What was your experience with publishing your first story?
I was in the Navy, learning how to be a submariner at Sub School in Groton, Connecticut when I came up with a story of two alien races of the same species coming to earth in a space ship. My idea was that onboard, they had a huge civil war that ended up with total fatalities on both sides. I had the idea that the craft would crash on earth and that the spirits of the different races would possess people and they would continue their war using our bodies.What sub-genre of horror (that hasn't been popular in a while. ex: zombies are big now. used to be vamps etc.) would you like to see a re-emergence of?
Eventually, I finished Sub School and was stationed in St. Marys, Georgia on board the USS Wyoming, SSBN 742. During one of my deployments, I met an officer who had published a coffee table book of photos he took of nature. He told me about lulu.com, a self-publishing service website. When I got back to shore, I submitted my manuscript for my story to lulu and had it published.
I ordered a paperback copy to be sent to me, but I was deployed again before it arrived. I had my then wife send it to me out to sea. When it arrived, so many of my shipmates wanted to read it. I barely got a chance to look at it because it was constantly out on loan! That was a great feeling.
I don't know about a re-emergence, but I'd love to see an emergence of a genre that mixes the paranormal with zombies. That's what I like to write. Nobody ever talks about what happens to the disembodied spirits of the zombies. Imagine if stuff like Poltergeist was going on during Night of the Living Dead.What is one horror movie you could watch over and over?
Wouldn't that just up the creepiness factor by about a million? There are lots of great ghost stories being told these days and lots of great zombie ones two. I just think that there's some definite territory to be explored between the two
Well, since I already mentioned it, Poltergeist. I'm talking about the original. I haven't seen the remake. It was the one thing in this world that has helped me to form my ideas about the spiritual realm. I went to church for seven years and never learned as much as I did from watching that movie.what is your most ambitious project to date and what projects(if any) have you been disappointed in the outcome or process?
The fact that it's based on actual documented phenomena makes it one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. On a side note, I had the privilege of appearing in Ambush At Dark Canyon with James Karen who plays Steven's boss. He also played Frank in Return of the Living Dead, which is another movie I've seen dozens of times. Maybe, subconsciously, that's why I mixed the two genres in my mind because he's in two of my favorite movies.
My most ambitious project is one I plan to take on soon. I will be collecting a bunch of my old poems, song lyrics, comic strips, stand-up comedy routines and anything else I can find and compiling them all into a book. I've got to search through old boxes full of random papers to find it all, type it into a computer or scan it, then organize it all. On a related note, I'll also be putting out a collection of my children's books. I wrote six of them and illustrated them. I'll have to scan them into a computer and organize it all. I have not been disappointed in any of my projects so far (knock on wood).You have two items with you during the apocalypse. One is book. What book would you have and what would the other item be?
The book would be almost anything from Joe McKinney because he often has people surviving in zombie apocalypses under horrible circumstances. It would basically be a survival guide. The other item would be a shark bite proof chainmail suit.Tell the readers about your current projects and where they can find you online.
I am currently working on a collection of my short stories called Solace In Solitude. I am also working on a movie called Heartbreak Bait, which is based on my story Smart Phone from the Possessions anthology. My books can be found at amazon.com under my name.
