Kickstart My Hellbound Heart: an interview with Abomination Magazine's Corey J. Goldberg

After I read and reviewed the inaugural issue of Abomination Magazine yesterday, I had a chance to ask a few questions of its founder and editor, Corey J. Goldberg. Enjoy.

Gef: After being a horror devotee for so many years, what made you decide to start a magazine dedicated to the genre?

Corey: I created Abomination Magazine as a way to give back to the genre which I have loved my entire life. After reading just about every horror fiction magazine I could get my hands on, I decided something was lacking. Numerous horror fiction magazines exist, but none that focus on truly frightening the reader. I decided to fill the niche because it was something that I wanted to read but was unable to find.

Gef: One of the ways you brought the magazine to fruition was a Kickstarter campaign. How did you find that experience, and do you see such campaigns as a new standard with independent authors and editors?

Corey: Kickstarter is a great tool for funding creative projects of all kinds. This was the first Kickstart campaign that I attempted to run and was overjoyed when it was successful. In retrospect there are a lot of things that I would have done differently with the project if I had the opportunity to do it all over again and would be more than happy to discuss the process in more detail with anyone that is interested.

A lot of projects fail because people think they can just put there idea out there and the funds will pour in. In actuality, it takes an exorbitant amount of self-promotion to reach even a modest financial goal.

For editors of other people’s material, crowd funding is a great way to obtain funding. Unless you are extremely wealthy, there may be no other way to pay writers for their work. For independent authors, however, I don’t feel that it’s necessary to run fund raising campaigns. If you want to write a book nowadays, it costs you absolutely nothing to self-publish in e-book format and if the e-book is successful, you can use those funds to create a print run of your publication. The time and effort required to run a successful campaign could be much better spent on the craft of writing itself.

Gef: How do you see the state of horror fiction as a whole these days? Upswing, downswing, pariah in the eyes of the masses--as usual?

Corey: As always, the monster du jour is constantly changing. I feel that we are on the tail end of the zombie infestation and I am excited to see what monster comes out on top in the years to come.

In my opinion the state of horror fiction is as it always is; praised by those that love horror and thought of as a pariah by everyone else. If you follow trends in fiction, it seems as if less and less horror fiction comes out each year, but you will also notice that books that used to be classified as horror are being sold as thrillers or mysteries. Obviously, this doesn’t change the fact that a book is horror, just what shelf it’s being placed on for marketing purposes. As long as people continue to read, the state of horror will continue to be strong.

Gef: Which authors would you say have influenced your own tastes in horror?

Corey: There are so many authors that I love and respect. Stephen King, Richard Layman, David Moody, Peter Straub, Shirley Jackson, Ambrose Bierce, Edgar Allan Poe, Graham Masterton, Ramsey Campbell, Clive Barker, Richard Matheson, and of course H.P. Lovecraft are some of my favorite horror writers. I am also a huge fan of Theodore Sturgeon , Kurt Vonnegut, and Philip K. Dick. I mention these authors separately because they are more science fiction than horror, but have had a huge impact on my tastes.

Thanks to Corey for the interview. Be sure to pay Abomination Magazine a visit at http://abominationmagazine.com