Hey Ed! I just finished reading Brian Keene's Urban Gothic and noticed he dedicated it you and supposedly from what I've read is kind his extreme hardcore ode to you. What I don't get(I super enjoyed Urban Gothic btw) is that Urban Gothic is brutal, violent and disgusting and it was of course published by Leisure. Leisure is notorious for cutting out parts too explicit, at least sexually! While Keene's UG was, as I said rather extreme, I still don't think it can top your private press stuff. However, it seems extreme enough that Leisure would heavily cut out some of the more..... extreme stuff. Which leads me to my complaint...

They make you cut out all the good stuff from your books(i.e. Black Train/Gast) due to strong sexual themes(that is a massive understatement), but when it comes to hardcore violence, blood, guts, brains, disarticulated eyeballs, severed penises, mutated dwarves and every other grotesque thing anyone can think of, Leisure allows it to stay in. I mean come on! Is hardcore sex scenes really any worse than hardcore graphic violence scenes? I guess to Leisure it is.

I hate to get off on a rant about Leisure because they release very enjoyable, quality books on a continual basis. I so hate having the original edition of a book watered down to appease the masses. If the masses are reading books like Urban Gothic that are so unflinchingly brutal and downright disgusting and disturbing then I don't think they'll mind cucumber sized penises penetrating extremely tight anuses LOL. Maybe some people just don't have a sense of humor for that type of stuff. I'd love to see Leisure publish The Bighead or Goon in their original graphic state. I think Hell would freeze over first.

Oh well, enough beating a dead horse. Can't wait to read Going Monstering!

Best,
TravisD

I also wondered about this but after reading Urban Gothic I realized how tame it actually was. I felt that this book was nothing compared to an Edward Lee story. As a nod to Edward Lee I also wondered how you felt about that Mr. Lee. Did you enjoy the book or have you read it? I thought it was pretty good but not my favorite Keene by far.

I'm half way through Wrath James White's Succulent Prey and that's very extreme and a Liesure publication, albeit without the black humour that I've found in Ed Lee's hardcore work that I've read to date.

I've not read Urban Gothic and I'm in no hurry to as I find Brian Keene to be inconsistent and I've not liked his previous two releases. I wouldn't consider him an extreme writer from my experience though.

For Keene, I thought Urban Gothic was a bit extreme. But compared to Lee...pssshhh. Nah. I think that Wrath's Succulent Prey, Gonzalez' Survivor, and Ketchum's Girl Next Door rank very high for the Leisure extremes. I think that Leisure slowly pushes the envelope for extreme horror.

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"The Living Dead and the dying living are all the same. Cut from the same cloth. But disposing of dead people is a public service, whereas you're in all sorts of trouble if you kill someone while they're still alive."

I think there's some pretty extreme stuff in my forthcoming SIXTUS (working title only) but maybe I'm getting old! We'll see. One thing I don't ever want to do is gross something up for the sake of it. That's why I love working in two creative worlds. I got VERY lucky. Thanks, all, for your interest.

Edward Lee

PS--I just CAN'T WAIT for folks to read HAUNTER, TROLLEY, MONSTERING and HEADER 2...

Ed,

Haven't posted in here in a while but thanks for the explanation on the differences between what you write for the small-press market and mass-market. And it makes perfect sense, to me. The last few novels of yours I've read (Brides of the Impaler and The Golem) I read FIRST as Leisure releases and thought they were well-done and classic Lee novels. Now that you mentioned Black Train and even though I bought Gast from Camelot a while back, I think I want to read the it now to see what you mean. That's really very cool.

Hell, man, we're lucky to have you writing in BOTH those markets!

I haven't read Urban Gothic yet but Keene is one of the best. Aside from Laymon, my top favorite Leisure authors are Lee (of course!), Keene, and Bryan Smith.

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Visit my blog:
http://horrorgasms.blogspot.com/

As always, thanks bigtime for your support! Maybe next year I'll make one of the cons in your neck of the woods. Later!

Edward Lee

I'd love to see Header 2 done by Leisure. Hahaha. But then again, I sort of expect "fuck" to be common on TV news by the middle of this century, so what do I know?

Pegleg