Inkshares 2017 Horror Contest Now OPEN; Hear from CEO Adam Gomolin
Debi Moore
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We told you a few days ago about the Inkshares 2017 Horror Contest to find the next big voices in horror, which Dread Central is a part of. In case you missed the earlier story, in a nutshell, the Oakland, California-based publisher is inviting horror authors to submit their work, which will then be judged based on reader interest (the number of pre-orders a book receives) to determine which three books the company will publish.
In addition to pre-orders, guest judges such as The Purge writer/director James DeMonaco, reviewers from horror outlets (including yours truly), and reps from Barnes and Noble will nominate books for publication as well.
The contest officially kicked off today and runs to October 31st; you can get the details and enter by clicking here. But first be sure to read the following statement from Inkshares CEO Adam Gomolin for a bit of inspiration.
This is both an announcement and a love letter.
It is an announcement of the Inkshares 2017 Horror Contest. The contest’s goal is to bubble up the most important horror voices of tomorrow, something with respect to which we’ve been lucky to have great success in the last three years—voices like J-F. Dubeau, J. Danielle Dorn, and Scott Thomas. Also partnering in this contest are the BloodList, Dread Central, HorrorTalk, and the Horror Writers Association of America.
But this is also a love letter to the horror genre itself. At Inkshares we are lucky enough to publish books and help produce them as TV shows and movies. Horror has been a centerpiece of this endeavor. You get into publishing because you appreciate the novel as a marquee form of narrative and because you secretly dream of launching a body wash that smells like old books; you get into horror because you appreciate and crave the convulsive, sphincter-ratcheting terror that makes you think and feel. So, as fans ourselves, we wanted to declare our hellmouth-deep love for the genre and articulate what we think makes it special.
Horror defies genre. The most iconic examples come not from books but film, which has always been friendlier to horror—and the recent breadth of horror at the box office perfectly exemplifies this. Anyone who saw Alien: Covenant in the theater felt it was faithful to the franchise in that it is as much horror in outer space as it is science-fiction. Annabelle and The Conjuring play on more conventional norms of possession while The Saw franchise epitomizes gore. The Purge franchise continues to marry socio-economic commentary with visceral horror. At Inkshares we’ve published horror set in dark-ages England, in Nazi-occupied Romania, in the Old West, and in present-day Quebec. These books cross historical fantasy, elevated pulp, western, literary, crime thriller, and Gothic horror. I challenge anyone reading this letter to supply a “genre” with greater breadth or nuance than horror.
And great horror has a way of staying with us. Ask me what the first romantic comedy I saw was, and I’ll fumble for a hazy memory of watching A Fish Called Wanda on VHS in 1989. But ask me what the first horror movie I saw was, and the answer is immediate—Hellraiser—and the memory rendered in high-def. At seven, my friend Scott and I managed to sneak Barker’s adaptation of his own novella out of Blockbuster Video disguised in a Peter Pan case. We snuck down to watch it while his parents were asleep, a state to which I did not return for a fortnight. Barker’s Pinhead was no aberration: Some of my favorite moments of my childhood were horror. My weeks revolved around mumbling a second-by-second countdown to “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” under my breath while my grade school teachers droned on about perpendicular bisectors and subordinate clauses.
Horror’s trick, the nature of its power, is that it plays upon our deep fears, our anxieties—and our sublimated cravings. As Stephen King notes in Danse Macabre, more so than any other genre, horror offers us an outlet, an efflux valve. It’s primal. This means that horror narratives not only provide a cathartic sense of drama but can effectively carry with them important social messages: Get Out uses the broad appeal of the genre to convey an important social message about disenfranchisement; The Babadook is above all else a meditation on how grief can flay a human being. We’ll publish a great book this fall called Weaponized that leverages some Metamorphosis-type horror to offer an important statement on the demonization of those suffering from sexually transmitted diseases.
But horror has never been the darling of literary authorities. It has languished, a dispossessed spirit relegated to a rank basement. I can’t recall ever being assigned a horror book in school; English teachers were happy to assign Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, but not her equally brilliant The Haunting of Hill House. Why? Not a single Stephen King book in eight semesters of high school English class: Come on; isn’t Carrie germane to the teenage experience? Perhaps they thought it would scare us, or perhaps they feared the basic power of the genre—a threat to their power, their authority. A sad fact is that horror has been treated similarly by traditional publishers. Setting aside the Kings, Straubs, Barkers, and a select few others like Koontz and Cook—each championed by rare agents and editors—horror has always been treated as “dirty,” absent the flagship imprints we see in other genres.
Only now, with the ascendancy of horror film franchises, runaway successes of self-published horror, and demonstrably large online horror communities, are publishers waking up. But the unfortunate result of this lack of respect for horror has been a lack of opportunity for talented aspirants and an according oligarchy of the uber talent. Stephen King may be the greatest horror writer in history—he is one of the greatest writers in all of fiction, hard stop—but I imagine even he would agree that it is not healthy for him to occupy 18 of the 20 top spots on the Audible horror chart.
Horror is a genre of singular breadth and impact. It is not to be relegated, cast aside, or otherwise subordinated. Horror is ascendant. It is beautiful. Because more than any other genre, horror is human. It is us. The Inkshares 2017 Horror Contest is about surfacing the next big voices in horror. Whether you’re an aspiring horror writer or a horror fan who wants to champion an aspiring young author, we look forward to seeing you on Inkshares.
The Rules
We’re looking for the top three horror books on Inkshares in terms of unique reader pre-order counts for pre-orders placed between August 15, 2017, and October 31, 2017 (12:00 noon PT). The judges may also select additional books based on their own criteria. All three (or more) books will be published by Inkshares even if they haven’t reached their pre-order goal. There may be opportunities for the winners to develop their work into other media such as movies, television, and digital productions.
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