Questions and Answers What are you currently working on? I am currently working on the premarket draft of a novel entitled GYPSY BLOOD. I will finish this in the next couple of weeks, hand it to a trusted reader and let it cool for a week or two, then revise it and turn it into a marketable manuscript. I'm very excited about this piece of work, hoping that it's going to be what I need to nudge me up into the professional, advance paying territory. But I'm always busy on something. I'm drafting out a couple of novellas, I've got a complete novel that's just waiting a synopsis, (I hate those things), a half dozen stories that need revising, a monthly tarot column in a local newspaper, articles for various professional journals. I simply don't have enough time to get everything done. Keeps things fresh and lively for me, never knowing what's coming next. Are you a member of any writing groups? I am an active member of the HWA, a senior member of the Nova Scotia Writer's Federation, a member of their Writer's Council and Writer's In The Schools Program (through which I am paid to go to various Nova Scotia schools and teach them about writing and storytelling), and I am the Nova Scotia representative of Storyteller's of Canada. Who or what has been a major influence on your writing and why? I owe a lot to the pulp writers, Lester Dent, Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs and the rest of the gang. They taught me to enjoy a good clean yarn. Steve King's the obvious choice. I owe more to his SALEM'S LOT than I care to admit. Robert Parker for dialogue (Elmore Leonard is overrated in this department) and his Spencer series (although not lately) and his excellent under rated Jesse Stone series. Stephen Hunter writes big fat gnarly thrillers, steeped with the funk of gun oil and testosterone, like Parker on steroids. But I owe the most of it to my grandfather who told me a few stories and told them well. Is writing your full time occupation, if not what is? I make a living through a variety of professions. I am a professional palm and tarot reader, I am a professional jeweler, I am a professional oral tradition storyteller. I first learned storytelling and fortune telling through my family in the woods of Northern Ontario. You've got to fish with a lot of poles if you're going to make any kind of a living in Nova Scotia. What was your first professional sale? How did it feel when you received the acceptance? One of my earliest sales was to a small press magazine called TERROR TIME AGAIN. It was a 175 word short story, 'Beat Well', that remains one of my favourite pieces of work. It was reprinted twice - once in SPWAO's "best of" anthology ALPHA EXPRESS, and a second time in David Kubicek's anthology OCTOBER DREAMS, (not to be confused with Richard Chizmar's excellent Halloween anthology OCTOBER DREAMS). It's been the most published of my short stories, (you can find it again in my upcoming collection NIGHTMARE DREAMS), but at 175 words at a penny per word, I haven't made a whole lot of money from it. I originally scribbled it on a chunk of particle board while I was running a double bladed tablesaw that was known as "the death machine". It felt so amazing to see it in print, a validation for all those years of writing. I was also fortunate enough early on to find myself published in such amazing venues as THE HORROR SHOW, CEMETERY DANCE, KARL EDWARD WAGNER'S YEAR'S BEST HORROR and many other worthy magazines. There was so many more of them out there in those days. If you could give one piece of advice to a would-be author, what would it be? First, do it for the love of it. There's been years when I've made a few thousand dollars at this, and there's been years when I've made darn near nothing, and so far there's been very little consistency. You don't do this for the money, not first off. You do it because you have to. I told stories and wrote plays because I was too darned shy to do anything else as a child. Then, when I got a little older, it became an escape and a coping mechanism. It brought me good grades, (writing history papers, plays and stories and poetry for English, Health assignments). It kept me alive, because the plays that I wrote in English, I cast with some of the largest bullies in the school. They got to share my marks, learned to express themselves, and allowed me to continue to breathe through undamaged nostrils. Nowadays I couldn't stop it if I tried. I simply have to write. I write what I love to read, horror. A good story, with a little bit of gore, and I'm a happy Camp Crystal Lake camper. The first thing I do every morning, (after plugging my big toe into a convenient electrical socket to jumpstart my heart), is to go downstairs to my computer and write. It's what pleases me, beyond anything else. I hope to someday be able to do nothing else but write. Seven days a week. So call me a fanatic. I've got off topic a bit. Let me straighten my keel, so you can catch my drift. Write because you love to, write because you have to, sooner or later somebody will publish it. Are you for or against e-books? I'm all for anything that gets the words out to the public. E-books haven't quite found their way yet, but their time may yet arrive. I do not count them out. Do you have a favourite place to write? I write in my basement. It's dank and it's moldy. It's been flooded twice, but the air down here is charged with such creativity, I have but to walk into the room and the neural connections begin to fly. There's some advice for any beginning writers - pick a time and a place where the bulk of your writing takes place. Creativity will fester and grow, like a healthy slime mold. Do you enjoy book signings/conventions? I'm a performer, and I always appreciate meeting the public. I met my wife at a convention. She was organizing it at the time, and we connected, except she was married at the time and so was I. We stayed as friends, reconnecting once a year or so at local science fiction conventions where I would be called in to give readings and writing workshops and talks and judge fiction contests, (the big fish in the small pond, eh?). Years later we came together after I'd been divorced and we realized we'd been in love with each other for all those years. We were engaged at a New Year's dance, me standing in the middle of the dance floor with the ring held out and my mouth (for once) completely empty of words while the band played Auld Lang Syne. She ran off and cried for a half hour, while I sat in the bar wondering where I'd gone wrong. Then she came back and we danced and became engaged. She told me she didn't want to plan another big wedding, that if it was going to happen I would have to do the work. So one morning I rolled out of bed and told her that I'd booked a judge and a weekend in a fancy hotel and would she be mine. So yes, (finally coming back to my point), I guess I really ought to believe in conventions. Aside from the romance, I truly enjoy helping up and coming writers. In my work in Writers In The School I am constantly encouraging beginning writers to throw the dice and go for it. I have a way of making technique accessible, and my students and workshop attendees show it. What gives you nightmares? I grew up on those old Universal monster movies. I have very few nightmares. I don't think horror writers are particularly prone to them. We exorcise our demons daily. Go for the burn, boys, go for the burn. Have you ever used real life horrors for inspiration? I wrote one story called 'Downward Bound, Downtown' that was inspired directly from the Montreal Massacre. Given the high quality of horror fiction available, why do you think there are so few great horror movies? What else? Committee thinking. It takes a single singular vision to see a story through from beginning to end. Hollywood is a creature of democracy, surveys and herd instincts. The vision gets muddied along the way, everytime. Too darn many cooks spoil the cannibal's feast, wot, wot? Is there anything more that can be done with vampires, demons and zombies? Vampires, demons and zombies, oh my? Sure there is. To find out what can be done with zombies check out my new novella LONG HORN, BIG SHAGGY due out in summer 2004 from Black Death Books. There's back-from-the-dead mountain men, green ghost Indian spirits, time travelling mad scientists and zombified buffalo. My first reader asked me "How did you make me care about a severed head?" For vampires and demons you ought to check out my full length fiction collection, NIGHTMARE DREAMS, coming out this winter from Cyber Pulp. There's a story in there, 'Moving Lines', that's the basis for my upcoming novel, GYPSY BLOOD. There's a vampire in the story, but there's going to be a whole lot more than that in the novel. You'll just have to wait and see, but I guarantee you'll see vampires and demons like you've never seen them before. Do You Always know a Story's Ending When You Begin Writing? When I was thirty I hitchhiked from one end of Canada to the other. Started out in Nova Scotia with a cardboard sign that read BC. That's how I write. I have to know where it begins and where it ends, if I'm going to write it well. I need to have a beginning and an end. Novel, story, all the same. Not until I know the beginning and the end does it truly begin to write itself. What's the most memorable thing said in a review of your work? I've been told that LONG HORN, BIG SHAGGY out-mojo's Joe Lansdale. That's just one reader. We'll have to wait and see, I reckon. A prepublication review of NIGHTMARE DREAMS in the webzine The Swamp (http://www.the-swamp.net/index.php) compared me to Steve King and Harlan Ellison on the same page. Don't know if I feel comfortable parking my bedroom slippers next to big boots like these, but it's darned flattering isn't it? Plug away - what do you have coming out? I've already told you about NIGHTMARE DREAMS and LONG HORN, BIG SHAGGY. I think one of the biggest things I'm excited for in those two projects is that fact that I've been lucky enough to be permitted to paint the covers for both books. I've also got some stories coming out in various anthologies. Check out 'Geeking The Muse' in Cyber Pulp's upcoming anthology STRANGE NEWS, "The Frozen Meat Axe Of Love" in Cyber Pulp's DEAD WINTER, or my dark horror poem "The Memory Of Burning Bone" in Cyber Pulp's upcoming poetry anthology Mirrors in Flame. But if you can only check out one Cyber Pulp anthology, grab yourself a copy of TRUTH, JUSTICE AND THE AMERICAN WAY, a collection of modern day super hero horror tales, complete with an illustrated comic style first page. There's a story in there, "The Reflection of Moonlight on Broken Glass" that I'm absolutely amazed by. Can't believe I wrote it. The last line is going to haunt you for a long time. Don't know what nightmare pit I dredged it out of, think about Will Eisner mating with Clive Barker and your somewhere in the right geography. Many Thanks, Steve! Relevant Links Steve Vernon Main Bibliography Black Death Books Website