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| Jonathan Maberry |
Jonathan Maberry is an award-winning author and comic book writer. He has written over 1200 articles, 10 novels and 20 non-fiction books. His most recent novels are GHOST ROAD BLUES (Pinnacle books; winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel in 2006), DEAD MAN’S SONG (2007), BAD MOON RISING (2008), and PATIENT ZERO (St Martins Press 2009). Upcoming novels include THE WOLFMAN (2009, Tor/Universal Pictures), THE DRAGON FACTORY (2010), THE KING OF PLAGUES (2011), ROT & RUIN (2010, Simon & Schuster) and DUST & DECAY (2011).
And all you zombie fans -- don't miss week 3 of Marvel Zombies Return: Wolverine (September 2009). This installment features a who's who of Marvel's martial arts themed characters like Iron Fist, Shang Chi, and the Sons of the Tiger. .
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By Jonathan Maberry
Author Spotlight August 2009
On Horror Fiction
Horror got a bad name because of the slasher films of the seventies and eighties, because they were marketed as horror; and when they thought they had the horror crowd as their audience, they threw some token (and often illogical) supernatural elements to the films. This cemented horror and visceral gore together in the popular mindset. As a result the mainstream audience shied away, which took the profit out of anything in print with the word ‘horror’ attached to it. The publishers putting out books by Stephen King and other top ‘horror’ writers, released the books as ‘fiction’ or ‘suspense’, or basically anything except horror. In the last ten years the last nails were hammered into the genre label by movies like SAW and HOSTEL. Torture porn drove away any mainstream readers who might have started to get curious about horror. As a result, it’s damn hard for good horror writers to make a buck, which means most of them are not able to devote as much time to writing as they otherwise might have. That’s a damn shame.
I think horror fiction has never been better. There are so many great writers in the field today, even if some have been unfairly relegated to small or micro-press. Horror is an endlessly renewable genre, and we have writers who regularly bring innovation to the game. Mike Mignola, Clive Barker, Kaelan Patrick Burke, Nate Kenyon, Sarah Langan, P S Gifford, Michael Laimo, Christopher Golden, Tom Piccirilli, John Passarella, Nancy Etchemendy, Alexandra Sokoloff….the list goes on and on. I could name names all day of writers who never fail to impress me with their new twists and gorgeous prose.
I’m less impressed with film…mostly because Hollywood exerts too much control and the writer is not given a chance to tell the best story. There are exceptions, of course. Jack Ketchum’s THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, Neill Marshall’s DOG SOLDIERS (my vote for the best werewolf movie ever), indie films like PONTYPOOL, the HELLBOY films, and a handful of other are good. I liked Stephen Susco’s American version of THE GRUDGE, and the James Gunn script for the remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD; and I dig the subgenre of science fiction horror –films like ALIEN and 28 DAYS LATER. My biggest area of interest, and tolerance, is the zombie genre. I’ll watch even bad zombie flicks, but luckily we’ve had some good ones.
However, too many of the modern films marketed as horror are actually recycled slasher flicks or torture porn, and I’m not a fan of either genre. Horror films build suspense; most slasher and torture films rely on shock. Shock isn’t horror.
Writing Influence
The reviewers like to trot out comparisons to Stephen King, but they do that with all new horror writers, especially those of us who favor the longer novel form. Whereas I admire King I have no intention of trying to model my work after him, or after anyone. It’s a disservice to everyone to do that, and it’s disingenuous. That said, there are writers who have inspired me to write without necessarily influencing my style. Richard Matheson was a good example. I met him as a teenager and he talked about how and why he wrote I AM LEGEND –which stands as one of my favorite horror stories of all time. Matheson gave me a copy of the book, and it was accompanied by an impassioned lecture of being true to one’s own intellect. A short time later I met Ray Bradbury, who gave me SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES, and he told me about the practical side of being a writer, about how to go from idea to finished product without fuss and with an absolute minimum of the artistic temperament
The Creative Process
I’m a very disciplined writer. I write eight to ten hours every weekday, and about four hours on Saturday and Sunday. I either write from home or, more often, from a series of coffee shops that I move to in a random migratory pattern. I aim for about three thousand words a day, unless I’m revising.
I never revise until I have a completed first day, though I usually have an open file on ‘revision notes’. I outline the story all the way to the end, and often write the last chapter before I write the first. It helps to know where a story is going so you can lay down clues, foreshadow, and build suspense.
Unless I’m near a deadline, I usually alternate between projects. For example, yesterday (which, at this writing was a Tuesday), I spent a couple of hours doing clean-up work on a script for Marvel Comics. Then I did about a thousand words on ROT & RUIN, my Young Adult zombie thriller. After lunch I spent the rest of the afternoon writing a chapter on werewolf hunting for a nonfiction book (VAMPIRE HUNTERS and other Enemies of Evil). That’s a pretty typical day. Peppered throughout, however, I keep up to date on social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), and twice a week I write an entry for my BIG SCARY BLOG (www.jonathanmaberry.com).
Ideas come at me all the time. I have stacks of notebooks filled with ideas. If I like the feel of something, I’ll jot down a one paragraph description, maybe some character notes, and then file it away until I have time to develop it. If it’s really hot, like an idea for a digital media program (shows for the Internet) or comics, I’ll bang out a one-paragraph pitch and send it to the appropriate agent or editor. Then I return to the project at hand.
One thing I’ve learned –and it was Bradbury who first confirmed this for me—a writer is always writing. Walking, showering, working out at the gym…the creative brain, if well tended and allowed freedom…will be online all the time. Bradbury said it best: “Writing is 99% thinking about it, and the rest is typing.”
Advice to New Authors
Horror’s a tough field to sell in. Or, rather, it’s tough to make a buck selling ‘horror’. Most of the successful novelists who make a living off of the genre do it by pitching their books as ‘thrillers’, ‘suspense’, ‘urban fantasy’, ‘dark fantasy’, or other labels. Sure, we hate to do it, but this is a business and the business doesn’t like the word horror. So if we write horror and have fans that will read it, what does it matter if we wrap it up and serve it under a different name. We all know what’s what.
So, my best advice to upcoming writers is to learn how the business works. Be a smart business person, because publishing is a business, not an art. Art is a product. You can keep your artistic integrity, but that is really something between you and the reader. Between those two, however, is a business machine. Use that machine to reach the readers you want with the stories you want to tell.
And..have fun. If you’re not having fun with this stuff, you’re missing the point.
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