Darker Than Weird: Fourteen Tales of Horror

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People outside of the book biz are (blissfully) unaware of its truths. So, on the off chance you’ve bought a small press volume (this one) and are not a writer/publisher/artist I am going to lay Truth upon you. First Truth. Nobody reads introductions and forwards first. At best after you have read the contents of the book and picked it up off the bathroom floor you will read the introduction as you sit and — er — meditate. Hey, it doesn’t bother me. I have (by now) cashed my large check for introduction writing and spent it all on gold futures, champagne, and cocaine. But there you sit wanting to read something until you can stand and go buy a copy of my Building Strange Temples because you’re enchanted with my wit and deft prose. Your expectation is that I’ll talk about the stories in this volume and in my remaining time speak about… what’s his name?

Oh yes, John R. Fultz.

We’ll certainly I’ll get around to that, but I want to explain Dan Sauer, the publisher, and his many errors. Firstly, it is well known that book buyers, including you, spend more money on non-fiction than fiction. Then if fiction is purchased (perhaps by misreading the Amazon product description) novels outsell short story collections by a great deal. I mean, it could have been worse. He could’ve published a poetry collection. But that leads to his second error. Short story collections are generally bought by completists. That means something like, “I’ve read John R. Fultz’s fantasy novels. He has a deft hand with fantasy.

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