Les Daniels

Les Daniels
Daniels (right) with Fred Chappell in 1990
Born	(1943-10-27)October 27, 1943
Died	November 5, 2011(2011-11-05) (aged 68)
Occupation	Writer musician journalist
Alma mater	Brown University
Genre	Gothic fiction horror fiction historical fiction

Leslie Noel Daniels III, better known as Les Daniels (October 27, 1943 – November 5, 2011^[1]), was an American writer.

Background

Daniels attended Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where he wrote his master's thesis on Frankenstein, and he worked as a musician and as a journalist.^[2]

Career

He was the author of five novels featuring the

, where the horror of his vampirism is again contrasted with non-supernatural evil, now in the person of Sebastian's human enemy, Reginald Callender. A sixth (and presumably final) Don Sebastian novel set in Tibet and entitled White Demon was planned and is advertised by some sources as being available for purchase, but in fact was never completed: Daniels had begun writing it before abandoning it due to the demands of his non-fiction projects and was told when able to resume that his publisher had lost interest.^[4]

Daniels also worked with the historical fiction genre. The Black Castle features appearances by Torquemada and Columbus; in The Silver Skull Sebastian confronts Hernán Cortés; in Citizen Vampire he has a couple of friendly encounters with the Marquis de Sade; and Madame Tussaud makes an appearance in Yellow Fog.^[4]

Daniels described his works as "tragedy, in which evil consumes itself", as opposed to the melodrama of most contemporary horror novels, in which "customarily good guys meet bad guys and win in two out of three falls".^[5] He cited Robert Bloch as an influence on his sardonic style, and was an enthusiast of the works of John Dickson Carr, who in several of his own works combined historical fiction with horror and the detective story.^[6]

Daniels was also the author of Comix: A History of Comic Books in America (Dutton, 1971) — with illustrations by the

Works

Fiction

Don Sebastian de Villanueva

• The Black Castle (1978)
• The Silver Skull (1979)
• Citizen Vampire (1981)
• Yellow Fog (1986; revised and expanded edition 1988)
• No Blood Spilled (1991)
• White Demon (begun circa 1991 but never completed)

An unabridged audio-book recording of The Black Castle was released by Crossroad Press in 2018.^[8]

Non-fiction

• Comix: A History of Comic Books in America 198 pages, 1971,
  ISBN 978-0517110379
• Living in Fear: A History of Horror in the Mass Media, 248 pages, 1975,
  ISBN 978-0684143422
• ISBN 978-0810938212
• ISBN 978-0821220764
• ISBN 978-0811821629
• Superman: Masterpiece Edition, 96 pages, 1999, Chronicle Books,
  ISBN 978-0811821117
• ISBN 978-0811824705
• The Batman Masterpiece Edition: The Caped Crusader's Golden Age, 96 pages, 2000, Chronicle Books,
  ISBN 978-0811827829
• ISBN 978-0811831116
• Wonder Woman: The Golden Age, 80 pages, 2001, Chronicle Books,
  ISBN 978-0811831239
• ISBN 978-0810949690

As editor

• Thirteen Tales of Terror (1971; with Diane Thompson)
• Fear (1975)
• Dying of Fright: Masterpieces of the Macabre (1976)

See also

• List of horror fiction authors

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Hevesi, Dennis (November 15, 2011). "Les Daniels, Historian of Comic Books, Dies at 68". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 19, 2017. Retrieved February 27, 2017.
2. ^ Daniels, Les. The Black Castle (1978, Charles Scribner's Sons, NY), jacket bio.
3. ISBN 0-7867-1372-0
   .
4. ^ ^{a b c} Ward, Kyla (1995). "Living With Fear". Tabula Rasa. Archived from the original on July 31, 2009. Retrieved July 19, 2009.
5. ^ Daniels, Yellow Fog (1986), author's introduction
6. ^ S. T. Joshi, "Les Daniels: The Horror of History" in The Evolution of the Weird Tale (Hippocampus Press 2004), p.166.
7. ^
   Fictioneer Books
   . pp. 5–17.
8. ^ The Black Castle.

External links

• Les Daniels at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database