Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #20 November 2015 | Page 23

For anyone that hasn’t read them can you tell us a bit about your books. I’ve pretty much run the gamut in my book writing: ranging from horror to history, biographies to Westerns. I realize I’ve never been completely committed to one specific genre. I reckon I write what compels me at the time. Tell us a bit more about the last book you wrote. That was my return to horror after thirty years away from the genre. A return to my roots, as it were. The book is called . . . skinned babies and is probably the most terrifying of the four horror novels I wrote. My last horror novel was published in 1987 and I moved away from that type of writing to tackle different literary pursuits. But in recent years I had this idea for a horror story that kept expanding in my thoughts. Really what I wanted to do was write a book that I myself would find frightening. I am and always was a Monsterkid and as such have been exposed to a ton of horror movies and spooky and unsettling stories throughout my almost sixty years. I consider myself someone not easily scared, I had to ask myself what could I, under the right situation, find terrifying. Finally a conversation with my stepdaughter’s then boyfriend and a listen to a discussion on EVPs on Coast to Coast AM gave me the impetus to get to work on the book. However, to the timid, I do stress that the story has nothing to do with skinning babies or children. The title is merely a more explicit way to describe disembodied spirits. What did you learn about writing whilst writing the last book you wrote? Well, I’ve been at this racket for over thirty years so I don’t know if there’s much I learned from this specific novel that I hadn’t garnered from previous books. Maybe one thing is that I was determined not to start with the horror immediately. As with my past horror novels, I wanted to build the scenario and establish and develop the characters . . . kind of lull the reader in . . . and then hit them with a whammy. Like Stephen King, I prefer to set my horror in commonplace surroundings. If the people and the locale seem real and identifiable, then I think you can get the reader to believe in the horror that occurs. Do you have a set writing process, if so what is it? I think that depending on one’s circumstance, a writer should try to put pen to paper every day. If you’re fortunate enough to be working full-time as a writer, you should approach your writing like a job and discipline yourself to devoting a certain number of hours per day to your work. If you do have to rely on another means of financial support, you should still set aside whatever time you can best afford to work at your craft. Otherwise you can grow lazy and stagnant. For myself, I am fortunate to work from home and supplement my nebulous book writing income with work as an advertising copywriter. The additional benefit is that if I need a break from either my fiction or my “day job” assignment, I can switch from one to the other. Do you write a lot of short stories? No. In the beginning I wrote short stories for various magazines as a way to hone my craft and segue into writing novels (note to aspiring authors: doesn’t hurt to have some short stories under your belt before querying book publishers), but lately I really haven’t done anything in that format, outside of a true ghost story that was published last year in paranormal investigator Joshua P. Warren’s It was a Dark and Stormy Night. Do you prefer the long or short form? How do you feel about Flash Fiction? Confess I know nothing about Flash Fiction. But in answer to your question, I much prefer long form for my stories. Certainly you can run off a short story much quicker, but I like the novel because it gives you a better opportunity to flesh out your characters and allows for much more depth to the plot. 23