Victoria Blake is the founder and publisher of Underland Press. She started the company after three years as a prose editor at Dark Horse Comics, in charge of the production of the Aliens, Predator, Hellboy, and Lankhmar novels. She came to book publishing from a career in newspapers, having worked as both a hard news and features reporter. Currently completing an MFA in fiction at the Warren Wilson Program for Writers, she holds a bachelor’s degree from Barnard College at Columbia University.
Publisher Victoria Blake steps into the closet for a chat about her upstart, Underland Press, which dares to make wovel (web novel) a word to remember…
What creative urge inspired you to start Underland Press?
I read Brian Evenson’s amazing novella, “The Brotherhood of Mutilation.” I’d never read anything like that before—the prose was so spare and yet the world he created was so alive. I fell in love. When Brian told me that he was writing a follow-up novella, I knew that if there was any way for me to publish both as one book, that’s what I wanted to do. I had been thinking about leaving Dark Horse—I already had a business plan and I’d gotten my printer bids and I had a rough financial projection. The start of Underland was when Brian said I could have the book as my first title.
Can you flesh out for us what makes Underland Press different?
Actually, I’m not trying to be different so much as to be better.
Better? How so?
Not that there's anything wrong with genre presses now. In fact, from what I see, some people are doing some truly incredible things. But I think there's always room for improvement in the way we treat authors, in the attention we pay to manuscripts, in the production quality, in the marketing, and in the business decisions that guide the course of the company.
What challenges do you foresee in establishing Underland Press as a viable publisher in our digital-minded age?
The digital world is one of Underland’s strengths. I plan on making Underland an integrated in print, online publisher—which is a different mission than most publishers have. Our web site has short stories posted for free, it has author podcasts of their books, free excerpts, downloadable ebooks, and it has the wovel. The wovel is a web novel where readers get to vote on the plot at the end of each installment every week. Kealan Patrick Burke wrote the first one, and Jemiah Jefferson will write the second, beginning on November 4. The wovel has gotten Underland a fair amount of attention, and readers have really seemed to respond. Their enthusiasm for the form is infectious. When we started the wovel, we didn’t know it would work. It was an experiment. The experiment was so successful, we’ve decided to do more of them.
While at Dark Horse, you were a prose editor. What does a prose editor do?
I say “prose editor” to differentiate what I did from what most of the editors at Dark Horse did, which was to edit graphic material. Comics. A prose editor is a book editor. Comics are also published in books, so to be more precise I chose “prose editor.” It’s confused a number of people. Sorry.
What projects did you work on at Dark Horse?
My favorites were the Aliens and Predator books. In the right hands, licensed fiction can be really, really good—an intellectual playground for a variety of minds. As it happened, Brian Evenson wrote an Aliens book for Dark Horse, and Jeff VanderMeer wrote a Predator book. Both books, “No Exit” and “South China Sea” have recently been released. They’re well worth the read, just to see how these two wonderful writers approach the specific problems of the project.
You make a distinction between genre and category. Can you elaborate on this for us?
I aped that distinction from Debra Spark, who gave a lecture in my MFA program during the winter 2007 residency. According to her definitions, which I agree with and which are upheld by dictionaries all over the world, a genre is a collection of artistic works that share the same form, content, or technique. A category is a class of works. So, the genre is the descriptive—what this particular form is, how it is written—and the category is the box that the genres go into. In this context, it’s a marketing box—the aisle in the bookstore.
What’s odd is that when we refer to genre lit, we refer to those fiction books that aren’t high literature, or literature with a capital L. But high literature is a genre, too, one that conforms to very specific rules of style, form, and content. And, in terms of quality, I’d argue that fiction across the board has the same percentage breaks… In other words, there’s as much bad mystery, fantasy, and sci-fi writing as there is bad high literature.
I say this with the full understanding that anybody who articulates the lines of the genre/literature divide is considered an apologist, at best. I am not an apologist—for genre lit or for high lit. I’m just pointing out what I see.
I did not know you also write mysteries–the Sam Falconer series. How did you come up with your female private eye? (Zoc note: My bad; wrong VB, but Ms. Blake graciously went with it.)
That’s my doppelganger, Victoria Blake. I believe she also writes vampire novels.
Victoria Blake: Yes, dear. That’s right, I do.
Victoria Blake: Oh, Hello there! Do you want to answer this question…?
Victoria Blake: Certainly, dear. The answer is simple. Does the world really need another male detective?
Would you say the horror and mystery genres are similar? Different?
Similar, and different. They both have the same impulse—which is to set the reader off balance, to change the rules of the universe just a little, just enough to make it strange.
I’d say, though, that a mystery is a structure, and that horror is more of a sensibility. I’m afraid I’m not being very eloquent about this… In a mystery book, the information necessary for solving the mystery is withheld until the end. The plot is pulled along by withholding information, and by letting it out bit by bit, like a balloon. A horror novel can be a mystery, can be a thriller, can be a procedural, can be a quest novel, can be a love story. Each of those stories has different structures, are made with different DNA. The horror elements are the monsters and magic and violence and supernatural elements that occur along the way.
Is it difficult to shift mental and physical gears between your mystery writer role and now publisher (editor) role?
Victoria Blake: You betcha’.
Victoria Blake: Couldn’t have said it better…
Tell us about your future projects, regarding Underland Press and everything else.
My first two books come out in February and March. That’s Brian Evenson’s “Last Days,” and Will Elliott’s “The Pilo Family Circus.” I’m very honored to be publishing both books. Brian’s book I’ve talked a little about, but Will’s book is amazing, too. And I’m not just saying that because I’m the publisher. Will wrote the book when he was in recovery from his first episode of Schizophrenia, when he was nineteen. He literally taught himself how to write, and the result is a book that is weird and wonderful. Plus, the clowns in his book are in a war with the acrobats. Some die. It’s well worth the read.
My next book is “Chaos,” a thriller by Escober, a best selling husband and wife team from the Netherlands. This is their first time in U.S. English. I was a little nervous to get the translation—I really wanted it to be great. I read the proof in two days, and was blown away. It’s fantastic. A real page turner.
After Chaos comes “Finch,” by Jeff VanderMeer. It’s the third book in his Ambergris series, and it promises to be fantastic. There’s a revolution on, a mysterious lady in a blue coat, and everything is made out of mold. He’s writing it now. I can’t wait to read it.
I can’t announce my books beyond that right now, but I should be able to within the month. Online, we have Jemiah Jefferson’s wovel starting on November 4. It’ll be super cool—a dystopic future, part “Ghost in the Shell,” part “Bladerunner.”
I have to give a shout out here to Matt Staggs, who has helped me tremendously along the way. Thanks, Matt. I couldn't do this without you.
What question would you love to be asked, and what's your answer to it?
My favorite questions is, “Would you like another drink?”
I always answer yes.