Home > Around Town > Hell is an awfully big city

Hell is an awfully big city

The weird works of DL Russell

By Michael Summers

michael_summers@fortwaynereader.com

Fort Wayne Reader

2009-11-24

David Russell made a promise to himself many years ago when he served in the military during the first Iraq war: if he made it out of that experience, he was going to pursue his dream of becoming a horror writer.

And he did. After he got out of the military, Russell, a graduate of Wayne high school, began the long and sometimes painstaking process of developing his horror fiction, submitting stories to magazines and, like any fledgling author, collecting a stack of rejection slips. (we covered Russell in FWR #89)

Of course, the magazine business isn’t what it used to be, so Russell began looking at other venues to place his work, and got a big break several years ago when Eternal Press, an Australia-based e-publisher specializing in genre fiction, took a liking to his stories and included a couple in an anthology they were publishing. They also released Russell’s novella, Maxwell: The Last Vampire.

But now, as Russell’s first short story collection Hell Is An Awfully Big City is just coming out in print from independent publisher Wildcat Books (www.wildcatbooks.net), he’s discovering that the actual writing process might be the easiest part of being a published author. When I reach Russell on his cell phone, he’s in a branch of one of the big chain bookstores in Fort Wayne, trying to find out if they stock books by local writers. “I’m learning that when you’re in this business, you’re on your own,” he says. “I can’t stress that enough. Every writer out there is trying to push their work, and you’ve got to really, really promote your own book.”

So Russell has been doing the rounds. As it happens, this particular bookstore does not stock books by local authors, but he’s found plenty of others, here and in other cities, that do, so Russell has been calling and e-mailing as many places and people that he can, trying to set up book signings or anything else that can help promote Hell Is An Awfully Big City.

Among the nine stories in Hell Is An Awfully Big City include “Dreams Still On You,” about a bookstore owner who falls in love with the ghost living in his house. That was the story that first brought him to the attention of his old publisher, Eternal Press, who liked the “romantic” aspect of the piece enough to include it (and another story called “Raymond Doesn’t Remember”) in an anthology called Paranormal Bedtime Stories.

But Russell says Eternal Press’s primary focus is “paranormal romance,” which didn’t sit well with his style. “That’s just not my cup of tea,” he says. “I’m not downing it or anything, but that’s just not what I write. The paranormal romance writers got more of the billing.”

After doing his research, Russell found Wildcat Books, an independent publisher based in Winchester, Virginia that he thought matched his sensibilities much better. Russell submitted a synopsis and some samples, and Wildcat Books liked what they read. “The publisher really likes the ‘pulp fiction’ era,” Russell says. “Pulp fiction is kind of old school, and I think I write some old school, kind of Weird Tales and Amazing Stories kind of things. That’s the way I see my fiction, and I just thought it might be a good match with the pulp idea that they had.”

Indeed, Russell’s take on the horror/supernatural genre is a little old school. The tales in Hell Is An Awfully Big City are modern stories in contemporary settings, but there’s sort of a Twilight Zone feel to many of them, where something that appears normal or average proves itself to be exactly the opposite. “I like the old guys,” Russell says, explaining his literary influences. “Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, Robert Bloch… I still love guys like Stephen King and Dean Koontz, but the older guys, the guys who used to get published in regular magazines when it seemed every single magazine used to run least one piece of fiction, those are the stories I really, really like.”

“The Old Men of McDonald’s” — the most recent story in the collection — takes its premise from a sight that’s familiar to many of us: the small groups of older men that can be found sipping coffee and holding forth in practically any franchise in the country. But Russell’s story gives these groups of seniors a deeper, stranger purpose. There’s also “That Ain’t No Chicken,” a story about an egg farm told, partially, from the point of view of the animals.

The title story is a “deal with the devil” story, where the main character Rufus is approached during the last days of his life by the Devil. “I kind of feel that every horror writer needs to put their stamp on one of the basics, the classics, and the ‘deal with the devil’ story is one of those,” Russell says.

In addition to his own writing, Russell also publishes and edits the e-zine Strange, Weird and Wonderful (strangeweirdandwonderful.com). “We believe there’s talent everywhere, and with the ‘zine, our goal was to give new writers a way to showcase their work,” he says. “I still get a rush when somebody sends in a good story and says they haven’t been published before.”

As with any fiction, the horror/supernatural genre has its share of conventions that have just been seen so many times that readers lose patience. As an author and an editor in the genre, Russell says that what counts is originality, the author’s own, unique take on a tale. “Predictability is predictability,” he explains. “Readers can tell when something has been done before. There are stories that I’ve half-written that I’ve stopped because I’ve thought ‘I’ve seen this before.’ And it’ll just sit on the shelf if I can’t come up with something original.”

Russell points out that the old vampire story got an update several years ago, after Laurell K. Hamilton took up the baton from Anne Rice, revved up the sex and romance for her Anita Blake series, and sort of started the current “vampire romance” craze (see Stephanie Meyer). “Even though I’m not a big fan of the whole ‘paranormal romance’ thing, when it started out it was pretty original,” Russell says. “Now, everyone is copying it, so it’s becoming cliché, but in the beginning, when Hamilton first started doing that, no one else was doing it, and it took the genre by storm.”

“There are only so many stories to be told, but there are a thousand ways to tell those stories, and when you can get a reader to forget that they might have seen the this or that before, and just get into the story you’re telling… then you’ve really got something.”

David Russell reads from Hell Is An Awfully Big City at the IPFW Bookstore in Kettler Hall (2101 East Coliseum Blvd.) on Thursday, December 17 at 2 pm.

For more information, visit www.dlrussellsworld.com and www.strangeweirdandwonderful.com.