When I got on the phone with David Scott Hay earlier this summer, we had plenty to discuss. He’s running Headless, a new horror-centric imprint at Whiskey Tit, the indie press on which we’ve both released novels. The first book published under this imprimatur is an anthology featuring work from the likes of Eric LaRocca and Tananarive Due, Connoisseur Volume 1: Feast. Next February will see the publication of The Butcher of Nazareth, Hay’s next novel, which takes a visceral look at religious history. Our conversation touched on both projects as well as Hay’s experience in theater — and the uncanny appeal of horror stories.
You have a new horror novel on the way and you recently announced the start of a horror imprint at Whiskey Tit. Was the genesis of the two connected, or did one arrive a little after the other?
Miette [of Whiskey Tit] and I were having a phone conversation and just spitballing stuff. I went to my first StokerCon in June, and I had been a juror for the short story for the Bram Stoker Awards. I went there. It was in San Diego, so it was just a quick train ride down. And a lot of people that I had met, that I had read, were such a diverse group. It’s so inclusive. And because the subgenres of horror are spread out, it felt like everybody had room, you know?
I didn’t grow up like a super horror kid or anything. I kind of came in sideways to it with, you know, NSFW. I was telling Miette, there is room for so many voices and things to do. And honestly, you know, the commercial aspect is a little bit bigger. Whiskey Tit is very into experimental stuff. I think there might be a path for us to do some kind of the Whiskey Tit style stuff, but leaning more towards horror. Headless is kind of fun because everybody uses a skull. I thought, we could not use a skull and call it Headless.
I read so many short stories because I went in cold as a juror. I committed to a year of reading hundreds and hundreds of short stories and judging them. And I read some fantastic stuff. It’s like anything, 95% of it, you know, people are on their way, they’re discovering their voice. And 3% to 5% of that, you’re like, oh man, there is really something here. And it was a cold read for me other than a handful of authors. I didn’t know these names. And when the tally came in, I was happy with the jury short list of 10.
Then the final ballot came out and I thought, this won’t do. There were so many short stories that set out to do something different. They nailed it. I kept all those stories. I kept my sheet and pitched them on doing a “best of Stoker” anthology. I know Ellen Datlow does a best of horror anthology, but it seemed like a no-brainer. They said, “Oh, that’s a great idea.” And then…crickets.
So it was really kind of a spite thing. I called Miette again. I said, “I think I can put together an anthology.” I’d selected 25 to 30 stories that I thought were really, really amazing and they kind of crossed genres and things. She said, “This is a great idea.” Within six weeks of emailing, I’d gotten yeses from everybody. The only two people that ended up not joining — the rights weren’t available for one story, and the other writer had just sold a collection and that story was going to be part of that.
Originally it was going to be Connoisseur Volume 1: Encore because of the reprint aspect. It was a blind spot for me because I kept thinking it’s all reprints. And then, we got the artwork, which has an album cover in the layout and stuff. And I thought, Encore is not going to sell anything. So we changed it to Feast since we had the heavy metal character with the bloodied mouth. That was the start of it.
When we were talking about doing the anthology, my next book, The Butcher of Nazareth was originally going to come out this. I said, “Thinking longterm, we should probably do the anthology, plant our flag, get fans of everybody in there — and then put that novel out on the Headless imprint.” So I kicked my own book down the road a year, which, a few years ago would have been like torture. Nowadays it’s just, that’s the long run. And I get time to do more edits and sit with it, come back with a little bit more distance.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with the music of dälek, but — I’ve known those guys for a while. And while the music they play is hip-hop, I can remember when they started playing on metal bills and they found that those audiences were very accepting of what they were doing. I feel like there’s something similar going on with horror, where a writer like Brian Evenson can do really challenging, inventive work that also resonates with horror readers.
The reason I plan to stay in the horror space for the next few years is that — I’m a stylist. I like to try this kind of style of book, I like to try this kind of writing. Everything’s an experiment. But with horror, I can do my Western novel and lean a little bit more towards Bone Tomahawk or The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. I’m not really into splatterpunk or slashers, but I like books where there’s a Cronenberg element to its science fiction or something. You could write any kind of story you wanted, as long as it bent a little bit towards that.
With NSFW, it’s a much more experimental book about social media. I got a really lovely review from Kirkus, but they also referred to it as science fiction. It’s more like speculative, like next week speculative. My first book, The Fountain, has sold so many more copies of NSFW, and II probably have twice as many reviews on GoodReads. It was really just a challenge for me. The people that love that book have shouted it out. One of the things I love about the horror community is that, movies or books, if something resonates, they’re vocal. Science fiction readers are hidden away. I don’t know where they are, but the horror readers are big fans and so much more vocal. For somebody writing in the indie space, it’s great that horror-adjacent work is becoming part of that community.
Where do you see the Headless imprint falling, aesthetically speaking? Is Headless going to be in the same neighborhood as, say, what CLASH and Ghoulish are doing, or will it head in a somewhat different direction?
I have to be honest with you. This started as a spite project, right? So I’m kind of making it up as I go along. That’s why the anthology covers everything from cosmic to weird. We got a Carson Winter story, Patrick Barb. We’ve got Tananarive Due and Eric LaRocca. Clay McLeod Chapman’s in there. Pedro Iniguez — I was trying to find a poem to open the anthology and I couldn’t find anything that resonated. And I bought his book on a lark and fell in love with his writing and his poetry. And then later that year, he was up for a Stoker for Best Poetry Collection. So I thought, I’m on the right track here.
My novel, The Butcher of Nazareth, is more literary horror. So I think we’re going to lean into a little bit more of the literary horror and a little bit more of the experimental, but I don’t quite know. I don’t have the next book lined up yet. We’re putting the anthology out in early Fall, and The Butcher of Nazareth will be out in February. I really haven’t put out the call for submissions yet. But there have been books I’ve read where I’ve thought, “This would be a good fit for us.” But I’m also leaving it open. I’m hoping to read something that surprises me.
You mentioned that you have a history of working in theater. Has that had any effect on the way that you approach prose?
Absolutely. Absolutely. My undergrad was kind of like the pulp fiction school of writing. And I don’t mean Tarantino. I mean cliffhangers, goals,actions, decisions, disaster, all that stuff,. How to write books with a hook and a cliffhanger and stuff. And then I ended up getting into theater. I went back into theater and found I enjoyed working with other people and that community. I produced my first play with an insurance payment from a fender bender on my ‘67 Caddy. I took that $1,500 and I produced my first play, got the bug, did another play. That won some shiny things in San Antonio.
We were young and thought, “Hey, let’s go to Chicago and see if we can do this.” It took us a few years, but we finally broke in critically and we finally got the major papers coming out to see what we were doing. And I was fortunate enough to become a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists, which was a hotbed at the time for young playwrights.
Let me tell you, getting your work in front of a live audience, you find out really quickly what works on the stage, and that what reads well on the page doesn’t necessarily read well in front of an audience. I think one of the last things a writer — prose or otherwise — develops is a sense of theme and how to write to support the theme.
I read a lot of stuff where somebody’s decided to write something cool, where there’s a great concept but thematically there’s nothing under it to carry it or resonate. With theater, 90% to 95% of the work produced is written around a theme. That’s the whole point of theater: presenting a thematic moral quandary, and here are the characters that are going to sort it out for us.
I think this is the last thing a young writer outside of theater develops. So in terms of that, yeah, I spent 15 years in Chicago writing and producing for theater. And so my sense of story was really honed. I also did some screenplay work. So you start learning different mediums. I feel like that’s where I learned to tell stories. I’d written a couple of novels, I had a crime novel. I was making up shit, like what it was like to be married and have kids when I’m 20. I only had my family to model off. So you feel like an imposter there, but when I started writing plays, I was pulling much deeper from the personal well.
Earlier, you mentioned the collaborative aspect of theater. As you get the imprint off the ground, are you finding that this experience is pushing similar buttons for you?
Yes. And not even with the imprint. When I met Miette, we had signed our deal for The Fountain. We went to AWP in San Antonio, which was great because I already had friends and family there, just to hang out. The book wasn’t even out yet; it would get pushed back because of the pandemic. When the book was out, I wanted to be a good hand. So I would go to three or four festivals a year with her, and hit FaceTime with her and pitch books. Because I’m out here in LA, I know how to pitch things a little quicker, especially if somebody is walking by a table.
I started training some of the young authors who start talking about the deep themes of their work. And I said, “No, let’s give them a log line first. And then we can talk about the thematic parts, right? Let’s hook them. Let’s find out what genre they’re looking for. Let’s give them the log line and go from there.”
So the community there and the overlap; you start getting name recognition and face recognition and eventually start reading people’s stuff. And you start recommending it and it reminds me so much more of theater. That group of people getting together regularly and talking about art. I lost that when I left Chicago theater and decided to do some film work and stuff out here.
Out here, the stuff you’re writing is on spec and pitching. You’re not necessarily reading a finished product. Whereas in the indie lit scene, you’re reading the finished product. You can buy the book. You can read it. Whereas in film, somebody’s like, “I’ve got this screenplay making the rounds” You ask if they can send it to you, and they say, “Well, we’re keeping a lid on it. We don’t want it getting leaked.” And so you go out to eat and talk about something else.
I read the collection Mexicans on the Moon. At the time, I didn’t know anything about Pedro [Iniguez]’s background or any of his writing. I just thought it looked interesting and read it and fell in love. He was nominated for a Stoker. He had a short story collection come out. We’ve corresponded since then.
It’s just being willing to engage and support each other. That was the way the Off-Loop Chicago theater scene was like. You’re making theater and most of the people coming to see it were other theater creators. There was that core group that would go see every show, but then you’re making theater for other theater lovers, and sometimes it feels like we’re writing books for other book lovers. And you’re hoping you can break out a little bit more, but you’re satisfied with the feedback and the people that are reading your work, because they want to read it and they enjoy that kind of work.