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Post by funkdooby on Feb 24, 2015 21:00:20 GMT
Evening No, still knocking about. Every now and then I have a rekindling of my GNS interest. It's a bit like being an alcoholic or a junkie Found my way back here (after a bit of an absence) after someone mentioned the notorious Neil Jackson and the whole Ghostwriter fiasco. Found a thread on here in which I expressed my considerable disappointment at the (appalling!) idea of books being produced carrying the GNS moniker but actually having nothing to do with him... Always knew NJ was a scammer from the first time he contacted me (on this very forum, via PM, I believe) to offer me, as someone who isn't even a writer in any significant sense, the chance of seeing my name up in lights. Was just sorry that so many good people got stung by that shyster
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Post by pulphack on Feb 25, 2015 6:48:18 GMT
Hello FD, nice to see you back.
Mention of Ghostwriter reminded me of something that I discovered last year by chance and which I forgot to mention at the time...
As I mentioned on another thread, I love Dorset and we were looking through trip advisor for somewhere down there that we hadn't been to. I found a really nice sounding place called Birkin House (near Dorchester), except when I checked reviews it turns out that it went bust and was put up for sale in 2013. Then one review mentioned that it had an odd atmosphere and the manager or owner (? not specific) called Neil spent more time talking about the land deals he'd done in Canada rather than actually doing any work...
The name of the place seemed familiar, as did Canada so a quick google later revealed that someone on either Ramsay's board or Shocklines (can't remember which now) had put up a link to a Birkin House (now dead) that Jackson was involved with. The names and the mention of Canada, plus the fact it went under, lead me to believe that Jackson had a crack at running a hotel (manager or owner I don't know) and promptly ran it into the ground.
Wonder where he's been since then? Just so it can be avoided, like...
(Mind you, it seems to be traders where the money issues lay, as the reviews were all good up til it went down)
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Post by dem bones on Feb 25, 2015 8:23:09 GMT
Mr. Hack, for the "hotel owning" incarnation, check the string of comments after the initial posting on Dave McAfee's blog: Why I Left Ghostwriter PublicationsTwo very astute comments from a thread on Ramsey's forum: "What blows my mind is why anyone would try and pull fraudulent stunts like this in the small press. It's like robbing a bottle bank." - Gary Fry "Calling it a "company" is a good way to avoid taking the blame. After all, I didn't accept 400 chapbooks and 50 novels when I couldn't handle the workload; the company did.
Incidentally, is it just me or do those numbers make it look like they never said 'No' to anyone?" - Jamie Rosen And for those new to Vault, here's how the depressing Crabsgate affair played out on this forum. "Can't you see the mythology growing? This will be great stuff for the radio interviews later in the year." Mr. Dooby's finest hour and a cautionary tale if ever was. Very glad to hear from you, funky. Welcome back!
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Post by pulphack on Feb 25, 2015 9:32:28 GMT
Ah, so poor old Nova Scotia has him now... if that bit was true... Must have been cheapo land, as I really can't see how Birkin House made him that much, let alone Ghostwriter... those comments about scamming in small presses is so true: for the vast majority of small press publishers, it's a labour of love, and a great pity an arse like Jackson tars them with his brush.
Hell of a shame, though, as Birkin House did look like a lovely little place.
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Post by funkdooby on Feb 25, 2015 14:04:41 GMT
Not at all surprised to hear of Neil's further adventures. Am certain he'll have moved on to yet another project by now, no doubt still convinced that previous failures were just bad luck etc.
Over in Smithland, the fanzine seems to have finally bitten the dust. The last issue of Graveyard appeared in summer 2012, shortly after which Guy's assistant Ceri, who was the driving force behind the mag's revival, left to start a family and that seems to have been the end of that, sadly.
The GNS autobiog came out a while ago - haven't bought a copy, I must admit. Nor any of his more recent works. My enthusiasm is mostly for his 70s and 80s classics.
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Post by funkdooby on Feb 25, 2015 14:18:09 GMT
Many thanks for the welcomes. It's nice to be back on the board again after all this time. Regarding Neil Jackson targeting the small press world, I also found that particularly unpleasant. It's easy to be wise with hindsight but so many writers and artists got taken in by him. And intitially I thought the whole GWP venture sounded fantastic. But quickly started to think it was just too good to be true. NJ seemed to think the Guy N Smith back catagloue was of a similar value to that of Stephen King or James Herbert; an untapped reservoir of huge money spinning potential. I did question him as to the realistic value of the film rights to the various GNS works - many of which were optioned years ago without anything ever coming of it. But NJ effectively patted me on the head like some clueless halfwit with no understanding of the complexities of the film industry, or of his own marketing genius To this day I don't know if he really thought he could make it happen and had the intention of publishing all that stuff. Or if it was a deliberate scam from the start. Or maybe something halfway between the two - I suspect the latter. Certainly, the Ghostwriter copies of Night of the Crabs were vastly superior in quality to the utterly appalling substandard original copies of Deadbeat, which were so poorly made that virtually none have survived. And that debacle came about after GNS got involved with another wrong 'un who was going to make him a fortune... You'd think 60+ years in the business, man and boy, would have taught him something...
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Post by andydecker on Feb 25, 2015 19:16:47 GMT
The GNS autobiog came out a while ago - haven't bought a copy, I must admit. Nor any of his more recent works. My enthusiasm is mostly for his 70s and 80s classics. I bought and read it. It is a bit slim. Some nice anecdotes, but I hoped for more infos and especially background on the horror novels. In this regard it is very matter of fact. GNS apparently had no interest talking about books. Very unsentimental about all. "The market went bust and I moved on." I guess it depends on one's viewpoint how you rate this. You can be disappointed that seemingly he didn't care about the genre, or you see him as a professional writer just doing his job.
Still want to know if he is still working for "The Countryman's Weekly". Seems he had a lot of fun writing articles. Unfortunatly you can't sample an issue online, and I wasn't that interested to order a hardcopy somewhere. So I don't know if this is still valid or if he retired.
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Post by funkdooby on Feb 25, 2015 20:16:47 GMT
It was Guy's obvious lack of warmth for his own material when I used to correspond with him some years ago which started my gradual decline in interest. He made no qualms, for example, that Graveyard Rendezvous was his 'loss leader', something promote his latest offerings among the fans (though he has always been supportive of new writers and has given many their first break in GR).
His reluctance to invest a sensible amount of money in his own products led to more than one disastrous partnership. Such as the Telco Communications fiasco (Deadbeat and The Lurkers reprint) and the notorious Ghostwriter Publications nightmare. Not helped by his refusal to accept that e-books were the future (something of which I tried to convince him as far back as 1999 - it was 2010 before Black Hill finally started to digitise his novels). The callous way he ditched loyal right hand man and former GR editor Dan Windley as soon as Neil Jackson appeared on the scene is still something that sticks in my craw to this day.
To be honest, I preferred it back in the 80s and early 90s when I knew nothing about him, and that certain air of mystery was still intact. I was pretty disappointed at the absence of any affection he seemed to have for his various works. He liked Night of the Crabs simply because it made him enough money to move to Black Hill. And once you realise this, it affects your enjoyment of his novels (well, that was the case for me anyway). Suddenly everything comes across as the work a man just going through the motions to make a living.
Guy is still very much active as the gun editor of Countryman's Weekly - a job I believe he truly loves. He's certainly got enough money in the bank to stick to horror and not bother with the CW gig. But I think that's where his heart lies.
The GNS website is rarely updated since Ceri Steadman stopped working with Guy to start a family. There are still references to GR appearing quarterly, though it's not appeared since summer 2012. Etc.
For all this, I can't help by retain a certain affection for Smithland, as it was an integral part of my youth and helped to introduce me to the joys of horror and pulp.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 25, 2015 23:35:44 GMT
Over in Smithland, the fanzine seems to have finally bitten the dust. The last issue of Graveyard appeared in summer 2012, shortly after which Guy's assistant Ceri, who was the driving force behind the mag's revival, left to start a family and that seems to have been the end of that, sadly. That's a shame. The ceriadelle-edited issues of Graveyard Rendezvous are the only ones I've seen and I like them a lot. Nice balance of fan fiction, weird art and reviews with plenty of input from Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Spent some hours last week working through a stash of old vampyre-goth 'zines and these later GR's sit comfortably with the better ones.
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Post by pulphack on Feb 26, 2015 6:09:29 GMT
It's a pity that knowing Guy a bit has spoilt your affection for his work, FD, but that's how it is with pulp writers - sometimes you end up in fields that you didn't intend visiting in the first place. I've read interviews with Guy where it's clear that all he really wanted was to be the next Edgar Wallace, but got sidetracked by the demands of getting himself in print. Blame Laurence James - he advised Guy to write a horror novel for NEL as he knew they were after them, after his editorial stint but when he was writing for them. The rest is history. Money is why we all do pulp really - it's better than a day job*, but it might not be the genre we really wanted to work in. Doesn't mean we don't enjoy it - I've certainly enjoyed mine, even though all I really wanted to be was Edgar Wallace, too. Maybe Guy is a bit detached because he's written about werewolves and crabs when all he really wanted was to write about blokes dashing around London foiling supervillans with names like the Frog or the Ringer (I always thought The Black Fedora was his backdoor attempt at this). It does, however, breed a certain detachment. Which is not the same as contempt, which a fan may take it for.
Conan Doyle hated Holmes and wanted to be remembered for his historical novels. Which aren't very good. There's a lesson there for all of us who toil at the pulp mill... we just need to figure it out.
(* really, it is - I had to take one in 2009 after Black Wednesday in US publishing put me out of work, and was I glad to get back to full time writing in 2011! If you're lucky enough to do anything you love for a living, those are the times when you realise it.)
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Post by funkdooby on Feb 26, 2015 7:25:29 GMT
I don't think I've ever spoken to someone who didn't have a little bit of fondness for their own material. GNS was asked the question of whether editors had ever censored portions of his novels and he said he had no idea as he'd never read one of his books in finished form. I was quite shocked. Maybe he thought it was a waste of time when he could be doing other things...but I think there's such a thing as being too busy.
As to GR, during one of the previous spells where the 'zine didn't appear for a while I conceived my own one. Called Guynecology. I seem to remember doing quite a lot of work on it before other things in the real world intervened. And then GR started to appear semi-regularly again and I forgot all about it till quite recently. It was obvious to me quite early on that GR would only ever appear haphazardly, but I suspect Guynecology would have been even more so.
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Post by pulphack on Feb 26, 2015 9:04:30 GMT
That's a great title...
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Post by dem bones on Feb 27, 2015 1:19:02 GMT
As to GR, during one of the previous spells where the 'zine didn't appear for a while I conceived my own one. Called Guynecology. I seem to remember doing quite a lot of work on it before other things in the real world intervened. And then GR started to appear semi-regularly again and I forgot all about it till quite recently. It was obvious to me quite early on that GR would only ever appear haphazardly, but I suspect Guynecology would have been even more so. .. . and now would be a good time to revive it, what with GR leaving a gap in the market. With a devoted fan base like his, it's unlikely you'd struggle for contributors, and the title may even attract a fair number of the Guy-curious, too.
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Post by helrunar on Jan 20, 2022 17:22:12 GMT
Came here hoping to get a terrified glimpse of the hideous goo-spattered gut-wrenching SHEER HORROR of the cover of Crabs: the Human Sacrifice but, alas, the cover image on this old thread became a sacrifice to some even more bloodthirsty spectre of image hosting--it is truly to shudder.
Great thread, though. I think my favorite comments are from the gent who described this nefandous tome's prose as "smelling of day-old seafood."
I look forward to reading more here--just had time to take a glance.
H.
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