It has been 13 years since author and screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith graduated from Emerson College and moved to Los Angeles to take his shot at a career in writing. After quitting his “somewhat cushy” job as a reality television-developing executive, he decided to dedicate himself to writing and breaking into making movies.

Grahame-Smith offered more than 100 students, fans and aspiring writers words of experience and advice Thursday evening in the University Union Ballroom.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Grahame-Smith said. “I am literally going to kill myself. If I wanted to come out here, write stuff, work in the movies, TV and books I have to just take a risk.”

Before his writing started receiving considerable attention, Grahame-Smith wrote “The Big Book of Porn: A Penetrating Look at the World of Dirty Movies.” He also wrote “How to Survive a Horror Movie,” which was his first published book of his own idea.

Grahame-Smith’s “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” and “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” have both broken the top five on New York Times Best Seller list.

“I thought ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’ was a cool idea, taking something everyone knows and putting a new spin on it,” said fan Mariana Molina. “It sparked my curiosity. Now I want to check out ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies;’ the original is one of my favorite books.”

Sacramento State English Professor David Toise said he did not like how “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” was the nearly the same book, except for the little parts Grahame-Smith added.

“It was weird in a boring kind of way,” Toise said. “I’ve already read the original and in a way I think I would have wanted the whole book rewritten.”

Grahame-Smith said one of his editors called him up with the idea of taking public-domain titles such as “Moby Dick” or “Treasure Island” and mixing them with themes such as robots, ninjas, or zombies.

“We excitedly submitted the idea to the publisher and they were sort of like ‘ehh,'” Grahame-Smith said. “That sound means, it’s an idea but you know no one is going read it. No one is going to buy it. The publisher’s thinking was you are going to turn off the Jane Austen people by adding zombies and bore the zombie people by adding Jane Austen.”

After submitting the idea, the publisher was convinced to produce a print run of 5,000 copies and wanted a manuscript within six weeks.

“For six weeks I sat at the computer with the manuscript of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and added a line here or changed a word there,” Grahame-Smith said. “Then at the end of the six weeks, that was it. I just handed it in.”

In the following months after submitting his work, Grahame-Smith said he had completely forgotten about the project until blogs started popping up and hype began to generate around the title.

“All of a sudden, the publisher was like, ‘This is a crazy idea, maybe we should print 10,000 copies,'” Grahame-Smith said as he chuckled. “I remember there was this feeling of ‘If this doesn’t work, that’s a big bonfire.'”

“Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” reached No. 3 on the New York Times Best Seller list in its first week and the original 10,000 copies sold out by the second week.

“Once they realized how it was selling in the first week they had printing presses going night and day trying to get that book out for the third week,” Grahame-Smith said. “Two million later it is still going and it is just crazy.”

In the last three years, Grahame-Smith has gone from writing nonfiction books about porno flicks and Spider Man to writing two bestselling books and working as a screenwriter for major motion pictures.

“There is a certain amount of shit in everyone’s sewer pipe,” Grahame-Smith said. “When you’re starting out with anything, whether you’re a doctor doing your residency or cellist playing your first piece, it’s shitty. You got to get that out and for writers the only way to do that is write. For everything you write the water starts to flow a little more clear.”

Ben Dewey can be reached at [email protected].