The Black Beacon Book of Horror will be released on Friday the 13th of October; the Kindle version is available for pre-order at just $1.99 instead of $3.99 and you can add the anthology to your Goodreads list today. To get you in the mood for a particularly spooky Halloween this year, we’re interviewing the contributing authors. The first Black Beacon Book of Horror is bound to give you the creeps!
Hi Edward,
Why do you write horror?
Human beings feel pain—often agonizing pain. They fear death and the loss of loved ones. Knowing their vulnerability to pain, and knowing the certainty of death in an uncaring universe, they seek solace—some in religion, others in philosophy. Others choose to confront their fears, to somehow allay them, by reading horror, and a few by writing it.
At the age of twenty-one (many decades ago) I found myself in Puerto Rico participating in a program based on British Outward Bound training, the purpose of which is to teach survival techniques. One day a group of us rather foolishly decided to explore a recently discovered cave that had been uncovered by a small landslide. On the side of a mountain, the cave was accessed by lowering oneself down a narrow passage. Once inside the cave, we found ourselves ankle-deep in bat guano. But what I most vividly remember are the cave spiders, huge, the size of baseballs (or so it seemed). In all the years since, I have never encountered spiders that even came close to those suckers. As for setting: For many years my wife and I were frequent visitors to Maine. Friends of ours bought an old sea-captain’s house in Belfast and invited us to stay for a few days. The house, though not as isolated, is the inspiration for the house in my story.
Do you have a favourite horror story?
Childhood impressions last a lifetime. I would have to say Dracula.
What books did you grow up reading?
A voracious reader, I devoured hundreds of books. My fondest memories are of the science fiction magazines readily available in my youth.
Do you have any writing rituals?
No. I wish I did. I might then write more.
Tell us something we don't know about yourself.
I quit my job teaching English at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, and for a brief period lived the life of a hippie in San Francisco. I loved San Francisco, and wearing shoulder-length hair, but had no interest in other aspects of the hippie “scene,” so I returned to Massachusetts, taught part-time for a couple of years at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, then (having only a Masters degree) became a social worker.
Thanks for answering our questions!
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