Last weekend was the annual League of Utah Writers Spring Conference. While the point of attending the conference is to learn new ideas and techniques to better our writing and understanding of the industry, the real reason many of us attend is to reconnect with all our favorite writer friends. It’s like a huge family reunion.

I was super happy to spend a few minutes with Scott, and even happier when he agreed to be interviewed as this week’s guest.

Onto the interview!

First, let’s take a minute and get to know you know you better. I imagine as a horror writer you have to face your fears on a regular basis. Tell us, what is your biggest fear?

I don’t know if I would consider myself a horror writer – yes, I write horror, but I also write suspense, fantasy, poetry, and even some non-fiction. That said, back to your real question: what is it that I fear? Well, there’s only one word for that, and that word is Sasquatch. Yes, Bigfoot, the North American Yeti, even Cain if you want to go in the direction of David W. Patten. I think it started when I was a small child, back in ’72 or ’73. My friends and I used to go to the local movie theater, the cinema, whatever it was called. Our haven was a little place called the Queen Theater located in the sleepy bedroom community of Bountiful, Utah. Saturdays would always have a double-feature, and usually it would be Disney. I clearly remember watching the snakes in The Living Desert paired with prairie dogs in The Vanishing Prairie, or The Scarecrow paired with Swiss Family Robinson. This particular Saturday, the first feature was a pseudo-docu-drama, I don’t even remember the title, but Bigfoot was the star. I think what was the most troubling was actual, physical evidence, Bigfoot captured in the infamous Patterson-Gimlin film, or PGF. From that moment on, I was hooked, and terrified. I find it interesting that I’ve never written a story about Sasquatch. Hmm???

Everyone has secrets. Tell us three things that most people don’t know about you.

I love Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, the whole canon – Northanger Abbey is my favorite. What else is there to tell? I really don’t have a lot of secrets, but maybe there’s a lot that people just don’t know about me. I’m a combat veteran, I’m a Mason and a card-carrying member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which pairs nicely with my pseudo-Nome-de-plume: The Prince of Darkness. I find that once you sit down with a person there are lots of things you may not know about him or her, but they aren’t really secrets. Oh, here’s a big secret: I’m an aspiring writer.

What was your most interesting experience with writing Lovecraft’s Pillow?

Well, considering Lovecraft’s Pillow is just the title piece in a collection of previously published short stories, I’m not sure if you want experiences putting the collection together, experiences with each story, or just experiences with the lead story? The project itself took me down the road of re-learning everything about publishing? I had previous experience in grad-school with a few college pals – we produced seven or ten volumes of flash fiction, a novel or two, and were lucky to break even. I have a Press, per se, Fear Knocks Press, and this was my first paperback and eBook publication. For the last twelve years, Fear Knocks Press has been more of a dormant project waiting to sprout, grow and blossom. It was the home of the eZine, Fear Knocks, but that kind of went the way of the Dodo, so…

As far as the individual story, Lovecraft’s Pillow, that takes me back to several experiences. First, reading Michel Houellebecq’s book, H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, which included a Stephen King challenge to write a story, the story. Then, I think traveling back to Lovecraft’s hometown, Providence, Rhode Island, stopping by his grave, and getting a feel for the region really inspired me to go through with it. It didn’t hurt that my wife and I had just made a trip to Salem, Massachusetts, during the month of October, and there were all kinds of things floating around in the grey matter.

You’ve always been a wonderful support for local authors, including myself. What is the most powerful lesson you can share with a writer who is just starting the process of creating their stories?

Okay, this is a great question – a wonderful question – and the answer is one I don’t think most people are willing to take. Write a lot, write, write, write, and read a lot, read, read, read, read even more than you write. And not just books on craft, or books in the genre you plan to write in, books on everything; and get out and experience life. It’s true that, as writers, we put pieces of ourselves in the work we do. If you’ve only lived in a small town and only ventured between your notebook, typewriter, or word processor, and the kitchen and bathroom, you probably are going to have a very limited and unrealistic point of view in your work. Add a few books, a few across several genres, a book or two that you would never be caught dead reading, and you will start to open up vistas that are ready to lend themselves to your work. Then, if you can, travel, see the world, even the world around you. Most people would be surprised at how many secrets wait to be discovered just outside their back door within 5 or 10 miles of where they live. So, this begs the question, what books would you suggest a person read? Well, how about I include a list of my favorites at the end of this blog post?

I ask this question to everyone – What is the most interesting thing you keep on your desk, or bring to your writing space, and what is the story behind it.

I have a Día de Los Muertos skull. It’s more of a planter, one of those little trinkets with a succulent growing out of the top, the kind of plant that no one can kill. I don’t know why, but I’ve always been attracted to the darker side of things. When I was a kid, I loved the Old Testament and Edgar Allan Poe (and comic books). I had the opportunity to learn a few foreign languages over the years, one of them Spanish, and it got me hooked on some of the culture and traditions of Latin America. After traveling to several Latin American destinations, I had lots of information to ruminate on, to use as fodder for stories. What’s interesting, at least for me, these kinds of experiences usually do more for my settings, the feel of the story. For some reason, and I blame Anne Rice, most of my experiences take me back to the flavor and feel of New Orleans. If you’ve never been, you need to go. New Orleans is much more than Mardi Gras. There’s the whole Cajun culture, Marie Laveau and Voodoo, and the feel being at the mercy of the elements. I think these all merge with things closer to home, Native American legends, the Four Corners area, and a little Magical Realism courtesy of Gabriel García Márquez or Isabel Allende. They all manifest themselves in this little, living skull that watches me write and may even contain my muse (wow, I never considered that until now).

What’s next? Tell us about the next big thing you’re working on.

How about this blog post – yes, this is actually a big thing. I’ve been going through a period of very little productivity. We all have these moments, I’m sure. I was getting ready to pitch an urban fantasy at the upcoming Storymakers conference, Madison Blackwood and the Twelve Hours of Night, something a little like Harry Potter meets Angels and Demons, but with a female protagonist and links to Dracula and Old Testament Egypt. Like so many projects, by the time I get to the second draft, I hate the whole thing. So, I started an epic Fantasy novel, got 100 pages in, and then something changed in my life, an almost spiritual manifestation, and I started something else. I’m on a journey now, at least through the pages of the LDS canon of scripture, to meet, greet, and try to understand every female character. I’ve started with Eve and the wives of Noah, Ham, Shem, Japheth – I don’t think there’s a whole lot of information there, but there’s lots of hints and indications that there’s more to each of their stories, something that might become creative non-fiction. I love re-reading about these characters, women most people have never heard of, characters like Jael, Rahab, Tamar, and Dinah, or even those that have no names like the woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery, the handful of widows, or the queens (Vashti, Esther, Sheba, Lamanites), or even the Daughters of Onitah – there’s got to be a story there. I’m off to a great start. I’ve got over a hundred names to work with, so far. All that being said, how about I give you an exclusive, a cover reveal, the story I mentioned at the beginning. Well, here it is, Madison Blackwood and the Twelve Hours of Night, soon to be pitched at a writing conference near you.

Here’s that Suggested Reading List I promised. I’ve only included one title per author, and only the ones off the top of my head. I’m sure I’ve missed several of my favorites, several that are much better written, but what the heck. One of these books I absolutely hated, not because it was poorly written, but because the author made me hate every character by the end of the book. That’s got to say something about the writing, right? I’ve included some non-fiction, short stories, and poems as well.

•  Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• The Blight Way by Patrick F. McManus
• A Fine Dark Line by Joe R. Lansdale
• Working for Bigfoot by Jim Butcher
• Speaks the Nightbird by Robert R. McCammon
• Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
• At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
• Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
• Lion of Ireland by Morgan Llywelyn
• The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
• The Distant Hours by Kate Morton
• The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
• The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
• Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
• Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
• One Hundred Years of Solitude
• by Gabriel García Márquez
• The Misenchanted Sword by Lawrence Watt-Evans
• The Walking Drum by Louis L’Amour
• The Hunger by Alma Katsu
• The Green Mile by Stephen King
• A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
• The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
• A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck
• Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
• The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
• The Dinner by Herman Koch
• The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
• Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson
• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
• In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
• Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith
• Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Askaban by J.K. Rowling
• Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
• Something Wicked this Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
• The Book of Job (get a good copy with commentary)
• The Tyger by William Blake
• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Story of An Hour by Kate Chopin
• The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood
• The Demon Lover by Elizabeth Bowen
• Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

About K. Scott Forman

K. Scott Forman is a writer and editor. He co-edited and contributed to the first three volumes of Fast Forward: A Collection of Flash Fiction along with working on three more volumes, a novel, and a flash novel for Fast Forward Press. With the Utah Chapter of the Horror Writers Association (HWA), he selected and edited the volume It Came from the Great Salt Lake: A Collection of Utah Horror. Scott graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University and was the recipient of the Robert Creeley Scholarship in 2007. He also received a Master of Arts and Education degree from the University of Phoenix, and a Bachelor of Arts in English and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Maryland. Scott teaches English Composition at Weber State University and was an adjunct faculty member at the National Cryptologic School. He has taught courses in Developmental English, Composition, Research, Writing for Math and Science, and Haiku. He is a member of the HWA and League of Utah Writers and enjoys long walks in inclement weather, sunsets with blood in them, and Metallica at volumes determined unsafe by the Surgeon General. He has had several short stories and poems published and is currently at work on the Great American Novel. He makes his home in the Rocky Mountains with his family and a collection of guitars. Find out what he’s up to at http://fearknocks.com

Connect with K. Scott

• Website: FearKnocks.com
• Facebook: @kscottforman
• Twitter: @KScottForman
• Amazon Author Page

Lovecraft’s Pillow and other Weird Tales is K. Scott Forman’s first collection of stories that plumb the depths of imagination when the lights go out. In these 12 tales and 1 poem, we revisit Jack the Ripper (The House that Jack Built), suicide and the consequences (Mumford’s Ghost), sympathy for the devil (Neighbor of the Beast), redemption (The Rescue), PTSD (The Stranger Within), a Frankenstein short (Lost at Sea), a Lovecraftian-story inspired by Stephen King (Lovecraft’s Pillow), and more.

Find it on Amazon

***

You can also find updates and post notifications on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram – chose the one you like the most!