Paperbacks from Hell [N.F. - Literature, Art]

Zebra’s publishers knew their authors weren’t famous enough to sell books on name alone, so they focused instead on covers. They paid their artists well, hiring big names like Lisa Falkenstern and William Teason. Working on the skeleton farm may not have made you proud, but it did earn a paycheck. Always looking for ways to stand out, Zebra published the first hologram cover on a paperback horror novel (Rick Hautala’s Night Stone) in 1986.

In 1992 cancer claimed the life of Grossman, who had been like a daughter to Zacharius. After her death, Harlequin tried to buy Zebra for the bargain-basement price of $30 million; in the depths of his grief, Zacharius agreed to sell. He backed out at the last minute.

The early ’90s saw Zebra flogging the killer-child, Satanic, and animal-attack books that had been so popular in the ’70s, giving them increasingly ornate covers. But the death rattle had sounded: in 1993 Zebra reduced its horror output to two titles per month. Three years later one of the last and largest existing horror imprints in America stopped publishing horror titles and focused on romance and suspense instead. An era had ended.

Skulls and bones are familiar cover images for paperback horror. But Zebra Books raised the skeleton cover model to an art form, whether the story was about a devil child (Sandman), small-town evil (Devil’s Moon), Aladdin’s lamp (Smoke), or an actual walking skeleton (Wait and See). Credit 147

Lazy bones? We think not. Zebra Books and other horror publishers showed us that if they put their minds to it, skeletons could do anything from lead a pep rally to earn an advanced degree. Credit 148

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Dark Fantasy and Quiet Horror

For every dancing skeleton who writes a horror novel, there must be a skeleton wrangler, a person who takes that skeleton to NECON (Northeastern Writers’ Conference), introduces it to the right editors, publishes its first story. Skeleton wranglers are the grease in the gears that make the pendulum swing; they’re the ones who buy the drinks, correct the manuscript, cut the checks.

Often we can spot wranglers by looking at horror periodicals and anthologies. David B. Silva’s quarterly magazine The Horror Show (1982–91) won a World Fantasy Award, and Silva published early work by future stars like Poppy Z. Brite and Bentley Little. Jeff Conner’s Scream/Press published limited editions of Stephen King, F. Paul Wilson, and Ramsey Campbell and issued the first U.S. hardcover editions of Clive Barker’s Books of Blood collections. Ellen Datlow was the fiction editor at Omni magazine from 1981 to its folding in 1998; she ushered dozens of authors into the spotlight before taking over editing The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and The Best Horror of the Year, as well as numerous themed short-fiction anthologies.

But the biggest skeleton wrangler of them all was also one of the genre’s best-known editors and most prolific writers: Charles L. Grant. A Vietnam veteran who disliked Lovecraft and hated gore, Grant was a purveyor of what he first called “dark fantasy”—what was later called “quiet horror.”

The contents were quiet, but the covers were loud. Grant’s books got covers by some of the genre’s best artists, like Rowena Morrill (Night Songs) and Jill Bauman (Midnight). Credit 150

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Grant believed in creeping mist and full moons, he loved long titles and characters taking midnight strolls down empty streets. Like fog, he tended to blur lines rather than shatter boundaries. His characters are modern, dreaming of cars they can’t afford, and his ghosts go on dates and leave answering-machine messages. Like John Cheever, he enjoyed writing about suburban ennui, families crumbling under pressure from suspected infidelities, and which child liked which parent best. Four of his fictional New England towns spawned their own series, but the place he kept returning to was the imaginary town of Oxrun Station.

Grant knew everyone, and he made all the introductions. He published more than one hundred novels and wrote uncountable short stories under the pen names Felicia Andrews and Lionel Fenn, among others. But what made Grant the ultimate skeleton wrangler was Shadows.

Launched in 1978, Shadows was an anthology in which Grant tolerated no traditional monsters and no gore. Instead he published work by Alan Ryan, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Al Sarrantonio, and a couple of Stephen King’s quieter stories. As contributor Thomas Monteleone said, “If your stories weren’t appearing in Shadows, then you just weren’t cutting it.”