What or Who's Behind Dean Koontz' The Forbidden Door?

The Forbidden Door by Dean Koontz (Bantam, September 11, 2018) darkles with danger from the first page to the last. It’s a fast-paced thrill ride, to say the least, and much of the novel describes exotic vehicles and long motor trips from Texas to Southern California for both the pursued and their demented pursuers.

This is the fourth novel in Dean’s Jane Hawk series. Maintaining tension throughout four consecutive thrillers is difficult for any novelist, even the most experienced, and the plot does drag in places. But Dean keeps me reading because of the continuing supporting characters, especially Cornell, Bernie, Luther, and Travis and his two dogs, Duke and Queenie. Jane can take care of herself, but we come to care deeply about these others because they’re not only vulnerable but surprising. Each has redeeming qualities that make them sympathetic and likable. And dogs, as in all of Dean’s recent novels, are special.

The bad guys have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. None. Dubose, the most ruthless of the lot, is however full of surprises. Egon Gottfrey is as relentless in his pursuit as he is depraved beyond measure. There’s never any doubt in a reader’s mind who the bad guys are, despite valid FBI, NSA, and Homeland Security credentials.

The Forbidden Door opens up new possibilities for future plot twists and, despite vague foreshadowings, we still have no clue who the mastermind—Egon Gottfrey’s Unknown Playwrite—might be. I look forward to learning more in future Jane Hawk novels.

 

 

 

 

 

The Suspense Could Kill You

The thrill is back as Dean Koontz returns once again to the fast-paced protagonist-on-the-run roots that made his early novels so exciting and appealing. The Jane Hawk novels seamlessly cross genres, effortlessly moving from science fiction territory into that of James Bond’s espionage and modern techno-thrillers, from noir into pure psychological horror.

None of the characters in The Crooked Staircase by Dean Koontz (Random House, May 8, 2018) learned to play nice as children, and they certainly make reprehensible adults. Jane’s piano virtuoso father killed her mother and made life hell for the young girl, Booth Hendrickson’s mother made life hell for Booth and his half-brother, and the crooked staircase leads Jane and Booth straight down into a real-life hell from which only one may emerge alive.

Alternating short chapters between Jane Hawk’s POV and other viewpoint characters, including those hunting her, Koontz paints a horrifying picture of the worst abuses of government authority imaginable. Carter Jergen and Dubose are NSA employees who also work for the FBI, CIA, DHS, and IRS. They’re covert agents of the Techno Arcadians, a secret cabal of government and business elite who seek to control the world. They’re already in control of many world leaders, politicians and businessmen, implanted with nanotechnology that turns them into mindless slaves like modern-day Manchurian Candidates.

Dean pays tribute to Robert A. Heinlein, one of his mentors and idols, throughout this novel. Characters become strangers in a strange land, mannequins controlled by puppet-masters, Waldoes manipulated by monsters. Another of his idols, Charles Dickens, receives honorable mentions. And, of course, there’s always a faithful canine companion or two in a Dean Koontz novel.

We first met Jane Hawk in The Silent Corner (Bantam, June 2017) and continued her exciting adventures in The Whispering Room (Bantam, November 2017). In this third novel, The Crooked Staircase, former FBI Special Agent Jane is on the run from the Techno Arcadians while seeking revenge against those who killed her husband Nick. With son Travis safely hidden, Jane pursues Booth Hendrickson even as Hendrickson pursues her.

But bad guys Jergen and Dubose, two of the nastiest villains you never want to meet in a dark alley, are hot on Travis’ trail.

Will Jane survive descending the crooked staircase? Will Jergen and Dubose capture or kill Travis? You need to read the latest installment of the never-ending Jane Hawk saga to learn what happens next.

Or the suspense could kill you.

Dean Koontz has a new heroine

Dean Koontz combines Richard Condon’s The Manchurian Candidate with Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives to create his latest pulse-pounding suspense thriller The Silent Corner (Bantam Books, June 2017).

Jane Hawk’s husband commits suicide, but he isn’t the only one to die by his own hand. When Jane, a highly-trained FBI Special Agent, takes bereavement leave and investigates the sudden rash of unexplained deaths, she and her five-year-old son are threatened by mysterious strangers who know all about her. Jane’s only hope to save her son and herself is to go entirely off the grid — to disappear into the silent corner where no one can track her movements or whereabouts.

Because those hunting Jane and her son don’t play nice, Jane can’t either. She becomes a rogue agent, a cold-blooded killer, and a thief.

Like Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, Jane Hawk has skills that allow her to survive against impossible odds. She goes on the offensive and ruthlessly kills people who deserve killing. We cheer her on each time another bad guy bites the dust.

The Silent Corner is only the first of at least three Jane Hawk novels. The Whispering Room will be out next January.

Exciting, thrilling, suspenseful, and well-written, I recommend The Silent Corner to everyone who enjoys a good read.

My Debt to the Small Press

Many of us sf, suspense, and horror writers owe a debt to the small press.

Those of us who began our careers in the last half of the twentieth century—specifically, the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s—honed our craft by writing short stories. We had grown up reading pulp magazines and paperback anthologies, and what we aspired most to be in life was a paperback writer who wrote short stories and fast-paced serialized novels sold on newsstands or through subscriptions.

Our heroes had ascended the ladder of success via early short stories published in the pulps: Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Robert Heinlein, Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, Andrea Norton, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Fritz Leiber, Fredrick Pohl, Isaac Asimov, H. P. Lovecraft, and countless others. Zane Grey, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Max Brand, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and even Faulkner and Hemingway and Stephen King wrote many short stories for magazines. Seeing one’s own name on a by-line in a magazine was the gold-standard of success.

But television killed most of the markets for short stories, especially pulp-style stories. Smart writers migrated to screenwriting (Richard Matheson, William F. Nolan, Harlan Ellison, C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, William Faulkner, and Raymond Chandler were only a few of the more successful screenwriters who got their starts in the pulps). Motion pictures and television shows were really only short stories in disguise. I view television as the modern reincarnation of pulp magazines

As the number of magazine markets dwindled, new writers sought alternate ways to get their stories into print. Fan fiction thrived, and Amateur Press Association APAs—mimeographed or photocopied hand-stapled magazines—achieved significant circulations. Distribution or sales in the hundreds and even thousands provided ways for new writers to get their fiction into print and their names known.

Some amateur publishers became semi-pros, paying ½ cent or a penny a word, almost as much as early pulp magazines had offered half-a-century earlier.

Semi-professional publishers became known as “The Small Press” because their distributions and pay rates were too small to attract professional writers.

Today many of those small presses are called “Independent Publishers” because they aren’t owned or controlled or distributed by one of the Big Five International media conglomerates.

Cemetery Dance Publications, Dark Regions Press, Gauntlet, American Fantasy, and 2AM Publications began as small press publishers of magazines. David B. Silva began The Horror Show as a small press magazine in the 1980s. Dave was a writer himself, and he created a vehicle for new writers—as well as a place for big names like Dean Koontz, Robert R. McCammon, and up-and-coming Joe R. Lansdale—to showcase short stories. Dave achieved newsstand distribution, a consistent quarterly publication schedule, and professional-quality covers and print production. When the First Gulf War glued Americans to their television screens to watch play-by-play CNN or Fox News coverage of the war, sales of newspapers, magazines, and books declined and didn’t recover. Dark Regions, 2AM Magazine, Weirdbook, Pulphouse, Deathrealm, and The Horror Show folded. Only Cemetery Dance survived as a continuously published magazine.

The digital revolution in publishing has seen a rebirth of the small press. Dark Regions Press, Cemetery Dance, and Gauntlet produce exquisite numbered and lettered hardbounds and trade paperbacks. They publish short story collections and novels. I support all of them by buying and reviewing many of their books.

I have supported the small press since the 1970s. I reviewed the small press under my own name and under my Irwin Chapman pseudonym for three decades. I served as the Grievance Officer for the Small Press Writers and Artists Association in the 1980s. I have contributed stories to most of the small press magazines over the years, and many of those stories (along with some of my stories that appeared in anthologies from major publishers) will soon be collected into a new short story collection entitled The Devil Made Me Do It Again and Again.

When Eldritch Press announced in the HWA newsletter that they were actively seeking novels and would pay a professional advance and royalties, I sent them a proposal for Abandoned, the first novel in my Winds-series of Supernatural Thrillers. They replied immediately, and I sent them the full manuscript. They accepted within a week and sent me a written contract that was more than agreeable. In exchange for an advance, royalties, and a one-year reversion or renewal agreement, Eldritch would publish Abandoned as a trade paperback, a hardcover, an e-book, and an audio book. They hired a pro artist to design a dynamite cover.

I informed my then-agent who was very displeased. Two professional publishers had expressed interest, but both were taking their time to make an offer. I withdrew Abandoned from consideration, and my agent and I parted ways.

Michael Randolph, the publisher of Eldritch Press, agreed to hurry the trade paperback into production so the title would be available at the World Horror Convention in Atlanta in May. We agreed on a March 1, 2015 publication date. Abandoned actually appeared on March 3, 2015, and copies were for sale at WHC. Michael said he wanted to wait to release the e-book, hardcover, and audio book until we could get advance publicity into place.

Eldritch Press never did do any publicity, nor did they publish a hardcover or audiobook. I did push Michael into publishing an e-book version at the end of summer.

I recently heard from other Eldritch authors that Michael closed Eldritch Press on November 18. The Eldritch Press website has vanished, along with the Eldritch Press Facebook page. Copies of Abandoned are no longer available for sale on Amazon.com.

I know from experience that the time, money, and energy required to sustain small press operations makes it impossible to live one’s own life. The burden can seem unbearable. If the small press publisher is also a writer, he or she has no time for his own creative writing. Family life goes to hell. Constant demands from authors and distributers destroy perspective. There is simply never enough time for one person—or even a small part-time staff of several people—to do everything required to acquire, edit, format, publish, market, distribute, and publicize multiple books. Necessary accounting for taxes and royalties eat up time and money. Communicating with authors and artists, negotiating contracts, and marketing published and soon-to-be-published works can become a real nightmare.

I don’t know if that happened to Michael Randolph at Eldritch Press. I only know that Michael is no longer communicating with me and Abandoned has gone out of print.

Over the years, I have had 43 stories and novels accepted by small press publishers that never made it into print. At least Eldritch Press actually published Abandoned, and they did a decent job. If I had waited for a major publisher to produce Abandoned, it would still be in production. At my age, I can’t afford to wait.

So, thank you Michael Randolph and Eldritch Press for publishing Abandoned in a timely manner. I wish you well.

And thank you Crossroad Press for wanting to produce a new edition of Abandoned. As soon as I have it edited and I’m certain the rights have reverted to me, Abandoned will be available as an e-book.

I will continue to support the small press whenever and however I can. Despite the temptation of large advances, I can’t afford to wait years for major publishers to bring out my new titles. I owe a debt to the small press for rushing many of my titles into the marketplace. I intend to pay that debt.

 

 

My visit to the real world 6-30-15

After months of little more in life than writing and book marketing, I emerged today to mow the lawn, buy new bookshelves, and do a few mundane tasks that needed doing.

Elizabeth Aisling Flygare was nice enough to buy me dinner and introduce me to mocha shakes at Arby’s. We looked for bookcases at Furniture Row, but they were oversized or priced far beyond my meagre budget. We did find a five shelf bookcase at Target for only $26.99 that I’ll need to assemble myself. I bought that, plus a ton of cat food. I also bought a container of Liquid Plumber drain restorer for my kitchen sink. The drain opener set off an alarm at checkout causing the clerk to need to scan my driver’s license. It seems that drain opener is now treated as a controlled substance, not unlike pseudoephedrine. Misguided youths are using liquid drain cleaner to get high. Stores are required by law to keep a copy of my driver’s license for 2 years each time I purchase pseudoephedrine allergy medications or liquid drain opener. If I try to buy more than the normal amount in a 2 year period, I will be declared a potential drug dealer and investigated.

And then, when I bought a Fiskars hardened steel saw that I intended to use to trim unwanted elm trees sprouting in my yard, the alarm sounded again. This time I already knew why. It’s the kind of bone saw serial killers in my Instruments of Death novels use to dismember human bodies. Heh heh. Honest, officer. I was only planning to use that saw on trees. Heh heh.

The killer of the evening, though, was a visit to the local Barnes and Noble store at Cherry Vale Mall where the fiction section was being reduced to make room for displays of toys, graphic novels, and games. None of my novels were displayed on store shelves. The customer service desk said they would be happy to order single copies to send directly to my home, but they did not stock my titles. My books were listed in their online catalog, but the titles were not part of the local store’s inventory. Neither were Andrew Vachss’ novels, nor Joe Lansdale’s, nor Alaya Dawn Johnson’s. They did carry Jonathan Maberry’s Joe Leger series and I found all of James Patterson, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Jo Nesbo.

Elizabeth asked me on the way home if I were depressed because today was the official release day for Darkness and no store had it available. It is still on pre-order at Amazon and B&N.com. I wasn’t depressed. But I was disappointed.

So now I am ensconced back at my keyboard after a brief visit to the real world. I think I will hide here for awhile until it’s safe to venture out again.

Maybe by then my titles will be in the stores where customers’ drivers licenses will be scanned and saved for two years because my books are considered dangerous when consumed in quantity.

What’s in a Name? On Author’s Names and Creating an Author Brand

 

When I taught novel and short story writing for Writers Digest Schools back in the 1980s, many of my students asked me if they should change their auctorial names. Either they had very common birth names that wouldn’t stand out on bookstore shelves or they possessed very unusual names that revealed their religion, ethnic heritage, gender, or were too long to easily fit on a book’s cover and spine. Since I had only recently begun using my own name after employing a variety of pseudonyms on much of my published work for a variety of reasons, I urged students to choose one name, preferably their own name, and stick to it throughout their careers. I had learned that what matters more than the name itself is the quality and quantity of work associated with a name. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but a bouquet of bright-colored sweet-smelling roses matters most of all.

Literary history, like music history, is filled with one-hit wonders. Margaret Mitchell and Harper Lee come immediately to mind. Some writers pen a masterpiece first-time out and never write anything again because they feel nothing else they would write could surpass or even come close to their masterpiece. Some writers have only one story to tell, and that’s okay.

But the publishing game depends on selling lots of books. Publishers, like readers, seek out brand names they can trust to deliver consistent product each and every time. We choose those brands we know over no-name generics from displays in bookstores, grocery stores, and online retailers. We know what we like and we like what we know.

Two of my favorite writers are Henry Kuttner and Catherine Lucille Moore. Both were prolific authors who wrote under pseudonyms for a variety of reasons. Not unlike Alice Bradley Sheldon who wrote under the pseudonyms of both James Tiptree, Jr., and Raccoona Sheldon, Moore chose the androgynous name of C. L. Moore to disguise her gender in the male-dominated genres of science fiction and fantasy. Moore proved that a woman could write sword and sorcery as well or better than most men regardless of name. But Moore and Kuttner would be better remembered today if they had penned everything under their own names, or one consistent pseudonym, than writing under so many different names.

Some brand-name writers choose pseudonyms when writing outside their genre or writing in styles different than their fans expect. Stephen King wrote novels as Richard Bachman, Dean Ray Koontz as D. R. Dwyer, Leigh Nichols, Brian Coffey, Owen West, and Richard Paige, and Joanne Rowling wrote novels as J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith. Their already-established reputations were enhanced when it was revealed they were capable of writing outside their known genres. Though their pseudonymous novels sold reasonably well on their own, they became best-sellers only when the authors’ true names were added to the covers. Brand names sell books. Period. End of sentence.

My own birth name is too long to fit comfortably on book covers. There are far too many Paul Andersons in the world, and I don’t want to be confused with the legendary Poul Anderson (I was once on a panel at an sf convention where Poul Anderson was GOH and I was listed on panels as “the other Poul Anderson”). I have writer friends named Paul Michael Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson. When I was a kid, I was teased for having the same name as Olympic weightlifter Paul Edward Anderson. I now use my full birth name on books, and my current publishers break up my name into two lines on book covers to accommodate the length. I no longer deal with publishers who won’t.

Friends like Mort Castle call me P. D., and Wayne Allen Sallee affectionately calls me PDA. My parents called me “Dale” or “Paul Dale” because my father was Paul Anders Anderson. Most of my male cousins on the Anderson side of the family were given Dale as a middle name to commemorate our Dalecarlian or Dala heritage from the Swedish province of Dalarna. I set my Instruments of Death series of police procedurals in the fictitious town of Riverdale in Dale County in honor of my Dalecarlian heritage. In Mysterious Ways, the forthcoming sixth novel in the Winds series, I honor Dalecarlian magic and explain the origins of the Dala Horse.

Paul Dale Anderson disappeared completely from bookshelves for twenty-some years while Paul Dale Anderson, MS Ed, MA, BCH, CI did medical research, wrote journal articles, and worked on doctorates. When I reappeared as a fiction author after the death of my wife, few genre readers remembered my name.

That became painfully apparent when I began book tours last year. Although some fans and book collectors asked for autographs on old copies of my published novels and anthologized stories and John Everson and Bill Gagliani even asked me to read one of my published stories at their late-night panel on erotica and horror, some fellow panelists had no idea what I wrote. Despite serving as an elected Vice President of HWA and as a trustee who signed the original HWA charter, HWA members at registration couldn’t find my convention name badge and gave me an anonymous blank attendee badge. My name was misspelled on the mass signing list and on panel placards. It took nearly the duration of the entire World Horror Convention for people to begin recognizing me. Only two people asked for my autograph during the Friday night mass signing, but by the end of the convention a few dozen more asked me to sign copies of my books (including one collector who had acquired copies of all my out of print titles).

I am the invisible man, the man nobody knows. My name is too long and too confusing with other writers to remember. Many of my contemporaries have died or no longer make the convention circuits. I am a ghost.

Part of the problem is I’m shy. I’m a writer whose comfort zone is sitting alone at the keyboard. I don’t aggressively ask people to buy my books. I’m the quiet guy who observes. I know you, but I don’t want you to know me.

I write about you. Sure, some of me appears in my writing, but I’m really writing about and for you. See if you don’t recognize yourself in my stories.

 

            I’ll be signing trade paperback copies of Abandoned and Darkness at the Nebulas in Chicago next Friday and at the Printer’s Row Lit Fest on Saturday. Paul Dale Anderson is prominently displayed on the covers of both titles. I don’t care if you remember my name. I do care that you read and remember my stories.

Two of the Nice Things about Social Media, Especially Blogs

 

I’ve quoted Shakespeare often before, and I’ll quote the Bard now again. In the first scene of the fifth act of The Tempest, Miranda exclaims, “O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world that has such people in it!” Prospero replies: “Tis new to thee.”

Social media is relatively new to me. I began writing in the late 1940s, pounding out stories on an old Remington upright. I migrated to a manual Royal in the early 1950s, acquired an electric Smith-Corona in the 1960s, and got my first dedicated word processor in the 1970s. By the 1980s, I was writing on computers: Commodore 64 (with a voice tape recorder to save files), Apple IIe (with dual 5.1 inch floppy disk drives), Mac SE with a 120K hard drive. I paid $7,000 for a Macintosh portable in 1990. It had one megabite of RAM and a small hard drive and used 3.5 inch floppy disks to store stories. But—miracle of miracles--I could connect it to a modem, connect the modem to a telephone line, and access Genie. SFWA had an online discussion board on Genie where I could post messages and read messages from other writers. HWA followed SFWA onto Genie not long after, and my novel and short story writing suffered as I learned the new technologies and spent way too much time online. I followed SFWA onto Compuserv and then AOL and, finally, to the worldwide web. I was a lurker as much as a contributor, and I felt a part of the writing community even if I were no longer writing fiction.

When Gretta developed heart problems and I was diagnosed with cancer, I stopped writing fiction entirely and became a researcher. I used hypnosis and visualization to shrink my tumors until they disappeared, and Gretta used hypnosis to generate new arteries in her heart. Gretta lost her battle with heart disease and diabetes in 2012, and I returned to fiction writing shortly thereafter.

I discovered modern social media while earning a masters in Library and Information Studies from the University of Wisconsin and working on my doctorate in Educational Psychology. So computers, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, e-books, and website creation weren’t exactly new to me by the time I returned to full-time fiction writing. But I still have Miranda’s sense of wonder at how many goodly creatures there are here online.

I now keep in touch daily with hundreds of friends on Facebook and thousands of readers through Blogger, Twitter, Tumblr, and Google +. I can download e-books instantly from Amazon or Barnesandnoble.com. And I can literally see the faces and workspaces of other writers and read about their daily struggles to commit words to memory.

That seems like a godsend to me. I am no longer alone at my keyboard facing a blank screen.

Writers are lonely people who want desperately to connect their minds with other minds. They attempt to do that with words and images while wishing direct mind-to-mind communication were possible. Sometimes, when a writer recognizes her own thoughts in the writings of others, mind-to-mind communication does indeed seem possible.

I maintain blogs on Blogger, Tumblr, and Wordpress, and so do many other writers. Some writers post about their daily struggles, and some talk openly about the process they follow to create works of fiction. I used to think it was a waste of time and creative energy to devote hours and thousands of words daily to blogs, but I was wrong.

Blog postings, like short stories, can be collected into books. I can go back to blogs I have written, extract the most salient points, and edit them into a book on the process I follow to create fiction. Such a book can be valuable not only to me but to other writers, especially new writers just learning the craft.

Just as important, however, is the name exposure. When people go into a bookstore—either a brick-and-mortar bookstore or an online emporium—they might recognize my name and take a look inside a book with my name on it. I do that, and I suspect others do that, too. I don’t buy a book simply because of author name recognition, but I do take a look inside every book by Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Patricia Cornwell, Joe R Lansdale, Billie Sue Mosiman, Mark Rainey, Lee Child, David Morrell, Brian Garfield, and everyone I befriend on Facebook. If their stories or styles interest me, I buy their books. I would hope people do that with my books.

One of the nice things about blogs is seeing a writer’s style before buying his or her books. It costs nothing but a few moments of time to scan a blog. I have bought books recently solely because I liked what I read on the author’s blog.

 

Coming Next: Author Interviews and Elevator Pitches

Myths of Book Marketing Part II

Myths of Book Marketing Part II

Doing a video interview only takes a few minutes. That’s true for the actual video when it’s aired, but prep time can be daunting. Today I was lucky. I spent only an hour prepping: showering, shaving, selecting the right attire that included a blue instead of a white shirt, stopping for a haircut on the way to the interview, driving to the interview location, practicing what I wanted to say. The interviewer/camera person was almost right on time. Setting up the equipment took no time at all, finding the right background with minimal background noise and good lighting was slightly more tricky, but Abbye Garcia—affectionately known as “the girl with the camera”—proved an expert at what she does. She started off with asking the right questions, promising to edit out all but the essentials. I forgot I was on camera and I answered her questions as if I were speaking directly with her. We did two interviews and a couple dozen publicity stills. We wrapped up the entire session in less than an hour. I had time to drop off some mail-order book sales at the post office before heading home to write. Total time away from the keyboard: less than four hours.

                Is all this necessary? you ask. Yes, it is, if you want to sell books.

                I’m naturally a shy, retiring kind of guy. There was a time when I sold most of my stuff using pseudonyms. Name recognition didn’t seem important to me at all. I was wrong.

                Kevin J. Anderson reminded me, in his wonderful Million Dollar Professionalism for the Writer, that Dean Koontz also wrote many of his early works under pseudonyms. Stephen King wrote a few books under the Richard Bachman name. But it was only when they got their own names out there, where people could recognize them, that they wrote best-sellers.

                King is as much a master of marketing as he is a master of the macabre. People ask for his works by name because they know his name and know the quality of his writing. People are willing to pay money for his grocery lists.

                I want people to read what I write because they know my name and recognize the quality of my story-telling. Writing a good book is only part of the process. Getting the books into the hands of readers is equally important.

                Do interviews sell books? Yes, a few. But a lot of interviews over a long period of time can add up to a significant number of books reaching readers who’ll want to buy more.

                A by-product of having your own name on the cover of your books is writing a better book because you own the story. When I ground out down-and-dirty novels for packagers, I didn’t care about the quality. I did it for the money (plus the practice of fast-paced story-telling with minimum characterization). Nobody knew who wrote those novels. I didn’t care if anybody ever knew.

                But the marketplace has changed, and I have changed as I’ve aged and grown as a writer. I care about what I write, carefully crafting every word, and I want people to read what I write and to know who wrote it.

                I’m proud to be a horror writer. I write in other genres, too, and I’m proud of those stories, as well. I do mysteries, police procedurals, suspense thrillers, and occasional fantasy and science fiction. I have a few cross-over novels. Okay, more than a few. But I want to be known as a horror author.

                But what makes me a horror writer isn’t the interviews I do nor the name recognition. What makes me a horror writer is what I write. It’s writing the kind of stories I like to read and putting them into the hands of other readers who also like my kind of stories. Reading and writing always comes first.

                To be continued….