THE HORROR OF MY LIFE BY SEAN DOOLITTLE

Sean Doolittle is the author of seven novels, including Kill Monster, his latest. His books have received the International Thriller Writers Award and a Barry Award, among other honors. His short fiction has been reprinted in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII and Best American Mystery Stories 2002.


WEBSITE LINKS
www.seandoolittl.com
Twitter: @seandoolittle
http://severnhouse.com/book/Kill+Monster/8984

 
I’d be very reluctant to present myself as a horror writer—not because I’d want to avoid that label, but because I know the true horror aficionado does not (and should not!) suffer dilettantes gladly.
 
To the extent that I’m known as a writer at all, I’m primarily known as a writer of crime thrillers. But in truth I started out, as a late teenager and all through my college years, writing horror stories.
 
Some writers can’t remember a time when they didn’t want to be writers. I myself vividly remember that light bulb moment when I first thought:  “I want to do this. I’m going to do this. How do you do this?” For me, the light bulb was the short story collection Night Shift by Stephen King.
 
Oh man did I want to give others even half of what King gave me in that book. Ok, that’s a half-truth. I also wanted to learn how to keep giving it to myself.
 
Through King I discovered Robert Bloch (author of Psycho and scores of great short stories). I had the lifelong honor of dining in a group setting with that latter master at a small, intimate SciFi/Fantasy convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, where I’d driven my terrified 21-year-old self in an attempt to learn more. Bloch’s obituary came just two years later; I’ll always cherish the opportunity to sit at his table, absorb his kindness, and listen. 
 
Through King and Bloch I read more Shirley Jackson and Daphne du Maurier, discovered more modern writers like Brian Hodge, Joe R. Lansdale, and David J. Schow. And through traveling to industry gatherings such as the World Horror and World Fantasy conventions in the early-mid-90’s, I began to piece together my first sense of something wonderful:  a writing community.
 
I remember eagerly awaiting each new stapled-together edition of a mail-subscription market guide called Scavenger’s Newsletter. I remember scouring Scavenger’s for small press magazines and anthologies where I could submit my first wobbly attempts at short fiction. Thank you so much, Janet Fox, wherever you are.
 
I’ll always remember the editors of those outlets who took their valuable time to offer tips, advice, and commentary on my work. Editors like Kathleen Jurgens (Thin Ice); Peggy Nadramia (Grue); Mark Rainey (Deathrealm); Richard Chizmar (Cemetery Dance); Ann Vandermeer (née Kennedy, The Silver Web); Wayne Edwards (Palace Corbie); Thomas F. Monteleone (Borderlands); and so many others. In retrospect it must have seemed so clear to them what they were dealing with:  a young writer without much life experience struggling to learn the craft.
 
But they did it. They didn’t have to do it, they just did it out of sheer awesomeness. Also, I expect, out of love—not love for me personally, but a love for the genre. And for doing their part to make it as rich and interesting as it could be. 
 
A few eventually accepted work from me. Some may not even remember me now. Others—legends like Ellen Datlow and the late Karl Edward Wagner—offered key votes of confidence that helped keep me going when I needed help most. I consider all these people my earliest mentors in the world of writing and publishing, and more importantly, true heroes of horror.
 
Thank Cthulhu I was able to publish those early stories before the Internet. Looking back on most of them I see what all those editors must have seen:  a wannabe with only the vaguest hint of his own voice, copping riffs from others, looking for a place to fit in.
 
Eventually the place I seemed to fit best turned out to be crime/suspense fiction. But years later, along came an overpowering urge to dump all my toolboxes on the floor in one big pile and write Kill Monster, my latest book.
 
I don’t even know if I should claim Kill Monster as a bona-fide horror novel, despite the marketing label. To me it feels like a spiritual cousin to movies like Tremors and Edgar Wright’s Cornetto Trilogy. It’s a creature feature that, I hope, uses some of the things of horror, and the pace of a thriller (along with a few light comments on middle age, parenthood, getting knocked down, and getting back up), to deliver one thing above all:  fun.
 
I know I had fun writing it. Probably the most fun I’ve had writing anything in a long time. I know many writers, myself included, who might be tempted to say:  “That means you’re doing it wrong.”
But so be it! Like the mighty Cornetto, sometimes horror—whichever flavor it might be—gives you exactly what you need.
 
 

Kill Monster  by Sean Doolittle  

A golem created to assassinate a criminal in 1856 is reawakened in the present ... intent on targeting his victim's innocent descendants.When treasure hunters excavate the long-lost wreck of the steamship Arcadia from a Kansas cornfield, a buried creature awakens - a mindless assassin of accursed earth, shaped like a man though in no way mortal, created to kill a slave trader in 1856.

With the original target long dead, the monster sets its sight on the man's closest surviving descendant . . . a burned-out IT technician named Ben Middleton. Nothing could have prepared Ben for the horror now aimed directly at his lackadaisical life. But he isn't only being chased by the monster, and it's not just his own life in danger.
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Ben must pull himself together to not only save himself, but his estranged teenage son, Charley. Yet who are the mysterious people chasing him, and how do you stop a 150-year-old monster with no 'Off' switch?

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