My first book, MOONDEATH, was published in January 1980, so I’ve been at this quite a while. I didn’t always want to be a writer. Throughout my childhood and even through high school, I wanted to be an artist—an illustrator like Frank Frazetta. I loved drawing and painting, and I guess I was all right at it, but I didn’t have much confidence in my artwork. (There’s a reason my friends call me “The Eeyore of Horror.”) Only in college did I find that I could do with words what I couldn’t do with paint and ink.

There was definitely a creative itch inside me … an urge to create and express myself, but it took me a while to find a way to release it. I still draw or paint occasionally, but I haven’t developed my talent much as an artist because I focus so much on my writing now.

I’ve always been drawn to the “dark side” of life. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s my personality … maybe it’s my heritage as a Finn (although Finns aren’t as gloomy as some folks think!).

More specifically, I’ve always been drawn to ghost stories … eerie tales about things you glimpse out of the corner of your eye but can’t see directly. Of course, when I was starting out, I had aspirations of writing science fiction, but I was intimidated by the genius of writers like Arthur Clark and Isaac Asimov, so I gravitated more to intensely personal stories about hauntings because that’s what I knew,” and they always tell you to write what you know.

I still have other stories to tell, non-horror ideas, but when I start them, they usually take a dark turn, and I follow them where they go.

Well, thank you. I’m glad you like the little bros. A lot of people seem to favor that book.

Generally speaking, writers and all artists are not “happy” people. The urge to create comes from a deep sense of dissatisfaction of some kind … a feeling of being ill at ease with ourselves or with life … or with death. If we were happy, we wouldn’t sense something churning inside us that we have to express … something we want to get out or else we might explode. So my ideas come from a general feeling of wanting to deal with the conflicts I feel inside me. I want to express them and share them—and entertain people in the process.

Also, pretty near every night, I have vivid and disturbing dreams that feed a sense of feelings and emotions and thoughts inside me I have to express. On nights when I lie awake, unable to sleep, or when I wake up screaming from a nightmare, it’s reassuring to think that something I wrote might have done the same thing to a reader who—somewhere in the country or world—is also lying wide awake, waiting to fall back asleep. I don’t feel so alone then …

I’m as proud of my second short story collection OCCASIONAL DEMONS as I am of my first, BEDBUGS, and not just because of the amazing artwork Glenn Chadbourne provided. Generally speaking, though, I’m never really satisfied with any finished book of mine. I can always see what it could have been better. If I wrote a book that fully satisfied the itch … that said everything I have to say, I wouldn’t have to write another book.

Life is complex and full of things that inspire me to tell stories, so when I want to experiment with ideas and writing styles, I write short stories to get at things and ideas that don’t have a novel’s worth of weight behind them. The stories in OCCASIONAL DEMONS span my career pretty much from the beginning until 2004, when I put the collection together. There’s a wide range of styles and voices and ideas in these stories that I think (I hope) readers will find interesting and fun.

EBooks are the future. They’re also another source of income, which a writer must have in order to keep writing. Personally, I don’t have a Kindle or IPad … yet. I still love the feel of a book with real paper in my hands. As a kid, I remember opening a new book and inhaling the smell of the ink. (Books don’t smell the same these days. Is it because they’re using different inks?) I love the tactile feel of books, and while I can admire eBooks as a way to deliver a story, part of the experience for me is the actual BOOK.

But the next generation is much more comfortable getting its entertainment electronically, and books will eventually go the way of the dinosaurs. So writers have to adapt and explore these new ways of telling their stories because—bottom line—people will ALWAYS want to be told stories, and I will always want to get paid to tell it.

I met Rich Chizmar early on when he was starting up CD, and we’ve been close friends ever since. When he first asked me for a story and interview for the “Rick Hautala Special” edition of the magazine, I had the good sense to refuse payment and ask for a lifetime subscription instead, so I’ve been an avid reader and fan of CD ever since.

When Rich started publishing books, he asked me for something and eventually ended up publishing THE MOUNTAIN KING, BEDBUGS, and FOUR OCTOBERS before OCCASIONAL DEMONS. He’s also done the chapbook COLD RIVER, and—yes, there are more on the way. Absolutely! In fact, just this week I finished INDIAN SUMMER, a new novella for Rich. It’s another “Little Brothers” story. I suspect I will publish books with Rich as long as he wants something from me.

But besides all this, Rich has helped me through some personal tough times by being above and beyond everything else a true friend who has stood and still stands by me when things aren’t going well. It’s not generally known, but when my mother died accidentally, I gave up writing for a year. I know. No one missed me. I didn’t have a career big enough to be missed when I went away, but Rich stayed in touch and pushed me for stories. When he published THE MOUNTAIN KING, that dragged me out of my self-imposed retirement.

I have a small circle of friends whom I refer to as “The Texans”—people who stand by me when my personal and/or professional life feels like the Battle at the Alamo. And I want to tell you, Rich Chizmar was and is there on the ramparts with me, fighting at my side. Let me take this opportunity to say to Rich Chizma and everyone else who works at CD: Thank you! You have no idea how much I value your continued friendship and support.

The length of time a book takes varies. Of course, there’s all that time the book is simmering and stewing away in my mind and subconscious before I actually sit down to write it. Once I have an outline (and-yes, I generally work from an outline, but not always), I’d say it’s three or four month to write a first draft. Earlier on in my career, it took much longer—perhaps nine months to a year to finish a draft, but …maybe I’m getting better at this writing thing. I don’t know.

THE COVE, a mainstream novel I completed recently and (so far) have been unable to place, took me two months to write about 500 pages. That’s fast, even for me. The story poured out of me. Of course, revision takes more time, but the hard work—the heavy lifting of creating the story-is over. Other books take longer because it’s more difficult for me to pry the damned things open.

A typical workday for me goes as follows: I wake up between nine and ten o’clock. Before I eat breakfast or take a shower, I stagger into the living room, sit down in the Morris chair, fire up the laptop, and start writing. I work until I get a minimum of two thousand words. Usually more. Maybe in the neighborhood of three thousand and, when I’m on fire, four thousand or more. But once I hit the two thousand mark, I can relax. I eat breakfast (usually around one o’clock in the afternoon), shower, check e-mail and Facebook, make phone calls, and then I may write some more until around three o’clock, when I go out on the deck and smoke a cigar and read. I generally don’t write in the evenings because once I reach those two thousand words, I tell myself (and try to believe it) that I’ve done what I could that day. When I’m revising, the word count goes to a four thousand minimum.

Oh, Lord … Hardships. Don’t get me started. Writing is a terribly tough business. Sure, we have Stephen King and Dean Koontz, and who wouldn’t want a career like theirs (of course, people don’t comprehend the amount of work they put in—People think it’s fun and easy. Hah!), but for the vast majority of writers, it’s either a life of poverty or a day job you hate so you can afford to snatch small moments to do the one thing you love—write. Harlan Ellison said it best when he said (and these aren’t his exact words): Becoming a writer is easy. It’s staying a writer that’s tough.

With the publishing business changing so fast, and people not reading as much as they used to, and so many other distractions for our entertainment dollar, it’s nigh on impossible to make ends meet as a writer unless you hit it big. And what are those odds?

Over the years. I’ve dealt with lousy editors and agents who don’t know what they’re doing to people in Hollywood who outright lie to your face. I’ve had publishers cheat me out of significant amounts of money and then all but say: “Go ahead and sue us. We’ll wear you down with our lawyers. You won’t get a dime. In fact, you’ll lose money.”

These days, I have a literary agent and a film agent I love, and I’m dealing with editors and publishers who “get it.” And the bottom line is, I get to write. I get to tell stories that entertain and amuse people. Like my buddy Tom Monteleone says, if we were living back in Medieval times, writers would be the jesters, prancing around with our cap and bells.

One book of mine that I think has unfairly disappeared into oblivion is FOUR OCTOBERS. It’s a collection of four novellas (MISS HENRY’S BOTTLES, TIN CAN TELEPHONE, COLD RIVER, and BLOOD LEDGE) that, I think, are some of the best stuff I’ve done to date. They’re right up there with REUNION, which Peter Crowther at PS Publishing put out last year. FOUR OCTOBERS never got a paperback sale because, they say, collections don’t sell unless you’re a big name author … which I am not. (I had my chance with NIGHTSTONE, and I—and others—blew it!) I wish there was a way to get FOUR OCTOBERS to the readers who I know would appreciate it.

For novels, I have a special warm spot in my heart for TWILIGHT TIME … I’m not sure why. Maybe because I was trying to do some things in that book that, I think, readers missed … and it never sold well. It’s tough to see your books go out of print. Of course, with e-Books, they’re coming back slowly.

Other novel… ? That’s like asking me to choose my favorite child. All of my books have their good points and bad points. That’s why I’m revising them for e-publication—to remove some of the more egregious flubs. I love all of my books because I love diving into the world they create as I write them.

I have three finished novels which for a variety of reasons, personal and professional, have not gotten published yet. They are THE COVE (a mainstream novel set in coastal Maine), MOCKINGBIRD BAY (the first in a proposed YA series ) and WAITING (what was supposed to be the next A. J. Matthews novel, but the previous A.J. book sold so poorly, the publisher didn’t want it).

My short story LITTLE WOMEN IN BLACK, a literary mash-up of LITTLE WOMEN will be in the anthology CLASSICS MUTILATED this month. It’s an amazing collection.

I also have a pile of screenplays that are still making the rounds and will hopefully sell and start an avalanche of demand for my scripts. The most likely is PIGEONS FROM HELL, the script Mark Steensland and I did for Paradox Entertainment based on Robert E. Howard’s short story. It sticks remarkably close to the original, and I think fans of the story will love it if it ever gets made.

Mark and I also wrote THE DEVIL’S CHUCH, THE SPECIAL, SNOWMEN, and ANIMOSITY (based on James Newman’s amazing book of the same name). I have an original script titled CHILLS, and I adapted with Chris Golden his novella THE SHELLCOLLECTOR which came t-h-i-s close to selling this past summer. With singer/songwriter Judy Pancoast, I wrote a “family feel-good Christmas script” titled THE HOUSE ON CHRISTMAS STREET which we’re trying to get to Kirstie Alley and John Travolta. (Anyone got contact info?)

Also, I’m talking to comic book artists Glenn Chadbourne and Matthew Dow Smith about possibly adapting my “Little Brother” stories and some other projects to graphic novels.

The biggest thing keeping me busy these days are the chapbooks and e-versions of my stories and novels, which Neil Jackson is doing in England and Bob Booth is doing in the US. As I said, I’m revising the books and stories for the e-versions because—well, I think I’ve learned a little something about writing over the years, but it’s an on-going process.

Simple advice: Have a thick skin and keep your sense of humor and perspective. It is brutal out there. But keep at it. Don’t give up unless someone is holding a gun to your head—literally. Realize that you will never perfect your writing. It is a process, not a product. Take criticism with many grains of salt … unless the person doing the criticizing is also the person who can write the check. Then, listen. And don’t ever get cocky or bitter. It’s a balancing act. No matter what level of success you achieve, there is no reason to think you’re any better or any worse that the next writer.

I know that I can turn the dreams and ideas that haunt me into stories that will entertain, amuse, and possibly (but not likely) enlighten my readers. I want to thank them for their support over the years, and I would like to thank you for a fun (and exhausting) interview. It’s nice to get some of these things off my chest … Now can I get back to work on my new novel?