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.
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.
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.
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.
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.'
