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| Keaton Patterson | |
"I'm looking for one excellent, flagship novel, to plant the press and represent the press," said Keaton Patterson, lead buyer at Brazos Bookstore in Houston, Tex., and founder of Grave Empire, a horror-focused independent press he launched on April 1.
Patterson opened submissions for Grave Empire the same day he publicly launched the press. Submissions will be open until June 30, and he is looking for a literary horror novel ranging from 50,000-90,000 words in length. By literary, Patterson means "the best writing I can find," saying: "I don't want to elevate or transcend the horror genre. I really want to revel in it."
He emphasized that he is not looking for a specific sub-genre or type of horror. "Horror is legion," Patterson remarked. "It's such a vast and elastic genre." It is perennial, with a reliable spike around October every year, and evergreen, as it "gets at a primal aspect of being human." There is "something for everybody in horror," and he is as open to cosmic horror and things that "defy human comprehension" as he is to horror that "delves into the nitty-gritty of everyday evils."
Rather than point to specific titles as examples of what he's looking for, Patterson offered a list of authors who have influenced him, like Shirley Jackson, Ira Levine, and H.P. Lovecraft, as well as authors he'd like to publish, including Brian Evenson, Victor LaValle, Tananarive Due, and Mariana Enríquez. The most important thing, he reiterated, is "prose quality is paramount."
Once Patterson finds Grave Empire's debut title, he plans for a print run of around 300-500 copies, the sales of which he'd like to then "convert into another book." Ideally he would like to work up to the point of doing about two titles per year, or something on the scale of the small press Dorothy.
Asked for how long he's wanted to start his own horror press, Patterson called himself an avid, lifelong horror fan and said he's "thought about this for years." He imagined it would be a "nice project if I ever had the time," and around the beginning of this year, he started thinking about it more seriously. Once he started putting things together, such as building a website and getting an LLC, it "all fell into place really quickly." He noted that since the pandemic, his general philosophy has been "now is the time to do things."
He added that he's known people who run and work at indie presses for quite some time, and they've "really helped me out so far," in particular Paul Oliver at Soho Press and Eric Obenauf at Two Dollar Radio.
About a month and half into it, Grave Empire has met with a strong response, and Patterson has already gotten more submissions than he expected. There are a few that seem promising, and he's looking forward to working with an author.
"This is a super-exciting passion project for me," Patterson said. "Hopefully by this time next year, we have something out in the world for readers to be scared of." --Alex Mutter