AUTHOR INTERVIEW: FIVE MINUTES WITH SCOTT NICHOLSON

Scott Nicholson is the author of more than 30 horror, psychological, and post-apocalyptic thrillers. He’s sold more than a million books worldwide and been published in ten languages. His first novel The Red Church was a Mystery Guild alternate selection and a Stoker Award finalist. His website is AuthorScottNicholson.com.

Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?

I’m just your basic lazy dreamer type who’s always been making up stuff. I started with crayons and went into writing, art, and music, and never grew up. I’ve had a lifelong aversion to reality.

What do you like to do when you're not writing?
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I tend an organic garden and I fish a lot. I also still play some guitar almost every day, and of course I’m always reading one or two books at a time.


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

I like good, dark, twisting thrillers like Dennis Lehane’s and Gillian Flynn’s, and I love dystopian stuff like Fahrenheit 451 and 1984. I’d guess Dr. Seuss was a huge influence, with his carefree imagination, wordplay, and subtle messaging.
 
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 believe the primary confusion is the term “horror” used as a cinema genre, which is often slasher or torture porn, which is only a very minor fiction subgenre. The typical normie lumps it all together, but really, who cares what normies think? Horror doesn’t give a shit about anyone’s opinions. It just is.

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?

Humans are terrible are making predictions. People usually point to the ‘80’s and the Me-First Reagan Era and say “Horror thrived when times were dark and evil flourished.” But maybe, just maybe, it had everything to do with the rise of Stephen King and nothing at all to do with the times.  But voices appear when the message is needed, and you can’t really write outside the times you are in, no matter how hard you try.

What are the books and films that helped to define you as an author?

The Lorax made me an environmentalist, The Star-Bellied Sneetches taught me the folly of racism, and Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” taught me you could have a really dark story that was also beautiful. I remember reading Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron” as a young teen and I was incensed at its disregard for reality and the use of a name like “Diana Moon Glampers,” as well as its profound satire. Within a couple of years I was reading all of his books. That and Hemingway and Richard Brautigan and John Steinbeck, and then Stephen King came along, so I had an odd mix of influences.

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

I don’t read many new authors and don’t want to leave anyone out, although I am thrilled the indie and digital era has allowed so many people to get their voices out there. I’m still way behind on my classics reading.  For example, right now I’m reading Straub’s “Ghost Story.” I still have hundreds of old paperbacks lying around to catch up on.

How would you describe your writing style?

I’m the least qualified person to have an opinion about that. Some people have described me as easily readable, kind of commercial-grade fiction; others say I have weird humor and that I am dark and cynical. I like to think I have a strange spice I put in there that you can only get from me. Whether that’s to your taste or not is a different question! I can say that I do commit to the craft and love choosing the words, the musicality of a sentence, and power of a nice turn of phrase or image.

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

I learned early on to not read reviews, because they say more about the reviewer than the work and it really doesn’t matter at all in the process of creation. It’s not like I’m going to rewrite the book because Becky in Madison doesn’t like it. Plus I feel ignoring reviews respects people’s right to an opinion without mine getting in the way. I do remember one in Fangoria for my second novel that went something like “Sets the record for small-town Southern stereotypes.” What the reviewer couldn’t know was that all those characters were based on my relatives!


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

The longevity of it. It’s a lifetime commitment, and the work is never done. Which, of course, is also a blessing. And the necessity of making money, if you’re a professional—that adds an extra level of complexity and invades the creative process a bit whether you want it to or not.

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

Well, not so far. I’ve done short stories where I crossed some taboo lines—sexual violence against a minor (although by another minor), the killing of pets, implied incest, plenty of racist characters. Each case had plot motivation behind it, and I’ve always used short stories to experiment with subject matter and voice. In retrospect, I don’t know if those stories need to survive in published form, but I don’t regret writing them. As a reader, I can endure a lot as long as it’s not purely gratuitous.
 

How important are names to you in your books? Do you choose the names based on liking the way it sounds or the meaning?

I hoard names. I love names. I collect them from everywhere—cemeteries, phone books, street signs, old history books, and even random lists. Especially where I live, in the remote Appalachian Mountains, the names really add color to the area. I just try not to use names that sound like the name of a made-up character like you see in some bad mainstream books.
 
Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years?

After more than 20 years, I’ve definitely burned off a little of the passion, but I hope I’ve made up for it with wisdom, experience, and craft. I can still sit down and write 15 pages a day for a stretch if necessary, but early on I could write like water flowing. Now it’s more like I’m pushing water uphill. I think that’s true of most artists in any field. Never grow old, kids.


What tools do you feel are must-haves for writers?     
   
Strunk & White’s Elements of Style is a basic one. A good thesaurus is cool. A big, broad library helps. And learn basic grammar. I’ve always said, “If you can write a sentence, you can write a book.” Sadly, most people never learn to care about sentences.

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

When I went back to college to get a degree, I took some writing classes. You’d get the usual brainless critiques from the others, like “I don’t really get it” or “I think Bobby should be taller.” My fiction teacher, a Vietnam War refugee, wrote on one of my stories, “You write with feeling. I say go for it.” I understood that to mean committing to the craft every day. Later on, when I was first getting published, Bentley Little advised, “Keep your head down and write.”

Getting your worked noticed is one of the hardest things for a writer to achieve, how have you tried to approach this subject?

I’ve always been a tireless promoter, because not only do I believe in my work, I know that ultimately no one will ever care more about it than I do. That doesn’t mean standing up naked at a horror convention and screaming that I’m the next Stephen King. It means finding an audience one reader at a time. Plus, of course, now that it’s a job, it’s not optional. Especially as primarily an indie writer now, my job is not to write books, my job is to sell books. That starts with writing well and creating your best product/art, and then marketing it to your audience. It’s simple, but it’s not easy.


To many writers, the characters they write become like children, who is your favorite child, and who is your least favorite to write for and why?

I tend to love the villains. In a way, all characters are a biographical extension of the author, often exaggerated to ludicrous extremes. That’s why I love using shifting third-person limited viewpoint so much—I can get in the heads of many different people. I don’t fall in love with my heroes and heroines. I will say this: I’ve never written a character that I couldn’t kill.

What piece of your own work are you most proud of?

Probably The Red Church, which is a little sad because it was my first published novel, although the fourth one I wrote. It feels a little timeless, because it didn’t fit in with the horror being published at that time and doesn’t have a heavy dose of cultural references, as if the story exists in a parallel world. My short story “The Vampire Shortstop” I wrote basically in a day based on awakening from a dream with that title in my head. It won the Writers of the Future award. It’s the only piece of my work I ever re-read, every five years or so, and it always makes me cry a little at the end.


And are there any that you would like to forget about?

Not on the writing side of things. I regret nothing except the books that failed to find an audience—that effort could have been better spent on something people would respond to. But again, that’s about having to pay bills. In a perfect world with free health care and basic income, I’d write the craziest stuff I could imagine. I often find myself going “Hmm, I bet the conventional audience won’t like this” and then I grin and do it anyway.

For those who haven’t read any of your books, which of your books do you think best represents your work and why?

The Red Church, because I wasn’t published then and I wasn’t clogged up with “Scott Nicholson the author” bullshit.


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

The first book in the Arize series, Resurrection, just came out. Basically the zombie apocalypse as Biblical prophecy. The second book, Revelation, will be out after Christmas.


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

Horror writers as book characters.

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

Swan Song by Robert McCammon. (See, I told you I was behind the times!) I can’t remember the last disappointment, since I tend to give up on books pretty fast if they don’t catch my interest early on.

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

“Why don’t you stop writing and go away?” To which I’d answer. “Gladly. All it will cost you is a million bucks.”
 
Website : http://authorscottnicholson.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AuthorScottNicholson
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/eScottNicholson
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Scott-Nicholson/e/B001HCX30O
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