Episode 107: W.E.D. Ross - The King of Gothics - Paperback Warrior

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
It's spooky season again right here on the Paperback Warrior podcast.
My name is Eric, and I'm single handedly dragging you,
my faithful listener, through the hallways of dark castles, up
shadowy staircases of secluded mansions, and a terror filled peak
at a mountain of vintage paperback books. This show is

(00:40):
an offshoot of the Paperback Warrior blog, where you'll find
one hundred and six prior episodes of the show, along
with thousands of reviews of vintage fiction across multiple genres.
Be sure to follow us on Facebook and x Also
be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. I'm putting
a lot of emphasis on our channel with loads and
loads of video shorts showing you book cover and brief reviews.

(01:01):
Plus each of these podcast episodes has a companion video
of my most recent shopping trips are just unusual finds
in the wild. This very episode has a video, and
I'll talk about that in just a second, but first
let me tell you what I have on tap for
this episode. Today's features on a mysterious Canadian writer named

(01:21):
William Edward Daniel Ross. He used a lot of pseudonyms
over the course of his writing career, with the most
famous being Marilyn Ross. He is what many consider the
king of Gothic romance paperbacks, but he wrote over three
hundred and fifty novels in genres like romance, science fiction, westerns,

(01:41):
and the aforementioned gothic romance. He also wrote over six
hundred short stories. His career in personal life is just
really bizarre and unusual, and I can't wait to tell
you all about it. Also, today I'm reviewing a vintage
horror paperback from nineteen ninety titled Thrill. It was written
by popular horror scribe Patricia Wallace. In addition, I'm going

(02:03):
to read to you a short story by one of
my favorite writers. It's called the King of Horror and
it was authored by Steven Mertz. But before we get
to all that, I'm dying to tell you about my
visit to North Carolina. So a few episodes ago, I
was explaining that my family members and loved ones seem

(02:24):
to be dying left and right. I really hate cancer.
Everywhere I look, I just find someone I know or
loved is dealing with it. So my wife received some
very bad news growing one of our close family members,
so we decided we needed to just get away for
a few days, just the two of us. So we
drove up from Florida to Virginia. We did some hiking

(02:45):
and visited my parents and friends and it was great.
On the way back to Florida, we chose to stay
in a bed and breakfast in Fayetteville, North Carolina. So
trying to find the place, I was just looking around
as my wife is speeding through the city and I
see a very small plaza with a tiny parking lot
that says bjays to used books, white sign, blue letters.

(03:08):
I mean, this place is so small that it was
like two blocks before I could even emphasize to my
wife that she just drove past a used bookstore, which
is something that absolutely can't happen. She was happy to
turn around and drive back. And we pull up to
this little plaza. It looks like it might be, I
don't know, like a pool supply store something on the left,

(03:29):
and then the bookstore is on the right side of
the building. The parking lot was virtually empty, but it's
a Sunday of all things. And what was interesting is
the door was just wide open. We just pull up
doors wide open, strange plaza, pool supplies books, go figure
At first I thought it was an abandoned building. But

(03:50):
the building, it's not in really great shape, so I
was kind of worried about it. But anyway, we go
inside and there's a guy that says hi to me,
and I assume he's a co owned It was very nice.
I took a quick look around and immediately knew this
was my kind of place. It was your kind of place.
I don't mean this as an insult to the owners

(04:11):
of the bookstore, but the place is a complete wreck,
with books stacked on top of books and boxes stacked
on boxes just sort of sitting around everywhere. These are
the bookstores that I actually like. If they're too clean,
with everything just neatly organized, and I see a bunch
of new hardcovers, chances are I'm probably not going to

(04:32):
find anything there. Unless that store owner is into what
I'm into and they've purposely hand crafted their store to
look organized where I can find everything, then that's okay.
But chances are, if everything's organized, then maybe they have
a cat or something that's probably not going to have
what we need. But anyway, this place had some mileage

(04:52):
and it showed severely, so my wife strikes up a
conversation with a woman who co owns the store, and
again she's really really nice. Shakesplains in a lot of
detail that the bookstores like hers are really few and
far between these days, and the building it no longer
has any power. Apparently, the building, I guess, maybe condemned
at some point and the city wants her out. I

(05:14):
wouldn't necessarily say it's a fire trap, but I could
definitely see some issues in there with maybe codes and stuff. However,
I don't care, because this is my kind of place.
It has a horder vibe to it, and it was
just overwhelming with all of the books. But it's good.
It's good, it's good good. I journeyed into the belly

(05:36):
of the Beast and found the first set of shelves
dedicated to the executioner types of books. I find sometimes
that's the easiest approach to find mysteries and crime fiction
and things like that, is by first locating the men's
action adventure section. I do that by trying to find
the executioner books or the Clive Customer books, and if

(05:57):
push comes a shove, I'll start looking for Tom Clancy.
For God's sake, I won't go into this too deep
because I took loads and loads of photos of the
store and the books and the covers, and I have
all of them in a companion video to this episode.
But I will say that if you're into books published
in paperback between nineteen seventy and nineteen ninety that feature Vigilantes,

(06:24):
team commandos, post apocalyptic fiction, military fiction, we're talking books
in series titles like Kung Fu Mace, Liberty Corps, Fu Manchu,
Soldier of Fortune, Dennison's War, The Zone, The Guardians, Road Blaster, God,
Help You Overload, Hell Rider, Tiger Shark, matt Helm, The

(06:49):
Last Ranger, Phoenix Force, Horse Clans, I would venture to
say that other than Chamblain's book Mine here in Jacksonville, Florida,
this store is a close second. There were so many
spy books and prisoner of war books, like loads and
loads of paperbacks which cover combat or have covers with

(07:12):
people in combat. And it wasn't just that particular niche.
The story was also stacked with books like Mike Shane,
books by John D. McDonald, hard case crime novels. They
had Eggerriis Burroughs vintage paperbacks along with vintage doc Savage paperbacks,
and Michael Moorcock paperbacks. Some of those were in sets

(07:33):
in big bags, so you had to buy them as
like trilogies. They had a great selection of novelizations. There's
an entire shelving unit, both front and back, dedicated to
vintage horror paperbacks. I mean, they had Ross McDonald books.
They had a section just for Sherlock Holmes, just to
give you an idea of how deep their collection is.

(07:55):
They had rare books that we've reviewed right here on
Paperback Warrior, like The Town That Saw No Evil by
Harry Canter. Tom reviewed that book, A Piece of This
Country by Thomas Taylor. I reviewed that book, and The
Captain Must Die by Robert Colby, which Tom reviewed. This
isn't just your everyday run of the mill stuff. They

(08:16):
also had a lot of vintage Gothic romance paperbacks and
a great selection of Mary Stewart paperbacks. Below the shelving
units were boxes and boxes of stacked paperbacks. I just
pulled one box out just to take a quick glance
and saw books by Clark Howard and Jack Higgins. Again,
you need to watch my video to understand what kind

(08:38):
of books this place has. It's uncanny the things that
threw me off was that seemingly one half of the
store's front portion is off limits. I could clearly see
what looked like hundreds of paperbacks and stacks on tables
or on shelving units, but the owner said she hasn't
had time to look through all of those yet. Let

(09:00):
me tell you, I hate it when used booksellers tell
me this, because chances are I'll go there a year
from now and those same books will be sitting there
with the same explanation. I just haven't had time to
go through them yet. I see this as habitual behavior
from used booksellers all the time. She also informed me
she has boxes of vintage Gothic paperbacks to put out,

(09:23):
so maybe someday they'll be on the shelves for sale.
The other thing that I didn't quite understand or didn't
really like was the prices. They varied from three dollars
to eight dollars. I couldn't really obtain a sense of
what made a paperback more expensive than another. I will
say the vintage horror paperbacks I'll pulled out were priced
rather high, but maybe not as high as some I've
seen on eBay, especially considering the paperbacks from hell price

(09:45):
hike we've seen over the last few years. Again, I
have a video companion of this episode you can watch
on YouTube right now, of all the books and the
book covers I saw in the store, it's worth watching.
Included in that video is the stack of paperbacks I
bought as well. Be sure to check it out, and
also please subscribe to the channel. I'm growing Up by
Leaves and Bounds on. I need your help to get there.

(10:06):
All right, now that I've taken you through stacks of
books in Fayetteville, North Carolina, it's time to switch you
to a Canadian basement to bring you this author feature.
I'm gonna hit the tune for us. Stay tuned, Okay,

(10:27):
So the first thing you need to know is that
William Edward Daniel Ross was a best selling Canadian novelist
that wrote more than three hundred and fifty novels using
a variety of pseudonyms. Chances are if you see a
Gothic romance paperback and a used bookstore, there's a very
high probability it was written by Ross. I wanted to

(10:47):
dig into his career in life because he was just
so prolific, and I have read certain things about him
through the years, concerning how he would write, how he
supposedly chained himself to a typewriter, how he had a
basement dungeon, and so forth. I really just wanted to
get the story straight, and I think I've done that so.
Ross was born in nineteen twelve in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada.

(11:11):
He moved to the United States in nineteen thirty four
and studied at Provincetown Playhouse in New York. It's in
nineteen thirty four that Ross won a Dominion Drama Festival
prize for acting. He went on to study creative writing
at University of Oklahoma, Columbia University, and University of Chicago.
He managed a traveling production company and created his own

(11:32):
theater company called Maritime Theater Players, which he ran between
nineteen thirty seven and nineteen forty two. In the nineteen thirties,
Ross also wrote and acted in radio dramas, including those
produced by the Canadian Broadcast Corporation. During World War II,
Ross served with the British Entertainment Services Division. After the war,

(11:52):
he co founded the Capitol Sounds Film Company, which distributed
films into the late nineteen fifties. In nineteen forty four,
he married Charlotte McCormick, who become his writing partner for
a short time. Ross's first published literary work was a
short story titled The Pearls of Lee Pong. It was
in the February nineteen fifty seven issue of Alfred Hitchcock's

(12:14):
Mystery Magazine. His second published story was a Perfect Ending,
which was in the November nineteen fifty seven issue of
that same magazine. So Ross really gets going here and
starts churning out short stories from magazines like the Saint
Detective Magazine, The Saint Mystery Magazine, Mystery Digest, Mike Sheen

(12:35):
Mystery Magazine, London Mystery Selection, and so forth. Of these stories,
both Ross and his wife collaborated on a series titled
Mister Mee Wong that's spelled m like Mary Elike Elephant,
I like Igloo space Wong. Their collaboration was on the
series stories, all collected in the Saint Mystery Magazine and

(12:58):
the UK version as well, between nineteen fifty eight through
nineteen sixty four. However, Ross's wife, Charlotte died in nineteen
fifty nine, but what they had wrote together was published
in nineteen sixty three and nineteen sixty four. But I
wanted to stop here just for a minute and go
over this Mister Mee Wong series. So there were twenty
nine total Mister Miewong stories published between nineteen fifty eight

(13:22):
through nineteen seventy seven. As I mentioned previously, Ross's wife
co wrote the series, but our contribution was just four stories.
The rest were all pinned by Ross using the name W. E. D. Ross.
These stories appeared in the magazines The Man from Uncle Chase,
The Saint Mystery, Mike Shane Mystery, and The Saint Mystery UK.

(13:45):
The premise of the series is that mister Miewong is
an artist, a painter that lives in Bombay, India, which
today is called Mumbay. He runs the Bombay Art and
Curio Shop. The idea is that Wong assists the police
in capturing art thieves and other criminals preying on the
Bombay population. The other main character of the series is
Inspector Bannerjee. Wong is always a wise old man in

(14:09):
this series and comes up with interesting ways to solve crimes.
So in a way, it's kind of like a detective series.
For example, in a Mike Shane Mystery Magazine story from
nineteen seventy. Wong is in his studio painting when an
armed intruder barges in and says he will now kill Wong.
The explanation is that Wong assisted the police to put

(14:31):
him in prison, and now he's out for revenge. Wong
gingerly explains to the intruder that he would like the
time just to finish the painting. The intruder gives him
the time that he needs. Just as he's about to
pull the trigger. Wong tells the intruder that he would
be willing to provide him an ultimate treasure if he
could just watch the sunset one more time. The intruder,

(14:55):
hoping for some sort of huge payout here, allows it.
Just as the Sunsets Inspector Banerjee storms into the place
and arrests the intruder. The intruder wants to know what
the treasure was going to be. Wong explains to the
intruder that he did give him a wonderful treasure. By
allowing him to see the sunset, he was able to

(15:16):
prevent the intruder from becoming a murderer. That was the
gift that no amount of money could purchase pretty clever.
Ross would have sixty five short stories published throughout his
writing career under his own name. However, according to the
New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia, they state that Ross actually wrote
over six hundred short stories. Other publications include The Link, Highway, Patrolman,

(15:42):
Daily News, Canadian Messenger, The Roundup and so forth. The
only other series title I could locate with Sister Julia,
which she appeared in just two stories that I could find.
I have no information on this Sister Julia character. Between
Ross and his wife, they collapseated on one hundred short
stories or even more than that. Maybe. Now let's get

(16:05):
down to books and pseudonyms. The first pseudonym I can
find Ross using was that of Alin Ross l In.
He used it to write his first published novel, The
Case of the Naked Driver, which was published by Art
Enterprises in nineteen sixty one, when Ross was forty nine
years old. He was recognized for Best First Novel in

(16:27):
Canada with the Gibson National Literary Award. He followed that
with another novel written using the Alin Ross name, called
Lust Planet. It was published in France in nineteen sixty two.
And It's a sleez novel adults only that takes care
of the Alin Ross pseudonym. Just those two books. However,

(16:47):
an article online stated that his first published novel was
Summer Season in nineteen sixty two, written under the name
Jane Rossiter. I was able to find further information that
suggests that Summer Season was published in the fall of
nineteen sixty two, but it appears that The Case of
the Naked Driver was published prior to this. I'm not

(17:07):
sure what his first published book was, but it certainly
seems like the Case of the Naked Driver is it.
Next is the pseudonym of Dan Roberts. This is a
name that Ross used to write westerns for the American
library market publishers like Robert Hale, Arcadia House, and Avalon
books titles like Wyoming, Showdown, Outlaws, Gold Vengeance, Writer, Uma Brand,

(17:32):
and so forth. He authored fourteen Western books between nineteen
sixty one through nineteen seventy for publishers like Arcadia House
and Tower. I think at least one of these books
was reprinted by Leisure. I think it was called Sheriff
of mad River. I've never read a Western by Ross,
but according to the excellent blog written by author James Reasoner.

(17:55):
They seem to be very generic but entertaining westerns. Now,
we move over to his pseudonym, Jane Rossiter. He used
this name to write romance novels. Not to be confused
with Gothic romance. These are just traditional romance novels. He
wrote six of these books using the Jane Rossiter name
between nineteen sixty two and nineteen sixty seven for publishers

(18:18):
like Valentine Books, Valentine and McFadden Bartel. If you dig
nurse fiction, one of these books fits that niche Backstage
Nurse from nineteen sixty three. Okay, so speaking of nurses,
that opens up a whole new segment of this feature
on Ross. If you will recall, Ross's wife, Charlotte, died

(18:40):
in nineteen fifty nine. In nineteen sixty Ross returned to
Canada and he married Marilyn and Clark. He was married
to her until his death in nineteen ninety five. Now
Clark worked as a nurse, and she's also served as
Ross's agent and proofreader. I noticed that Ross began writing
nurse for around the time that he married Marilyn Clark

(19:04):
as Ellen Randolph, the author wrote five novels from nineteen
sixty three through nineteen eighty three of nurse fiction. Some
of the titles were Nurse of the north Woods, Nurse
Martha's Wish, the Haunting of Nurse Gene. Then we really
get into some nurse fiction with Ross using the pseudonym
and Gilmour. He wrote seventeen paperbacks of nurse fiction with

(19:28):
titles like Nurse Crane, Emergency Nurse in the Tropics, Private Nurse,
Nurse on Call, Skyscraper Nurse, and Celebrity Nurse. Using the
name Rose Williams, Ross wrote five paperbacks starring nurses with
titles like Five Nurses, Airport Nurse, Nurse in Doubt. Using

(19:51):
the pseudonym of Rose Dana, Ross authored twenty three novels
with most appearing to be nurse fiction titles like Nightclub Nurse,
Arctic Nurse, Nurse in Jeopardy, and Resort Nurse. Right now
we're at like fifty books of nurse fiction. But we
aren't done yet, folks. As Ruth Dorset, Ross wrote eight

(20:15):
nurse novels with titles like Hotel Nurse, Front Office Nurse,
and Behind Hospital Walls. So roughly sixty nurse paperbacks before
we even consider the nurse books that Ross wrote using
the name W. E. D. Ross. Just from glancing at titles,
I see eleven books with hospital or nurse in the title.

(20:37):
That's sixty two books about nurses. Not to mention that
a lot of his gothic romance paperbacks featured nurses as
main characters. Ross's Marringham nurse may have pushed him into
this niche market, or maybe he was just trying to
overtake nurse fiction author star Peggy Gaddis. I think she
was averaging like a book a month. Ross also was

(21:00):
writing nurse short stories that appeared in publications like hospital romances. Now,
before we just go completely gothic crazy, let's finish out
the rest of the pseudonyms that aren't necessarily Gothic related.
As TeX's Steele. Ross wrote three Western novels between nineteen
sixty eight and nineteen sixty nine as Charlotte McCormick, which

(21:23):
was his first wife's name. He wrote two books from
nineteen sixty six to nineteen sixty seven. He wrote one
novel in nineteen sixty eight using the name Miriam Leslie,
and he wrote two romance novels using the name Jan
Daniels in nineteen sixty six. He wrote a romance novel
in nineteen eighty seven using the name Marilyn Carter. He

(21:44):
wrote another one in nineteen eighty one using the name
Dianne Randall. Okay, so we have all that out of
the way. Let's get into the gothic craziness and then
get into his crazy writing life. All right, so gothics.
His gothics were published under the names Dan Ross, W. E.
D Ross, Clarissa Ross, Marilyn Ross, Dana Ross, Lydia Colby,

(22:09):
and Laura Francis Brooks. His publishers included Paperback Library, Avon
Curtis Books, Lancer, Leisure, Manner, Pyramid, and Magnum. As W. E.
D Ross, he authored about twenty gothic romance novels, maybe more.
I'm just going off with the titles that sound like

(22:30):
their goth As Clarissa Ross, he authored another forty gothic
romance novels. Also as Clarissa Ross, he authored a six
book series called Dark Harbor from nineteen seventy four to
nineteen seventy five. Then as Marilyn Ross, he authored another
forty eight gothic romance novels from the nineteen sixties through

(22:51):
the nineteen eighties under the same Marilyn Ross name. He
wrote the Fog Island series, which was seven books between
nineteen sixty nineteen seventy eight. He wrote The Stewarts of Stormhaven,
which was a twelve book series between seventy six and
seventy eight, The Birthstone Gothic series, which was three books

(23:11):
in nineteen seventy five, and of course his most well
known literary work, and that's the Dark Shadows series, which
lasted thirty two books between nineteen sixty six and nineteen
seventy two. I'm going to briefly touch on just a
handful of Ross books I've read. My first one was

(23:32):
Fog Island from Paperback Library, nineteen sixty five. Young Stella
Trent is invited by her distinct grandmother to visit this
island on the coast of New Brunswick, Canada. There, she's
attacked by what appears is to be a ghostly apparition.
She's told the house is haunted. She also learns that
her aunt and a man died there in a mysterious drowning.

(23:54):
The mystery is whether or not her aunt really died
or is being held captive in a neighboring laboratory. I
really enjoyed the book. I liked the main character, and
of course the atmosphere was great. I read Dark Legend
from nineteen sixty six, also on paperback Library. The story
takes place in the late eighteen hundreds in a large
lakeside mansion in Maine. Jan is the main character and

(24:17):
she wakes up with amnesia. That's a common trope, right,
It must determine how she arrived at the mansion and
who she really is. There's a crazy psycho with vicious dogs.
And there's also a rumor that a masked man wearing
black gloves haunts the area. There's a mystery about her
dead mother and this weird neighbor. The book was just okay,
and it had a heightened level of suspense to really

(24:39):
keep things moving. I read Phantom Manner from nineteen sixty
five on paperback Library. It's set in the eighteen hundreds
in a coastal manner situated on a small peninsula. When
the tide rises, the manner is cut off from the
mainland completely, which plays a part in the book. Again,
this character's name is Jan. I don't know why he
keeps using Jan. She's invited by her distant grandfather to

(25:02):
visit the house after her father dies. There's this land
feud there between her grandfather and these monks, and there's
a mystery regarding the murder of a monk. There's this
idea that a ghost haunts the area. I thought the
book was really dull and too much time was spent
on Jan and her relationship with her distant cousin and
the hiring and firing of staff around the house. It

(25:24):
was a real chore to set through. I read The
Heidi Circle from Pyramid from nineteen seventy six. A woman
named Agnes is suffering from the recent loss of her mother.
After a nervous breakdown, she journeys to Haiti for vacation.
She falls in love with a doctor, and then there's
rumors or voodoo rituals on the island. Obviously, Agnes is
targeted by the voodoo cult and she's got things like

(25:45):
tarantulas and bats showing up at her bedroom as some
sort of curse. I thought this book was actually pretty
darn good. It had a spooky overall vibe to it.
I feel like the book contained a real, maybe supernatural
element to it. I read This Secret of Mallick Castle,
reprinted by Manner in nineteen seventy seven, from an original
publication on Arcadia House back in nineteen sixty six. Now

(26:09):
Eve is a nurse working in Ohio, and she finds
out she's inherited a fortune from a distant relative in
Cape Cod. This stuff never happens to me. I'm probably
gonna inherit debt. Anyway. Eve goes to Cape Cod, gets
the ownership of this large house, begins dealing with the
house staff, and begins feuding with her uncle's wife. She
falls in love with a surgeon. Eve was one of

(26:31):
the stronger characters I've experienced in a ross novel. I
just loved how she took charge of things. She really
had a supreme confidence in dealing with danger. She even
uses a gun, which is like the first for me
in a Gothic. This one was good. I read Message
from a Ghost from Paperback Library in nineteen seventy one.
In this book, Gail experiences the death of her wealthy

(26:53):
father and journeys to Connecticut to mourn with her sister Emily.
Gail then takes a vacation at a resort where she
ends up being involved with a local mobster. The book
second half is spent as Gaale as a prisoner in
an old, abandoned theater with some really frightening captors. There's
this possibility of a dead actress that haunts the place.

(27:13):
This one was really good and a combined crime fiction
with the traditional Gothic element made it really unique. I
really really liked this book. I also read Dark of
the Moon from nineteen sixty nine on McFadden Bartel and
thought it was just me. Julia experience this crazy phenomenon
in a mansion and she's nearly killed multiple times. Is

(27:34):
her husband of Psycho? Is his mother of Psycho? This
was just okay. I didn't really enjoy it that much.
I also read the first two installments of the Dark
Shadows series. The first book, titled Dark Shadows, was really dull,
as the main character, Victoria, settles into Colin's house in Collinsport, Maine,
to care for a kid. Now, obviously this is tying

(27:55):
into the famous ABC Vampire soap opera series that ran
in the seventies. She's nearly killed multiple times, but the
book's pace was so slow and there was just so
much pointless dialogue. I disliked this book, but thankfully the
second book, which is titled Victoria Winter's, works more like
a mystery or crime noir. As three guests spend a

(28:17):
few weeks at the Collins house. There's a mysterious woman
in the house that no one can see other than Victoria,
and she may be a dead woman named Stella. There's
also a mysterious painter hanging around that seems to have
a secret agenda. This was a really good crime fiction
mystery with atmosphere. It was rather slow, but it all
had a point and it added to the storytelling. I

(28:39):
loved this book. Despite Ross's incredible volume of books, he
did receive rejections often. He routinely received rejections from Robert Hale.
He was asked to make many edits for his books,
like a step Mom's too mean or Doctor's too sadistic.
His settings would sometimes throw off the publishers. For example,

(29:00):
his novel Castle on the Hill is set in Canada.
Avalon published the book, but US magazine Red Book rejected it.
There were interesting reasons behind books being published and those
that weren't. Like Carol Plain, who was the editor for
Pyramid at the time, she considered Ross's atmosphere to be
the most important element of his books. By nineteen sixty six,

(29:23):
Plain began to reject some of Ross's gothic outlines, claiming
that it just didn't conform to her expectations. On the
other hand, Paperback Library editor Sue Rosenberg identified other elements
as being important. A gloomy house, a spunky young woman
whose life is threatened while being a resident in the
gloomy old house, a harboring mystery, a love interest for

(29:45):
the heroine, a brooding master burdened in some way. Robert
Hale refused Ross's gothic outlines due to their feelings that
English readers preferred straightforward romances or mysteries. While Pyramids stopped
exis upting Ross's gothics, Paperback Library was all in on Ross.

(30:05):
They hired him to write the Dark Shadows novels, which
by mid nineteen sixty nine had already sold more than
two hundred and five million copies. On Ross's personal life,
things get a little crazy, all right. So it's one
of the reasons why I actually chose to present this feature. So,
according to an interview published on May tenth, nineteen sixty nine,

(30:27):
and Weekend magazine. Ross stated that he would take twenty
four hours after finishing a book to begin the next book.
He said he couldn't afford to waste any time with
another promise to deliver another novel before the end of
the month. He also went on to say that the
short stories also had to be turned out every single week.
He said he's not complaining and that the writing is

(30:49):
going well. Think about that for a second. He's writing
nearly NonStop his entire life. As of nineteen sixty nine.
The article about Ross date that he wrote one hundred
and fifteen novels and had six hundred stories published just
in a seven year period of time. The New York
Times Book Review once called him quote one of the

(31:11):
most formidable writing factories in this or any other hemisphere unquote.
In that same article, Ross is quoted as saying, I'm
probably Canada's most read unknown writer. But that's because I
use so many pen names, editors insist on them for
my different types of novels, and because I was producing

(31:32):
for so many publishers. As a result, I may have
eight books on a newsstand and not one of them
with my own name. I'm Rose Dana and Rose Williams
for the nurse books, Marilyn Ross that's my wife's name.
For the Gothic mysteries involving a heroine and the setting
of an old castle or remote ancient mansion, Dan Roberts

(31:54):
and Tex Steele for westerns. Then for the modern novels
romances in general mysteries, I'm Alan Randolph, Jane Daniels, Jane Rossiter,
Clarissa Ross, Ruth Dorsett, Leslie, Ames W. E. D Ross,
w E, Dan Ross, and Dan Ross. The article says

(32:16):
that a veteran New York literary agent by the name
of Donald mccampbell called Ross on a Monday morning and
said he needs a nurse book, and that they're in
a bit of a rush. Ross said he would get
right to it. He put aside his mystery novel and
then wrote a nurse novel. The agent said that he
had three hundred typed pages, which was the manuscript for

(32:36):
a seventy five thousand word nurse novel, delivered to his
desk the following Monday. Supposedly, that same book, again written
in just one week's time, sold a quarter of a
million copies. So how does one write this many books? How?
Does a writer gain this much patience to write? Gain
the allegiance of countless editors and publishers have the discipline

(32:59):
to stay at home with the typewriter, banging away manuscripts
seemingly every single hour of the day. Here's how Ross
did it. This is extraordinary. So here's his jam. Ross
placed himself in a wood paneled, soundproofed basement room about
nine feet square. He worked seated on a small sofa

(33:21):
with his typewriter in his lap. He would go into
this writing room after breakfast. He would read his mail,
look after business affairs until eleven am. He then begins
to write. He takes a short break for lunch, goes
back to writing NonStop until seven pm. He stops to
have dinner. He goes for a short walk about three

(33:41):
minutes with his dog. He then returns to the writing
room and writes NonStop until midnight. By that time, he
has typed ten thousand words. And the kicker is he
doesn't type. He used the two finger approach. That's insane
to me that this blows my mind. Now why all

(34:02):
that is happening. His wife, Marilyn's upstairs editing the nurse
books because she's a nurse. She also takes the phone
calls and does background research for all of his books.
He described his wife by saying, she keeps my characters
name straight. I'm always getting their names mixed up. Sybil,

(34:22):
the heroine in my current book, suddenly becomes Elsie, who
is the heroine in my last book. That sort of thing.
When asked if he is a hack, Ross responded, I
honestly don't think I am a hack. A true hack
is motivated entirely by money, and I'm not. Of course,
I do make a lot of money, as much as

(34:43):
a successful business executive, but I've never written anything that
was not sincere, I write primarily to express my viewpoint
on life and to entertain as an entertainer, I write
escapist fiction. What's wrong with escapism? You eat a meal
to escape hunger. You read a novel of mystery or

(35:05):
romance to escape boredom or worry. Some controversy arose when
an American tourist in England picked up one of his
novels in a bookstore. It bore his name as the author.
On her trip home, she bought another book with the
author's name as Jane Rossiter, but the book was the
exact same thing, one as Ross, one with a different

(35:29):
title as Rossiter. So she decides she's going to write
Ross a letter, and in the letter she said that
this is a case of literary theft and that this
Jane Rossiter person has stolen Ross's book. Ross said he
responded to her by thanking her. He sent her some
free books, but he said it was much simpler than
trying to explain to her that I can't sue myself.

(35:52):
In a New York Times interview dated April seventh, nineteen
seventy five, Ross said, of course, I write this same
story over and over. I'm writing for a market, and
I give my readers what they want. I like to
think of them as the successors to the pulp readers
of thirty or forty years ago. When describing his characters,

(36:14):
Ross said, the heroine in distress must always be innocent
and beautiful, and she must always be sympathetic and good.
How I'd love to write about a bitchy heroine. Sometime
in that same interview, Ross explained that he was earning
about one thousand dollars per week. As a side note
to that statement, Ross was paid seven hundred and fifty

(36:37):
to eight hundred dollars for a reprint from Paperback Library,
and they paid him a thousand for original paperbacks. As
their relationship prospered, Paperback Library would increase their payment to
fifteen hundred and then seventeen fifty, Lancer paid one thousand
dollars to Arcadia for a reprint of one of Ross's
nurse romances. Other interesting tidbits here before I finished this up.

(36:59):
Raw Ross also wrote twelve plays. He starred in a
film called As Young As You Feel in nineteen fifty.
He appeared on the CBS game show To Tell the
Truth on January thirty one, nineteen sixty six. That episode
is available on YouTube, so if you want to see
what this guy looked like and what he sounded like,
you can watch that episode again. It's called to Tell

(37:21):
the Truth on January thirty one, nineteen sixty six. He
appeared on Late Night with David Letterman on April first,
nineteen eighty seven, alongside singer Dolly Parton. The topic was
the amount of books that Ross wrote. The New Brunswick
Consortium of Professional Writers named Ross Canada's most prolific writer.

(37:42):
He earned the Queen Elizabeth Silver Jubilee Medal for Writing
in nineteen seventy eight, and he earned an honorary doctorate
from the University of New Brunswick in nineteen eighty eight.
According to Boston University's Papers, Ross maintained a correspondence with
author Michael Avaloni, W. S. Campbell and Kurt Singers, was
published in twenty two countries and in thirteen different languages.

(38:03):
His one hundredth book was Behind Locked Shutters and the
message at the beginning of the book says to my
wife Marilyn novel one hundred. On average, his books sold
seven hundred and fifty thousand copies, making him an example
of a best selling author, with cumutive of sales being enormous.
He received recognition from Guinea's Book of World Records for

(38:26):
the number of books he wrote. Now you can listen
to a ton of audio books by Ross. Paperback Classics
has The Dark Shadows available on Audible, and you can
also buy each book on CD, with the narrator being
Katherine Lee Scott. She's great. The non Dark Shadows Gothics
are read by Romy Norlinger. What I love about these

(38:48):
is that they all chose to keep the original artwork
of the paperbacks. They look very cool. I can listen
to the Ross novels for free using the Hoopa app.
I just log in with my local public library credentials
and I've got like fifteen of them sitting there. Hopefully
this episode sort of authenticates some of the things that
I've heard about Ross through the years. Maybe you've heard
about Ross as well, about his career and strange writing

(39:11):
habits and things like that, so hopefully this sets the
record straight. My sources for this feature was Boston University's W. E.
Dan Ross's collection of Papers, the New Brunswick Library Encyclopedia,
the Toronto Reference Library blog, collins Port Historical Society, and
an amazing essay titled William Edward Daniel Ross's Transformation into

(39:34):
a Popular Fiction Novelist nineteen sixty two to nineteen sixty
seven by Janet Friskney. All Right, onto today's review, I
chose to read a vintage horror paperback by Patricia Wallace
called Thrill. It was published in nineteen ninety by Zebra.
Wallace was a really popular author, and she saw her
first book published in nineteen eighty two called Traces. Her

(39:57):
horror novels typically feature kids, so this book I read
again titled Thrill features Kids. Here's what I was thinking
this book was about. Going into the first page, I
was thinking this book was about kids who are trapped
inside of a high tech, giant amusement park where the
robots and props have malfunctioned, forcing them into a do
or die type of escape. Yeah. I was thinking like

(40:19):
Chopping Mall, remember that old eighties harflick where the robots
are killing all the people in the mall, Or maybe
like Westworld where the androids go crazy and start killing
the attendants, or even something like Jurassic Park where I
guess the securities breach, the fences come down, the dinosaurs
are running around, and the people are trying to escape.
Does Thrill deliver this No, No, no, it does not.

(40:42):
This book sucks, and I'll tell you why. This billionaire
developer named Sheldon Rice builds this thousand acre amusement park
in rural California, complete with robots, soldiers, robots, spiders, and creatures.
It's like a combination of being scared to death and
having the best time of your life. That's the idea
of the park, which is what it's cleverly called. Rice
decides to do a Willy Wonka type of thing and

(41:04):
send out special invitations to kids to come experience the
park on its grand opening to the public. Great, but
the author spends entire chapters introducing each kid and there's
like six or seven of them and what their backstory is.
That's fine as long as there's a huge payoff to
all this, Like these kids band together to save themselves

(41:25):
and others as they battle the thrilling malfunctioning robots. By
page two hundred of three hundred and eighty eight pages,
the kids finally arrive at the fricking park. Two hundred
pages of this nonsense. Then for the rest of the book,
people just get hurt on rides. There's like a broken
bone here and there, some guy gets a severe laceration.

(41:48):
Then a couple kids get killed on the rides, but
the park doesn't even close and it just keeps things
business as usual, which is just weird. I would think
if kids get killed in a park, you're probably gonna
shut down for a few days just to deal with
the press. There's a ton of malarkey in this book
about Native American curses on the land, and that rises
receiving his come updance for building there. The book's finale

(42:11):
is the kids playing laser tag with the runaway robot
soldiers who are using real lasers. I hated this book
so much. I hated the pace of the book. I
hated the plot. I hated the dull and uninspired dialogue
between the characters. This book is terrible. I'm sure Wallace
has some great books because she was immensely popular, but

(42:33):
this book isn't one of them. Stay away from thrill
because it ain't thrilling. And that's the end of my
regular portion of the episode. Stick around for my reading
of a short story by Stephen Mertz called King of Horror.
If you're leaving now, thanks for listening, and be sure
to subscribe to our YouTube channels and follow us on

(42:54):
Facebook and x Be sure to read the blog for
new reviews Mondays, Wednesdays, Friday, Saturdays. And there's tons and
tons of stuff in the archives that I routinely repost
on social media so you can get a chance to
look at it again. All right now is the King
of Horror, authored by Stephen Mertz. This is the lead

(43:15):
story in a book that came out a few years
ago under that same title. It was published by Wolfpack.
So here we go. I'm the greatest horror writer who
ever lived the tragedy, For me as a professional writer,
for you as a reader, is that more than likely?
You've never heard of me. You've heard of Stephen King,

(43:36):
You've heard of Clive Barker, You've heard of Dean R. Coots.
Pretenders to the throne, every one of them, and there
are too many others like them, talentless pygmies, and a
land once ruled by giants like Poe Lovecraft, Dirlith Block
and yours truly Wrigly Balbo, a prophet without honor in

(43:56):
his own country, a man who was cheated and pushed
aside by these grubby Johnny cumb Lately punks and their
million dollar contracts and their New York Times bestsellers. They
went to school reading my stuff. The cemetery people, the
goblins are hungry, blood on my hatchet. What did I
get out of it? Lousy advances, no reviews, crummy distribution,

(44:19):
and even that was years ago. In other words, I
got nothing out of it, not a zip, not a
damn thing, not money, not fame. Hell, my last book
was published nine years ago in England. Only the Bastard's
paid me four hundred freakin dollars for it, and it's
never been reprinted since in England or anywhere else. Pardon

(44:41):
me for sounding more than a little bitter, folks, but
I'm talking hunger here, and pain and the indescribable ache
of seeing men and women not fit to kiss my
platin roller going after big bucks time after time after time.
The only horror about their writing is that they can
get away with recycling the same third rate crap lifted
from old movies, old pulps, old comics, and the work

(45:02):
of their betters, foisting it off on a semi literate
public that doesn't know any better. But have any of
these jerks ever said a nice word about me in
public after they became famous? Have they ever cited me
as one of the founding fathers of this genre they've
coasted on to the bank. Have they ever helped a
tired old pro out by maybe slipping him a few
bucks when it could have helped? No? No, and no scum,

(45:24):
talentless scum, every one of them. Well, there was one
who was different. His name was Mark Darby, and his
is the last story I want to tell. Or maybe
it's my story. I'm not sure. I'm not sure of
anything anymore. I'll just tell the story you decide. He
chose a restaurant we've been to a couple times before
when he'd been to New York, one of those places

(45:44):
just off Broadway, Midtown that still has managed to hold
off against the closing in sleeves that's rotted most of
that part of Manhattan into something unrecognizable since the days
when I in the city were a whole lot younger
writers rarely run with the pack. We'd set a lunch
date for afternoon rush, a good restaurant in that part
of town is rarely empty, even at mid afternoon. He
was waiting for me at a corner table when I

(46:05):
walked in. The murmur of conversation, the clink of silverware
from near by tables, and the music the place piped
in did nothing to ease the tension that had wrapped
my gut into a knot, and strangely juxtaposed the ringing
in my ears that began when I approached the table.
He rose to greet me with that fresh faced grin
of his that the world knew from his book jacket photograph.
He must have been about forty by now, but he

(46:27):
could have passed for ten or fifteen years younger than
that with no problem. Damn him. There were no stress
lines at the corners of his eyes or mouth, no
gray in his beard or longish hair. Why should there be.
He had the world by the tail. He was dressed casually,
but the clothes were expensive, I could tell. I wondered
if he noticed how out of style, how threadbare my

(46:48):
own jackets, slacks and shirt were. His hand shake was
firm and friendly, like his voice. Rig, damn, it's good
to see you again. How the hell have you been
gettin by? We ordered a beer for him, Scotch on
the rocks for me. Then we ordered lunch. He ordered
the hamburger steak. I ordered salad. Lunch is usually my

(47:09):
main meal of the day, but the knot in my
stomach had taken away my appetite. We touched glasses in
a silent toast. Jeez, Rig, I'm glad you were able
to make it. What's it been like four five years?
Glad I can make it, you sniveling little shit. It's
not like I've been balancing an overload social calendar here exactly.
More like sitting around waiting for the damn phone to ring.

(47:30):
I sipped my drink and was surprised to see that
my hand was trembling, just the trimmer, not enough to
spill more than a drop. He probably noticed, but he
didn't say anything. I've been wondering how you were doing, kid.
I tried to make my voice sound cordial. I saw
your book all over the best seller list? What was
it three years ago? Then nothing? I had to cut
the world loose for a while. Still, I didn't figure

(47:52):
you'd cut me loose. No one seemed to know what
happened to you. I figured you'd stay in touch with me,
at least ever since you wrote me that fanly twenty
years ago. I guess I always thought of as a
friends more than just teacher and student. I've got a say, kid,
I didn't know what to make of it. It sort
of hurt my feelings. I'm sorry, he said, and he
sounded cecere. My brain blocked. After that first book went

(48:14):
through the ceiling like it did, So where have you been? Bummed? Around?
Europe's lived on Majorica for a while, fell in and
out of love in Paris. I finally hammered another book
into shape I've been town to deliver it to my
agent big bucks, I'll bet huh uh. Let's not get
into that rig. Hey, it's okay. I heard it about
it at a fan convention I went to a couple

(48:35):
months back. I still attend the damn things, even if
I hadn't written in the field in twenty years. Anyway,
I heard you pulled down half a mil for an advance.
How does that feel? Every page is still a battle.
My back still goes out on me hemorrhoids. Still give
me help? Not that much has changed? Yeah right, how
about you? What are you working on these days? I shrugged.

(48:56):
I polished off my drink. I'm not working. Why bother?
It wouldn't sell. I sent the glass back down on
the table. Maybe a little too hard. I'm washed up?
Or haven't you heard? My career was in the toilet
before you left. I can't get work. No agent will
handle me. Ten years ago, I made a stink about
how they were screwing me on royalty payments, and the
bastard's blacklisted me. You know that I need another drink?

(49:19):
I ordered another, a double. This time he was still
working on his beer. He waited until the waitress and
cub had gone before he spoke. You did piss off
and alienate a lot of people, he agreed, but that
was a long time ago. Editors come and go. Writers
write until they die, and then their work lives forever.
You taught me that, remember, Yeah, but the blacklists stayed
around forever too. The last ten years have been tough, Mark,

(49:41):
real tough. I can't get arrested on publisher's row rig.
Every writing career has its ups and downs. It's lean stretches. Look,
it's so called bad boys like Harlan Ellison. He's made
a second career out of bad mouth and crooked publishers.
But other houses still publish as stuff. Editors will buy
books if they think the books will sell. Listen, kid,
every writer in the world is getting screwed by every

(50:04):
publisher in the world. I made an effort to sit
my drink, not toss it back the way I wanted to.
The trimmers had stopped, but nothing, not in my stomach
or the ringing in my ears. I set the glass
down easy this time. So what is it, Mark? Now
that you've got a best seller under your belt and
some oversized advances, you're not gonna go condescending on me.
Are you you're not going to forget where you came from?

(50:25):
Don't me mean? Rick? I thought we were friends. I
guess I've just had about it up to hear with
This current crop is so called brand name authors, a
bunch of what's in it for me? Thieves, that's all
they are. You think I had leprosy At the cons
I go to, you can see in their eyes from
across the room. I hope you don't think I feel
that way. I couldn't stop the words from spilling out.
I was getting drunk whiskey on a empty stomach, but

(50:49):
I didn't give a shit. They're just showing their true colors.
I said, one oversized paycheck, and the little boogers actually
start to believe that they're better writers. All of a sudden,
they're not available when the big issues come up, like
getting shafted over royalties or fighting for fair play buck
the establishment. All of a sudden, they can't be bothered.
They can't afford to choose sides or do the right thing.

(51:09):
Damn them for the hypocrites they are. I'm sorry to
see you like this, man, What the hell did you expect?
You know what that blacklist did to my career. An
uncomfortable silence. Then the food came. We both ate for
a few minutes without saying anything. Then he said, quietly,
are you sure there was a blacklist? Rig? Or were
you just making yourself too difficult to do business with?

(51:30):
I'd been forcing myself to eat. I couldn't take another bite.
I swallowed and set my fork down next to the
half finished salad. Who have you been talking to? Of course,
there was a blacklist, a fault city hall, and I lost.
They ran me out on a rail and they never
let me back in. Okay, if there wasn't a blacklist,
what the hell happened to my career? Another stretch of silence.

(51:51):
He pushed his plate away, with most of his hamburger
still on it. This is a hell of a get
together after all these years. Tell me, if it wasn't them,
who the hell did this to me? It was you
rig that caught me off guard. I blinked me it
was hurt in his eyes. He spoke softly for no
other ears but mine. He said, you allowed your ego

(52:14):
and laziness to grind your talent into dust. Laziness. After
my first few books, I wrote ten books a year
for ten years. Those were gothic novels. Rig your first
four horror books were terrific, But when the Gothic boom
hid in the sixties and early seventies, you wrote one
and it sold better than your horror stuff. So you
took on a pen name and cranked out nothing. But

(52:34):
from then on writers have to eat, and they were
good gothics, heavy on atmosphere, with a lot of horror elements. Maybe,
but you weren't writing ten books a year. You were
writing the same book ten times a year for ten years.
Your editors wouldn't have bought that type of book if
you tried to break the formula. And I suppose you're
not lazy, mister, four years to write a book. Maybe

(52:55):
a creative block is laziness, he conceded. I've done formula
work for hire when I had to pay the rent.
But I know it's a hell of a lot harder
to take the time and patience to dig down inside,
try to do something different each time out, to try
to make yourself a better writer with each book than
just to work the treadmill. He looked across the table,
looked me straight in the eye, then that's the kind

(53:16):
of writer you were in the beginning rig and it's
the kind of writer you could still be, unless your
ego precludes you from learning from creative growth. I wanted
to lean across the table and strangle the life out
of him right then, but of course that wouldn't do,
and I was aware that a few heads had already
turned from nearby tables as my last outburst, although they
had since returned to mining their own business. Stay cool,

(53:37):
I told myself, it won't be long now. Writing is
everything to me, I told him. He shook his head.
Don't give me that, he said, nod unkindly. His tone
was friendly. In fact, your ego is everything to you.
You wrote for as long as it came easy, and
it came easy because you never struggled to better yourself,
only to write faster when it no longer came easily.

(53:59):
You blew at everyone in sight, the good and the bad,
and you threw in the towel. What the hell do
you know about it? I snapped. I have a closet
full of unpublished manuscripts that I can't give away, and
you tell me there was no blacklist. You're forgetting that.
You let me read some of those manuscripts. The ones
I read were sabotaged by every bad habit you picked
up over ten years or writing those trash books, Uncertain

(54:21):
point of view, authorial intrusion, ungrammatical as hell. Well, aren't
you the authority all of a sudden? Not all of
a sudden. It took me a long time to learn
what good writing is. Damn it. Rig You spent years
turning out fatish, ephemeral junk, and now you're bitter because
you're not regarded as a major talent. You want to
be a major writer. Write a major book like you did.

(54:42):
I suppose no, like you did in the beginning. Do
what you can already do. Write a page turner that
sends shivers up the spine. That's what your best stuff
always did to me. That's why I wrote you that
first fan letter all those years ago. Write a book
for today's market, and instead of focusing your considerable energies
and talent on volume, focus on improving for a change.

(55:04):
Listen to you. I've tried to keep the snarl out
of my voice and failed today's market. What you mean
is I should turn myself into one of those derivative,
bloodless hacks with no sound of their own. Listen, I'm
gonna outlive and outclass nine tenths of these flash in
the pan scribblers. Maybe so, but in the meantime they're
going to the bank and you're in the poorhouse. I
felt washed through me, the brooding blackness of despair that

(55:27):
always alternated with the rage. Don't remind me. I'm almost
glad Jenny isn't alive to see what became of me.
She used to share my dreams. Crazy lady, I'm glad
we didn't have kids. I'm a rotten, damn failure. It's
hard to believe that once upon a time I was
so full of dreams and ambition. Oh, I was going
to set the world on fire with my typewriter. I

(55:48):
was going to be a great entertainer. But after all
those books, after all those millions or words. You want
to know how I feel now? If you ever wake
up surrounded by books and typewriters, you've died and gone
to hell. I heard my words taper off, heard the
sentence dwindle away, and I didn't want to see the
look on Mark Darby's face, because I knew i'd see
pity and nothing else. I waved down the waitress and

(56:10):
ordered another double. The kid passed, he still hadn't finished
his beer. The distraction gave me some time to rain
in my emotions. Slow down, rigg, I told myself, slow down,
don't lose it. What's going to happen, will happen any
minute now. I glanced over Darby's shoulder at the glass
doors behind him that led to the street. Still no

(56:30):
sign of Lester, but he'd been putting in an appearance
soon enough. Lester wasn't the type to pull a no show,
not on something like this. Mark Darby may have been
my biggest fan once upon a time, and maybe he
thought he was my friend, but he didn't know everything
about me, not by a long shot for starters. He
didn't know that I actually had been writing some over
the past few years, some hardcore porn work I'd managed

(56:53):
to scare up and almost as bad one entry in
an action and venture paperback series before the editor found
out who I was. I'd approached the series editor using
a pen name for cover, not giving my own name.
They paid me a kill fee on that one and
never published it. Said it wasn't up to snuff, too purple.
They called it overwritten, but I knew better. The blacklist
was still in effect. The kill fee was peanuts, but

(57:15):
I got something worth a whole lot more out of
the experience. Besides humiliation and rejection, I got Lester. Maybe
you know a guy like Lester. They sent him to
Vietnam a lifetime ago, and part of him never came back.
I met him at my favorite neighborhood tavern about the
time I was writing that action adventure book. You know
the kind of book. I mean, big tough, macho hero

(57:36):
saves the world from foreign bad guys in annihilation, book
after book, month after month, all in one hundred and
ninety two pages, real juvenile crap. Anyway, Lester reads that stuff.
He's collected all the different series, and we got to
be regular drinking buddies after he found out I was
working on one. He'd been trained in the Special Forces
but been bounced around even before the war was over.

(58:00):
Be he started liking it too much. But that was
one thing he never spoke about. What he did talk
about was his guns. He had a regular arsenal in
his basement. I saw it once. He talked about all
the ways he knew of killing a man, of the
satisfaction he had always gotten when he'd taken someone out
and it had gone like clockwork. He told me that
he missed those days. Of course I talked some too.

(58:22):
I told him about the fair haired boys who had
stolen my place in the sun, had stolen my markets,
my readers, my livelihood. I told him about my hatred
for the ones who are selling the books that I
should have sold instead of getting blacklisted and living off
my social Security and getting drunk on cheap booze. At
my festering hatred, one thing led to another. You'd like
to see them dead, wouldn't you, rig, he said one

(58:42):
night after last call, just before the bartender threw us out.
I didn't even have to think about it. Yeah, I'd
like to see them dead, lester in the worst way.
I dream about it, after what they did to me.
I'd love to see them get theirs, every last one
of them. I'll do it myself, except I don't have
the guts. Well I do, he said quietly. At first

(59:03):
I thought he was kidding, egging me on, just having
fun with the demons and misery of a broken down
old drunk. But he wasn't kidding. He had demons too,
and they needed to be satisfied. It turned out as
much as mine did. It was as if fate had
brought us together, one of those coincidences you're not supposed
to use in fiction, but it happens all the time
of what we call real life. That was the beginning.

(59:24):
We started getting together more regularly. We'd fire our demons
with alcohol at the tavern, and then we'd adjourn to
his place or mind, where I'd supply the names and
the cities where they lived. And he would take considerable
time between our meetings to draw up extensive plans for
the elimination of each one of them. Contracts, he called them.
And none of them would look like murder, he said.
One could be a suicide, another would be an accident,

(59:46):
another would be made to look like the victim of
a burglary. That one would look like murder, of course,
but he would ensure that there would be no way
either of us could be tied into any of the deaths.
The best thing was it wouldn't cost me a cent.
Lester looked healthier every time I saw him. He even
gave up drinking. After the first few planning sessions. It
was as if he were born again or something. I

(01:00:06):
guess his reward would be in knowing that he could
still perform at what had once given his life meaning
and purpose. Me I just fell asleep smiling thinking about it.
Every night. I couldn't stop drinking, and it didn't make
me want to write. But revenge would be its own
sweet reward. The ones who had stolen from me and
built careers on it would be as dead as my
career was. Anticipation of that was all I needed. Hell,

(01:00:30):
it was better than writing. It was better than sex.
Lester had been a week away from implementing the first
contract when I'd gotten the unexpected call last night from Darby.
I'd lost touch with Mark, but what I felt for
the others was even stronger for him because he had
written me those glowing fan letters all those years ago.
He'd almost literally learned at my knee, and so the
hatred I felt for him was more a personal thing.

(01:00:50):
The others had learned from reading my books. That's how
they'd stolen from me. Mark Darby had been much more
personal about it over the years he'd stolen from my brain,
and end would be more personal too. I wanted to
see him die unlike with the others. Lester explained that
it would be much better if I were nowhere nearby,
if I had myself a strong alibi when those contracts

(01:01:12):
were carried out. But this payback, Let's call, it would
have to be different. I knew. I'd called Lester and
explained all this to him as soon as I'd hung
up after getting Darby's call. Lester hadn't skipped a beat.
Shouldn't be a problem. They taught us in the Berets
to adapt and improvise when you want me to do it.
I guess I was taken aback a little at his

(01:01:32):
readiness and his willingness. How about while he and I
are having lunch together, I suggested, But will that work?
I mean, it'll be broad daylight. There'll be witnesses that
would be good for me. They'll know I didn't do it.
But what about you? No problem? Lester always spoke briskly
when he talked about killing people. A hitting public can
be the easiest. A man walks up to the table
and a restaurant blows some guy away. Crazy shit like

(01:01:54):
that happens in New York all the time. But the
witnesses in a situation like that. People are on shock
from what they've see. That's all they see. I come in,
I execute this darby guy in a run out. No
one will try to stop me. Shock, Like I said,
as many people who witness it. That's how many descriptions
the police will get at the killer, and not one
of them will be worth a damn. So how will
you do it? A gun, a knife, don't worry about it.

(01:02:17):
Maybe a gun, maybe a knife, maybe something else. The
more spectacular, the less anyone will see of me. They'll
see the blood and a dead man, and that's all.
But there is one thing. What's that? Like you said,
rig this one will be different from the others because
you're gonna be there. So ever see a man killed before?
Uh not really, it won't be pretty. Just don't get

(01:02:39):
cold feet on me. Okay. Once I commit myself to
taking someone out, I do it and nothing stops me.
Understand I understand. Good, You just meet the guy for
lunch and I'll take care of the rest. But if
you want to back out, now's the time. Nothing gets
in my way, and that includes you. For the minute
I walk into that restaurant tomorrow, this guy is dead
and meet you. Try to stop it, and I'll take

(01:03:00):
you out too. I just want that clear between us.
Don't worry about it. Nothing will change my mind. In fact,
I'm looking forward to it. Not only had nothing changed
my mind, but the more time I spent over lunch
with Mark Darby, the more I wanted to see this
disrespectful creep get his I had to work to keep
my eyes from wandering to the street entrance. It would
be better if it came as a surprise to me

(01:03:20):
when it did happen, I told myself it would look
better that way. I sipped my drink and watched him
over the rim of the glass. I realized he was
saying something that my attention had drifted. He didn't have
a clue to what my thoughts had been. How could he,
The smug bastard would never guess in a million years,
and all he had left was a few more minutes
at most. You're right, rig, he was saying, in a

(01:03:41):
gentler tone than before. I did learn from reading you
when I was a kid, and so did a lot
of other writers who are hot to day. Well there
ye are, I managed to say, filthy thieves. But learning
isn't stealing, he said, and we learned from reading hundreds
of other writers too, And if some of the writers
in my age group do appear to be condescending towards

(01:04:02):
you at times, it may be because we've continued to
learn and grow as writers over the years, and you
haven't bullshit. Not bullshit, Rig. You do need to improve
your work. You should want to. Every writer needs to,
and for you, a big start would be just to
go back to being as good as you were in
the beginning. You can do that. You can become a
modern stylist. Those first novels of yours are exactly what

(01:04:23):
editors are looking for today. But it was as if
at some point early on you decided you'd learned enough.
I couldn't help myself. My eyes shifted over his shoulder
again to the door. Come on, Lester, I thought, Come on.
The ringing in my ears was growing louder. So thanks
for the post mortem, I said, So why are you
wasting your time? What is this talented student gives mentor

(01:04:45):
a pep talk? So you're like all the others After all, Rig,
you have to stop blaming everyone else. You're deluding yourself.
Why don't you fix the blame where it belongs? And
everything else could just fall into place. God knows the
world as a far from perfect place, and that sure
does include the writing profession and the publishing industry. You're right,
they are shark infested waters, so I'm right only about that,

(01:05:09):
But that can't be an excuse for everything you've let
happen to yourself. Your biggest enemies are your ego and
your inability to adapt, adapt and improvise. Eh, exactly. Cut
through that, and you can be three times the writer
you ever were. No one can make a page sing
the way you did when you're in top form. Get
your act together, and we'll do business that through me
for a loop business. I haven't been hammering at you

(01:05:32):
like this for fun. See, rig I'm not like the others,
and you're wrong about most of them. I'm taking a
big chunk of that last advance I paid, and I'm
going into the publishing business myself. You're what. I don't know.
It's just something I've always wanted to do, maybe for
some of the reasons you've stated about what's wrong with
the industry. I want to do it right. I've hired

(01:05:52):
one of the best editors in town. He was talking
faster now bubbling and rising spirits. I control the purse strings,
and I want to give you your chance. Just this
week I reread The Cemetery. People hadn't read that one
since I was a kid, and you know what, it
absolutely bowlded me over. That was one of my masterpieces.
I admitted, I've forgotten all about watching the glass Doors.

(01:06:14):
I do owe you for what you've given me, rig
he said. When I was a kid, You're writing helped
make me want to be a writer. When I started
writing and I contacted you, you encourage me, and your
books have entertained me through the years. I even read
those lame gothics you wrote. I'm still a fan. I've
reread some of your old books several times. I want
to pay some of that back if I can you

(01:06:35):
do the same for me. What are you saying, kid,
I'm saying that if you'll get your act together, I
mean really together, if you'll write a book for today's market,
free of cliche and of the other problems we've discussed,
if you'll really go back to being the king of horror,
then I'll see to it that my editor buys that
book from you, and that it's published all I'm asking

(01:06:56):
for is the blockbuster I know you've got in you.
I'll see to it that you get a top dollar
advance on acceptance with a major promo budget. And I
want to reprint some of that great old stuff too.
I don't know what to say. That was all I
can manage. Please say yes, rig and please don't screw
up this chance I'm giving you. I didn't have time
to reply to that. I saw Lester come in from

(01:07:17):
the street, looking straight ahead. His face was like I'd
never seen it before, like a mask carved in granite.
He saw us and started straight for the table. His
eyes were on the back of Mark's head, and he
was reaching for something in his pocket. So there you go.
The King of Horror by Stephen Mertz. It's funny yet

(01:07:37):
reading the story, but Stephen Mertz was probably my very
first author that I really got into as far as
adult fiction like men's action adventure paperbacks. I remember as
a kid, my dad my mom took me to a
used bookstore. I saw Mi Hunter on the shelves. At
the time, I was into Missing in Action with Chuck Norris.

(01:07:58):
I was into the Rambo movie. My dad had served
in Vietnam, a bunch of my family members were in Vietnam,
so I heard all the military stories around the dinner table,
sometimes on a Sunday. So I gravitated towards those books.
And Stephen Mertz was the man behind the pen. He
was the one writing that stuff, and it really he
was the guy I remember writing. As I've said on

(01:08:19):
this podcast before, I remember writing book reports on the
Mia Hunter books in English class, and I would turn
into book reports and my teacher was like, I don't
know what what you're reading. I don't know if these
are good for you, but you certainly got passion for
writing and for reading. And she always gave me a hundred,
which I use for extra credit because I wasn't very

(01:08:40):
good at English class, but those books helped me get
kind of over the hump and pass English. Based off
of my book reports of Stephen Mertz's literary work in
the men's action adventure field, but this interesting story is
I guess, sort of Merch's love letter. I guess, in
a way, or maybe not, a love letter to the

(01:09:01):
writing industry and some of the things that he's probably
experienced in his career from early on writing in like
Mike Shane mystery magazine and writing all those action adventure novels,
you know, honestly, and he'll probably tell you too, getting
passed around from publisher to publisher, looking for that big
next advance. And I think he's pretty happy with his

(01:09:22):
literary career. He's made a great go of it, put
out a ton of great books. He's got a wolf
Pack publishing behind him. Now, he's got great editors, he's
got a great company behind him. And I know he's
churning out about a book a year, maybe even more
than one book a year, and he's happy he's writing.
He's behind the typewriter what he calls the book factory.

(01:09:44):
And man, I got to meet him one time. My
family and I spent some time with him out in Arizona,
and genuine one of the most happiest people on earth.
Just happy to be alive, happy to write books, write stories,
be behind the typewriter. And he's just a great guy
to just reach out. So he's very approachable. He'll talk
to you about writing, talk to you about books, talk

(01:10:05):
to you about the price of peanuts in China. So
just a great guy. This is a great story. Meant
a lot to me. I read it a few years ago,
and it's one of those stories that just relates so
well to the publishing industry. It says so much in
twenty two pages. Anyway, Stephen Mertz, The King of Horror,
and other stories. Just flipping through here, you've got introduction
by Ben Bolden. You've got the King of Horror story

(01:10:27):
that I just read to you. You've got some other
great stories, The Death Blues, Fragged Talent's Gift. You've got
the Lizard Men of Blood River. That's a kind of
a fun, pulpy story, The Busy Corpse Take two, The
Basics of Murder, The Dark of Midnight, Last Stand a
hit for the New Age. Probably my French is bad.

(01:10:48):
Chay Erotica, I'm not sure how to say that. Chez Eroti,
Eagle Park, Slim. And then you've got an afterward, and
then a preview of Stephen Merz's Dragon Cody's Warp Book
one which he's had a lot of success with the
Cody's War books, and then about the author. So pick
this book up. It's great, and you can get it

(01:11:10):
through Amazon and so forth, or you can just go
to wolf Pack Publishing and see the links there. But anyway,
I Hope you enjoyed this episode, Hope you enjoyed the feature,
the review, and that story that I just read to you.
And I'll be back here in two weeks to do
it again. Hope you have a great rest of whatever
you're doing. Bye Bye,

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Episode 107: W.E.D. Ross - The King of Gothics

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 107: W.E.D. Ross - The King of Gothics