Interview (Part I) with L. Andrew Cooper, Publisher and Editor, Horrific Scribblings
Using a self-publishing company left a bad taste in Cooper’s mouth, so he decided to just… do it himself! I needed to know more, so I spoke with him about his motivation to start Horrific Scribblings, what it took to get it done, and his thoughts about skinning someone alive (a totally natural segue). Check out the interview, below!
Shannon: What motivated you to start the Horrific Scribblings indie press, and what were the first steps you took to get it off the ground?
Cooper: After getting to know several talented writers who were self-publishing, I decided to try it myself and ended up doing three books. The first time, I used a self-publishing company (which one should never do) because I was completely inexperienced and had no idea what I was doing. Through that process I learned a lot about what not to do and a little bit about what to do. That was enough to go ahead and just publish the next book myself, which I then did again, followed by an audio book. After that, I figured I knew enough that I wanted to do more with publishing and have more legitimacy, so I decided, “okay, I’m going to start my own imprint and get into indie publishing, starting with my own stuff and then growing to publish other people.” I had been running a website for many years called L. Andrew Cooper’s Horrific Scribblings, so I decided I would call the indie press Horrific Scribblings. From there I started building the website, making a business plan, and initiating the ongoing process of trademarking the name.
Going off that, how do you navigate the business side of things? While you have experience with publishing and design projects, I’m sure there are components of running a press that you learn as you go.
I did a lot of the ‘businessy’ things before I turned to face the public, in terms of completing government paperwork to create Horrific Scribblings LLC, opening business bank accounts, and getting a business credit card. Stuff like that. I’m not very financially minded at all, so I did all of that one step at a time, and luckily my husband is an actuary who’s extremely good at math and very good with those types of things. He’s been a big help all along the way. So, I figured all of that out, and fortunately I had already been running a website along the way so setting up a business website (even though I’m not a coder) wasn’t too hard. I just had to expand my learning a bit. It was all about piecing things together between October 2024 and February 2025, which is when I actually started publishing things.
That’s such a quick turnaround! In hindsight, is there anything you wish you had known, or maybe taken the time to educate yourself on, before embarking on the journey in the first place.
Trademarking. It’s an ongoing nightmare and I had no idea it would take more than a year to finish… but that’s true of any business. Otherwise, I haven’t had any nasty surprises. I already knew that I wouldn’t be making any money for the first year, so I planned to do things that weren’t about making money. Basically, my plan was to spend the first year or so just building a name, trying to make a reputation, trying to make contacts, and getting all the tools together to have a business that would be worthwhile for other people to sign on to.
Alright, so let’s dive a little deeper into the press itself. The homepage of the Horrific Scribblings website is all about Horrific Scribes, and you’ve mentioned to me before that sometimes people confuse the two terms. What’s the difference and how would you explain the relationship between the two?
The name Horrific Scribblings came first, and I’ve been using the name for many years… it’s the publishing company—the publisher of Horrific Scribes, which is a publication. Horrific Scribes is an archive of short stories (and some poetry) that basically follows the same philosophy of the publisher. I’ve likened Horrific Scribblings to the creator, Frankenstein and Horrific Scribes to the creation, Frankenstein’s monster. No one can ever figure out what to call Frankenstein’s monster, not since Mary Shelley wrote the book and published it in 1818. Nobody’s been able to keep them straight, so they just call the monster Frankenstein because she doesn’t give him a name in the book. And Horrific Scribblings and Horrific Scribes are so similarly named that people always refer to Horrific Scribes (the publication) as Horrific Scribblings (the publisher). But it’s actually kind of convenient, because one of the reasons I started Horrific Scribes is because I wanted to bring more attention to Horrific Scribblings… so if people think of them at the same time, there’s some success in that.
So where’d you get the idea for Horrific Scribes and doing the exhibits (the latest of which is Pests and Puppetmasters)? It’s a pretty unique way of presenting stories compared to other horror publications that I’m aware of, and I like how your “squad” of contributors has a name.
Horrific Scribes came into existence because I’m impatient. My original plan was for Horrific Scribblings not to publish other people until I could afford to do anthologies that could pay professional rates, which right now are generally seven or eight cents a word (or more). I can’t do that, and when I started, I knew that it would be a long time before I could. I finally broke down and thought, “well, I know that the Horror Writers Association gives credit toward an affiliate membership for sales that are $25 or more, and $25 or more meets the definition of semi professional for a lot of writing guilds or organizations and it can be very good on people’s resumes.” I decided it’s not taking too much advantage to pay semi-pro rates for web publications and basically talked myself into doing that, which could be worthwhile for people. After that, it was a matter of wondering “so what could I publish?” knowing I didn’t want to publish a normal webzine. I liked the idea of being able to get stuff, turn it around, and publish it pretty quickly, while not necessarily having to do regularly timed issues. And so, the idea of publishing as I was able to made sense, and the idea of an archive that I could draw from and promote stories at will seemed very attractive. That’s where I came up with the idea for exhibits and curating an archive instead of just publishing and forgetting about stories. It keeps things alive, like a museum.
The Horrific Scribes archive features short stories and poems that are dedicated to “the provocative, scary, and strange,” and I’ve also seen the collection described as transgressive. So now I have a challenge…
Ok…
Do you accept the challenge?
Do I get to know what it is first?
No.
I have too gory of an imagination to accept a challenge without knowing what it is
I wasn’t planning on asking you to commit a vile act or something like that. I’ll give it to you anyway: Describe what makes a great story without using the words provocative, scary, strange, or transgressive. Go.
A great story for the archive is still recognizable as related to horror, which means it deals with affect. It deals with fear. It deals with the bodily reactions of horror, revulsion, terror, anxiety, etc. But… it does so in a way that is unconventional, unfamiliar, and surprising. It inspires thought and contradicts expectations.
Why do you look for the types of stories that you do? I assume the reason might go back to what inspired your own storytelling within the horror genre.
It’s related to my personal background and interests. I studied the history of horror for my PhD, mostly focusing on the 18th and 19th centuries, but getting to know the whole thing pretty well. I then spent a decade teaching about it and expanding my range through the history of global film, and so I know a whole lot about horror and I’m not impressed by what’s trendy. I know about a lot of the different directions horror has taken over the last 300 years, and how it’s spawned different subgenres and so on and so forth, so I take a very broad view of what good is, and a lot of what’s successful in the mainstream is not good in my mind. I also know that historically what is unusual is actually what lasts, and what is unusual is often not what is mainstream and popular. So, I look for what I think is different and what is my idea of good. Some of that might have mainstream potential for success, but a lot of it doesn’t.
In terms of being “live” out in the world, Horrific Scribblings turns one-year-old in February. You’ve broken your plan for the press out into phases on the website—where are we at and what’s next?
We’re still in phase one, which is building the brand and the name, getting ourselves out there, building a foundation and such. But we’re getting into what I hope is the later side of phase one. One of the reasons for that is our first book that involves writing other than mine, that’s actually going to have a price tag on it, is coming out on December 16th. It’s the first Horrific Scribes book, which is called “Invasions of World, Home, Body, and Mind.” It’s a collection of stories from the Horrific Scribes archive and it’s a $2.99 eBook. I don’t expect it to make a lot of money, but if it makes a little bit of money, I’ll set that money aside toward an anthology fund; with that, and hopefully some crowd funding, I will plan the first print and eBook pro-rate paying anthology from Horrific Scribblings and publish that, which will bring us into phase two. I hope to get that into production around mid-year.
Now I have three would you rather questions to wrap this up… Freddy or Jason?
Freddy
:'(
I agree. Would you rather stay at the Overlook Hotel or the Bates Motel?
I’m going to answer this question in two ways. As a matter of survival, I would choose the Bates Motel because I’m not Norman’s type… so as long as I don’t go up to the house and try to investigate, I think I could get by. If I had a free pass, like I’m guaranteed to survive either way, I’d totally want to see the Overlook.
Would you rather skin another human alive or wear another human’s skin suit every day for the rest of your life?
I’m going to have to ask questions before I answer this one… if I’m skinning another person, do I get to choose the person? Do I get legal immunity?
Ok, yeah, you would get legal immunity, because for me it’s not about that, it’s about bringing yourself to be able to commit the act, not the consequences. And yeah, let’s say you get to choose who it is.
If I get to choose the person and have legal immunity, I’m going to skin somebody.
Cooper’s Picks: Three Stories That Inspired His Work
Today’s list is a special departure from the usual. Rather than talk your ears off with my own thoughts, I’m also going to hand the microphone over to Cooper. Earlier this week I had the pleasure of talking with him while he reflected on short stories that function as important building blocks in the cultivation of his own craft. At first, I was going to write my own blurbs about these stories, but I decided it’s best you hear about them from Cooper himself, as he sells them far better than I could.
Rappaccini’s Daughter – Nathaniel Hawthorne (1844)
“We might call this early plant horror, but it’s about much more than that: science, aesthetics, morality, and gender, all wrapped up in Hawthorne’s delicious prose. It has been adapted and filmed many times, my favorite being Twice-Old Tales (1963) starring Vincent Price. But that didn’t stop me from writing a still-unfilmed but award-winning feature-length screenplay titled Agave Agape. It’s loosely adapted from Hawthorne’s work, set in contemporary Los Angeles. Hawthorne’s story is the only thing I didn’t originally write that I’ve adapted.”
You can read the full story here.
The Repairer of Reputations – Robert W. Chambers (1895)
“This is from Chambers’s The King in Yellow, a collection which is often mistaken for a novel. The story is a masterclass in writing madness. Set in a near-future imperial America, the story entails a suicidal mania related to a higher power that spreads like a plague. It’s a model for dark fantasy world-building that would go on to influence Lovecraft, King, et al. I incorporated some of its opening verse directly into The Middle Reaches (2025) as well as its description of suicide machines. Of course I took fodder from other literary bodies, such as Ambrose Bierce’s “An Inhabitant of Carcosa” (1886), but when writing about Carcosa, Lake Hali, and the titular king himself in The Middle Reaches, I mostly referred to this story.”
You can read the full story here.
The Judgment – Franz Kafka (1913)
“Some people would object to classifying Kafka’s works as horror, but they’re at least horror-adjacent, and Kafka has influenced me more than any other writer. I refer to his short story “The Hunger Artist“ (1922) and quote at length from his novel The Trial (1925) in my series The Middle Reaches. I quote his novel The Castle (1926) in my novel Crazy Time (2025). “The Judgment” focuses on the horror of parental authority, the resolution of which conveys the crushing sublimity of the absurd in a succinct manner to which I’ve seen nothing else compare. The surreal reversal in this story involves raw power I’ve tried to capture several times in my own writing, most directly in my early short story “Bees and Bears.”
You can read the full story here.