I know it doesn't start until tomorrow, but I wanted to go
ahead and run this in. It's the interview with Bruno Fischer
that I mentioned a while back. In it, he talks a about some
of his experiences with Gold Medal, so it fits right in. The
interview was in Paperback Quarterly in 1976.
Bill Crider
A PQ Interview with Bruno Fischer:
Q: More Deaths Than One says that it was originally
published, in "Mammoth Detective Magazine." Did you begin
your career in writing with the pulps? How long did you write
for them?
A: What I began with the pulps was my mystery writing career.
This was in the midst of the Great Depression, in the middle
1930s. At the time I was a newspaperman, which paid little,
and a writer of short stories for literary magazines, which
paid less. I had recently been married, and in order to pay
the rent I wrote a terror-type short story and sent it off to
one of the more popular pulps. Two weeks later I received a
check for $60?enough to pay two month?s rent in those days. I
wrote a longer story and sold it for higher rates, and I was
hooked.
I wrote for all the pulps till their gradual demise after the
war, killed by paperbacks which by that time brought me most
of my income.
By the way, I didn?t write More Deaths than One for the
pulps. Like the seven full-length novels I?d written previous
to that one, it was written for my hardcover publisher and a
year later was issued as a paperback reprint by Pocket Books.
(The New York Times Reviewer called it
?outstanding for its middle-class realism?for its
full-length, three-dimensional characterization.?) But
because I was well-known to pulp readers, several magazines
were willing to buy first serial rights and devote a good
part of an issue to my unpublished novels before their book
publication. This happened with all but one of my novels as
long as the pulp magazines were around.
Q: You published a number of hardcover books before writing a
series of paperback originals for Gold Medal. Were the
requirements of GM any different from your hardcover
publishers (that is, did GM ask for more action, sex,
dialogue, etc?)?
A: Sex. Or what passed for sex in the 1950s, which was mild
stuff by today?s standards. I, for one, welcomed this
liberation from the traditional stuffiness of mystery
stories. As for the rest, I wrote in my usual manner,
movement and suspense with very little violence, about
ordinary people in extraordinary situations, and nobody at
Gold Medal asked for anything else, especially as the books
sold well.
Q: Did you feel that paperback publishing had any advantages
over hardcover publishing? If so, what were the advantages?
If not, what were the limitations?
A: Before I entered into my first contract with Gold
Medal
[in 1950] to do a paperback original, I weighed the pros and
cons.
First, the cons. I would, of course, bypass the income and
prestige of hardcover publication. The book clubs wouldn?t
touch a paperback original and many reviewers (by no means
all) would not deign to notice it.
As for the pros. I had by then written thirteen mystery
novels. They had not sold badly for mystery novels, which
meant not very well. After their hardcover publication, they
had been reissued by major paperback houses?and it was from
my paperback sales that the bulk of my income came. Since
practically all contracts with hardcover publishers stipulate
a fifty-fifty split on all paperback earnings, my hardcover
was receiving as his cut a good deal more than he was paying
me in royalties. If I went into original paperback
publication I would get to keep all of that income.
More important, the contract Gold Medal offered was far
superior to any hardcover publisher?s. A book publisher tries
to get as large a share as possible of the author?s earnings
form other sources, known as subsidiary rights?reprints, book
club, movies, television, foreign. Gold Medal was interested
only in its profits on its sales; everything else went to the
author. This was especially attractive to me because my books
were selling well in translation in a number of
countries.
I signed with Gold Medal, and my first book with them, House
of Flesh, sold some two million copies. Which made everyone
happy. None of the other nine novels I wrote for them in the
1950s did as well, but almost all had satisfactory
sales.
Q: Did you ever write paperback originals under a
pseudonym?
If so, could you tell us what it was? The GM "original"
of The Lustful Ape was actually published some years earlier
as by "Russell Gray." What's the story on this?
A: The Lustful Ape was the only novel I ever wrote under a
pseudonym. Russell Gray was a name I had sometimes used
during my pulp-writing days.
As I vaguely recall, I met the editor-in-chief of a modest
paperback house called Lion Books at a meeting of Mystery
Writers of America. He wanted me to do an original for him
and offered a fair advance. I may have been in the writing
doldrums at the time and thought this a chance of grabbing a
quick buck while still writing myself out of them. I dashed
off the 60,000 word novel in some four weeks, shattering by
far all records for me?and the book sounds it.
Nine years later the editors at Gold Medal came across it and
offered to publish it if I would let them do it under my own
name. I hesitated for perhaps a day; it wouldn?t do my
reputation any good. I reread it and it didn?t seem quite
that bad, maybe because the advance Gold Medal offered was
attractive. It came out twice almost a decade apart under two
different names as the author. Abroad it?s always been
published under my real name.
If the book still embarrasses me a bit, I do love that
title!
Q: Your most recent book (at least that I've seen) is The
Evil Days, reprinted in paper by Ballantine. Are you working
on anything at the present? If so, what can you tell us about
it?
A: Yes. But I?m one of those fiction writers who never
discusses a story or a novel in progress with anybody?not
with my agent, not even with my wife. When the story comes
out of me, it comes out on paper. So I?ll have to pass this
one by.
Q: If you had. to choose one of your books as your favorite,
which would it be? Why?
A: The Silent Dust. And if I?m permitted two favorites, my
most recent, The Evil Days.
Because they are the most satisfying to me. Because in them I
I came closest to doing what I set out to do: tell a good
story, achieve a cogent mystery, create flesh and blood
characters. Or so it seems to me.
Q: Can you recall any particular cover of a paperback edition
of your work that especially pleased you? If so, would you
tell us what made it appealing?
A: I?m afraid there are few of my paperback covers I really
care for. Mostly they are too garish, too slick, too
women?s-magazine coverish, too obscure.
If I have to pick a favorite cover, it?s the one on The
Pigskin Bag, reprinted by Dell in 1955 (some years before,
there had been a Mercury paperback edition). It?s clear,
dramatic, understandable, and quite readable from a
distance.
Q: Do you feel that your work was influenced by any
particular writers? Who were they?
William Faulkner, Raymond Chandler. (And of course every
mystery writer was influenced by Edgar Allan Poe.)
Q: Do you have any favorite mystery writer(s)? Who?
A: Raymond Chandler, John Dickson Carr, Wilkie Collins
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