If you've spent any amount of time in a used bookstore, you've undoubtedly seen the horror paperbacks section. Adorned with decades-old book spines that are predominantly black, they boast covers that are simultaneously creepy, kitschy and remarkably appealing. Those books never fail to evoke a sense of nostalgia and—I'll admit it—appreciation.

Grady Hendrix shared that same appreciation with readers in 2017 with the publication of the Bram Stoker Award-winning love-letter to 70s and 80s horror fiction, Paperbacks From Hell. It's a survey of paperback horror fiction from those decades in all their gory glory. I'll freely admit it's a book I keep returning to for reading ideas or just to look at the cool cover art. That book is now being used as a blueprint for a new line of retro-reprints from Valancourt Books called, appropriately enough, PAPERBACKS FROM HELL. The recently launched series offers readers a chance to re-experience classic horror fiction or perhaps discover it for the first time.

I spoke with PAPERBACKS FROM HELL series editor Grady Hendrix, Will Errickson (Too Much Horror Fiction blogger and author of the afterword to Paperbacks From Hell) and Valancourt publisher James D. Jenkins about the genesis of this new, must-have line of horror stories…

Q: The publication of PAPERBACKS FROM HELL in 2017 was a godsend to fellow readers who shared your love of 1970s and 1980s horror fiction. Tell us how the book came about.

When Darkness Loves Your Grady: I was going to used bookstores and seeing all these horror paperbacks that I'd never heard of, that I couldn't find information about online, that were total mysteries to me, and I thought: someone should be reading these books and telling me which ones are good or not. But no one was, so I had to. I started reading randomly and writing about what I found on Tor.com, learning bit by bit as I went, feeling my way forward. And then my editor at Quirk asked if I wanted to do a book that was a collection of these columns and I said, "You want me to do cocaine for ten weeks on an island full of naked people? Absolutely!" That meant I had to read a few hundred of these books in a very short span of time, but that was the fun part. And by "fun" I mean "the part that did permanent brain damage."

Will: I started my blog Too Much Horror Fiction back in early 2010. Grady had become a fan and contacted me about writing for Tor with him. That was 2014, and we did several series of vintage horror fiction reviews for Tor.com over the next two years. Then in early 2016 he contacted me and said his publisher Quirk Books wanted him to do a whole book on the horror paperback boom, and he knew I was just the guy to help him! I scanned lots of covers from my own library and we talked on the phone for hours about themes, structure, titles, authors, cover artists, all the nitty-gritty stuff. I wrote the afterword of recommended reading as well. It was truly a labor of love for both of us!

Q: Why do you think that horror fiction from those decades still resonates today with readers?

James: A lot of the horror fiction from the '70s and '80s is really high-quality and was undeservedly forgotten. Books like Robert Marasco's Burnt Offerings, Joan Samson's The Auctioneer, and Michael McDowell's Blackwater are bona fide classics, and not just '70s classics or horror classics, but classics, period. These are books that have stood the test of time and stand up next to modern classics by better known writers like Shirley Jackson or Stephen King. And then, alongside those lost masterpieces, there's also this huge output of horror fiction that doesn't aim for literary greatness—it just tries to be fun, and often it succeeds in a big way. Our first PAPERBACKS FROM HELL reprint, Gregory A. Douglas's The Nest(1980), for example: it's the story of giant mutant killer cockroaches loose in a Cape Cod community. It's wonderfully gruesome and over-the-top in a really fun way that you don't often find in today's horror fiction. So, whether you're the literary horror type or instead prefer cockroaches eating eyeballs and burrowing through ear canals in search of yummy brain matter, chances are that PAPERBACKS FROM HELL has something to offer you.

Will: Certain kinds of pop culture fans relish the detritus of the past, trawling through it for hidden and forgotten gems. I'm one of those fans! People remember these books from their childhood or teen years, and are delighted to find that some titles still hold up. They can be delightfully dated (or offensively dated, if I'm being honest!) and many still pack a horror punch even after all these years. The Seventies and Eighties are decades people still have a lot of fondness and affection for, and PAPERBACKS FROM HELL slotted right into that!

Q: Grady, your affinity to horror is apparent in your fiction as well, as evidenced by your novels HORRORSTÖR, MY BEST FRIEND'S EXORCISM and WE SOLD OUR SOULS, all of which tap into pop culture to some degree. Why infuse your fiction with nostalgia?

Grady: It's not conscious! I can only write what I know because I am a poor writer with a limited amount of talent, and so the events and locations that I'm most passionate about, that I can really make sing, are the ones that I experienced. And, unfortunately, I'm now old enough for my childhood to exist in the zone of cultural nostalgia. It's more an accident of timing and a testament to my limitations, rather than a conscious attempt at some sort of style.

Q: When did it become apparent that PAPERBACKS FROM HELL could serve as a guidebook for a new line of reprints?

Will: I think it was after it won the Stoker Award for nonfiction. Valancourt emailed Grady and me about starting a line of reprints of some of the titles we'd talked about in the book, and I think Grady and I were like, "Duh, yes, it's a perfect idea, why didn't we think of it?!" I'd already helped Valancourt with a couple titles a few years before, so there was a relationship already. A good handful of out-of-print titles had become expensive collector's items, which was an unintended consequence of our book. Truthfully, some of those paperbacks were going for astronomical prices even before PAPERBACKS FROM HELL, and my blog, existed. I recall copies of A Delicate Dependency by Michael Talbot and Hell Hound by Ken Greenhall being listed at hundreds of dollars over 10 years ago (fortunately Valancourt was able to reprint those).

James: Like everybody else, we rushed out to buy PAPERBACKS FROM HELL when it first came out, and like everybody else we loved it. But as we paged through it, we started noticing a pattern: there were a ton of books featured in it that we'd already published, works by Michael McDowell, Michael Talbot, Ken Greenhall, Robert Marasco, Bernard Taylor, Eric Higgs and others. And so, it just seemed natural to link what we were already doing with what Grady and Will was doing in PAPERBACKS FROM HELL and find a way to reissue even more of this great horror fiction.

Q: How did the project get launched?

James: We kicked the idea around here at Valancourt and then approached Grady and Will. They were both enthusiastic about it, so we got in touch with Quirk Books, who own the "Paperbacks from Hell" name and logo, about licensing it for a series of reprints. From there, it was just a matter of Grady and Will coming up with a list of possible titles and then researching the rights situation to see which books might be available for reprinting.

Will: As soon as Valancourt contacted us, we began looking over our shelves to see what would be good. We were disappointed a few times to find that titles we wanted were unavailable for various reasons: some books were available in ebook format already, some authors weren't interested, and some never responded at all. We whittled a short list down to five books.

Q: The PAPERBACKS FROM HELL series will include 5 classic horror books from the 70s and 80s:

  • THE NEST by Gregory A. Douglas
  • WHEN DARKNESS LOVES US by Elizabeth Engstrom
  • THE REAPING by Bernard Taylor
  • THE TRIBE by Bari Wood
  • THE SPIRIT by Thomas Page

Out of the huge selection to choose from, why those five?

The Reaping Grady: In part, it was based on what we could get. We're still trying to locate some authors whose work we're desperate to reissue but we're having a hard time getting in touch with them. Although, James did just track down an author when he found a police blotter item that her son had recently doused her with lighter fluid and tried to set her on fire. More than that, though, we picked these books because they're the ones we love. Will's big on The Nest, which I like but don't love, and I really like Bernard Taylor's writing a lot, even though I think The Reaping is good, but not his greatest work (what I consider to be his greatest work is still in print so off-limits to us). For me, The Spirit, The Tribe, and When Darkness Loves Us were must-haves. The Spirit is probably the only Bigfoot fiction where no one has sex with sasquatch, and thanks to Page's sense of humor and his sharp writing style, it's really THE great bigfoot book. The Tribe is probably the greatest work of Jewish horror out there, and When Darkness Loves Us...I don't know how this book fell out of print but it's a crime.

Will: It was a combo of titles Valancourt had easy access to rights and titles we liked. And five is not too few and not too many.

Q: Valancourt is offering readers a unique way to get their hands on these classics. Tell us about it.

James: We're doing something we've never done before, a subscription service, where readers can preorder the set of five books for $85 and we'll send them one book per month. (The price works out to $13.50 per book, which is a 20% discount off list price, plus $3.50 shipping & handling for each.) They even come in special cardboard mailers with the PAPERBACKS FROM HELL logo. Judging from the photos we're seeing on Instagram and Twitter, people are really loving receiving them! And really, if you think about it, how many of us order books directly from publishers these days? So, it's been a bit of a different way of doing things for us, and it's been great interacting directly with readers and fans.

Q: What can subscribers expect from the PAPERBACKS FROM HELL series?

Grady: They can expect fun. Some of these books are pulpy, some are truly great, some are bizarre, but they're all fun. And we're focusing on writers who truly know how to write, even if what they write is pulp, so you won't find any Guy N. Smith or William Johnstone because, as fun as those guys are, their writing is just like being hit in the eyeballs with wooden sticks over and over again. And although they were written in the Seventies and Eighties, we're avoiding books that are misogynistic, although it's impossible to avoid some "Hey, little lady" chauvinism from time to time. And we're not going rapey. Attitudes towards sex, and consent, and rape were really different when these books were written and we're doing our absolute best to avoid the ones that are just out-and-out gross. So readers can pick up any of the books in this series and know they're getting good writing, a fun story, and it's passed our smell test for blatant and offensive sexism/racism/homophobia.

Will: They can expect a variety of the types of horror fiction of that era: pulpy graphic horror, literary horror, man vs. monster, man vs. nature, etc. I myself enjoy various kinds of horror, not just one style. These five books represent the breadth of the genre.

Q: At least the first few volumes in the series will include art from the original paperbacks. Why? Was it difficult to get the rights to do so?

The Tribe James: When we first started teasing the series on social media, the response was overwhelming: people wanted the original cover art kept! And I mean, they were emphatic about it. Yes, rights are sometimes a challenge, mainly because in the early '80s publishers often did not credit the artists—and this was intentional: they didn't want other publishers poaching their talent. So, for The Tribe, for instance, we're fairly sure the art is by Don Brautigam because it matches his style, but even his family weren't 100% sure whether it was his work or not. The other challenge is that once we decided we wanted the original painted covers, we wanted the whole series to be uniform—so we didn't want 4 painted original covers and then a photograph or a modern design for the 5th book. And yet the original editions of Thomas Page's The Spirit, which is a fantastic Bigfoot novel, had really terrible covers. So we're having to be creative in how we retain the '80s-style painted covers across the whole series, even when the original source material doesn't give us a lot to work with.

Will: There was no way we could do this without those covers if at all possible. It's kind of all about the covers! We want them to jump out at bookstore customers just like in the old days.

Q: I'm seeing lots of buzz on social media about PAPERBACKS FROM HELL. Does that mean we might see even more reprints coming?

Grady: Absolutely. We already have one title locked down and there are definitely more to come. James spends seventeen hours a day tracking down these authors. We never sleep!

Will: Yes! We are hard at work coming up with potential titles, reading them, and discussing their various merits--or lack thereof. It is absolutely a work in progress.

John DeNardo is the founding editor of SF Signal, a Hugo Award-winning science fiction and fantasy blog featuring news, reviews and interviews. You can follow him on Twitter as @sfsignal.