Hi,

in this topic I will be posting info about Polish editions of Lee's books and some news. Hope you'll find it interesting!


short story ICU (2002)



SUCCUBI (August 2011)



short story MOTHER (September 2011)



More Lee in Poland:
- interview given to Horror Online, the biggest website in Poland devoted to horror

- interview published in Dziennik, the second biggest Polish daily paper

- lots of reviews and all of them (literally: all of them!) are extremely positive, even those in mainstream media
- article on Edward Lee in Biuletyn Carpe Noctem, an online horror mag


Upcoming in 2012:
- CITY INFERNAL and (at least) one more, not yet chosen, novel
- short story THE DEVILTRY OF ELEMENTAL VALENCE planned to be published in a collection of Lovecraft-inspired stories
Trailer:
- Lee has confirmed his attendance at Polcon which will be held next year in Wroclaw, Poland (August 2012)


Stay tuned for more news from Poland!

Best,

Bartek

Nice jackets! Polish editions seem to have a cool look.

Bartek: very cool for you to post all that. Thanks!

Edward Lee

Would anyone have english translations for the interviews? Wouldn't mind reading those. Thanks.

Lthrby1/Pete

I've got Dziennik interview in English - if Lee's okay with it, I can post it here.

Bartek

COS NA PROGU magazine cover

short story MAKAK (February 2012)

I love the cover artwork! Who's the artist?

Author's name is Michal Oracz. He also made the first Polish lovecraftain RPG game called DE PROFUNDIS, you can find a review here (in English):

Yes, indeed, that's a great cover! I'm really excited about my work appearing in Poland and I CAN'T WAIT to go there next August. And, Bartek, any English translations of my interviews you have, by all means post them here.

Take care!
Edward Lee

Here it comes - "Dziennik" interview in English:

Recently your novel “Succubi” has been published in Poland. Can you say what's in it?

EL: Foremost on my mind when writing it was a strong desire to produce a very “feminist” horror novel, as well as a very erotic one. At that point in my career, having only had a few mass-market novels published, I was interested in seeing how far I could go with regard to explicitness–I wanted to test the waters, so to speak–because back then–the early ‘90s–novels didn’t seem to be hardening their edge as much as I would’ve thought. I was also quite influenced by Thomas Tyron’s novel HARVEST HOME, a very interesting psychological terror novel; it occurred to me that a similar theme (a town secretly living within a realm of female domination) would be a thrill if there were a supernatural element at its core. So with SUCCUBI, I killed two birds with one stone: I manipulated a deeply occult plot around a mythic feminist folklore and was allowed to proceed with what was to me a wonderful level of gore and sex. I thought for sure that my editor would make me cut a great deal of it but she didn’t. It was a very gratifying experience for me as a young writer; it gave me confidence in myself that I’d been trusted to conduct myself professionally while exceeding the levels of explicitness of the day.


Readers often look at the author through the prism of his work. How does your own writing define you as a person? All in all, you're called “king of extreme horror”.

EL: I’m glad to be dubbed the king of extreme horror–I’m proud of it! A more amusing tag that seems to find its way to me all the time is “king of the gross-out.” I can, and have, written many pages of thesis legitimizing hardcore horror and contradicting critics, but that would take all day! But in response to your query, I can very much relate. Personally, I’m a very “normal” guy–actually, I’m pretty low-key and boring!–but I remember back in the early ‘90s when I first started going to conventions, I had the same suspicions and pre-conceived notions myself. I knew I was going to start meeting other horror novelists, and I wondered with a chill what they would be like in person. I would’ve expected a great many of them to be pretty bent-out-of-shape people, due to the kind of fiction they wrote, but I was astonished to be proven wrong time and time again. If anything, horror writers are more normal than everyone else! And when fans meet me for the first time, they’re often flabbergasted by how nondescript and “regular” I am. Hence, just as we must never judge a book by its cover, we mustn’t judge authors by the kind of books they write. Some of the most normal, easy-going, and thoughtful people I’ve ever met in my life are hardcore horror writers.

In your books you are juxtaposing scenes of graphic violence and eloquent reflections on art, sexuality, occult and anthropology. Do you think that all those things are inseparable?

EL: That’s a complex and very intricate question, and I suppose it can be interpreted from multiple tangents; but, ultimately, yes, for horror fiction to be honest and relative, those components often ARE inseparable. And if they aren’t up front, they certainly are in an implied mode. But then again, you can subdivide horror fiction into multiple compartments, and argue that “real” horror fiction may well ignore the occult, anthropology, and even sociology, psychology, and the supernatural itself, so is it still horror? I’m not sure. All I know is that my brand of horror almost always institutes the occult, anthropological theses, sexuality, and aberrant psychology. To me, it’s not good without those elements.


I am wondering how you see the borders of the horror genre – are there any? Can you go more and more violent and never stop? Or maybe that's not what you want to achieve with your prose?

EL: This was a fascinating question to ponder for the longest time: just how hardcore can hardcore get? When will the examination of the extreme go so far that it can’t possibly go any farther? Of course, there IS no answer to these questions. Only time will tell. I suppose the conventional wisdom of the matter would insist that there ARE no real boundaries. But me? I don’t know. I can only deduce that extremity in horror fiction will have run its course only when it no longer becomes relevant and/or functional. It’s funny how each year that I get older, I’m stricken by this fear that I’ve run out of hardcore ideas but then, one by one, they keep popping up. By now I’ve had over 50 books published, and just when I start to feel burned out, I miraculously get another second wind. I remember about a year ago, I was stricken by a “heyday” of creative impetus, and for several weeks all I did was outline all these new ideas. It was like I’d been hit by a lightning bolt of creativity! As it stands right now–and even if I never get another new idea for the future–I have ten more novels slated and ready to write. I’m very grateful for this wonderful thing called creativity!

Next year another book by Edward Lee is coming out in Poland – “City Infernal”. In it you have presented an unorthodox vision of Hell as an...industrial city. How did you come up with the idea?

EL: It was a concept I’d been thinking about for quite a while (during the ‘90s): a “tour of Hell” scenario, but I wasn’t sure how I wanted to reflect Hell in the story. Then I got the idea of Hell being a city, which made sense to me. Here’s a quote from my original proposal for the book: “Goth girl-in-jeopardy a’la the Wizard of Oz, only in this case Oz is Hell. Just as human society has evolved over the last 5000 years, so has Hell. Through an occult happenstance, the protagonist, Cassie, discovers that she was inherited a terrifying power: she can enter Hell as a living person; and she discovers something else as well: Hell turns out not to be the primitive sulphur pit described in the Bible. It is now an immense, phantasmagoric metropolis in a vast sorcery-based technocracy, an evil city-scape of unfathomable skyscrapers, damned human souls, fallen angels, and all manner of demons.” Yes, it made perfect sense to me that Hell, after all this time, would’ve remained a stone chasm full of flames and devils with pitchfork. Just as Humans on Earth became industrialized, so would the denizens of Hell. I wound up writing four books based on that concept, City Infernal, Infernal Angel, House Infernal, and Lucifer’s Lottery. I can’t tell you how much fun it has been to keep going back to Hell!

Official news on Polcon webiste:

Can't remember if I mention this, but I just got my copies of Succibi in Polish and it looks dynamite. It's my first official Polish book--time to celebrate! Bartek is a GREAT agent!

Edward Lee's short story THE TABLE has been translated to Czech and has just appeared in HOWARD, an online horror mag. Wanna have a look? Click .

And some more news from Poland. Lee's SUCCUBI has been chosen "the best foreign horror book of 2011" by editors of Grabarz Polski magazine.

Thanks for posting this, Bartek. Is this cool, or what? Finally, Stephen King takes a back seat to me!

Being part Polish I highly APPROVE of these books....gotta get me some of those!

Brand new CREEKERS cover! Relase date - May 2012!

Creekers was very cool,
but the cover was a bit standard.
this cover is WOW.

It's official now - THE GOLEM is coming to Poland! The novel is scheduled for August release. It will be Lee's third book published here but definately not the last one. CITY INFERNAL will hit the shelves in 2013.

Polish edition of CREEKERS hits the shelves today!

Moreover, THE GOLEM's cover is here!