Black Static #38 Horror Magazine by TTA Press

Author:TTA Press [TTA Press]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TTA Press
Published: 2014-07-08T00:00:00+00:00

HIS ARTIST WIFE

JOHN GRANT

illustrated by Vincent Sammy

You’re far more likely to have heard of my artist wife Lucille Hrade than of me. Her paintings have a way of communicating directly to people. They’re realistic – you can see the subjects of her portraits breathe, feel the heat of her sun-baked landscapes – but at the same time, like Andrew Wyeth’s work, they have just enough of what I call the askew in them to make you think you’re daringly enjoying experimental art. They’re ideal for feeding the pseudo intellectual pretensions of the readers of color magazines, too, which is the main reason you’d be bound to recognize her work, even if her name doesn’t immediately mean anything to you.

It sounds as if I’m denigrating her art, but I’m not. Unlike many of the other painters whose stuff fills the mags you find in dentists’ waiting rooms, she’s good. There are paintings of hers not just in the Museum of Modern Art but in the Met. London’s Tate Gallery has a couple, and there’s one in the National Portrait Gallery there. Three in the Louvre, and so on. She’s a truly gifted artist.

Was.

The odd thing, though, is that, if you weren’t looking at one of her pictures while waiting your turn at the dentist, you might just possibly, at least until a few years ago, have been reading a paperback by me. Not that I’d expect you to recognize my name. I used it on a few short stories and one or two of my early novels, back in the mid-1960s, but as soon as my pace really picked up I had to start using pseudonyms. From 1964 until recently, over thirty years later, I hardly ever published less than a book a month, and some months saw two or even three appear. All paperbacks, of course – almost all, anyway; in the beginning there was a small spattering of hardcovers before my publishers realized where my true talents lay. I’ve written romances. I’ve written Westerns. I’ve written “adult” novels. I’ve written thrillers and mysteries and discreet erotica for ladies – some gay erotica too, although I find that more difficult because I’m not gay. I’ve written fantasy and science fiction; I’ve picked up a couple of minor awards in those fields. My series of cozy detective stories featuring Fenella Reade was particularly successful; every now and then I think of adding to it. And then there are the books I’ve ghostwritten…

I was probably the last great King of the Pulps, and my reign was a long one.

Now that the mass market paperback’s popularity is ebbing, my output’s doing likewise. No problem. Even leaving aside Lucy’s earnings, I’ve managed to put aside enough money to keep me in comfort indefinitely. For the first time since I was nineteen, excited by the appearance of my debut novel – with my name on it, my real name – I can sit back and take my time, no agent on my neck to insist that everything be done with an eye to selling-points.

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