Chance, choice, and consequence are fundamental parts of existence and perfect fodder for a horror story - or any story, for that matter, that asks, 'How do you live through this? How does anyone live through this?'
— Paul G. Tremblay
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.
When it comes to actually writing the book/story, I work on a computer. I wish I could write longhand, but I can't.
There are great and terrible consequences to any act of violence, and they reverberate beyond the act itself.
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.
Horror is often about how we live in the liminal, whether we want to or not.
Getting into graduate school was pure luck.
In the early 2000s, I started selling some short stories to horror markets. I joined the Horror Writers Association.
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.
Independent horror movies have really stepped up the game, and hopefully mainstream Hollywood will follow suit.
I want folks to take horror seriously.
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.
'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 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 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.
I usually dread writing non-fiction. I don't feel comfortable or confident writing essays and the like.
I've been a fan of horror and studying it for as long as I can remember.
The feeling of having no choice or no say is a fear of mine, partly because the idea of loosening oneself from the burden and responsibility of choice and consequence is so intoxicating.
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 do remember dancing in my living room when my short story 'The Laughing Man Meets Little Cat' won a Chizine fiction contest in 2002.
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 many talented and worthy writers engaging horror in new, imaginative, and yes, terrifying ways.
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.
Math was always my best subject growing up.
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.
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.
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.
'A Head Full of Ghosts' was my first full horror novel, and that felt like coming home as a writer.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The closer a horror story gets to the truth of things, the more affective it is going to be.
'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.
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.
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 became a reader - never mind a writer - because of Stephen King.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Pop country definitely frightens me, how popular it is.
Ambiguity is a big part of this post-truth world we're living in.
What keeps me up at night is our nation's continued and burgeoning lack of rationality in response to mass shootings.
I'm a daydreamer - a purposeful one when I'm writing fiction.
I'm certainly no hardcore backpacker, but I do enjoy being out in the woods for a few hours.
Any day in which I get writing done is ideal to me.
I always wanted to write a book that would have people talking, theorizing, arguing.
My first two novels were quirky detective stories followed by a couple of SF/Fantasy novels.
