The Writing Show (WS): Welcome to the Writing Show, where writing is always the story. I’m your host, Paula B, here with my guest, Marty Young. Marty Young is president and founder of the Australian Horror Writers Association. Currently finishing his Ph.D. in paleo-oceanography, Marty is co-editor of Macabre: The New Era in Australian Horror which will be published in 2006. Marty’s first short story will be released on Halloween, 2005, as part of the “Shadow Box” e-anthology, and his first novel, 809 Jacob, is finished but awaiting some minor edits before he finds a home for it.
Welcome to The Writing Show, Marty. It’s such a pleasure to have you here.
Marty Young (MY): Thank you, Paula. Thank you for offering to talk to me.
WS: Let’s get started because horror is such a fun subject.
MY: Yes, it is.
WS: Tell us about your organization, the Australian Horror Writers Association.
MY: Okay. The Australian Horror Writers Association unofficially formed in late 2003. We’re a nonprofit organization set up to provide basically a sense of community for Australian writers of horror while helping the evolution and development of this genre within Australia. We do that through offering things like writing resources, latest news, competitions, articles, advice, discussions on the genre itself, and we’re always working on new projects. I guess we’re foremost a writing organization, but we don’t restrict membership on that basis. One reason is because, I think, the film industry in particular is an important aspect of the genre, and we’re keen to incorporate that element within the Horror Writers Association. We’re also foremost an Australian organization, obviously, but again, we don’t want to restrict membership on the basis of nationality or where they live, so we welcome writers and those interested in horror from all parts of the world.
WS: Can you just tell us a little about a few of your projects, and then I’d like to talk a lot about writing horror stories.
MY: Okay. We’ve got the Australian Shadows, which are awarded annually for the best horror story written by an Australian, published either in Australia or overseas. We have an anthology called Macabre: The New Era in Australian Horror. I’m co-editing that with Angela Challis. That will showcase the best Australian horror stories from the past plus the best ones today.
WS: How can people get hold of that anthology?
MY: We’re hoping to have national distribution in Australia, so hopefully, that should be available quite easily from bookstores, or definitely online through the Australian Horror Writers Association. Also, we ran the flash and short story competition for the first time this year, and that was for unpublished stories. We were very lucky in that Dark Animus, an Australian magazine, offered to publish the first three winning entries of the short story category, and Shadowed Realms published the first three winning entries of the flash fiction competition. We’ve got the Southern Horror Yahoo group, which is our official online forum, and that was set up specifically for horror and dark fiction writers and fans to talk about everything related to horror.
WS: Oh, fans too. Not just writers.
MY: Fans are important for writers, aren’t they? You can write all you want, but if you have no one to buy your books or to read your stories.
WS: You say that’s a Yahoo group. How can people find that group?
MY: There’s a link to that on the Australian Horror Writers Association Web site again. You can just click on that and sign up.
WS: And the Australian Horror Writers Association Web site, now that you mention it, what is the address of that?
MY: Our Web site is www.darkanimus.com/hwa.html. We also have a number of articles on horror and writing written by our members. We have articles devoted to getting published by editors and agents and published writers. We also want to forge greater bonds with all the avenues releasing horror in Australia, especially the small presses, which are so vital to the genre because they’re the ones that publish stories by unknown authors and they’re the ones who take the chances.
WS: It sounds like you’ve done a huge amount in the little time that you’ve been going. I’m very impressed.
MY: It’s been a slow slog but yeah.
WS: Let’s talk about horror itself because that is such a fun—well, I know it sounds a little strange to say—but it seems to me it’s such a fun genre. What exactly is horror?
MY: Okay, well, perhaps before I answer that I’ll just say that the word horror has such a bad reputation. It’s got a past, and not a particularly pleasant one. A lot of publishers shy away from it because of all the rubbish that’s been produced. There was a boom time in the 1980s. Everyone wanted to write horror. They wanted to emulate all the… specifically Stephen King’s success, and I guess the magic was lost eventually. You get the same thing coming out all the time. Everyone loses interest in it. And you get terms like “dark fiction” and “dark speculative fiction,” which take their place to avoid the preconceptions people have of the genre. But I’m happy just to stick to the word “horror.”
WS: Good.
MY: Okay, to answer your question, I don’t really think that anyone’s answer can be used to explain what horror is exactly, because I think it’s almost something personal. I’ve got a quote here somewhere. Paula Guran in 1997 wrote an essay called “The Meaning of the ‘H’ Word,” and she defined horror as something that is defined by each reader and writer in an individual way. And that’s how I see it. If you get the dictionary, the dictionary I have on my desk is The New English Dictionary. The definition of horror in that goes “Horror is a strong feeling caused by something frightful or shocking.” And also there’s another writer, Douglas E. Winter, who said in Primeval, I think it was, his introduction to Primeval, that horror is not a genre; horror is an emotion. So, if that’s the case, if you’re going to call horror an emotion, then horror elements can be found in absolutely every kind of story, any genre, because wherever you have a human, you’re going to have emotions. And feelings of fear and unease are always going to be there, aren’t they? Death is always going to be a part of our life, and everyone’s pretty scared of death. Okay, it might be an emotional experience, but I think horror literature is that which seeks to draw out and exploit those feelings in whichever way the writer chooses to make them the focus of the character’s journey through the story.
To me, I think horror is that which makes me feel unsettled, gives me pause and makes me wonder what might be out there looking in at me, or licking its lips and wondering how tasteful I might be. I love monsters. I prefer books and movies that have monsters in them. Not monsters of the human kind, although when I was growing up, I used to love all the slasher flicks and the serial killer books. I used to also love splatter punk, which is the violent, extreme form of horror. But at the moment, I enjoy the more quiet school, where the things suggested are far more frightening than what you see.
For me, horror works on different levels. You’ve got kind of like the terror level, which is, you know, you hear a noise at night but you can’t see what’s making it, so your imagination starts providing you with images, and you wonder what it is. Then you’ve got the horror of actually coming face to face with whatever was making that noise and seeing the monster that’s out to get you. And then you’ve got the disgust, which is, you know, the monster gets your wife or your husband or someone in your family and starts pulling out their brains. I don’t think all three levels are necessary in any one particular story. But for me, at least, there’s something almost satisfying about seeing the beast that’s out to get you. It’s like you get to that peak and you wonder, “Will I ever see it? Will I ever see it?” and then suddenly it’s there. And it’s quite satisfying.
WS: It’s almost a release in a way.
MY: It is. Yeah. That’s right.
WS: From the uncertainty at least.
MY: Yeah. Before you see it, you’re always wondering, “Oh my god, what is it? How bad is it going to be? It’s going to be terrible.” And you always think the worst, so hopefully when you see it, you might go, “Oh, well, that’s all right. It’s nowhere near as bad as I thought.” Or it could be even worse.
WS: That’s a good point. I’d like to come back to that in a minute when I ask you about the techniques that horror writers use, but first I’d like to ask you why do you think people enjoy being scared so much? Well let’s put it this way. I don’t mean in general being scared, but I mean why do we like horror stories so much? I’m not sure we necessarily enjoy being scared in real life.
MY: Yeah. That’s a good question. You go to any kind of carnival and you’re always going to have to line up for the ghost train or the haunted house or the roller coaster ride. There’s always people wanting to go on them. We’ve all got our own ways to escape from life, our own avenues of escapism. You might enjoy romances, whereas someone else might enjoy science fiction, another guy martial arts. For me, I like horror because I like being scared by a movie or book. The scare there is safe. If it gets too much, I can simply put the book down or I can turn off the DVD or walk out of the movie theater. I love the adrenalin buzz that you get from being on edge and the freedom of imagination that comes with entering the horror world. But also I think there’s that thrill there, that seduction of going into somewhere taboo. One where you know you shouldn’t but you simply can’t help yourself. You’ve got to peek. You’ve got to take a look at the freak show. It’s like a car crash, really. You go past a car crash, and you point out the person who doesn’t at least slow down and have a look. I think everyone, no matter even if they don’t want to. They can’t help themselves. They have to have a look.
I think people like horror because it tells the story of a person pushed to the extreme and coming through. That person has to confront things that we ourselves don’t want to confront or really talk about in our lives. But this character is made to confront it, and more, they have to deal with it. And most of the time they do, so maybe horror gives us a sense of strength or triumph as well.
WS: That’s a wonderful answer.
MY: Thanks.
WS: Let’s talk a little about some of the sub-genres, the types of horror stories. You mentioned that there’s sort of three basic elements. There’s the uncertainty, not knowing what’s out there and then seeing the beast or the monster. And then the disgust from what the monster does. But there are other classifications you can put horror stories into, like monster stories and ghost stories and that sort of thing.
MY: Certainly.
WS: Can you talk a little about the various types of horror stories?
MY: I know there are many different sub-genres. Just on a little side note, I was reading something, I think it was by Paula Guran, who said that horror’s not a genre, it’s an emotion. Now that we’ve got that straight, let’s talk about some of the sub-genres of this emotion.
There are monster stories, and I love my monster stories. There’s something—I don’t know—I just enjoy monsters. You’ve got the H.P. Lovecraft school of horror, where the world used to be inhabited by these powerful beings well before our time. And they vanished from the Earth, and now they continue to live on in almost another dimension, but they’re forever eager to get back on Earth and take over again. A lot of people love writing with those types of stories.
You’ve got the splatter punk, where you go more for the shock factor rather than the actual scare. That’s all the blood and guts and dancing on your entrails, that real extreme school of horror. That has a place as well. I’m not saying that that’s disgusting and there’s no room for it because certainly, I enjoy some of the stories as well. Edward Lee writes some fantastic stories that certainly make you sit back and say, “Whoa, that’s something, isn’t it?” Clive Barker’s another one that does that as well.
You’ve got the ghost stories. That’s almost like the quiet horror, isn’t it, where there’s things making noises but you don’t often see them. You might see a glimmer out of the corner of your eye. M.R. James was well known for his classical English ghost stories. That’s not using shock factors to scare the readers.
You’ve got the sort of middle ground horror, where there are a whole lot of weird things happening and eventually you come face-to-face with the monster and you have to deal with it. That’s probably more mainstream or contemporary horror. Stephen King probably fits in there.
You’ve got erotic horror, where you use sex and horror as well.
You’ve got dark fantasy, which is like a fantasy story, but you have strong supernatural elements in it, and it’s quite dark and plays on your dark emotions.
You’ve got psychological horror, which is probably more your serial killers and things that play with your mind.
You’ve got weird horror. I’m not sure how this one differs from horror in general, but that’s just strange, uncanny, supernatural stories, really weird ones. Really far out there.
WS: That’s a great list. You mentioned something about English stories, and that brings up a subject I’d like to get into a little bit. Do you think there’s a difference among horror stories that come from various countries. For example, is there a difference between Australian horror stories and English horror stories and American horror stories and that sort of thing?
MY: Yeah, definitely. If you want there to be, of course. In Australia, we’ve got a harsh, desolate, apocalyptic outback. I’ve been out there on a field trip for my geology, and I had to spend two weeks camping in this desert wherever we found a flat bit of earth, which is pretty much everywhere. Temperatures in the high 40s.Thousands of flies.
WS: Let me just mention, that’s 40s Celsius, right?
MY: Yes, that’s right Forty degrees Celsius.
WS: Which for people who think in Fahrenheit degrees is very hot.
MY: Yes. That’s the scientific term we use too.
WS: Yes, very hot. Right.
MY: And you know, it’s a world unto itself. It’s so harsh. But at the same time you’ve got this place and you’ve got all these wonderfully crazy Australian bush people out there. Just wonderful characters. Really rich with their stories. You also have the indigenous cultures with their own distinct myths and legends. And in Australia we’ve got kangaroos and emus and wombats and all kinds of crazy Australian wildlife, which can only come from this country.
Our culture is different to England and America. Each country has its own identity. And I think that identity comes from the people, the history, the geography, wildlife. All these add up to provide the identity for the country. And writers can draw on this to construct stories which have distinct flavors, distinct cultural identities.
So for sure, there are differences between English, Australian, and American horror. And every country can be different as well. But in saying that, at the same time, our cities are full of skyscrapers and pollution and harassed humans. There’s no difference between, say, our big cities and your big cities. So horror that’s based in a city could easily be based in any city around the world, unless, of course, you’re using some cultural icon like the Sydney Harbor bridge.
WS: That’s interesting. It makes a lot of sense. I wasn’t really aware of it, but it certainly makes sense. You certainly think of English stories, you think of gothic, with the haunted mansions, and I don’t know. Do you have haunted mansions in Australia?
MY: No, I don’t think so. That comes down to the history because England has such a long and involved history, whereas Australia, our history’s relatively young and short-lived. So I think you’ve got all these mansions and castles that went through the Dark Ages and there have got to be horrific events there, so there are bound to be ghosts lurking around. But in Australia, two, three hundred years old, there’s not really a chance for a lot of ghosts to accumulate.
WS: And of course, here in California, we have stories about haunted McDonald’s because we’re really so young. That was a joke.
MY: Nice joke. I like it.
WS: How do you think horror fiction and movies, if you want to talk about movies, have changed over the decades? And you can pick as many decades as you want. It could be two decades or it could be ten decades.
MY: Trends come and go in cycles all the time. You’ve got fashion, music, television shows, cultures like punk and even the 80s. Something will happen to spark off a surge in popularity, and all of a sudden, everyone wants to get in on the action, wants to be a part of that scene. Then you get saturated with it, and you get bored and you go elsewhere looking for something else.
And I think horror’s the same. There are cycles in popularity both within the genre and the subject matter itself. Like vampires. They come in and out of fashion all the time. Mutations were huge back in the 1940s, 1950s. The giant ants and the nuclear. Maybe we’re due for another surge of the giant genetic mutations. Ghost stories—I guess they’re always around, but every now and then there will be a surge in popularity, and everyone will want to write ghost stories. Same with demons and zombies. They might go away for a little while. Like any one of these, people will eventually have enough, and editors will say, “All right. I don’t want any more ghost stories.” And then something happens—a writer comes out and produces a really wonderful ghost story, and all of a sudden everyone wants back on the bandwagon. So I think there are all these peaks and troughs, and there’s quite a cyclic nature to the genre itself. So what’s been before is obviously going to come again. That almost sounds like a horror movie in itself.
I think labeling has changed also. Stories that might have been classified as horror in the past are called something totally different now, basically because there are preconceptions of that little word “horror.” There are still a lot of horror stories out there, but now they might be dark fantasy or speculative fiction or even crime. Like when I was growing up, there were a lot of serial killer movies and books, and I used to consider that horror. You’ve got a serial killer that’s out to get your family, you go through a lot of frightening emotions. Maybe it’s changed a little bit now and there’s more emphasis on the crime side of it and the actual crime-solving unit or the forensic side. But it still definitely has a horror element to it.
I think one fundamental way that horror really has changed is the explicitness of the stories. And it takes a lot more to frighten us these days than it did in the past. And that’s definitely because of our world. You just listen to the news or the radio, and it’s shocking what goes on out there. You can’t help being inundated with horror, but that’s real life horror, and there’s no escape from it. So you kind of become desensitized to the horrors around you. So us horror writers have to work even harder to try and extract that bit of fear or that shock value from you. And at least with a horror story, there’s generally a resolution. Most times it works out for the best. The main character or your favorite character of the book survives. He doesn’t always, but most of the time, he survives. And he’s met someone, so you know the horror’s dealt with, and they can go along and be happy. And us the reader, we must feel happy for them as well, and you feel happy for the state of the world, even though it’s a make-believe world. So yeah. I think horror’s definitely changed with how explicit the stories are these days.
WS: Let’s talk about the writing itself—some of the techniques that horror writers use. I’m really interested in what horror writers do that’s different from what maybe other writers do. The techniques they use that are different. For example, one of the main features of horror writing as I see it is suspense. And I’m wondering how an effective writer goes about building tension and suspense.
MY: You’re right. Suspense is a really vital ingredient to a good horror story. I think it works best if you use it with a lot of variation. The pace of a good story should vary so you go through something that’s quite suspenseful, and then the pace backs off a bit and you have enough time to sort of catch your breath and go, “Wow. That was quite something.” And at the same time to wonder what’s going to come next. I think each peak should be a little bit higher than the one previous so you almost can’t bear it. I think you build suspense by making the reader wonder what the heck’s going on. Make them wonder what’s going to happen next and when it’s going to happen. But at the same time, you’ve got to drop enough clues so that they know something is going to happen. You’ve got to keep them enticed. You’ve got to feed their imagination.
Also I think weather is a wonderful tool for building suspense. Gothic stories use this quite a bit. A big storm will build as we heard towards a climax, and that storm will burst when the action reaches its peak. And yeah, like I said, I think weather’s a great tool for building tension because you’ve got the sound of the wind through the trees—that sort of howling, eerie sound that gives you a bit of a chill. It makes branches scratch against windows and your imagination goes off. You go, “What the hell was that? There’s something at the window.” The wind in the trees can also hide the sound of someone creeping up on you. And then at the same time you can use a burst of lightning to reveal the scene in the flash, and you can see that something or someone that has crept up behind you. And the same with the writing. I like using shorter, sharper sentences when the action’s moving fast or when the monster’s hot on your heels about to get you because I think that portrays a sense of urgency or desperation.
WS: Obviously one of the features of a horror story is fear, and the author attempts to scare the reader. What are some of the ways that an author can effectively scare a reader?
MY: I think, and again, this is just my opinion—someone else is probably going to go, “No, I don’t agree with that at all”—but this is my opinion. I think horror is far more effective when it’s focused on a small group of characters. If you consider horror as an emotion, then the best tales, the most frightening stories, the ones that engage us on a personal or emotional level, you grow to love and get to know a character. And when the character is confronted with terrifying events, you worry for them. What if that person dies? That would be like losing someone close. You spent time getting to know them, getting to know their secrets, their ambitions, their loves, their dislikes, their quirks. They’re almost like family, so you associate with them and importantly, you feel for them. You feel their emotions and you feel as if you’re going through what they’re going through. So I think the best way to scare a reader is to, like I said, engage them on an emotional level when they can go through what a character’s going through.
I also think getting a reader anxious about what lies ahead of them makes a story quite successful. The writer leads you into a world of their creation. He introduces you to the people that live there, the characters he’s made up. And off you go. But of course this is a horror world you’ve just gone into, so things aren’t going to be rosy. You kind of expect that. I guess people or their pets might start going missing. Dead bodies might turn up. All sorts of weird things might start happening and suddenly your imagination is tweaking, and you go, “What’s going on? What’s causing all these things? What’s killing those people? What’s making all the lights flash on and off like that?” You get pretty anxious, partly, I think we discussed this at the start, but you get anxious because you want or you need that revelation, but at the same time you’re scared of what you might encounter. Your imagination supplies you with these images and your emotions start to bubble and you start feeling the adrenalin surge through you and you get a bit of a chill. I think that’s where the scare comes from. It’s not the revelation; it’s not seeing the thing, because that’s more the shock. But the scare is in building up to it and making the reader wonder what it’s going to be or how bad it’s going to be or how they’re going to deal with it.
I think it’s far easier scaring people in movies than in books just because a movie’s more visual. You don’t have to think so much. All the images and the sound and everything is provided there for you from the screen, whereas with a book, you’ve got to use your imagination.
WS: I’m just wondering. I agree with you that movies can be scarier than books. However, if you think about it logically, in a way, a reader’s imagination should be scarier than what a movie presents because what a movie presents is only one possibility; whereas the reader can imagine all kinds of things, a range of scary things. But I don’t think it works that way somehow. I agree with you. I think movies are scarier, but it seems counterintuitive in a way.
MY: It does. That’s a good point. Because the writer builds up everything, and then it’s up to the reader to use those close and those props, basically, to build the world in their own head. Yeah, I don’t know why that is. I don’t know why movies affect us more than books. Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe movies affect me more than books, whereas the guy down the road might get more of a fright from books.
WS: Just speculating, it could be the music. It could be the total immersion.
MY: I think the music definitely is a key factor. You watch a movie—it’s either the lack of music or the eerie music that’s starting to build. And that definitely lets you know that something’s going to happen. I think that’s a big key factor. Within a book, you can’t really have background music going on. Well, you can, but it’s a bit weird.
WS: Who are some of your favorite horror writers? You mentioned a whole bunch of them, and if you could mention some specific books. Maybe, just three books, something like that.
MY: I guess I’ve got three all-time favorite writers. Stephen King. There wouldn’t be many self-respecting horror writers that wouldn’t admit to liking Stephen King. He’s written some pretty excellent books. I think Salem’s Lot, Carrie, Pet Sematary, It, The Shining. I think they’re my favorites and the ones that give me more of a chill.
Clive Barker. I think he’s got one of the most vivid imaginations out of everyone I’ve read. He’s got such a way with writing, and you can really see in explicit colors what he wants you to see. There’s Books of Blood, Volumes 1-6. I think they’re the best collection of short stories I’ve ever read.
And then Edgar Allen Poe. He’s fantastic. I love the way he uses language, and his stories really give me a chill.
I also enjoy H.P. Lovecraft, although when I was growing up, I really couldn’t get into his stories. The writing was too cluttered for my liking. But I guess he was writing in a time that I wasn’t born in, and that was the style of the time. Or that was the style he wanted. That was the style of his stories for his characters. But now I’m really enjoying the stories. Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre by H.P. Lovecraft. It’s the best of H.P. Lovecraft. If you want a good book with some great stories, I recommend that one.
I also really like Brian Lumley and his Necroscope series. I’m a big fan of Richard Laham and James Herbert and Ira Levin, who wrote Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives. There are some great writers down here in Australia too. Some of my favorites are Kim Wilkins. She’s not specifically a horror writer, but she writes some great supernatural stories. Richard Harland, Robert Hood, Stephen Dedman, and we’ve got some great up-and-coming talents like Paul Haines, who won the Aurealis award for best horror short story last year. And Kaaron Warren.
And let me just mention that three of the people you just mentioned—Robert Hood, Stephen Dedman, and Kaaron Warren—are participating in our 14 Days of Horror. They’re going to be reading from their own works on The Writing Show.
MY: That’s right. And that will be something to look forward to.
WS: Oh yes. I am really looking forward to that.
MY: Yes, definitely. That will be good.
WS: What about movies, Marty? What are some of your favorite horror movies?
MY: “Nightmare on Elm Street” is one of my all-time favorites. The first one, where there’s the whole concept of this guy that lived in your dreams and could kill you through your dreams. He had that wickedly cool glove and the hat and those wonderful one-liners. That was fantastic. That really scared the hell out of me when I was young. There’s a scene when Johnny Depp’s lying on the bed and he’s asleep and then Freddy gets him and pulls him through the bed and suddenly there’s this big fountain of blood that gushes up and splatters all over the ceiling. That scared the bejezus out of me. And for about a month afterwards I had to lie on my stomach because I thought if I lie on my stomach, the bad guy can’t pull me through the bed because my spine won’t let me bend that way. I thought that’ll save me.
Then I remember also creeping out of bed one night. My cousin was staying with us to watch “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” That was one of those where I shouldn’t have done that because that was a spooky movie.
Two other favorites are “The Blair Witch Project.” I know that’s a movie it seems people either like or dislike. There’s no middle ground. I really liked it because of its realism. I thought it was pretty real. I love the way the movie was done. The whole witch trial actually being a documentary. I’m going camping this weekend, so maybe I shouldn’t be thinking about that one too much.
And “Scarecrows,” which was another fantastic movie. That was a 1980s movie. It was about a group of bank robbers who, one of them backstabs the rest and leaps out of the plane with the money and lands in a cornfield out in the middle of nowhere. So the others jump out and try to track him down. But there are these Satan worshippers who sort of come back from the dead and are reincarnated as scarecrows. They go around killing people and stuffing them full of money and straw. And the whole movie is done at night, so it’s all dark, and it’s really eerie and it’s just—yeah, it’s quite frightening. Quite spooky. I love it. You sick little boy, Marty.
WS: Tell us about your own stories a little. We’re going to hear a reading from you in the 14 Days of Horror, but just tell us about some of the themes you like to write about the most.
MY: Like I said, I really enjoy monsters, so I like writing about monsters and using my imagination to really work out my imagination and see what I can come up with. The story I’m working on at the moment…actually, I’ll give you a bit of background.
I’ve just moved to Kenthurst, which is a suburb on the outskirts of Sydney, and we’re renting a 12-acre property that’s got natural bushlands…we’re surrounded by natural bushlands. And there’s a sensor light out the front of our house, and it’s wired into the inside of the house, and we can’t find the off switch. So the first couple of nights we were here, the lights were forever popping on. And me being the horror fanatic I am, I’m lying in bed, and the light will pop on, and wake me up. And I’ll lie there going, “What’s out there? What’s that?” So I’ll start listening and see if I can hear any sounds. And I’ll work myself up, and I’ve got to get up and turn on the lights and have a look and make sure there’s nothing there. And I thought, well, that would be a really good idea for a story. Because about a couple hundred meters away from us there’s an old abandoned house that the owners want to renovate and fix up, but there’s so much work involved, and at the moment, it’s overgrown with weeds and its quite a creepy-looking place. And I went in there one night, and I found a whole lot of ancient books, like 1904 books. And they were all inscribed with this lady’s name. She must have lived in the house. So there I am. I’m lying in bed and this light’s popping on and I’m going, “Oh my god. It’s the lady. She’s come back from the dead. She wants her books back.” So I thought, “There’s a great story.” So I had to get up and start writing. So that’s what I’m working on at the moment.
WS: For our listeners, this is how horror writers live.
MY: It’s shocking, you know. You can be anywhere, and all of a sudden you see something and you go, “Hey. What would happen? But what if it went like this?” And suddenly you’ve got to find paper to write it down. Meanwhile your partner’s looking at you going, “You are just a weird little person, aren’t you?”
WS: So you like writing about monsters, and you’re obviously a very creative person who can find horror everywhere. So I’m really looking forward to your reading, Marty.
MY: Thank you.
WS: Marty, can you repeat the Web address for the Australian Horror Writers Association?
MY: Certainly. The address for the Australian Horror Writers Association is www.darkanimus.com/hwa.html.
WS: Thank you so much for being with us today, Marty. And by the way, let me just mention that you were the organizer of the 14 Days of Halloween. You coordinated getting all fourteen of your members together to do these readings, and it’s been quite a project. So I thank you for that so much.
MY: Yeah, it’s been a bit of a challenge, but I think it will be well worth it. And we’re all definitely looking forward to it. And thank you very much for the opportunity.
WS: Oh, thank you. And again, thanks for being on the show today.
MY: No problem.
WS: And be sure to visit us at www.writingshow.com, where you will find more information and inspiration for writers, including transcripts of our interviews, and articles, and blog where you can come and comment and tell us what you like, what you don’t like, what you’re thinking, just generally what’s on your mind. And be sure to join us for our 14 Days of Horror, which starts on October 18th and continues through Halloween. We have readings by members of the Australian Horror Writers Association. One a day between the 18th and the 31st, and it’s going to be fantastic. Don’t miss it.
That’s it for The Writing Show today. I’m your host, Paula B.