“No Giant Mouse?” and Other Disappointments

Last week one of my publishers, Samhain, terminated one of my editors, Don D’Auria. If you’re at all into horror fiction, either reading it or following the industry: then you probably read something about it online.

If you haven’t, I’m not going to give too much of a recap here because, frankly, I’m no good at that stuff. If you need the scoop, I think John Everson has the best rundown of what happened and Don’s pedigree while also giving voice to a writer’s experience with Don, a prince of a man. But if you want a little more fire in your reading, you can also check out the post Brian Keene wrote on the subject. I don’t wholly agree with Mr. Keene (someone who’s been very supportive of me and whose writing and industry know-how I greatly admire) but I can nod my head at a lot of what he’s saying.

Where we disagree is that I don’t read the decision to let Don go as one predicated on him being replaced with an editor who is “social media savvy.” Even if that’s how the company’s press release seems to be (insanely unfortunately) worded, I think his exit from the company was likely a much more straightforward matter of economics.

As a Samhain author for three years (a book a year, even though it was constantly implied that I should be on a faster release schedule), I’ve seen a lot of internal emails and press releases that read similarly to the one sent out last week. The gist of those pieces of correspondence are usually “we know there’s a problem with [marketing, distribution, art direction, etc.] and we’re working on fixing it.”

Without getting too far into my thoughts on last week’s press release, my opinion runs towards:

“Big changes are coming that will make things better for everyone!” begins to sound a lot like “remain calm. No shoving. Make an orderly line to the life boats, please” when you hear it repeated ad nauseam.

The bottom line is: while I haven’t always thought that Samhain made the right moves, there are good people working there in the Cincinnati office and I want to see them succeed. Thanks to Don, Samhain is currently publishing some fantastic authors (some of them I count as great friends), and I hope that the company can continue the horror line and grow sales/the readership to where authors like Jonathan Janz, Sephera Giron, Kristopher Rufty, Patrick Lacey, David Bernstein, Hunter Shea and many others deserve. Support these people.

As for Don himself, I’m sure you read enough sappy blogs last week to hold you over for a lifetime. He’s a great editor, a fantastic guy, and I have no doubt that there are already talks on-going for another publishing house to bring him in. Last week I put this picture and caption up on Facebook and I think it sums up my feelings nicely:

“Here are some more fun Don facts, as they pertain to me:

He’s not just an expert in horror fiction, he’s as big a Euro-horror cinema geek as you’re likely to find. Most of our World Horror Convention conversations have been about DVDs and Blu-rays, even the conversations where the drinks were going on the Samhain company credit card and we were supposed to be talking business. Thanks, Samhain!


I pitched him my first novel, Video Night, and lied about it being finished. Not only that, I was sweating bullets during the pitch session (at Stoker Weekend 2011 on Long Island) and it had to be apparent to Don. He put me at ease by making small talk instead of asking me about the manuscript (I hadn’t sold anything beyond a few short stories at that point), we landed on topics like Boston in the ’80s and Warren Zevon. He later acquired the book.


He doesn’t do a lot of afterhours events at cons, and when he does he always knows where the paparazzi are, as evidenced by this photo from Killercon:

”

Don will be a catch wherever he goes, and I hope to work with him (and chat movies) again one day soon.

I may not have any books forthcoming with Samhain (I have some coming from elsewhere though, so don’t worry if you’re one of my four readers) but they’re still the publisher of a large section of my backlist. Not only that, a month or so ago events were set in motion to get one of those backlist titles discounted for a limited time.

So, uh, I’m left in the awkward position of making this blog post about two different (somewhat ill-fitting) topics and will now proceed to try and sell you something.

We’re about to switch over to shilling mode, don’t hate the player hate the game.

For the next week my book Exponential is on sale for a measly 99 cents wherever ebooks are sold (amazon, B&N, Kobo).

I think that’s too low a price, but Exponential is a bit of an odd duck when it comes to my books. It’s kind of my “sleeper” title. And it got that way via an underwhelming release that can be traced back to a lot of factors.

For one—and this one’s totally on me—I was very busy when the book was released and didn’t get to send out requests for press (reviews, interviews, etc.) or plaster the internet like I should have. At this level of publishing (at basically all levels, really, these days) the onus for a book launch is placed partially or wholly onto the author’s level of hustle. I thought I’d try a “set it and forget it” approach here with Exponential, and it didn’t work. Even the folks who bought (and presumably enjoyed) my prior two novels didn’t show up to the party. And maybe that’s because they weren’t made aware that there was a party going on at all. Again, my bad.

But there’s also another problem I’ve run into with book, and this one’s only partially on me: people seem to read the back-cover copy and think that Exponential is about a giant mouse.

Exponential is not about a giant mouse.

You heard me.

(Yeah, this entire post was basically an excuse for me to use that gif.)

Neither does Exponential, as the cover art “strongly inspired” by the poster art for 1988’s The Blob implies, feature Kevin Dillon’s long flowing hair nor a dude getting sucked down a drain.

The ad copy and the cover weren’t prepped by me. I did offer some notes for the cover image (eventually getting cut off after a couple rounds of revisions for being “too nitpicky,” if I remember) and probably could have had the synopsis refined, but I somehow let the notion that people could falsely assume the book’s about a giant mouse slip by me until it was released.

After that, people at cons started asking “So this book’s about a giant mouse?” after reading the back cover synopsis. Leading to a reaction from me similar to this:

So if not a giant mouse, what is Exponential about? 

It’s about a bunch of characters who seem like they’d be better suited to an crime thriller ending up face to face with a gelatinous bone golem that is cultivating mass by eating people and wildlife as it moves from Arizona towards Las Vegas. In short: it’s a giant monster road novel that I pitch at cons as “Tremors meets Breaking Bad!”

I honestly do feel like it features some of my best writing and character work and the reviews bear me out on this (it got a nice write-up in Rue Morgue #152 and even made some “Year’s Best” lists). It bums me out that the book wasn’t a hit on initial release, but I hope that you’ll give it a chance now and that it’ll find a new audience (and if you don’t like reading, there’s even an audiobook version).

And whether you like the book or wish that it had slightly more giant mice: please tell someone about it (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Goodreads reviews do wonders, even if they’re negative/mixed).

Thanks for listening to the spiel and good vibes to all my Samhain brothers and sisters,

Adam