• Interview with Desi D.

1. Name one horror author you admire and explain how they helped you become a better writer.

Every year, I discover a new author who changes my perspective on horror, and sometimes, literature and writing in general. Choose one that’s impossible. I can’t split the baby. But I can say with certainty that anyone who loves horror couldn’t go wrong reading some of my recent favorites: Steve Rasnic Tem, Attila Veres, Reggie Oliver, Mark Samuels, and Luigi Musolino.

The person who’s helped me the most become a better writer is Noah Lukeman, who doesn’t write horror at all (at least not to my knowledge).

That being said, all of my answers might be completely wrong, and I might read this interview later and say, “What the hell was I talking about?” No, not might: probably will.

2. What is your favorite supernatural creature? And why?

The Wandering Jew. His immortality and itinerancy make him something like a biblical cowboy. If that biblical cowboy was also a scapegoat. In terms of conceptual impact, he’s a very powerful character, though not very popular, at least not contemporarily. I think because some people are uncomfortable writing or saying the word “Jew” and others are way too comfortable writing or saying it (and not because they’re fans of the tribe).

Aesthetically, the xenomorph—what H.R. Giger calls the actual monster he designed for Alien—is pretty badass. If something looks evil enough, it can overcome the absence of evil character development in the narrative. Kind of adjunct to “Quantity has a quality all its own.”

Although the horror series The Strain also has two of my favorite villains. Thomas Eichhorst, an undead Nazi who’s hardened after betraying the Jewish woman he loves (after that, he’s all in on evil; in for a penny, in for a pound). And The Master, when his physical host was the gigantism-afflicted Jusef Sardu. A bloodthirsty giant in a holocaust cloak is pretty terrifying.

These questions are too hard. Why would you give me these impossible questions?

3. What is your favorite story? And why?

I don’t have one, and it’s impossible to have one, and if people claim to, if you talk to them long enough, they’ll find another story they say is just as good. And if you wait a few years, those same people will change their minds completely.

The best stories, to me, are the ones that make you set the book down on your chest after finishing, take a breath, and then register, if even only on an unconscious level, that you are no longer the same person who began reading it.

There are a few I’ve read over the last few years: “The Red Fog” by Mark Samuels, “The Amber Complex” by Attila Veres, “Whatever You Want” by Steve Rasnic Tem, “The Mortlake Manuscript” by Reggie Oliver.

But the story that really kicked my ass was “Lazarus” by Leonid Andreyev. It takes a biblical story of resurrection and turns it into a cautionary tale of cosmic dread. If “Lazarus” doesn’t freak you out, then you’ve got ice water in your veins.

4. What about the thrill of writing that calls your name and excites you to create a new tale? And of course, what is the next story we can look forward to reading from you?

Rarely does writing thrill me. But if I don’t write, I feel like I’m swollen with psychological edema. Writing is agony, and going back and reading your older writing is a specific, can be cringe-inducing agony.

What’s next? I’m not sure. The majority of what I write ends up abandoned and consequently unpublished. I started my writing career with three semi-competent longer works and a not-so-great novella. Although recently, I’m really enjoying writing short stories, even though they don’t give me as much space to develop character arcs or create a fictional universe, so I’ll probably keep doing that.

Alright, I’d like to go eat lunch now.