We here at The Daily Grindhouse may be big fans of depravity and perversion in our cinema, but we like to keep decent company. After all, liking absolutely reprehensible art and being a little bit louche yourself doesn’t mean you can’t treat others well and be a basically decent human being, even if your daily beat involves regularly brushing up against vice workers, weirdos, and the general underclass. That’s why we here at Daily Grindhouse are also big fans of Max Booth III. The founder/owner/capricious overlord of Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing and its popular imprint Ghoulish Books, Max is a rarity in a genre space that sadly too often attracts its fair share of leeches, hotheads, grifters, and conmen: Max is just a really decent guy.
Never whoring for fame on social media, never trend hopping for clout or tossing aside acquaintances when it becomes convenient, Max has instead built the PMMP/Ghoulish brand on hard work, basic decency, and a pure love of genre writing coupled with a desire to uplift other writers while also establishing himself as an irreverent voice howling in the wilderness of horror lit. His wry sense of humor coupled with keen human observation and an occasional sentimentality, often set against the backdrop of a rural America usually only represented in backwoods horror, has made him a unique voice in contemporary horror lit, and something of an inheritor to 80s-era Joe Lansdale’s throne of humorous horror with heart. After years of quietly establishing himself with his own novels as well as the output of PMMP, Max got a major boost when his novella We Need to do Something was optioned and adapted into a Sierra McCormick-fronted film of the same name at the height of COVID, raising his profile and tossing him into a wider spotlight. Always one to pay it forward, Max in turn put on the first annual Ghoulish Book Festival in 2022, a San Antonio-based weekend-long horror publishing event meant to give a space to indy and Southwestern horror authors since the genre—even in the age of cyber democratization– tends to focus on high-profile and coastal-based creators. The result was a resounding success: highly trafficked, multiple authors found themselves selling more than they ever had before, and Max and his wife/PMMP-co-owner Lori Michelle immediately set about planning an even bigger Ghoulish Book Fest 2, scheduled for April 14-16 of this year (more information can be found at https://ghoulishbookfest.com/).
Having recently wrapped up a Kickstarter campaign that raised over $20k towards a brick-and-mortar horror bookstore in San Antonio plus more involved book launches for PMMP/Ghoulish, Max is set to further up his game as a major force in the realm of indy horror publishing, and we here at Daily Grindhouse couldn’t be happier to see a good guy win for a change. So it was that we dispatched Greg Mucci to sit down with Max for a conversation about publishing, indy horror, and making your own way in a space that often impedes rather than encourages success.
DAILY GRINDHOUSE: What got your foot in the door of horror fiction, and did you envision that sort of trajectory when you first became interested in the genre?
MAX BOOTH III: When I was 17, I answered a call for volunteer editors for a magazine called Dark Moon Digest. At the time, I had ambitions of eventually going to college and becoming a book editor. I also, of course, wanted to write fiction of my own, which I had already been doing since the moment I learned how to spell. I figured volunteering for this magazine would be a great way to “break into the business”–and, I suppose it did. Because within a couple years, I had launched my own indie press and embraced indie horror headfirst.
My partner and I eventually purchased Dark Moon Digest and became its sole publisher, although we discontinued the magazine in late 2022 with the intention of relaunching it as a new magazine called Ghoulish Tales.
I never did mess around with college, though, and looking back I am grateful I skipped over a higher education. I am doing everything I want to be doing and I did it early rather than waiting around trying to get a degree.
DG: Like a lot of fans of the genre, it sounds like it enthralled you at a young age! Who introduced you to the genre and what did horror mean to you when you were growing up with it? Has it evolved significantly for you?
MAX BOOTH III: I think it was a mix of my older brothers making me watch shit way too mature for my age, my mom’s giant collection of Stephen King paperbacks littered around the house, and my aunt’s hobby of burning horror movies onto discs and letting me borrow sleeves of under-the-radar slasher flicks every time we visited. My love for horror has been on a steady rise since leaving the womb. Maybe even before then. I can’t imagine it decreasing any time soon.
DG: With your vested interest in horror coalescing with your passion for writing, what made you want to begin your own independent publishing press, and what can you tell us about the industry then and how it’s evolved over the years?
MAX BOOTH III: The desire to begin our own press kind of grew after spending so much time volunteering for another press and wondering what we would do differently if we were the ones in charge. Lori and I had also found a home in the horror community, and at the time it felt natural to want to give back and help other writers publish their books. There is a lot different about the industry now, I think. For one thing, at least in our experience, eBooks are no longer the dominating reading preference. These days we sell way more paperbacks than we do digital copies. I suspect that has to do with the steady rise of social media outlets like Instagram and Tiktok. Nobody wants to take a picture or look at a picture of a Kindle device. They want to see the real thing. As a consequence, written reviews no longer seem to do much sales-wise. But a viral Tiktok video about your book? Holy shit. Something like that can be life-changing for an author.
DG: As someone with both feet firmly planted in the literary world, what do you look for when publishing an author’s work and how does that differ from what you gravitate towards when writing?
MAX BOOTH III: I’m not sure my brain operates like that. Whether I’m reading something for publication consideration, or writing something of my own, if it’s not exciting me then I’m probably not going to finish it.
DG: Okay, that’s fair. What I suppose I mean more is, is there a difference between what excites you in another’s story and what excites you in your own work? What’s your genre in front of the keyboard and behind a book?
MAX BOOTH III: I don’t really write with a genre in mind, but I do run a horror publishing company, so naturally when I am reading for the press I am looking for works that fit into that genre, of course. For a long time, when we were only operating under the name Perpetual Motion Machine, we considered all genres of literature, but in recent years we have leaned solely into spooky stuff, which I hope is evident with our rebranding as Ghoulish Books. When I am writing my own work, I do not consider genre, and I do not think, “How can I sell this to people?” I just write whatever seems exciting at the time with the assumption that I’ll figure out its future when I’m done with it.
DG: With horror continuing to remain a sort of black sheep – a constant source of dialogue as awards season looms closer – while also breathing life into whatever medium it touches, as evident by its domination at the box-office and with a widely popular video game adaptation about to explode out of the gate, how important is representation in the genre? Especially now as it continues to exist in a world that marginalizes so many people.
MAX BOOTH III: Personally, what has kept me attracted to horror is the fact that it’s such an outsider weirdo’s genre. I don’t much care to see it go mainstream and am secretly glad awards typically ignore us. We don’t need them. I enjoy working in an industry that makes most people tense up and feel uncomfortable. I live in a very conservative town in the middle of Texas. I don’t want them accepting what I do. I don’t want any part of them.
Going into your actual question, representation is of course always important, regardless of its mainstream appeal. Anyone who feels differently is probably a terrible person. Spotlighting only straight white men is an easy way to experience the same stories over and over. Who wants that?
DG: I think many would argue that the Academy Awards gravitate to and showcase stories that are not only similar in narrative, but also similar in representation, which further makes the case for the genre not needing their spotlight. With the emergence of your newly labeled publication, Ghoulish Books, via a Kickstarter that has currently blown its goal of $7,000 well out of the water, what can you tell us about the kinds of unique, individualized stories that will be stepping out of the literary shadows in the coming months?
MAX BOOTH III: One of the books I am very, very excited about is Bound in Flesh: An Anthology of Trans Body Horror. Edited by Lor Gislason, this anthology features only trans and non-binary authors (including the editor and book cover artist). Many of these writers were new to me and discovered while reading slush, which is always an exciting moment when putting together an anthology. Aside from this anthology, this year we are publishing many debut books, such as E.M. Roy’s sapphic horror novel Let the Woods Keep Our Bodies (pitched as Twin Peaks meets My Best Friend’s Exorcism), Kayli Scholz’s Saint Grit (pitched as GUMMO meets THE CRAFT), Warren Wagner’s The Only Safe Place Left is the Dark (in which an HIV positive gay man must leave the relative safety of his cabin in the woods to brave the zombie apocalypse and find the medication he needs to stay alive), and Shelly Lyons’s Like Real (a body horror rom-com). And that’s not even everything we’re putting out this year. We definitely have an ambitious schedule for 2023 and I’m not freaking out about it at all hahaha.
DG: Wow, talk about an immensely stacked release schedule, and by the look of it, you’re carving out an outlet for voices that may not have a chance to be heard otherwise! With your Kickstarter well over its goal of $7000, were you shocked at how quickly the horror community came together and made this happen?
MAX BOOTH III: Oh, absolutely. I wasn’t even sure if we’d hit the $7,000 within the entire month, much less within 9 hours. We had stretch goals planned just in case it was successful, but I never really thought it’d happen. The community’s trust in us as horror publishers and booksellers has certainly been a pleasant experience. In fact, just this morning (Jan 23) we signed the lease and paid the deposit on a building we intend to turn into a horror bookstore. We hope to continue paying it forward and spotlighting indie horror forever–not just the stuff we publish but all indie horror.
DG: That’s amazing! Well, congratulations are in order! As of today, it has nearly $22,000 in support from the horror community with only days remaining. If that isn’t an indicator of how a supportive fans can be then I don’t know what is.
In closing out our interview, I wanna end on a more casual note: what horror have you been watching and reading and what are you most excited about for the new year?
MAX BOOTH III: Can’t wait for the new season of Yellowjackets, personally. Currently reading and enjoying Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt, The Beast You Are by Paul Tremblay, The Strange by Nathan Ballingrud, and The Deluge by Stephen Markley. I can’t wait for Victor LaValle’s new novel. One of the best there is and it’s always exciting when he releases something new.
Follow Max Booth III on Twitter at @GiveMeYourTeeth
Follow Ghoulish Books at @GhoulishBooks
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