Extrait :
You have written in genres ranging from science fiction to mystery to thriller to Westerns, but your focus is undoubtedly on horror. What got you started on horror and what keeps you there?
Gary A. Braunbeck : I’m going to answer that in reverse, if you don’t mind. I stay with the field because I truly believe that if it ever gets over its case of protracted literary adolescence (and the overly defensive attitude that often accompanies it), it has the potential of any fiction to become the great mythic literature of our time, and maybe even times to come. But to be completely truthful, a majority of horror readers don’t gravitate toward my work (some outright hate it) because it’s not what they’d expected. I remember one particularly amusing review from an Amazon reader that said – and this is a direct quote – “He writes literary stuff that makes you think, and I don’t read horror to think! And why does it take him so long before any violence or stuff happens? Pages and pages of dialogue and character stuff. Who needs it?” I’ve seriously considered having that engraved on my tombstone.
What drew me toward horror were those Friday nights when I was a child and Chiller Theater ran on Channel 10. Friday was the only night I was allowed to stay up late. Dad got home from work about 11:30 p.m. (he was a second-shift factory worker, 10 hours a day), and Mom would set up TV dinner trays in the living room so Dad and I could eat while watching classic films such as Creature From the Black Lagoon, The Wolfman, The Monster That Challenged the World, and even some classic stinkers – Zontar, Thing From Venus became a particular favorite of ours. Then one Friday night Dad comes in a little late and hands me this big roll of magazines – Creepy, Eerie, and Famous Monsters of Filmland. I was a goner before I was 10.