More like a boo-kshop
28-year-old George Woods has dreamed of owning a bookshop since he was a little kid – and today, that dream is finally coming true. George, with help from his husband Joseph and their friend Sarah, is launching Shroud Books – "a new and used bookstore specializing in horror and gothic lit" – just in time for Black Friday.
I recently had the opportunity to ask George some questions about Shroud Books, his own relationship with horror, and his opinions on Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
Shroud Books is based out of London, where George has been living for the last two years. "I moved here when I was coming out of the back end of a pretty bad depression. I was in a really dark time of my life and I needed a fresh start. I decided to pack up and move to the capital and follow my dream," George explained. "Before moving to London I was living in Norwich where I studied illustration with the hope of being an illustrator for publishing but it was never as much of my passion as literature and writing is. I was always told I couldn’t be a writer in high school because I’m dyslexic but working with books is my dream."
That dream is a long-held one. "I've always wanted a bookshop, since I was a little kid it was a dream. Like how most five year old boys want to be a fireman or a postman, I wanted to work in a bookshop," George told me. "Growing up as a teenager and the awkward gay kid I was always drawn to outcasts in media and I think that’s what drew me to darker aesthetics and the love of gothic and horror literature. I watched my first horror movie when I was twelve and it scared the hell out of me but I loved it. When I go to a big chain bookshop I love being there but I always leave disappointed because the horror sections are so small, they’re usually just full of classic novels and Stephen King books, which is are all great books but there’s so much more out there! My frustration with the lack of horror novels in bookshops turned in to Shroud Books."
The horror genre and the queer community have a complicated history. Characters like Norman Bates and Buffalo Bill have literally villainized trans people, portraying them as deranged killers whose murderous tendencies are inextricable from their desire to be recognized as women. However, horror has also provided an outlet and a community for many young queer people who feel out of place or different from their peers, or have been told that the way they are is "unacceptable".
"Horror and the queer community has such a love/hate relationship. As in we love horror and they seem to hate us. I fell in love with horror as a queer person because it was relatable, I didn’t care that I was relating to a villain that much because at least it was something," George said. "I do still find it disappointing when people talk about movies with such a clear homophobic or transphobic narrative but say nothing about it. Sleepaway Camp is a great example of that, people talk about it all the time but they smooth over the fact the “big twist” was that the killer was trans. And don’t even get me started on Silence of the Lambs. There have been a few good examples in the history of horror where they got it right but not many."
However, George is hoping to flip the script, so to speak, and highlight books that do get it right. "That’s something I really want to focus on with Shroud Books, any self-published or indie-published authors who don’t see themselves highlighted in the wider horror industry have a home with Shroud Books," he told me. "I did recently read The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher and it was the best example of queer representation I’ve come across in a while. The supporting role in the book is a queer person, but it’s not the focus or even really relevant, I love that, it makes the world Kingfisher created so real. Queer people exist in real life without having a reason, we don’t need a reason to exist in literature."
After years of loving horror and wanting to work with books, George is excited – and a little nervous – about today's launch. "It is a bit of a “soft launch” because I don’t have loads of money backing me on this yet," he clarified. "If things go well we’ll start to make more money to buy more stock soon and then keep growing bit by bit. I don’t even have a real shop yet, Shroud Books right now is a corner of my bedroom so I can run the website. As well as excited, I’m completely terrified. I’m taking this huge leap of faith in supporting myself financially and jumping in to a bookshop. During a pandemic and everything, I must be insane. This is the part of the horror book where I accidentally rent a haunted bookshop or find a witches spell book in my stock order or something."
While Shroud Books is currently online-only, George has plans to get a brick-and-mortar store at some point in the future, hopefully within the next year. After that, he's hoping to expand his business beyond just selling books. "Over the next few years I want to look in to publishing," George said. "I would love to open a publishing company as part of the Shroud Books brand that puts a bigger focus on minority writers. Horror has a long way to go before it becomes truly diverse and I want Shroud Books to be a big part of that."
Of course, there's a pretty big elephant in the room when it comes to opening a small, independent bookstore these days. In recent years, Amazon has grown into a trillion dollar e-commerce giant, making it increasingly difficult for small bookstores to survive. However, George is confident that it won't be too much of a problem.
"The bookstores vs. amazon thing is actually really interesting," he commented. "Amazon doesn’t affect indie bookshops as much as you would think because the people who really spend a lot of money and time on books want the experience of a bookshop. I know loads of people who will go in to a bookshop with no intention of buying but will leave two hours later with a bag full of books because there’s something so intoxicating in being in a bookshop. Over the last eight years or so indie bookshops have been back on the rise. Things might change again after the pandemic, and Amazon is clearly still growing as one of the biggest companies in the world but the indies are fighting for our space in the market back and I think we’ll be okay."
While George loves many, many horror novels – enough to fill a bookshop with, even – his all-time favourite is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. "The first time I read it I was so confused because it’s NOTHING like any movie based on it, for some reason no one wants to make a true to form adaptation of Frankenstein," George told me. "But it’s got so much going on, Victor Frankenstein loses his faith in his religion after the hardships he’s faced. The hole left where his god used to be, he decides to fill himself claiming to be a god. It’s aesthetic nihilism years before Nietzsche’s philosophy existed. Shelley predicted the death of religion and the rise of science, inventing the 'science fiction' genre in the process. The story of his creation learning that he’s the only one of his kind, and he’s completely alone in the world is actually heartbreaking. He tries to fit in to world and it rejects him, every action he takes is to gain a companion. I get weirdly passionate about this book."
Aside from books, George is also a longtime fan of my favourite show, Buffy The Vampire Slayer – in fact, he started watching it when he was just eight years old. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of the best TV shows," George said. "I actually have a portrait of Buffy on my arm next to a portrait of Wednesday Addams. I watched it when I was a kid and it was still coming out weekly. My mum wouldn’t let me watch it because I think I was only seven or eight years old when it started but my dad used to tape it (actually tape it on VHS) so we could watch it together. I fell in love with this gang of misfits fighting evil and trying to finish school, I could relate to Willow getting bullied for things she couldn’t control and Xander being impossible awkward but trying so hard to fit in. I was watching people I could reasonably see myself hanging out with. Obviously, when I was seven I didn’t think this, I probably just thought: 'Vampires, cool!'. When I was eleven or twelve I started to realise I wasn’t the same as everyone else in my high school. I wasn’t a vampire slayer but I was gay and I didn’t know how to deal with that. Buffy really became a safe space for me. It had finished by then but I had the boxsets and I would rewatch it all the time. Willow going through the same thing was incredible to me, She was the only queer person I’d ever seen before, not just on TV but ever. I was the only queer person I knew and it was painfully isolating but when I watched Buffy I was among friends. I think Buffy is important to a lot of queer people who grew up during the late ‘90s and ‘00s because it was the first time we saw ourselves and we weren’t the victim or the villain anymore."
Since starting on his Shroud Books journey, George has come across several other spooky businesses. "One that I love so much is Doom & Bloom; like me, it’s run by just one person. Rebecca creates stunning dry flower arrangements, wreaths, and soon fresh flowers that all have a gothic theme. When I started working on a bookshop with a gothic focus it never occurred to me that people would be doing the same thing with other classic retail like floristry," he explained. "Another company I’ve been talking to is Haunt Publishing, they run out of Scotland and they’re an independent publishing company focusing on new gothic literature. It’s such a great niche because gothic lit doesn’t have much of a focus anymore, people just want to be scared but with the rise of gothic adaptations like Netflix’s Rebecca and The Haunting of Bly Manor, it’s definitely on the rise and it’s my favourite horror literature subgenre."