Post by Vaughan on Aug 7, 2009 22:59:27 GMT
Introductions..... hm, let me see.....
Back when I was a kid, the likes of The Rats, Night of the Crabs, and Dennis Wheatley were all the rage. Some new geezer named Stephen King came along and put something called "Carrie" on the market. And then movie spin-offs starting happening, and some good old horror novels were actually making it to the screen: The Manitou, The Sentinel, The Omen. Earlier something called "The Exorcist" had leapt from the page onto the big screen, soon after a big fish ate a cute girl and fingers on a blackboard will never sound the same again....
And then I got bored of all that and buggered off.
DVD revived my interest in horror films, and I eagerly grabbed all those old films I had loved: 50's sci-fi, Universal Horrors, Hammer films, Amicus, Tigon and so on. The video nasties were out there uncut, and I grabbed those. Brilliant stuff.
And finally I found my way back to horror novels. Perhaps it was self-indulgent nostalgia, or maybe it was simply because I have some time on my hands and horror is simply my thing..... but whatever it was, you'd have thought I'd of unboxed all my old novels and reread them.
But, like the millions of stupid people before me, I had never figured I might want to revisit these titles. So they were long gone. LONG gone. So I started scraping around for what's out there now (I don't even have so much as an Ebay account). And yeah, I'm back reading.
Many books stick in my mind from those days, and I have a good number of them again now (fortunately with the same covers):
And so on... many many of them.
Since I have time now, once I set my mind on what to read next I can usually demolish a book a day. Strangely I find I flag after 250 pages though, so if it's longer than that it goes over two days.
I've also developed a strange habit, quite unexplainable, that once I've finished a book I immediately have to select what will come next and to read the first chapter RIGHT AWAY. Then I sleep (since it's usually 4 or 5 in the morning by the time my reading is done). Strange, but I don't pretend to have all the answers.
I also don't read any author consecutively. So if I'm reading a James Herbert now, it'll be someone else next. I also move between monster books, possession books, and ghost stories etc - cycling through them. I don't know, I don't want to get into a rut. Also, the formulaic nature of the stories I've found doesn't lend itself to getting obsessed in one sub-genre too long....
Vaughan is not my real name. It's a character from my favorite movie - David Cronenberg's Crash. Based, of course, on one of my favorite novels, JG Ballard's Crash. I put up a website in honour of it: www.cronenbergcrash.com
Which leads me to something else. I love to write. Hence my "introduction" is getting longer than GNS's Slime Beast. ;D
I have a brief outline of a novel I'll write one day - it's a monster v. human novel without an ounce of originality, but some really good set pieces. I just need to knuckle down to it. In fact, it'll probably never get done and stay stuck in my mind, probably like a lot of people around here! I have had 8 books published in the past, from Prentice Hall among others - but they're boring books on technology and frankly, I don't want to talk about them any more. Let alone write one.
Oh - and Monster Mag was the best horror magazine ever. Any dissenting opinion on this point will be deleted by Ian. ;D
One final thing - I like Jazz. It's the tops you funky cats!
What else do you wanna know?
I did tell you I love to write......
HELLO EVERYONE!
Back when I was a kid, the likes of The Rats, Night of the Crabs, and Dennis Wheatley were all the rage. Some new geezer named Stephen King came along and put something called "Carrie" on the market. And then movie spin-offs starting happening, and some good old horror novels were actually making it to the screen: The Manitou, The Sentinel, The Omen. Earlier something called "The Exorcist" had leapt from the page onto the big screen, soon after a big fish ate a cute girl and fingers on a blackboard will never sound the same again....
And then I got bored of all that and buggered off.
DVD revived my interest in horror films, and I eagerly grabbed all those old films I had loved: 50's sci-fi, Universal Horrors, Hammer films, Amicus, Tigon and so on. The video nasties were out there uncut, and I grabbed those. Brilliant stuff.
And finally I found my way back to horror novels. Perhaps it was self-indulgent nostalgia, or maybe it was simply because I have some time on my hands and horror is simply my thing..... but whatever it was, you'd have thought I'd of unboxed all my old novels and reread them.
But, like the millions of stupid people before me, I had never figured I might want to revisit these titles. So they were long gone. LONG gone. So I started scraping around for what's out there now (I don't even have so much as an Ebay account). And yeah, I'm back reading.
Many books stick in my mind from those days, and I have a good number of them again now (fortunately with the same covers):
- James Herbert - The Rats, The Fog
- Guy N. Smith - Night of the Crabs
- Frank De Felitti - Audrey Rose
And so on... many many of them.
Since I have time now, once I set my mind on what to read next I can usually demolish a book a day. Strangely I find I flag after 250 pages though, so if it's longer than that it goes over two days.
I've also developed a strange habit, quite unexplainable, that once I've finished a book I immediately have to select what will come next and to read the first chapter RIGHT AWAY. Then I sleep (since it's usually 4 or 5 in the morning by the time my reading is done). Strange, but I don't pretend to have all the answers.
I also don't read any author consecutively. So if I'm reading a James Herbert now, it'll be someone else next. I also move between monster books, possession books, and ghost stories etc - cycling through them. I don't know, I don't want to get into a rut. Also, the formulaic nature of the stories I've found doesn't lend itself to getting obsessed in one sub-genre too long....
Vaughan is not my real name. It's a character from my favorite movie - David Cronenberg's Crash. Based, of course, on one of my favorite novels, JG Ballard's Crash. I put up a website in honour of it: www.cronenbergcrash.com
Which leads me to something else. I love to write. Hence my "introduction" is getting longer than GNS's Slime Beast. ;D
I have a brief outline of a novel I'll write one day - it's a monster v. human novel without an ounce of originality, but some really good set pieces. I just need to knuckle down to it. In fact, it'll probably never get done and stay stuck in my mind, probably like a lot of people around here! I have had 8 books published in the past, from Prentice Hall among others - but they're boring books on technology and frankly, I don't want to talk about them any more. Let alone write one.
Oh - and Monster Mag was the best horror magazine ever. Any dissenting opinion on this point will be deleted by Ian. ;D
One final thing - I like Jazz. It's the tops you funky cats!
What else do you wanna know?
I did tell you I love to write......
HELLO EVERYONE!