Dark Thoughts on Writing: Advice and Commentary from Fifty Masters of Fear and Suspense

Stanley Wiater is a veteran journalist of the horror field, and a skillful interviewer. In Dark Thoughts: On Writing he has thematically grouped well-selected quotations from horror creators: major influences; the day-to-day work of writing; choosing a form (short stories, novels, comics, or movies); fame and fortune; the game of making movies (as seen by Wes Craven, John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, and George Romero, among others); sex and death; censorship; personal fears and philosophies; surprising advice; the function of horror; and "Where do you get your ideas?" Also included are two choice reading lists, and a guide to print and electronic resources. A sample quotation from Joe R. Lansdale: "It's very easy to offend--but it's not easy to offend deeply." Peter Straub: "Sometimes you want to 'hurt' [your] readers. But at the same time you don't want to hurt them too badly--I mean, you do want to hurt them very badly at a couple points--but you don't want to leave them that way." Clive Barker: "Writing about the unholy is one way to write about the sacred." Horror readers and writers, as well as movie fans and moviemakers, will find much here to savor, laugh at, and learn from. Just one complaint: of the 52 writers quoted, only 2 are women.