Read on and find out more about this master of the macabre. Don’t forget to check out John’s latest, The 13th, available from Leisure Books. Get your copy now!

Do you remember when you first realized that you wanted to be a writer? Was there one defining moment? How old were you?
I don't know that there was a "defining" moment. More of a defining childhood. I was a voracious reader growing up; I lived for the day the Scholastic Books catalogue came to school. I poured over those things, circling all the books I wanted, and then spent hours trying to narrow my choices down. I remember in junior high, in the summer, I'd come back from the library with a shopping bag full of classic pulp science fiction books from the likes of Isaac Asimov, Clifford Simak, Hal Clement, Poul Anderson, Robert Heinlein, etc. I think my first story was written in 3rd or 4th grade, an emulation of Asimov's galactic empire stories.

So... my love of "story" was just so strong that I wanted to tell them, as well as read them. I wanted to "give back" the same kind of enjoyment I got. In high school I used to keep a journal, and I was an editor of the high school newspaper, and ran an underground paper to boot. By the time I went to University of Illinois there was no question but that I was going to make my living somehow through words; I was a journalism major there and worked on the daily student newspaper most of my tenure. I wrote poetry and song lyrics and fiction throughout high school and college, but didn't start submitting my fiction to magazines until a couple years after entering "the real world." I've just always written, somehow or other.

Have you ever written something so terrifying it frightened even you? What authors do you read that can still scare you?
I can't remember ever scaring myself... I mean... I'm creating it, so I know everything about it. How can you be afraid of that? The fright factor comes in the unknown. I don't think I've been genuinely scared by reading a story since I read Clive Barker's The Damnation Game while on a business trip 20 years ago. That book gave me the creeps as I laid there reading it alone in my hotel room. Stephen King's Pet Sematary creeped me out in high school too. I can't say that many books have really frightened me that much; now and then I suppose, as you're reading at night and you turn the lights out after reading an intense scene, you might hear some creaking floorboards and get a little scared, but after reading hundreds of books and stories and seeing hundreds of horror movies... I just don't get too scared by fiction. Clenched fists as you root for the characters to escape the horror incarnate. An enjoyable surge of adrenaline sometimes, yes. Scared, no.

Is there anything you would never write about? Do you have any taboos?
I don't have a lot of taboos. There are plenty of things I'm simply not personally interested in spending time writing about. But the point of writing fiction is to poke at things outside the norm of everyday life. To make readers think. So I don't like to say never. I don't think I could ever write about children being tortured. Scared, yes. But detailing them being hurt... no. There's a scene in my new novel, THE 13TH where a baby is going to be killed, and I pull the "camera" away before you see it. It was necessary to the story that this horror happens... but I won't sit there with the close-up lens giving you the blow-by-blow of that.

What frightens you in the real world? Do you believe in the supernatural?
What frightens me? Mean people. Stupid people. People who enjoy violence and giving others pain. Serial killers. Unexpected accidents.

While plenty of people have told me about "supernatural" experiences, I've never had one, so I can't say that I totally believe in it. I like the concept, obviously, or I wouldn't write so much about it. But my fears are not of ghosts in the dark; I'm afraid of the people who break into your space and try to hurt you. That, and stepping on bear traps in the middle of the woods. Apparently, from the horror movies I've seen recently, there are a lot of those things laying around out there waiting to take your leg off.

What book was the hardest to write and why? Do you think that writing horror has different pitfalls and challenges than other genres?
The first book was definitely the hardest to write -- Covenant. From the time I started that book until the time I gave it my last rewrite/edit, was something like 7 years. I stopped working on it several times because I just didn't think I could actually do it - I didn't believe I could actually finish an entire novel. I'd only written very short stories up to the point I started on Covenant, and I was totally unprepared for dealing with a narrative that stretched on and on. I was used to finishing a story in a day or two, and so when I worked on a novel for weeks and weeks and it wasn't even one-third of the way done... I totally lost my confidence that I could finish what I started. Completing that book really opened the door for the rest, because once I proved to myself that I actually could do it... it was much easier to do it again. Sacrifice, the sequel, was effectively written in four months (though I took a two-year break in between writing the first half and sitting down to finish it).

As far as horror having singular challenges... well, you have to make sure the blood is the right color.

Seriously, I suppose the biggest challenge for any genre is to not simply repeat what has been done before. Every genre comes with certain built-in tropes and reader expectations, and as an author, you'd like to try to find a spin on those things that makes the "standard" stuff of the genre your own.

What writers influenced your love of writing, what about them made it so? Richard Matheson was a big early influence on me, for his ability to tell a tight, gripping story with a great twist at the end. The science fiction authors I mentioned earlier were inspirational because they told big, universe-spanning stories filled with a "sense of wonder" which I think we rarely see in today's fiction. We're too cynical and jaded as a culture maybe to recapture that pure sense of "Gosh, what lies beyond the stars?" feeling like we did in the 50s and 60s.

Over the past decade, writers like Neil Gaiman, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Anne Rice, Clive Barker, Edward Lee and Gary Braunbeck have really inspired me with their very strong and unique takes on dark fantasy and horror fiction. They are amazing voices all, and working in very different places along the dark fantasy/horror spectrum. But everyone should read them if they want examples of the best storytelling of our generation.

Why horror? What do you love about it?
I think it's the search for the old science fiction "sense of wonder" that I loved as a kid. The idea of swashbuckling spaceships doesn't get my adrenaline going like it once did... but the idea of something lurking beyond the dark... that tingle never goes away. The impact of the unknown is a powerful thing.

Why did you decide to found Dark Arts Books?
I had been moonlighting as a copy editor, book designer, cover artist, web designer etc. for other small press publishers for years. I have proofed most of the books that Necro Publications has released since its start in the mid-'90s, as well as done occasional proofing projects for Delirium Books, Earthling and Cemetery Dance. I've designed book covers for Delirium and Bad Moon Books and have helped a couple other presses with internal book layout work (I actually did the layout for the In Delirium II anthology that I served as editor on for Delirium). For a couple years, I did all the book design, cover art, web site work, contracts, sales and distribution for Twilight Tales' book line. I finally got to the point where I was like "you know, I'm doing everything that goes into running a small press for everybody else, except for actually picking the books' content. Perhaps I should just launch my own imprint, and work for me!" My friend Bill Breedlove had the idea of doing a four-author anthology for World Horror Convention 2006 to show both the breadth and depth of each author through multiple stories, and to feature both new tales and rare reprints, and that became Candy in the Dumpster, the first release for Dark Arts. In all, we've issued five anthologies to date.

What really gets you in the mood to write? Do you have any rituals?
Music is a necessity. I nearly always write to music. While sometimes I write in my home office, often when I write at home, my favorite thing to get me in the mood is to go into my basement, turn on a moody disc by This Mortal Coil, Delerium, Conjure One or Cocteau Twins or perhaps even some Euro-techno, like Miss Kittin, and then light some candles. Then I turn off the lights, kick back in my recliner and start typing on my laptop surrounded by nothing but ethereal music and flickering flames. Very conducive to mood!

When I'm deep into a project, I also tend to keep a weekly "writing night" outside the house, usually on Mondays. I'll go straight from work to Rizzo's, a local bar, and stake out booth #11. Then, as the bar fills with people and noise and the guitarist up-front plays, I slip into my own cone of silence and work for 4-5 hours. I don't do well with writing for an hour at a time - I need large blocks. And going to the bar really helps because there aren't all the distractions of home. I just plant myself, munch on some hot chicken wings, my waitress keeps my beer mug full, and I generally get a lot done on those nights.

Do you have a favorite horror film? Do you have any interest in writing the screenplay for one someday? Who would you pick to direct it?
I don't really have a big interest in writing a screenplay. I love film and respect the screenplay form -- I don't know that I'd do well at it. I prefer to write straight narrative fiction. But I'd certainly love to have someone bring their screenplay talent to bear on my stories and adapt them for the screen! And if Tim Burton or Dario Argento or George Romero wanted to direct... that'd be OK with me!

I don't think I could pick one favorite film... I have a lot of favorite horror films! One of my most long-standing is Alien, because it melds both science fiction and horror, and does both amazingly well. Night of the Living Dead is another stalwart, which I've watched many, many times. Those are truly "horror films", but I've really enjoyed some horror humor flicks too over the years, from Dead Alive to Beetlejuice to Shaun of the Dead to Fido.

Over the past few years, I've really gotten into European horror from the '70s, like Vampyres and Daughters of Darkness. I love the difference in atmosphere those movies have from the films produced in the states. Dario Argento's Phenomenon, Inferno and Suspiria are great, as are Lucio Fulci's The Beyond, City of the Living Dead and House By The Cemetery. And I'm a huge fan of Jean Rollin's French films from the period, Living Dead Girl, Lips of Blood, Grapes of Death and Night of the Hunted.

If I asked your characters to describe you, what would they say? Obsessive, irritating and demanding?

The 13th, your latest, has just been released, can you give us several good adjectives to describe it?
Dark, erotic, depraved and very, very bloody. Filled with knives, neuroses and nudity!

In some ways, The 13TH is my homage to grindhouse movies... it builds from the mystery of a new asylum opened in an old hotel out in the backwoods, into a novel of a group of women put through intense, horrible peril. And at the heart, it tells the story of a guy trying to save his girlfriend... before it's too late.

To which part of the dark spectrum are you headed next?
The mythological. I just turned in my 4th novel, Siren, which moves a little away from the "ritual sacrifices" and "demonic horror" of my first three books to focus on a Siren who is brought back to life in the modern age. There is still plenty of sex and horror in this one, but I think it goes a little deeper, as its main character is a man named Evan, who has lost his son to the sea. A lifelong aquaphobe, Evan couldn't save his son from drowning, and has essentially been existing in a "living death" with his guilt, until the Siren's call lures him to the brink of losing everything that's left of his life. I just turned Siren in to the publisher, and can't wait to see it come out... but it's going to be awhile; the book is slated for release in paperback next summer.