A huge thank you to Michael Gingold and Fangoria for the awesome interview about our releases!
EXCERPT: Amidst the current wave of nostalgia novelizations, author Christian Francis stands apart. Not only has he made it his mission to bring cult faves of the past to the printed page, he formed his own outfit, Echo On Publishing, to do so. Debuting last fall with the adaptation of Brad Anderson’s acclaimed Session 9, Echo On has since issued Francis’ book versions of The First Power and the Maniac Cop trilogy. Coming up are The Gate, Night of the Comet, Strangeland, In the Mouth of Madness (credited to the film’s fictitious author Sutter Cane), Beneath Perfection (based on the original screenplay for Tremors) and, just in time for Christmas, 3615 Dial Code Santa Claus.
A horror fan since childhood, Francis first fell in love with fright-film paperbacks while attending a British school in Paris during the 1980s. “Going to the cinema was tricky,” he recalls, “since all films at the nearby cinemas were dubbed into French without subtitles, and video stores weren’t exactly bursting with original-language options. So I was stuck with only being able to see what could be recorded from TV, or bought when I returned to the UK with a meager amount of pocket money.
“I was already an avid horror book reader by then,” he continues, “and it was around 1986 that I discovered novelizations, the perfect solution to not being able to experience newer or unavailable films. Suddenly, bookstores became my cinemas, pages my screen. Gremlins, Aliens, The Lost Boys, The Goonies, The Blob—I experienced them all through words long before I saw the films themselves. When done well, novelizations aren’t just substitutes; they’re sublime experiences in their own right, so I began to seek them out. And in the subsequent years, even if I could see the films, I would try to read the novelization first.”
See the full article here