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Interview: Brian Knight

WM: When did you first suspect you were a writer? A horror writer?

BK: I wrote my first short story for a grade school assignment. The teacher, Mr. Cole, pulled me aside and told me it was pretty good. He even said that I might be a writer some day. I was happy to have done well on the assignment, but beyond that I didn"t care. It was just schoolwork. I had no interest in it.

When I was sixteen, my dad was killed in a logging accident. About a month afterward, I read my first Stephen King book. I was with my grandparents, camping in the mountains. I hadn"t wanted to go, but I think they felt some time away would help take my mind off of things. I don"t even remember where the book came from. My grandparents are Jehovah"s Witnesses, very religious, so I suspect it wasn"t theirs. The book was Misery. It was morbid, dark, exciting, and I was hooked.

By the time I had turned seventeen, I had most of Stephen King"s books, was branching out to other authors, and began writing short stories of my own.

WM: Did your fascination with horror, the occult, and things supernatural begin at an early age? Did you have any particularly frightening experiences? Childhood nightmares?

BK: I don"t remember much about my early childhood, except for the time my best friend (who happened to be sweet on my sister) shot me in the head with his bow and arrow (I think they were conspiring!), and the time another friend dropped a piece of plywood out of a tree house and onto my head. Said tree house was in my childhood home, Hidden Village, and overlooked a large pond fed by runoff from the Clearwater River. I remember looking up and seeing the wood come toward me, then I was underwater. Once I was out of the water there was a lot of blood and a lot of screaming. I remember that quite well.

I"ve been fascinated with the dark, and with the things that go bump in it, for as long as I can remember. That didn"t stop me from having nightmares the first time I watched Psycho, but the nightmares didn"t stop me from sneaking out to watch Friday The 13th on HBO either.

There was the murder that happened in the house behind ours. The woman who lived there had just kicked her boyfriend out, and later the same night he came back. He blew her head off with a shotgun and hunted her two kids around the house until the first "Help" arrived. He shot and killed the first few people who came to investigate. One man died right there. Another managed to get away, and died on the front patio of my friend"s house. Later that week, I was enlisted to help with the demolition of the patio. Blood had soaked too deep into the wood to ever come out.

The murderous ex-boyfriend never did find the kids he was hunting (as far as I know, they are alive to this day). When more people arrived, the ex-boyfriend fled. He fled into my front yard, onto my front porch. The front door was locked so he moved on.

But, getting back to the question, I"ve been fascinated with the dark, and with the things that go bump in it, for as long as I can remember. I blame it on head trauma from people dropping plywood on my head and shooting me with arrows.

WM: I notice in your short story collection, Dragonfly, that most of the primary characters are children. Would you comment on that?

BK: I am a parent of three wonderful (if tiring) children. Chris is the oldest at ten years, then Judi, eight, and Ellie, five. Being a parent in today"s world of child molesters, grade school drug pushers, and freaked-out junkies, is accompanied by a very special kind of fear.

I was listening to the radio on the way home from work today, and heard about a man from a town a few miles downriver from me who is going to prison for raping a three-year-old girl. A three-year-old girl!

The fear of loosing my children, or of having something bad happen to them, often comes through in my fiction. As morbid or sad as many of those stories are, they help me work my fears out. They help me cope.

WM: Could you talk about your writing process, or is that some horrific secret that after revealed, you"d have to torture, kill, then eat me?

BK: I don"t eat my fans, Ter. It"s bad for sales.

I am usually in a state of chaos from 6:30 in the morning until the kids go to bed. Those precious few hours from 9:00 P.M. to Midnight are all I have to work with. Once I re-read what I"ve done the day before and catch the thread of the story, I put a CD in, usually Rob Zombie, Metalica, or Alice Cooper, put my head phones on, and spend the next three hours in a varying state of caffeine-induced super-hypnosis.

When I zone-out, I really zone-out. When I really get into it, WW3 could be starting in my front yard and I wouldn"t notice. There"s really not much more to it than that.

I like to get at least 1,000 words a night, and have done up to and beyond 4,000. These days, as I am getting back into the habit with my new novel, I usually don"t meet the 1K standard, but each writing session on the new book gets a little better. Also, I now use an old laptop for my composition, so I don"t have the distraction of email, instant messages, or surfing. I sit on the living room couch, away from my desk, and go to town.

That is my process. Nothing fancy. I just try to find the calm spot in the storm, the eye, and ride it.

WM: So tell us about the Bram Stoker nominationéwow! How does that whole process work? What does being nominated mean to you as a writer?

BK: Sorry, there is no Stoker Nomination. Readers have recommended Dragonfly for the Stoker Award, and I imagine those recommendations do have some weight when nomination time comes around. I try not to get my hopes up too high though, know what I mean?

The nominations will happen this summer, and the winners chosen at the HWA Stoker Award Banquet in New York City.

WM: What if you were nominated and won? What would that mean to you as a writer?

BK: What would winning the Stoker mean to me? It"s a kick-ass trophy; it would look great on my desk. Beyond that, it is recognition from ones peers in the biz, and I think it shows the larger publishers and editors that you are someone to watch.

WM: We first met through the vampire/horror group hosted by Henry Sanders and Doris Pearson, right? That"s about five years agoÜWhat have you been working on?

BK: Horrorwriters was the name of the group, hosted by Doris "Toadmama" Pearson and "Unca" Henry Sanders. I joined that group in 1999. I met some fine folks there, you included, who helped me get a foot into the whole "Small Press" scene. In the small press, you see people come, struggle, and often as not give up and drop out before they"ve gone too far. I"m happy to still be in the game.

WM: What about rejections?

BK: I"ve collected a lot of rejections since "99, but I"ve published quite a few short stories--and a collection. I"ve also learned how to do web design so I can promote myself to some degree on the web. My site is www.brian-knight.com. If you"ve come this far with me, you might as well take the leap and visit me online. Check out my work and let me know what you think.

WM: What are your current projects? A new collection of short stories? You mentioned working on a novel earlier.

BK: Currently, I am working on a new novel. I don"t want to go into it too much, other than to say I expect to have the first draft completed by the end of this summer. I"m also finishing up a chapbook with writer Monica J. O"Rourke called Zombie Stomp: Bad Times At The Damnation Inn. It"s a satirical story about horror writers at a convention in Utah. The publisher is Flesh & Blood Press (http://zombie.horrorseek.com/horror/fleshnblood/).

WM: The last time we "spoke", you graciously offered comments and poetry to be included in my horror poetry column. You also offered some excellent advice for burgeoning young writers. I"m sure our readers would love to hear more along those lines.

BK: Some advice, and a warning.

The advice goes like this: you are going to collect a lot of rejections, most polite and professional, some rude. Editors are people, too; most good, some bad. I once had a rude acceptance, if you can believe it. Donít take rejection personally; magazines (especially those that pay) have more submissions than most writers would imagine. We have a lot of competition. You must develop a thick skin, learn to look at your work with an analytical eye, and when you figure out what your shortcomings as a writer are (We all have them ; there are no exceptions.), be willing to improve. You must not beat up on yourself over them, though--and never quit.

Above advice only applies if you truly love to write. If you are only doing it because you"ve got it in your head that you can write a few novels, make a million bucks, and retire early, then just forget about it. It doesn"t work that way, except for maybe one in a trillion writers of exceptional ability.

If you love it, never stop.

I can"t offer specific advice to writing horror. Everyone has different fears and anxieties, and will have a different approach.

WM: Doug Clegg is one of your mentors, isn"t he? Who else has "mentored" you? Do you also find yourself mentoring less-experienced writers?

BK: Doug Clegg is a wonderful writer (if you haven"t read him yet, then do it now! That is an order! www.douglasclegg.com), and a wonderful human being. I don"t know if he would be comfortable with me calling him a mentor, but he has been, and continues to be, an enormous help and inspiration. Other people who have helped me include Monica O"Rourke, Brett Savory (my HWA mentor), Dennis Latham (a fine writer of horror and dark comedy), and Victoria R. Tarrani (who gave me great editorial advice à check her out at http://www3.sympatico.ca/bonnie.toews/editor.html). There are too many to name here, people without whose help I wouldn"t have made it this far. They know who they are.

There are a few writer friends who I help out from time to time, but mostly my help consists of "Buck Up" speeches and an occasional critique.

WM: What do you think about writing groupséeither on or off-line?

BK: I don"t belong to any, not out of principal, or a prejudice against them, but because I simply don"t have the energy to contribute in the way I"d feel I need to.

I think they can be helpful for the beginning writer as long as you remember one thing: Once you get past the definitive rules of language, and learning how to come off in as professional of manner as you can when submitting, most of what you will get from such a group is subjective. No one writer is God, no one writer"s opinion is law. Take subjective advice with an open mind, but also with a grain of salt.

WM: Anything else you"d like to add?

BK: Just to announce that my latest novel, Feral, was just accepted by Five Star Books. Five Star is a publisher of library edition hard covers, and has published writers of high caliber, including Zane Grey, Ed Gorman, Timothy Zahn, and Mike Resnick. No word on a release yet.

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Dragonfly
by Brian Knight