Today we’d like to introduce you to Steven Hoveke.
Hi Steven, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I spent the first number of years of my working life bouncing around jobs, looking for something that would grab me, I had no strong drive towards anything in particular, other a childhood dream to become a film special effects artist. I loved horror/sci-fi movies and I felt like that was one thing I would really enjoy. I was never able to get any thing going in that way as all movie stuff was in Hollywood (and some in New York) when I was young and I was in the heartland, having grown up in the suburbs of Chicago.
So I eventually landed in Central Illinois where I discovered a natural connection to the field of construction. So i Spent the next 20 years doing exactly that.
There were some other things along the way of course, I worked simultaneously as a bouncer at numerous bars and clubs, eventually tiring of that. I started to re-connect with my love of comics and the toy collector’s market just kind of fell hand-in-hand with that.
I wound up making a lot of new friends in the comic and toy company world which would eventually lead me to a job in NY working for Wizard magazine. Unfortunately, it was just as they were imploding business-wise and that didn’t
That opportunity however, got me to meet my current business partner, Phil Lawrence who was in charge of West Coast ad sales for the magazine for years. He an d another ex-Wizard employee had started their own comic convention in California at the time, and I started working for them. One thing led to another and Phil and I decided to create some unique movie posters prints, in the model of what Mondo was doing in the early days.
This led to us deciding in 2016 to create a book project around a whole bunch of images from one film in particular, “John Carpenter’s – The Thing”.
And thus, Printed in Blood as it is today, was born.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
We started out just making a few prints a year and letting the sales of those prints pay for more prints and so on. We paid for about a third of our initial printing bill for the “THING” book project out of our own pockets, but the rest was covered by pre-order sales and that;s how we’ve managed ever since. We’ve boot strapped the company as we have gone, never taking outside money, and allowing the growth to come organically to the point where we are today. Working this way is great as you don’t need to take on outside investors which then makes you beholden to them at some point. On the other side of the coin, unless you have a product which is selling thousands or millions of dollars worth, that natural growth can take some time. While it does allow you the freedom to do what you when you want, you;re still not accelerating as fast as you could if you take a chunk of money from someone that allows yous to start running before you fully understand how to run.
In that way, our model has worked very well for us as we have been able to work with some amazing other publishing companies early on as well as get safely to the point where we are today, aquiriung our own licenses and fully controlling our product line.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
While coming up through and rediscovering my love for the world of comics and that storytelling medium, I actually started writing creatively again. I had not finished a written story in decades, lots of little idea nuggets here and there, but nothing complete. So, in 2010 I had an idea for a screenplay and started writing it and by 2011, I had actually finished my very first full screenplay and finished my first creative writing project in a VERY long time. The confidence that this gave to me was hard to explain. Just completing one thing showed me that I could do it and it was what I really needed at that time.
Since then I have written for and had published a number of comic projects, some for John and Sandy Carpenter’s Storm King Comics, where I was on board the team that launched the very successful “Tales for HAlloweeNight” annual anthology series that’s still going strong today.
I have my own series of comics, “MacBryde & Grum” that is published by Rogue Matter. It’s a kind of an occult detective/buddy ongoing story with a scottish detective who’s partnered up with an ogre-looking character to help solve problems that the police don’t wanna deal with.
I have written several other screenplays and continue to work towards one day having one filmed.
What are your plans for the future?
We keep growing and making moves to insure that we build a robust library of titles and always expanding the types of books we are creating.
Contact Info:
- Website: printedinblood.com
- Instagram: insatgram.com/printedinblood
- Facebook: facebook.com/printedinblood
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/printedinblood
- Twitter: twitter.com/printedinblood
- Youtube: youtube.com/printedinblood
