Flesh Welder

by Ronald Kelly

  Words fail me in expressing the pride and pleasure I felt when Ron requested that I conduct this interview. He told me that he wanted to pull out all of the stops, and really uncover the workings that make Ronald Kelly tick. We hope that all of your questions will be answered after you’ve read this.

  Now, sit back, but don’t get too comfortable, and enjoy.

  MH: First of all, it’s great to see you back behind the keyboard, Ron. I, myself have been hoping for your return for a very long time, and I know your many fans have as well.

  RK: Thanks, Mark. It’s great to be back… thanks to you and other fans and friends who urged me to give this writing gig a second turn. So far, it’s really been an incredibly positive experience.

  MH: Let’s start from the beginning. Was your interest in the macabre something that developed in your adult life, or did it stem from your childhood?

  RK: You might say that I was born with it. My mother once told me that she read alot of horror comics during her pregnancy with me. My father was overseas in the Army and she was renting a little house in the town of Dickson, Tennessee. She discovered a whole stack of old EC horror comics in the attic… you know, Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror, Haunt of Fear. She read them ravenously during the entire nine months she was expecting, so, unlike other babies, I reckon I developed under the influence of rotting corpses and flesh-eating monsters, instead of lullabies and nursery rhymes.

  During my grade school years, I began to watch alot of horror and science fiction movies. After school, one of the local Nashville stations had a program called The Big Show, which showed every old Universal monster movie and scary B-movie ever filmed. Later on, when I was eleven or twelve, another station began a Saturday night creature feature hosted by a fella named Sir Cecil Creep, presenting more fearsome fodder for my young imagination. And, of course, I loved reading the horror comics… you know, House of Mystery, Swamp Thing, and Werewolf By Night. And then there were the Warren magazines, titles like Creepy, Eerie, and my favorite monster mag of all time, Famous Monsters of Filmland edited by Forrest J. Ackerman. I got the rare privilege of meeting Mr. Ackerman at one of the World Horror Conventions. It was one of the high-points of that weekend.

  MH: So where did it lead to from there? I’ve heard that you were a pretty good artist back in high school. How did an interest in art change into a passion for writing?

  RK: Yes, I had aspirations of becoming a comic book artist when I was a junior in high school. I collaborated with a guy named Lowell Cunningham, who just happened to create Men in Black years later. Small world, isn’t it?

  Anyway, I drew the comics and he wrote them. Then I started creating my own superheroes and writing scripts of my own. I even submitted some work to DC Comics when I was a senior and got some encouraging feedback. Then I took a few Creative Writing classes and gradually gravitated toward fiction alone. By graduation, I’d been bitten by the writing bug and decided that was what I wanted to do for a living.

  MH: Did it come easy to you?

  RK: (Laughs) I had no earthly idea what I was getting myself into! Since I didn’t go to college, I worked in factories and welding shops, and wrote in my spare time. I wrote in every genre imaginable – mystery, suspense, and western mostly. I had a great interest in Civil War and Old West history back then and very seriously wanted to be a western writer in the vein of Louis La’mour or Zane Grey for two or three years. I reckon it was good practice. It gave me the opportunity to hone my writing skills and search for the genre that was right for me.

  MH: And that turned out to be horror?

  RK: Yeah, I guess I came full-circle and returned to what I loved when I was a kid. I started reading alot of horror fiction and buying some of the small press magazines that were plentiful in those days. I began writing and submitting short stories and it all just sort of clicked. At the same time I wrote my first novel, The Tobacco Barn, and had a New York agent sending it out to the mass market publishers. Apparently, he started with the letter A and went through the entire alphabet, because it ended up at Zebra Books, where it was picked up for publication and released as Hindsight in 1990. By then I’d had several short stories published in the small press.

  MH: Who were some of the writers that inspired you during that time?

  RK: Well, of course, Stephen King was probably my biggest influence. I cut my teeth on novels like Salem’s Lot, The Shining, and The Dead Zone. I also read some of the older masters of horror like Poe, Bierce, and Lovecraft. Richard Matheson was one of my favorites and remains to be a major inspiration. I was also heavily into authors like Dean Koontz, Peter Straub, and Joe R. Lansdale. One author that really did it for me, though, is Robert McCammon. His down-home style and use of Southern themes sort of mirrored the type of fiction that I hungered to write and told me that “Yes, it’s okay to write about the South and be proud of it”.

  MH: I know you’ve told me many times that two of your major influences, both in your writing and in your personal life, were your mother and grandmother. Could you tell us why that is?

  RK: Well, on a personal level, they were both excellent role models and, together, helped raise me into the person that I am today. I carry alot of them around inside me and a day never passes that I don’t apply something from my upbringing to my life. As far as being an influence in my interest in horror, both had a fascination and love for the strange and the bizarre. My mother loved to read both gothic and horror, although she only indulged in those genres toward the end of her life. She once told me that she refrained from reading alot of scary literature in her younger years because, back then, paperback books were considered “trashy”, which, of course, was a false misconception. I remember that she took me to quite a few horror movies when I was in my preteen years. Two that stood out was Let’s Scare Jessica to Death and House of Dark Shadows. I recall that during the latter film, she tried to cover my eyes with her hand because she hadn’t realized how gory the movie actually was. Here someone was staking Barnabas Collins in the heart and blood was gushing from his mouth and I was like “Come on, Mama, I want to see it all. It’s not gonna warp my brain or anything.” (Laughs) But, who knows… maybe I was wrong about that.

  As far as my maternal grandmother is concerned, her love and proficiency for the art of storytelling has greatly influenced me in my writing. She could sit and tell story after story for hours on end and never repeat herself. Most were about her childhood and her life as a young adult, but the majority of her tales had bizarre and scary elements to them. She told me strange stories of the peculiar country folk she grew up with; how her childhood friend had fallen off a stone wall and into a thicket of ‘devil’s ear’ cactus and how that little girl had died after many days of suffering, when dozens of quills had slowly worked their way into her internal organs. She told me of a simple-minded boy who had been kept, naked and wild, in a cage by his parents for loss of anything better to do with him, and how he later grew up to roam the country roads carrying a pine casket across his back, always ready for his death and burial. She told me of haunted houses she had lived in or near, about a ghostly procession of Confederate calvary that passed regularly on a rural road in a town where she once lived. And she told me of Green Lee, a deranged handyman who terrorized the children of the farming camp she grew up in. A crazy individual with a fleshless crippled hand and a fetish for honed steel. It was that scary tale that lingered with me the most and still does after all these years. In fact, it inspired one of the creepiest stories I’ve ever written, “Midnight Grinding”. So I reckon it isn’t all that strange that being exposed to such things at an early age would influence me to someday pursue a career in horror literature.

  MH: So, in the late eighties and early nineties, you finally saw publication of your work. Out of curiosity, could you tell us about the feeling you had when your first piece of fiction was published? How about your first novel?

  RK: Well, since I’d tried to break into publication for so many years, to
finally sell that first short story was incredibly surreal, but satisfying. It was like “Wow, is this actually happening? Did this editor send me an acceptance letter instead of a rejection slip by mistake?” My first sell was a tale titled “Breakfast Serial” to a small press magazine called Terror Time Again. I think I got paid a whopping twenty buck for it. (Laughs) Anyway, I remember it was a snowy afternoon in 1988 when I returned home from work – after driving several hours from Nashville in what seemed to be a blizzard – to find an envelope in my mailbox. It was my story in print! All my disgust and exhaustion from sitting in snowbound traffic that afternoon dissolved into elation. I’ll never forget it.

  I felt the same feeling when my first novel, Hindsight, was accepted for publication. When my agent called me at work to tell me that Zebra wanted to publish it, I thought someone was pulling a cruel prank. I talked to the guy, then turned around and called back to New York to confirm that it was actually for real. I must admit, when Hindsight was finally released in early 1990, there was a bitter-sweet element to the entire experience. The novel was loosely based on my mother’s psychic experiences as a child growing up during the Great Depression. Sadly, she died after a courageous battle with cancer only a couple of months before Hindsight hit the bookstores. I urged her to read it before her death, but she was determined to read it as a published book. Her condition worsened, however, and she passed away in November of 1989. Hindsight came out in January of 1990 and I remember feeling a strange mixture of euphoria and profound grief at the same time; I didn’t know whether to feel happy or sad. My first published novel had come out, but the one I had written it for wasn’t there to enjoy it with me.

  MH: After the release of Hindsight, your career took a sudden upswing. You were pretty active and well-respected in the horror community between 1990 and 1996. Could you tell us what you had going on at that time?

  RK: That was an exciting period for me. I’d worked hard at reaching a stable point in my writing career and, for several years, everything seemed to go well. Along with Hindsight, Zebra published seven other novels: Pitfall, Something Out There, Moon of the Werewolf, Father’s Little Helper, The Possession, Fear, and Blood Kin. I had alot of short fiction appearing in the small press magazines and stories in major anthologies like Shock Rock and Hot Blood. And Spine-Tingling Press put out an audio collection of my short stories called Dark Dixie: Tales of Southern Horror, which was included on the nomination ballot for the 1992 Grammy Awards. So, during that seven year period, the ball was really rolling and I felt like I was accomplishing what I’d set out to do.

  MH: Then, in 1996, the Horror market imploded, putting yourself and many of your peers literally out of business…

  RK: You’ve got that right.

  MH: I know how difficult a time that was for you, Ron. Would you mind sharing your feelings about those dark days?

  RK: Well, I guess I was pretty naïve back in those days, because I was blindsided by the whole ordeal. Sure, there were rumors of mass market writers being blatantly cut from their publishing houses; writers who had been popular fixtures in the horror industry for years. There were also many publishers who were down-sizing and cutting their horror lines completely due to flagging sales and a downturn in consumer interest. Still, I just plugged along, thinking that I was okay, that it wouldn’t happen to me.

  Then I got the call from my agent. It was October 8, 1996… funny, how I remember that date. Anyway, I had a couple of new novels scheduled for release and was awaiting news on a new three-book deal, when I was informed that Zebra had cut their horror line without prior warning. Not only was I suddenly out in the cold, so to speak, but they wouldn’t be publishing the two novels I’d already finished. He also gave me a piece of advice that I reckon I took way too much to heart. “From now on, write anything but Horror.” And, for a while, I tried that. But, hey, I was a horror writer. That was what I was good at and where my heart and soul was firmly entrenched. Oh, I tried my hand at other genres… children’s books and even romance novels… Heaven forbid! But nothing worked for me the way horror did and I simply couldn’t get published. And none of the mass market publishers were even considering taking on new authors at that point, particularly anyone with ties to horror. It was like I’d been black-listed or something.

  I remember when it happened, Mark, you said that it felt, even to you, like there had been a death in the family. That’s exactly how it felt to me. My horror career had been a great love of mine and suddenly it was dead and buried. I grieved over that loss for a very long time and generated a genuine bitterness toward the publishing industry at that time. The way I’d been treated, I felt like I couldn’t trust anyone in the business during that period.

  MH: So, at that point in time, you decided to put an end to it. You decided to stop writing completely?

  RK: Given my circumstances, I didn’t really see any other alternative. Here I had made writing a profession for nearly eight years and, suddenly, my full-time job was gone. I had no choice but to go back to work in the factories… the sort of work that I’d aspired to leave behind forever. I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with that sort of work, not by a long shot. Hard and honest work of any kind is honorable work, be it digging ditches or cleaning toilets. I reckon I’m just like anyone else… you simply aspire to do better in life, for yourself and for the sake of your family.

  Anyway, I returned to the ol’ nine-to-five and put that lost career behind me. Joyce and I had been married for five or six years by then and we decided to raise a family. First we had our daughter, Reilly, then, in 2004, Makenna, who we affectionately call “Chigger”. Now we have another on the way, although we don’t yet know what gender it is. I’m hoping for a boy this time around, but if it’s a third girl, I’ll be just as happy. In that respect, I’d never trade that ten year period for anything in the world. The responsibility of being a father has proven to be one of the biggest blessings of my life.

  During that time, however, my passion for writing dwindled down to nothing. For the most part, I thought any chance of making a comeback were non-existent. Sure, I considered it from time to time, but figured the effort of having to go back and start all over again simply wasn’t practical, especially as busy as I was working and raising a family. As you know, Mark, I pretty much distanced myself completely from anything related to horror at that time. I reckon it was kind of painful to deal with, seeing the genre move onward without me in the picture.

  MH: Then came the summer of 2006. What happened that made you decide to return?

  RK: You know, I can’t really say for sure. It all happened so suddenly and fell into place so perfectly, that I’m still a bit bumfuzzled by what took place. Personally, I believe the good Lord had a hand in it. It was like He said “Okay, I took it away for a while, so you could raise a family and get some things straight, and now I’m giving it back to you, with my blessings.”

  At least, in my mind, that’s how it felt.

  I reckon it started in July of last year. Of course, Mark, for years you’d been suggesting I make a comeback, although I pretty much said “No, that’ll never happen.” For your loyalty and tenacity in that respect, man, I’ll always be grateful. Anyway, you told me that a whole lot of folks had been discussing my novels on the internet message boards and wondering whatever happened to me. I remember feeling a glimmer of hope, that perhaps maybe there was a chance that no one had totally forgotten me or my work. Then things started moving at a mind-boggling pace. I showed interest in returning and things got stirred up on the McCammon board. Shoot-fire, I was totally out of the picture cyber-wise; I didn’t even own a computer at that time and was unaware of the impact the internet had. My good friend, Shannon Riley, way back from my small press days, contacted some of the leading small press publishers and they seemed very receptive toward the possibility of publishing my work again. I went out and bought a computer and, by the end of July, I was back behind the keyboard again. Before the next month had pa
ssed, I’d made a deal with Cemetery Dance for the publication of Hell Hollow and my first short story collection, Midnight Grinding & Other Twilight Terrors. Since that point, everything has been moving steadily forward. It’s just so weird how it all came about… not that I’m complaining, though. (Laughs)

  MH: Did you have any concerns upon returning? After being away from the industry and the writing game for so long?

  RK: Truthfully, Mark, it scared the living crap out of me! Here I’d decided to come back and committed myself to take up writing again, and I wasn’t even sure I could still do it or not. After all, I hadn’t actually written anything in ten years! I had some very strong doubts about whether I could write as clearly and effectively as I once did.

  MH: So, how has the writing been going so far?

  RK: Surprisingly, it’s been going wonderfully. I reckon it’s like riding a bicycle… you never forget. Actually, I believe I’m writing better than I did before, but I reckon I’ll let my fans be the judge of that.

  MH: Have you found any disadvantages to making a sudden comeback? Advantages?

  RK: Well, the biggest disadvantage when I first decided to come back was my total lack of new material. Oh, I had a few trunk stories, but very few

  that I wanted dust off and put into circulation. But once I got back into the groove of writing, the ideas started coming, another thing I was initially worried about. Lately, they’ve been coming so fast, that I have to write them down to keep from forgetting them. I look forward to the day that I can devote myself to my writing full-time again, so I can complete all the projects that I have on the drawing board right now.

  As far as advantages are concerned, I did come back with a previous body of work which was pretty extensive. The majority of folks who are reading horror today have never read any of my novels or short fiction, which makes it entirely fresh and new to them. That’s one reason my reprint projects with Croatoan have got me so excited. With great artwork and excellent design and production, my former work is being presented in a way that I only dreamed of when it was first published.