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David
answers questions submitted by fans from all over the world. He's
answered questions like, "What made you decide to become
a writer?" Or, "Of the books you've written, what's
your favorite?"
This section
of the David Morrell Network takes you up-close-and-personal with
David as he answers fans' most Frequently Asked Questions. Simply
click on each of the questions to learn more.
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| What are your most collectible books? |
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Until THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE ROSE, my hardbacks didn’t have a large first printing. Thus the American first editions of FIRST BLOOD (15,000 copies), Testament (10,000 copies), LAST REVEILLE (7,000 copies), THE TOTEM (7,000 copies), and BLOOD OATH (5,000 copies) are hard to find. The British editions were comparably small. I’ve seen first editions of FIRST BLOOD sell for $300 and higher while the other books are sometimes priced between $50 and $100. On the other hand, I’ve heard of people finding copies for a couple of dollars at a garage sale. Looking for them can be amusing. See Ebay.com, Alibris.com, or ABEbooks.com. To my knowledge, there were no second editions of any of these novels, but please check on the copyright page to make sure. Every copy of the 1972 M. Evans FIRST BLOOD is a first edition, even though it doesn’t say on the copyright page. If it’s a book-club edition (noted on the flap where the price would normally be), it’s of limited value. The 1979 edition of THE TOTEM is rare for another reason besides scarcity. My editor and I disagreed about the manuscript. The published version contained my extensive and reluctant revisions. Years later, in 1994, I had the chance to see the original version published (it’s twice as long, with a different style and a different beginning and ending). That is the version currently in print. The specialty publisher Donald M. Grant (grantbooks.com) put out 5,000 hardbacks of THE TOTEM (COMPLETE AND UNALTERED) in a handsome volume that includes illustrations by Tom Canty. It is still available: a bargain at $24.95. Grant did an even more handsome, signed, limited edition of the book (1,000 copies), which had an oversized format, color illustrations, and an interesting lift-up tray case ($100). My introduction to the Grant editions and the Warner paperback explains THE TOTEM’s complicated textual history. I like both versions of the book (a comparison of the two will surprise you), but the longer one has scenes that I hated to lose. Grant also did a beautiful version of my Christmas fable for children and adults, THE HUNDRED-YEAR CHRISTMAS. This 70-page, oversized, colorfully illustrated hardback is easily my most attractive. There are only 600 copies. Each is numbered and signed by me and the artist R. J. Krupowitz (who died a few years after the book was published). THE HUNDRED-YEAR CHRISTMAS is no longer available from the publisher and is very hard to find. The going price, if you can find one, is around $100. Another specialty publisher Cemetery Dance (cemeterydance.com) did a fancy hardback of BLACK EVENING. Priced at $40, it has illustrations by Steve Gervais and is limited to 1,000 copies, all of them signed by me. Still available, this is the only American hardback, although the British publisher Headline did a hardback as well. A British publisher New English Library did the only hardback of my novelization for RAMBO III, which appeared everywhere in paperback. There may have been as few as 500 of these hardbacks, which were manufactured for libraries. I have no idea how much these rarities are selling for on the secondary market. Finally, Subterranean Press did a chapbook (another word for an impressive-looking pamphlet) of my essay about the difficulties I had writing TESTAMENT. It’s called TESTAMENT: THE UNPUBLISHED PROLOGUES and includes sections that did not appear in the published novel. There are only 250 of these, each signed by me and numbered. These originally sold for around $12. A more deluxe version was identified by the letters of the alphabet and sold for twice as much. Neither version is now available from the publisher. I’ve never seen them on the secondary market, so I have no idea of their current price.
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| Several of your books are dedicated to Philip Klass and William Tenn. Who are they? |
| When I went to Penn State to study with Philip Young, I met a fiction writer named Philip Klass (not to be confused with the UFO expert by the same name). Klass was the first professional writer I’d ever met. Under the name William Tenn, he had written numerous, admired science fiction stories in the fifties and was now teaching fiction writing at Penn State. I persuaded him to give me some instruction, but alas he hated the stories I gave him. He was right to hate them. I now realize how false and imitative they were. But with Klass’s help, I learned to look inward and write fiction that was distinctly my own, fiction that addressed the traumas of my past (I’d been abandoned in an orphanage, for example), fiction that dramatized the intense emotions I was still struggling to resolve. I am immensely indebted to Philip Klass/William Tenn. What he taught me is discussed at length in my preface to BLACK EVENING and in the early sections of LESSONS FROM A LIFETIME OF WRITING. |
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