For too many of our citizens, Christianity has become entwined with the ecstatic worship of the gun and violence. For the adherents, there is no compassion, no love thy neighbor, no peace, no reason, and God only helps those who arm themselves.
Paul G. Tremblay
'A Head Full of Ghosts' was my first full horror novel, and that felt like coming home as a writer.
So much of my work is about children and/or parenting; it's something I'm drawn to without being able to completely articulate why.
Ambiguity is our permanent state, isn't it? We don't like it being so. Most of us crave order and routine, and yet yawning before us is our future, as frightening as it is thrilling.
Ambiguity and the horror of possibility play a part in so many of my favorite horror stories: Shirley Jackson's 'We Will Always Live in the Castle,' Mark Danielewski's 'House of Leaves,' Victor LaValle's 'Big Machine,' Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper,' Stewart O'Nan's 'The Speed Queen,' and so many more.
Crime, horror, and satire each aim to reveal an ugly or uncomfortable truth: one that, after the reveal, will ensure we'll never be the same. The big difference between those genres being the effect they create.
After my debut didn't go very well with Holt, I needed to be in a healthier head space. I was happy to emerge from there. You will always have those negative thoughts as a writer, but you can't let them take over. If you let them take over, those are the real page killers.
There's no objective reason anyone can point to that proves a horror story is innately inferior or that it's doomed to fail as a work of art because of it being horror. Anyone saying otherwise is being intellectually dishonest.
Whenever you bring reality TV into the mix, it's only a matter of time before, whatever fiction you come up with, it'll become real.
Ambiguity is a big part of this post-truth world we're living in.
As an adult, I've learned to cope and pull the plug on the worst what-ifs before my mind takes me to a place from which I can't return.
The closer a horror story gets to the truth of things, the more affective it is going to be.
I've been a fan of horror and studying it for as long as I can remember.
My first two novels were quirky detective stories followed by a couple of SF/Fantasy novels.
A large part of the appeal of this novel when I was lucky enough to stumble across the story idea for 'A Head Full of Ghosts' was that I'd finally be writing a horror novel. In a lot of ways, the book is both my criticism of and love letter to horror.
I usually dread writing non-fiction. I don't feel comfortable or confident writing essays and the like.
I always wanted to write a book that would have people talking, theorizing, arguing.
Marshmallows are kind of weird. I'm not a huge fan. I mean, they're fun when they get molten and melty at the end of a stick, but I always burn my mouth because I'm not all that smart or patient.
I don't consciously sit down thinking I'm blurring genre lines, for the most part. I try to stay focused solely on serving the needs of the particular story on which I'm working.
Any day in which I get writing done is ideal to me.
I feel like too many horror writers and filmmakers sort of just assume that the default is, 'The horror movie must be all atmosphere first and everything else second.'
I'm certainly no hardcore backpacker, but I do enjoy being out in the woods for a few hours.
If what needs to get done is going to get done, then I can't screw around with the luxury of writing rituals or waiting for pristine writing conditions to magically materialize.
'The Cabin at the End of the World' is my riff on the 'home invasion' subgenre of horror/suspense. Hopefully it's a big, loud, dark riff.
I'm a daydreamer - a purposeful one when I'm writing fiction.
What keeps me up at night is our nation's continued and burgeoning lack of rationality in response to mass shootings.
I want folks to take horror seriously.
Independent horror movies have really stepped up the game, and hopefully mainstream Hollywood will follow suit.
Pop country definitely frightens me, how popular it is.
I have to admit to being a music snob. I think, in a parallel universe, I pretty easily could have been Jack Black's character from 'High Fidelity,' working in a record store and snidely commenting on everyone's purchases.
I was a good boy in high school , and I read for English class, and I vaguely remember reading, as a kid, 'Choose Your Own Adventure' stuff, but I didn't really read for pleasure.
I was definitely a child of the '80s. Cable TV was new. I watched a ton of movies and a ton of TV. HBO would show the same movies over and over again, so I'd watch the same movies over and over again.
In the early 2000s, I started selling some short stories to horror markets. I joined the Horror Writers Association.
I think I got serious about writing in the late '90s. The first stuff I wrote was terrible and got rejected, but I started getting more encouraging rejection letters.
Math was always my best subject growing up.
Getting into graduate school was pure luck.
How children attempt to deal with everyday comedies and tragedies, and mortality, is universal and ultimately such a large part of what it means to be human.
While being a parent has been the most fulfilling experience of my life, it comes with a price. Besides the onslaught of worries and fears that can be paralyzing, more personally there is a struggle with identity, or the fear of loss or usurpsion of identity, if that makes sense.
Horror is often about how we live in the liminal, whether we want to or not.
When you trust your subconscious enough to put something in a story and then figure out why it really needed to be there later, when that works out, aye, that's the stuff.
There are many talented and worthy writers engaging horror in new, imaginative, and yes, terrifying ways.
I became a reader - never mind a writer - because of Stephen King.
The response to 'A Head Full of Ghosts' has been amazing and thrilling. I'd be lying if I said I don't feel a little extra pressure trying to follow it up.
There are great and terrible consequences to any act of violence, and they reverberate beyond the act itself.
I'm harsh on myself. But let's be honest: I'm not as harsh as the online one-star critic who says, 'This book is boring and stupid and smells like poo.'
I do remember dancing in my living room when my short story 'The Laughing Man Meets Little Cat' won a Chizine fiction contest in 2002.
When it comes to actually writing the book/story, I work on a computer. I wish I could write longhand, but I can't.
My first book deal was for two Mark Genevich novels. I hadn't planned on writing a second Genevich novel, but I was contracted to do so, and so there I was being introduced as a crime writer.
I won't call 'Cabin' an anti-home invasion story, because that's not exactly true, but the home-invasion subgenre is one I generally don't gravitate toward as a reader or film viewer.
'Martha Marcy May Marlene' is excellent. I adore how the film is both grounded in realism and, at the same time, it has an ethereal, nightmarish atmosphere.
