How to Build a Horror Imprint [Interview with Nick Whitney]

Welcome back to Scare Me! a weekly horror newsletter. Today, we’re speaking with Nick Whitney, Soho Press assistant editor and co-creator of the newly minted horror imprint Hell’s Hundred.

Publishing can be a brutal business. I know that Zakiya Dalila Harris’ The Other Black Girl is fiction, but the icy internal politics, astounding levels of white privilege, and veiled sniping Harris captures felt shockingly similar to the horrible behavior I observed during my brief stint at a national magazine.

Fortunately, not all publishers create real-life nightmares. Some focus on just publishing them. That’s the case for Soho Press, an independent publisher known for its crime fiction and roster of internationally celebrated authors including Edwidge Danticat, Stuart Neville, and Fuminori Nakamura.

Last year, Soho Press announced the launch of Hell’s Hundred, a brand-new imprint focused on horror fiction. It’s the first time since 2012 that Soho has created a new imprint—a reflection of both the thriving market for horror fiction and the relationship between horror and crime fiction audiences.

I recently connected with Nick Whitney, Soho Press assistant editor who co-created the imprint with associate editor Taz Urnov (together known as the Monster Squad within Soho). We spoke about the ebbs and flows of genre fiction, the unnerving scares of found footage, and the kinds of manuscripts Nick is keen to acquire.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and concision. 

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Michelle Delgado: Let’s start by talking about Hell’s Hundred. What's involved in establishing a new imprint?

Nick Whitney: This is my first time getting to build an imprint along with my colleagues. Because Soho specializes in crime fiction, and because crime and horror can often intersect really beautifully—and sometimes nastily—we started the imprint with an already formidable backlist that attended to horror readers. Stuart Neville's The House of Ashes is a great example of this, as well as Sarah Gran's horror masterpiece Come Closer. The first step was just acknowledging that many at Soho had a vested interest in the genre, and that we already had several key titles with which we already made inroads into the genre community. We had something to start with, to build on.

As for building the imprint, a lot of collaborative conversations had to happen. Soho is a proudly independent publishing house—I think we have something like 15 full time employees. I always say “small but mighty.” It means that every single person at Soho has eyes on every single project we put out and gives meaningful input at every stage of a book's life.

This necessary cross-departmental collaboration became all the more clear to me when we were developing and naming the imprint. We had a company-wide spreadsheet on which everyone put their ideas for the imprint name, and we ended up with Hell's Hundred because the neighborhood in Manhattan—Soho—used to be called Hell's Hundred Acres. The momentum was just really good from there.

We already had a sort of horror project that, without the imprint, would have just gone on crime: Stuart Neville's vampire trilogy, which is incredible. When we noticed that that book was already really for horror readers, we decided to make that the flagship entry into our imprint.

I was recently listening to a podcast about self publishing, and the host mentioned that in their view, the Big Four don't really care about horror. It made me wonder if imprints like Tor Nightfire really are recent developments, or if there’s a persistent misconception about horror publishing.

I think so many people say “horror is so hot right now, horror is so in right now.” When you say that to a long time horror fan, they will hit you askance—and for good reason, right?

Horror has a devout, diverse base who've celebrated the good, the bad, and the ugly, and never once had any desire to push it into the realm of prestige. It's long been a genre where low budgets and B movie aesthetics are celebrated, and deservedly so.

But I do think there's something to the claim that horror has catapulted into a moment right now. In the 2010s, there was this moment where horror literature and horror cinema suddenly had prestige. At the same time you had Carmen Maria Machado's Her Body and Other Parties and Han Kang's The Vegetarian, you had this brilliant slew of films like Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin, Jennifer Kent's The Babadook, David Robert Mitchell's It Follows, and Robert Eggers' The Witch. Because they accrued a certain level of prestige, the genre sort of opened its doors to a brand new fan base, widening the readership and the viewership just a bit.

For me, I can't stress enough just how much I think Jordan Peele's Get Out was a watershed moment in horror, a turning point. I think it forever changed the genre. Get Out was just a seismic moment. It opened up the possibilities of a new optics for horror. It took that white savior trope and absolutely smashed it to pieces.

I get chills thinking back to that time. It was nearly ten years ago when I saw it in theaters, right after Trump's first inauguration and nationwide women's marches, when the world felt very on edge and righteously furious. I just thought, “This is art at its finest pitch.” It's pushy, edgy, funny, brilliant, fearless. It linked up with a cultural and political movement. And I think for many, many fans of art—but not necessarily horror—they saw for the first time that horror has something to say and can communicate it quite well.

I've been struggling with how to articulate this—because it's absurd to say there were never “artistic” or “auteur” horror movies, because that obviously has existed since we had silent films.

But there is a sort of crossing over, where you have people who generally enjoy cinema, and because of that love of filmmaking, are drawn into horror. I'm having trouble putting my finger on it. The way that you described it is really helpful.

There's so much under the umbrella of horror, right? There was a moment from the 2000s when found footage from The Blair Witch Project to The Ring to Paranormal Activity to V/H/S was the big thing. And that ebbs and flows. I was in college during the 2010s, and so those films and many more really left an impression on me. I still think we're seeing a new possibility for horror and a new kind of excitement about it.

As you did market research and developed Hell’s Hundred, what surprised you most? As a horror fan, did you discover anything you didn't expect, or that validated something you noticed in yourself?

With the launch and the early success of our imprint, I have this terribly hopeful notion that if you build it, they will come. People are so excited every time something new like this comes along, some new imprint or focus of energy.

We've started going to horror conventions like Stokercon and getting to meet longtime horror fans, horror readers, and horror writers. It has been absolutely the best part of this process. Nobody looks at me as a newcomer with suspicion, but welcomes me into the fold. I find that’s true about crime authors as well. The crime fiction community has been really welcoming to newcomers.

Yes, we've had to put a lot of work and a lot of research and a lot of concentrated effort into making the imprint good, and to make sure that it has sort of health to last for a long time. But also, what I wasn't quite expecting was the enthusiasm with which we would be met, and the exciting conversations I'm getting to have on the ground. It's just been lovely.

Were there any moments of Stokercon that stood out?

I went to a panel on birds in horror.

Birds are pretty scary.

Exactly. All five panelists were just incredibly knowledgeable about how powerful and sometimes terrifying birds are, and their symbolism in horror.

Another highlight from Stokercon was seeing Joyce Carol Oates speak about her life, her work, and her career. I didn't know this, but she loves Alice in Wonderland, which is one of my all time favorite texts. Hearing her speak about Alice in Wonderland and its literary significance and its significance to her as a small child, which I also experienced, was a really cool moment.

Reading and loving books can be a very solitary thing, right? With film, you're in a theater, hopefully watching it with a ton of other people, and you're getting to soak in their energy and their reactions to a movie. With reading, it can be quite lonely—so being at a conference and hearing people speak about their love of books and literature and stories and their lifelong meaning, is just really special.

What horror stories are you most drawn to as a reader, and what are the ones that you're most interested in working on? And are those the same kinds of stories?

There's been a seismic shift in who gets to tell horror stories. You just published an amazing interview with my good friend Joey Vallese, and he spoke to some of this shift. There's been a broader literary movement in horror and elsewhere from subtext to text, or from margin to center. Those are the projects I'm always excited to see.

I'm really interested in queer horror. There's been a long and enthusiastic fanbase of queer people loving horror and having a lot to say about it—a lot of crucial analysis of horror, in all of its glory and all of its deep imperfections. It's been an exciting thing to see queer and trans authors really taking up the mantle and starting to write horror on their own terms. 

On that note, I'm always excited to see horror stories that take seriously real life horrors that exist in the world, and which tackle those horrors inventively and imaginatively, either through subtext or head on. I like novels that have something to say about the conditions of our world, even if they take place 300 years ago or 300 years in the future.

And I always am and always will be attracted to epistolary novels, or horror novels that feel like found footage, because they feel of the earth or of the world in some way.

In the nascence of the imprint, I find that I really get to build what the imprint looks like. There's a lot of intersection of what I like to read and what I can acquire. As we go on, and as we as we see really what works and what's finding success and what's finding readership, I think that the brand aspect of Hell's Hundred will become more clearly defined. As it should be! But right now, I'm just opening myself up to seeing what's out there and what people are interested in—or, conversely, what's not out there.

Are there any Hell’s Hundred books that really embody those qualities?

I really need everyone to read Stuart Neville's vampire trilogy. The first one is called Blood Like Mine, and it came out last summer, so it's not too late to read that before the second one comes out this year. It's a mother-daughter horror road trip, and it's brutal and beautiful. Stuart Neville is a favorite writer of mine. Once you read one of his books, you'll want to read all of them. 

We just released one of my favorite projects I've ever worked on. It's called The Butcher's Daughter: The Hitherto Untold Story of Mrs. Lovett, co-authored by David Demchuk and Corinne Leigh Clark. It is the backstory of Mrs. Lovett, Sweeney Todd's pie-making accomplice. It's like Gregory McGuire's Wicked, but very, very wicked. And it's sort of a found archive novel. You're reading documents left in the apartment of a missing journalist, and the book demands the reader piece some things together themselves. Where is the journalist, if she's missing? Is she in danger?

Oh my god. Is she in a pie?!

It's historical, it's queer, it's an incredibly invigorating novel. I loved every second of working on it. 

This one's not out yet, but I'm excited for a gothic horror novel we have coming out in February. It's called The Glowing Hours by Leila Siddiqui. It takes one of the most famous—if not the most famous—literary creation myths of all time, that of the summer Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, and it inserts the voice of a historically fabulated Indian housemaid. 

It's a fun gothic horror novel. It's tropey and strange, and it takes a revisionist approach to a story we all know so well. It's also a statement on how we look at history, and how the lens from which we look at history always matters in our telling of it. It's just awesome. That comes out in February.

Are there any books outside of Hell’s Hundred that stood out to you recently?

There's a lot going on in horror that I'm excited about. I'll read anything that Carmen Maria Machado puts out, same with Stephen Graham Jones. I finally read Chuck Tingle's Bury Your Gays.

What did you think about it?

I was sort of mad at myself that it took me so long to get to it! But I thought it was very brilliant and fun. To me, Tingle's writing obliterates subtext. It's so meta and knowing, and it almost operates from a thesis that capitalism limits the stories we're able to tell about ourselves. I don't think every book can be like that, and I don't think every book should be like that, but it was exciting to read something I felt like accomplished it well. 

I really love Alison Rumfitt's Tell Me I'm Worthless, which tackles like fascism in the UK. She's just a really exciting trans author. And I've read Gretchen Felker-Martin devotedly. So, I'm excited by all of those.

I'm very curious about your taste specifically. This is such an amazing opportunity to both shape the imprint and bring readers to writers who really need to be read.

Are there any horror stories—books, movies, or otherwise—that you think are as perfect as something can be?

David Lynch is probably my artistic hero. He passed away in January of this year, so I've just been revisiting a lot of his films, especially his Hollywood movies—Lost Highway to Mulholland Drive to Inland Empire, the latter of which is probably my favorite film of all time and features Laura Dern. I can't even put into words how brilliant and brave and soul-baring her performance is. 

I think what David Lynch does so well is that he really knows how to imagine or project the uncanny. Things that should feel familiar to us feel suddenly incredibly off-putting and strange and abject. I remember this moment from the Twin Peaks pilot where Sarah Palmer—played by Grace Zabriskie, who's also in Inland Empire—has just found out that her daughter, Laura Palmer, has died. She looks up the stairs to where the Palmer family sleeps, and the stairway looks dark and empty of life. It's morning, so it should be bright and sun should be coming through, but it's very dark. It's one of the most gut-wrenching images I can think of in film or television. So, yeah, shout out to David Lynch. He's given me a lot to think about.

I can also talk about acquisition if you’d want to?

I would love to know more about how acquisitions work for Hell’s Hundred!

So, Hell's Hundred was named after the old name of Soho, a neighborhood in Manhattan which is now a sort of glitzy shopping center with high end retail brands. But during the Industrial Revolution, it was known as Hell's Hundred Acres, a sort of industrial hub with plumes of smoke and cast iron and people working in really brutal conditions. It's heavily atmospheric and atmospherically heavy, and that image guides me while I'm reading people's writing. 

It guides me to stories and to authors who endeavor with their writing to uncover a layer, so to speak, to get to the truth of something. Like the William Faulkner quote: "The past is never dead. It's not even past." That, to me, is the meaning of a haunting—that thing that refuses to leave a place or a person, that reaches beyond time to grab them where they are and refuses to let go. 

To me, even hyper-contemporary or futuristic horror always concerns itself with the way things were, and there's so much magic in the juxtaposition of now and then. It guides me to what I think is a good book to champion in the imprint.

That makes me think of Clay McLeod Chapman’s Ghost Eaters, which I think does what you're talking about beautifully. You take the drug, you see the ghost—but you actually see the past, just rupturing into your present life in horrific ways that make it impossible to ignore the injustice that this rich white girl’s family's wealth is built on. To me, that is so truly what horror is—the transgression of things that are supposed to be contained, but refuse to remain there.

I think Tananarive Due does that really well. Honestly, one of my favorite horror books of all time is Toni Morrison's Beloved, which transcended genre in a way. It's a great American novel, but is very gothic and very horror and centers around a sort of haunted house and a ghost named Beloved. I've read that book probably more times than I've read any book in my life, and it informs a lot of what I'm interested in seeing from stories. It's a powerful, brutal, crucial read, and does some of what we're talking about here.

It has the deep empathy that I also find in Lynch movies, where the scary thing is some reflection of us. Or it's something that you can empathize with in some way, or understand, rather than just a monster you kill. Luckily, it seems like empathy and curiosity are really rich in the genre.

I agree. I really love stories written with great empathy about people who really can't run from the truth of the world. That, to me, is horror in a sentence.

I completely agree. There's this scene in Jacob's Ladder where he's being wheeled on a gurney, and all the beings around him can come as close to him as they want, and he can't stop them. In my experience, like that's what PTSD feels like when you're in it. It's the most disturbing thing I've ever seen, because it was such a real visual representation of something that usually is so invisible. I love that movie, but I don't know if I can rewatch it.

The scariest films for me are found footage films. I think what they do so well is build relentless dread. The Blair Witch Project, for example—that barely shows you anything at all. It's just an hour and a half of “Don't go there.” It's just dread-inducing. I find that kind of build up to be so terrifying. 

I think Paranormal Activity really perfected what The Blair Witch Project revolutionized. It shows you a bit more, but still, all of those shots in complete silence, at night, of CCTV cameras just tracking an empty living room. You just know that something is about to happen. Still to this day, they're really fun and terrifying.

Thanks so much, Nick! You can find more information about Hell’s Hundred here.

Up Next: Wild Card

I have three new interviews I’m working on scheduling, with visual artists and podcasters and the author of a wonderful debut that will be out this fall. If I manage to schedule one this week, we’ll stay in interviewland for next week’s Scare Me!

If the interviews don’t pan out in time, there are plenty of other happenings in my horror life to chat about. My TBR has gotten out of control recently (especially after browsing Hell’s Hundred’s catalogue!) so maybe I’ll share some of the books piling up on my shelves. I also have a bad habit of browsing eBay whenever my day job gets stressful, and there’s a new addition to my horror collection arriving any day now.

Anyhow—we’ll see where the week takes us! I hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Scare Me! is a free weekly horror newsletter published every Thursday morning. It’s written by Michelle Delgado, featuring original illustrations by Sam Pugh. You can find the archive of past issues here. If you were sent this by a friend, subscribe to receive more spooky interviews, essays—and maybe even a ghost story or two.