Please introduce yourself and tell us about your background as a writer.
I am Glenn Arthur Rahman and I’ve been writing weird fiction since the early ‘70s. Also, along with doing fiction, I’ve been designing board games since the latter 1970s.

I began fiction writing while attending a one-room country schoolhouse, one of the last still operating in Minnesota as of the beginning of the 1960s. During my 5th and 6th grades, students were occasionally asked to compose poems. I remember one of these, but it’s so awful that I’ll spare the reader. Also in those days, just because I wanted to, I wrote a story about a time-traveling adventure in which my schoolmates I got into danger with dinosaurs.

During the 10th or 11th grade, my English class was assigned to write a short story and I took this as an opportunity to compose a half dozen of them and turned them in all at once. My English teacher was impressed and recommended me for a school writing award, which I won.

My favorite reading in those days was to be found in history and mythology. The science fiction made available in the school library was unfortunately meager and there was hardly anything on the shelves that could be called fantasy in the modern sense. I was in senior high school before I even heard of The Lord of the Rings. But I did like War of the Worlds and The Time Machine. My real input for fantasy was comic books, since my elder brother was buying very many of these and letting us younger kids read them. When he gave up buying comics, I only bought them selectively, favoring such titles as Conan the Barbarian, Howard the Duck, and Tomb of Dracula.

Toward the end of my high school years, the counselor interviewed me regarding my post-graduation plans. I told him that I most wanted to become a professional writer. His response was a word of caution, saying that people usually find it hard to make a living that way.

He was right. The wide-open pulp-fiction era had ended at the start of the fifties, more than 20 years earlier. The current popular fiction market was very tight and selective. Though energetic and enthusiastic, my creative efforts were cold-shouldered by the mainstream market. My first professional publication would not be realized until Chaosium anthologized a Lovecraftian pastiche I wrote with my brother Philip in 1997. The story was entitled “The Temple of Nephren-Ka” and it appeared in The Nyarlathotep Cycle. Doing Lovecraftiana came naturally to me, insofar as I had been reading HPL since college. 

I didn’t get meaningfully into paperback fiction until the late ‘60s. That wasn’t due to any lack of interest in good stories; it was just that the imaginative writing of the early ‘60s wasn’t anything that I could groove to. The popular authors up to that point had included Heinlein, Bloch, Bradbury, and Ellison. No one was offering action fantasy, a genre that mainstream publishing had incomprehensibly abandoned upon the death of the pulps. (Had the atomic bomb had made people disbelieve in magic? Go figure.) But in the late ‘60s, reprints from this era started appearing (mostly in Ballantine and Lancer). I was most attracted to Edgar Rice Burroughs (except for his Tarzan; the low budget movies featuring that character having put me off) and Robert E. Howard’s stories. 

To be experiencing pulp-era literature for the first time was to love it! This was real writing! To celebrate my 1969 junior college graduation, I bought a bag of fantasy books, mostly by Burroughs and Howard. I actually read King Kull before taking up with Conan and still maintain a slight preference for Kull. In my senior college years, my interests expanded into pulp horror and I became enthusiastic about H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.

In 1971, I earned my BA in Geological Science (no BS being offered for it in Winona State College). Getting no appropriate job offers, I took minor jobs, such as hotel clerking. The latter was not work-intensive and the lack of supervision permitted me to read while on duty and also to type manuscripts. I remained serious about being a writer but, alas, all through the ‘70s I was unable to get past the publishing companies’ gatekeepers. The editorial holdovers of the day were backward looking, cool to the changing center of gravity in imaginative literature. They couldn’t get their heads past the stodgy days of Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury, Vonnegut, Anderson, and Pohl. To me, those very names sounded dull and nothing being offered by the big publisher was anything that I wanted to emulate.

Frustrated, but still enthusiastic about writing, I turned to the fan-driven semi-pro market. These home-industry zines were being put out by younger people attuned to the pulp-inspired fantasy revival wave. It so happened that there existed a semi-pro writers’ group in the Twin Cities that I gravitated to because they were strongly into Lovecraft. During one get-together with those folks, I was introduced to a weird fiction writer whose work had just begun appearing in professional anthologies, Richard L. Tierney. The two of us shared similar interests, especially in the realm of sword and sorcery literature. Tierney had been a reader of the pulps during their last decade and now after his passing the consensus is forming that he belongs on the short list of the most skillful writers doing S&S in the ‘70s and ‘80s. His best creation was Simon of Gitta, a particular favorite of mine.

In 1980, the two of us collaborated on a joint Simon tale, “The Wedding of Sheila-na-gog” (published 1987 by Crypt of Cthulhu). Before long, we were doing a Simon novel together, entitled The Gardens of Lucullus (written in 1981, published by Sidecar in 2001. Note: Lucullus is planned for a new 2024 release by Pickman Press). In the next decade, we followed up Lucullus with another Simon novel, The Path of the Dragon.

During this era, with RLT’s help and advice, I acquired a literary agent in New York. On paper he was impressive, having already helped Stephen King become a writing superstar. But that gentleman never moved my career forward. His agency failed to sell what I sent him and I heard people claiming the agent had changed following his success with Stephen King. Supposedly, he was neglecting clients who came to him unable to boast about existing publishing credits.

I continued with the “semi-pros” for the rest of the ‘70s. When I was about to turn 30, I decided that I had to get serious about earning a middle-class living. On the strength of my typing skills (developed through story-writing), I landed a government job, one that I would hold onto doggedly for the next 25 years. Alas, the job demanded no creative input and was stupefyingly boring. But while doing repetitious office work, my mind kept active, continuously forming new story plots. Sometimes a new poem would commence running through my mind even at work and I would have to jot down its lines at odd moments.

The daily grind drastically reduced my free time for writing. Further, I had gotten involved in designing games for the war game market, a cottage industry that was flourishing just then. Working with my brother Kenneth (who was both a gamer and a gifted draftsman), we saw 3 of our board games published by 1980 (one of them being the cult game, Divine Right, which people still remember.) Additionally, I sold a solo board game called Trojan War and also created role-playing supplements for Judges Guild, Flying Buffalo, and Chaosium. (One of these is still available today in a revived edition from Chaosium, Alone Against the Frost, a Lovecraftian FRP adventure set in the Canadian wilds.) Unfortunately, the 1981 recession closed down the best of my war game and FRP markets. It would be 20 years before I would resume my game work.

Though writing less, I was working on perfecting my style. I wrote Heir of Darkness in the middle ‘80s, an S&S adventure set in Richard Tierney’s adventure world (published by New Infinities in 1989. Note: A new edition of Heir is currently slated for release in 2023 from Pickman Press.)

The Path of the Dragon turned out to be Richard’s last serious excursion into fiction. Although only in his late fifties and still enjoying decent health, he claimed to be creatively burned out. As it happened, he would produce no significant work after that time. Nonetheless, Dick remained a great fan of weird literature for the next 25 years and we stayed in contact. In 2022, he would suffer a minor accident that developed major complications, leading to his sudden death at the age of 86. Shortly before that, he had given me permission to carry on with the career of his fondest creation, Simon of Gitta. This I have already started to do with “The Hound of the Cherusci.”

Before Richard’s passing, he had closed a deal with Pickman Press to publish the entire Simon of Gitta saga. This was to include all of our collaborative work, but Richard was now feeling his years and so passed the task of editing our joint work over to me. The Path of the Dragon is slated for production by Pickman Press in the current year, 2023.

By 2020, my endeavors in game design were winding down. Over the past decade, my only significant fiction writing had been a 546-page paperback collection of short stories dealing with Minaria, the background world featured in Divine Right. This was entitled The Minarian Legends (2022) and is currently available at Amazon.com and other distributors.

After licensing my game IP to a publisher, I started work on a new literary project, a collection of stories that had been in my mind to do for the last 40 years. It featured a couple of zany medieval characters, Bingor and Donalbain, who had a way of getting waylaid by supernatural evil. The book’s writing and polishing process took a year to complete. I called it A Feast of Ambrosia and when it turned out that the selected publisher (at his own insistent request) had not so much as looked at it after nine months, I withdrew Ambrosia and sent the manuscript to DMR Books. Ambrosia was readily accepted there and went on sale 9 months later, as of February 6, 2023.

What are the most prominent influences on your writing? How do you incorporate those influences without being derivative?
Without doubt, the works of the “Big Three” of pulp literature have been my guides for excellence: H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith. Also, as already stated, I had been strongly influenced by the sword and sorcery techniques of Richard L. Tierney.

To address the subject of derivativeness, I’m tempted to ask: “What’s wrong with being derivative?” Okay, I’m being facetious. In fact, I enjoy working with established characters and have gained much from collaborating with RLT on Simon of Gitta.

This being said, the subject of derivative writing makes for an interesting topic. New writers beware: it is hard to sell a flatly derivative book. As hard as it is to do “one’s own thing,” it is even harder to do someone else’s thing. Nonetheless, some derivative books have done credibly well. Lin Carter is cited as being a successful derivative writer, but he represents an uncommon case. As a professional editor with wide connections inside professional publishing, Lin could swing deals that a less well-placed person never could.

Looking at the bigger picture, derivative work can be useful in developing a young writer’s skills. Though a bland and shallow imitative book will rarely achieve individual success, its author -- if he is truly a writer at heart -- will gain seasoning from deeply delving into a master’s methods and craftsmanship. Practice makes perfect. Terry Brooks’ Shannara series starts out as Tolkien done badly, but Brooks eventually vindicated himself as a craftsman. His later works increasingly improved as he progressively expressed his own individual spirit.

And then there is the noteworthy case of John Jakes, who started out with the lackluster, Conan-style Brak the Barbarian. But Jake had unplumbed talents that he eventually channeled into historical romances, such as the North and South series. To get three TV miniseries out of this one idea certainly makes him a winner, at least financially.

What makes for success if one is continuing another author’s work as either an authorized or unauthorized successor? I think it is a passion for that author’s work, meticulous scholarship regarding it, and a faultless respect for the letter and verse of the canon.

With self-publishing easier than ever, there are tons of books being released every day. What makes your work stand out from the crowd? What can readers get out of your work that they can’t from anyone else?
I hope my work stands out. Too few have told me that it does. But just because fans are saying nothing to me at all, I don’t go into a depression about it. What can readers get from my stories? Hopefully, good reading. There is a large and diverse audience out there that provides a readership for people doing a wide variety of well-crafted work. I like reading good literature and by doing a good product myself I’m hopeful that others shall gravitate into my fandom. I’m motivated to do what I do because I have been uninterested in the bulk of recent writing. Other people’s bad composition is my inspiration to write the stories that aren’t being written as often as they should be.

Of course, an author can be a poor judge of his own best writing. A. Conan Doyle notoriously maintained that The White Company (1891) was his best novel creation. I haven’t read that book, so I have nothing to say against it. But it has to mean something that The White Company has never been translated into film. In contrast, how many successful Sherlock Holmes movies and television episodes have been made?

The ongoing problem with gaining an audience involves the difficulty of attracting attention. The operating word here is “publicity.” Basically, a book sells more if a wide range of people learn of its existence. But that subject is best taken up below, when we discuss marketing.

In the larger view, how does one create a product that reaches the largest number of readers? What, really, can one person do toward this end? The American readership is too large too display any coherent themes. It is an amalgamation of many interests, too many for any one writer to address. How can a would-be author discover what he needs to know about the shifting tastes of his day? Can he gain wisdom from friends and relatives? Not hardly. The usual attitude of the common reader is, “I don’t know anything about art, but I know what I like.”

Fair enough. My advice to a writer is to stop “seeking the Holy Grail” and simply write the sort of book that he himself most wants to read. If I had found more enjoyable stories in my teens and twenties, I probably wouldn’t have become a writer at all. Writing is an art and it should not be smothered by over-intellectualization, by fretting about what other people are thinking. Unless a writer’s tastes are awful, there are plenty of readers “out there” who would be enjoying his work if only they could find it. But is it fair to expect the writer, with his limited wherewithal to go out and find those readers? Life is short and time is limited; the best thing a writer can do for his art is to write, not pursue “the questing beast.”

In broad terms, I think it is clear that what readers want are books in which those things that he wants to happen are made to happen. Different readers want different things to happen, unfortunately, and one cannot meaningfully work to please the entire mass of the readership. After all, where can we find information about this array of widespread tastes? There are few people, either writers or voracious readers, who have valid opinions to offer on that score. To chase after random opinions is as useful as chasing after will o’ the wisps. What a writer can more usefully do is concentrate on putting forth his best product. And I think the best product is one that is produced with the author addressing it with a sense of fun and excitement.

Bear in mind that writers are individualistic and, as a group, they find fun and excitement in many different topics and themes. What thrills one bores another. There is no consensus on how to write “the great American novel.” So far, everyone who has tried to do it has fallen on his face. Writing is for the brave. Don’t be discouraged that you are not selling to the millions. No one is ever going to win over more than a very small particle of the entire reading audience. Write to have fun; if you are not having fun, don’t write. If you are writing primarily for money, well, there are easier ways to be poor.

I hesitate to throw numbers around, but here goes: The average book in America currently sells 500 copies. Only 10 books sold more than a million copies last year, and fewer than 500 books sell more than 100,000. There are 332,403,650 adult Americans. 130,000,000 of them have low reading skills, so we’ll take them out of the total. There you have it, there’s about 203.5 million potential readers in the USA. No type of book, no matter how well done, will interest more than a tiny fraction of them. Even if someone puts out a rare book that sells a million copies, he has only connected with 1/203 of the available American readership (roughly a half percent). If we look at the lesser books (500 of them) that sell 100,000 copies each, the actual market for each is only about 1/2000 of the American readers.

As for the average book, the ones that sell about 500 copies, each one’s share of the market is 1/400,000. Pretty plainly, no one is likely to ever win more than a microscopic minority of the available readership. If one wants big money, he has a better chance for success if he goes to Las Vegas and bets high.

To recap, a writer puts himself on the firmest ground by simply writing the best book he can, using his own criteria to decide what makes his book the best. If his judgment is wrong, he will fail. If his talent is small, he will fail. If he has bad luck, he will fail. But if things break his way, he can eek by. Still, be aware that many who have talent will, nonetheless, go unrewarded. My brother Philip ran a very good small press for weird fiction for over 30 years. He drew supportive comments from the tiny market consisting of people who respected the old pulp. Though he learned what he could learn and did what he could do, over that whole span of time he was only selling about 400 copies per book – and this level of support rarely allowed him to break even, given necessary expenses. All along, his take-home pay was subsidizing the good work that he was doing to enhance the reading enjoyment of his audience.

Many authors say marketing is one of their biggest challenges. What tactics have you found to be most effective for getting your name out there?
Yes, this is the proper place to address the subject of marketing. But I’m not so sure how a writer can do anything at all to market his own work. Isn’t it the writer’s job to create the product, not to market it? Creating and marketing are entirely different disciplines. Writing is art, marketing is business. Should we expect a skilled wall painter to be good at plumbing as well? The good writer who is simultaneously a good businessman is a rare breed.

I confess that I don’t have any special marketing aplomb. I feel my job is done when I have completed my work of art. What can a freelance writer realistically do to inform masses of people about his work? Go to a local newspaper and swing an interview? That can be done near to where he lives, and I’ve done that multiple times, but will a paper located a thousand miles away from home be interested in what a non-local minor writer is doing? The number of superstar authors able to profitably trade on their name is very small. Maybe Stephen King can usefully do marketing work, but any effort I make is bound to get the “Glenn Rahman who?” treatment. Marketing is the proper role of a publisher and a publisher who is apt at marketing is a pearl beyond price.

Marketing is an engaging subject nonetheless, but mostly because it’s a blood sport with its amusing aspects. When we talk about marketing, who should we take for our role models? Shouldn’t the long-lived and (formerly) popular Walt Disney corporation be looked at as past masters at marketing? Has anyone noticed that Disney is commonly shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing campaigns that push bad products (of which they produce many) and are still ending up with dud releases that no one cares to see?

A big-spending publicity campaign will bring in more customers, granted, but at what cost per capita? Quick research tells one that a reasonable show ticket is over $10 now. The movie company’s take is about 60% domestically (and 20%-40% overseas). At best, if one spends more than $6 to bring a single new body into a show hall, the marketing is actually losing money. I think a successful movie like Joker manages to win by means of good word of mouth, not by costly promotion stunts and expensive ads. Without releasing good products that produce positive word of mouth, a company will only increase its losses by doing major marketing. Could any amount of marketing have made Strange World into a financial success? If a work is one that interests few people, marketing is a fine way to throw good money after bad.

In the second part of this interview, which can be found here, Glenn discusses his trip to New England where he visited many locations that inspired H.P. Lovecraft.