INTERVIEW: This Kickstarter campaign for ‘Kolchak’ is truly monstrous
Image courtesy of Monstrous Books / Provided by Superfan Promotions with permission.
Kolchak: The Night Stalker continues to be a genre phenomenon decades after its initial release as a book, pair of movies and TV show starring Darren McGavin. Now, the Kolchak fever continues with a limited edition release of Jeff Rice’s original Kolchak novel, the one that started it all. Monstrous Books and editor-writer James Aquilone are behind the release, which is currently raising funds via Kickstarter. It should come as no surprise that the project is fully funded and then some. Pledges continues through the end of July 11.
Fans can expect this book to have some special features, including a brand-new hard cover and foreword by actor David Dastmalchian, star of this year’s hit horror movie Late Night With the Devil. Press notes also indicate there’ll be an afterword by writer-producer Rodney Barnes, essay on Jeff Rice by Kolchak expert Mark Dawidziak, and cover and spot illustrations by Russ Braun. That’s a lot of Kolchak for enthusiasts.
Quite appropriately, this limited edition will have a run of only 1,973 copies. Rice’s original novel came out in 1973, so this release is also celebrating 50 years of Kolchak. In this classic tale, the corpses of young women have been turning up in the Las Vegas area. They are mysteriously drained of blood with puncture wounds on their neck. It’s up to Carl Kolchak to solve the mystery and save the day.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Aquilone, the maestro behind the book project. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
Why should Kolchak fans be excited about this Kickstarter campaign?
Kolchak fans should be excited for a few reasons. It’s the first hardcover edition. We’ve restored the original content missing from the last reprint, fixed the typos and errors from previous editions. We’ve added new essays from David Dastmalchian, Rodney Barnes and Mark Dawidziak, and we have cover art and interior illustrations by Russ Braun.
How did you employ the help of writer and actor David Dastmalchian for this project?
David is one of the biggest Kolchak fans out there. I knew he had been wanting to work on some Kolchak projects, so I reached out to him. And fortunately he said yes.
How does this novel compare to the TV show and movie?
The TV movie is pretty faithful to the novel, but there are a few differences. The biggest is that in the novel Jeff Rice is a character. The conceit is that Jeff, who was a Las Vegas reporter himself in real life, meets Carl, who then gives him his notes about the greatest manhunt in Las Vegas history, and throughout the book Jeff chimes in with notes and comments.
Can you believe Kolchak fandom continues to this day?
It’s pretty incredible. There’s a huge fandom out there that’s very active. Whenever I go to a convention, people only want to talk about Kolchak with me.
Will this be the biggest release ever from Monstrous Books?
It certainly looks like it. This is already the biggest crowdfunding campaign for a Monstrous book and is on pace to be my highest funded and most backed campaign. We’ll be shipping out a lot of books in a few months.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Kolchak: The Night Stalker is currently being crowdfunded via Kickstarter. Click here for more information.
