Meg Gardiner was born in Oklahoma and raised in Santa Barbara, California. She graduated from Stanford University and Stanford Law School.

She practiced law in Los Angeles and taught writing at the University of California Santa Barbara. China Lake won the 2009 Edgar award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Paperback Original and drew the attention and praise of Stephen King.

Ransom River is her tenth novel.

Meg met me at The Slaughterhouse, where we talked about law and memory.

How has your experience as a lawyer influenced your writing?

Every court case is a story. It’s a tale of how things went wrong between people. And the lawyer’s job is to present her client’s side of the story persuasively. An attorney has the duty to “zealously” represent the client. So as a lawyer, you’d better learn to tell a story clearly and compellingly. You’d better learn to support it with evidence — and to anticipate and rebut the other side’s arguments. You must know how to grab a judge and jury with the power of your client’s case and to convince them of its justice.

All that carries over into writing fiction. Though if a novel goes wrong, nobody’s going to jail. Which is a relief.

Tell us about Ransom River

My new thriller was published on July 5th. It’s about a juror on a murder trial who finds herself fighting for her life when gunmen storm the courthouse and take the courtroom hostage.

Rory Mackenzie is a juror on a high-profile murder case in her hometown of Ransom River, California. It’s a place she vowed never to visit again, and her return dredges up troubling memories from the childhood she spent as an outsider. But in the wake of the desperate attack on the courthouse, Rory realizes that exposing these dark skeletons has connected her to an old case that was never solved, and bringing the truth to light just might destroy her.

Who are your literary influences?

James Lee Burke, Elmore Leonard, Wallace Stegner, Annie Proulx, Sue Grafton, Carl Hiaasen.

What do you think it was about China Lake that caught Stephen King’s attention?

I know what it was: the print was big enough to be easy on his eyes during a transatlantic flight. He chose the paperback from a box of books his British publisher had sent him, hoping it wouldn’t strain his eyes on a flight to London. Luckily for me, he really liked the novel. He liked all my novels. And because he’s a generous person who supports other writers, artists and musicians, he told people about my work.

Is there a particular event that has changed your life and influenced your writing?

Not one event, but an environment. I grew up in a home that encouraged reading, writing, and creativity. My parents told me I could do anything I wanted to, and that I should strive for excellence. That changed my life. Above my desk I keep a quote from the late Olympic runner Steve Prefontaine: “To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.”

“You know what date is on this coin?”
What do you make of Anton Chigurh’s philosophy in No Country For Old Men?

Chigurh’s coin-flip philosophy is an attempt at absolution. It’s a way for him to claim that he isn’t deciding the fate of the person he’s about to murder – that they’ve brought it on themselves. That he isn’t responsible. It’s of course bogus. Chigurh is nothing but a walking, breathing embodiment of intent. He kills. He is ready and willing to murder at all moments, and not only those he’s hired to kill. Anybody who crosses his path becomes a target.
God, he’s a horrible, wonderful villain.

Lawyers use evidence and question it to secure convictions and defend clients, and in this way influence a jury’s perceptions. To what extent is memory a useful means of undermining a reader’s certainty in your narratives?

In court the credibility of a witness’s memory will always be an issue. Attorneys can attack that credibility from several directions: Has the witness’s memory faded with time? Is a perceived memory inaccurate? Is it confused, or confabulated, or just plain off the wall? All those techniques can be used in fiction as well. Though in fiction we talk about the unreliable narrator, instead of that liar on the witness stand.

What advice would you give to yourself as a younger woman?

Don’t fear failure. Give it all you’ve got. You’ll win some, you’ll lose some. But you’ll never fly until you’re willing to take a leap off a cliff.

What are you working on now?

A new thriller about going off the grid and disappearing.

What do you make of the E Book revolution?

E-books are a boon to readers. More books are available at the snap of your fingers than ever before. We’ll see if the revolution helps writers to make a living.

Thank you Meg for an informative and perceptive interview.

Links:

“‘Ransom River’ is everything you want in a blockbuster thriller: multiple plot twists, thoroughly creepy psychotic villains, danger at every turn…. Gardiner’s conclusion to ‘Ransom River’ leaves open the possibility for a sequel, and to that may I just say: yes, please.” Associated Press

Pick up a copy of Ransom River at Amazon US or UK.

Read more about Ransom River and all Meg’s books here where you can also download PDF and audio
excerpts and find all online store buy links.

Find Meg Gardiner at her website, Twitter, and Facebook.

Oana lived through the Ceausescu regime. She is an active online personality at Authors Info and she has written a book, The Healings. She has a passion for felines and is a multi linguist.

She met me at The Slaughterhouse, where we talked about totalitarianism regimes and mental conditioning.

You experienced first hand the totalitarian regime of Ceausescu. How do you think he used the personality cult to advance his interests?

This is a very complex issue, there are many aspects involved. He had a double agenda, the domestic and the foreign one. I think the cult for his personality started early on in 1968 when he convinced everyone in the country and abroad that he was “different” than the others Kremlin puppets. He opposed the invasion of Czechoslovakia and pretended he was open to the West. People liked that, and saw it as a sign of independence. Little they knew, in and outside the country alike that he planned to escape the Russian rule so he could create his own personal pocket country.

After 1968 slowly but steadily the regime turned into an increasingly oppressive one. I was born in 1969 and I do remember pictures of him and his wife everywhere, the schools were propaganda-infused, the TV programs — that eventually got reduced to two hours of braodcasting daily – were about him, with him and approved by him.

At this point (I am talking 80’s) he was hated not admired. But the hatred was not overt, the militia and Securitate (the secret services) made sure we were a disciplined people.

We all felt it was an abusive relationship – he was a father who was cruel and horrible to his children and his wife Elena was an equally horrible mother. Ironically they really considered themselves to be our loving parents and guardians. Ceausescu also was close friend with North Korean leaders whom he admired and from whom he learned a lot in terms of propaganda.

Ceausescu used the personality cult to create a system of terror and massive corruption. Everyone feared him so his surveillance services were very effective.

In the end everyone was alienated, his own trusted servants included. No one felt safe around the Ceausescu couple.

It is my personal belief that as a result of that cult twenty two million people developed severe mental alienation. I considered myself lucky to have lived through this for only twenty years although I feel robbed of my youth, but I look back and think of those who never knew better and just feel lucky. Sounds strange but my demons are really “cute” compared to theirs.

There are people out there who never healed. The frightening part is that they never acknowledged the harm that was done to them.

Would you describe yourself as feline and what are your views on dogs?

I had spent a lot of time around cats, especially big cats. I find them fascinating although they are not friendly and cuddly in any way. I have never felt safe around cats really and no animal handler should, in my opinion. With cats is always a matter of ‘when’ not a matter of ‘why’ or ‘if’.

I guess my nature would be rather feline. I rarely negotiate and when I do I always win. So far I have always landed on my feet narrowly escaping extremely dangerous situations – knock on wood haha . I left my country at a very young age, and I had to fend for myself.
Independence curiosity and loneliness would bring me closer to a cat than to another animal. Cats are solitary elusive animals. They are also constantly and consistently monitoring their targets. Cats are hard to distract. I am too.

But that’s where the similarities end. I hate to say it, but I have little if any from the grace of a cat. I am very straightforward, sarcastic, and upsetting for most people. I just cannot sugarcoat the reality. It is what it is.

Dogs are pack animals, social animals. Comparing dogs to cats is simply put wrong. People do it all the time. We attach human emotions to animals. Animals do have a wide array of emotions, some of them very sophisticated, but they are animal emotions not human. Human emotions include the animalistic emotions, not the other way around. I hope I make sense. Sometimes I wish I could explain everything with a meow.

Did you experience any ongoing mental conditioning by the totalitarian regime you left when you arrived in America?

I have a funny story for you. When I arrived in Atlanta in 2001 I had this weird sensation that I was being watched. I didn’t share my impressions with anyone really because I thought I was crazy. But then it was a sensation I had not experienced in many years not even in my home country, keep in mind that Ceausescu was executed in 1989 and we were in 2001.

Anyway, years had flown by and I trusted my instincts and I always looked for cameras. I am not talking about the ones that were conspicuously placed in the stores I am talking all sorts of surveillance devices, hidden in very weird places. I did take my time on a few occasions to find the surveillance programs on computers at work. As a matter of fact, the IT guys didn’t even bother to hide them very well.

Back then I thought I had a lot of mental conditioning going on, but in time I realized I had in fact used all my experience to discover the progress of the surveillance science in my new homeland, or should I say the free western world.

Luckily, the years under surveillance and stress paid off. In so many years of handling wildlife I had hardly been taken by surprise by animals, no matter how good or fast they were. I am not the chick you would try to tap on the shoulder without warning either.

Another classic of mental conditioning that taught me bunches, is the fact that when I see people my first reaction is to screen them. I do not trust unconditionally, period. To be quite honest, people use the information you give away against you, regardless if you are in a totalitarian regime or in the free world. It’s just human nature.

And if there is one category I found hard to trust that would be police or military haha. To me authority had always been “the enemy” or at least some sort of hostile entity. These people are not there to protect me, but to oppress me. That was probably the hardest to fight. I’ve surprised myself many times becoming aggressive and defensive just upon a routine check at the border.

Oh and let us not forget the fireworks or any similar sounds for that purpose. Twenty something years later I still think Ceausescu’s troops are firing at people in Universitatii Square in Bucharest.

I really don’t want to take up too much space here, I shall end on a positive note: if people knew how much they are monitored how much of their information is shared and sold and how many strangers actually peek into the most intimate aspects of their lives on daily basis they would definitely lose their minds.

What advice would you give yourself as a younger woman?

I would listen to my own voice. I would spend more time with myself. Knowledge starts with your own Self.

Although I was far from being unaware or oblivious to existence in general, I got to know my own Self late in life. I had not been aware of how much energy and raw force I was putting out there and this ultimately destroyed all my relationships with men. Not that they were saints, they were actually very troubled. But I was the one picking them, so until I figured out what exactly made them flock to me, their problems became mine.

Had I known how to channel that testosterone – mine not theirs! — I would have been a happier woman. I wouldn’t have competed against men, but worked with them.

That’s how I realized that being self-centered is okay, while being selfish is not. When you are interested in your self and learn the laws that govern your body and mind you become a woman of your own.

I am one today but now I have to wait for men to catch up with me haha.
Life is so funny.

How would you describe your writing?

What a question haha. It’s like asking, how would you describe yourself naked with no make up? I guess we are all humans before being artists, so the answers would be, oh, I am fat or I am so sexy. Some writers think highly of their writing even if it has the quality of scribbling on the walls at the outskirts of the big city. Some do not, and feel their writing is not good enough. It’s not a matter of writing, it’s a matter of ego.

However to the eye of the observer, a writer cannot hide behind his writing. A writer is his writing. So my writing is aggressive, poignant, somewhat bordering on brutality. All this on the canvas of my great sensitivity. Surprise! I have the soul of a five year old.

If anything I like all my characters to “be right” at the same time. I refrain from placing The Truth in the hands of one character or another. That’s my signature trick haha. I like my readers to step back and exclaim in outrage, “Wtf is this, are we getting an answer?”
No, you are not. Hahaha.

Do you think killing and fucking are related?

They are both fueled by instincts. The reproductive one is stronger than anything else; killing derives from it in my opinion.

I am fascinated how they work together. They both have something to do with territoriality and control. Male harassment of females is definitely an important factor in evolution of mammals.

There is even species of seals where the males harass the female as part of the mating game, and sometimes kill her, but they never mate. I think the male canary occasionally kills the female if she is not ready to mate. Go figure. I think we should pay more attention to animals if we want to learn something about our sexuality.

There are some nasty truths there that have to be faced so we can finally evolve. Yet we have been obstinately avoiding them and that is why we display such awkward social behaviors. We never changed who we are; we just sugarcoated who we are.

Do you feel American?

Yes, I do feel American.

Am I American? Heck, yeah! I write in English, I publish in English, I am at home in both language and country, I am more American than anyone I know haha.

I do want to say a few things about language, though. I know people who have lived here for twenty years and do not speak English. This is sooo wrong. On top of that, they complain all the time about everything, and I look at them and say, “Hey, you are the architect of your disaster. You didn’t bother to learn the language, initiate contact and settle down. You’ve made no effort to feel at home here.”

And by saying that I feel American, I am not denying my strong European heritage. It shows in my education and my views. But then so does my Balkan temperament. Who am I, really?

I am layers of experiences, I am a little bit of every culture I was exposed to; I am not a linear one-dimensional being.

Spiritually, I am a citizen of the world.

I think part of the conflicts we have — religious, cultural, historical – stem from the fact that most people fight to stay within their own cultures, they demand one dimension.

Tell us about The Healings.

The Healings is the story of a nameless universal man, and his pain.

The main character is a depressed male – the universal human being in search of his own Self and his place in the society and, on a deeper level in the world. In his quest for healing, he is accompanied by his one and only partner, his talking cat.

The thoughts and dilogues, naïve and hilarious as they seem, offer a deep insight into life, death and what’s in between.

My take on depression is simple and effective: witticism and laughter coupled with the understanding of the frailty of human nature help us heal.

I think laughter is a recipe for survival.

The most important feature of my book is the namelessness of the character. I broke the rules, although everyone told me to avoid that. I think the fact that every human being can relate to that is huge. And I really wanted to capture that.

Tell us about the new magazine Authors Info.

Author’s Info is one of the projects I have joined some time ago. When Shane Cox, the gentleman who created this network approached me and shared his vision with me, I admit I was reluctant. I’m hard to get and even harder to keep around. As we talked more and more, I started liking the idea, then I saw some of my friends authors joining as well.

The concept behind it is having a FREE professional network for readers, writers and all others the literary industry, where they can connect, get exposure, and also get access to affordable services for members.The website was designed to offer exposure, unlike the social websites people usually join just to hang out someplace.

So far writers who joined are happy because their articles and posts are viewed by many readers. Members can post in the Blog section; add themselves and their books in the listing area, create a fan club groups, and much more.

Right now I have the pleasure of coordinating the monthly poetry anthology Blueflame. I also co-host the radio show It Matters together with Monica Brinkman. I have my column titled, The Romanian Bite. Other writers and editors work on their own projects, whether it’s a slam poetry contests or various events.

What is the most important skill a writer should have?

I think observation is the most important skill a human being should have. Good observations lead to good predictions, too. Whenever I trained people and regardless of the subject matter I did my best to teach them how to see the things in front of them. Too many times, we look at things without seeing them and poor assessments translate into missed targets, and ultimately failure.

If people took their time with observation, they would see that their puppy crawling dizzy on the floor is not being “cute” but has a hypoglycemic episode. They would see their partner is unhappy and hurting. They would see their child is not scratching the walls because has ADD, but because is trying to paint or write. Oh well…

A good writer will take the art of observation, which is a long lost art, to a different level. That is why we love to read the classics because they help us see things we constantly miss in life.

Oana thank you for an interview that is both versatile and interesting.

Links:

Pick up a hard or soft copy of The Healings at Amazon US or UK.

Find Oana at…
Her website, Twitter, The Romanian Bite, an 18+ fan club, or check her list of resources for other places she can be found.

JG Faherty is a horror novelist, whose titles include The Cemetery Club. He’s been a zoo keeper, photographer, salesman, laboratory manager, medical researcher, marketing specialist, and teacher. He’s got a new novella out, He Waits.

He met me at The Slaughterhouse, where we talked about the E Book Revolution and the evolution of horror fiction.

Do you think horror is changing?

Ah, the perennial question. The short answer is yes and no.

My take on horror is that it’s always changing, but at its heart it stays the same. Here’s what I mean: In the 70s and 80s, vampires and werewolves were all the craze. From King’s ‘Salem’s Lot and McCammon’s They Thirst to the mini-series by Tracy Briery, Scott Ciencin, Christopher Golden, and Fred Saberhagen, the undead were everywhere. Then you had some changes: Anne Rice with her gothic, romantic vampires and mummies, which eventually spawned Laurel K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series, which in turn led to paranormal romance and erotica being so popular today. You had Skipp and Spector in the 80s and 90s with their splatterpunk horror, which mutated into the blood-and-guts serial killer horror that’s all the rage today. Readers grew tired of nasty vampires, then they grew tired of suave, sophisticated vampires, and now we’re saddled with sparkly, emo vamps. Go back 20 or 30 years, and you won’t find zombies on anyone’s shelves. But thanks to Brian Keene and some others, zombies are everywhere you turn. They’re even more popular than vampires. Hell, you can’t go on Facebook without seeing a zombie cartoon or a mention of the coming zombie apocalypse.

Movies are no different. Way back in the 50s you had all the giant bug movies and space creatures. Before that it was the traditional monsters: Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolfman. In the 70s it was creatures in creepy houses, crazy serial killers, and comical vampires. In the 80s things shifted into space for a while, due to Alien. You had a lot of zombie movies, thanks to a revival in popularity of ‘Night of the Living Dead.’ The 90s were kind of bad for horror movies; not a lot of memorable ones. And then BAM! Torture porn movies hit like a plague. ‘Saw,’ ‘Hostel,’ etc., etc.

So yes, horror constantly changes on the surface. But underneath, in its dark heart of hearts, it remains the same. It has one purpose, and that is to scare and entertain us. Horror, through the subconscious and conscious minds of writers and artists, senses what the general population is looking for. Not scared by vampires anymore? Okay, we’ll give you zombies. Oh, zombies are turning farcical? We’ll give you a reject from the Insane Clown Posse who likes to make people cut their own feet off. What’s that? You have a hankering for werewolves? We got those! How about a remake of the Wolfman? Or a remake of The Howling? Or a new twist on Little Red Riding Hood?

Horror is, and always has been, all about stirring up our fears so that we can let them out, like a boiler letting off some steam so the pressure doesn’t build up too much. We like to get scared, especially when we know that an hour or two later we’ll be laughing about jumping in our seat. Horror reminds us that our problems aren’t so bad. Sure, money’s tight and your oldest kid just came home with purple hair and nose ring. But that’s sure better than seeing the neighbor turn into giant wolf, or getting kidnapped at the mall by a psycho who wants to sew your butt to someone else’s mouth. And that’s why horror will never change. Good or bad, literary or cheesy, gory or suspenseful, horror is, in the end, a part of the human condition, and just like all good literature or art, it works best when tapping into our own emotions.

Tell us about Cemetery Club.

Cemetery Club is the story of 4 childhood friends who are forced to reunite when the deadly evil they released 20 years ago – and thought they’d put an end to – returns with a vengeance.
When I started writing the book, I was working with the idea of evil being something that grows beneath the town of Rocky Point, because of the terrible things that have occurred there over the centuries. Despicable murders, experimentation on unwilling patients in a mental hospital, secret burials. The idea came to me because of my own ‘urban exploring’ in a local abandoned asylum, one that was established more than 70 years ago to provide a haven to the feeble and physically incapacitated but which, thanks to underfunding and overcrowding, became one of those terrible state-run places where doctors experimented on the patients – vaccines, lobotomies, shock therapy – and eventually Geraldo Rivera did an expose on the deplorable conditions. That was in the 1970s; by 1999 all the buildings were empty, but in typical government fashion nothing was removed. Patient files, business check books, dental records, fixtures, furniture – all of it left behind. The place quickly got a reputation for being haunted. My friends and I have been in almost all the buildings over the years, and visited the graveyard of forgotten patients on several occasions (a field of numbered crosses with no names, marking the sites where patients without families were buried, often after being used as experimental subjects).

However, in the course of writing the book, I realized that my initial ‘monsters,’ the Shades, were only half the story. The book had also morphed into a zombie novel, with Shades taking over bodies and turning them into a hive-mind of flesh-eating creatures. This created a great opportunity for me to torture my heroes. They had two enemies to fight, and each had to be dispatched in a different way. Of course, on top of that you have the non-supernatural obstacles: stubborn town officials, nasty ex-husbands, and the troubled pasts of the four main characters, who end up finding out more about themselves, and the town, than they bargained for.

At its heart, Cemetery Club is a novel of good vs. evil, people overcoming their pasts, and a dark history that too many old asylums share in the real world.

Who are your literary influences?

I have a lot of them. As a young boy, the first fiction books I can remember reading were The Hardy Boys. But from there I moved quickly into sci-fi and horror – Something Wicked This Way Comes stands out as something that really blew my mind when I was probably 10 or so. My reading back then was probably more diverse than it is now. I read the classics – Poe, Shelley, Stoker, HG Wells, etc. – and I also read the ‘modern’ writers of the time. Heinlein, Piers Anthony, Alan Dean Foster, Roger Zelazny. Then I started moving more into horror. My first Stephen King book was ‘Salem’s Lot (somehow I’d missed Carrie). I couldn’t get enough of him, or Peter Straub, or Dean Koontz, or Robert McCammon. Then the great horror revolution of the 80s occurred and I was reading 3 paperbacks a week.

So, who would I say directly influenced me as a writer? King – his ‘every man’ style of writing made me want to write. Bradbury – because his ideas were so cool. Heinlein – because he could be funny and serious all in 1 book (The Door Into Summer is a perfect example). Charles Grant, who showed me that you didn’t need gore to scare people. And I have to say that F. Paul Wilson, David Morrell, and Thomas Monteleone were also big influences, although later in my life, because they are the ones who actually showed me how to write.

Do you think evil is human or supernatural?

Do I think evil is human or supernatural? That’s a good question. I guess I would have to believe that it’s supernatural. Because while evil is definitely something that humans are well-practiced at – and seem to have inherent in themselves, to varying degrees – evil also exists beyond the human condition.

Chimpanzees have been known to wage war on other tribes just to get food or mates.
Even in humans, there is a difference between conscious evil – the guy who kills you while stealing your wallet, the dentist who fondles his patients while they’re asleep – and inherent evil. We’ve all seen it or heard about it. The young child who enjoys torturing the household pets or his little brother before he’s even old enough to talk. The politician who wages genocide and feels no remorse about it.

I guess what it comes down to is if you believe in Good, you have to believe in Evil. If we are truly made in God’s image, then it means the good and bad in each of us is just an extension of a larger good and bad that is part of the universe. That would go a long way to explaining why some reports of aliens are benevolent and some are downright nasty!

What do you make of the E Book revolution?

I am of two opinions when it comes to the ebook revolution.

On the one hand, I love it. I own a kindle, and I love being able to download a book at less than traditional cost, which allows me to explore new writers cheaply. And all the classics are free. Plus, it means I don’t have to take 4-5 books with me on vacation; I just pack up the kindle. As a writer, it’s also great. Ebooks have gotten a whole new generation of readers interested in genre fiction. Today’s readers don’t want to lug around paperbacks or hardcovers. They want electronic books they can share between their different reading devices – computer, phone, pad, reader. That, in turn, translates to more sales for writers.
On the other hand, there is a lot I don’t like. First off, you lose the joy of holding a real book in your hands, of having the books displayed in your bookcase. Someday soon a library will just be an online repository where you borrow an electronic file. No more dusty shelves, echoing rooms, and mysterious atmospheres. Books will become anachronisms, like in the Star Trek movie where Kirk still wants to read a real book. Second, writers are getting ripped off. Publishing companies want to pay the same old royalties and advances, despite the much lower cost of producing an ebook. And third, the relative simplicity of creating an ebook means that the internet is now flooded with people hawking their self-published ‘books,’ and the generally poor level of writing among these so-called authors is creating a backlash where readers think anyone who isn’t famous is probably a self-published hack.

What we need is a way for small and medium-press writers to distinguish themselves from the fly-by-night self-published crowd. Just like in a book store where you have the big sellers and then the racks of paperback hopefuls, we need a way to show people that small press ebooks really are edited and proofed and written by professional writers.

How do you think horror is different from terror?

At its most simplistic, terror is what you feel, and horror is what causes the terror. I know people say you can be ‘horrified,’ that you feel real ‘horror’ at something, but to be horror is something that generates fear or terror or even loathing.

Bodies strewn about on a battlefield is a horror.

A monster with three heads is a horror.

Getting brutally raped is a horror.

Now, the dictionary defines horror both ways:

1. An intense feeling of fear, shock or disgust.
2. A thing causing such a feeling.

So my personal definition is a bit different than the real one. But to me, it’s like saying pain causes pain. If horror means terror, how can terror cause terror? It’s another example of language not being exact – or perhaps being too exact!

We say the horror of it all, and we mean how awful something is. How terrible.

And when we’re frightened, we say we’re terrified – we don’t say we’re horrified. That’s more an expression of shock than fear. So I would amend the dictionary definition of horror to say it is an intense feeling of shock or disgust, or the thing causing such a feeling, or causing a feeling of terror.

But it is not a feeling of terror.

Now let the etymologists come at me!

Do you think extreme criminality is a theme a horror writer can acceptably tackle if he is exploring the psychopathology that motivates humans to commit atrocious acts?

Of course. Thriller writers do it. Mystery writers do it. Non-fiction writers do it. Why should horror writers be different? Extreme acts of human brutality have always been fodder for fiction – psychopathic murderers, cannibals, war atrocities, rape, torture. It’s all been done over and over. And it’s been done for decades. Do you think the creators of ‘Saw’ invented torture porn?

Exploring the dark depths of man’s nasty side is part and parcel of horror.

What are you working on now?

What am I working on now? I’ve got a couple of novels that I’m fooling around with, one that I’m 12K words into, and another that I’m outlining. I’m also brainstorming ideas for a sequel to Carnival of Fear but I haven’t gotten any momentum up for that project yet. I write whatever strikes me each day, so I’ve always got 2-4 things going at the same time.

Why do you think monsters appeal to people?

For a couple of reasons. They are the opposite of us (or so we’d like to think). They are grotesque, scary, without morals; they are different and yet it’s okay to hate them for being different, unlike the way we feel about people who are different. You aren’t supposed to dislike people for the color of their skin, or their deformities, or the way they dress, or how they talk, or what god they worship. But let’s face it: we all have prejudices, whether you’re a member of the Aryan Brotherhood or just a person who thinks people who dress all in black and listen to The Cure all day are ‘not right.’ We can hate the monsters and it’s just dandy because they represent all that’s wrong in the world, they represent the chaos that would occur if people other than us weren’t in control. And we feel extra good because we say it’s ‘mankind’ against the monsters, not whites or blacks or Jews or Christians or southerners or northerners. We feel good about ourselves when the monster is dispatched, because it’s a bad monster!

The second reason is monsters are scary, and anything scary gives us a release from the real horrors of our world – the bills, the wars, the death. We forget the bad in our own lives because for a few hours we are transported to a place where things are so much worse.

Finally, I think we love monsters simply because they’re so damn cool. They bring us back to our childhood, when we simultaneously feared and worshipped the monsters. What kid didn’t love Frankenstein or Dracula or the Wolfman? We played with models, watched them in movies and cartoons, read books, and snuck comics under the covers. Just to see monsters.
So, I guess in reality I think there are three reasons. So sue me!

Tell us something your readers don’t know about you.

Many years ago I was working as a photographer. I ran a one-hour film place and portrait studio. During that time, I got a lot of side jobs from people, everything from shooting weddings to architectural photos. A couple of times, I was asked by local police departments to take pictures of accident scenes when their regular photographer wasn’t available. Usually it was just a smashed guard rail or two cars all bashed up. But on one occasion it was a person who’d been hit by a train. The body was gone, but the bloodstains were still there on the tracks and on the front of the train. In the process of shooting the area, I found an eyeball on the tracks. I think to this day I still have that picture somewhere in my files. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to work that scene into a book or story.

Thank you Greg for an insightful interview.

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He Waits can be found at Amazon US and UK.

Cemetery Club at Amazon US and UK.

The Cold Spot at Amazon US.

Carnival of Fear at Amazon US and UK.