Hi, I'm S.A. Bradley, and welcome to Hellbent for Horror, a podcast devoted to all things related to horror, where I remind you that you used to love horror movies, and you secretly still do. For those of us who were born before the internet really started to roll, books and magazines were our first escape from our parents' rules and scrutiny. Movies, especially the scary ones I wanted to see, were too loud to hide from mom and dad. However, reading was a quiet revolution.
Every one of the Ten Commandments got broken in the pages of novels I read while my parents were in the same room. Books also helped me fall in love with horror movies. Reference books by people like William K. Everson, Alan Frank, and Dennis Gifford told me about a whole world of horror movies that I had no idea even existed. Now, this started a lifetime love affair with books and horror movies, and for some of us, the love is so strong that we can't stay spectators.
We need to create something that shares our love with others, and today, we're talking with a super fan who grew up to create an oasis for fellow horror fans and for bookworms alike, a place that's become an institution that draws authors and filmmakers as well. Del Howison is an award-winning author, journalist, and actor. He's the Bram Stoker award-winning editor of the anthology Dark Delicacies, Original Tales of Terror and the Macabre.
He's written historical fiction, including the novel The Survival of Marga Thomas, and nonfiction such as The Book of Lists, Horror. Del has also written columns for Writers Digest Magazine and Fear.net. Now, on top of all that, Del and his wife Sue are co-founders and co-owners of Dark Delicacies, a world-renowned book and gift store in Burbank dedicated to horror and fantasy.
Now, this year, Dark Delicacies celebrates 30 years as America's home of horror and is the oldest horror bookstore in Los Angeles. This distinction and a lifelong love of the genre got the couple inducted into the Monster Kid Hall of Fame in the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards. Del, thanks so much for talking with me. Thanks for inviting me out. I appreciate it. So as I mentioned, you're a legitimate Monster Kid royalty.
Were you a famous Monsters of Filmland reader as a kid, or what was your magazine? Occasionally, when I could get hold of it. I grew up in a fairly strict Christian home, so it wasn't like we had that laying around on our coffee table. We have that in common. I came from a very strictly religious family. I also had a police officer as a father, so there was a lot of strictness that went along with that. I also had a police officer as a father, yeah.
So you're originally from Detroit, as you said. Did you watch horror hosts like Sir Graves Gastly? Was that considered cool enough for your dad? Oh, sure, and that was a Saturday afternoon kind of thing, and he was, you know, he was, as most horror hosts are, very comical in his delivery. So that kind of made everything just fine. And the movies they showed weren't exactly the horror movies of today. So were you a horror fan as a young kid, or was it older when it kind of hit you?
No, I've always been a horror fan. But of course, as a young kid, I was a horror fan of movies, mostly. I think I kind of, I think I kind of got into horror literature-wise through things like the anthologies, the Alfred Hitchcock anthologies, like Stories to Tell in the Dark and things like that. I think that was kind of, which I picked up in the school library, and it kind of brought me in. So were you a scaredy cat when you were a kid? Absolutely.
Absolutely. The Dark, The Basement, yeah, you know, I absolutely was. And I think the books may have been something that taught me how to conquer some of my fear. I'm guessing at that, not having a psych degree, but. Yeah, I found that I was very much a scaredy cat, and my dad was tired of waking up at three o'clock in the morning and put me back in bed because I saw something scary. So he would let me read as if that was going to be easier.
But in a way, having it inside of my head was a little bit better than actually seeing whatever the terrible thing was that was in front of me. And have the door cracked open so I could see the light from the hallway or the living room kind of creeping into my bedroom to make it less frightening. So what was your first kiss with horror, the book or the movie that hooked you? That's a good question. I remember my first.
Films like on the big screen, because that was so different than seeing it on grainy television with Sir Graves Gasly and his. You know, he that he always did as this vampire character on screen. The first matinee I remember seeing with my friends was The Curse of the Faceless Man, a black and white film that was very mummy. Mummiesque in its delivery, it was about a Pompeii statue that came to life and was in love with the female scientist and carried her off to, you know, that kind of thing.
And then the first one I saw in color at a matinee was The Seven Faces of Dr. Lau, which really captured me because it was in it was a George Powell movie. And it was in such vivid technicolor that the the greens and the reds and all of that stuff literally popped off the screen at you. That was still I was still in my jujube days of where they stuck to you because you were covering your face and lying on the floor. But I had another thing that probably worked for me.
And that was my mother worked at a drive in theater. And my dad would take my brother and myself when it was time for her to get off shift, which was she would get off shift like in between the two movies, because once the second movie started, that was pretty much it. So we would go down and watch the first movie in our pajamas, standing in the back of the car on the hump when the cars had a humps in the backseat and watch the movie and eat popcorn and stuff.
And then when she got off work, she would walk back to the car. And by then we were sound asleep in the backseat and it would we would live to see another day. But at that time, I saw things like the seven voyages of Sinbad and Jack the Giant Killer and and movies like that. And I started falling in love with the monster, the Cyclops from that kind of stuff.
The the Medusa and the seven faces of Dr. Lau, those kind of things really appealed to me because they were far enough out of my realm of understanding that they weren't as frightening as they were fascinating. Yeah. So I hear a lot that we as horror fans, we relate with the monsters often. Frankenstein's monster, of course, Karloff's performance on that. So many of us kind of felt connected to him. Do you think it is that we have this connection with the monster?
Well, I think it's because they're the outsider. And I think all kids feel like they're an outsider. And I think especially kids that grow up in a in a strict religious home or a strong religious home very much go. This is something that's kind of imposed on me. It's not necessarily me. And they relate to the to the monster because of that. You know, Karloff and Frankenstein was such an unusual case because we don't get many empathetic monsters. And and he kind of had that empathy.
He related to what was going on because enough of him was human. And yet he was still a monster. He was still an outsider. So, you know, that kind of thing kind of plays for us, I think. And the other monsters, things like Cyclops and Medusa, and that they weren't they weren't frightening. They were fascinating. And we we hung with them. The thing that really got me in the Sinbad movie. I mean, I enjoyed the monsters like cartoons.
But the thing that really got me was the the evil wizard in that movie. Every time he would cast the spell, he would age and his face would get like Oscar Wilde thing, you know, and he would get older because of the the life force that was going out of him to to cause evil in the world. And I think there was something about that that just fascinated me to pieces.
And I was lucky because later in life, I got to be very good friends with Ray Harryhausen and the connection came full circle for me, you know. Well, that's pretty amazing in and of itself. And from what I've seen in pictures, you've met quite a few folks. You met Forry Ackerman as well, correct? I knew Forry very well. Yeah, we went we were at conventions together. I was at his house a few times.
His house was up in the Hollywood Hills about two blocks from the house on Haunted Hill, the Vincent Price one. So it was always kind of fun. You knew when you were getting near Forry's because that house was there. So you were a middle child. You had a brother who was older and a sister who was younger. But the age difference was just enough that you really didn't connect very much with each other to play.
Did horror movies and books and stuff like that help you find the tribe, the people that you were going to hang out with? You know, I can remember with my friends when I was growing up, the ones that you would play ball with or play Cowboys and Indians with or whatever you did in the neighborhood when you were at that age level. I don't recall us ever doing anything with horror movies and monsters. It was like my private little kingdom that I could come and enjoy.
And then I'd go outside and be a kid. So there were there were like these different facets of my life now that I think about it from you asking me that it wasn't cohesive. There was the religious facet. There was the kids in the neighborhood, my buddy's facet. And then there was my private facet of movies and horror and reading.
So one of the things that you bring up there about almost having our own little private fiefdoms, because horror in and of itself really wasn't nearly as popular as it is now when we were growing up. I know you're slightly older than me. One of the things that I think is hard for younger fans to understand is how little information, memorabilia there was for horror back in, say, the 60s and the 70s and how homogenized it was.
In other words, we had only a few books and outlets where we would get this information, and they were pretty much written by a few people. Where did you go to learn more about the horror genre when you were starting out? Well, there was there were outlets like Famous Monsters of Filmdon, but I didn't. I probably saw five issues of that the whole time I was growing up. You know, it was more like my parents are asleep now. It's Saturday night. And at midnight, I know there's a horror movie on TV.
But if I'm going to watch it, I have to sneak down there and keep the sound very low and sit closer to the TV and watch it. And if I hear them waking up, I got to get the hell out of there and go back to bed, you know. So it was kind of a long road of self-discovery until and it was in pieces, snippets, little bits and pieces until about my sophomore year in high school. And an English teacher brought me stronger into the world of reading and then writing.
And it kind of opened more doorways for me, even though she wasn't like a horror fan or wasn't having me read horror books. I discovered them within the things and started discovering that kind of stuff. And then when I went in the Army, I remember sitting on guard duty in the barracks, reading this new book that had come out called, you know, the Salem's Lot. And and so that's about my time period.
Salem's Lot, Carrie, all of that stuff came out between like a year or two of college and then Army. So my discovery was actually late, a lot later than the people probably watching this. I was in the Air Force myself, and I was deep into it by then. By the time I was in the Air Force, VHS was starting to become a thing. So you'd be able to rent with a lot of money and be able to rent those big machines.
So I was someone who found myself once I learned that there was stuff that I could read about movies that I've never seen before. I kind of became a reference book kid or hit the library. Did you find that there was a trusted source that you went to? The library was a big one, school and the city. Either way, for especially for finding like the oversized picture books that would have a full page from the Frankenstein still and other things like that.
And yet I kind of feel like horror evolved with me or I evolved with horror because the Universal Monsters or the Ray Harryhausen monsters, the Kenneth Tobey time period of the giant octopus taking out the bridge in San Francisco, really are a whole different strain of horror movies than what came after that. If you look at the evolution of horror films, especially, and horror books, of course, got stronger along the way, too.
I used to have a chart at Dark Delicacies at the store, kind of like a family chart. You know, you have grandpa and the siblings and it was horror and it was all the things that came off of that. And then there was like almost 50 different types of horror that came through the generations. A lot of people will say that modern horror kind of starts with Psycho, but I really think it's a couple of years later.
I think 1968, Rosemary's Baby, Targets, Bogdanovich's film, as well as Night of the Living Dead being this year where it really changed what your expectation was of horror. And that horror was... Night of the Living Dead changed horror entirely, you know. Targets and those kind of things kind of brought the psychopath in, which was a new type of horror for us to view. Always there. We just didn't talk about it. We didn't read the newspapers when we were young, you know.
Yeah, Night of the Living Dead. And then just, you know, a few years later, Texas Chainsaw, which kind of did it in this... Whereas Night of the Living Dead was black and white still and that kind of thing. Texas Chainsaw was like watching a newscast. It was very television oriented and in your face it had a reality quotient that the others hadn't had. Yeah, it's still one of those movies that I can speak to horror fans that are in their 60s. I can talk to them that are in their 20s.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre is still way up there for them. Somebody at one point said, sometimes movies just happen. That's one of those movies. It's like lightning in a bottle and it will probably never be copied in the right way again. I was always fascinated by the first two Omen movies. I thought that they were excellently done. And then they remade the first Omen almost verbatim in the script.
And I thought to myself, did they think that the new flavor of the Weeks, who were starring in the movie, were just going to be better performers than Gregory Peck? Right. I mean, what was somebody thinking? It wasn't in black and white before, so they weren't appealing to the color. I don't even know why they remake some movies, because an executive doesn't have an original idea in his head. And he goes, hey, they had box office before.
So when we're horror fans, especially if we watch movies, we tend to collect. We collect ideas. We collect pictures, things like that. When did you start collecting? And did you collect like trade books or trade things with people? Or was it just a collection? No, when I started collecting, it was novels. It was short story collections. It was nonfiction books on the subject. And of course, my idea of what to collect and my desire what to collect has changed over all of the years.
I mean, I'm 70. I'll be 71 this year. I still collect some things, not as vastly, because when I first started collecting, it was I want everything I can get my hands on. I paired it into things I care about. You know, I have an entire bookcase of books on blues music, and then I have an entire bookcase of limited editions of things signed by some of my favorite authors. But before, I had horror books everywhere, you know, and I've since gotten rid of that.
And now nobody has any room for film posters to hang up. So my idea of collecting is not put things in a storage unit and pay for them every month and not get to look at them. I had someone one time tell me in the store, oh, yeah, I'm saving all this stuff for my retirement. This is my retirement. I'm going, you keep them in a storage unit. They're worth less by the time you retire than now because you've been paying on them. And they just didn't get that.
I have friends who their entire basement is filing cabinets full of alphabetized posters. I mean, it's beyond me. I just don't have that kind of space. And I'm I also know I'm an obsessive person. I don't need another addiction. I think posters might be the one that would kill me. Yeah, it's true that there's people that enjoy the collecting for the act of collecting their stamp collectors. Why not horror collectors?
I knew a guy that had one of those draftsman cabinets that they keep blueprints in. Then they're on wheels like those tall toolboxes you get. And he would pull out those slim drawers and the posters would be laying in there and they'd all be alphabetized. And I have, of course, lots of friends that have filing systems on their computer. And then they go, oh, you're having so and so at a signing. Let me look that up and see if I have their signature. Yeah, of course.
So you were an actor in Detroit before you came out to L.A., right? And you moved out in the early 80s to L.A. Did you? I moved to L.A. in 81. Were you here to act? If so, how did that go? Well, I thought I was. And obviously, obviously, it wasn't what you imagine, but you have no clue what you're going into in Detroit. I was almost all stage work. I studied for a little bit of Shakespeare under Michael Moriarty. I studied with improv with Adele Close from Chicago, Second City.
Wow. Worked with Jonathan Round in some musical kind of punk rock things. And then when I moved out here, one, it was to get away from Detroit. It's a great place to be from, you know. When I came out here, of course, I had to work immediately because I had to make money. And one thing, if they don't live here, people, when you come to California, you have to make money or you don't have a place to live. It's not cheap.
So I got into some equity waiver theaters out here and I collected all of that giant money that comes in like nothing. And then I started doing now Howard Berger from KNB. He said to me a couple of weeks ago, quit saying that, but I'm not going to quit saying it. I got into a bunch of like C movies, you know, instead of B movies, but they paid me. So I was able to do those. He goes, every movie is worth an effort. I go, no, Howard. I mean, these are C movies.
And then I worked my way up into the B class. So I was doing all right. And then I started writing more and more. And then I've sold books. And in the meantime, I was finally able to get out of the daily work job I was doing and with my wife open up dark delicacies. And then at least my job was part of my love. Yes. And that's where I wanted to go next. Your wife, Sue, obviously a huge part of the story here. So when did you two meet? We met, well, I don't know when we met.
It was like three or four years before we married or got the business together and stuff. You know, that dating period ahead of time. We opened the store in 94, and we got married the year after that because we were already business partners. You know, you better trust that person. So we got married in 95 and been together ever since. I mean, I'm just I'm just the mouthpiece. I'm just the pretty face. And she's the one who actually runs the business.
She's the one who lines up signings and decides what stock we're going to carry. And when I met her, she was a very shy, introverted kind of person. She would never be doing what she's doing now, except as it went on. That's her safe space. She can talk to anybody about anything horror in her safe space. But she won't go out to a party and talk to people about it. She won't go on stage at a convention. That's for the pretty face.
Now, she's a huge horror fan as well, Sue, and both of you started working conventions as vendors. So what was the early days of conventions like? Well, there were none.
So when we thought that because we were we were collectors between the two of us, books and things, and we thought that there might be some other idiots out there who were collecting the same kind of thing we did or had a love or, you know, a desire for those kind of things, we thought, oh, a store with this stuff would be interesting. I mean, there was nothing. People have to understand these products didn't exist. There was nothing.
And so one day we decided we would get together a bunch of things from our collection, bring in a couple of new things. And we decided to do a table at a local comic convention that was in the banquet room of a Red Lion Inn. I don't even think there's Red Lion Inns anymore. And we sold the stuff and we looked at each other like, hmm, this this could be kind of kind of interesting. And then one day I'm driving around and I see a storefront not far from our house for lease.
I go in, I talk to the people was affordable. It would be a place if nothing else, I could get a lot of the crap out of my house and put it in a store instead of, you know. And I came home and I said to Sue, I said, I found your store. And she said, what, you know, and here we are 30 years later. Vendors are like deadheads. They work conventions so they can get to the next convention. I need a miracle. And it's finding that crew.
What I found at conventions is I have convention family people I'll see twice, three times a year as they go around the country and I go around the country to try and find places. And that's one of the things that I think comes to Dark Delicacies. So December 3rd, 1994, that's when you start. I come in much, much later. I think you were at Magnolia the second to last time or something. The first time I was ever in there.
But one of the things that I felt when I first walked into Dark Delicacies was that it felt like a clubhouse, that this is a place where people come together. It's a hangout for horror geeks like myself. I mean, not only were there tons of genre books, but there was also memorabilia for sale, signed items, rare books, the kind of thing that I wouldn't expect to see.
But I think most significantly, the thing that is really important to talk about was the openness that you guys have had to give independent authors and filmmakers a place to have readings, to meet their fans, to do signings, meet and greets, stuff like that. Sell autographed merchandise. Can you talk a little bit about the genesis of that?
Well, when Sue and I would go to other stores, probably the most prominent would be Dangerous Visions, which was a sci-fi and horror store in Los Angeles that is no longer there. But they would have signing events on Saturday or whatever, where they bring in, you know, the David Scow or, you know, whoever it was that just had a new book came up.
And that imprinted itself on our head so that when we got around to opening up the store, having events because it gives people a reason not only to come to your store, it gives people a reason to come back to your store. And that's even more important. And people have come to regard it as their own clubhouse. It's like a private clubhouse for them. In fact, somebody said in a recent article, I think it was Fuck This Movie was the name of the column that's out there.
And they did a column on dark delicacies. And they said the interesting thing is there's a sign at the top of the building just says dark delicacies, nothing on the windows. The windows are tinted. There's no thing about come inside. We carry this and that or big sale or nothing, because when the people come inside, it's their own kingdom.
And when my wife puts together signing events, it's always cool if we can pair up somebody new or somebody of a lesser ranking in the business as far as popularity or people out there knowing they exist or that kind of thing and put them with a name person who's also signing their thing. And we've done that over and over again because everything cross pollinates. You know, people will come to see Joe Lansdale. But who is this guy with a book that's signing with Joe Lansdale for crying out loud?
So they end up buying that book, too. And I find that kind of discovery, that organic pairing of people, then cross pairing. I find it fascinating. And where it leads to so many times has got nothing to do with us. It's the people take the reins and go. Yes, I think that's one of the things you mentioned that it's a way to get people to come and to come back. But it's also it keeps you hanging around. I've spent a lot of time in that store because I get into conversations with people.
If I walk in to, say, buy something, yeah, it wouldn't take long to get through the entire square footage of what's there. But you end up getting into conversations with people, which is why I go to conventions in the first place. So I had heard that one of the founding rules of the store was that you wouldn't overcharge for items that were there for the signings. You just charge like MSRP on it. And everything in the store is MSRP when the items come out.
Now, a lot of the signers like we've got a big signing coming up, the In Search of Darkness signing this weekend, even though I don't want to timestamp your interview here. So there's a lot of people there, say, Kelly Maroney from Night of the Comet, Heather Wickson, who's done a lot of books on special effects and stuff like that. And a lot of times, friends of those people come and support. You never know who's going to be there when you walk in.
You never know who you're in conversation with unless you can identify them in your own head. And the only people that might charge extra, it's usually the actors or actresses. But it's like if you buy the book or you buy the Blu-ray we're selling, that gets signed for free and it just sells to you at SRP. But say you also brought in a Night of the Comet movie poster from way back. Well, you might get charged to get that sign. So you pay that not to us. You pay to the individual person.
But when you think about it, it doesn't cost you to park. It doesn't cost you to come inside. It doesn't cost you to meet these people and talk to them. It's not a convention. It's a much more relaxed setting. So if you pay $20 or whatever the thing happens to be to get your poster signed to, it's a win-win for everybody. Well, I can attest to that. I was just at the fiction signing for Don Coscarelli's book. The phantasm thing. Yeah, the phantasm bit.
So it was about his book, but at the same point, it was also the 45th anniversary of phantasm. And it became kind of like this party atmosphere. It went from being this book signing to Paul Peppermint showing up to Reggie Bannister to having the Hemakuta in the back of the building. Thornberry is playing guitar and singing to everybody. It was almost surreal how laid back everybody was. And walking through the line, it was almost like I was talking to Coscarelli.
And I was saying, I have this magazine. I have this. And I have a silver sphere. How much would it be? And he's like, well. And he didn't want to take the money. And I was going, I'm team Coscarelli here, man. I have no worries about paying you a little bit on this. Great conversations and so laid back that you felt that this was kind of like a family picnic. And I'm not sure how much of that is them or how much it's that you know people for so long they feel comfortable in your place.
I think it's a combination of three things. It's them. I mean, the cooperation we've had from signers to want to and to come and sign things at the store and engage with the crowd has been amazing. We couldn't have existed without it. Then the next level is the fans who come to get things signed and meet these people. It's kind of like in the beginning we set up rules.
Oh, when you get your thing, you go along this barrier at the back of the store and then you come out and you're in front of all these people. Nobody tries to screw with that. Nobody tries to break the rules, you know, because the crowd is all having fun with each other talking and discussing movies. And then the third is we try to keep it as organized. And I have two or three volunteers that work with Sue and I as organized and as straightforward as we can. So there's no ambiguity.
And we want to have a good time as much as everybody who's there. Plus the signers, they don't feel like they're at a convention where they have to make a quota or something like that. They do whatever they want. And when they're done at the end of the day, half of the time, they all go out to dinner and drinks later, or they get to just go around the corner to their own house and sleep in their own bed. It's not a big deal. You know, location, location, location, right?
I mean, it is, but the three layers of people involved is so important. We couldn't have existed without all of them working together. It's like I've had very little in the way of stuff being stolen in the store. And I think that's because most of the people start to think of the store as their own. It's their place. And if you're standing next to somebody and you see somebody like, I'll just stick this here in my coat, you're not going to stay silent.
You're going to say something because they actually feel like they're stealing from them. It was kind of surprising. I showed up the day before to pick up my book because it was something that you had ordered in advance. And when I walked in, Sue was there and she just looked over and said, you must be Scott, which kind of made me trip. I was like, what? How do you know? And she's like, I saw you on Facebook. So she's very good at doing that.
But it also shows that this isn't some kind of faceless thing. The people who are involved in it are fans, but also it's just good business, right? You know, the people who are, we don't want to be the Walmart of horror, you know, what a disgusting thought that is. So do you remember what the first book reading or signing was and who was it? And how did it go? I think it was Sarah Karloff at my very first place. And she came in and she was selling.
This was before she'd done any of the conventions or anything. I mean, we were all finding our footing. So she came in and she had portfolios of photos of Boris and this and that. And she had a book and different things. And she kind of did a little talk and stuff first. And then she did a signing. That was our first full month of business. So it was like January of 95, because we opened in December 3rd in 94. That was our first full month.
And we vowed from that point on with the lessons we learned from Dangerous Visions, that we were going to have at least our determination was, we're going to have at least one signing every month. And you can kind of see how that ridiculously got out of hand. Well, you mentioned that. And I happen to have this printout that I've got. Let's see if I can put this here. This is from 15 years ago, I believe. One day, October 13th, Saturday.
Did you actually have David J. Scull, first off, rest in peace, magnificent man. Mary Warnoff, Chelsea Quinn Yarbrough, Thomas Sipos, Corey Mitchell, Dennis McDougall, and Paul Leonardo all in one night? All in one night. I've got 13 people, I think, signing Saturday at that In Search of Darkness thing. We're used to that. Well, this being, and I know you're going to get to that subject anyway, this being our last year in business, because we're retiring, just retiring the store.
I'm keeping the trademark of Dark Delicacies, that we're going to be online doing some stuff and doing pop-ups at the occasional show, that kind of thing. But Sue had said that she wanted to go out with the biggest bang as she could for the last year of signings. And as you know from the Phantasm one, there must have been eight people, 10 people signing at the Phantasm one. Plus you had the photo ops with the car, plus you had the photo ops with the mausoleum things around the backside.
That was typical of the kind of signings we're having all this year. Next week, the In Search of Darkness this week, next week is one person signing, but it should be a great signing. It's Charles Fleischer, the voice of Roger Rabbit, has just put out a short storybook, and he's coming in to sign copies of the book. I have a feeling though, he'll be signing a lot of other things, because he was in Dick Tracy and Roger Rabbit and all those kind of things.
So, do you have any kind of count as to how many signings and events you've had over 30 years? Much to Sue's chagrin, no. So, she started about nine months ago, maybe a year ago. And the first big comment I remember hearing from her was, I should have kept track of this stuff. I should have kept a copy of every newsletter when we put out newsletters in the beginning.
So, she's been through her archives, through everything she can find on the web, because as you know, once it's on the web, it's there forever. You just have to figure out how to find it. She's putting together portfolios and all kinds of things, because in the back of our head, and we haven't quite realized how we want to do this, we would like to do a book on the history of dark delicacies. Absolutely. So, you mentioned this is the last year, 2024, 30 years. Do you have an official end date?
Yeah, well, the last real date of the store as an operational store will probably be the end of March of 25. And then we'll have the month of April. You got to start hauling cabinets out of there and doing all of that. And I'm sure that's going to take at least two weeks, but probably a month. So, I already have people dropping by and going, when you leave, I want that cabinet, or I want to buy that tape.
And so, we're already making a list and people are paying, and then you get them marked with sold signs as we get into the new year and stuff. So, people are already thinking that way. We don't know how much of the stock we're going to sell, but a good portion of it, because wherever we go, we don't want to haul that around with us. We have our own house of stuff and things to haul around. So, we'll probably start doing some sales in the early part of next year, that kind of thing.
Stay posted, folks, and just on the website, go to darkdel.com, and you will not only see the signings that Scott's talking about, but you will see upcoming signings and you will see any announcements we make about the closing of the store. Absolutely. I know that there are many people from all of my different horror groups.
We've been talking about this all year since, I think, about maybe two years ago, you had a post where you were saying, yep, looks like we're going to have to move again, and we're opening up options for selling. And it was kind of like hearing the end of a really good party. I think everybody just wants to make sure they're there one more time. I think it's the end of an era in horror selling.
It kind of started something, and now the business has changed so much and gone on to other things that us old fogies are kind of left behind, and we kind of like to have some free time to ourselves. But I've had 30 years as a horror enabler, and I'm pretty proud of that. Absolutely. So you talked about how you had Karloff as the first of the signings. Everything's a test.
And so was there a time when you sat there and you finally had that one signing where it was so much fun that you said, shit, I can do this for another 30 years? Yeah, that started with Sarah. OK, wow. I mean, I've had, wow, really great stuff. One of my wife's most memorable guests was when Ernest Borgnine signed with us. So that was amazing. And you know, I miss people like Ray Harryhausen and Richard Matheson and Forry Ackerman and Ray Bradbury. They were all friends, and they're all gone.
You know, we have a wall in the back of the main store that has one of those long frames that has tons of pictures in the little cubby holes of the frame. And I could put up about six. But it's like our memorial wall of people who signed with us who are no longer here. They're setting up store on the next level. So, you know, when we go, well, I mean, people like the one that did the music, Bobby, what's his name? You know, I was working in the laboratory late.
Yeah, Bobby Pickett. Bobby Pickett, you know, people I never thought, why would I ever end up meeting this person? And they're signing in the store. So it's amazing all. Sometimes somebody will mention a signing they went to. And I went, yeah, we did have that, didn't we? I mean, there's so many. I'm talking like thousands over the period of 30 years. So there's no doubt. And to be able to survive in L.A. for that amount of time and doing that, that's a bit of an achievement.
That's a lot of stuff, especially. Right, right. Now, you had a great start as an author as well. You're an author. First off, before we get to what you've written, what makes you happy about writing books? I really do love writing books, too. Actually, I like editing my writing more than the first draft of creating the writing. There's something I enjoy about tinkering with it and changing stuff around. But I really love writing because it is truly an escape for me.
I can come in here in the office, get on my computer, shut the door. I can put on headphones so I have my music on or nothing and just spend an hour in here and be somewhere else. Reading to me is one of the most magical things that ever happened. I think we have to thank the Phoenicians for that, don't we? Or somebody. Well, you had a great start. I mean, you had a short story that had quite a life to it. So what was your first published story? Give the story around what happened with that.
My first published story, there was a series that Jeff Galb and his partner were putting out called Hot Blood. And they would put out a book like every year, every other year. And it was like erotic horror stories. And I said, I think I can write one of those. I can do that. So I wrote this story. It was a short story. And it probably took me six months to get the way I wanted after it happened. And it ended up in Hot Blood 11, I think.
The subtitle was Strange Bedfellows, Hot Blood, Strange Bedfellows. And we ended up doing a signing with that book. So there were several of the authors. And Jeff was there and whatever. And I talked with Jeff and said, would you ever like to work with me and do a Dark Delicacies story anthology? And he said, sure, I'll do that. That ended up being three trade paperback books and hardbacks. And he's still a good friend today. In fact, I wrote him a couple of weeks ago.
There was an article in Vanity Fair that came out. And it had a search engine. It was an article about AI and training AI to write, which is all some of our great fears, whether you're an artist or a writer or a filmmaker. And it said, you can search on this search engine and see what ones this AI has used. And I don't know whether it was Chatbot or which one it was, but it was one of those. And in my name, and it came up with Dalhousen and Jeff Gelb.
So I knew it was one of the Dark Delicacies anthology books. And I wrote him where he is retired and living in Arizona. And he just wrote me back and went, wow, they're using our book to help train, you know. Well, now you've poisoned the system. Let's see if maybe that's it. Now I'm thinking maybe we could get him to use all our books. And then we could have horror and the AI going strong, you know. Wouldn't that be wonderful.
So your first published story, though, didn't that become part of Fear Itself? Didn't Mick Garris get involved? It did. He had done Masters of Horror, was the first series where he had all his buddies and name directors doing episodes. Like I think John Carpenter did Cigarette Burns. And it was a very interesting idea because it was on HBO or Showtime. I guess. But they could do boobs and blood and swear. And so it was an interesting experiment for two seasons. Then that ended.
And Mick was working, I think, with the same producers. And they wanted to do one for mainstream. So they did Fear Itself. And Fear Itself was a complete season on NBC. But they only got to show the first four episodes, I think, because the election came in and the Olympics came in. So the only place you can see all of the episodes is the box set that is kind of a cool box set that's kind of a tombstone. And the DVDs are inside and stuff. But we were the premiere episode.
And it was the first time I saw my name on a single card on the screen based on the short story, The Lost Herd by Del Howison. So that was kind of a, you know, one of those check. Yeah, one of those boxes you get to go. I could see my name on a single card 20 more times. It would never have the same thrill that that first one did. This year, I have four short stories coming out. And one of them is in an upcoming Weird Tales magazine. So that's another check.
You know, it's checks you didn't know that you had. But when you finally get it, you go, wow, that's kind of fun. So, yeah. And you've even had checks of more acting since you've come out here. You've been in now when I say see movies as well and be movies, we say that with love. Many of us can still say, you know, it is what it is, but still absolutely love them. So you had this experience with acting.
Did it help get filmmakers to do signings or did dark delicacies get you roles or was it kind of a mixture of those? I think all of the above. I think it's all happened. Sometimes you have somebody that says, I need you or somebody. It's like saying to Lucille Ball, get me a Lucille Ball type, you know. I need you or somebody like you to do this one scene. In many of the films, I'm throughout it. And in other films, I am hired for a day or two of work for a particular scene.
And if I wasn't having a good time, I wouldn't do it again. But I've been in, you know, two or three of Charlie Bann's movies, things like that. In fact, the last film that I was in up to this interview was a film called Transmission, which then had its premiere at a horror and sci-fi festival in London that they have. And it was the midnight movie that was shown. And it got good reviews. I have yet to see it. I don't have a clue.
But I had one good scene in that movie and then I get hit by a train. So that's the story of my life. You were in like Lord of Illusions at the bar or something. In fact, it was that movie that cemented my friendship with Clive Barker, who I have now got a collection, a short story collection out, having publishers look at it to see if one of them wants to do the book. And Clive wrote the foreword for me. So our our relationship has continued for decades since then. That's wonderful.
That's the nice thing. You know, you said it earlier. We do it with we say, see movie, we do it with love or whatever. Lord of Illusions, of course, was a much higher grade movie than that. But it is the love because there is no money. So the people who are doing it are either doing it for the joy of filmmaking, for the opportunity to maybe have their movie scene and get hired to do. Oh, they saw my little independent and now Blumhouse is letting me do whatever it is.
So it's all about love and it's big time about cooperation, which is kind of the backbone of the store. I have volunteers. I have fans. I have signers. It's all about cooperation. So I think that's really the love that's in the sea movies, too. And if we weren't having fun, we wouldn't keep doing it. I've got like 30 under my belt and I know other people that have 100 or so, you know. So it's fun. I get to work with people who are friends.
I've done a couple of things that Felisa Rose produced and just all kinds of stuff. So I have a blast. And you know what? There's no pressure. I'm not trying to win an Academy Award. Thank God. Well, I have to say we are, boy, labor of love. We've got that down pat. I make pizza money doing this kind of. Oh, there you go. Yeah, you have to have beer and pizza, you know, and red licorice on the table. Yeah. Helps me every so. I'm more of a black licorice guy, though. I don't know what the heck.
But they always have a tub of red at the table by the film when you're shooting. Yeah. So you've had to adapt a lot over the 30 years that you've made it. We just talked about it. You judge the success of independence by longevity and how much fun you're having more than you do profit. You've survived COVID. You survived what? Five moves, four or five moves, right? We're in our we're in our fourth location. We survived COVID.
We just survived the actor strike, which had to be in Hollywood that I think we were off like 20,000 for that year of the actors, right? So for a small business, that's a big chunk of money. We had to adapt. Talk about adapting during COVID. Burbank would not let you even curbsail for a while. We couldn't walk out to the car. Here's your item. You called me with it and I got your change and they wouldn't let you do that. But they never said you couldn't sell in the alley.
So suddenly it was like I was dealing drugs. I go, oh, you want the new Frankenstein and that bobblehead? Great. Here, give me your card. Great. Come around back and just call me on the phone. I'll meet you out the back door in the alley and we move product. A horror speakeasy. This horror speakeasy there. And then I also the three closest towns, Burbank, North Hollywood and Glendale. I would do free delivery. I would get the items, put them in the car and drive them out to them.
We were doing anything we could to keep cash flow generating. We survived those two things. We also survived the rise of the big box bookstores like Barnes and Noble and Borders and all of that kind of thing. We survived Amazon, which, you know, was one of the big threats for a while. The thing is, they can't they can't do what we're doing. When when you go to Amazon to buy a book, say you're looking for my book. You're looking for my book.
You won't accidentally find Lisa Morton's book because you're browsing at the thing. It just you can't browse unless you know what you're browsing for. You don't accidentally come on things. And that is one of the bottom line. Great joys of a bookstore is discovery. Yeah, it's one of the things I can't remember the time I've walked into a bookstore where I didn't come out with a bag.
You know, I may have come in with one or wanted to have one, but I usually come out with recommendations and just things that I didn't even know that author was still working. Oh, my God, this is great. And, you know, as a film lover as well, I'm a film completist. I need to see everything a director does. And I'm kind of one of those guys with people who write as well. When I see an author that really jazzes me, I've got to continue on that.
You mentioned about bookstores, and I hate that this is kind of like a postmortem question because, of course, you've only got another year to go. But, you know, it's struggle for bookstores is real, right? Tattered Cover in Denver is closing. Roman's Bookstore in Pasadena. The Book Soup is closing. And in L.A., they're up for sale. How has the market changed that? How are we going to make it past that next hump?
You know, and they say I was reading an article today in Publishers Weekly, they say somebody had said that people aren't buying books anymore, which is not the truth at all. They sold like 300 million books last year. The fact is, it's the conglomerates that are eating things up. And so you're buying them all from the same people. And it's the same problem that befits the authors because they go, oh, I have this book. This would be really good. Let my agent try to sell it.
And the agent's got like four choices to try and sell it to. But oh, no, you already went to us because we're Simon & Schuster. And we also own that other company you went to last week. So if they said no, we said no. You know, there's something about the monopolization of the industry that's hurtful. But I think Dark Delicacies has always avoided some of the book selling problems because we're so specialized.
If we had been one of two things, if we had just been a general bookstore, we would have been out of business a long time ago. Because a mom and pop corner bookstore that carries new books, not just some specialty used book place, they can't make it against the other guys. People will go online. People will look for the cheapest thing. We talked about selling things at SRP in the store, never going over there. But they'll go on to Amazon and buy it for 15% under SRP.
They don't care that it kills a small business or an independent in the meantime. And the other thing was if we didn't have the mix of merchandise with the books, we would have been out of business a long time ago. Because people will come in for action figures or Frankenstein cookie jar or birthday present or whatever. And if all we had were books, they wouldn't be back. So, oh, the third thing, we've been lucky as hell. There's something to be said about luck, man.
You know, I'll take luck over skill any day of the week. You mentioned something interesting because as a author myself and self-published, I have to fight with Amazon all the time over the battle of the box. Because essentially, there's the guys that go in the third parties that sell your book way below. And you don't even know that you've had that kind of siphoned off. And I did search on that. And I found out that they go, oh, the third party system has gotten around us.
We'll just put your sale back up to your normal price. But I did a search on those third parties. They're from Amazon. The little bastards are taking it from both sides. So, yeah. Today, I went on. I was looking at something else. And I happened to check the survival of Margaret Thomas on Amazon. It's like a $17 book. I brought it up and it was $10.99. And I went, whoa, I got in touch with the publisher who happens to be Casey Lansdale, Joe Lansdale's daughter. She has started a press.
I said, that's a hell of a sale and gave her a screenshot. I haven't heard anything, but that's not my job, man. Right, right. That's a great thing if you have someone else who can be the asshole for you. Because it sucks to make those calls. So, it's a rough world right now for freedom of speech, for bookstores and libraries. They're under siege in some ways.
Underdog Books in Old Monrovia, they're going to close in the summer because even though they were considered a safe place for BIPOC and LGBTQ, they've been threatened. We have Little Ghost Bookstore. This is one that is taking a book that I am involved with. They said something like they were pro-trans rights and they had someone come in today with coffee and throw it all over the books so they could damage their books as in a protest. So, book bannings in schools, libraries.
It's at an all-time high in 2023 per Publishers Weekly. Given the nature of having a horror-based bookstore, have you folks had any of these issues or is it just that we're not like that? I, first off, most of us aren't like that. Whether it's in horror or not in horror. The problem is that there are a lot of assholes out there in the world. And, you know, there's not much you can do about it ahead of time because you're not anticipating some jerk to come in and throw coffee all over everything.
I've had people write me when I was putting together, like, Dark Delicacies Volume Two or whatever. Why would you include stories in there from these guys? Well, because they wrote a good story and it fit my criteria and I thought it was a neat angle for a horror story. You know, I remember early on coming from a very conservative upbringing of my mom. One time I was doing a school lesson in grade school. I was looking at the Sistine Chapel and she said, you know, Michelangelo was a homosexual.
Um, my mom said that to me, like, that should make a difference as to how I judge the artwork. Like, somebody's private life that has absolutely nothing to do with me is a better or worse artist or I should disregard them because of what they are as a human being in real life. People get these things in their head. The person who threw coffee is probably the same kind of a thing, you know? It blows me away that people are so closed minded.
Well, I know you've been really kind to give me this amount of time. I just have two more questions and then I'll let you go. So we have conspirators, people who early on help encourage our behavior. We have people encourage us and influence us when we're kids. Did you have a teacher, because you mentioned a teacher earlier, did you have a teacher or another adult who encouraged you? Well, Mrs. Hoag or Miss Hoag, who knows? It was sophomore in high school.
My English teacher, she was one of the main people that pushed me in writing and reading in her class. She wasn't particularly horror oriented, but she was writing and literature oriented and it really lit a spark underneath me. Then I had another teacher in 11th grade. His name was Mr. Sparrow and he decided he was American history and he decided to take the entire class in Michigan and put us on buses and take us to Gettysburg and we walked the battlefields.
And what I got out of that was a sense of discovery, a sense of research and a sense of history as a living entity, which I think was very important for when I started writing things like Margaret Thomas and other things. So how do you feel about 30 years on, you're probably someone who encouraged someone else to be able to go on and do this? I would like to think so.
It would be more important to me not to be someone who discouraged somebody else, but if they find encouragement in what I do, I say, hey, more power to you. I'm glad that you did. Go for it. What do you think that horror as a genre does for people in a culture? Why do we come back for more? What does it do for us? The genre? You know, I think that a lot of people feel out of control. It's not just with the world today. It's not one of those things. Oh, we've gone to hell in a handbasket.
I think man has always felt out of control, and that's why they started. What was the quote? If there was no God, man surely would have invented him, you know, but that's why they always have something bigger than them that not only can they blame, but that they can look to for guidance, maybe, but it's just themselves that they're looking to. They don't realize it.
And so when we started doing monsters and monster movies and all of that kind of stuff, I think we could then close the book, turn off the TV, or the monster is captured or whatever. Man's need for control is reinstated by that kind of thing. Well, Dalhousen, thank you so much for giving me so much of your time. Thank you for having me. And I look forward to seeing it up and hearing feedbacks. And thanks for listening to the show.
Hellbent for Horror was written and broadcast by me, S.A. Bradley, and produced by me and Lisa Gorski. You can find more on our website, hellbentforhorror.com, and I'm also on Facebook at facebook.com forward slash hellbentforhorror, and my Twitter handle is hellbenthorror. Please hit that subscribe button to get H4H hot off the press. And if you can do a review on iTunes or whatever app you listen to us on, that really helps people get to find us. And now for some Hellbent for Horror news.
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