Karl’s Comments (group member since Sep 26, 2010)

Karl’s comments from the Q&A with Karl Vadaszffy, author of Full of Sin group.

I hope the topic says it all.

Mine's Ian McEwan's The Cement Garden. It's the novel that inspired me to write my novel.

I'm presenting my debut novel, Full of Sin, and my ideas on the challenges of writing dark fiction to a writers' group in a couple of weeks. So this got me thinking: what is it that makes dark fiction so challenging?

When I say challenging, I mean what makes publishers cautious about releasing it? Why did someone say 'yes' to American Psycho but 'no' to much of the dark fiction that's written today? Why do writers of dark fiction find support from independent publishers and not the mainstream? It took me four years before I found a publisher who embraced dark fiction; the others just said 'too dark', even though I've read much darker.

Just think, if someone hadn't been brave we wouldn't have Ian McEwan, Stephen King, Brett Easton Ellis... so many. I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts.