Sometimes The Darkness Needs to Get Darker
Essay on the Second Edition of Everything the Darkness Eats
There really are books that can change your life. As a reader books like Solitude of Prime Numbers changed how I viewed love, Little Children showed how compassion and humor are the best path for life's horror, and Clive Barker's Damnation Game showed a teenage boy the power of what a horror novel can do. While I fell in love with the fun of Fear Street on the page and the thrill of seeing Jason, Freddy, and Chucky cause havoc on the screen, it was reading Damnation Game on the page and watching Hellraiser on the screen where horror became my home[.
Clive Barker's work was a revelation. While I loved the entertainment of ’90s horror, Barker showed me horror could help you deal with the hell of teenage life and the frightening corner of adult life coming for me. Sex, death, desire, anger, sadness, and loneliness were all things that were a part of my life that I struggled to accept and understand.
Hellraiser remains my favorite horror film and The Damnation Game is still one of my favorite horror novels.
Let's flashback to the early summer of 2021. I remember that being one of my happiest times in publishing: we had two books (In Defense of Ska and Darryl) come out in May that were both hits, Consortium had accepted us to be a part of their 2022 year, and we were pregnant with a beautiful boy.
I'm superstitious and thought: good things come in threes. We can't have any more wins any time soon. But I was very wrong as I got a submission called Everything the Darkness Eats by Eric LaRocca. I was already a fan and loved his viral debut that Weird Punk Books (an amazing weird-fic horror press, you should go buy a book from them now) published and I was so excited to see this query.
I can remember being 20 pages in and thinking: this feels like when I read The Damnation Game for the first time. I fell in love hard with this book and when the contract was signed it felt like winning the lottery of publishing. I knew we had something really special.
It was a joy to edit the book. To really push a young talented author, who reminded me so much of my favorite writer, who loved being edited to be their best creative self. It is so rewarding, you live for these moments as an editor. I say the most fun I had editing a book is a tie between Tea Hacic-Vlahovic’s Life of the Party and Everything the Darkness Eats.
When everything was wrapped up editing-wise and we finally landed on a cover, after a few tries, the moment of truth came when we had to decide on the print run. I had a mini heart attack when our distributor recommended to print at least 10,000 copies and we ended up printing 12,000.
The novel got great reviews in the New York Times, Library Journal, and Dread Central. So, we ended up printing another 5,000. Those are pretty much gone now, and I'll get to what we are doing next in a sec.
First, I need to say how much of a blessing it is to sell that many books as a small press. Financially it helps us a lot, but it also helps other authors. I've accepted there are some things I will never be able to change about publishing and one of those things are comps--aka comparative titles.
Having a solid comp from our own press was proof to show our distributor that horror, and not just any horror, but horror that really pushes the envelope, can sell well, has been huge when doing our sales conferences. Our distributor has really gotten behind our horror and queer titles. The saying about all rising tide lifts all boats can be very true in publishing.
The book has been a real gift and while I'd love to work with Eric again, I'm happy to see him with Tim O'Connell and Saga which is the perfect fit for him. I am lucky to call Eric a friend and fellow horror writer, and I’m so proud of where he is at in his career.
Let's get back to those 17,000 books that are now gone. We could have printed another 3,000 and just let it ride, but Eric sent me something special. It was a remixed edition of Darkness that is, well, way darker, especially the ending. We did a limited hardcover for super-fans, but now we are going to put it out as a second edition in paperback.
While I will always love the first edition and the original ending, I am in a much different place three years later. I feel the darkness of this decade. I see it online and I feel it when I walk around the city. Life feels a little fucked up and while I have optimism still, sometimes it's best to embrace the Darkness. Writers like Eric LaRocca, Clive Barker, CJ Leede, and Wrath James White are so gifted in giving us a place to deal with that darkness. For the Darkness mythos, it's time to share a much bleaker tale as we prepare to face the dark times ahead.
Yet, this book has brought so much joy. A life-changing book for us. Eric gave us a gift and I want to give one back to him and have this second edition be his true and final words on Henley’s Edge.
