Writing career
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Clegg finished writing his first novel, Goat Dance, in 1987. Pocket Books published it in 1989, and Goat Dance was nominated for Outstanding First Novel by the Horror Writers Association. Pocket also published his second, third, and fourth novels, Breeder (1990), Neverland (1991) and Dark of the Eye (1994). Clegg's next novel, The Children's Hour (1995), was published by Dell, but the imprint dropped its horror line four months later, leaving him without a publisher. His sixth novel, Bad Karma (1997), written under the pseudonym Andrew Harper, was published by Kensington Books, and later adapted for the screen by Randall Frakes. The resulting 2002 film, directed by John Hough and starring Patsy Kensit, was released as Bad Karma internationally and as Hell's Gate in the United States.
In March 1999, Clegg announced that he would be distributing his new ghost novel Naomi in serial installments via email. [4] Naomi debuted in May 1999 and became the Internet's first publisher-sponsored e-serial. [2] Publishers Weekly called it "arguably, the first major work of fiction to originate in cyberspace." [5] Some four thousand mailing list subscribers received free chapters of Naomi on a weekly basis, boosting print numbers for the 2001 Leisure Books paperback version from the low 50,000 range to over 125,000.[ citation needed ]
Clegg found a new publishing home with Dorchester's Leisure imprint, a small New York publisher committed to its horror line. Leisure brought out The Halloween Man in 1998, Clegg's short story collection The Nightmare Chronicles, (which won the Bram Stoker Award and the International Horror Guild Award) in 1999, and two novels, You Come When I Call You and Mischief, in 2000. Also that year, Cemetery Dance Publications published the print edition of Clegg's novella Purity, which Clegg had made available for free download on his website, and the author launched another e-book, Nightmare House, which was serialized on a weekly basis on the DouglasClegg mailing list at Onelist.com. A bidding war erupted between three companies for sponsorship of the mailing list for the duration of the serial.[ citation needed ] Cemetery Dance won, and paid Clegg a five-figure fee for his free email novel,[ citation needed ] which was published in hardcover the following year. Cemetery Dance also sponsored the Harrow Haunting website, which offered readers multi-media along with the e-book. A Nightmare House sequel, The Infinite, became Leisure's first hardcover in 2001.
Since then, Clegg has published several other novels and collections, including the 2004 Shocker Award-winning collection, The Machinery of Night. His current publishers include Cemetery Dance Publications, Tor Books, Berkley/Ace, Leisure Books, and Wildside Press. Under the pseudonym Andrew Harper, the novels Red Angel and Night Cage also were released.
Clegg's Harrow series includes Nightmare House (1999), Mischief (2000), The Infinite (2001) and The Abandoned (2005), as well as the prequel novellas The Necromancer (2003) and Isis (2006). The Vampyricon trilogy, a dark fantasy series about vampirism and mythology set in an alternate medieval history, includes The Priest of Blood (2005), The Lady of Serpents (2006) and The Queen of Wolves (2007). The Priest of Blood hit the extended New York Times bestseller list in hardcover in late 2005. In 2006 Clegg also began his Mordred trilogy with Mordred, Bastard Son . [6] The novel was nominated for a 2006 Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror. [7]
In 2009, Lonely Road Books announced that they would be publishing The Vampyricon Trilogy: The Definitive Special Edition. The book was scheduled to include all three of the Vampyricon novels, re-edited by the author, as well as an addendum of around 50 to 100 pages of exclusive "deleted scenes" and "lost material" and color and black and white artwork by Erin Wells. Lonely Road announced two editions: a Limited Edition of 300 copies and a Lettered Edition of 52 copies. [8]
