OH NO I’M STUCK IN A HORROR
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This is a new, hopefully fun short interview template, where you imagine you are trapped in a series of horror books and films, it’s meant to be a lighthearted way to talk about the thing you want to promote without directly talking about it.  As with all of the other templates, please include a biography, the product you want to promote, any social media links or links to purchase your stuff at the end of the article and please attach a profile picture that we can use in the article.

You wake up and find yourself in a horror franchise, what franchise would you prefer to wake up in and why?


If we are only talking about movies, would I have to live through every film in said franchise? Could you imagine having to live through every terrible Halloween film? Imagine being in a Rob Zombie movie? If you had asked me if I could be part of any kind of horror universe, I’d like to be in the Lovecraftian and/or Cthulhu-mythos films or the Hammer horror films. I’d travel to all the different universes and have my own family of cosmic horrors. I’d come back to this reality and tell everyone everything about what I had learned.


You find yourself as the “Final One”  which monster / villain would you most like to go up against ands why do you think you would survive?

I suppose the only monster worth fighting would be a Yautja (Predator films, especially Predator 1). That’s what they’re called, right? It would be the ultimate test of bravery and strength, and you know it would be a fair fight. Just me and an alien in the jungle with blood and flames and screams and rain. But, if I had magic, maybe I’d want to have a contest with something more powerful. It all depends on my motivation. I would survive because I wouldn’t let anything bad happen to the ones I love. I would make sure everyone worked as a team. I would do everything I could to keep everyone alive and well.



And which creature would you least like to go up against?

That depends on what kind of weaponry you’re giving me. Would I have access to magic? And why am I fighting when I could be having a good time? So many of these horror movie “villains” would be no problem if the main characters would learn a few good spells. If you know how to handle ghosts, demons, and such, then you really have nothing to fear, and so what you would have is a world of complete possibility to grow and learn. Preparation and understanding are key. If I were in a slasher film, and there was no magic, no supernatural, then I wouldn’t want to get involved with any “villain.” But, if suddenly ghosts are real? and magic is real? Awesome. Why? Because then anything would be possible, and death would really only be the beginning. But the Horror genre should teach us to connect with something higher than ourselves anyway. Horror, as a genre of film or literature, should be ways to transport us into worlds of beauty and thrill.



You find yourself in Scooby Doo, which character are you, and who would most like to have as the other members of Mystery Inc?


Scooby Doo is not for me.



Pinhead pops round for an evening of fun, what are you pains and pleasures?

That’s between Pinhead and me. Am I to assume we have been long-time friends?


The Wishmaster gives you three wishes

1.  You can wish to write in any franchise
2. You can wipe on franchise from the minds of everyone
3. You can date your horror crush

What do you chose?

It wouldn’t be just a date. That’s the thing. It would have to be love forever. Marriage. Family. You don’t just spend your wish on a date. I would choose wish #3 (You can date your horror crush), and I would live an eternal and happy un-life with a beautiful vampire woman. Maybe, Akasha? Not sure.

​In "The Report of Mr. Charles Aalmers," Matthew Pungitore crafts a spine-chilling story about a surreal chain of maddening events surrounding a historian and his beloved friend. Encounter a lurid report written in a disturbing manuscript found in a Gothic crypt guarded by strange rumors and an indescribable being. Additionally, this anthology includes many more thrilling yarns most grotesque, most sublime, wonderfully Gothic, charmingly dreamy, and certainly weird: "Black Torque Demon," "Dubhdris Abbey," "Fetch of Prismatic Froth," "Grumocruth," "Idyll For An Allhallowtide Masque And Romance," "Jade Gorget Hex," "O Tumult Unearthly," "Platinoid Pearl Rapture," "Ultramundane Numina in the Forbidden Tomb," and "Zynzblazoth."

Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?


I’ve been married to my wife for twelve years now and it’s hard to remember what life was like before I met her.


I work as a librarian at a public library having earned my master’s degree in Library and Information Science in 2016. Before that I worked as a painter at The Ohio State University for fourteen years.


I started reading Stephen King in my teens and was drawn to horror slowly. The supernatural was something that interested me but also scared the hell out of me.


I spent many years watching horror movies through my fingers. It wasn’t until I was old enough to be certain that monsters weren’t going to come for me that I could begin to dive into horror proper.


Now I want to bring the journey full circle and share my own horror stories with people.


Which one of your characters would you least like to meet in real life?


Doctor Charles Barrett.


He’s the main character in A Visitor. He’s very much a man willing to do whatever he needs to do to get what he wants. If I found myself alone with Dr. Barrett in a room, I’d be looking for anything I could find to physically defend myself. That encounter would only end one of two ways and I would do my level best to make sure that I was the person to walk out of that room. 😊


Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing?


Science Fiction/Fantasy.


I grew up watching Star Trek and the first book that I ever read for fun was the Star Trek The Next Generation novel Vendetta.


The term horror, especially when applied to fiction always carries such heavy connotations.  What’s your feeling on the term “horror” and what do you think we can do to break past these assumptions?


I think most people hear the word horror and immediately think of movies like Friday the 13th – slasher flicks full of gore and nudity. Eye candy in short.


I think horror is much much more than that. I think horror at its core is about an individual coming to terms with the titanic forces that eclipse our understanding of size and scale. Humanity loves to cast itself as masters of the universe. We have no control over the cosmic nor can we control the forces that our own planet can unleash every second of every day.


Horror comes into focus for all of us when something comes along and goes, ‘Hey dipshit, let me show you something…’


In short - anything that offers us a glimpse behind the curtain lays bare our total lack of control. Once people realize they live side-by-side with horror, they can begin to appreciate horror writing/movies in all their glories.


A lot of good horror movements have arisen as a direct result of the socio/political climate, considering the current state of the world where do you see horror going in the next few years?


Looking into my magic eight ball… I think horror is going to continue to do what it does. By that I mean that there will be a large collection of stories that chase the current trends/issues to be relevant and gain wider acceptance. But there will also be those stories that drop out of the clear blue sky, and they will be timeless.


I instinctively pull back from anything trendy or ‘new’ because some trends are not worth my effort to realign my existence in order to be viewed as cool. For example, imagine if musicians had only written music that fit inside the Disco genre. Forever. Think about all the different music we would have lost out on because everyone was so focused on the ‘new’.


Horror can and should be contemporary, horror should be open to all people and horror should represent the times in which it was written. But above all else, horror should be real. If it only applies under limited, narrow circumstances, then it can’t transcend boundaries. Take Jordan Peele’s movie Get Out as an example of something that managed to be both timely and timeless.


As a white man I will never know what it’s like to be treated like a second-class citizen because of my skin tone. But I can relate to Get Out because I can relate to the class distinctions of rich versus poor, of those in power versus those that are not. Those themes are timeless and can be felt by everyone.

Given the dark, violent and at times grotesque nature of the horror genre why do you think so many people enjoy reading it?


Everyone has an opinion on this issue: people like being scared, people like living vicariously, people have blood lust, etc. etc. If you push past all the flash and spectacle of horror, people – deep down in the dark places of their souls that no one likes to talk about – people know that life is horror. We live it every moment of our lives. Take shows/comics like the Walking Dead for example.


At its core you have a group of people just trying to get by. Sure, there happens to be zombies, but they are all just dealing with food insecurity, crime, scarcity of resources, violence and disease all while trying to maintain a sense of identity and family. Sound familiar? That’s because that’s what we are all dealing with daily. Whether your stomach is full right now or not, somewhere in you is a primal fear of going without.


That’s what drives so much of human behavior (if not all). Fear.
Reading horror allows us to tap that prehistoric, cold, foundational emotion without being enveloped body and soul. At least, we like to think we’re safe. 😊


What, if anything, is currently missing from the horror genre?


More everyday horrors.


Some of the scariest things that I’ve ever read involves the normal everyday things that are harmless on the surface but strike terror into your soul, nonetheless.


Under the right conditions, a door opening can be terrifying. A good example of the mundane being horrifying is found in Stephen King’s novel The Shining.


In The Shining, about half-way through the novel little Danny Torrence makes the mistake of going into the one damn room he is supposed to stay out of! And there’s a point when King writes how the door slowly swings open and it scared me. Sitting in my chair safe at home far away from the Overlook Hotel, I got scared.


The whisper of a suggestion that someone or something was behind that movement is something that every person who’s seen a door swing open on its own has heard in their own head. Its personal, it’s relatable and therefore the ‘realness’ of it is breath taking.


I’ll never forget how something so routine, like a door swinging open on its own – something we have all experienced! – when placed in the right setting can really, really f**k someone up.


That’s horror.


What new and upcoming authors do you think we should take notice off?


There are hundreds of new/emerging authors out there (myself included).


My take on reading a new author is that it is like inviting a stranger into your home for the first time. Will they be a good guest or will they shit on the rug and set fire to the house? Do you want them to be good? Or do you want them to rattle your cage a little (or a lot)?


Right now, I’m looking to expand my horizons and I’m picking up authors I have not read yet. I just bought a copy of Adam Nevill’s The Ritual and Beverley Lee’s The House of Little Bones. I’m hoping that they will be memorable house guests.

Are there any reviews of your work, positive or negative that have stayed with you?


All of them stay with me. The good, the bad or the ugly. One reader wrote in part that Interrogation in Room #249 was ‘a strange story’. They might have meant it as a criticism, but I took that to mean I told the story that I had meant to tell.


I had another reader review for Pox where they wrote that they had stopped reading another book and started reading mine. That’s a cool feeling.


But by far the reviews that put me over the moon were from Yvonne Miller for the Kendall Reviews website. They were great reviews from an established book reviewer. Suddenly I felt like I had a right to be writing, that it just wasn’t me ‘playing’ author, but that my work could have an impact on someone.


Sure, making a living from writing is the dream, but as long I live no matter what happens in my career, no one can take that experience away from me. I wrote those things, and someone felt something about them.


That’s mine forever.


What aspects of writing to do you find the most difficult?

Grammar and punctuation.


I have a bachelor’s degree in English and I couldn’t diagram a sentence to save my life nor do I know what verb tense I’m using right this instant. Should there be a comma there? F*ck if I know. Thank God for editors.

Is there one subject you would never write about as an author?


Animal cruelty.


I can’t bring myself to write anything where an animal is made to suffer at the hands of anyone.


Let me be very clear: I don’t think for one second, written words (or movies, or videogames) make people do horrible things. Bad people do bad things. But I do think that sometimes these things can plant specific ideas in the heads of people who are already prone/vulnerable to these types of suggestions.


Not to throw Stephen King under the bus, but in his novel Rage (originally published under his infamous pseudonym – Richard Bachman) a student takes a gun to school and holds his class hostage. King made the book stay ‘out-of-print’ for fear that people already on the razors edge of sanity would find that work to be inspirational for all the wrong reasons.


If something I wrote planted/inspired an idea for animal cruelty I would feel morally responsible for that animal’s pain. People are already shits towards animals; they don’t need my help being any shittier.


Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years?

One of the hardest fought realizations of my life is this: it’s ok to fail.


No one sits down, fires off 40,000 words, and slaps their hands and say, ‘Ok. All done.’ No one. If you ever talk to someone who even remotely lets on that they think writing is simple/easy, stop talking to that person because they are liars. Or frauds. Or trying to undermine you.


Expecting a blank page to give itself over to you is roughly akin to thinking that the stars in the heavens give one ounce of shit whether you live or die. They will continue to twinkle in the night sky long after you and I are gone. And I doubt they feel one way or the other on the issue. Neither does the blank page so get over yourself.


My process is to get into a ‘clean’ headspace – by that I mean I try to relax and put life’s worries to the side for a while – and think. I think about what happens, who’s doing what, what decisions are made, what consequences flow from what I’m seeing, what are the characters seeing/feeling/hearing/smelling, etc.? I try to make it relatable, first to myself and then to a larger audience.


That’s the nuts and bolts of writing.


The magic of writing is the idea. That first lightning strike when the Muses grace me with the kernel that the story will grow from. I can’t tell you (or anyone) how to get that initial ah-ha idea.
    

What is the best piece of advice you ever received with regards to your writing?

My wife patiently listened to me talking about my stories/ideas for years.


Years.


The day finally came when she told me I needed to get going on the writing. Stop thinking, stop thinking about it, and stop talking about it.


Do it. Do the work. It was hard, it was scary, but she knew it was something that I had to do.


Which of your characters is your favourite?

Most of my characters make all sorts of bad choices but the one I’m having the most fun with right now is the main character in a novel that I am working on. He’s quick on his feet and even faster with his mouth, able to cut someone down verbally in a heartbeat. But he has a massive blind spot that gets him into some serious trouble…


Which of your books best represents you?

There’s something of me inside all my writing.


If you’ve never had a bad thought or an evil impulse in your life, you won’t be able to effectively write about anyone doing those things because you have no personal knowledge of the subject matter. If you haven’t felt anger, how could you explore that with the written word? What would you base it on? It would sound like the scene in the 40-Year-Old Virgin where Steve Carrel described a breast as feeling like bag of sand. It would sound fake.


I’ve never been to Italy and if I were to write a travel blog about Italy, it wouldn’t take people long to get the sense that all my musings were inspired by Google search results.


My writing is personal attempt to exorcise my own demons by dragging that bullshit into the light of day and saying, ‘See! This is what that type of shit does to a person! Don’t be that guy.’


And I like to explore the extreme edges of those tendencies. I don’t have to murder a room full of my house guests to know the dangers of obsession, but by writing A Visitor I could take obsession all the way down the twisted path and find out what lay at its end.


So, if I invite you over for dinner, you’re probably going to be ok.


Probably.

Do you have a favorite line or passage from your work, and would you like to share it with us?


The closing line of Pox: “I finally wrote the fucking thing, Jane.”
I think it perfectly sums up Alan Dandridge’s total lack of empathy and single-minded fixation on his writing.


Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next?


The last novelette I published was The Man Without a Hat.


It’s about a man living in a dry sunbaked world. Society has collapsed and he’s responsible for keeping his enclave of people alive by trading resources with a small mining community. Without the trade, they’ll have no water to drink. When he shows up to trade, he finds that things have gone from bad to worst.


In terms of the near future, I’m tiding up another novelette titled The Mission Bell. It’s a story about a wayward group of ranch hands that have the misfortune of spending the night in a church on the wrong side of reality. Every time the bell rings, a body turns up.


Hoping to get that out into the world soon.


After that I’m diving into the several WIP’s I have on the back burners. Novels take time to write and are much more costly to self-publish. But now that several of my smaller works are out, I’m swinging back to the long form and getting them all the way out of my head to make space for more ideas.

If you could erase one horror cliché what would be your choice?

The virtuous survivor.


One of my favorite reads is Off Season by Jack Ketchum.


At the end of the story one of the good guys dies senselessly. It comes out of nowhere and is unexpected. Which is great writing because it totally fits with the rest of the story. Life can be cruel and senseless, sparing one house from a tornado while devastating the one next door.


In the final analysis, it doesn’t matter if you’re a good person or not.


When your number is up, it’s up. I’m not advocating that life should be a melee of murder and mayhem because nothing you do matters. Quite the opposite. I’m just saying you can’t buy your way into safety or survival by living a certain way. The idea that the trope of the virtuous survivor sends the wrong signals to readers worries me.

What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you?


The last book I read was Chuck Wendig’s The Book of Accidents.


His voice is clear, and the writing is fast paced. And he’s merciless.
The last book I had a hard time getting into was Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koontz.


His writing style is way more about setting the atmosphere and laying the stage for the back half of the novel. I think I’m too impatient of a reader to slow down and enjoy the world building.

What's the one question you wish you would get asked but never do?  And what would be the answer?


“What Is the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow?”


And my answer would be, ‘I love Monty Python and the Holy Grail!’

Gingernuts of Horror: Welcome to the site! I’d like to start out by asking about the two leads, Mal and Jackie - where did they come from, and how much time did you put into mapping out their relationship before starting in on the series?


RJ Dark: It’s strange because I’ve actually been writing professionally for quite a while, but Mal and Jackie have existed right from the start, they were the first book I seriously tried to write and they’ve been through a few iterations before I hit upon them as they exist now. They come from a love of American crime novels which often do the detective who has a dangerous friend, we have Spenser and Hawk (Robert B Parker) Elvis Cole and Joe Pike (Rober Crais) and Myron Bolitar and Windsor Lockwood (Harlen Coben) and I wanted to do a very British version. Something that was partly deadly serious and partly comical in the way that Joe Lansdale does so well in the Hap and Leonard books. So there’s that.


At the same time, I spent my youth and young adulthood as someone who was a bit too quick with a quip and was lucky enough to have friends who could look after themselves that saved me from a few unpleasant situations. More than a few, actually. So there’s quite a lot of that in them too.


GNoH: So there’s a bit of you in Mal?


RJD: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I was never an addict or a medium. But there’s definitely my sense of humour and sense of fair play going on. And I suspect we share an ability to hide really well if violence is kicking off. Though Jackie doesn’t really give Mal the chance.


GNoH: Jackie is a complex character who we learn more about in the second book, though much of his backstory is still mysterious. Do you have a good sense of his past, and are you planning any future revelations?


RJD: I have a REALLY good sense of his past and yes. I tried writing Mal and Jackie books for ages and constantly failing because I was trying to write the book that dealt with how they became friends and I realised they needed to be more established for the reader first. So that knowledge has always been there, and I suspect that the more hidden facets of Jackie will surface in later books as well. At the same time, I never want to go too far, like where does he keep all those clothes? Nobody knows. He is a man of secrets.


GNoH: The estate of Blades Edge feels almost like a character itself, in the books. Is it based on a real location? And to what degree do you have it mapped out in your mind?


RJD: It doesn’t exist and it does. I grew up on the edge of an estate and we were constantly warned about what it was like. So it kind of became a bogeyman in my head and Blades Edge is very much the estate that existed in my head, as opposed to a real place. At the same time, I've spent plenty of time in places like Blades Edge, and known plenty of the sort of people who you run into in the book so there’s a lot of realism in it. I receive a surprising amount of emails from people who are sure it's the estate they grew up on, so it’s definitely hit something.

As to having it mapped out, not really, I have a vague idea of it.  It's more of a feeling for it. How it feels to walk along certain streets, how there’s nowhere to hide. I know it, but I couldn't tell you where The Scar is in relation to Mick’s house or the Tower Blocks or the massive hill that is the Blade.


GNoH: In terms of that, then; how do you strike the balance between that ‘bogeyman’ version and realism? There must have been a fear of inadvertently veering into caricature (which I do think you avoided)...


RJD: I think it's the same as with all things, you write it with a sense of affection and the knowledge that people are people, and their actions are often driven by things beyond their control. There’s a bit in A Numbers Game when they go into the house of someone who clearly has undiagnosed mental issues. Though they’re quite open about how awful it is to be in that house, and how they don’t want to be there, at the same time the person has trouble rolling a  cigarette so Jackie takes over, and by the time they leave he’s rolled a little tobacco tin full of cigarettes for them. I think that confirmation by a small act of kindness stops it from being a Jeremy Kyle style, ‘let’s laugh at the poor people.’ The acknowledgement of the struggle some people have just to live and not being overly judgemental about it.


GNoH: How about dealing with outright villains, though? Is there any difference in your approach when dealing with, for example, the racist organisation in Incy Wincy?


RJD: I don't write many outright villains so it was fun to write a proper scenery chewer. I've no doubt in their minds they're the heroes, well not in Dareth’s, he is clearly a monster and he knows it which should clue the rest of the organisation in, but they don’t care. That’s how you tell they are genuinely very wrong as opposed to being wildly misguided.  That and the way they treat people, are people a tool or do they actually want to help them? I think that’s what divides Trolley Mick from some of the other bad guys. He has a sort of twisted sense of community. He’s not got my morals, but he does have some morals.


GNoH: Both novels contain a mystery. Did you have the solutions to those mysteries in place before you started writing, or did you work it out alongside the characters?


RJD: I always know who did it and why when I start. And probably one major connection going through. Like the realisation that is at the heart of Incy Wincy was always going to happen. How I get there is always a mystery and often the people that turn up are a surprise. The appearance of Mucky Jim in Incy Wincy came from nowhere but I feel like he is worth revisiting.


It's quite fun just to let it run though because I can hear Mal and Jackie so well,  so they bounce backwards and forwards in my head and I can follow where they would go. I know they make bad decisions, and why they do them so it rolls along in quite a fun way.


GNoH: One thing I wanted to talk about in Incy Wincy was the autopsy scene; it’s a staple of crime fiction, but with Mal as the POV character, you brought something fresh to that sequence. Can you talk a bit about how you approached writing that sequence? And more generally, what are the things you most enjoy and most dislike about writing Crime fiction?


RJD:  There wasn't really any clever plan to it, I’m sorry to say. I was really thinking about how much I would hate an autopsy and trying to write that.


GNoH: Fair enough. More generally, the books are interesting tonally, in that they contain both humour and darkness, with Mal being our window for both. How do you make decisions about when to drop in a gag line, and when to let the darkness or tension play out?


RJD: It’s a really odd thing and it’s almost entirely done by feel, I don’t think you can teach it or explain it. Mal and Jackie use humour as a tension release valve and I think a lot of the actual funny in the books comes from the fact Mal gets tense a lot more quickly than Jackie. That might also be why the autopsy scene works the way it does. You have two very different levels of acceptance for A) the way the world works and B) for the amount of violence they are happy to be involved with. So you scamper along that tightrope not trying to destroy the tension of the story with too many jokes. Though I’m not sure jokes is the right word, it’s very character dependant, they’re funny as opposed to it being set up - punchline.


GNoH: Finally, what’s next for Mal and Jackie? Are further adventures in the offing?


RJD: Yes!  There’s another Novel and a Novella written. The novel moves away from the established location of Blades Edge to the seaside, and the novella happens before the events of A Numbers Game. But they are both great fun and I’m really pleased with them. I keep messing about with ideas for a fourth book and I’m pretty sure that will happen at some point. They are just so much fun to write.

One dead man and a missing lottery ticket.
Two family members who need that money to get away from the rundown Blades Edge estate.
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Three local gangsters who want that money for themselves.

Meet Malachite Jones – the foremost (and only) psychic medium on the gritty Blades Edge estate. All he wants are two things: a name that isn’t ‘Malachite’, and a quiet life. And maybe some real psychic powers, but he’s making a living without them.

Janine Stanbeck wants to find her dead husband Larry’s winning ticket and escape Blades Edge with her son. And she thinks Mal can help her.

But Larry’s dad is the crime lord of the estate, and he wants that ticket for himself, and worse for Mal, he's not the only criminal with his eyes on it. Add in two coppers desperate to nick Mal's best, only, and admittedly quite dangerous, friend, Jackie Singh Kattar, and Blades Edge is getting pretty crowded.

Malachite Jones might not really be able to talk to the dead, but if he and his friend Jackie Singh Kattar can’t find that money and a solution that pleases everyone they’re likely to be in need of a psychic medium themselves.

The first Mal Jones and Jackie Singh Kattar adventure: a chaotic rollercoaster ride through a Yorkshire landscape full of double crossing friends, dogged police, psychotic gangster and voices from the other side.

Malachite Jones is a pretend psychic medium and an unwilling detective.

He certainly doesn't want anyone bringing him a missing persons case.

Definitely not two.

When the a body turns up he knows life is only going to get harder.

Blades Edge premier gangster, Trolley Mick, owes a favour to a family who’s son, Daniel Jerrings, has vanished. He wants Mal to pay it. Jackie’s friend from the military, Spider, is also missing. And though Jackie doesn’t really do friends, he does do loyalty and that means Mal does too.

But it seems that there are plenty of other people out there looking for Spider, and everything is spiralling down the drain in a wash of designer drugs, UFOs, racists, violent youth gangs and a group of evangelical Americans with their own agenda. Somehow, it all involves a missing teenager but nothing adds up, and violence lurks around every corner.

Discovering the truth means sinking deeper into the grimy world of organised crime where dangerous people have an awful lot to lose, and a way out for Mal and Jackie is getting harder and harder to see.
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Incy Wincy picks up where A Numbers Game left off. Gritty, good hearted and laugh out loud funny. Mal and Jackie are back!

This is a new, hopefully fun short interview template, where you imagine you are trapped in a series of horror books and films, it’s meant to be a lighthearted way to talk about the thing you want to promote without directly talking about it.  As with all of the other templates, please include a biography, the product you want to promote, any social media links or links to purchase your stuff at the end of the article and please attach a profile picture that we can use in the article.
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You wake up and find yourself in a horror franchise, what franchise would you prefer to wake up in and why?
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I know this might be considered “blasphemous” to some, but I absolutely loved ‘Prometheus’ and ‘Alien: Covenant’ and I think a big part of that was how the story was based on the group finding the star map and travelling to a distant planet and finding the crashed ship. The Alien stuff has always gripped my and excited me because of the Science-Fiction/Horror team up, the imagery and the sheer scope of the story telling. Not every movie is perfect, sure, but every entry is fun and filled with some great moments. I also loved the way it tied into and joined the Predator world.

You find yourself as the “Final One” which monster / villain would you most like to go up against ands why do you think you would survive?

Hmmm, tough one. So many pro’s and con’s to each. Like, I know I could kick Freddy’s ass easily enough, but the dude can get you in your dreams haha! I guess I’d have to say I’d go up against zombies? But not the 28 Days Later or World War Z ones, I’m not a runner. The slow moving – easy to pick off kind.

And which creature would you least like to go up against?

Ever since I watched ‘Monster Squad’ as kid I’ve been deathly afraid of Werewolves. I love reading about them and watching them, but damn do they freak me out. I think I’d not survive long against a lycanthrope. They’re fast, strong, have phenomenal sight, smell and hearing. Perfect killing machine.

You find yourself in Scooby Doo, which character are you, and who would most like to have as the other members of Mystery Inc?

I mean, I’m clearly Fred, yeah? Tall, blonde, beyond good looking while remaining humble without a hint of arrogance? HA! But yes, I’d be Fred. Am I supposed to pick real people to be the rest of the gang? I guess for Shaggy it’d have to be Matthew Lillard, he’s pretty much Shaggy. Or Ashton Kutcher. Or Snopp Dogg. He’d be a fun Shaggy. As for Velma and Daphne, I’d say Salma Hayek and Sofia Vergara… for uh… reasons!

Pinhead pops round for an evening of fun, what are you pains and pleasures?

Wow, now we’re getting somewhere, eh? I mean Pornhub does have a lot of BDSM videos (not that I frequent that site… or know what that site is, yeah, that’s it, sorry what’s Pornhub?). Oh, yeah, pains and pleasures.

Ok, well I’ll keep this Rated G how about that?

Pains – if Pinhead wanted to hurt me deeply, he’d just need to take a pen or sharpie out and draw on my skin. Bleeeech, even writing that is making me uneasy. God, it’s disgusting. The feeling of it going across your skin and then it’s on there and oh Lord, BLEECCHHH. The irony of this is always that I’m like 75% covered in tattoos haha!


Pleasures – Rated G here, Steve! I enjoy frozen treats, like ice cream, slurpies/slushies, ice cream sandwiches etc. So, Pinhead could pop over with some delights and we could sit in the dog/kid pool we have and relax in the shade of the umbrella while enjoying some cool treats! Be a nice day, really.

The Wishmaster gives you three wishes;
1.  You can wish to write in any franchise
2. You can wipe any franchise from the minds of everyone
3. You can date your horror crush
What do you chose?

Oh easy, number one. I wouldn’t want to erase any franchise because even though I might not like it doesn’t mean others don’t. Each thing gives people their own joys, who am I to take that away.

Number three is a tough one because I don’t really have a horror crush. Maybe when I was in my teens, or even younger.

So, number one it is and while it’s not in the question – the franchise I’d most like to write in would be either creating another entry in the world created by the movie ‘SPLICE’ which some of you might have figured was an influence on a novella and a recent novel of mine, OR, barring that, something within the world that Guillermo del Toro created with ‘Pan’s Labyrinth.’ That movie is a huge favorite of mine and really has so much potential for further exploration or expansion.

You wake up and find yourself in a horror franchise, what franchise would you prefer to wake up in and why?


Despite the multiple storylines and lack of continuity, the Halloween franchise with the original first five Michael Myers films' brother/uncle storyline.

Halloween, and all its sequels, remakes, and comics has always been my favourite franchise and I don't care the stick it gets. I love it. I read Taking Shape II recently and even loved reading about the sequels and revamps that never got made.

So, yeah, Halloween, as it's a great time of the year too, and in a way I kind of sympathise with Michael Myers.

Something happened to make him that way. I liked the Curse of Thorn idea and would have liked to have seen more about that and its origins.


You find yourself as the “Final One”  which monster / villain would you most like to go up against and why do you think you would survive?

Michael Myers in the latest continuity.

I'd burn his bloody house down and destroy his mask {I don't think he's happy with people seeing his face for some reason} and say 'Now what, fucker?' And then obviously run really quickly to the nearest airport as he's never left the country yet.

And which creature would you least like to go up against?

A Hammer Horror vampire. One of the ones wearing bodices with heaving cleavages everywhere.
I'd be screwed.


You find yourself in Scooby Doo, which character are you, and who would most like to have as the other members of Mystery Inc?

Knowing me I'd be the bloody dog.

Em Dehaney would be Daphne, Linda Nagle would be Velma,
Jonathan Butcher would be Fred,

Daryl Duncan would be Shaggy and I'll have my dachshund Pearl to play Scrappy as she's a little shit.


Pinhead pops round for an evening of fun, what are your pains and pleasures?

Obviously copious amounts of food, which in my case usually covers both of these things. He'd lure me with a banquet of my favourite foods, make me believe that they're free of calories, and then laugh when I've eaten everything and he tells me he's lied. Then all his little chains would come out of everywhere and force-feed me chicken nuggets and chocolate and milkshakes intravenously until I explode.


The Wishmaster gives you three wishes

1.  You can wish to write in any franchise
2. You can wipe out one franchise from the minds of everyone
3. You can date your horror crush

What do you choose?


Yet again, Halloween. It's been my love since getting into adult horror. When I first used to write 'serious' stories I would write  Halloween fan fiction.

It took something like six years for The Curse of Michael Myers to come out after ending the previous film on such a cliffhanger and I recall writing my own ending, which, funnily enough I've seen theorised online recently. My story continued straight after Halloween 5 and even linked in the third, unrelated, Season of the Witch. My Michael Myers was one of the androids from the Silver Shamrock Novelties factory and the guy who freed him from jail was the toy maker himself. I think, and this was about two years before Terminator 2 came out, my ending was something very similar, Michael Myers drowning in a vat of something extremely corrosive in the Silver Shamrock factory. His niece is left holding his mask, just in case I wanted to write another one.


Yeah. I love Michael Myers.

Matthew Cash's latest book The Glut was written entirely during Nanowrimo 2021 and came out January 2022. Buy it here http://hyperurl.co/fdzzai


FREE YOURSELF
What would you do if you found out your compulsions were not your fault?
That something else had been controlling you all along?
What would you do if you discovered there was a dark part of you, a part of humanity, that was put there by an entity older than the stars?


Vince is binge-eating himself into an early grave. He cannot resist the voice inside that encourages him to gorge, an instinctive reaction to every strong emotion.
Finding it increasingly more difficult to live with, he vows to do anything to rid himself of it.
Even if it means stooping to new lows and levels of degradation of which he never considered himself capable.
​

I usually meet Kyle Muntz just outside of a metro station. Every couple of weeks we meet for dinner to catch up, talk about books and express the small quirks that come with being two foreigners living in China.  Kyle gives thoughtful answers to most things he is asked. When you tell him something, or give an opinion, he absorbs the information like osmosis, taking it in and considering it thoughtfully. His background is in experimental fiction and literary fiction, but his latest novel has a much darker element:


“The weird thing about The Pain Eater is that I planned to write a completely different book beforehand. I had this elaborate idea about these people who were living with this non-human creature, they were even going to have sex with it – until I realised that was just insane. So, I took this previous idea and I kept making it smaller and smaller until there was this weird stuff that was hidden beneath the surface… It’s a family drama on one level and one of my favourite things is that it’s not just about the weird stuff. I do think the novel could go through to the end being just about the family and it could work.”


In his new novel, The Pain Eater, he explores a family that encounter a demonic cat that can take people’s pain away. The opportunity for escapism sends the characters on a downward spiral. “I had never owned a cat or had much contact with them, but what had happened was my father had been taking care of cats,” Kyle says, when I asked him why he chose the internet’s favourite animal as the catalyst for the horror elements for the book. “I found it so striking that a person who I’d known all my life as such a stern figure had become awakened in some ways by this little animal.” Despite serving as the spark for the horror to take place, Muntz quickly clarifies that the fractured family in the novel is far from the real one he has back in America, “my brother is my best friend.” His best friend is thousands of miles away and the distance of China to America seems to be in his work as well as geographically: “It’s weird to live so far away from home and then write about a character who is going home. I don’t think I would have written the book how I did if I hadn’t come to the other side of the planet.”


We sat in a Korean bar and music videos flicker in the corner of my eye. For Kyle, this isn’t a distraction, as he is talking about his favourite thing: character development. “Real people and character development are my great obsession. For me, I’m obsessed with the idea that the characters themselves should be alive, rather than being these sort of puppets who are carried along by the writers’ understanding of the world – or their ideology. The writer gives  good qualities to the hero and bad ones to the villains and the whole novel is about the ideas that they think are valuable.” Kyle admits that this has ruined other forms of entertainment for him in the past, finding things either illogical, unbelievable or uninteresting in its failure to illustrate human nature: ”I think this is a game that art has played on human beings that fundamentally lies about the human world.”


The obsession with character may explain the focus on it in The Pain Eater, a novel that doesn’t rely on its unique twist but instead uses it as a probe to explore the outer reaches of character. It’s definitely a conscious effort, with Muntz saying: “With The Pain Eater I’m really fixated on real people and what they think about and care about.” It’s a problem with art in general, but perhaps in horror it is more common than we think. “For me it was about showing realistic people in a horror story, a genre where sometimes the characters have no life whatsoever. Essentially characters in horror stories can be like fresh meat you buy from the store—their entire purpose is to be slaughtered. They are utterly enslaved by the narrative”


None of this comes from a place of dissatisfaction though, instead a love for art and creating. Something that is reflected in his own desires to create and write different kinds of books. “I like all kinds of stories. A few months ago I finished my first completely realistic manuscript. Now I’m working on a science fiction novel. Genre fiction is one of my great obsessions,” he says, before taking a sip of his beer and smiling, “but maybe if people like The Pain Eater I’ll just write horror novels for the rest of my life.”

Welcome to our new interview series where Ginger Nuts of Horror asks the the important and burning questions what would happen if you were stuck in a horror franchise?  Who would be your Scooby Doo team mates, what three wishes would you take from The Wishmaster, what are your pain and pleasures and many more questions that need to be answered.  

If you would like to take part in this series, which is open to everyone, you can download the template here. 

Today we welcome author T L Wood, whose most recent collection of short fiction, SEEDS, was nominated for three awards this year: the Australian Shadows, Sir Julius Vogel, and the Ladies of Horror Fiction awards.

You wake up and find yourself in a horror franchise, what franchise would you prefer to wake up in and why?

It has to be the Evil Dead franchise, because I love a bit of pitch-black humour with my horror, and how could you ever pass up the chance to fight side-by-side with wise-cracking Ash Williams and his boomstick?


You find yourself as the “Final One” which monster / villain would you most like to go up against and why do you think you would survive?


Ghostface from Scream because he’s not in the least bit scary or clever. I’d lure him into my house, in which I’d set up a series of deadly Home Alone-style traps, sip tea and wait for his screams to start.


And which creature would you least like to go up against?

I don’t fancy my chances against Freddy Krueger to be honest. I’m a serial napper so he’d probably get me straight after a heavy meal and I’d be too slow to run away. Plus, if I can’t even dodge a swipe from my own cat’s claws, I probably can’t win a fight against someone with knives on their hands.

You find yourself in Scooby Doo, which character are you, and who would most like to have as the other members of Mystery Inc?

I think I’m probably Fred. I’m (kind of) buff, (reasonably) brave and can rock a good orange ascot. For the rest of my team, I’m going to pick a few of my favourite Horror authors. I think Penny Jones is my Velma, Laurel Hightower is my Daphne, and A.S. MacKenzie is my Shaggy. (They’re all going to hate me for that now… *evil laugh*)

Pinhead pops round for an evening of fun, what are your pains and pleasures?

I challenge him to a board game marathon: Scrabble, Risk and Catan. I’m very competitive and hate to lose, so it will be painful for him to have to deal with that and I will take great pleasure in beating him.


The Wishmaster gives you three wishes

1. You can wish to write in any franchise
2. You can wipe one franchise from the minds of everyone
3. You can date your horror crush

What do you chose?

I would love to write for the ALIENS / PREDATOR franchise with a particular focus on Dachande "Broken Tusk.” Instead of him being killed by the Alien Queen, he survives and establishes his own ranch colony.


If I were to wipe a franchise from everyone’s minds, I’d kill off FINAL DESTINATION just so it could be done all over again with tons more over-the-top death sequences and I’d put Joe Keery in Devon Sawa’s role.


I’m a sucker for a sexy vampire, so I guess I’d pick Severen from Near Dark. He would be a total liability and chaotic to be around, but it would also be bloody great fun.

Here at Ginger Nuts of Horror we are gearing up for the release of The Last Storm by Tim Lebbon, the near future horror thriller from one of the UK's leading authors.  Described by Christopher Golden as "Grim, dusty Americana, family drama, near-future horror. The best thing he’s ever done!"  Ginger Nuts of Horror we kind of have to agree.  The Last Storm is brilliant.  To celebrate the launch of The Last Strom, we have tried to do something special.  Kicking off with an in depth interview with Tim with added help from the fabulous Kelly White, we have also created a little road trip for the launch of the book with help from some of the best genre review websites, so be sure to check in each day for directions on how to read the full interview.  There will also be a review from yours truly on Friday and next Tuesday I will be posting a feature on my five favourite Tim Lebbon books.  

Hello Tim, how are things with you?

Afternoon, mate! I'm OK thank you. Hot and sweaty (we're currently in Wales's traditional 3-day summer), busy, but good.


The Last Storm is published early July, it must feel good to have a book coming out after the mess of the pandemic?


Absolutely. This is actually my first original novel in two years (following on from Eden), so I'm very excited to see it out there. As usual Titan have come up with a glorious cover, and I'm lucky enough to have loads of very lovely blurbs from writers I respect and admire. In some ways Covid feels like just a momentary blip ... but in other ways it's been a ten-year-long 18 months of nothing. So yes, it'll be good to have a new book on the shelves.   


How much do you think the pandemic affected book releases from authors such as yourselves, with so many events being cancelled during the lock down years?


Eden was launched in May of 2020 and ... it didn't perform well. I think it's a great book, but it came out just at the wrong time. Everywhere was closed (I was supposed to be going on book tour, and there was a London Underground poster campaign which, of course, no one saw), and it was also just into Covid. Later, people started buying lots of books when they realised they might be in the house for a good long while. But I think people who didn't normally buy books looked at the bestsellers on Amazon and bought one of them. And Eden was not on that list, of course! So it wasn't a particularly good time. I remain upbeat though, I've written a TV pilot for Eden and my manager is currently showing it around LA. So, who knows. If it gets optioned, and even made, the book might have a second life.


Nature and the climate feel like characters in their own right in your fiction, and they have become more antagonistic in your most recent novels. How does this reflect your view of our world and what drives you in these portrayals?

I've always written about nature in my novels, from my very earliest mass market novel The Nature of Balance. I'm a real lover of nature, always have been, and I love living in the countryside, so I guess it's only natural that it often creeps into my fiction. It is featuring more heavily now, probably because I'm more worried than I've ever been about what we've done to the world and how we continue to influence the climate. Isn't everyone? I hope so! And it's an interesting observation that it's become more antagonistic –– I hadn't consciously noticed that, but I guess it's my simmering anger at what we've done to the world bleeding through and giving nature a route to fight back in my writing. Even with The Nature of Balance, though, nature was giving humanity a bit of a kicking! So I guess that aspect has always been there too. I do think we'll adapt and change as nature changes, and hopefully we'll also do our best to stop how much we're changing nature. But in my darker moments, such optimism feels pretty naive.

You wrote this novel longhand. How did that affect your experience of crafting the story compared with typing it? Is this a method you’ll stick with?


It was a hell of a task, more in the typing-up process than anything else. I started just before lockdown (I blame Rio Yours, one of my best friends and our best writers, who writes everything longhand. So, I thought I'd give it a try). Unfortunately, rather than travelling away from home and writing in cafes or on the tops of our local mountains, due to lockdown I had to find a quiet corner in our own house (with my son finishing A levels, my wife working at home, and my daughter completing her degree) and scritch and scratch into a series of notebooks. I really enjoyed the process, and I think it made the story flow much more naturally. I'm not a great typist -- even though I've written almost 50 novels, they're all been written using 4 or 5 fingers! So usually when I type I'm often breaking the flow because I'm constantly going back, correcting mistakes, and inevitably editing the writing. Working by hand, there was very little editing going on ... this was all pure first draft, and I think that helped the flow immensely. Saying that ... I have yet to repeat the experience! I probably will one day. It's all storytelling, whichever method you use.


The Last Storm feels like a logical successor to Eden, but where Eden felt somewhat upbeat in tone The Last Storm is a far angrier and more rural novel, where did this shift in tone come from?


Maybe because I was writing it during Covid? I don't know, it is a more brutal downbeat book in many ways, but there's always optimism in my work (although sometimes maybe you have to dig deep). It was a very strange time, writing the novel longhand in a pile of notebooks, trying to find a quiet spot in our small house with my wife working from home, my son finishing his A levels from home, and my daughter home from uni finishing her degree. Luckily we all get on great and lockdown never felt difficult for us, but being the writer I am, I did let the anxieties of Covid get to me sometimes. Maybe that bled through into the novel.


Are the two books set in the same version of our world?

I did think about that as I was writing The Last Storm, but I decided not to be overt about it. Simple answer ... yes, they could be. But there's no real connection in the stories.


In both novels the world is broken and on the brink of total shutdown, however The Last Storm to me has characters that are more akin to the world they live in, every single one of the main protagonists, is broken, was this a conscious decision on your part?


Hmmm, no I don't think that was conscious. In Eden my group of characters was a team from the beginning, supporting each other through their troubles. The Last Storm features a fractured family also confronting dangers from outside, so the set up is very different from the start. I don't think this was a conscious decision, just something that I think served the story best. It's as much a novel about the family coming together and discovering themselves again, as it is about the more supernatural elements and challenges from outside. And I think that's the sort of novel that works best for me.      

Which of your characters did you get to know best in the process of writing The Last Storm?

All of them to different degrees. There are five POV characters in this novel, so that meant I had a great time getting into their heads, especially Ash who I wrote first person. Some people don't like novels that chop between first and third person perspectives, but I really like working like this, and it really suited how I wanted to tell this story. So while it doesn't suit every novel, I felt it worked well in The Last Storm. In a way Ash is the narrator of the whole story, and her sections are the actions that influence and drive everyone else. She is the star around which all the other characters orbit. I also really enjoyed writing Jimi, because he's the main antagonist, even though he has his reasons for doing the terrible things he does. Bad guys are fun to write, right?

It felt odd not having a traditional hero in the story, did having a cast of characters like this  allow you more freedom with what you put them through?

I think it makes for a more realistic narrative, and also allows me to follow several points of view, which was essential to the story. I couldn't have told this tale from one point of view. They're each the hero of their own story, and I think writing about characters who are all driven and determined––whatever their faults, and however they start out in the novel––gives the story great forward momentum. It also allows me to explore the darker and lighter sides of each character. Even Jimi, the main antagonist, has his good side, though it's buried pretty fucking deep.


I was fascinated by the descriptions of the world in which The Last Storm is set in, particularly the world in balance where the world still has some of the features of ours like cars, mobile phones and a nationwide media, and yet it also had a Mad Max feel to it.  Was there any reasons as to why you chose to do this?


From the very beginning I wanted this to read like an American road novel. It's built around journeys and pursuits. It's near future when the climate crisis is much, much worse than it is now, but while I wanted to ground it in a recognisible world, I wanted it to play out across that wonderfully epic American landscape––long dusty roads, little towns with one gas station, the wild. As it's called in the novel, the Desert. It could almost be a western. I think that makes the supernatural elements feel more settled and grounded, and also allows for the lawlessness that pervades the landscape of the book. It could be set the day after tomorrow. I worked hard on the US setting, always conscious that while I've been to the USA a dozen times or more, there's no way I really know the place that well. Luckily my agent said it doesn't read like someone who isn't American, so hopefully I got enough right to make it work. As for the Mad Max feel ... I honestly never really thought about that! But yes, I guess with the Soakers and the HotBloods, there's a hint of that sort of futuristic petrol-soaked endless highway landscape.     


I’ve got to admit I was initially thrown by the prospect of rainmakers in the book, your depiction of them and they way in which they bring the rain, was totally left field, what was the inspiration for them?


A short story I wrote maybe 18 years ago called Hell Came Down. I've always been fascinated by stories of creatures falling from the sky––fish, frogs, all that Charles Fort/Arthur C Clark's Mysterious World sort of stuff––and I wrote the first story with that in mind. I adapted that into a screenplay which never went anywhere, and I guess the story just stayed with me, begging to be expored in more detail. I did research rainmaking efforts, both scientific methods and otherwise, and I wanted to come up with a way that felt more science-based than just purely magic. Hence the apparatus, and the way the rainmakers have to sort of plug into our world, and other worlds, to make it work.


And I’m probably grasping at straws but have we seen the rain world before?  It’s been a while since I last read them but that wasn’t Noreela was it?


Not consciously. But now you say that ... maybe!

I remember chatting to Christopher Golden about the book, and he mentioned that i should buckle in for the final act, oh boy was he right, that has to be one of the most balls to the wall, final acts i have read in a long time, did you always plan to go to the max?


I tend not to plan in great detail, but I knew the climax would be the drawing together of these different characters, and that Ash's rainmaking would have been getting more and more intense and dangerous throughout the novel. There's a lot of stuff in there that actually surprised even me, to be honest. This doesn't always happen to me, but the climax of this book was one of those that told me the way it needed to be, not the other way around. It's good when I finsih a writing day surprised at how things went.*


(*who died that I wasn't expecting to die).



And I have got to ask, why Jimi, everyone knows apart from Hendrix, it’s Jimmy?


Er, I can't remember to be honest. I should change his name to honour you! Quick, Titan, can I do that?

Let’s talk drinks and nibbles. If you could choose a glass of whiskey, or two, to go well with The Last Storm, what would that be? And perhaps more importantly, if readers were to enjoy the book with a slice of cake, what would you recommend?

Now you're talking my language! I don't claim to be a whiskey connoisseur, but my favourite regular tipple is probably Jamesons, so smooth and lovely. I'm also fond of a nice Glenmorangie. As for cake ... how long have we got? I guess for The Last Storm a nice chocolate cake would be good, heavy and tasty, and a decent amount of calories to see you through the Desert. There ... now I want cake. Thanks!

What would you like the readers to take away from reading The Last Storm?


The memory of an exciting, action-packed story that has family at its heart.


Rather than asking what you are working on next, what’s the one book of yours that you wish you could go back and write a sequel to?


Aha ... great question. Well, it's The Silence. After the movie was released on Netflix, for several months there was talk of a sequel happening, and I was heavily involved in developing ideas. I went through a dozen drafts of different ideas. First it was happening, then it wasn't, then Tucci was coming back, then he wasn't ... and eventually of course it never did. So rather than waste all that effort, I put together all the ideas I thought worked as a sequel (and honestly, some of those we'd come up with didn't), and wrote a second novel proposal. I also wrote the first three chapters, and I think it's a really great sequel that honours the first book while moving the story on. But unfortunately it wasn't to be right then, and instead I wrote The Last Storm, which I actually see as a good thing. But maybe one day. I know I'm not the only one who wants to know what became of that family.

Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?


There isn’t enough time to write all the novels I want to write, so I have to hustle now to make up for lost time. I’ve been writing professionally on and off since 1983.

Which one of your characters would you least like to meet in real life?

Wang Fat Fang, a villain in The Enigma Club. You just can’t talk to him. He’s a dick.

Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing?


The pulps, especially the Martian stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs; and comic books, particularly the Bronze Age up to the mid ‘80s. Tomb of Dracula was seminal to me.


The term horror, especially when applied to fiction always carries such heavy connotations.  What’s your feeling on the term “horror” and what do you think we can do to break past these assumptions?

I think horror is best when it is developed gradually and used sparingly, in the same way that Spielberg only allows short glimpses of the shark in Jaws until it’s time for the reveal. King used this technique in ‘Salem’s Lot, and Frank Miller used it in The Dark Knight Returns. The best horror surpasses the name of the genre, and reader or moviegoers accept some titles as mainstream thrillers, when in fact they are true horror, such as Jaws or Silence of the Lambs. Alien is minimally a sci-fi movie, and truly a horror film. I have to think that scaring people today is best done under the guise of a different genre. In that way audiences will accept scares that otherwise they would avoid…simply because it’s called “horror.”

A lot of good horror movements have arisen as a direct result of the socio/political climate, considering the current state of the world where do you see horror going in the next few years?


Escapism. A few novels and films will explore pandemic-related dystopias, but as a reader, I don’t want to be reminded of the Trump years or COVID, and I think most audiences will be like that. I envision more supernatural-based films and streaming; more films and series based on popular novels; and many more titles embracing diversity, showing genre-related stories from marginalized creators.


Given the dark, violent and at times grotesque nature of the horror genre why do you think so many people enjoy reading it?


There are so many reasons people like horror that the answers are almost repetitious. Some like the supernatural, some like the occult. Some like the gore and the slashers; some like the vampires and werewolves. What I have noticed is that certain types of stories engage the imagination, especially at certain times in our lives. Horror and dystopian fiction seem to stimulate adolescent minds, and those loves linger with us, sometimes for the rest of our lives. We are thrilled by these stories, even with the blood and gore, because most of us see this and can say (somewhere deep in our minds) that this is only a movie, and the blood ain’t real. It’s like a roller coaster ride that is 100% safe, but scares us nevertheless. And it happens in real life when we slow down to look at terrible accidents, and leave, thinking, “Well, at least we’re safe.” It’s a form of aesthetic distancing. We’re fascinated by the show, but avoid the danger.


What, if anything, is currently missing from the horror genre?


1. Pacing, timing, and building development slowly. There is something to be said for starting off a story with a bang, but it’s not always necessary—and I argue that the best stories start with a small, but consequential scene, and gradually rise from there. Again, I point to Close Encounters, Jaws, and The Dark Knight Returns, and their deliberate build up of both story and tension…and the eventual revelation of their characters’ inner strengths.

2. Heart. Having a story that means something. Carpenter’s Halloween asked (and answered) What if the Boogeyman came to town? But, of the uncounted slasher movies that followed it, did a single one of them really have anything to say? King has argued in Danse Macabre that all horror is allegorical. I hate to disagree, but I think that all GOOD horror is allegorical; we have too many bad books and movies that say absolutely nothing, but instead are merely gratuitous, which somehow creates cult audiences for them. Perhaps this is why the mainstream audience is averse to the term “horror”. Maybe the stories as told just aren’t well-rounded enough and substantial.

What new and upcoming authors do you think we should take notice off?

Michael Howarth.


Are there any reviews of your work, positive or negative that have stayed with you?


Ghostflowers has been getting some nice advance reviews, but I can’t say that I memorized them. I’m extremely grateful for the kind things other writers have told me.


What aspects of writing to do you find the most difficult?

Coming up with initial ideas! I write subconsciously while I’m in the middle of a novel, so things flow and ideas come. But original ideas for a new novel are hard to come by. The best stories I’ve written have come when ideas triangulated in my mind. Ghostflowers sprang like that: my wife gave me a simple premise, and in minutes I knew the characters, I knew the setting, and I knew the time period. Once those three things triangulated in my mind, the story opened up for me.

Is there one subject you would never write about as an author?


Two: the killing of animals, and torture.


Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years?

We almost always start writing by imitating our imagination’s heroes, at least to a degree. My mother taught me how to read by the time I was 3 1/2, by using comic books. So I grew up on comic book adventures, which led to Edgar Rice Burroughs and the Shadow pulps, which led to Dark Shadows and Dracula and Tomb of Dracula, to Stephen King and Ray Bradbury. In college writing workshops, I was emulating King and Bradbury, and realized my prose had grown bloated and purple. In the years since, I’ve learned to pull back, be more direct. That last sentence right there has a comma splice in it. That’s bad writing, and I’ve taught myself as best I could to not use comma splices, and to check myself for bad grammar. And I realized that I have my own distinct voice, and that voice is the one I need to use to tell stories. But I couldn’t tell stories without experiencing first all the other voices, of King and Bradbury and Englehart and Goodwin and Stoker and Burroughs…

What is the best piece of advice you ever received with regards to your writing?


Cut it back. Don’t overwrite.


Which of your characters is your favourite?


I absolutely love Summer Moore, the protagonist of Ghostflowers. I’ve always loved strong women characters—I think it was because The Avengers and Emma Peel were such a powerful influence on me. Also, Summer Moore is much more than just a character. I envisioned her as the embodiment of summer in the South, and I love the heat of summer in Virginia, the way the sky is so blue, and how a haze hangs over the trees.


Which of your books best represents you?

The Enigma Club (unpublished). It represents many of my literary interests, and my sense of humor, as well as reflecting the past and the future. It’s bookish and fun and stupid, combining text and pictures. It’s Animal House meets Indiana Jones. And it’s me.

Do you have a favorite line or passage from your work, and would you like to share it with us?


The Half Shell was no frills: concrete floors, wooden tables and benches, chalkboard menus, and wide windows open to the ocean breeze. Up at the bar it was mostly locals, drinking beers, peeling shrimp and slurping oysters off the shell. Outside, an orange tabby slept on the bare wood railing separating the tables from the docks, and beyond that boats rocked gently in the shallow harbor.

    Dee insisted that we have conch fritters for an appetizer, and she fed me half the first one and popped the rest in her mouth, grinning as though she'd won a contest. Dinner was a dolphin filet that had been grilled in garlic butter and lime juice. She had the same, and we washed it down with cheap white wine in plastic cups while I told her about the puzzle box and why I had come here. She told me about moving to Key West with her parents when she was a kid and falling in love with it instantly. People laughed somewhere behind me, but I was falling into her wide green eyes, and everything else was merely a whisper—flickering glimpses that danced like candlelight: the mingling aromas of cooked fish and stale beer, the way she twirled her hair while we talked, the sound of boats creaking against the docks; a woman at the bar, laughing at her boyfriend, her hair slick with sweat. I ordered more wine, and told her how much I loved hearty reds; and couples flirted, and the breeze sent me a whiff of Dee's perfume, a wild tropical flower. Yellow light played along a woman's bare shoulder. I smelled salt water and heard the sound of a rock band from somewhere out in the night. A flash of light from the docks, and we laughed as a woman pulled up her tank top for her boyfriend's camera. The moon and stars hung above the Gulf, and a warm breeze sighed through the wide windows, and I thought there was no place and no time finer than this.


Excerpt from The Enigma Club by Rus Wornom


Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next?


So, I finished The Enigma Club in 2012, I think, then I started Ghostflowers in 2013, and finished it in 2014. The draft being published is the 13th draft. I actually began Ghostflowers in 1996, when my wife gave me the idea, but real life and jobs and commuting three or more hours a day got in the way of writing…and then The Enigma Club took over my imagination.


That started out as an outline/timeline for a jungle hero story—I had the idea to write a parody of the Tarzan novels. When I created the locale for my jungle man—a mysterious island in the Gulf of Mexico—the island itself became more important than my main character, and I knew that the island was instead the location of a club of pulp-era explorers, going on pulp adventures. The idea still thrills me, even though the novel has been finished for years. Hell, I was just making notes on additions to it earlier today.


My next novel is a horror novel that takes place in Miami, and I’m also working on a mystery series with a writing partner.


If you could erase one horror cliché what would be your choice?


There are too many I despise, such as couples that have sex or smoke pot will be killed by the slasher, or anything to do with silver bullets. But I’ll just leave it with a very superficial cliché, but one that pisses me off: Dracula ALWAYS wears a cape. Look, I accepted it for Lugosi and Universal; I accepted it for Lee in the Hammer Draculas because, hell, it worked for Lee. But let’s move on. Give the greatest of vampires an equally impressive look, damn it! Get original!


What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you?


The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis was outstanding. I saw the series, then had to read the book, and the writing just blew me away. It’s the best book I’ve read in the last year and a half. On the other hand, The Shadow, the reboot novel by Patterson and Sitts, was ludicrous. It’s the single worst thing I’ve read—on every level—in a long time. It’s an insult to the original hero.

What's the one question you wish you would get asked but never do?  And what would be the answer?


What’s your favorite type of monster?
Answer: Same as my favorite hero. Both wear black capes.

The weekend of July Fourth, 1971
 
The jukebox is playing "Everything is Beautiful"...
Old Glory flaps against the blue, Southern sky...
The aromas of burgers and hot dogs hang in the still air...
Children laugh as they play with sparklers in the park...
And the night fills with screams when a girl's body is found, her throat torn out by savage teeth...
 
Summer Moore is a waitress at the Dixie Dinette.
Twenty, blonde and beautiful, Summer desperately needs to break free from her mother's constant nagging and the dull monotony of life in the small mountain town of Stonebridge, Virginia. She wants out.
 
His buddies in 'Nam called him the Midnight Rider.
Trager's the name on his Army jacket, but a dark shadow of the unknown hangs over this Vietnam vet as he rides into town on a night-black Electra Glide, called on a quest that's tainted by blood.
 
Sheriff Buddy Hicks doesn't like hippies in his town...especially not long-haired hippie bikers.
As soon as the sheriff saw him, he knew the biker was trouble. Now something feels different in Stonebridge-something he doesn't understand-and he's not going to put up with radicals in his town...not some biker, and not some smart mouth like Summer Moore.
 
There are secrets in the woods.
Ben Castle, who summoned the biker with a note scrawled in blood...
Louise Moore, who refuses to lose control of her daughter like she lost her husband...
Summer and the biker, locked in a dance, an embrace of shadows that has lasted for centuries...
And even the mountains themselves hold secrets...
 
It's a rock and roll Grand Guignol.
It's a death-dance in the moonlight.
ghostflowers
It's a love story. With blood.