Question 1: What was the initial catalyst—whether that be a short story, a novel, a film, a video game, an event—that made you want to be a writer?
The immediate catalyst was reading Stephen King's Christine during my freshman year of high school (this would have been fall of 1983). Prior to this, my goal was to work in comic books as an artist/writer. I had read a lot of comics—largely Marvel stuff—and also a fair amount of fantasy—Howard, Tolkien, Alexander, L'Engle, Lewis, Brooks—all of which tended to feed my comic book aspirations. At a prose level, I think I responded most dramatically to Howard, with Alexander a reasonably close second; though Tolkien's imagery and ideas were all over the place. I had written a couple of stories before reading King, but Christine galvanized me, took everything in my life that had come before and reorganized it under a heading marked, WRITER.
Question 2: An aspiring author has written a 70,000- to 100,000-word debut horror novel and doesn’t know what to do next; what advice would you give them? Should querying literary agents be the first choice of action, or is self-publishing becoming a viable option?
Maybe the first question I would ask the writer is, What is it you want? Here at the outset, it's important to be honest with yourself. Do you just want to have a copy of your book to hold in your hand and maybe pass out to family and friends? Then go the self-publishing route and be happy.
If your ambitions are in any way for something else, I would continue, something on a larger scale, then I would tell you to remember this: money always flows toward the writer. Always. In writing, as in sex, you do not pay for it. I would advise you to do a little bit of research--much easier online than it used to be--and find out which agents are open to queries and open to representing horror. If there are particular writers whose work you feel your book resembles, I would pay particular attention to their agents. Once you have your list of agents, send out query letters to all of them. There's plenty of information online about the proper way to write a professional query letter; find and follow it. This will be difficult, because you'll want to include all kinds of personal information about how much this book means to you and what it represents in your life, but it's important to be professional from the very start. Think of it as showing up properly dressed to a job interview.
After you've sent out your query letters, I would go on, you need to do something even more difficult: you need to put them out of your mind and move on to the next piece of writing. The temptation is going to be to check your email every five minutes as you're swept by waves of insecurity and resentment; fight that temptation. And for heaven's sake, don't email the agents every other day. Any good agent is going to be busy, which means that you may not hear back from them for a month or two. If you haven't heard back from any of them after two months, I think it's appropriate to send a brief, polite, professional follow-up, asking about a response to your query.
Statistically speaking, I would conclude, it is more likely than not your queries will be declined. This is in no way a reflection on you. (I would repeat this.) There are more reasons than I can quickly give for an agent to decline your query, most of which are only tangentially related to your letter. Of course you're going to be upset at this, disappointed. The important thing is not to do anything stupid, i.e. respond to the agent's rejection in any way. It's totally fine to go outside and yell at the sky, or complain to your partner, your parents, your friends, or your dog. But that is as far as things should go. Remember: all it takes is for one person to say yes. Try not to be too discouraged.
But what, I imagine this person asking, if everyone I query rejects my letter? What do I do then? I've invested so much time and effort into this novel; I don't want to abandon it.
At this point, I would recommend putting the book aside for a little while--say six months?--to allow yourself a bit of space from it. The hope is that when you return to it you do so with fresh eyes. At this point, you may decide that the novel maybe wasn't as good as you thought it was, which is completely fine: you can revise it now or leave it for a little while longer. If, however, your reread of the book leaves you convinced it's still as good as you thought it was, then put it somewhere safe for when your next novel is published and your agent asks you what else you have?
Question 3: With massively successful video game franchises like Resident Evil and The Last of Us, horror films consistently performing well at the box office (not to mention carving out their places in mainstream culture), and the sheer cultural popularity of iconic horror figures such as Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula, and the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King—why do you think that horror literature, from local bookstores to big 5 publishers, isn’t taken as seriously as other genres? Horror, as mentioned above, thrives in other mediums, so why not in literature? And is there anything writers and readers can do to change this? If so, then what?
I've spent way too much time thinking about this, myself. I think there are signs of positive change—the Library of America editions of Lovecraft and Shirley Jackson; the Penguin Classics editions of Blackwood, Machen, Matheson, and Smith—but change never comes as fast as any of us wants, does it? At this point, I think the best thing(s) we can do as readers is to read and support good work; while as writers we have to continue writing to the best of our ability.
Question 4: What are your general (or extensive) thoughts on AI in literature?
I don't believe that the two things go together. The people using AI for writing remind me of a couple who approached me at a neighborhood party many years ago. We want to talk to you, they said.
Sure, I said.
We have a great idea for a novel, they said.
That's wonderful, I said. Congratulations.
We were thinking, they said, that we would tell it to you, you would write it, and then we would split the profits.
Oh, I said. Thank you, but I'm afraid I'm very busy. You should go ahead and write it yourselves.
No, they said, all you have to do is write it. We have the idea.
Thanks, I said, but as I said, I'm very busy. You should go ahead and write it.
Throughout our exchange, I remained polite and smiling. The couple went away frowning and I think confused.
Those are the sort of folks, I believe, who are interested in using AI to write fiction. If you have the idea, they assume, then the rest is easy, right? Do I need to tell you, it's not? For the moment, however, AI allows these people to indulge their fantasies of creator-ship. In the end, however, there's no substitute for hard work.
Question 5: What are some novels or collections that deserve more exposure?
A half-dozen titles, in alphabetical order by the author's last name: Michael Cisco's Antisocieties; Mariana Enriquez's Our Share of Night; Laurel Hightower's Every Woman Knows This; Premme Mohammed's No One Will Come Back for Us; Robert Ottone's The Vile Thing We Created; Hailey Piper's Queen of Teeth.
Question 6: What is one book that every aspiring horror writer should read?
There's no single book a writer must read. It's much more important to read as much as you can, read copiously, promiscuously. The more you read, the more consistently you read, the better a writer you become.
Question 7: What’s next for you?
Currently, my agent is shopping around the beginning of a new novel. We'll see if anyone's interested. I'm also putting together my sixth collection, whose tentative title is, Lost in the Dark.
John Langan is the author of two novels and five collections of stories. For his work, he has received the Bram Stoker and This Is Horror awards. He is one of the founders of the Shirley Jackson Awards. He lives in New York's mid-Hudson valley with his wife and younger son at the top of a hill with a well at the bottom of it.
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