A Scary Interview with Dino Parenti

The Black Beacon Book of Horror 2 will be released on the 1st of October, but in the meantime, the Kindle version is available for pre-order (LAST CHANCE TODAY!) at just $1.99 instead of $3.99 and you can add the anthology to your Goodreads TBR list. To get you pumpkin-spiced up for an unforgettable Halloween 2026, we’re interviewing the contributing authors. Step into the corridors of their dark minds, if you dare!

Hi Dino,

That classic question to get started. Do you have to be a horrible person to write horrible things?

Absolutely not! You might have to be a horrible person to DO horrible things, but to write horrible things simply requires being a patient observer of history and the human condition. The horror pretty much writes itself.

Which horror writers do you admire—old or new, famous or hidden gems?

That’s a long list. Just off the top of my head, Stephen Graham Jones, Tananrive Due, Josh Malerman, and Catriona Ward come to mind, but I always migrate back to Cormac McCarthy. Granted, he’s not known as a horror writer, but read Blood Meridian or The Road and tell me they don’t contain some of the most haunting images and passages ever written.

Can you describe your perfect horror-themed night in, out, or away?

I don’t require much. Some good wine, good friends, and a good scary movie.

Are there any urban legends, folktales, or real-life tales of horror that happened (just maybe) where you live or grew up? 

I grew up and still live in Los Angeles, so I’m sure there are plenty since the place is so spread out with distinctive, smaller towns and neighborhoods. The Charles Manson killings were before I was born, but I remember well those several weeks in the mid-1980s when The Nightstalker was active and everyone was buying up all the door locks and home alarm systems in town. My parents kept freaking out each time I went out to play until he was caught.

Do you have any writing rituals?

I’m a terminal outliner. I’m also almost exclusively a morning writer, so each session, I go through what I wrote the morning before with a quick edit pass before writing the next bit, so by the time I have the first finished version of a piece, it’s really draft 1.5. If I write at all in the evenings, it’s only to edit.

Would you share something about yourself that your readers don’t know yet?

My only real writing training insofar as schooling goes was playwriting in college. I became a serious reader and fiction writer starting in my early thirties. So, if I have a heavy dialogue scene to write, I write it like a play—all dialogue with the most minimal of prose. 

Where can we find you online?

I’m on all the socials—Facebook, Instagram, X, Bluesky—all under my name, Dino Parenti. Simple, easy. I haven’t ventured into TikTok yet. Still waiting for someone to convince me to do so.