Brian McNaughton - Satan's Love Child

[severance]

Brian McNaughton - Satan's Love Child - Star Books, London (1981) originally published by Carlyle Comm. Inc, New York 1977

Riveredge Township was a quiet place and Ken and Marcia Creighton were an ordinary couple. When they married she put the past behind her, forgetting the weird commune in the Black Hills of Dakota. But Ken couldn't forget. Because fifteen-year-old Melody was Marcia's daughter, but not his, the beautiful but icy child of an unknown father.

When Melody's nightmares began Ken thought she needed a psychiatrist, but the terrifying dreams sounded horribly familiar to Marcia. They took her back sixteen years to Melody's conception in the drug-crazed commune. Then Marcia had been a virgin, a living sacrifice to the powers of darkness. In a ritual orgy of evil she had conceived the daughter she called her own - SATAN'S LOVE CHILD.

[andydecker]

It´s ages since I read this.

Has anybody read the "restored" edition of tis called GEMINI RISING?

Seems all the three books in the cycle were published in a restored edition from Nightshade Books.

[severance]

Great book - finished it this morning - a typical 'six months later' let-down of a closing chapter, but that goes with the territory. There's not a lot more I can say that doesn't just regurgitate the above blurb, the only thing that I think the author overdid was the amount of graphic and explicit sex - of course sex goes with the territory in these sort of novels as well - but McNaughton really overdoes it. Doesn't mean I won't be reading any more of his 'Satan' novels though

[Dr Terror]

Brian McNaughton (1935-2004)
wrote about Satan's Love Child @ alt.horror.cthulhu October 31st 2000:

If I may digress a bit... . I had written a few horror stories that I
couldn't sell anywhere by the early 70's and was somehow managing to
make a living (if you can call it that) in New York City by writing
dirty books, mostly for a company called Bee-Line. The editrix told
me they were branching out, hoping to publish some less reprehensible
stuff, and asked me if I could write a horror novel. Wow! Could I!!!


Actually, she asked me if I could write a ripoff of THE OMEN. I read
that book and found nothing in it worth ripping off, so I wrote my own
novel, SLC. She liked it, but then she got back me and said that the
head honcho wanted a slightly more Bee-Linish book. I inserted some
rather mild sex-scenes, using euphemisms and metaphors for all the
hard-core boinking that was Bee-Line's stock in trade.


That didn't satisfy him, so I got on the phone with him and asked him
what the hell he wanted. "The words!" he said. "Use the words!"


I daresay you can't imagine how disheartening this was. Here, at
last, I had been given an opportunity to write a horror novel, I
thought I had done a pretty good job, and this scumbag wanted me to
turn it into a jerkoff book.


I told him I would use "the words" if he added another $500 to my
advance. "You're holding a gun to my head!" he screamed. "Yeah," I
said, "so?"


I added those words and got the money, but I'm not proud of the
result.


It turned out that this guy had recently left another publisher, and
his contract barred him from "producing" any book that the other
company might publish. In other words, he could only publish dirty
books.


You might say that I am the only writer who has ever been required by
law to write a pornographic novel.


Anyway, GEMINI RISING repairs all the damage that guy did to my
original conception. I think it's not such a bad read.

[andydecker]

Thanks, Dr. Terror,

now that was interesting. A fine way to up the word count

Could be fun to compare the different versions.

[fullbreakfast]

I bought a copy of Satan's Love Child for about 30p in Woolworths when I was all of thirteen and used it for the purpose for which it was intended with some enthusiasm as I recall it - definitely seemed like a stroke book with horror elements rather than the other way round. Then again when you are thirteen it is any excuse for a sherman I guess, perhaps there was more to the book than I realised at the time...

Many years later though McNaughton wrote a book which is really rather wonderful, The Throne of Bones - short stories set in a world of his own and greatly concerned with ghouls and black magic. Very much recommended to anyone who likes both fantasy in the vein of Clark Ashton Smith and horror. It is gruesome, weird, funny, sexy and pretty much unique.

[hugegadjit]

admirable to see such frankness about the secondary use of horror novels as an enhancement to the time-honoured 'sherman'... I seem to recall a class passage in 'the hell candidate' which did the job for me... but I've been holding a copy of McNaughton's Satan's Seductress open from the spine to see which pages are most-thumbed, but have to say, the results are disappointing!

[dem bones]

from the Brian McNaughton post quoted by Dr. Terror above

If I may digress a bit... . I had written a few horror stories that I
couldn't sell anywhere by the early 70's and was somehow managing to
make a living (if you can call it that) in New York City by writing
dirty books, mostly for a company called Bee-Line. The editrix told
me they were branching out, hoping to publish some less reprehensible
stuff, and asked me if I could write a horror novel. Wow! Could I!!!

weird thing is, i managed to snag a copy of Satan's Love Child on Sunday gone, and at the same time i picked up another book, this one purely to decorate sev's 'down the back of the Vault' thread.

Gene North - Swinging Couples Wanted (Bee-line, 1972)

Blurb:

SHE WAS LOVE STARVED
Joyce had insisted on moving to this suburban community - she thought it was romantic - and sweet ...
She didn't know that she was entering into a swingers paradise that would feed her hot and horny young body ... at a price she never thought she'd be willing to pay!

i know McNaughton says Bee-line were a NY company and this one has 'Printed In The UK' on the inside, but i wonder if it was one of his? Whoever was responsible sure didn't scrimp on "the words", i can tell you.

[justin]

Just reading the McNaughton trilogy as research for Pulp Horror! so this thread is most welcome....

Bee-line were the owners of Pinnacle, home of many NEL exports such as Edge and Fox. Bee Line set them up to launch The Executioner and Destroyer men's adventure series and were very successful until the mid-80s. From what I can gather Bee Line were hardcore and would have been sold through mail order and sex shops, not traditional book stores.

It wouldn't surprise me if Bee Line did print some stuff in the UK- probably cheaper and safer against seizure than shipping. I'm pretty sure Paramount Books were their UK version of Pinnacle- the logo used the same font and distinctive P. A number of US publishers had UK equivalents- Flamingo were Belmont Towers- I have a number of men's adventure series that look identical to the BT ones with the exception of the logo and price.

David Gold had some form of arrangement with the dodgy Manor Books- most of the second hand Manor books I've picked up in the UK have been over-printed with a David Gold & Sons distribution wording. So presumably you paid Manor for the plates and it was up to you what you then did. I can't imagine Manor paid their authors for foreign rights. I don't know if I mentioned it elsewhere but I shared a number of Manor SF books with Bruce Pennington as they had his (poorly reproduced) art. He was totally unaware of these editions!

[andydecker]

Read the McNaughton books ages ago. Plan to re-read them for a long time. Pretty weird stuff if I remember correctly. His Thron of Bones was marvellous, in the vein of C.A.Smith.

Bee Line was indeed hardcore porn novels. Hundreds of novels with titles like "Hard-to-tame-Tamara"; "One lust to live"; "Kellys kinky kicks". They were pretty famous in the US, even Stephen King mentioned them in a scene in "Christine"

[andydecker]

Finally re-read this and don´t have a lot to add. I toyed with the idea to order the "restored" versions, but I am not that a fanatical fan of McNaughton, this isn´t worth the money.

There were some well-done scenes (and I don´t mean the porn ) and good constructing work done here, but overall the plot was rather simple.

I kind of marveld how much it owed to Lovecraft´s The Dunwich Horror and especially to the movie of 1970. But it didn´t matter because he put a different perspective on it, right to the downbeat ending. Which at the time wasn´t this much overdone. It was an effective version of a Mythos tale, much better done than a lot of other works.

Also it held up quite good considering this is from 1977. Always a good sign if the absence of handys, PCs and GPS doesn´t make a story dated.

[jamesdoig]

Nov 1, 2010 17:07:53 GMT andydecker said:

I kind of marveld how much it owed to Lovecraft´s The Dunwich Horror and especially to the movie of 1970.

In that case I must have a read - I've fond memories of seeing the film on tv late one night when I was a kid. Mid-70s was a halcyon age of tv films - the Norlis Tapes (I think it was called) with Angie Dickinson, The Night Stalker, Trilogy of Terror, that movie with the little Gremlin things hidden in the fireplace whose name escapes me.