Red Ramblings : July 2011

Ray Garton is the author of over sixty books. He has written children's books, movie tie-ins and thrillers-- under his own name and the pen names Arthur Darknell and Joseph Locke-- but he is best known for his horror fiction. In fact, in 2006 he was presented with the World Horror Convention Grand Master Award, so you can imagine how thrilled I was when Mr. Garton agreed to do a short interview with me.

Redux: Ray, you've got a reputation for putting out some pretty gruesome and sexually explicit horror and thriller novels. What are your thoughts concerning the recent trend in the fantasy and horror genres toward young adult themes. Twilight and Harry Potter, for example. Do you think the mainstream media has become too repressive and / or restrictive? Sometimes it feels to me like we have gone back to the 50's culturally, i.e. racism, religious extremism, sexual repression.

Garton: You’re right — we have gone back to the 1950s in a lot of ways, and it’s disturbing. I have nothing against genre fiction for young readers. In fact, I wrote several YA thrillers and horror novels back in the 1990s. I wrote them under the pseudonym Joseph Locke because I was concerned that if I used my real name, my young readers might seek out my other books, which are not for young readers. It’s great that so many young people are reading, and that books like the Harry Potter and Twilight series are keeping them reading. What I find troubling is the fact that, although these books are YA fiction, they seem to be replacing the horror and dark fantasy normally written for adults. All the people I know who read those two series are adults, even though they weren’t written for adults. There’s nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but there’s something more going on, I think.

In publishing right now, the horror genre — not YA horror, but horror fiction for grownups — is deader than the Lindbergh baby. The publishing business doesn’t even use the word “horror” anymore. Even when the genre is published, which isn’t often, it’s called something else. Other things have crept in to sort of take the genre’s place — urban fantasy, paranormal romance, but these things most definitely are not horror, just as YA fiction is not adult fiction. The Goosebumps series by R.L. Stine was perfect for kids, but I would be annoyed if someone were to hand me one of those books and say, “Here, you should read this because it’s really scary.” No, it’s not. It’s a Goosebumps book for kids. I’m 48 years old and I lived through eight years of George W. Bush, so you’ll have to try a lot harder than that to scare me. But the absence of real horror has created this bizarre blend of horror-like elements mixed together in ways that do not add up to horror, but people seem to think it’s horror, or they’re at least willing to accept it in the absence of real horror.

A similar problem exists in genre films. For some time now, horror movies have tended to be rated PG-13. That’s never a good sign. When I see a trailer for a horror movie that looks intriguing, I lose interest the second I see that it’s rated PG-13. That tells me the movie is targeting a young audience and it’s not going to be a horror movie for grownups. It’s not that I require loads of graphic violence in my horror, because I don’t. But I want it to be horror. I want it to be disturbing, frightening, upsetting, dark. If it’s rated PG-13, I know it’s going to be none of those things. It’s going to be safe, watered-down pablum for a mostly young audience — or worse, a “family-friendly” audience (don’t get me started) — because that will sell more tickets than a real horror movie that’s rated R and is designed to shake up its audience.

I find this very depressing. It seems like everything is being softened for us, as if we are intellectually toothless and must have our ideas chewed up first before we can consume them. I recently had a conversation with a young woman in her twenties who maintained that we live in an age more liberal than ever before. I pointed out to her that she thinks that only because she wasn’t around in the 1970s. Can you imagine movies like The Exorcist or The Brood being made today for the first time? Or movies from the ‘80s like The Howling or Re-Animator? If they got made at all, they would be PG-13 Cream of Wheat versions of the movies we know and would get a small straight-to-video release. Or straight-to-cable. Or worse, they’d be made directly for that thing that used to be called the Sci-Fi Channel, in which case they wouldn’t even be movies, they’d be endurance tests that we could use to torture terrorists at Gitmo. They wouldn’t have the same edge, they wouldn’t challenge and upset us and give us all those things we horror fans want from our horror movies.

What’s left of the genre (and let’s face it, that ain’t much) has been gutted by the dumbing — and watering — down of everything to sell more tickets and make everything resemble some abominable form of family-friendly entertainment. The most disconcerting thing about all of it is that audiences are simply taking it. There’s no angry backlash, no rejection of this trend. I refuse to see these movies. I just won’t. I’m not giving them my money so they can make more of this crap. But I don’t know anyone else who feels that way. Horror movie fans are notoriously forgiving, anyway. They love the genre and will take what they can get, and even in the good times, most of what they get is crap because it’s a genre that attracts a lot of people who think they can slap together some garbage with a monster or a slasher and they’ve got a movie. But it’s even worse now. And audiences are numbly embracing it and filmmakers and writers are just cranking out more of it. Given all that, I see little chance of it changing anytime soon.

Redux: You're probably best know for your classic vampire novel Live Girls. What is your own personal favorite?

Garton: It’s hard to pick favorites, because usually — and I think this is the case with most writers — my favorite is the one I’m working on now, or the one I’ve just finished. Each one feels like a major breakthrough, like a great work. That’s not always the case, of course. It’s usually not the case, in fact. But that feeling is part of the process and it’s necessary to get through a whole book, I think. My personal favorite of all my work — at this point, anyway — is my novel Sex and Violence in Hollywood. It’s not a horror novel, but rather a darkly comic thriller. It gave me a chance to allow myself to be funny. I find myself holding that urge back in much of my work. Sometimes that’s not easy. I take my work seriously, but there are times when I’m writing a horror novel that involves werewolves or vampires when it’s difficult not to peer through all the dark, gruesome stuff and see the humor in it. When I was a boy, my dream was to be Rob Petrie when I grew up and write comedy. Instead, I ended up writing horror fiction. I think they’re two sides of the same coin — both rely to a great extent on the misfortune and suffering of others, and both rely on the element of surprise. The difference is in the desired effect. One makes you laugh, the other makes you shudder. But mixing the two usually doesn’t go over too well, unfortunately.

With Sex and Violence in Hollywood, that feeling of a major breakthrough was authentic, I think. It was the most enjoyable writing experience I ever had. That book flowed out of me without a hitch. I started out with a couple of vague ideas. I wanted to write something about the movie business, or at least something that dealt with movies, because I’m a movie lover. And somehow I wanted to approach the idea that we have become very desensitized to violence. I’m not one of those pompous douchebags who thinks violence in movies and TV and literature causes people to be violent. But violence has become such an ingrained part of our culture that it seems we sometimes don’t know how to react to the real thing. Real violence never looks quite like the stuff we see in movies and TV, and it’s almost never in a dramatic context. When violence occurs in a movie, it can be horrifying, or cathartic, or funny. When it occurs in life, it’s usually unexpected, senseless and undramatic. It’s blunt and ugly and usually not as bloody or as visual as the special effects have led us to believe. Sex and Violence in Hollywood is about a bitter young man named Adam Julian who hates his father, a successful action movie writer and producer. Adam believes his father killed his beloved mother and has come to hate everything associated with his father, and he decides he wants to kill the man. Adam is having an affair with his father’s wife and gets involved with her dangerous, twisted daughter, and the book follows him through this Los Angeles nightmare of kinky sex and forced violence, all culminating in a big, high-profile celebrity trial. I’ve never enjoyed writing anything as much as that book.

Redux: Do you have anything new coming out soon?

Garton: My newest novel was just released. It’s a thriller called Meds. Some years ago, I had an unpleasant experience with prescription drugs, and to satisfy my own curiosity, I began researching that subject — prescription drugs, their side effects, how the manufacturers deal with those side effects, what the FDA does to protect us from them. What I learned was pretty horrifying. Medical science has provided us with some amazing drugs that allow us to live longer, healthier and happier lives. But the pharmaceutical industry has corrupted that in many ways, all with one single goal: Gigantic profits for the pharmaceutical industry. It has bypassed the medical profession and now markets its drugs directly to the public, convincing them that they need drugs they do not need, drugs that have horrendous side effects. And those are only the side effects they choose to tell us about. Many of those side effects are covered up for as long as possible and we’re not warned about them until they harm and/or kill so many people that they can’t be ignored anymore and they’re added to the warning label. The FDA, the organization that’s supposed to be protecting us from all of this, has virtually become the lapdog of the pharmaceutical industry. There’s now a busy revolving door between the FDA and Big Pharma so that the people in the FDA who make things as easy as possible for the drug companies get cushy, high-paying jobs in that industry when they leave the so-called “watchdog” organization. And the politicians certainly aren’t on our side because we’re not the ones with loads of cash and prizes to throw in their direction to get them to do what we want them to do — the drug companies are, and that’s exactly what they do. The pharmaceutical industry has no interest in curing or improving the health of consumers. It’s interested only in making as much money as humanly possible and keeping people on their drugs. The health of the consumer is irrelevant. Making people well would be self-defeating. Healthy people don’t need drugs, sick people do. And one sure-fire way of staying sick is believing what the drug industry tells us about its products.

After learning all of this stuff about this industry, I wanted to do something with it. But that’s not my field of expertise. I mean, I write scary books — who’s going to listen to anything I have to say about prescription drugs? So I did what I do best — I wrote a story about it. Meds is a thriller that tells two stories that converge. One is about a man who’s trying to repair his shattered life and who inadvertently makes a scary discovery about a prescription drug he’s taking. The other is about a hit man who finds that he really doesn’t like the job he’s been hired to do. Within these converging stories, I’ve tried to sprinkle the information I’ve gathered and apply it to the fiction. It’s not a polemic, not at all. Like everything else I write, it’s a novel that’s meant to entertain and nothing more. But hey, if I can throw a little useful information into the mix, too, then all the better.

I’ve also got a new collection coming out in the fall from Cemetery Dance called Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth, a collection of religious horror stories. It includes two brand new stories that have never been published before along with stories that go all the way back to the beginning of my career.

Cemetery Dance will also be releasing a new novella called Vortex, a new adventure involving investigators Karen Moffett and Gavin Keoph, who originally appeared in Night Life, the sequel to my vampire novel Live Girls, and then again in Bestial, the sequel to my werewolf novel Ravenous.

Redux: What's your new project about?

Garton: Which one? Ha! For most of my career, I worked on only one thing at a time, and I focused on that one thing at the exclusion of almost everything else. But things have changed and I’ve had to train myself to be a multitasker, something that doesn’t come naturally to me. Right now, I’m working on a new novella for Cemetery Dance that’s kind of a departure. There’s no gore or sex, it’s more psychological and emotional than visceral.

I’ve got a nonfiction book called The United States of Jesus, which is about the ongoing attempt by American Christianity to transform the United States into a Christian theocracy. My longtime agent doesn’t want to represent the book. He agrees with everything in it, but it’s a pretty blunt, cranky, smartass book and he knows the kind of anger and controversy it will most likely stir up, and he just doesn’t want to deal with that. So I need to finish that up and try my hand at hawking it myself, which is something I’ve never done before.

Then there’s my humorous novel Dismissed From the Front and Center, about my two years at a Seventh-day Adventist boarding academy, which I need to finish and get out there. And I have a time travel novel kicking around in my head that I’ve started preparing for in a few ways. And I still have to write the next installment in what has become a series of novels — the follow up to Bestial, which is going to pit the vampires of Live Girls and Night Life against the werewolves of Ravenous and Bestial, featuring. characters from all four of those books.

But I seem to spend a lot of time these days just promoting the stuff I’ve already written. My new publisher, E-Reads, is releasing my entire back list as paperbacks and ebooks as well as my new novels, like Trailer Park Noir and Meds. I’ve been preparing a website (I seem to be the last writer in the known universe to get a shiny, flashy website that screams, “Buy my books and love me!”) and doing a lot of nonfiction writing about religion in America — the kind of stuff that makes up my book The United States of Jesus. I’ve been very busy.

Redux: You're a traditionally published author. What do you think about the "e-book revolution" and do you have any projects that you plan to publish independently? Do you think indie publishing is something you will eventually go to?

Garton: I think ebooks are fantastic. They have made reading far more convenient because now, not only do you not have to leave your home to buy a book, you don’t even have to leave your chair. Any book you want can be in your hands in seconds. I think it’s brilliant. And it’s made reading kind of cool again. Technogadgetry seems to give everything it touches a kind of cool sheen and that’s happened with books. Because of the convenience — and, I think, the cool factor — there are people reading now who didn’t read before, and that’s always a great thing.

It depends on what you mean by “publish independently.” I can never tell anymore. The publishing business has changed drastically and continues to change, and the jargon changes with it. I’m assuming you’re referring to self-publishing. I haven’t done that yet and frankly, I’d like to avoid it as long as possible because I just don’t need anymore shit to do. I started out as a writer and for decades, that’s all I did. Now I have to be a promoter and my own agent. I don’t know if I want to be a publisher, too. I kind of miss just writing, if you want to know the truth. No one can just write anymore. Now you have to be a one-man orchestra. I’m still not very good at multitasking. What’s next? Will writers have to make their own movie adaptations of their books and play all the roles? Jesus, I sound like my grandpa bitching about all the devil’s work on the tee-vee.

There was a time when self-publishing was the refuge of the talentless, the sub-literate and, in some cases, the insane. That’s certainly not the case anymore. It’s now a viable alternative for writers and has made publishing a much more level playing field. I’d never say I won’t do it, but let’s face it, I’m lazy.

Redux: How would you compare indie to traditional publishing?

Garton: Traditional publishing has changed so much — and continues to change — since I started writing professionally that I don’t know if I would compare anything to it because we aren’t quite sure what it’s becoming yet. I hardly recognize traditional publishing anymore. I have been told lately that I’m not famous enough for anyone to publish my book. Can you imagine that? Publishers now are interested in you only if you’re already famous for something. That’s why they threw all that cash at Snooki for a book she couldn’t possibly write and probably will never read. That’s one big difference between traditional publishing and independent publishing. If you want a New York publisher to consider publishing your work, you’d better be a celebrity, or a notorious drunk or drug addict, or you’d better have committed some well-known crime or indiscriminately fucked a whole lot of people, or you’d better have something to sell besides your book — something your book is meant to sell, like a self-help program or a get-rich-quick scheme or a new way to talk to Jesus, or something. Traditional publishing is in a terribly sorry state these days.

Redux: Do you have an ereader yet, or are you still reading "analog" books?

Garton: I don’t have one yet, but not because I have anything against them. I’ll get one, but it will probably take me a while to warm up to it. I’m a book person. I love the feeling of a book in my hands, the way it smells — yes, I’m a book-smeller, I have been known to sniff books in book stores. I love the idea of ereaders, though, and I think they’re wonderful. I just haven’t boarded the train yet.

Redux: Do you have any advice for young, hopeful horror-fantasy authors?

Garton: How much time do you have? First of all, if you’re going to write, you have to read. You have to read a lot. Constantly. I’ve actually encountered people who say they want to be writers but don’t have time to read. That’s like saying, “I want to be an auto mechanic but I don’t drive.” If you’re going to write in a genre, like horror, don’t make the mistake of reading only horror. That’s a big problem in the horror genre right now. Horror is being written by people who read only horror, and it creates stagnant, incestuous work. But when you do read horror fiction, look at what everyone else is doing and DON’T DO THAT! One of the things that’s killing the genre is endless repetition. Do we need another fucking zombie story? Does horror have to involve only stupid, sexy teenagers?

Step out of the genre for a bit and look around at real life. What are the things that are scaring the shit out of people in life right now? The economy is tanking and people are lying awake in bed at night wondering how they’re going to make their next mortgage payment or keep the lights on. Look at politics in America and you’ll see there are some people who couldn’t hold a knowledgeable conversation about American history with a fifth grader, and even some people whose sanity is in question, people who believe that Jesus talks to them and that homosexuals should be jailed for their sexuality — and these people want to be president! They want to be the leader of the free fucking world! The world is changing rapidly and drastically and people are having trouble keeping their footing. We’ve got amazing technology, but some of it is watching us and even following us, and what happens when that falls into the wrong hands? Not if, but when. The weather is getting weird and scary and there’s not much we can do about that. And then there are all the old stand-bys, like cancer and old age and ending up old and alone. There’s the parental terror of a child being abducted, raped, killed. There are marriage and relationship problems. And there’s always death! Life is full of horrors. The best horror fiction reflects those horrors. I think the best horror fiction springs from real-world experience and is anchored in reality before a supernatural or scary menace invades whatever situation you’ve created. If you can populate your fiction with sympathetic people your readers will recognize and link your fictional horrors to the horrors of life, your readers will come back for more because you have given them a release, a catharsis, the feeling of defeating all the things that scare them the most.

Publishing is so insane right now that I really don’t recommend anyone write with publishing in mind. Sure, it can be a possibility, but write first. Create that world and tell that story first. Because if you start out by thinking about getting published, you’re going to start asking yourself bad questions like, What are publishers buying right now? What’s popular? What can I write that will increase my chances of getting published? And that will kill your work. That’s the tail wagging the dog. Just write that idea that’s been eating at you. Write what’s in you, inform it with your own life and experiences, and when it’s done, then you can start thinking about getting published. And then you’ll have something that is yours, something you wanted to write, something that was in you first and is now on the page.

Redux: Have you ever written anything that was considered too controversial to be published?

Garton: Well, there’s the book I mentioned earlier, The United States of Jesus, which my agent thinks is too controversial to represent. And then there’s my novel Crucifax, which raised some controversy back in 1988. It contained a scene in which a guy with a three-foot-long tongue performed a cunnilingual abortion on a young woman and then ate the fetus. My editor at Simon & Schuster was pregnant at the time and when she read that scene, she went through the roof. I got a call from her. “There is no way this book is getting published with this scene as written!” she said, rather loudly. She insisted that the scene either be cut or watered down. I strongly disagreed. I went to my agent, thinking he would support me. But he agreed with her that it was too over the top. He said it brought the story to a halt so I could shove this unnecessarily graphic and disgusting scene into my readers’ faces. I was young, drunk and stupid and I fired my agent. My editor won that battle. I watered down the scene. The book was published with the scene intact by a small publisher called Dark Harvest Press under my original title for the book, Crucifax Autumn. Both versions came out at the same time, the small press hardcover and the mass market paperback. The story got a lot of attention and that chapter was published as originally written in anthologies and magazines. But as the years passed — and as I sobered up, because I spent nearly the entire decade of the 1980s drunk — I came to see that my agent had been right. The scene was gratuitous and it did bring the story to a halt so I could go for the gross-out. This was something I had criticized in other writers, and in the case of Crucifax, I was guilty of it myself. I went back to my agent, apologized, told him he was right and asked him to take me back. He did. Crucifax has since been rereleased by E-Reads, and that’s the same edition published by Simon and Schuster. I firmly believe that version reads better. It’s tighter. The Dark Harvest edition of the book is hard to find, but it’s out there, and it’s quite collectible and expensive.

I'd like to thank you for such a generous interview, Ray. You've certainly given me a lot of food for thought!

Ray's new thriller MEDS can be downloaded instantly at the link below for the Kindle e-reader, and be sure to check out his other classic horror and thriller novels, available in ebook format at Amazon.com, and wherever books are sold!