We usually say that our interviews are a pleasure. Our lawyer advises it. But this one really was. A delightful, extensive ramble with Benjamin Holesapple, editor and publisher of the new weird and horror fiction magazine Turn to Ash. Interesting thoughts for writers, readers and editors. The second issue is about to come out, so this seemed an ideal time to get with it…
“Uh… hello. Is that you? Is that Mr Leek? This is my first time calling, so I might not get it right. I’ve never used a phone before and I’m a little nervous. I found this one, you see, and it has so many buttons and lights that I almost gave up. I knew that you wanted to hear from me, though. That you’ve wanted to hear from me for a long time, even if you didn’t realise it.
“My name? Maybe… maybe we could come back to that. Let me wipe the front of this thing, it’s a bit sticky. I might have fibbed a little when I said I found it. I suppose you could say that I took it, but he didn’t want it any more, the man who was walking around the woods. He was bent up kind of odd, and he’d dropped it on the moss.
“I haven’t rung the police, no. I don’t want to talk to them, only to you. Please don’t think I’m strange, but I don’t like calling you Chuck. It seems disrespectful. Mr Leek is better, unless we got to know each other. I wish we could, but you’d have to come out here, and I’m not sure the others would like that…”
What’s that about? You’ll find out later.
An Interview with Mr Holesapple
greydog: Welcome to greydogtales, Benjamin. Great to have you here. Usually before we go into the burning topic of the day (Turn to Ash in this case), we like to know a bit about folk. So, what is a Benjamin when it comes down to it? A hard-bitten enthusiast of twisted transgressive fiction, a relaxed explorer of weird fantasy, or a lover of old-style pulp? Give us a quick picture.
Benjamin: I did that thing that I think a lot of people do: I grew up reading a ton of horror and other fantastic fiction, but around the time I started college, I decided that I needed to focus on the “serious” stuff. I left King, Barker, Jackson, Bradbury, HPL, etc. on the shelf for several years while I read primarily literary fiction and non-fiction. It wasn’t until I was in my late twenties (I’m 35 now) that I started sniffing around horror fiction again, and stumbled into, first, Ligotti, and then Pugmire. From there, I was in a frenzy to catch up on everything I’d been missing.
So, while I’ve been a fan of horror and the weird for most of my life, I still feel like a bit of a neophyte, as it’s only been the last 7 years or so that I’ve re-immersed myself in the genre. Becoming reacquainted with horror fiction in the age of the internet has been overwhelming, to say the least. Not only do I have to catch up on all the good stuff that was being released in my 20’s, now I have ready access to all the stuff from the last hundred years or so that I didn’t even know existed in my previous incarnation as a reader of horror lit. That wasn’t a very quick picture. TL;DR version: I’m a tulip in a thunderstorm.
greydog: How did you get into the genre(s) right at the start? What were your introductory books, films, comics or whatever, the ones which really hooked you when you were younger?
Benjamin: I was a creepy kid. I don’t really recall ever not being interested in monsters. Creature from the Black Lagoon and Them! were on constant rotation throughout my childhood. I accidentally caught most of Hellraiser when I was about 7 or 8. My older sister and her friends were watching it, and I snuck a viewing in from the next room. There have not been too many days where I haven’t had a vision of ol’ skinless Frank dancing through my head ever since. At grade school book fairs, I stocked up on the Bunnicula and My Teacher is an Alien series. Corny little books, but they were indicative of what was to come.
I was also extremely interested in the “real life” weird at an early age, and checked out every book in the library on ghosts, UFOs, and cryptids again and again. I grew up about an hour north of Point Pleasant, WV, where the Mothman flap happened in the late 1960’s, and in the 80’s people in the area still discussed it as a matter of fact. In the 5th grade, I read Something Wicked This Way Comes, and that really sealed the deal. By the following year, I’d read Christine and Salem’s Lot, and picked up a couple of the Del Rey paperback editions of Lovecraft. One of them, The Lurking Fear and Other Stories contained “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” which was, and probably still is, my favorite Lovecraft story. Man, all this reflecting on my childhood is going to save me a fortune in therapist’s bills.
greydog: That’s the sole purpose of this site, but don’t tell anyone. And when did all this coalesce into the idea for putting out a magazine?
Benjamin: From roughly 2004 to 2014, I ran a very small record label and recording studio with a good friend of mine. When he moved to Texas, we decided to fold the operation, and after a few months of trying to get used to enjoying all the free time I suddenly had, I started looking for other outlets in which to keep myself occupied and entertained.
Very briefly, I tried putting together amateur electronics kits, but I’ve always hated soldering things, as I tend to burn myself quite a bit. A friend and former bandmate and I had been discussing modern horror fiction, and he asked if he could send me something that he’d been working on. I said yes, and wound up making some notes on how I thought he could improve it, and after further discussion, I told him I’d publish it whenever he was finished if he wanted me to.
I’d spent ten years producing and selling records, so I thought “why not books?” I’m still waiting on that novella, but the idea to start publishing books started gnawing at me after our conversation. I was thinking about other things I could publish while waiting for my friend’s novella, and the idea of doing a zine really appealed to me. I’ve been collecting issues of Whispers and Crypt of Cthulhu for years, and I’m an avid follower of The Lovecraft eZine.
In January 2016, I settled on the idea of doing a zine in the style of Whispers, using the Lee Brown Coye tribute issue as my Bible. I’d been kicking names for the press around in my head for months. I wanted something that tangentially tied the endeavour to the punk/avant-whatever music scene I’d been a part of since I was a teen. “Turn to Ash” is the name of a song by the seminal 90’s Columbus, OH, punk band, Gaunt. They are one of my absolute favorite bands ever, and largely the reason I came to Columbus to make music in the first place.
“Turn to Ash” also happened to sound quite good as the title of a repository of dark fiction, so I ran with it. I registered the business name, the website, and recruited my friend and fantastic artist, Julian Dassai, to whip up a logo. In February, I put out the call for submissions, and at the end of August, Volumes 1 and 0 went live. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind year.
Turn to Ash Emerges
greydog: Turn to Ash 0 was a striking collection of stories, made available as part of your launch campaign. What was the thinking behind that?
Benjamin: Thanks! Volume 0 served a few key purposes. First and foremost, I had a glut of stories that I wanted to publish. When I put out the call for subs, I really didn’t think I’d get much of a response; maybe a few friends of friends, that kind of thing. In six weeks, I got just south of 500 fiction submissions. I didn’t want to overstuff the first issue, so I thought about the idea of doing a smaller, promotional issue.
I ran with that idea for a while, and was working on the layout for Vol. 0 while I was still doing edits and such for Vol. 1. I’d never done layout for so much as a pamphlet before, let alone a book, so I was able to learn a few valuable lessons working on Vol. 0 (from redoing it three times from scratch), and since it was a significantly smaller book, it didn’t cost me as much time redoing all the formatting as it would have if I had tackled Vol. 1 first.
Eventually, I decided instead of using it as a promotion for the first volume, I’d just include it as a bonus to the first 50 people who ordered Vol. 1, and kept it under wraps until ordering went live. People love their super limited edition stuff, so I thought it would be a good way to motivate buyers to try out a book from a brand new micropress. There are four original pieces of fiction in Vol. 0, and I really love them. That’s the only bummer about the limited-edition thing, those stories won’t be available anywhere else until they get collected or picked up for reprint in another publication.
greydog: This is a peculiar time for weird, horror and speculative magazines, in that so many new ones are being launched. Many of these are obviously a labour of love. Any idea as to why we’re suddenly in this publishing boom?
Benjamin: I think it’s a natural response to readership and authorship expanding in the genre. I think there is a strong DIY element in the community that’s mirrored in the punk, metal, and noise communities. In those communities, there’s a lifecycle that’s something like, “go see a band – ok, now go start a band – ok, so there are 5 new bands now, somebody start a label – ok, somebody bought your record/tape and came to your show, now they’re going to start a band – ok, somebody went to their show, and now they want to start a band, so now there are 10 new bands, somebody start another label…” and that kind of grows in that way until it can’t any more.
That blurring of the line between creator and consumer is one of the things that drew me to this community in the first place. I spoke earlier about finding W. H. Pugmire early on in my return to horror fiction, and he really personified that connection to the punk ethos for me. Obviously, you need a few more consumers than creators or the house falls down, and that’s my only worry with the recent explosion; that the ambition of those of us making these things will outpace the readership and many of us will fall flat on our faces. So far, so good, though, so I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.
greydog: What was the most difficult part of the process of getting your magazine into print?
Benjamin: Thus far, Turn to Ash is a one-man operation, and there’s been a steep learning curve. I was somewhat familiar with Photoshop before I started doing this, but learning how to use InDesign and Illustrator was daunting. Making sure I’m staying communicative with my collaborators whilst doing all the other work has been tough, too. My memory is terrible. Spreadsheets are my friend.
greydog: And if you’ll excuse the marketing term, what would you say are the unique selling points of Turn to Ash? Its tone, its direction, or just a commitment to quality fiction? Do you see yourself as having some definable or indefinable difference to other new arrivals?
Benjamin: Well, I’d say since Travis Neisler has declared us bitter rivals, the most important thing to note is that Turn to Ash is not Ravenwood Quarterly. I kid, of course! We have the most courteous of bitter rivalries. I have the first two issues of Ravenwood, and I love them, and Travis is an excellent guy.
I would like to think that the range of fiction presented in Turn to Ash will become a hallmark. The weird is my bread and butter, but I am going to strive to include more fiction that lays outside those boundaries. Adrian Luden’s “Sod Webworms” from Vol. 1 is a good example of that. Nothing potentially supernatural going on there, just a good punch in the gut. I’m very lucky to have regular non-fiction columns from Jose Cruz and James Newman, too. They both do great stuff in very different realms, and I think they do a lot to elevate the zine. I hope that any future themed issues will continue to be very unique in theme and format.
greydog: For any writers reading this, is there a sentence (or two) which encapsulates what you want from them?
Benjamin: Dark fiction of any flavour with a strong, emotional resonance. Monsters are cool, too.
greydog: You began with print, but we understand that you’re considering an e-format version as well. Was that due to demand?
Benjamin: Yeah, I got a lot of feedback about that. The print edition will still be priority #1 for me, but I understand the way a lot of people read is changing, and I owe it to the authors to get their work in front as many eyeballs as I can. I will continue to try and incentivise the purchase of the print edition as best I can, and I’ll likely work on a way to sell the two in a package, but the e-book thing is another one of those steep learning curves that I’m in the middle of tackling right now.
greydog: Turn to Ash 2 will have a specific, and rather unusual, theme – the radio caller. Tell us a bit about Chuck Leek and where he came from.
Benjamin: Charles “Chuck” Leek and the town of Orion, Ohio have been bouncing around in my head in various incarnations for about four years now. The character obviously owes a great deal to Art Bell, whose Coast to Coast AM program I’ve been obsessed with since I was a teenager, but the initial idea was to have a town that existed in one of John Keel’s “window areas,” and a sort of paranormal news man who reported on the weird goings-on in town.
Late one night, working on Vol. 1, the idea occurred to me to have a selection of fiction modelled after one of the old Ghost to Ghost Halloween specials that Coast used to do. I returned to the idea of the paranormal news man, turned him into a talk show host whose name is a reference to both Charles Fort and John Keel, put Don Imus’ cowboy hat on his head, and we were off to the races.
Turn the Radio On
greydog: Great idea. Because we’re UK-based, we’ll ask a question we tried out on Matthew Bartlett and Tom Breen a while ago (see our mega double interview – tag team horror ). Local radio seems to be more influential in North America than over here, and comes up in a lot of US horror stories. What’s your take on that?
Benjamin: I appreciate you trying it out on Matthew and Tom first. This way, I know it’s not a cursed question or hex or something. There are already two canaries in this coal mine! I’m sure they probably gave better answers than I will, but I’ll drop my two cents and see if they bounce.
I don’t know if it’s at all the same in the UK, but just about anywhere in the US, a quick scan of the AM dial will yield a handful of staticky, barely-there transmissions – usually a fire-and-brimstone, old-time-religion sermon or someone shouting some kind of extreme political ideology. The airwaves are haunted with flickering, ephemeral ghosts shrieking strange gospels. It’s creepy stuff, and it makes you wonder what sort of lean-to or underground bunker these yahoos are broadcasting from, who, if anyone, is actually listening to this stuff, and if any of the parties involved have furniture made of human remains.
greydog: We sort of wish we’d grown up with that now. And you can show off some of the authors/pieces for Issue Two right here if you want to – give folk a taste of what they can expect.
Benjamin: The very first person I contacted about the issue was Jonathan Raab, author and imperator at Muzzleland Press. His Gonzo take on high-strange horror is perfect for the frame story in the issue – Chuck’s rather unusual night hosting his paranormal call-in show. The rest of the fiction is presented as calls from Chuck’s audience. I don’t want to give away too many specifics, but the stories hit a lot of the notes you’d expect if you’ve ever listened to Coast or any of the shows like it. Though many of the tales are far, far weirder than anything ever heard on late-night radio.
The line-up of “callers” includes Rebecca J. Allred, Joseph Bouthiette Jr, Evan Dicken, Kurt Fawver, Joanna Michal Hoyt, S. L. Edwards, Thomas Mavroudis, Betty Rocksteady, Joseph Pastula, A.P. Sessler, and Martin Rose. There’s also the aforementioned non-fiction pieces by Jose and James, and an interview with Matthew M. Bartlett by Gordon White.
greydog: Excellent. We have to ask about ‘Them!’ while we have you – you even brought it up yourself, earlier. Seminal, a highpoint in old cinema, a commentary of the risks of atomic power and lots of other good things, as far as we’re concerned. Are we right that you feel the same way about the film?
Benjamin: Absolutely. It’s near the high-water mark of the “atomic power run amok” genre in my mind, second only to Godzilla, and one of only a handful of 50’s creature features that still holds up pretty well today. The film has a quick pace, but manages to remain downright spooky in the first third, up to and including the bit where the until-then catatonic kid starts screaming “Them! Them!” when she smells the formic acid. I’ve always felt that Them! must’ve been a big influence on Cameron’s Aliens, from the queen alien, right down to Ripley going to town on the eggs with a flamethrower.
greydog: It’s a joy. It even features an early appearance by Leonard Nimoy (uncredited), for goodness sake! Finally, any ideas for Turn to Ash 3, or is that too far in the distance to contemplate?
Benjamin: I’m still busy putting the finishing touches on Turn to Ash Vol. 2, but once that is ready to ship (sometime in December) I’ll be open to submissions once again. I’ll put out the word in the usual places, and I’ll probably stay open until mid-February, with the goal to have the issue out by early spring. It’ll be another non-themed issue, like 0 or 1, and will probably land somewhere between the two in terms of the number of stories and page count. I already have two stories purchased for Vol. 3, and I’ll be looking for six or eight more.
greydog: Many thanks for joining us today and giving us the lowdown. We wish Turn to Ash great success.
Benjamin: Thanks for inviting me to hang out in the land of Lurchers!
You can find out more, and get hold of issues of Turn to Ash below:
Next week on greydogtales, more stuff. More weird stuff, with the occasional added longdog. Do pop your email in top left if you want to be warned…