You should know: Sara Gran

That quote from Ed Brubaker on the cover of Little Mysteries, which is a little chopped off here, reads: “Full of wisdom and life and perfect sentences that make other writers tear their hair out in jealousy.”

Yeah.

I love finding a writer who is super-talented and also fearless. If I go on for too long about Gran, I’ll just sound like a deranged stalker but she is easy to admire. It would’ve been simple as pie for her to follow the grooves in the road, you know, like the rest of us. Build a conventional career. Keep writing the same book over and over. But she did not. Because she did not, she’s turned out a wondrous body of work. She also started her own press, a literary press, something a lot of us threaten to do but chicken out, because it’s a lot of work.

I didn’t know Gran well but we have mutual friends, and so after I read Little Mysteries, I asked her for a brief interview and she kindly agreed.

AK: First, let’s talk about horror. You said this in one of your newsletters:

“Horror is a difficult genre to work in creatively, and difficult career-wise. The biggest creative challenge is creating fresh, original, imagery that can actually scare—not just a jump scare that will startle you in the moment, but something that will keep you up that night (and the next, and the next). The challenge is the same as with all writing: digging really deep and finding the idiosyncratic, weird, potentially-embarrassing, potentially-vulnerable stuff that good books are made of. If you feel a feeling a bit like you’ve just peed on yourself in public in front of someone you like (someone you like like), you’re on the right track. And if you can’t stand that feeling, well, learn to stand it, a little bit at a time. This is your ore to mine, and all that frightening stuff inside is where your greatest gifts as a writer are buried.”

AK: I agree with this. Many people think of horror fiction as jump scares or tropes like monsters, but to me what’s really scary is figuring out what’s going on in people’s heads. Which is what made COME CLOSER so amazing. The book is, I think, a classic of modern horror. It was published in 2003 and I still see it on reader’s best of lists, recommending it to other readers, etc.

Sounds like you’d like to write more horror but feel that publishing is resistant to horror (and, in this same newsletter, you pointed out the nonsense of that, given that some of the biggest commercial writing has been horror). You said that in 2021; do you feel differently today?

SG: Thank you for the kind words. I do feel differently about publishing horror today. I think the book world at large is lot more welcoming of horror, of all types. There’s a well-established niche for more boundary-pushing, literary horror and a huge market for broader Stephen-King-ish work. I would encourage anyone on the fence to give it a go.

AK: How do you think of yourself as a writer? You’ve written horror, mystery/detective—but really, from what I’ve read of your work, it’s been pretty genre-defying. Adventurous literary fiction? I’m not trying to put you in a box, but rather would love to hear what you think a literary career should be.

Judging from the LA Times article, it sounds like you prefer to write the book you want to write, enjoy new challenges as a writer, even though it goes against conventional wisdom for a “writing career”.

Anything you want to say about the publishing business and the writer’s place in it?

SG: I love the term “adventurous literary fiction,” I’ll take it! Going in such different directions all the time has definitely hurt my career but enriched me as a writer and a person, so it’s trade-off I feel pretty good about. I value my ever-changing self more than my status or income—which I’m aware is not a belief everyone can afford to act on. I’m very fortunate to be in that position. Sometimes we have bills to pay and kids to feed and the way to do that is by doing what we did before so we can get that advance. For those us for whom taking more chances is an option—I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

AK: You launched Dreamland Books in 2021 by publishing The Book of the Most Precious Substance (February 2022). You also said you’d like to publish 2-4 books a year (are you focusing on reprints of books you admire, or foreign translations?)

What made you decide to go this route? I think many writers, after dealing with the inconsistencies of the industry, think it would be great to start their own publishing company but think the amount of work it takes (handling all the business stuff, in addition to promotion, which we all must do now anyway) will take away from our writing time. You very generously addressed this learning curve in one of your newsletters.

SG: Publishing your own book (at best) isn’t much more work than working with a publisher (at worst). What I mean is: if you were try to recreate the red-carpet treatment of having a big-deal front-list title from a big publisher on the cheap, alone—that would be nearly impossible, and a huge endeavor. But as a midlist author who has a little money to spend and isn’t going to get that treatment anyway—yeah, unless something goes very wrong, it’s not much more work.

And it’s a different kind of work. I’m not a very controlling person in general, but my books are very important to me and the work of controlling them—hiring a designer, a publicist, etc, and being in on every conversation and decision--is much more enjoyable to me than the work of trying to get someone from a random house of penguins to return my calls just to tell me that advertising doesn’t work or covers work differently than I think or whatever foolishness. Which is not to say that people who work in publishing are, themselves, foolish—they’re mostly kind and smart people who have impossible jobs. But there’s some conventions of the culture of publishing that drive me batty. A lot of this is about personality.

Some other reasons, out of many: complete creative freedom, the challenge of it, and just to kind of prove that it can be done. I hear from a lot of mid-career writers who are getting deals and have agents but they aren’t happy. Their careers have kind of turned into a grind and they’re a little more tired than one should be at forty- or fifty-something. I also meet a lot of writers in that same mid-career stage who aren’t publishing at all, but maybe do have a readership who wants to hear for them, just not enough of one for the economics to work out for a publisher. Another category I hear from pretty often is writers who’ve had success in one genre, but they want to try (or have tried) something new and their team isn’t into it. I would encourage anyone in those categories to try doing it themselves. I made a nice little piece of money on the first book I published. So far I’ve lost money on the second, although I think I’ll make a good profit in the long run. So there’s no sure bets, but I’m very happy with the results. I’m working on a little book/pamphlet that will spell out step-by-step how to do it.

I also want to control the rights to my work and keep it in print. I’ve had books fall into the not-quite-in-print/not-quite-out-of-print abyss and that’s a shitty place to be.

AK: Your most recent publication is Little Mysteries, which you recently published [and I’m giving away a print copy—enter below]. It was an utter delight, even for someone like me who had no prior experience with the world of Claire DeWitt, the world’s best detective. It seemed like exactly what most writers would like to do: a rules-free volume where you produce what needs to be written (in this case, satisfying DeWitt fans with more Claire, while at the same time pushing the boundary of what is a “sequel”).

What was your intention with Little Mysteries? Are you 100 percent satisfied with how it turned out? What’s next for DeWitt?

SG: Thank you! The opportunity to do something different like LITTLE MYSTERIES was exactly why I started publishing myself. Each story plays with the idea of what a mystery is in some way. I’m very happy with how it turned out.

This past month has been the fun part—after working on the book alone for so long, I’ve been out in the world hearing from people, and I’ve been wonderfully surprised by some of the emotional responses. You write alone, but reading can be an act of real closeness and intimacy, and doing events in person is where I get to share some of that intimacy with people. Events aren’t immediately cost effective, but I think they generate money over the longer term (by raising one’s profile and forming relationships with bookstores), and those moments of hearing from readers make touring more than worthwhile for me.

AK: What’s on the horizon for Dreamland Books?

SG: Well, I have a few historic reprints coming up this year, and maybe a few small surprises. One of the many joys of having my own press is the ability to be spontaneous, so we’ll see. Subscribing on substack or following me on Instagram is the best way to keep up and get everything. And speaking of horror, I hope to publish a print edition of my previously-audio-only haunted house story, MARIGOLD, in 2026.

Thanks for reading, everyone, and if you’d like to be in the running to win a copy of Little Mysteries, please leave a comment below. Check back next Monday when I’ll announce a winner. The winner must provide a U.S. mailing address to receive the prize.

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And now a word from our sponsor…

FIEND update: Things are chugging along for Fiend, due to be released September 16. We’ve got a list of kind words from fellow authors as long as my arm. Right now, I’m putting together a thank-you gift that will go out to pre-orders, to include this groovy sticker (“Every family has its demons”), a custom letter-press bookmark, and a signed bookplate. I’m heading to the Frederick Book Arts Center in mid-May to make the bookmark with my own little hands (seriously, they’re tiny) so stay tuned for a whole newsletter about that.

If this sounds good to you, pre-order today!