A Quote by Paul G. Tremblay

In the early 2000s, I started selling some short stories to horror markets. I joined the Horror Writers Association. — © Paul G. Tremblay
In the early 2000s, I started selling some short stories to horror markets. I joined the Horror Writers Association.
I started writing short stories. I tried writing horror, mystery, science fiction. I joined a little critique group here in town and ran my stories past them. After about three years, I tackled my first novel, Subterranean. It took me 11 months to write.
Many of my short stories (all unpublished) were horror, and the novel I'd just finished was horror, too.
I think I've covered every other genre. The truth is, I'm a horror fan myself. When I started in this business, horror wasn't cool. But it's cool now. Horror attracts A-list talent. That wasn't the case when I started.
I think readers appreciate those of us who stay in the trenches and fight the good fight even when times get tough. I know that I, personally, lost respect for writers who, when there was a downturn in the market, started shouting from the rooftops that they wrote thrillers and suspense novels rather than horror. As far as I'm concerned, those wussboys should sever all ties with the horror community if that's the way they feel and get out of the way so real horror writers can do their work.
I'm a fan of short horror fiction... in fact, the most memorable horror I've read is of the short variety... but I have a hard time pulling it off myself.
I spent years only ever reading horror and then trying to write horror - and deep down, a horror writer is still what I'd love to be. But it wasn't until I started writing crime that things began to work for me.
As a kid I was into horror. I loved horror. Horror was huge. I was always into horror. Goosebumps for me was massive growing up. Horror for me was always a big thing.
I've always loved short stories. Even before I was a writer I was reading short stories - there were certain writers where I just felt like they could do in a short story what so many writers needed a whole novel to do, and that was really inspiring to me. Alice Munro, I felt that way about from an early time. Grace Paley.
I started out with almost entirely black fans except for a little handful of people in the horror writers' community, and those people really liked horror, you know. They will go to any lengths and read whomever they can find because they like that feeling of being scared.
The thing is, horror is a big part of 'Sherlock Holmes.' Doyle also wrote a lot of great horror stories, so there's a lot more horror in 'Holmes' that people possibly think of. There's a lot of curses and mysticism and real scares.
I have always felt a little bit uncomfortable with question [why I'm write these stories]. It's not a question that you would ask a guy that writes detective stories or the guy that writes mystery stories, or westerns, or whatever. But it is asked of the writer of horror stories because it seems that there is something nasty about our love for horror stories, or boogies, ghosts and goblins, demons and devils.
I feel lucky that I get to read and publish stories that are not necessarily overtly horror in 'Best Horror of the Year.'
I thought I was going to be a horror story writer. My influences were horror writers, like Rich Matheson, Ray Bradbury and Bram Stoker.
The definition of horror is pretty broad. What causes us "horror" is actually a many splendored thing (laughs). It can be hard to make horror accessible, and that's what I think Silence of the Lambs did so brilliantly - it was an accessible horror story, the villain was a monster, and the protagonist was pure of heart and upstanding so it had all of these great iconographic elements of classic storytelling. It was perceived less as a horror movie than an effective thriller, but make no mistake, it was a horror movie and was sort of sneaky that way.
When there's a great horror movie, people are like, 'Horror's back!' And when there's a series of not so good ones, 'Horror's dead.' I think it's all about the quality. When there are one or two good horror movies in a row, people come out interested again.
I feel like too many horror writers and filmmakers sort of just assume that the default is, 'The horror movie must be all atmosphere first and everything else second.'
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