THE HORROR OF MY LIFE BY JAY WILBURN
27/6/2019
 Jay Wilburn is an author of horror and other speculative fiction. He is a Splatterpunk nominated author and has work in Best Horror of the Year volume 5. After a life-saving kidney transplant he started running and is currently training for a double marathon. His works include Vampire Christ, the Dead Song Legend series, and a series of scary adventure stories for children, The Lake Scatter Wood series. Featured work: Vampire Christ – https://amzn.to/2RBbeeW Website – https://www.jaywilburn.com/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/AmongTheZombies Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/jaywilburnauthor/ The first horror book I remember reading It by Stephen King was my first real horror book. I read it in early high school. Up until then, I read fantasy and sci fi almost exclusively. A girl who was out of my league who I really had a thing for rebounded to me around Christmas after a bad break-up. I think it was the mini-series of the It story that got me interested in the story and she bought me the book for a gift. We were together in secret over the Christmas break and then she got back together with her old boyfriend for New Years. I was with her and reading the book during the same time period. I wasn’t even upset about the break-up. It was almost like it happened in a different dimension that only exists during the holidays when real life was on hold. Maybe it all tied together to create an alternate universe where things horror stories and secret flings reside. I got a love for horror out of it, so it wasn’t a wasted adventure. The First Horror Film I remember watching The original Halloween was the first real horror movie I remember. My Dad was strict, but had a bad habit of letting his rules slide when it was something he really liked. The movie Halloween was one example. The original Highlander film was another. Animal House was yet another. We watched the Elvira TV show, too. If he loved something, he wanted other people to love it too, so I got to watch Halloween when I was still too young for it. The Greatest Horror Book of All Time A big part of me wants to pick something older and classic, like the guy who claims the greatest movie ever made is Citizen Kane, even though he can’t sit through it. Another part of me wants to pick edgy books I really do love like something from Ketchum, Wrath James White, or Edward Lee. I think the right answer may be Head Full of Ghosts by Tremblay. It accomplishes things with a few well-used tropes that are new and largely unmatched. I think it hits the perfect balance of ambiguity that forces the audience to draw its own conclusions and people from opposite sides of many different spectrums think it goes to far to the opposing side of the spectrum. For that and many other reasons, I think it should be a contender for greatest horror novel. The Greatest Horror Film of all time The Exorcist, I think. It was groundbreaking at its time and only seems flawed in so much as it has been copied by so many films made since to create cliché out of originality. It captured and terrified audiences. The worst that can be said about it in all honesty is that it still holds up. It blew up into a genre of religious and possession horror that swept its decade and still inspires films today. THE GREATEST WRITER OF ALL TIME Stephen King is my favorite author of all time. A long list of indie authors are the ones who most excite me with their writing currently. The greatest writer of all time has to be William Shakespeare, I guess. He invented words and phrases that are still in use today. He invented metaphors and tropes that are used as reference points in writing in every genre and in every age. You can approach that, but can’t really match that with even the bestselling novels now. Greatest horror writer of all time, could be King, Shirley Jackson, Bloch, Poe, or who knows? I’m going to give that one to Jack Ketchum, though. THE BEST BOOK COVER OF ALL TIME  The answer is probably a non horror book, but Kelly Link has some great covers. There are a couple reprint books that have good covers. More than one Dracula cover has been eye catching. I think some of R. L. Stine’s covers are better than people realize. Wrath James White and Edward Lee covers seem to try very hard to move away from any idea of perfection or greatness, but I think an argument could be made for several of them. Both covers of the Nightly Disease by Max Booth III are great. Even with all the turmoil around the collapse of Dark Fuse, I think I have to give that original Dark Fuse cover of the Nightly Disease by Max Booth III the nod for greatest. Something about the owl-headed night auditor on the cover lit by that old desk lamp gets me. THE BEST FILM POSTER OFF ALL TIME Best poster I’ll have to go with the Alien poster of green light breaking through Alien egg with the tagline “In Space No One Can Hear You Scream.” There are busier posters and some I find equally interesting, but I think that one has to be the best. THE BEST BOOK I HAVE WRITTEN If someone isn’t sure about me and wants to try me out as an author, there are two books I’ll direct them toward. That has to be a sign that they are my best. The first is The Enemy Held Near I cowrote with Armand Rosamilia. It is a haunted house story where the haunting parallels the breakup of a family. If I can get someone to read that book, I can usually get them to pick up another. The other is a newer release called Vampire Christ that is landing well with readers. It’s a political satire vampire horror novel. The book follows a faithless TV preacher political pundit who discovers the Bible is really a secret history of vampires. Those old disciples are still stalking the Earth and have set their eyes upon the seats of power in the United States government. The book is true to the dark horror of a vampire tale, but also satirizes politics, religion, current events, and popular culture. THE WORST BOOK I HAVE WRITTEN Setting aside unfinished and unpublished novels, I might have to give that distinction to Time Eaters. I don’t consider it a badly written novel, but I think it may be almost unmarketable. My publisher for that book has been kind enough to keep it on and keep sending me money whenever we move a copy or two. It has a lot of one and two star reviews various places around the Net and a number of five star reviews. It is cross genre between time travel sci fi and extreme horror. Turns out, sci fi fans who love time travel are really not prepared as a group for extreme horror. Many fans who like extreme horror get irritated with the confusing jumps that come with a serious time travel story. It is a very select person who likes both aspects of a novel that is essentially about time traveling cannibals. If I had decided to make it funnier, it might have worked better leaning toward weird fiction, but making it a serious story with serious character moments with time travel and with extreme horror and cannibalism really narrowed the audience laser thin. I’m still glad I wrote it, but I did myself no favors in finding an audience. THE MOST UNDERRATED FILM OF ALL TIME Hide and Creep. It is a low budget zombie movie set in Alabama. It is funny with interweaving story lines. Everything about it should be awful and unredeemable. If I force people to watch it, less than half appreciate it anywhere near as much as I do. However, everything about it works for me despite all reasonable evidence to the contrary. I think it is an unappreciated masterpiece and almost impossible to find a copy of it to watch. Between these two paragraphs, I checked, and the makers of it do have it up on YouTube for people to watch, I believe. They also have what I consider to be one of the best zombie short films of all time called “Birthday Call.” THE MOST UNDERRATED BOOK OF ALL TIME Population Zero by Wrath James White I think is a lot better than many people realize. He gets credit for being great in the extreme horror sub-genre, but I think he’s even better than he gets credit for. I could list a number of his books in this category. They are great, lots of people know they are great, but they are even better than that. THE MOST UNDERRATED AUTHOR OF ALL TIME Max Booth III is so much better than anyone realizes throughout his entire catalog. As he continues writing, he improves exponentially with each work. The Nightly Disease is a masterpiece. Carnivorous Lunar Activities is one of the greatest werewolf novels ever written. It is a great novel even without the werewolf caveat. THE BOOK / FILM THAT SCARED ME THE MOST Amityville Horror scared me the most. I was still in high school reading in the living room. I stopped on a scene that had a statue coming to life and biting someone in the dark. Then, I turned out the light and walked upstairs. Timing is everything. I was younger, it was night, and I created an image in my mind that translated into the real world with me. Going back now, it probably wouldn’t have the same effect, but that moment sticks out in my mind. THE BOOK / FILM I AM WORKING ON NEXT I’m always working on too many things at once. The next big thing I’m aiming toward is a Young Adult trilogy that combines zombies and high fantasy with a focus on all female characters. Vampire Christ Book 1: Blood of the Lamb by Jay Wilburn Will one faithless TV preacher be enough to defeat a vampire messiah? Reverend Holland Sire never intended to hunt vampires across America, especially not in an election year. He was a small time preacher and a big time party hack working the evangelical vote. But his father’s writings led him to the terrible truth. Every character in the Bible, every story, is about them. And some of those ancient undead saints still stalk mankind in the night with their glowing red eyes now turned on the seats of power within the United States. Ancient disciples and new converts to the faith of blood move to feast and conquer. No one is safe and nothing is sacred to the Vampire Christ. Vampire Christ: Blood of the Lamb rips open the veil to reveal the truth in this dark horror satire. The American Church, politics, modern culture, and current events mix together in an unholy splatter that only makes sense, if you can believe in vampires.   Comments are closed.
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