Witch Spell

[andydecker]

Guy N. Smith - Witch Spell ( Zebra Books, 1993, 286 pages)

This is the first of Smith' Zebra novels. We will maybe never know the circumstances, but it appears he couldn't get a major British publisher any longer, and the three novels for Zebra  in America were kind of a last hurrah.

[helrunar]

I'm intrigued by this one. Sounds like a Carrie knockoff, but presumably with Smith's trademark parade of grisly deaths, imaginatively mangled corpses, and the odd lurid sexcapade (unless the latter was not the kind of thing "Zebra Books" wanted to publish--never heard of them).

It's sad that he could no longer find a publisher in the UK. I thought he remained a bestseller until he decided to put his typewriter away for good.

H.

[helrunar]

As seen on the interwebs:

Zebra Books was launched in 1975 by Walter Zacharius, who had founded Kensington Publishing the previous year, and Roberta Bender Grossman. Both of them had previously worked for paperback house Lancer Books, co-founded by Zacharius in 1961. At the time of launching Zebra, Grossman became the youngest president of a publishing house. By keeping a low budget, small staff, and hiring overlooked if not desperate authors, they built Zebra into a powerhouse of cheap, consumable literature, with $10 million in sales annually by the early 1980s. ... 

If romance novels built the house of Zebra in the 1970s, horror made it famous in the 1980s. The imprint's first hit horror title was William W. Johnstone's The Devil's Kiss in 1980. Knowing their authors were not famous enough to sell books on name alone, Zebra focused on sensational covers. Skeletons were such a recurrent theme in Zebra's covers that the imprint is nicknamed "the skeleton farm" among collectors.

Mainstay authors in Zebra's horror roster were Johnstone, Rick Hautala, and Ruby Jean Jensen. [Never heard of any of them.--H] Other horror authors published were Bentley Little, Ken Greenhall, Joe R. Lansdale and William M. Carney.

Though still active in the early 1990s, by 1993 Zebra reduced its horror output to two titles per month. In 1996 it stopped publishing horror authors, focusing on romance and suspense instead.

H.

[dem bones]

Feb 4, 2022 16:42:08 GMT helrunar said:

.... and the odd lurid sexcapade (unless the latter was not the kind of thing "Zebra Books" wanted to publish--never heard of them).

Zebra were assuredly not shy of publishing "the odd lurid sexcapade."

I rest my case ...

[helrunar]

It's funny how I don't remember seeing any of these. I'd go to the horror section of the bookshop and most of the time, my eyes would glaze over because all the books by the circa 1993 era seemed like the same thing over and over again (sort of like what's happened with films in the current century). Of course, nowadays these covers seem so imaginative and vibrant compared to the crap that's being put on the front of books these days.

That cover certainly leaves an impression. Presumably Miss is groveling before the Great Undead working up the courage to ask if she can have just one more toasted crumpet at teatime.

H.

[andydecker]

Feb 4, 2022 16:42:08 GMT helrunar said:

I'm intrigued by this one. Sounds like a Carrie knockoff, but presumably with Smith's trademark parade of grisly deaths, imaginatively mangled corpses, and the odd lurid sexcapade (unless the latter was not the kind of thing "Zebra Books" wanted to publish--never heard of them).

It's sad that he could no longer find a publisher in the UK. I thought he remained a bestseller until he decided to put his typewriter away for good.

H.

It is also possible that he was just tired of genre books after 20 years. Make no mistake, those later books have not much in common with his earlier books. Also he still wrote, just did non-fiction, articles about land-life, hunting and weapons. I can't remember if he did elaborate in his autobiography why he stopped writing horror.

On Zebra there is a long thread. Some covers must be done again.