Over 9 of the next 10 days I will be featuring 10 of the 12 authors in this collection. Each has answered a series of questions from me about their God, why they picked it, what their favorite scary books are, and more. It’s very similar to the posts I have been running by authors all month, just with a Lovercraftian spin. Expect each day’s post to bring you a handful of new authors and titles to add to your arsenal of books you can suggest to patrons.Next up, Douglas Wynne. [Click here for reviews of other books by Wynne and his previous guest post on the blog.]
Please remember you can also enter for a chance to win one of two copies of The Gods of H.P. Lovecraft by emailing me at zombiegrl75 [at] gmail [dot] com by 10/29 at 11:59pm.
--------------------------------------------------------
Who are you?
I’ve been trying to figure that one out for a while now. According to Buddha I'm a continuity of consciousness arising from an endless chain of causes and conditions. I’m also Douglas Wynne: writer, musician, husband and father, and a guy who likes loud guitars, cake, and microbrew beer.
--------------------------------------------------------
Who are you?
Who is your favorite horror author [besides Lovecraft]?
It's hard to pick only one, but if I must: Clive Barker.
Why do you like to write horror?
Horror is more of an emotional tone than a genre, so it feels more wide open to me than the other labels you can put on a book. Under the banner of horror I can dabble in fantasy, SF, crime and suspense with as much or as little supernatural and sexual content as is fitting for the story at hand. It can also be a very literary genre. Horror is generally gritty and realistic and preoccupied with questions of the nature of reality and an urgent sense of mortality. Where else can you get all that?
Which “God” did you focus on in the Anthology? What features of this god do you find most interesting?
Yig, the Father of Serpents. I like the folkloric aspect of the curse of Yig, but there are a lot of stories you could tell from that jumping off point. A reader at a signing event recently told me that she thought theme anthologies were the work of the devil because writing is art and you should be able to write whatever you want. I fully agree with the importance of striving for originality and trying to make genre elements our own. But thinking about it after the fact, I wished I had told her that the execution is far more important than the premise, and you can always make a story uniquely your own in the execution. I tried to do that with "Rattled". Sure, it's a horror story about a snake god, but it's really about the distance a boy feels when his best friend is growing up faster than he is. It's about coming of age and finding your tribe.
Please share some of the authors you are reading and enjoying now.
I loved Paul Tremblay's A Head Full of Ghosts. I'm also currently reading Charles Stross's Laundry Files books and revisiting Ray Bradbury and Shirley Jackson.
What other works do you have out now?
My latest book is Red Equinox, a Lovecraftian urban thriller. My other novels are The Devil of Echo Lake and Steel Breeze.
What are you working on currently?
I've finally cleared my calendar of all other deadlines and am starting work on the next book in the SPECTRA series, the sequel to Red Equinox. I'm going for a quieter, creepier tone with this one. Should be fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment