Nightmare Magazine Issue 26

by Nightmare Magazine

  And then the third big piece was how videogames deal with death. Where it’s something you can come back from because you’ve invested time in this character, but there’s always some kind of journey or a cost. It was fun to write my own way back from the nether realms.

  The main character experiences a revelation about her own identity by way of playing a game. Do you think games have a special ability (or perhaps potential) to facilitate self-understanding? Are there any games you find particularly effective in that regard?

  I really want the answer to be tabletop roleplaying games, like Changeling or D&D. But really, the times when a game has taught me something surprising about myself or my friends, it’s usually been a cheesier sort of game such as Loaded Questions, or that exercise where you imagine yourself walking in the woods and answer questions like, “You see a cup on the ground. Describe it.”

  Roleplaying games like D&D answer a deep-seated need for stories, which is something different but also vital.

  Of course, as I mentioned earlier, there are true stories about transgender people discovering or coming to terms with their gender identities through online games, where it’s safe to be whoever you want to be. I read recently that Robin Williams loved playing World of Warcraft. That really surprised me because he had this long and amazing career without ever making a movie that glorified violence, but it makes sense for the same reason it makes sense for transgender teens because, if you’re Robin Williams, where are you going to go that no one will recognize you?

  I’ve also read of people with autism spectrum disorders using online games to work through social issues.

  The debate over whether supernatural monsters or humans are the scarier villains is a long-standing one in horror, and one that “Rules for Killing Monsters” touches on. Where do you fall?

  That’s a tough one. The easy answer is that monsters are scary because you don’t understand them, while humans are scary because you do. I mean, if I’ve done my job in “Rules,” then when Ursula goes off, you understand why, and there should be a part of you wanting her to kick ass.

  But I think the reverse is also true, that sometimes monsters are scariest when you can relate, and humans are most frightening when you can’t. One time I was staying with a friend in an upstairs apartment in a two-family house, and the landlady called in the middle of the night to rage at me that the boards were creaking when I walked. And she was furious about this, and distraught, and she would not listen to anything I said, but just kept going back to how I needed to make it stop. And I was terrified to go back to sleep, knowing that there was someone I did not know, right below me, who might have a key, who might have a gun, and who might fly into a psychotic rage because I’d gotten up to use the bathroom, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  That’s also what’s going on with Ursula’s tormenters in the story, that they see someone who is beyond their understanding, whose wants and needs aren’t the same as theirs, and it terrifies them. Though I think in this case they’re less afraid that she’ll do something to them, and more afraid that they might find her in themselves if they look too deep.

  By the same token, when a monster is inhuman, it becomes much more compelling if the writer can give you a window into the creature’s mind; let you see, without anthropomorphizing, what the creature feels, what it wants, and so on.

  What are you working on lately? Any upcoming publications you’d like to let readers know about?

  At the moment, I’m working on a science fiction sitcom. I’ve got a few actors and a small camera crew, and a budget of, uh, nothing. And I’m having a lot of fun. You know, there’s a lot of pressure on writers of science fiction and fantasy to respect the value of your own work, and not to send it to places that won’t pay you or presses that take it on spec. And it’s a good thing that writers are standing up for themselves, but I was surprised when some truly talented actors and videographers and other people were willing to come in and help me and make this thing happen without any assurance of being paid for their time. And now I’m working on a way to get from a couple of days of brilliant unpaid work to something that will be larger and more rewarding for everyone involved.

  I’d like to say more about the project itself, but at the moment there’s a major TV network that has an exclusive look. By the time this interview is published, I hope to be able to talk about this show and where you can go to help make it happen, whether it’s associated with a major network or with an Indiegogo campaign or making the rounds of smaller networks.

  Best kind of unquiet dead: Liches, ghouls, or zombies?

  Can I go with plain old ghosts? I love the idea of a spirit being trapped behind by unfinished business. And sometimes the self gets washed away, and all that is left is the effort to finish the task. There’s a lot you can do with that. I once wrote a one-sentence ghost story, that I’m still very proud of, in Safety Pin Review.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Born and raised in Honolulu, Lisa Nohealani Morton lives in Washington, DC. By day she is a mild-mannered database wrangler, computer programmer, and all-around data geek, and by night she writes science fiction, fantasy, and combinations of the two. Her short fiction has appeared in publications such as Lightspeed, Daily Science Fiction, and the anthology Hellebore and Rue. She can be found on Twitter as @lnmorton.

  Author Spotlight: David Morrell

  Erika Holt

  Someone told us that there’s an eerie true-life background to “For These and All My Sins.” Can you share it with us?

  A couple of times, weird things happened to me that gave me ideas for stories. “For These and All My Sins” was the result of one of those eerie events. In the 1970s, to research a novel called Testament, I spent thirty-five days on a survival course in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming. If anyone’s curious, the course was conducted by Paul Petzoldt’s National Outdoor Leadership School and trained its students in a variety of mountaineering skills. At the time, I lived in Iowa City, where I was a literature professor at the University of Iowa. After I descended from the mountains, I drove back home along Interstate 80, but my car developed engine trouble, and in the Nebraska panhandle, I had to leave the highway, hoping to find a mechanic. That’s when I came to this very unusual, very scary town. What I saw there and how the town’s residents reacted to me are described in the story. Even the tree that I describe was there. Of course, the plot is invented, but to this day, I often wonder how that town came to exist and whatever happened to it.

  The title suggests a religious topic. Do you often explore religious themes or beliefs in your work?

  “For These and All My Sins” is religious only in a medieval sense. But occasionally I do incorporate major religious themes—such as how religion has historically been associated with violence and mass murder, in ancient Rome, in the Crusades, the Inquisition, Ireland, the Middle East, etc. In 1985, I wrote what became an influential espionage novel, The Fraternity of the Stone, which dramatizes this topic. One of its characters asks, “How much killing does God need?” In another espionage novel, The Covenant of the Flame, I imagine that Mithraism, the dominant religion of the Roman Empire, survived into the twentieth century, which isn’t a stretch—because in Spain, the Basques have rituals that can be traced back to Mithraism two thousand years ago.

  Is setting more important in horror than in other types of fiction? Do you think whether a particular story will be read as horror has a lot to do with tone and atmosphere versus plot?

  Setting’s important in any story. It’s always a matter of how the location is used. In “For These and All My Sins,” the strange town is clearly essential to the narrative, and I had the advantage of bringing an eye-witness authenticity to my description of it. But whenever I discuss the essentials of horror, I always invoke Douglas E. Winter’s famous theory that genres are defined by the emotions they create. In that sense, thrillers are about excitement, mysteries are about puzzlement, science fiction is about awe, and so
on. Considered in that way, horror is about fear. It doesn’t need to be “Oh my God, look at all the blood!” In fact, my own preference is for Val Lewton subtlety. I think the heart of horror is the reader’s identification with characters who suddenly feel that they’ve stepped into a cupboard of reality in which something feels very wrong. That definitely happens in “For These and All My Sins.” Several years ago, there was a Showtime anthology series called Masters of Horror. “For These and All My Sins” was scheduled to be part of the series. I wrote a script for it, but I could never satisfy the producers because their view of horror was blood flying while my view is based on a character always looking over his shoulder.

  What is it about isolation that’s so inherently scary?

  I’m not sure it is. I’m an only child. I spent a year in an orphanage when I was three. My mother and stepfather fought all the time and pretty much left me alone. As a writer, I’m quite happy to be alone for hours and hours. It always puzzled me that I knew talented writers who didn’t accomplish much because they were always on the phone and going to lunch and getting together with people. Then I learned about the Myers Briggs definition of introvert and extrovert. An introvert is someone who gets renewal and refreshment from being alone while an extrovert gets renewal and refreshment from socializing. If I go out with friends two nights in a row, I feel exhausted while some of my friends are ready to socialize every night. I hear about prisoners put in solitary confinement and going crazy. In my own case, I suspect that as long as I was left alone and given food etc., I would happily lie on a bunk, close my eyes, and tell stories to myself.

  You show a deft hand for pacing. Do you have any tips for writers on how to keep things moving?

  Elmore Leonard once said that the secret to pacing is to cut out the dull parts. It’s a humorous line, but I’m not sure it’s helpful. How do we know what’s interesting to someone else? I suspect that this is an innate skill in some people. In my writing book The Successful Novelist, I tell an old story about two prisoners in a penitentiary. One has just arrived, and an elderly inmate is showing him how things work. At lunch, an inmate jumps up and shouts “Forty-three!” Everyone laughs. Another inmate shouts, “Twenty-six!” Everyone guffaws. “What’s going on?” the new inmate asks. His guide responds, “We’ve been here so long that we know everyone’s jokes, so we just assigned numbers to them.” The young inmate nods and jumps up, shouting, “Eleven!” No one reacts. “What’s wrong?” the young prisoner asks his guide, who responds, “Some people just don’t know how to tell a joke.” I think a lot of it has to do with our body rhythms. If a writer’s internal speed is thirty miles an hour, that’s how the story will come out. Years ago, Knopf released three novels by James M. Cain in one volume. It was called Cain X Three. I didn’t know anything about Cain at the time, but I was struck by something that Tom Wolfe said in his introduction, that reading Cain was like getting into a sports car that was up to eighty miles an hour before you could shut the door. So I tried to get myself up to eighty miles an hour before I started writing. The best texts for speed and efficiency are Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. Reading Cain, I discovered what the standard was. Years later, I was flattered when Stephen King, teaching a writing class at the University of Maine, had only two texts: Double Indemnity and my own First Blood, which is heavily indebted to Cain.

  What are you reading and/or watching these days?

  For the past five years, I’ve been in Richard Matheson/Jack Finney mode. Taking an example from Bid Time Return (aka Somewhere in Time) and Time and Again, I’ve been trying to convince myself that I’m on the harrowing fogbound streets of 1854 London. In 2009, my fourteen-year-old granddaughter Natalie died from the same rare bone cancer (Ewing’s sarcoma) that killed my fifteen-year-old son Matthew in 1985. To distract myself from unbearable present time, I fell under the spell of one of the most brilliant and controversial literary personalities of the 1800s, Thomas De Quincey, who was the first person to write about drug addiction in his notorious Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. He invented the word “subconscious” and developed psychoanalytic theories that predate those of Freud by half a century. He also invented the true crime genre in “Postscript (On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts),” his blood-soaked recreation of the first publicized mass murders in English history, the Ratcliffe Highway slayings in 1811. De Quincey influenced Edgar Allan Poe, who in turn inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to create Sherlock Holmes. Trying to escape from my grief, I immersed myself (like a Method actor) in the atmospheric world of 1854 London. My first novel about Thomas De Quincey is called Murder as a Fine Art. It’s as much a horror novel as it is a historical mystery and a thriller. The goal of my intense research was to try to make readers believe that they are truly in that long-ago brooding universe. A sequel, Inspector of the Dead, will be published in March of next year.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Erika Holt lives in the cold, white North (i.e. Calgary, Canada), where she writes and edits speculative fiction. Her stories have appeared in a number of anthologies including Evolve Two: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead, and What Fates Impose. She has also co-edited two anthologies: Rigor Amortis, about sexy, amorous zombies, and Broken Time Blues, featuring 1920s alien burlesque dancers and bootlegging chickens.

  MISCELLANY

  In the Next Issue of

  Coming up in December, in Nightmare . . .

  We have original fiction from Tim Lebbon (“Embers”) and Seras Nikita (“Bog Dog”), along with reprints by Christa Faust (“Bodywork”) and Michael Marshall Smith (“Night Falls, Again”).

  We also have the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word,” plus author spotlights with our authors, a showcase on our cover artist, and of course, a feature interview.

  It’s another great issue, so be sure to check it out. And while you’re at it, tell a friend about Nightmare.

  Thanks for reading!

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  About the Editor

  John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor-in-chief of Nightmare, is the series editor of Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the bestselling editor of many other anthologies, such as The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Armored, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, and The Living Dead. New projects coming out in 2014 and 2015 include: Help Fund My Robot Army!!! & Other Improbable Cr
owdfunding Projects, Robot Uprisings, Dead Man’s Hand, Operation Arcana, Wastelands 2, and The Apocalypse Triptych: The End is Nigh, The End is Now, and The End Has Come. Called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble, John is a winner of the Hugo Award (for which he has been nominated eight times) and is a six-time World Fantasy Award finalist. John is also the editor and publisher of Lightspeed Magazine and is a producer for Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams.