An Interview with Douglas Clegg

by Lynne Jamneck

What is your view on the current state of publishing? Would you encourage young writers to enter the world of professional writing?

I believe that if someone must write a novel, then they must, regardless of the state that publishing is in. However, this doesn't obligate anyone to publish that novel. I have never thought of the current state of publishing when I've written a novel. If it needs writing, it needs writing. I'd encourage anyone with an idea, a dream, and who's up for the hard work involved, to pursue writing fiction, if that's their interest.

I don't think of research as very separate from story. What I mean by that is, I get interested in things -- and explore them -- and then, somewhere in that interest and my own personal research, I get an idea and I develop it into a novel. So while I've worked in journalism in the past, I don't do formal research. What I do is explore, in life, what fascinates me and keeps me curious about the world, and then that provides me with endless material for writing fiction. However, if I need to find out how many gnats land on a slice of toast, and it can be looked up, I'll usually look it up if the book is set in the "real world." If the book is a fantasy, as if my upcoming Vampyricon series, I'll make up history if I have to do it.

Absolutely. I think, in fact, that horror fiction awakens a healthy sense of dread and surrealism in our minds. It allows us to experience ideas and emotions while remaining safely in a book. It's only when we look outside our windows that we see the true horror that numbs us -- and keeps us from experiencing life, I suspect. I believe the fiction of terror opens us to possibilities, to spiritual transformations in the wake of the horrific, and to the imaginative world each of us has inside that too often is locked away. It's also fun. It feels great to get shivers while reading.

Outside of a publisher's royalty statement, it probably is the news. But if you mean in fiction, I'd probably say that it's in short fiction, and it could be any number of stories. Scary isn't necessarily what I find interesting. Horrifying is. I found Peter Straub's novella Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff horrifying and powerful. I find Dracula horrifying, as well. Scary to me if closer to the fun side of things, and I guess Bentley Little's recent novel, The Policy, has some damn scary and shocking scenes. And there is one scene in that terrific novel that is truly horrifying.

My travels have influenced me to the point where 99.9% of my fiction has been set in places where I've lived for extensive periods of time. I pretty much am a writer who has to really sink his feet into the dirt, and know the local culture, and hang out and eat clam fritters at the crab shack and find out how the guy who sweeps the streets in the New England job got that gig. Then, eventually, I put it in a book.

I never think of genre when I write. To me, they're all the exact stories I want to tell, and it just so happens that horror is the genre that they are most categorized as. I love horror fiction. I love good horror movies (and even some bad ones.) I love books that marry the imagination with insight with terror with intelligence with adventure. When I find books like that, I don't care what the genre label is that someone sticks on them.

Here's what I do. I write and write and write because I want to find out where the story goes. Then, I have this pile of pages, and I edit and cut and revise and then...I discover more about the story from cutting parts out. Then I start writing again, and I begin to clearly see exactly how the story must go, how the character who has emerged from the writing -- because that character didn't exist until I wrote him or her -- must move toward whatever ending is within the realm of the story. To me, that means my first draft is really an outline, just not a formal one. It's a way for me to see the world that I'm writing about. Then, I begin to shape it -- and I cut out anything that is not "story." I did this more with The Hour Before Dark than I'd ever done in the past, and as a result, I think that book turned out to be more its story than many novels I'd written before it.

Within. But, sometimes, without, if you need to stop something horrible. I do think a person who intentionally hurts a child is evil. I think a person who kills another being for pleasure is evil.

If given the opportunity, whom would you like to collaborate with -- living or dead?

No one. I like to write my own books and stories.

Not in any way I can think of. I let black cats cross my path all the time.

It's extremely important to me, more so than my communication with publishers or other writers. The reader, to me, is the person to whom I'm directly communicating the story. It's a sacred relationship, in my opinion. However, I also like talking to people who read books -- whether my books or someone else's. I like communities of readers. It's like liking people who love movies or who like to go skiing: we have this thing in common, and I enjoy talking to people who read books. I don't think it's a requirement for most writers, though. But if I had the choice between communicating with someone who reads a lot of fiction and someone who reads little or no fiction, I can tell you who I'd choose to spend an afternoon with.

I'll leave that up to whoever pays for the marker. I think death is just a stopover. It would be like asking me what graffiti I'd want written on the wall at the train station.

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