Horror Author Justin Fulkerson #Interview
Horror Authro Justin Fulkerson #Interview
1. Congratulations on your most recent release Crossroads! Can you please tell us a little about this collection?
The first three stories (Unfinished Business, One More Cup and Knackelflerg) were some of the first I published to Amazon back in 2011-12. I was playing around with the platform back then and wanted to get my name out into the publishing world. The last three are novellas I wrote shortly afterward (Paranormal Alien Crap, Koyaanisqatsi, and Gate of She’ol). These are all the first stories that I shared with the world and I thought it would be fun to collect them into one volume. The introduction explains the origins of the stories and a few tidbits about each one.
2. Without giving away spoilers, what was your favorite story in this collection and why?
I would have to say Koyaanisqatsi. What could be better than Lee Harvey Oswald, Charles Manson and Jim Morrison teaming up to defeat time-traveling demons and aliens in order to save the world?? The story takes place in an alternate timeline when the Cuban Missile Crisis leads to nuclear Armageddon and the survivors are drawn to a figure named Phoenix that promises them safety. Hope that doesn’t qualify as spoilers, lol.
3. I’ve had the pleasure of reading your terrifying book Freckles the Clown. It was a delicious blend of disturbing gore and horror. Can readers expect this level of horror in your other works? In other words, how would you describe your horror brand?
Justin Fulkerson
I think Freckles the Clown pushed the envelope more than most of my past writing. My horror brand deals more with the human side of horror and the fact that there are no real ‘good guys’ on the world. Everyone has a dark side or secrets they do not want brought to light. The majority of my works are character-driven. The characters are the heart and soul of the horror I produce. Sure, in my novel Hallowed Ground there are a few zombies, in An Hour for Magic there is a power-hungry demon set to take over the world but the majority of my antagonists are human. Psychology plays a major part in my story-telling. Unfinished Business follows an elderly serial killer in search of his fiftieth victim on a Texas highway, One More Cup takes on the subject of an innocent person being accused of following someone else and how these situations can spiral out of control.
4. You’ve published eight horror books. What’s one tip you wish someone had told you before you began your journey as a writer?
Don’t give up!!!! Several times I stopped writing because I could not find a market. I even had one retired agent tell me that horror was dead and had been for more than ten years. He said there was no market for horror and that I should try something else. I won’t say his name, but he was a big name agent. It hurt momentum for a while, but then I became determined to prove him wrong. Write what you love and what you feel is a good story. Let the chips fall where they may and go for it. There will be a lot of people in the way, but you have to ask them to step aside and give let you take the path.
5. There’s a theory floating around the artist community that creative people need to experience suffering in order to write about suffering. True art comes from suffering. What do you think of this idea?
Wow. Well, suffering does give you fuel. But feeling sorry for yourself will get you nowhere. I am going to tell a story that I don’t share with a lot of people. To make a long story short and leave out the sordid details, I have been supporting myself since I was seventeen years old. I have worked full time since then. I am now 44 years old and I can truly say that I owe no one anything. I have gotten through this life without being indebted to anyone, including family or friends. Sure I owe my mortgage and bills, but have never had to ask anyone to help me financially.
6. Who is your favorite author and why?
Of course, you know the answer to this one. Stephen King. One of the most significant reasons I ever read him was because my mother was whole-heartedly against it. She said when I was 12 that I could read whatever I wanted, as long as it wasn’t Stephen King. So, I went behind her back and my father (they were divorced) bought me Cujo one month. I was hooked. My mother was livid but eventually came around. She said, ‘okay, as long as you don’t read The Shining.’ Well, what do you think I did next? Now I have an entire wall of my office papered with pages from IT, ‘Salem’s Lot and The Gunslinger. I have covers from Carrie, The Shining, Pet Semetary, The Stand and Misery polyurethane coated to the counter. I have 6 books signed by his son Joe Hill. So, yeah, I am a big fan of Stephen King. It humbles me when sometimes I am compared to him in a review.
7. What’s next for you? Any projects you can discuss?
I am working on four at once, but two of them are quite promising. Space Hobos is coming along nicely (you got a sneak peek of this one). Here is a blurb for those interested:
A galactic adventure rife with cultural relevance in today’s political and social media driven climate, Space Hobos launches the reader into a plausible sci-fi drama and never drops out of orbit.
For quite a while the future has been bleak for Holistic Henry and Cancer Carl and it isn’t getting any better. As the government begins to round-up the homeless population for an involuntary mission to space, Henry and Carl attempt to evade capture, fleeing with acquaintances Junkie Julie, Castaway Carl and Bike Mike. But their luck quickly runs out.
Trillions of dollars behind schedule, the government and sponsoring corporations scramble to find enough manpower to finish preparing Mars for imminent colonization. Current social economic challenges give them the perfect opportunity to capitalize upon. They make themselves champions of the homeless, forcing upon them a permanent solution to their predicament. A potential workforce of 554,000 homeless is at their fingertips.
Exiled to Mars, the hobos must stick together in their isolation. What the rest of the world sees as opportunity for them, they see as a death sentence. The people in charge have a deadline and don’t care what they have to do to meet it.
When an uprising begins, orchestrated by Carl and Henry, the powers that be see the imminent threat and decide to quash it before it can gain momentum.
Will Henry and Carl survive not only the harsh living conditions of Mars but live long enough to see their revolution become a reality?
Sounds good, right? This is my first stab at a full sci-fi novel.
I am also working on a post-pandemic novel from two different perspectives with my friend Dan Hubbard. It is called Cabin Fever.
Two families, one apocalypse.
When society breaks down after a worldwide pandemic, two families set out from opposite sides of the country in search of a safe haven. Two separate stories running parallel on an inevitable collision course until the two families finally cross paths. Forever changed, they each realize what sacrifices have to be made in order to survive the horror around them.
Both of these stories will be completed in the near future.
8. Where can people find you online?
9. Last chance! Anything else you’d like to say?
Thank you for taking the time, that is all I ever ask. Let me tell you a good story and make you think about how good your life is in comparison to my characters. Enjoy the ride and please leave a review when you read a story. A few words is all it takes to help an author like me gain attention.
Horror Author Kit Power #Interview
Kit Power Interview
1. Okay, I’m curious. When I put out the call for interviews, you mentioned a crowdfunding campaign for a non-fiction horror book. What is the book about and how can people get involved?
Oh hey, thanks for asking! The project is a non-fiction book called My Life In Horror Volume 1. Essentially it’s an essay collection representing the best of the first three years of my writing for Gingernuts of Horror as part of that series, every month I write about a childhood experience that I consider horror and that had a lasting impact on my imagination and/or personality. I had always intended to pull the content together into a book at some point, and with the series projected to finish this year with 60 essays total, I realised that I would need to produce it in two volumes.
*Then* I was talking about this last July at EdgeLit in Derby with good friend Neil Snowden, who is also the editor of my first non-fiction book, Tommy , and he said ‘you know, that’d be a perfect book for a Stokercon 2020 launch.”
Fast forward to January 2020. I’ve crunch-written a novella, which was… an experience I have now had, and I’ve assembled MLiH Vol. 1, revising and expanding every single essay, adding in some cracking bonus material, and rearranging the essays in the order I first experienced the subjects; turning a series of blog posts into a half-arsed autobiography via the medium of pop culture. The book’s in good shape, but the couple of publishers I have approached can’t take it on - both love the book but, it turns out, have big plans for Stokercon :/ .
Fair enough.
So I realize I have a choice - shelve it for now with a view to doing more shopping out of the manuscript post Stokercon, or try and crowdfund the editing and cover art and get the sucker out.
I opted for trying to get the sucker out.
So the IndyGoGo campaign launched on 25th January. It’s an all-or-nothing campaign, meaning it’ll only fund, and people will only be charged, if I hit the funding goal. Basically, it’ll be a way to pre-order the book, and if enough people want to do that, the book will happen. I will also be offering two limited edition hardbacks as part of the campaign. Both editions will be signed and numbered, with cover designs exclusive to this campaign, and the deluxe edition will feature an essay that will only ever be published as part of this print run. Ebooks and paperbacks will also be available, and other perks will allow you to get me to record an audio reading of an essay or short story for your exclusive use.
I have the editor, formatter, and cover designer on standby, and they’ve all assured me they can move on the project fast if it funds.
2. Is this your first nonfiction project and will you be doing more of this in the future?
It’s my second nonfiction book. The first was a (very, very) extended essay on the Ken Russell/The Who rock opera Tommy, which came out last year with PS Publishing . Whilst I’ve always considered myself a fiction writer first and foremost, I’ve found the non-fiction work has become more important to me as the years have gone by. I think what I’ve come to realise is that in both cases, I am writing to try and make sense of the world, and wrestle with the things I struggle to understand. Writing is a cathartic experience for me, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction.
I’ll certainly be doing more - My Life In Horror has 7 essays left to run (at which point I’ll be assembling Volume 2 for publication), and I have a separate long term non-fiction project with Gingernuts, reading the works of Brian Keene in order of publication, the vast majority of them for the first time. I’m ten books in to that project, and so far it’s an absolute blast - Keene is a top rate pulp horror writer, and it’s fascinating watching him develop and grow as a talent book to book.
Beyond that, I have a couple of Midnight Monograph books at proposal stage, and I’d really like to pull together a series of essays about the recent Joker movie; I saw it three times at the cinema, and I still find myself haunted by it, it’s an exceptional piece of art and I’d really like to spend more time digging into why it affected me as deeply as it did.
3. Congratulations on the release of your novella The Finite! Can you please tell us a little about the plot?
Thank you! The Finite is set in modern day Milton Keynes, and concerns a father and daughter in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear explosion. The story follows their efforts at survival in a drastically changed landscape, and is at its core about how parental responsibilities play out in a situation with few if any good choices to make.
4. What is your horror “brand”? What type of horror do you love to write? (Supernatural? Slashers? Psychological? Ect)
Great question! I think I lean more towards non-supernatural horror, so a lot of my work has crossover with dark crime or psychological thriller genres. Picking up from my last answer, a lot of what interests me as a writer are exploring scenarios where the protagonist has no good choices, and seeing what happens. Other thematic preoccupations are the end of the world, and liminality; the moments when a situation or event forces a character to confront their world view and figure out what they really believe. That preoccupation means my work often ends up in some extreme places.
5. Are there any horror tropes you refuse to write about?
No. The test for me is if the narrative feels compelling, if the characters feel real, if the idea disturbs me. I am aware some subject areas require sensitivity, and I certainly support the idea of using trigger warnings or content notes, where needed, to allow people to make informed decisions about what they read. But if something keeps me awake for long enough, I’ll probably end up writing about it.
6. What book(s) are you reading right now?
Right now I am reading King’s Firestarter for the first time, since I got The Institute for Christmas, and Clickers II by Brian Keene and JF Gonzalez, as part of my Keene project for Gingernuts, and Scenes of Mild Peril by David J Court , which I am really enjoying - Court has a fresh voice and a really surefooted comedic touch that’s pretty unusual in the genres he writes.
7. If you could co-author a book with any author, living or dead, who would it be and why?
Stephen King, I think. I’d love to try and match his prose style and I feel like I would learn so much from the experience. Though I am super happy with the piece I’ve been working on with James Murphy, which we’ve almost gotten to a finished first draft. That one I am very excited about, I think the core conceit is the best idea I’ve ever had, and James has absolutely made it into a narrative I’d never have thought to tell.
8. What is next for you? Anything in the works?
Always! :) Right now my priorities are finish the crunch novella edits and the D1 of the project with James, then get this campaign off and running. One of the Midnight Monograph proposals is a co-authored affair, and I should be breaking ground on that very shortly. Then it’s knocking the novel with James into shape with critical readers and editors, getting My Life In Horror finished, getting a couple of short stories finished, polished, and out to market, and working on my next solo novel, which is currently about eight thousand words in and going well so far. I find I work best when I have *way* too much to do.
9. Where can people find you online?
For a firehose of politics and various pop culture warm takes, you can find me on Twitter. I have Facebook, Amazon, and Goodreads Author pages - Kit Power in all cases, easy to find. And if you want early access and behind the scenes insight, for as little as $1 a month on Patreon you can get weekly updates containing new material - anything from essays to short stories to novel extracts to podcasts, often weeks or months ahead of official publication, with even more perks available at higher tiers .
10. Thank you so much! This is you chance to say anything that wasn’t asked. Closing thoughts?
Thanks so much for the invitation to talk :)
BUY THE FINITE HERE!