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Interview: Austin Williams Exploited

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Crimsonorgy

The body on the floor spread like the hands of a giant clock, with the arms pointing to ten and the legs tucked tightly together at the half-hour mark. Drops of crimson marked the second hand sweep around the chapter ring, and the contents of the small room stood at the various hour marks around that ring. At twelve stood a chipped desk with a Remington-noiseless laptop on it. The laptop's standby mode had been turned off, and at three stood a leather sofa that showed signs of too many sleepless nights spent tossing and turning on it.

A forensic photographer was sweeping around the body in a clockwise direction, taking shot after shot. Every now and then he paused, appeared to suppress an urge to move something in front of his lens to a better position, then continued. He had an annoying habit of popping the gum he was chewing every time he snapped a shot.

"You about done Brady?" asked the detective, pulling on his right ear, which was a tad shorter than his left. No matter how hard or how often he pulled on it, it didn't get any longer.

The photographer took another few shots. "Yeah, okay, that'll do it. Who is this stiff anyway?

"Some sleaze author. Name's Austin Williams. He just wrote a fictitious book about some fictitious exploitation film called Crimson Orgy. No publisher had the balls to bring it to print except, I hear, Borderlands Press.

"Take a looksy," said another detective standing by the laptop. "Looks like he was chatting up a storm with some goofball blog site called Zombos Closet. Some sort of interview."

They huddled around the small screen and read the interview, hoping to find a clue.

 

What inner demon inspired you to chronicle this whole sordid affair in Crimson Orgy?

I don’t know about inner demons but it’s fair to say Crimson Orgy is the byproduct of countless hours wasted watching some extremely dubious movies. At least I used to think they were wasted. Since I got a book out of all that cinematic dreck I now have to conclude it was a worthwhile expenditure of time.

You often mention Herschell Gordon Lewis's film, Blood Feast, in Crimson Orgy. Why is that?

That movie is the prototype for the movie at the center of my book. The release of Blood Feast in 1963 was a watershed event, not only for exploitation cinema but American pop culture at large. Absurd as that might sound, it’s true and has been noted by Danny Peary, John McCarty and other film historians. Prior to Blood Feast, graphic violence was taboo in cinema. Obviously, gore had been a staple of 20th century popular entertainment in other forms, from the Grand Guignol Theatre in Paris to the great E.C. horror comics of the ‘50s. It was inevitable, perhaps, that blood and guts would eventually make their way to the silver screen, but that’s easy to say with half a century of hindsight.

Back in ‘63, Blood Feast didn’t just push the boundaries of good taste, it deliberately demolished them. The whole appeal of the movie was its glaring lack of anything redeemable. Carnage for the sake of carnage, period. For better or worse, director Herschell Gordon Lewis and producer David Friedman redefined cinematic violence and horror with Blood Feast. Our culture has never been quite the same since. Whether this pioneering pair deserves praise or damnation is a matter of personal opinion, but their contribution can’t be denied.

What is it about exploitation cinema that's captured your passion?

For one thing, exploitation movies from the early to mid-’60s dealt explicitly with subject matter that Hollywood could not even obliquely reference at the time. Sex, violence, insanity, addiction, disrespect for authority… everything a good story needs, basically. Mainstream movies eventually caught up as the ‘70s approached, with Bonnie & Clyde making explicit bloodshed acceptable and Last Tango In Paris doing the same for sex. Those are just two examples, but iconic ones. The question is whether those movies could ever have been made, much less released, in a society that hadn’t been at least marginally exposed to the work of filmmakers like H.G. Lewis and Russ Meyer.

Another source of interest is that exploitation movies often provide a much clearer picture of their respective era than mainstream films released at the same time. This is because filmmakers like Lewis had no money to spend on wardrobe, props, locations, etc. The actors wore their own clothes and scenes were shot in personal homes, apartments, or motel rooms. In this way, exploitation films are essentially glorified home movies and offer a certain intimate fascination that’s impossible to fabricate on a soundstage. Finally, movies like Blood Feast are an embarrassment of riches for people who, like myself, appreciate the “so bad it’s good” school of cinema. Unintentionally hilarious, mind-numbingly inept and yet genuinely disturbing, there’s just nothing quite like a Herschell Gordon Lewis production.

The events in Crimson Orgy pretty much take place in one general area: Hillsboro Beach, Florida. What's the significance of this area in the history of exploitation cinema?

For a brief window in the 1960s, Miami was the exploitation film capital of the world. Aside from Lewis and Friedman, filmmakers like Doris Wishman set up shop down there and churned out countless Z-grade features for drive-in screens across America. One of the key elements of Crimson Orgy is that the filmmakers find themselves forced to operate in an alien, slightly hostile environment. Hillsboro Beach is a tiny rural community about 90 miles north of Miami, very remote and under the jurisdiction of a redneck deputy. Crimson Orgy’s production team needs total isolation in order to make the type of movie they have in mind, but aren’t prepared to handle the consequences of the events they set in motion.

Meyer and Hoffman, the director and producer of Crimson Orgy, stand prominent in my mind as fully-developed characters, though I can't put my finger on exactly why. Are they based on real-life counterparts?

Shel Meyer and Gene Hoffman are purely original characters but it’s fair to say that Lewis, Friedman and others on the Miami exploitation scene served as prototypes. Something Weird Video has done an incredible job in releasing hundreds of obscure exploitation titles on DVD, offering tons of bonus material including audio interviews. Lewis and Friedman, who had a falling out in the late ‘60s and didn’t speak for years, got together to offer their memories about the three gore movies they made together: Blood Feast, 2000 Maniacs! and Color Me Blood Red. Both men are extremely engaging and their commentaries definitely offered some inspiration, but the characters in my book are not based on anyone in particular. Meyer and Hoffman have to take full responsibility for all the trouble they cause in making Crimson Orgy.

In the story, Barbara gets Meyer to open up about an antisemitic experience involving his mother that contributes to her death. Of all your characters in Crimson Orgy, he's the one you put the most history on. Why?

Shel Meyer is the driving force behind Crimson Orgy. The movie is his personal obsession, whereas Gene Hoffman seems to approach it mainly from a business perspective. The death of Meyer's mother when he was a child, and his suspicions that antisemitic tendencies were at least partially responsible, are very much in the back of his mind during the writing and production of Crimson Orgy. He's determined to make a point with this movie, to strike back in some way at the perceived bigotry that cost him so much. The problem for Shel is that he never takes the time to examine his buried motivations or question where they might be leading him. Ultimately, he gets exactly what he's looking for and pays a terrible price for it.

Cliff the Grip is quite an enigmatic character in Crimson Orgy. You hint at his background, but never really explain it. How about giving ZC readers an exclusive scoop on Cliff. Why is he so screwed-up?

Yes, this is a cloudy issue that has perplexed some readers. What’s known beyond question is that Cliff was committed to the Calm Shepherd Sanitarium in Naples, FL, for nine months as a teenager. Diagnosed with manic depression, he was released when his condition seemed to improve somewhat with therapy. Unfortunately, a fire destroyed the sanitarium in the winter of 1968 (the precise cause of which was believed to be arson but never definitively proved) and thus all medical records relating to Clifford Schepps were lost. I think it’s safe to speculate that if some of today’s antidepressant medications had been available back in 1965, the tragic events surrounding Crimson Orgy might have been avoided. On the other hand, the world would be robbed of the most notorious cult film of all time and I wouldn’t have a book, so I‘m not sure where I come down on this issue.

If you could work at any part in the production of an exploitation film, which part would you prefer? Writer, actor, director, victim, etc, and why?

None. I have a feeling it’s a lot more fun watching exploitation movies, or writing about them, than actually working on one. Long hours, little or no pay, bad food, crummy accommodations, and not much glory when it’s all said and done.

Tell us about your writing background, and what's your writing regimen like? Are you a thousand words a day junkie, too?

I studied film in college, from a critical rather than creative perspective. I’ve never taken a creative writing course, just learned by doing a lot of bad writing and gradually recognizing what was bad about it. As far as a regimen, I wish I had one. It astounds me that someone like Stephen King can sit down and write for 7 or 8 hours a day, every day. With me it comes and goes, which I think most writers would agree is not an ideal approach. A good writing day is 2,000 words or more. I’d love to do that every day but it just doesn’t happen. I need time to let ideas formulate in the back of my mind before I can set them down coherently. I could also turn procrastination into an Olympic event.

In our email discussions, you said "A year or so ago, I stopped by Forrest J. Ackerman's house for one of his regular Saturday morning memorabilia tours (he lives about a mile from me.) It was a great honor to meet the man who's rubbed elbows with so many legends and rightfully become one himself." Okay, you realize you've got to spill the beans on that visit, right? What was it like?

As someone who started reading Famous Monsters magazine at about nine years of age, I was extremely fired up to meet this giant of the genre. As you know, Forry personally coined the term “sci-fi” and provided vital encouragement to multiple generations of filmmakers, some of them with last names like Spielberg, Lucas, and Coppola. He’s a straight-up legend. Forry lives in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, in a bungalow called the Acker-Mini-Mansion, a smaller version of the rambling Acker-Mansion he inhabited for decades. The collection of memorabilia on hand is staggering, including many items that were once personal possessions of Karloff, Lugosi, Lorre, Price, and countless other icons. Forry himself is a charming and gregarious host, with an endless supply of anecdotes and a buoyant enthusiasm that belies his physical frailty. He generously opens his home for tours most Saturdays when he’s in town, and I’d strongly encourage any fan of Zombos Closet who happens to be in the L.A. area make this pilgrimage.

(ZC Note: Forrest J. Ackerman died on December 4th, 2008)

What can we expect from you in the future?

I’m currently finishing a new novel called Harpoon City. It shares nothing in common with Crimson Orgy in terms of plot or setting, but I’m hoping it will appeal to the same audience by combining suspenseful and horrific elements with some dark humor in an edgy story populated by memorable characters. And now that the book about the movie Crimson Orgy is finally available, I think it’s a foregone conclusion that the movie about the book about the movie should be unleashed upon the world. Stay tuned for updates on that front.

What question would you love to be asked and what's your answer?

Q: How exactly did you manage to write a genre-bending book released by a small indie publisher that steadily built a mainstream audience until it topped the New York Times Bestseller list?

A: I don’t know, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

 

"Seems normal enough," said Brady as they finished reading the interview.

"Yeah, but what about that last question. How do you think he did it–top the Times' list I mean?" asked another.

"That's easy. Talent. No mystery there."

They nodded in agreement.

"This Cliff the Grip seems like someone we should look into."

They nodded in agreement.

"Maybe check out Something Weird Video, too. My money's on them."

"Okay, let's wrap it up. I'm starved. Let's get dinner–"

"You mean breakfast."

"Damn, it's that late? Okay, breakfast. Then we'll call on Cliffy boy."

"What about Borderlands Press? Should we pay them a visit, too?"

"Yeah, yeah; looks like we got our work cut out for us."

Interview: Mark Clark

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It’s not that actors no longer give good performances in horror films (they still do), and it’s not as if direction, editing, and special effects weren’t important in the classic horror film era. But in most modern horrors, concept is more important than cast. Horror has become a director’s genre more than an actor’s genre. During the classic era, the genre’s biggest stars were Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Vincent Price and Peter Cushing. In the years since, its brightest luminaries have been Mario Bava, George Romero, Wes Craven and M. Night Shyamalan. (Mark Clark in Smirk Sneer and Scream)

Director Justin Channell’s company acronym, IWC Films, seen on his Heretic Film’s distributed Die and Let Live zombies and pizza flick, sum’s up the current state of horror cinema rather well: IWC stands for Idiots With Cameras. While I admire his light touch of humor, I fear the ring of truth in those three letters is precisely why horror cinema is mostly relegated to backhanded reviews or begrudging nods of minor acceptance. Making the situation worse, it’s not just the idiots holding cameras, but also the ones pretending to act in front of them. Then you have the ones writing incomplete scripts without a hint of drama, pathos or depth, and others directing with those scripts, with nil basic training, because the digital age makes it appear so gosh darn easy to do–and Aunt Edna and Uncle Joey are available Tuesday for free.

Before the digital age gave any idiot with a camera the potential to become another Hitchcock or Romero, but not the sense to learn first, shoot later, horror movies more often than not had drama, pathos, and good acting that was sometimes even great. Even though many of these films were made for a quick buck, too, actors still acted, and writers wrote complete–if not always stellar– scripts. Directors learned their technique and approached their films seriously. Even if the script was underwhelming and the direction uninspired, you could still count on yesterday’s classic horror actor to give it his (or her) stylistic all. It may not have been naturalistic acting, but it was acting that convincingly and realistically entertained. Mark Clark, in his Smirk, Sneer and Scream: Great Acting in Horror Cinema, reminds us of this golden age.

If your looking for detailed plot synopses, look elsewhere: Clark focuses only on the memorable performances that show each actor’s ability to bring the house down. And while his predilection for classic horror actors fills part one, the other two parts of his book examine mainstream actors–those thespians briefly caressing the horror genre to leave their permanent scars–and the often neglected leading ladies of fright. From Boris Karloff to Anthony Perkins, and Bette Davis to Jodie Foster, Clark lists the roles that bewitched us into becoming horror fans in the first place.

After reading his fascinating book, I invited Mark Clark to step into the closet and talk about Smirk, Sneer and Scream…

Tell us about your background and how you came to write Smirk, Sneer and Scream?

I loved the classic monster movies as a kid, and even imagined someday writing a book about them after reading (and re-reading) Edward Edelson’s Weekly Reader type book, GREAT MONSTERS OF THE MOVIES. After college, I worked as a newspaper reporter and film critic for about 10 years. I eventually left that line of work because I wanted to write what I wanted to write, instead of having to write about whatever I was assigned to cover. Toward the end of my newspaper career, I discovered Tom Weaver and the Brunas brothers’ UNIVERSAL HORRORS, which brought back for me the idea of writing about horror movies. I also began writing articles and reviews for magazines like MONSTERS FROM THE VAULT, MIDNIGHT MARQUEE, SCARLET STREET and FILMFAX and launched my online DVD review column.

Why write about acting in horror films? I mean, it’s generally assumed that horror actors are not good actors, right?

Well, I wanted to write a book about horror films, but didn’t want to write a simple history. That had been done to death. I wanted an original angle, and it occurred to me that nobody had ever provided a real appreciation for the great acting performances that had been given in horror films over the years. Horror actors are usually treated like second-class citizens by critics and Academy Award voters, but that’s pure snobbery. Many fine actors worked in the horror genre, and did superb work there. I think Boris Karloff’s work in FRANKENSTEIN or THE BODY SNATCHER, for instance, stacks up with the best screen acting by anybody in any picture.

Also, I wanted to turn the spotlight back on the actors a bit. Even those people who write seriously about horror films these days tend toward narratives where the major players are directors. This is, I think, largely due to the influence of the “autuerist” film theory which emerged in the 1950s and quickly became dominant in critical thought. Personally, I believe that auteurism can be limiting, especially when oversimplified. Sure, directors are important, but film remains a collaborative art. And, as I note in my book, back in the 1930s, nobody went to see a movie based on the name James Whale or Tod Browning. They went based on the name Karloff or Lugosi. Actors and their work, as I see it, went a long way toward defining and shaping the genre, especially during its infancy.

Would you say the acting in classic horror films is different from today’s? If so, why?

Wow, these are great, thought-provoking questions!

Thank you. I amaze myself sometimes, too.

Film acting in general is much different than it was in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. And of course it’s completely different from silent film acting. During the classic movie era, actors performed in a manner that was very stylized and distinctive. It wasn’t necessarily naturalistic, but it could be very expressive. Stars tended to develop a recognizable persona they carried from film to film, but the best actors among the big stars (Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, Cary Grant, for example) were able to take that persona in a lot of different directions through subtle variations. With the rise of the Stanislavsky “Method” school of acting, all that changed. Naturalism became the new ideal, and anything stylized was dismissed as “phoney” or “camp.” The best screen actors (Marlon Brando, Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep) seemed to vanish into their characters and became almost unrecognizable from film to film. There are a few performers today who have an approach that’s a sort of a hybrid between the classic era and the modern era – actors (like George Clooney, for instance) who have a true star persona, but are capable of submerging into character when necessary.

Of course, this tectonic shift in styles was felt in the horror genre, too. Plus, other changes also had a major impact. The breakup of the studio system brought the death knell for typecasting in the classical definition of the term. Studios couldn’t force an actor to make a career out of one type of character or film. Or, at least, not as easily. If actors had always been free agents, as they are today, we might never have known such a thing as a “horror star” in the first place. Nobody wants to get pigeon-holed as one type of character or too readily associated with one type of film. It’s seen as a bad career move. Left to their own devices, most if not all of the great horror stars would have abandoned the genre to stretch their muscles in different sorts of roles. In the last 20 or 25 years, the only actor who comes close to being a true horror star is Robert Englund. Now, I’ve interviewed Robert and I like him a lot. He’s very intelligent and very funny. But let’s face it, his body of work isn’t going to make anybody forget about Boris Karloff or Peter Cushing. Anyhow, the lack of horror stars has turned horror into more of a director’s genre. Although there are still good performances given in horror movies, often the acting almost seems beside the point. CLOVERFIELD, for instance, strikes me as pretty well-acted, but the film derives most of its power through technique, rather than performance. That’s common now.

You devote a chapter to the leading ladies of horror, including actors like Bette Davis, Jaime Lee Curtis, and Simone Simon. Why? Isn’t horror a man’s game?

Now you’re baiting me! Actually, I found writing that particular chapter more enjoyable than any other in the book. In retrospect, I think an entire book could be written on the subject of women in horror films – not a compendium of biographies like Gregory Mank’s two-volume WOMEN IN HORROR FILMS, but rather a survey of how women’s roles in horror films have reflected the changing place of women in American society over the past century. It’s a fascinating subject, which I touched on (again somewhat indirectly) in SMIRK, but which deserves further consideration and discussion. In the context of SMIRK, my primary focus was to draw attention to the many great performances by women that have graced the horror film, like those by Mia Farrow in ROSEMARY’S BABY and Sissy Spacek in CARRIE in addition to those you mentioned. There were so many great ones, it was tough to narrow it down. That was the hardest part of the entire project, actually — keeping it from growing as big as the NYC yellow pages. There are so many great performances out there, it was impossible to cover them all. My book was intended to be a starting place for discussion, not the final word.

In our email discussions, you mentioned there were  elements you were trying to weave into Smirk, Sneer and Scream you don’t think fully came off. Can you elaborate on them?

Some of them I’ve already touched on, like the impact the rise of method acting and the breakup of the studio system had on horror film acting, and on the evolution of the genre itself. While writing the book, I tried to deal with these developments in a way that, looking back, was too subtle – you can get the narrative, but it’s broken up in bits and pieces in several different write-ups, rather than being stated in a clear, unified manner. I won’t be making that mistake again. In my current book, all my ideas are up front, offered in a clear, linear way. For better or for worse!

Who’s your favorite actor in classic and contemporary horror, and why?

Among the classic horror performers, it’s almost impossible to go wrong with Peter Cushing or Lon Chaney Sr. I think Lionel Atwill and George Zucco are underrated. I love Bela Lugosi and Vincent Price. But my favorite is definitely Karloff. He was just such a master. At the top of his game, his performances could be tremendously subtle and moving. He could scare the hell out of you, or he could break your heart. I don’t think any other horror star has a filmography as full of varied, three-dimensional characters as Karloff, and I don’t think any other star had as significant an impact on the development of the horror film. For decades, he was the face of the genre, the same way John Wayne personified the Western. In terms of contemporary horror films, I tend to like individual performances more than particular actors.

How did you conduct your research for Smirk, Sneer and Scream?

I watched and rewatched hundreds of movies and took copious notes. Very detailed notes. Lots of rewinding, pausing, jotting things down. I tried to break down the physicality of the actor’s performance – not just the line delivery but posture, gait, gestures. What was he or she doing in the scene that really brought the character to life? How did he or she relate to the other players in the scene? How did the actor’s choices differ from or align with the performer’s work in other films? Or with the way other performers had approached similar roles? The hardest part was not getting distracted by other elements in the film, staying focused on just the acting aspect. It required a great deal of discipline and could be exhausting, frankly. Try it some time and see!

As a writer, what’s your regimen to get words onto the page?

A source of ongoing pain, frankly! I tend to write in fits and starts, working very intensely for a while and then not at all for a while. This is absolutely not the way to approach writing, and I am trying to become more steady and disciplined. It’s also a big reason why I took me so long (over six years) to write SMIRK. I need to improve if I’m ever going to write all the books I want to write.

What other books can we see from your digital pen? More on horror, I hope.

I’m currently co-authoring (with Bryan Senn) a book with the working title SIXTIES SHOCKERS: HORROR FILMS OF THE 1960s. It’s going to cover, comprehensively, one of the richest, most varied and most dynamic periods in the history of the genre, a time when the classic horror era overlapped with the dawn of the modern era. I’m especially interested in writing about the way the social upheavals of the era played out in that decade’s horror films. I’m very excited about it. I hope to finish it this year and have it on the market in 2009. Again, McFarland will publish it.

Shameless plug department: By the way, if anybody else out there liked SMIRK, I urge them to check out a book called SCIENCE FICTION AMERICA. Edited by David Hogan, the book contains essays from several writers (including me) about the way social issues have been portrayed in sci-fi films over the years. All the essays are excellent. My two (about I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE and the first two ALIEN films) are the best work I have published so far. SCIENCE FICTION AMERICA is available from McFarland.

What’s the one question you’ve been dying to be asked, if any, and what’s your answer?

Q: Can I buy the film rights to SMIRK for a million bucks?

A: Yes. Just make the check payable to me.

Interview: Paul Bibeau’s Sundays With Vlad

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Vlad01 I watched Chef Machiavelli. He watched the big simmering pot on the stove while holding a large soup spoon at the ready. Zombos nervously watched Chef Machiavelli’s back while glancing at our Thanksgiving menu card. A tentacle suddenly pushed the pot lid aside and wiggled defiantly in the air. Chef Machiavelli whacked it with the soup spoon, sending it back into the pot. He slid the lid back in place and resumed his stance of readiness.

“Not done yet?” I asked.

“No,” said our chef, unperturbed, raising the flame a little more. He kept watching the pot.

“Look here,” said Zombos, “this menu simply won’t do. Yak-stuffed octopus is fine, but what about the Frunkens? You know how difficult they can be. We need a native dish they’ll love.”

Oh yes…the Frunkens. Distant relatives on Zombos’ side, originally hailing from Transylvania, recently moved to Pennsylvania under mysterious political circumstances, and soon to grace our annual family get-together with their vexing personalities. I was worried, too. Anything could set them off down the road to our damnation, ruining the festive Thanksgiving we planned for weeks. As for me, simple turkey and cranberry sauce is all I need for a festive dinner. Toss in a few bread rolls, mashed potatoes and gravy, and corn, and, as Emeril would say, “Bam!”

Wait a minute. Transylvania? Transylvania? I started to remember something–oh, bugger, I had almost forgotten! Paul Bibeau’s Sundays with Vlad and his journey to find the true Dracula of Bram Stoker’s novel, and in our psyche; I’m late in writing up the interview I recently had with him.

“I’ve got to ask him about that paprika hendl dish he talks about,” I said out loud, making a mental note I needed to follow up on.

“Perfetta!” cried Chef Machiavelli, wrestling the soup spoon free from a tenacious tentacle entwined tightly around it. He turned to Zombos. “Paprika hendl,” he said, while banging the tentacle back into the pot with his soup spoon. He resumed his stance of readiness.

Zombos clapped his hands together. “Superb! Paprika hendl it is. Capital idea, Zoc.”

Finally. Now to more important matters: the interview with Paul Bibeau!

Vladtepes What insane impulse drove you to write Sundays With Vlad?

Like all insane impulses, it seemed very, very rational at the time. I was writing an article for Maxim magazine about the failure of the Dracula-themed amusement park in Romania . It seemed startling to me that Romania was filled with places connected to one of the most famous cultural icons in the world, and yet they couldn’t or wouldn’t cash in. But as I researched the story I began to realize that the Romanian Dracula and our western Dracula were very different. Plus, the stories of the people surrounding Drac were as interesting as the subject matter itself. It was bizarre and rich and complicated, and I had to write about it.

Why are you so obsessed with Dracula? Why not the Wolf Man, or zombies for that matter?

The Wolf Man’s a victim of his curse. Zombies can barely even think beyond how to crack open their next skull. Dracula’s smart, cultured, and in complete control of himself. He really wants to kill you, and he has the skills to go about doing that. He’s Hannibal Lector, and every Bond villain you’ve ever heard of. He’s actually much closer to the Western image of the devil than the others. “A man of wealth and taste,” as someone once said.

Lugosi That’s my understanding of the character also.  I always felt that Bela Lugosi was the embodiment of this “man of wealth and taste?” Do you agree?

Bela was definitely the ultimate “cultured Dracula,” as opposed to the animalistic Nosferatu of Murnau’s film. Lugosi’s son mentioned that Bela started wearing his own opera suit during the play version of Dracula, and continued it with the movie. That style of dress became completely entwined with Dracula itself.

How would you compare Lugosi’s Dracula to Christopher Lee’s portrayal, given what you know about the real Dracula, Vlad Tepes?

If you remember, Lee portrayed Vlad himself in the documentary, In Search Of Dracula.  I don’t have an opinion whether he played a more “Vlad-ish” Count, but his Dracula was definitely more animalistic, closer to the Nosferatu.  And ultimately closer to Stoker’s portrayal. The Lugosi portrayal was further away, but at the same time compelling in its own way. I’d compare it to the Kubrick version of The Shining, which departed from the book, but became a classic in its own right.

You wrote “cook a Hungarian dish called Paprika Hendl, and it will tell you everything you need to know about Dracula.” What did you mean by that?

The act of taking an ethnic recipe and preparing it in your own home is a kind of data vampirism.  And it shows the fragility of culture — because culture after all is made of data and information. But I can adopt your recipes, laws, and folkways, and change them into whatever I want. Jonathan Harker mentions he’s going to take a recipe back home to Mina at the beginning of Dracula.  Later the Count brags about his knowledge of English culture.  Before we talk about blood and land, we are talking about the real weakness of a culture — their data. For the data is the life.

After mentioning Bela Lugosi in your book, I think it safe to say you’re a monsterkid from way back. Tell us about your monsterific childhood and why you think the horror genre has influenced you so much.

Leonard_nimoy_simpsons My favorite holiday was Halloween, and my favorite TV special was the Disney version of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. And then there’s the In Search Of episode on Vlad the Impaler that I write about in my book. I loved that whole series. Leonard Nimoy and his turtleneck brought the horror and mystery of real life into my home, and it damaged me in a wonderful way.

Have you seen the new series, Supernatural Science on television? If so, how do you think it compares to Nimoy and his turtleneck?

I never saw it.  I now have to.

How does your wife do it? I mean put up with your horror-leanings? And has she let you wear a cape yet?

She keeps me in check. She probably would let me wear a cape if I persisted, but I want to keep her happy. I sometimes go through a Jethro Tull phase where I listen to Thick as a Brick a lot, and ponder wearing a codpiece. But that’s out, as well. I love my wife very much, and not a day goes by that I don’t feel thankful for her incredibly low self-esteem, or whatever filthy, filthy fetish she has that makes her hang out with me.

What’s your Dracula Was Framed blog all about?

I want to get people to treat the compilation of journals and newspaper clips that make up Dracula as if they were real, honest-to-God testimony about a paranormal event. What’s missing? What seems like it’s not right? How would you reinterpret, rewrite, add to, or generally screw with the text of Stoker’s novel? A fun exercise in critical thinking or creative writing or both. That’s what I want.

Chris_lee_dracula In your book, you cover the Dracula/Vampire influence in many areas. One area is the Goth scene. What was it like–a nice, vampire-loving journalist like yourself–entering that culture?

Goths are some of the nicest people you’d ever want to meet! They’re deeply sweet people. Sometimes geeky. Sometimes oddly cool. But they are really fun to hang out with, and once you convince them that you’re not going to be completely mean-spirited and mocking, they are quite helpful about explaining the ins and outs of the goth culture today. And as much as we love to poke fun at it (and no one makes fun of goths like the goths themselves), it’s also important to note that it’s still with us, more than a hundred years after the birth of the gothic novel. So that says something.

You took some chances when visiting Lugoj, and other places in your quest to find the “real” Dracula. Why put yourself in harm’s way like that?

You don’t spend time as a reporter without meeting people who are much braver than you. I’ve interviewed New York City cops who survived gunfights that would make me piss my pants. So I look at my risk-taking as pretty minor in comparison. Also, don’t discount stupidity! A lot of the risks I took were just because I didn’t know how scary things would get until it was too late.

Bibeau You’re a writer, journalist, and monologuist. What’s a monologuist?

I wrote a collection of funny, scary short stories called “The Big Money,” and to publicize them, I did a series of monologues around Virginia dramatizing them. I’m still a theater geek at heart.

Tell us more about this collection of short stories. What are they about?

They are a mix of horror, suspense, and humor. Drug dealers, bank robberies, rants about love, a tale of revenge, and a novella about working at a women’s fashion magazine.

Given your style of writing, have you read O. Henry?

Actually, no.

As a journalist, what do you normally write about?

Spies and criminals, actually. I wrote a profile on Eric Haney, one of the first generation of Delta Force operators. Haney was part of the Iranian hostage rescue mission. And I have interviewed a guy named Antonio Mendez, the CIA officer who successfully rescued the Americans who’d escaped the Iranian embassy during the hostage crisis, and were hiding out with the Canadians. I also wrote an investigative article on a domestic terrorism case and an article on a stripper who ripped off a NASCAR team for a million dollars.

What current horror films do you like? Why?

I have no interest in seeing any of the torture movies. Just doesn’t do it for me. I own the VHS tape of John Carpenter’s Halloween, and when we got a DVD player my wife bought me the DVD version. When they change the technology again, I’ll probably go out and buy it once more. I always want to have that movie on hand, and I try to watch it every Halloween. It’s not just one of the best horror movies ever made, I think it’s a modern legend – The Grimm Brothers retold in suburban America with a bit of the “call is coming from inside the house” thrown in. The Blair Witch Project doesn’t survive multiple viewings – not having a script is a real liability – but it does have moments of horror genius. And limiting the blood and the body count really made it scary. That’s something I wish more people knew.  Ghost Story, The Changeling, The Fog…My favorites come from about twenty years ago, and they try not to show a severed limb or a guy in the rubber suit every 30 seconds.

I’m not a prude. I’m not offended by it. But a movie that combines high production values, extreme violence, CGI out the wazoo, and characters who wouldn’t be believable in a Dentyne commercial leaves me feeling utterly indifferent and not scared at all.

What question have you been dying to be asked, and what’s your answer?

Do you think it was fair to lose your job as an advice columnist at Mademoiselle? And the answer is, yes and no.

After two years writing advice on guy-related issues for that magazine back in the late 1990’s, I wrote one section entirely in the voice of Vincent “the Chin” Gigante, the accused boss of the Genovese crime family who was then on trial and constantly strolling around Greenwich Village in his bathrobe, allegedly pretending to be a crazy old man. This did not go over well. The people at Mademoiselle did not want jokes about putting folks into car compactors in their fashion and beauty magazine. In my defense, the piece was very funny. On the other hand, maybe I was not a good fit for that magazine.

Interview: Dead Sea Author Tim Curran

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Deadsea Horror author and Monster Kid Tim Curran freely, and of his own will, steps into the closet after his long terror-filled voyage in Dead Sea to talk about his latest novel, and the singular craft of writing horror.

When did the horror bug first take a bite out of you?

It took hold of me when I was very young. I remember my mom taking me and my sisters to the movies to see that Vincent Price/Poe adaptation, The Oblong Box. I knew we were going for days and I was terrified about it. There was an ad for it on the back of a magazine my sister had–a coffin, I think, with hands rising from it. That image burned itself into me and wouldn’t let go. The movie scared the hell out of me. I had nightmares for weeks. My older sisters were all Dark Shadows fanatics and they made me watch it with them. By then I loved horror. They were always dragging me to scary movies, a lot of the Poe stuff and Hammer films. We were always watching Night Gallery and re-runs of The Hitchcock Hour and Thriller with Boris Karloff, One Step Beyond and The Outer Limits. Wasn’t long before I traded in my Batman comic books for Monster of Frankenstein, Dead of Night, and The Vault of Evil.

I started buying Famous Monsters and Creepy, catching the old Universal flicks on Eerie Street out of Green Bay. And when we got cable, I became an addict of The Ghoul and all those great ‘50’s B-movies like Fiend without a Face, Not of This Earth, and Frankenstein 1970 that they showed along with the usual Saturday Night madness.

I was like any horror/monster fan of the 1970’s…I built all the Aurora monster models, Monster Scenes, Prehistoric Scenes. Collected the magazines and books and Don Post masks, put posters of Frankenstein and Dracula up on the walls.

When did you realize you wanted to be a horror genre writer?

I knew I wanted to write horror stories when I was like thirteen and I read Pigeons from Hell by Robert E. Howard in the paperback of the same name. The Howard book had a cool Jeff Jones painting of a dinosaur wading into the surf. That’s why I bought it. The first story in there was Pigeons from Hell and it scared me pretty good. I still think it’s one of the greatest horror stories ever written. But that first reading…all that imagery stayed in my mind. After that, I went after horror fiction with a fervor.

Next came Lovecraft and all the rest. I used to order those anthologies out of the back of Creepy, you know the Ballantine Lovecrafts, Pan Books of Horror, Alden H. Norton anthos, all of that. That’s where it all started.

Why write horror? Wouldn't romance be easier?

Romance would not only be easier, but more profitable, I’m sure. But it would never satisfy me. Not like horror does. It’s in my blood. I need to write. I don’t think I really have a choice in the matter. I don’t have the necessary skills or temperament to write anything else. You know, I’m not dark or weird at all, I’m very normal. Pretty optimistic and light-hearted. And I think that’s because I get all my demons down on paper. I guess it’s almost like self-therapy of a sort.

Tell us about your novel, Dead Sea, and how you came to write it.

I wrote Dead Sea because I just love sea lore and history, the weird varieties of ocean life, and probably because there’s something very mysterious and even spooky about the immensity of the seas themselves. That and the fact that I’ve been a big fan of William Hope Hodgson’s weird sea tales ever since reading his story, The Habitants of Middle Islet.

Dead Sea encompasses a lot of Hodgson’s ideas, a lot of the sea-based horror that has come since, and, of course, the reams of folklore that have come from generations of sailors: sea monsters, ghosts ships, disappearances at sea etc. It gave me a chance to incorporate a lot of those things and mix them up with Sargasso Sea legends and Bermuda Triangle myths/mysteries. In most of these types of stories, a ship or a plane will disappear in those areas and then people will try to figure out where they went . In Dead Sea, I dispensed with that angle. Instead, I show you where they went: a fog-bound, primordial dimension where the wrecks of ships and planes from throughout history are rotting in immense banks of seaweed. A place haunted by ghosts and monsters, alien monstrosities and things that were once human.

In the story, this dimension is the real inspiration for the Sargasso Sea tales. Dead Sea, then, becomes essentially a survival tale as a group of the lost try to stay alive so they can figure a way to get back into their own time/space while avoiding and battling the numerous horrors in the mist and weed, and particularly the devil of that dimension itself; something that feeds on human fear and human souls.

Hive In your novel, Hive, you wrote a sequel to Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness. What is it about Lovecraft's work that led you to do that?

Hive was one of those projects that had a mind of its own. I often felt like it was dictating itself to me. I set out to write a short story. Then it became a novella and then a novel and Elder Signs Press was kind enough to publish it.

I liked Lovecraft’s novella. I read it when I was a teenager for the first time. And through the years, my memory of it got a little convoluted. I remembered it as concerning a race of aliens that are discovered in Antarctica along with the ruins of their primeval cities that predate mankind. I had that much right. But in my memory, the aliens were scary and evil. But when I decided to write a story based on Mountains, I re-read the novella and discovered that my memory of it was partially erroneous: Lovecraft’s aliens, the Old Ones, were only scary for like the first half of his tale, then he approached them sympathetically. Showing us that the real horror was a shape-shifting group of creatures they had created called Shoggoths which had destroyed the Old Ones and their civilization.

Lovecraft went into great detail concerning the Old Ones’ history and culture, their battle with other alien races and their destruction by the Shoggoths etc. He went for the science-fantasy angle. That didn’t work for me at all. My original memory/concept of the Old Ones had them being extremely malignant and awful, not cuddly and misunderstood, victims of elitist class struggle. So when I did Hive, I tossed out most of Lovecraft’s ideas, staying with my own image of them, approaching it as a horror story.

I set Hive in the modern world as opposed to the 1930’s in Lovecraft’s story. The actual discovery of warm-water lakes beneath the Antarctic glaciers and NASA’s plans to drill down to them using cryobot technology as will be used to penetrate the poles of Mars and the ice sheets of Jupiter’s moons, Europe and Callisto, was what got me really going on it. I saw all kinds of possibilities. My novel is set in an Antarctic research station where a group of scientists discover the ruins of the Old Ones’ city in a sprawling subterranean network. They bring back mummies of the Old Ones and it’s discovered that although they’re physically dead, their psychically still active. Our minds coming into contact with them activate them and they begin draining our psychic energies. Then a NASA team drills down to a lake that has been locked beneath the ice sheet for 40 million years. What’s down there coupled with those dead alien minds will harvest the psychic energy of the human race on a global scale. Along the way, we realize that the Old Ones created life on Earth and engineered intelligence into it so that when the human race became populous enough and intelligent enough, they would harvest us like a crop. They seeded us and now they’ll harvest us. Something they have done with hundreds of races on hundreds of worlds. So, realistically, Hive is inspired by At the Mountains of Madness, rather than a direct sequel to it.

What's a 'writing day' in the life of Tim Curran like?

Well, I work a real job like everyone else. I put eight hours in a factory and when I get home, I write. I knock out about two-and-a-half or three hours of writing a day. More on the weekends. It’s like playing guitar or juggling…if you don’t discipline yourself to do it every day, you’ll never develop the necessary skills.

Which authors influence you the most?

I’m influenced by just about everyone. Lovecraft and Bradbury, King and Campbell, old writers and new. I really like the British author, Phil Rickman. Rickman’s just great. He’s like M. R. James, using all that ancient paganism and dark lore, having it rise up from the past to haunt the future. Thomas Ligotti is another of my favorites. Brian McNaughton, too. He’s incredible. I like a lot of non-horror authors like Dennis Lehane, Elmore Leonard, David Morrel. These guys can teach you a lot.

How do you do it? What's your formula for writing?

I don’t know if I have a formula exactly. With me, I get an idea and it’s usually months or years before I actually write it. I just leave it in my head and let it develop itself. Now and again, something will jump into my head fully-fleshed and I’ll knock it out. But usually, ideas seem to brew and come together in their own time.

Where do you go for story ideas?

I get my ideas same place everyone else does: everywhere. There’s no specific place. I see something, I read something, I hear about something…it inspires me. I think it’s really pure imagination. Just looking at something and seeing something in it ordinary people wouldn’t. To them, an empty farmhouse is just an empty farmhouse, to me it’s something else, it’s empty for a diabolic reason. And that can be applied to everything. I see shadows everywhere…and the things that throw them. Ideas just fly at you out of the blue and you just have to be ready to catch them when they do. You have to exercise your imagination machine constantly and daydreaming always works for me. Just opening your mind.

Do you have any favorite horror movies?

I love all the good stuff and the bad stuff. Old ones and new ones. I appreciate the subtle nuances of the Val Lewton films just as I appreciate the more graphic horrors of Halloween, or The Evil Dead. I like silent movies like Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the old Universals and Hammer films. In recent years, I really liked The Grudge, Dead Silence, The Boogeyman, because all three of those had incredible atmosphere. And instead of the usual gore stuff, they were actually scary. When I was a kid they always had those spooky TV movies-of-the-week, things like Don’t be Afraid of the Dark, Gargoyles, and The Night Stalker. All of those. They scared me pretty bad and probably have a lot more to do with what I write than any of the cinematic stuff.

Can you give some advice to neophyte writers?

Yes: discipline yourself. First and foremost. Write every day. If you have the talent, it will bloom and amaze you. If you don’t, you’ll realize that, too. But the only way to find out is by writing and writing and writing. It’s tough. It’s much more fun to drink beer and watch TV, but that’s the only way to do it. Write every day. Read every day. Unlock what’s inside you. Get used to the fact that you’re going to be lonely because you won’t have time for a social life.

What projects are next on your agenda?

Right now I’m working on Swarm, the sequel to Hive. William Jones at ESP suggested doing Hive as a trilogy and it sounded like a fun idea to me. Swarm will be very large in scale. Though it’s set in the present in Antarctica , there’ll be lots of flashbacks to earlier Antarctic expeditions. The Old Ones will swarm, rise up in numbers to fulfill their prophesy of harvesting the human race. I’ve thrown everything into this one…Old Ones, Shoggoths, alien ghosts, the hive-mind. We’ll actually get down into the alien hive this time, as well as back down to that dawn city beneath the lake and the ruins beneath the mountains. As world civilization collapses and long-buried alien imperatives implanted in the human psyche rise up to overwhelm the human race and turn it into an alien colony that can be harvested en masse, people trapped down in Antarctica will have to accept that they’re at the very epicenter of the trouble and must fight against it.

Other than the Hive trilogy, I’ve just written a huge apocalyptic zombie novel called The Resurrection that combines supernatural horror with science fiction as Army limb regeneration experiments combined with Medieval sorcery bring the dead back to life and open the gates of Hell. Torrential rains flood a city and rain down what the Army was working on and the city becomes a sinking graveyard of floating corpses, the undead, mutants, plagues of rats and flies.

I’m also working on a novel called Hell Mary which puts a new twist on the old Bloody Mary/mirror witch thing. Hell Mary is the demonic spirit of Jack the Ripper’s final victim, Mary Kelly, whose gruesome death and dissection was recorded in a mirror. When the mirror game is played, Hell Mary is summoned as a hacked and stitched together wraith that slaughters without mercy, recreating her own horrible death again and again.

Also, Red Scream Films is planning to do a film version of my zombie story Mortuary. I’ve also written a script for an upcoming movie of theirs called Ice Vampyres. So that’s pretty cool. And I’ve had some film interest in Hive. I’d really like to see that get made because I think my variation of Lovecraft’s themes combined with a contemporary Antarctic setting and cutting-edge scientific technology would make for one hell of a ride.

What question would you love to be asked and what's your answer?

I would love to be asked about that strain of hereditary madness in my family. I would answer it by first vehemently denying any such thing, then drooling and giggling as I led you up the stairs to the locked room where my insane sister is kept.

Interview: Amy Gretch

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Amygrech An interview with author Amy Grech…

Why use literary horror as your writing voice? Why not sci-fi?

I’ve actually written some sci-fi stories with horrific elements, of course! My story EV 2000 is a futuristic horror story inspired by my fear of giving blood. I hate needles. I don’t discriminate! I write horror because fear is an emotion everyone can relate to — everyone gets scared — some people are afraid of rejection, or death, or thunder…Fear drives my characters, it’s a powerful motivator — it drives them to act on their primal instincts for better or worse.

I’ve also noticed that when a story is going well, my characters will take over and call the shots; more often than not, they do bad things, breaking more taboos than I can fathom. I’m just along for the wild ride as an innocent bystander.

You said “most of my stories focus on subtle horror.” Can you explain what subtle horror is, and give us some examples, perhaps from cinema and literary sources?

Subtle horror typically involves a descent into madness, a gradual progression into the unknown. It’s important for my readers to relate to my characters before bad things start happening, that’s why I make sure all of my characters have their share of flaws and quirks. No one I know is perfect. Why should my characters be? I want my readers’ sense that something isn’t quite right to build gradually, so they’re not immediately aware of when the threat will appear.

David Lynch has been a great inspiration — I’ve seen all of his movies —Blue Velvet is a personal favorite of mine. One minute everything seems prefect, picturesque…Then we see a severed ear with ants crawling all over it and strange things start happening. All of Lynch’s films have a subtle, surreal feel. He does a great job of distorting reality, something I constantly strive for in my work. My stories are very visual — I think they would work well on the big screen…Hopefully some of them will be adapted for film.

Turn of the Screw by Henry James and Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein are two novels that contain evocative imagery and loads of atmosphere. Throughout Turn of the Screw references to eyes and vision emphasize the idea that sight is unreliable. In Frankenstein, dangerous knowledge is pivotal to story as Victor attempts to exceed human limits and access the secret of life. Likewise, Robert Walton attempts to surpass previous human explorations by endeavoring to reach the North Pole.

This ruthless pursuit of knowledge, of the light proves dangerous, as Victor’s act of creation eventually causes the destruction of everyone dear to him, and Walton finds himself perilously trapped between sheets of ice. Whereas Victor’s obsessive hatred of the monster drives him to his death, Walton abandons his treacherous mission, having learned from Victor’s example how destructive the thirst for knowledge can be.

I enjoy asking writers about their creative process. You’ve been writing successfully for a long time now. How did you finally get into the groove, and what challenges did you need to overcome to do that and stay groovy?

I grew up reading Stephen King’s novels —I got hooked at the age of 13 — and started writing seriously in high school. I studied English/Creative Writing at Ithaca College in Upstate New York. I started selling my stories to small press magazines while I was still in school —14850 Magazine was my first.

When I first started writing, rejections didn’t discourage me, especially since I started getting personal responses from Editors early on; their encouragement motivated me to find my unique voice and hone my craft, creating complex characters capable of anything.

I’m very disciplined: I write for at least two hours a day — listening to music helps me get into “the Zone,” that magical place where time seems to vanish while I’m hard at work on my latest project. I also carry a little notebook with me everywhere — it’s not unusual for me to jot down story ideas when I’ve got some downtime, I live in Brooklyn and commute to Manhattan often.

Authors, of course, are a big part of a writer’s influences. But what about horror movies? Which movies do you love, which do you hate, and why

Movies I’ve seen at least 5 times because I love them so much are Blue Velvet, The Exorcist, Psycho, and the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I despise remakes — they’re usually horrible and pointless. Instead of ruining a good thing, Hollywood should re-release the classics for younger generations to enjoy.

Okay, now what about authors? Who inspires you, who doesn’t, and why?

I’ve always been a fan of the Surrealists: Kafka, Lovecraft, Poe. Reading their stories always made my heart beat faster. I was hooked when my eight grade English teacher read Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart to the class on Halloween.

Several modern authors who inspire me are: Harlan Ellison, Jack Ketchum, Brian Keene, Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates; all of these writers have mastered the art of fine storytelling, breathing so much life into their characters that they feel like real people and I often find myself concerned for their welfare.

Whenever I tell people I’m a Horror Writer, some of the really misinformed individuals will smile and say, “Oh, like Anne Rice?” This causes me to shudder uncontrollably — I can’t stand Anne Rice’s writing — vampires bore me. Her characters always seemed one-dimensional to me. I know she has a loyal following, but that’s just my opinion.

Let’s talk about Apple of My Eye, your thirteen-story collection. Tell us a little about the nature of the stories, what led up to them, and what it took to bring it all together.

Apple of My Eye represents 10 years worth of my stories; consequently, some of them, Apple of My Eye, Snubbed, and Crosshairs are quite extreme, while others are erotic, like Come and Gone and Cold Comfort. The rest of the stories are subtle, but they contain a few nasty surprises: Ashes to Ashes, Initiation Day, Prevention, Raven’s Revenge, Rampart, Perishables, Damp Wind and Leaves, and EV 2000.

You might say Apple of My Eye has something for everyone! The title is my twisted take on the term of endearment, “You’re the Apple of My Eye.” All of the stories explore love in all its guises.

Rejection! Lots of beginning writers face it. I’ll assume you did, too. How did you deal with it and keep going?

Yes, in the beginning I got nothing but rejection letters, but they inspired me to keep writing, especially when Editors took the time to offer constructive criticism, which fortunately happened early on.

My advice to authors who are just starting out: Don’t give up — your diligence and persistence will eventually pay off, just be patient and your talent will be recognized.

I tend to think the horror writing field is an equal opportunity proposition for everyone. Am I right, or have you noticed a bloody ceiling of horror even here?

I’d definitely have to agree! One of the things I love about the horror writing field is the camaraderie — there’s a real sense of community. Horror Writers are some of the nicest people I know, mild-mannered, too! I’m an Active Member of the Horror Writers Association. I also frequent the Shocklines Message Board. All the cool writers are on LiveJournal, myself included

Don’t get me wrong, writing takes creativity, drive and ambition — every Horror Writer I’ve met so far is interested in what I’m working on and vice versa. I wish I had more money to attend conventions — they’re always a good time — I enjoy catching up with folks I already know and matching names to faces.

What are you working on now?

I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you…No, seriously I’m working on several short stories. Amazon.com has a new program called Amazon Shorts; stories are available for download. Best of all it only costs 49 cents, a real bargain for some serious entertainment! One of my stories will be live on the site soon; it’s one of my quieter stories. I wrote it while I was still in college.

What’s the one question you would love to be asked, and what’s the answer?

What scares Amy Grech?

Lots of things: death, fear of rejection, and thunder are the big three…I’ve had a few near-death experiences — if I’m like a cat, that mean’s I have six left. I was born with my umbilical chord wrapped around my neck — I almost didn’t make it into the world; luckily the doctor did a C-Section and I live to tell the tale.

My second brush with death came on a hot summer’s day. I was across the street at my friends’ house; since it was so hot out, we were drinking tall glasses of iced tea. I remember running around with ice cubes in our mouths — not a good idea, but, hey, we were just kids. I guess we were about eight-years-old, having a good time until I choked on mine and blacked out. When I came to, my friend Karen told me my face had turned blue and her mother performed the Heimlich maneuver.

We used to have a big athletic event at my elementary school called Field Day, held at a park, which meant a break from classes and lots of fresh air. Well, I’ve always been a good sprinter so I ran the obstacle course. I had to clear some hurdles, but I missed one, landed on my head and blacked out for a second. Then I kept on running and won the race! Go team, go! Okay, lucky for me that last one really wasn’t a brush with death, but I could have snapped my neck. Landing on your head isn’t something I recommend!

Violent thunderstorms have always scared me, lightning, too. When I was a little girl, our house was hit by lightning…Thankfully nobody got hurt, but our stereo got fried. If I’d be asleep in bed and the thunder was so loud the windows rattled, I’d wake up and hide under the covers. And you wonder why I became a Horror Writer!

Visit her website http://www.crimsonscreams.com.

Interview: Vince Liaguno

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Vince A. Liaguno’s The Literary Six is strangers meeting on a (terror) train. Think April Fool’s Day meets The Secret History from fiction. And, like all good strangers, once these two get together, there’s blood. Think Happy Birthday to Me or My Bloody Valentine or Prom Night or any of the other slasher-by-numbers from the Golden Age of Freddy and Jason and Michael, but don’t (though you’ll be tempted) try to shove this book into your VCR. Instead just let it play in your head, and with your head, and if you can keep from grinning, then you’re a better person than me. As Liaguno shows us with this impressive debut, the slasher is far from dead – it isn’t even tired yet. – Stephen Graham Jones, Demon Theory

It was a pleasant surprise for us to find out that Vince Liaguno is a Long Island native. New York State Nursing Home Administrator by day, and devilish writer of horror by night — along with being a contributing editor to Autograph Collector magazine — he joins us to talk about his love for horror and his novel, The Literary Six.

When and how did you get the horror bug?

As a younger child, my access was pretty much limited to TV horror, and some of those creepy 70’s films still stick in my mind — Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Gargoyles, Trilogy of Terror, those cheesy AIP films like Count Yorga.

When I was eight, my dad took me to see Jaws and I joke that it took four successive tries before I made it through the whole movie. Each time we’d go, I’d make it a little farther and then be like “Daddy, can we go?” through chattering teeth. Then, when I was ten, my dad took me to see Halloween. That was the defining moment for me. I was hooked on horror, especially the slashers, and couldn’t get enough after that. Horror became like a drug.

Tell us about your novel, The Literary Six, and how it came about.

Like I said, I really fell hard for the slasher films of the early eighties. I’m not sure if it was the comfort of the formula that I found appealing or what it was, but these films captivated me. There was something primal about the terror, maybe because the onscreen horror could translate so easily into real-life that made these films frightening.

Around the same time, I discovered horror literature — Jack Ketchum, Richard Laymon, and novelizations of the slasher films. I think I was struck by the differences between the latter and the films they novelized — the books adding nuance and capturing the characterization of the source material better than the films. I knew that someday I wanted to capture a slasher film on the printed page to make the literary equivalent of a slasher film, if you will. Flash forward twenty years or so, and I did.

What’s your “secret” for writing? What challenges did you need to overcome to finish this novel?

The only secret that I discovered while writing Lit6 (as it’s been dubbed on Internet boards) is that novels don’t write themselves. I know…mind-blowing stuff, right? Early on, I spent a great deal of time planning and thinking and plotting, which are all important to the process, but I think I prolonged that step long past the point of being productive. Perhaps it was out of an unconscious fear of doing the actual work…that old devil known as procrastination. But once I started and found my groove, I organized the writing process and drew from my Catholic school upbringing to discipline myself — even rapped my own knuckles a few times with a ruler just to keep it real.

I wrote Lit6 for about two hours, 3-4 evenings a week, and 8-10 hours on both Saturday and Sunday. The first draft process lasted about a year, the rewrites and editing another year. In terms of challenges, I think the major challenge was to bring a literary element into a sub-genre of horror not well known for its substance. Slasher films were all about the inventiveness of the kills, the systematic slaughter of a cast of characters. I wanted to remain true to the formula while updating it for more discriminating readers, for the teenage fans of those 80’s b-flicks who had grown up. Character development was critical, and I wanted an element of mystery. I wanted to logically scatter the players across the proverbial chessboard and then keep the audience in suspense as to where the malevolent force in the novel would strike next.

What is Queer Horror, and why is it important?

Queer horror is a burgeoning movement within the horror genre, with an obvious focus on the inclusion of queer characters, situations, and cultural references. In other words, horror that appeals to a gay audience.

Up until recently, many of the homosexual characters in horror have been peripheral to the action. Unless the character was an exotic lesbian vampire right out of The Hunger, you weren’t seeing many gay characters in horror literature or film. I think gay horror fans hungered to see stories inclusive of a more diverse cross-section of society.

There is definitely a market for horror in which GLBT individuals can see themselves represented, and even some venerable publishing houses like Haworth are developing their own GLBT horror imprints. It’s funny because I never set out to write a “queer” horror novel and was actually surprised when the gay elements received a lot of the focus. I really set out to write an integrated novel that would appeal to a broad range of horror fans — straight and gay alike. The novel is populated by eight or so primary characters, two of which are entangled in a gay/bisexual subplot that figures into the overall action. Most of all, I set out to write a horror novel and hope that it scares people senseless regardless of their sexual orientation.

What horror films are your favorites and why? Which ones turn you off?

Besides slashers, I love ensemble stories. Large casts of well-defined characters that do battle with the evil forces at work. Films like Carpenter’s The Fog and The Thing, Alien, Maximum Overdrive, more recently The Descent. I’m looking forward to the upcoming film adaptation of King’s The Mist, which I think falls firmly into this category.

In terms of turn-offs, I’m not overly fond of the trend toward torture movies. Not opposed to extreme violence onscreen if it’s germane to the story, but when the story exists for the sole purpose of the graphic violence, then I’m turned off. Not a big Hostel aficionado or fan of the Saw sequels.

Also have to admit that I’m a sucker for the occasional remake. I like to see alternate spins on the same source material and then compare and contrast. There does seem to be a preponderance of remakes of late, and while some work brilliantly like The Hills Have Eyes and others fail miserably like The Fog, I find most fall comfortably in between. I’m really looking forward to Rob Zombie’s reimagining of Halloween – more so because I loved his House of 1,000 Corpses and was less enchanted with The Devils Rejects, a film I think falls squarely into the realm of torture films. Say what you will, the guy’s a gutsy filmmaker with an eye for the nasty, so it’s going to be interesting to see what he does with a masterpiece of subtlety and nuance like Carpenter’s classic.

Who are your favorite authors and why?

I think the first author who I ever considered a favorite was Agatha Christie. Like slasher films, her novels followed an established formula that appealed to me. And, face it; the woman was the mistress of well-constructed mysteries! In fact, I’ve always considered her And Then There Were None and its subsequent 1945 film adaptation to be the first true slasher story — ten people brought to an isolated island and killed off systematically in inventive ways at the hands of an unseen killer for the sins of their past…come on!

Jack Ketchum and his legendary Off Season had a profound influence on my writing aspirations. His was the first novel I had ever read that captured the visceral quality of the slasher films I was so enamored with in written form. He taught me that written words had more power than all of the special make-up effects in the world because they had something that could rarely be captured by film — the reader’s own imagination. Peter Straub probably runs a close second in teaching me about nuance and mood — his Shadowland is probably one of the best works of understated horror ever.

Today, I’m loving the stuff by Bentley Little and Scott Nicholson. Both have found comfortable niches and great formulas to craft strong horror fiction that’s the literary equivalent of the most comfy t-shirt in your closet. Christopher Rice is another favorite of mine — great characters in well-plotted, suspenseful mysteries with a decidedly gothic feel. He’s got a great future ahead of him — one would hope with such genes, right?

What are you working on now?

Coming along on my second novel, tentatively titled The Renewed. This will be a departure from Lit6, more in the horror/science fiction vein. While I intend on revisiting the slasher genre somewhere in my career, I didn’t think it a wise move to follow-up with the same type of story. There are worse things than being pigeonholed, I guess, but feel it’s worth trying to avoid this early on. I tend to gauge the mood of my work by genre films, and I’d say that the new novel is a hybrid of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Fog, and Village of the Damned…maybe shades of Day of the Triffids thrown in. There will definitely be no butcher knife-wielding maniacs in this one, but the horror will be intense, muses willing.

I’m juggling work on the novel with my gig as a contributing editor at a small national magazine — for which I get to interview and write about some of my favorite celebs — and a weekly e-column called Slasher Speak: The Murderous Articulations of Vince Liagunoat the queer horror site, Unspeakable Horror, where I write book and film reviews, commentaries, nostalgic retrospectives on some of the great slasher films, and the occasional ruminations on Jamie Lee Curtis.

I’ve also been trying my hand at some short stories, not a format with which I’m intimately comfortable so I’m pushing myself. I’ve submitted to one or two anthologies, figuring it’s a good way to hone the craft while remaining visible to readers in between novels.

What’s the one question you would love to be asked and what’s the answer?

Hmm. That would have to be the age-old question that determines the fabric, the very essence of an individual: boxers or briefs?  Boxer briefs, thank you very much.

Interview With Jonathan Maberry
On Writing

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Jonathan Maberry Author photo“What’s the matter?” Zimba asked.

“My muse is not amused today,” I said. I sipped my third Dunkaccino in my doldrums, and sharpened a few more pencils. I had been alternately doodling and sipping, trying to get my story down on paper; or, at this stage, anything down on paper.

“There’s more to writing than just waiting for inspiration, you know.”

“I know. But it’s so hard trying to juggle time, things that need to get done, and writing. Like juggling balls, it’s easy to get them into the air and not so easy keeping them there.  To make matters worse, you have writers like Jonathan Maberry blithely juggling literary rings, non-ficion pins, and graphic novel buzz-saws while taking bites out of an apple, all at the same time. It’s demoralizing.” I took a long sip of my Dunkaccino.

“Jonathan Maberry?”

“He wrote Ghost Road Blues, a first novel that’s already received a preliminary Bram Stoker Award nomination. Makes me sick.” I took a hopeful sip from my empty Dunkaccino cup. Damn things are never big enough.

“Well, why don’t you just ask him how he does it,” she said.

“You can’t just go and bother a writer because—”

“Why not? It’s easy. Just click your pencils together three times and say “There’s no writing like my writing, there’s no writing like my writing, there’s no…”

I looked at her. She was serious. I clicked my pencils together and repeated those words. In a poof of light and smoke Jonathan Maberry appeared.

“Damn, not again! You neophyte writers are a pain in my — what? Oh, sorry.” He adjusted the bath towel around his waist.

Zimba exhaled.

“Well, I see you two have lots to talk about.” She left the room with rosy cheeks.

I was speechless.

“Well?” Maberry said, toweling-off his hair. “I’m waiting. Make it snappy.”

 

With the Ghost Road Blues trilogy, the Joe Ledger series, other fiction and non-fiction books written or in the works, comic books, teaching duties, and an 8th degree black belt in jujutsu, how do you do it? Lots of coffee?

I never sleep.  No, actually I multi-task well and I plan things out before I do them.  Unlike a lot of novelists, my background is in journalism rather than creative writing. At Temple U  I learned the reporter’s trade–get your hook, do your research fast, writing quickly, always nail your deadline, and move on.  I don’t believe in writer’s block–I think that’s an excuse for poor planning or a lack of discipline. If it existed, reporters would be telling their editors that “the muse just isn’t with me today”…and the next day they’d be working at McDonalds.

Real pros write, and they write every day. They set goals and meet them. This doesn’t mean, however, that they have less passion or less of an appreciation for the more artistic aspects of writing, it’s just that they can get the job done. I have a lot of friends who are professional writers, and they all pretty much agree.

On the other hand, sometimes time evaporates and I feel like I’m driving three cars at once. Aside from writing a novel a year, I also write one or more nonfiction books a year, I write articles, I’m writing a pilot episode for a TV series; and I own or co-own a few businesses.

I’m a founding partner of the Writers Corner USA (in Doylestown, PA), which is a writers education center, and I teach a bunch of classes there–which I love; I’m co-founder of The Wild River Review, a literary e-zine, and I just wrote a long serial feature on the ‘thriller genre’, which included interviews with Lawrence Blocks, Steve Hamilton, Barry Eisler, and others; I own Career Doctor for Writers, which provides editorial, proofing and career counseling for writers; and I’m president and chief-instructor for COP-Safe, which provides cuff-and-arrest and risk management workshops for law enforcement. I sit on a couple of boards — Philadelphia Writers Conference, etc.; and I’m the president of the New Jersey/Pennsylvania Chapter of the Horror Writers Association.

So…where do I find the time?  The real answer is that I have no freaking idea. Stuff gets done and I stay happy doing it. Coffee and meditation help a lot.  

What’s Ghost Road Blues about, and why is it shaking up the Bram Stoker Awards?

The success of Ghost Road Blues took me a little off guard. After thirty years as a magazine and nonfic book writer I took a shot at a novel–a trilogy of novels, actually–and hoped it would have at least modest success. I’d never written book length fiction before and simply sat down and wrote the kind of book I would read. I love epic stories, I love stories with ensemble casts, I love exploring the psychological cause and effect of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Fiction allows me to explore that.

Ghost Road Blues has racked up something like 107 Amazon reviews, of which nearly 100 are 5-star. Publishers Weekly compared it to Stephen King, and even though I don’t think I write like King, that was a helluva nice thing for them to say.

I think some of its success comes from my public appearances. I have so much fun with the horror genre, and people tell me that they love my enthusiasm and passion. When I do a talk or appear at a signing, I don’t just sit there and blab about my books…I talk about the whole genre, about the marvelous books–both classic and recent–that keep horror vital and alive.

Having the book recommended for two Stokers–Novel and First Novel–floored me. It absolutely floored me. I had no idea that I’d get even a single recommendation, and yet at the end of the initial phase I was in first place for recs for First Novel, and sixth in Novel! If I make it all the way to the official ‘Nomination’ phase, which happens around the middle of February, I think I have my strongest shot in First Novel. But even if I don’t win…just being included in the short list is a real buzz. I’ve read all of the other books, and I don’t see them as ‘competing’ books. These are books by friends and people I really admire. It’s excellent company no matter what happens, and we’ve all been joking that the winner has to buy the others the first round of drinks at the Stoker Banquet.

Why do you use the horror genre as your writing voice?

Horror allows me to take the brakes off. Horror isn’t safe and writing shouldn’t be safe.  In horror you can address the darkest, most dangerous parts of the human heart, and that’s where you learn about the true nature of each character. Some of our most profound pieces of literature have used the supernatural as a vehicle for telling stories of great cultural, literary, or psychological worth. Shakespeare loved the supernatural — The Tempest, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, Macbeth; Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is a pretty damn scary ghost story; Dracula and Frankenstein are enduring classics. Go back further and look at Dante and Milton, at Homer. Monsters, ghosts, demons. Most people want to believe in a larger world; and even for those who don’t, the horror format allows you a structure for telling a tale that otherwise readers might not try.

You see the same thing in SF and fantasy. The Twilight Zone and Star Trek were really morality tales, social or political commentary, even farces about the human condition–and if they had been done as straight dramas on TV would we even have watched them, let alone remember them all these decades later?

There is such a grand tradition of horror writers speaking in a voice that is unafraid of telling the truth about what goes on in the twisting corridors of the human mind. Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend tells you just about anything you’ll ever need to know about how we deceive ourselves by accepting the propaganda that supports our biased vision of the world; The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson is a short course on the dynamics of psychological disintegration; Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes speaks eloquently about the devastating effect of the choices we make, and about the ordinary heroism latent in the human soul. The list goes on.

Sadly, in recent years horror’s gotten a bad rap. All of the major publishers, including the one that does my books—Pinnacle–have stopped using ‘horror’ on the spines.  They’ve started calling their books ‘fiction’.  Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Peter Straub are known as ‘suspense’ writers. Maybe it’s backlash because of torture-based films like Saw and the spate of slasher films we had over the last couple of decades, the whole industry has been labeled as trash. That’s amazingly unfair…especially since most of the slasher flicks were not written by horror writers, or even writers of adequate literary chops. When a real writer takes a shot at writing something like a serial killer story you get a Silence of the Lambs.

I’m going to rant a bit here, so bear with me. When real horror writers–whether they call themselves that or not–take a popular genre and give it their all, you get books that can stand as literature by anyone’s standards. You want a ghost story? Try The Shining, or Matheson’s Stir of Echoes; Wither by John Passarella, or Peter Straub’s Ghost Story.

You want to read about the social and psychological effects of the apocalypse, a genre with a lot of great books, take a look at The Stand, Robert McCammon’s Swan Song, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

You want a good monster tale that actually has story rather than just shock? Pick up Charles Grant’s The Pet, Phantoms by Dean Koontz, Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker.

There are marvelous cross-genre works, like the Repairman Jack novels by F. Paul Wilson, and the mysteries with a touch of the supernatural that John Connolly and Peter Straub write with such elegance and insight.

Novels about culture clash? Try Dan Simmons’ The Song of Kali or Iain Banks’ The Wasp Factory.

Or, how about coming of age? That genre doesn’t begin and end with To Kill a Mockingbird and Catcher in the Rye.  Take another look at The Body by Stephen King, A Boy’s Life by McCammon, Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, and Bradbury’s Something Wicked this Way Comes and Dandelion Wine.

We even have slasher stories that strike right to the heart–Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris; and Jack Ketchum’s legendary Off Season.

And this is just scratching the surface. For every book and writer I just named there are dozens and dozens of others in the horror genre who have written– and are still writing–books of literary merit that also display deep insight, subtlety, and the power to both encourage and compel deeper thought on the part of the reader. Horror does this because to a large degree that’s what horror literature is all about.

 

“Hey, these Dunkaccinos are good,” Maberry said, sipping his second cup. Glenor was kind enough to make a sustenance-run for us. “You could raise the heat, too, you know. I’m freezing my ass off.” He pulled the towel tight around his waist as I turned up the thermostat. “Now where were we?”

 

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Interview With Jonathan Maberry
On WritingRead More »

Chindi Remembers Charles Grant

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West Nelson shares his thoughts on the passing of horror and science-fiction author Charles Grant. Thanks West.   

We said good-bye to Charles Grant on Thursday. You can read his obituary, but I’d like to talk about the first time I met him. It was about 10 years ago and I’d been corresponding with his wife, Kathy Ptacek, for some time. She kindly invited me to a party they were having for his 100th book. It was a weekend long affair, but I couldn’t make it on that Friday. I do recall that we were all watching an episode of the X-Files that Friday night. When I saw Charlie’s name on a list of suspects that Mulder was reading, I called Kathy and Charlie to tell them. Of course they’d seen it and the celebratory noise in the background made me regret choosing work over fun.

That night I prepared a couple of pans of spicy sesame noodles with shrimp and scallops and in the morning, I loaded it all up in the car and drove to Newton, NJ. The minute I arrived, I was welcomed with open arms. Not just by Kathy and Charlie, but by their community of friends as well. At some point, I mentioned to Charlie that his work had a Dickensian touch to it. The characters you got to caring about the most were the ones who were doomed, in particular the children. He rather enjoyed that. Later, when discussing his book, Jackals, I stated that it reminded me of the National Geographic film, Eternal Enemies: Lions And Hyenas. He fairly leaped into the air and said he got the idea for the book from that video. We riffed on the name the researchers (Derek and Beverly Joubert) gave the male of the pride. Ntchwaidumela which means “He who greets with fire”. In fact, whenever we’d float past one another that night, we would bow to each other and say “Ntchwaidumela” in a most formal tone.

As for my spicy sesame noodles, they were a hit. Charlie made me promise to send the recipe which I gladly did. Come to think of it, he’s the only person to whom I’ve ever given it.

When the blackout of 2003 occurred, I was in the midst of reading one of his Oxrun collections. Rather than wait for the lights to come on, I settled onto a couch and turned on a flashlight. I finished the book that night and when I went to sleep I had a nightmare I hadn’t had in years. I emailed Charlie about it and told him that I’d decided to finally write it all down. He wrote back and told me that he’d like to see it when I finished it. Sadly, I let life get in the way and I never did finish it.

Years ago, Charlie put out a small print magazine called Haggis. It was a way for his fans to get a glimpse into what was going on behind the scenes of his work. There was also a great deal of fan participation. He organized a virtual wrestling federation. We had to come up with our own characters. Mine was Loup Garou, the werewolf. I described him as George “The Animal” Steele with serious dental issues. Loup was quite tame as long as he was leashed. In truth, I’d forgotten about it until Jet Li’s Unleashed came out. Charlie was kind enough to email me to ask if I’d had anything to do with it.

People like Charlie Grant are never fully appreciated by most of us while they are here. I regret getting so caught up in my own life that I couldn’t take a day to see him when he took ill. “There’s always next weekend”, I kept telling myself. If we are to learn anything from his passing, it should be that we must cherish our friends and family while they’re here. Email and web communities are one thing, but they cannot replace real face to face encounters. It is small consolation that his funeral and the following reception were just the kind of gathering that he would have enjoyed.

We’ll miss you, Charlie. Thanks for everything.

Sin-Jin Smyth’s Ethan Dettenmaeir

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Hangman_2With a mysterious title like Sin-Jin Smyth, and a talented cast that includes Roddy Piper and Jeff Conaway, this is one horror film high on my must-see list. Here’s the synopsis: Sin-Jin Smyth takes place over Halloween weekend. Two Federal Marshals receive orders to cross the state border to the small town of Shin Bone, Kansas in order to transfer a prisoner during a tornado warning. Nothing is known about the prisoner except his name: Sin-Jin Smyth. The film is based, in part, on an old legend that tells of the Devil appearing simultaneously in the high plains of India and a quiet cemetery in Kansas at midnight on Halloween.

I wanted to find out more about the creative force behind this upcoming horror film slated for October release–writer and director Ethan Dettenmaeir, and here is the interview we recently had. You can also check out Sin-Jin Smyth at Wikipedia.

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Sin-Jin Smyth’s Ethan DettenmaeirRead More »