Halloween Haunts 2013: Stoker Spotlight Interview with Mort Castle
Mort Castle is the recipient of the Bram Stoker Award® for Superior Achievement in an Anthology for Shadow Show (edited with Sam Weller) as well the recipient of the Bram Stoker Award® for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection for New Moon on the Water.
1. How would you describe New Moon on the Water and Shadow Show?
I’d say they were both books. (Ain’t I a caution? Ain’t I a stitch?) Seriously, New Moon is the (not totally) dark side of the American dream, a collection of the best of my short fiction ranging from the early 1970s to the past few years. When I do a collection, however, it’s not just stories stuck between covers; there’s a thematic unity and a pace to the entire work, and this time, I had two short semi-fictions to frame it all. Serendipity.
Shadow Show: Stories In Celebration Of Ray Bradbury, in every way is a “thank you” to a that American—make that, world—master of story, Ray Douglas Bradbury. The stories and the man inspired every writer in the book. In his intro to the book, Ray saw himself as the creative father of all of us—one of our contributors, Dan Chaon, had been corresponding with Ray since he (Dan) was 12 or so—and it was our gift for Papa.
2. Tell us about what inspired you to write New Moon on the Water and edit Shadow Show?
I pure and simply love short stories. Were it possible to earn a living writing only short stories (once upon a time, it was!), there go I. I’ve written short stories I consider 100% successful (we number maybe 40+ by now, out of some 500 or so.). I’ve never felt that about a novel. It’s natural, then, that I want my stories out there to be read for a long time, and if they are not collected, they vanish, so I do tend to think of short story collections.
Shadow Show, wow! I’ve told this story many times, but in the summer of ’09, I said to Sam Weller, my respected colleague at Columbia College Chicago and the authorized biographer of the late Ray Bradbury, “You know, there are all sorts of ‘tribute books’ for various authors—and ‘tribute CDs” etc.—but there isn’t one that stands as a tribute to Ray B and there ought to be. And it ought not to be limited to genre authors, because Bradbury is so much more than a genre writer, and so are the people he influenced, nor should it indulge in the shared world/worlds of Bradbury, etc.”
Sam agreed.
Ray said he was honored and he said he’d write an intro.
Robert McCammon, David Morrell, Jay Bonansinga, Harlan Ellison, Margaret Atwood, Tom Monteleone, Joe Meno, Joe Hill, and a number of others immediately said, “You do this book, count me in.”
Really, on this one, you’ve got the right word with “inspiration.” Ray inspired everyone in the book and that inspired Yr. Mst Obdt Servants and Editors, Sam Weller and Mort Castle.
3. What most attracts you to dark fiction?
Not sure, but Paul Wilson seems to have it right when he says you’re hard wired for horror or you’re not. It’s a matter of DNA.
As far back as I can remember, I was drawn to the horrific, the terrifying, the dark and the scary—and I’ve learned that most horror writers can say the same.
All kids have nightmares (just like adults). I was one of those kids who had ’em and liked ’em. When I was seven and a half, I had a dream that I remember to this day, a dream which in its own fictionally altered way, has informed ever so much of my writing.
I was the kid apprentice to the secret village poisoner. It was my job to grind up a yellow poison with the mortar and pestle and sneak into peoples’ houses and dose their food and drink with the poison. Nobody suspected the village poisoner—or his apprentice.
I was a kid. Must have been something wrong with me. I should have been dreaming about fluffy bunnies and wax lips and happy sunshine songs.
I wasn’t.
I had nightmares and I loved them.
I had my introduction to literary horror, “The Tell Tale Heart,” in third grade. Mrs. Curlin brought in the latest high tech educational media—a long playing phonograph record—and we eight year olds sat and listened—and were horrified.
And there was at least one of us – that was enthralled.
It scares so good!
It’s not impossible that today Mrs. Curlin would be accused of child abuse. By audio.
Me, I have to thank her.
4. What are you editing or writing now?
Hoo, more than I thought to be: I’m finishing up a literary work on Dracula, which is about all I can say about it at the publisher’s request; it’ll be out Halloween of 2014 from Writer’s Digest Books. I just signed on to do a monthly horror comic called Darchon for Red Giant Entertainment, with an initial circulation of about one million. And at last I’m finishing up a How To Write Historical Fiction for Self-Counsel Press.
5. What advice would you share with new horror writers? What do you think are the biggest challenges they face?
First and most important: Learn to write. Can’t believe there’s so much bad stuff out there—because now we get to see the bad, proudly displayed on websites, in bad electronic magazines edited by editors who can’t edit, featuring stories by people who can’t write, aimed at aspiring bad writers who want to write for bad electronic magazines, and as self-published Kindle, Swindle, Shnook, Hobo, Yoyo, and Hoohah books.
Writing is a craft and a craft can be learned and a craft can be taught.
But learn your craft before you expect to be called a writer by anyone who is a writer.
6. Name three of your favorite horror stories?
“Black Country,” Charles Beaumont. “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,” Harlan Ellison. “Thus I Refute Beelzy,” John Collier. I could name another 100.
7. What’s your favorite Halloween memory or tradition?
In college, Illinois State University, in the days before every kid and his brother could buy a great costume at Wal-Mart for 6 bucks, my theater major roommate, Terry Tiz (he was also the president of Chicago’s Shock Theater’s Marvin fan club) put together Brent Bunton’s Halloween outfit and it was great. Brent was nine or ten, a stocky kid, son of the poet and writer Ruth Wantling and stepson of Bill Wantling, a pretty well-known post-Beat writer. Gave him a hunch back under a ratty look leather jacket. Horrible, pus and blood oozing facial scars, a long gash on his forehead. Wrapped him in chains. Had his drag one booted foot. Put an axe over his shoulder.
Then he went knocking on doors.
People screamed. Literally.
8. Given a choice
, trick? Or treat?
Treat. Preferably cream cheese brownies. Trying to get as fat as I can as soon as possible so I can become the first Jewish Sumo champion.
MORT CASTLE, a former stage hypnotist, folksinger, and high school teacher, has been a publishing writer since 1967. He’s been deemed a “horror doyen” by Publishers Weekly, “El Maestro del Terror” by South America’s Galaxia Cthulhu, and “the master of contemporary horror” by Poland’s Nowa Fantastyka magazine. Castle has published about 600 “shorter things,” mostly articles and short stories, in a variety of magazines, including Penthouse, Twilight Zone, Cavalier, Bombay Gin, Writer’s Digest, and books, among them Still Dead, Lovecraft’s Legacy, Poe’s Lighthouse, and Masques (he is the only living author to have stories in all five of the Masques volumes edited by the late J. N. Williamson). His novels include Cursed Be the Child and The Strangers, optioned for the screen by Whitewater Films, and cited on the list of “Ten Best Horror-Thriller Novels” published in Poland in 2008 by Newsweek.pl. Castle edited the essential reference work Writing Horror and the expanded and revised later edition On Writing Horror for the Horror Writers Association (Writer’s Digest Books). The Stoker winning Shadow Show was a Book of the Month Club Alternate, a Shirley Jackson award nominee, a Golden Bot winner, a “must read of 2012” according to tor.com, and as an audiobook, finalist for the Audie award. Castle’s forthcoming or recent publications include: New Moon on the Water (a Bram Stoker Award™ winner) Dark Regions; (editor) All American Horror of the 21st Century, Wicker Park Press; (as co-editor with David Campiti) J.N. Williamson’s Illustrated Masques, IDW. Castle has twice won the Black Quill award for editing, has been a Bram Stoker award finalist nine times, and has had four Pushcart Prize nominations. He teaches in the fiction writing program at Columbia College Chicago and at writing conferences and seminars throughout the country. Castle and Jane, his wife of 41 years, live in Crete, Illinois, known for both its bandstand and bubbling fountain.
Read an excerpt from New Moon on the Water, “I’ll Call You,” by Mort Castle:
(From Masques V: Further Stories, Gauntlet Publications 2006.)
The call comes at three in the morning. Maybe four. Some time in between.
That’s what the bedroom clock tells you. You try to make yourself think, Some jerk, some drunk, some wrong number Drunken JERK as a weighted fear presses down on you and you have to say something:
“Hello…”
###
We wait in lines, all of us. The Dead.
There is something about this place that makes you think airport terminal. Part of it must be the lighting, cold and insistent, what fluorescent lights strive to be. And there are frequent announcements in a metallic pseudo-friendly voice: “Please maintain the lines. Do not worry: Everyone will have a chance to call. Your patience is appreciated.”
Yet you do not think “airport terminal” when you take note (take note again and again and again) of the small clouds of fog swirling around your ankles, fog which is neither cool and damp nor humid: there is no floor, not tile or carpet or underlayment, just no floor beneath you. Of course, there are no clocks, nothing to indicate current time or to delineate time’s passage: there is no time.
We have moved beyond the confines of Time. We have entered The Twilight Zone (cue the classic leitmotif). This is … The Afterlife! Or at least An Afterlife.
Can you recall a theology or cosmology that had this scenario outlined?
And on this reincarnation, you will be a Brahmin but you will not wear a Rolex, nor will anyone else…
… for I bring the Good News: In My Father’s House are many lines and there you will stand until it is your turn to take up the telephone and call.
Again, we are instructed to “maintain the lines.” Again, informed how very much our “patience is appreciated.” A little philosophical wool-gathering:
What is patience, what does such an abstraction mean here? There is no time here, so there is no time passing here, and right now, whatever now means in non-time, you do not have anything else you could, should, or ought to be doing.
After a lifetime, lifetimes, spent queuing up, do the British find these lines the natural state of affairs? If so, then pity the poor Spanish … of the lengthy siesta and the lackadaisical por manana, pity this beautifully free people to whom straight lines and their illusion of imposed order/time and place are laughable.
But there are no Spanish here, nor British. Nor Italians. Nor French. Nor Irish. Nor Malaysians nor Japanese (not an airport: No Japanese!) nor Incas nor Hottentots nor Swedes.
There are only The Dead.
We are just as spectral as you might imagine–we could be all those ghosts you’ve ever dreamed or seen in films–and we are silent, because, well, because there is nothing for us to talk about–at least not with our Comrades in Death, not amongst ourselves, anyway.
But we do want to talk. Yes. We have to.
Perhaps not all of the dead need to talk. Perhaps other dead have gone on to a different place, a better place, perhaps, hallelujah and open the hymnals to whatever page you choose.
But we dead, we must talk and that is why we are here.
That is why we (Please) maintain the lines. That is why we are assured when reassured, Everyone will have a chance to call. That is why we are patient.
We are never stationary. Our spectral feet move on a spectral plane and the lines progress.
The lines move.
Everyone here will be able to call.
###
Telephone to your ear. Deep breath, held for a moment. “Hello?” Deep dread, held within. “Hello?” Please, oh, please, please …
You would like to say, “Is this a joke? Is this something you think real funny?”
Of course you don’t say that because you know this is not a joke and you can’t pretend you think it is a joke and you know this is nothing that your caller thinks funny.
###
Lines progress.
Closer.
Of course, just because we get to make the call, does not mean the call gets through, doe not mean we will necessarily speak or be heard by someone.
Someone alive.
And just why is that?
We do not know. That is how it is sometimes.
You know: Like when your cable goes out.
But it’s different, too. The cable goes out, we know there is cause and there is effect: a fiber optic-eating squirrel or a satellite gone hinky or a Chevrolet plows into a utility pole and triggers a power failure.
In that other place, the world of the living, we have science and we have faith to explain what science cannot.
Here, no science. Perhaps no faith.
Knowledge, yes, we in the lines have that. We know if a call does not get through, there will be no explanation, but there will be another chance. Always another chance.
The unsuccessful caller moves to the end of the line.
Thus, begin again.
###
You hear that silence at the other end.
You hear that silence this time.
You can hear your heart.
You can hear a rushing sound in your ears.
Oh. Oh, my.
You want to hang up hang the hell up —– hang it up.
And you can’t.
Because you know.
###
And so, everyone, each one, moves closer to the telephone. Each one of us moves closer to reach out in your night to call you. Each of us. Spectral feet move in silence through shifting billows of something like fog.
“Please maintain the lines. Do not worry: Everyone will have a chance to call. Your patience is appreciated.”
We are the Dead and the Dead are patient.
We have no time.
We have purpose.
###
Please. If you are there, talk to me. If you are here, talk to me.
What is this, you fool, you self-flagellating idiot! As oppressive and horrible as is the silence, why must you seek worse?
Do you understand–do you ever understand–why when your corkscrew-pain-to-the-brain midnight toothache at last quits pound pound POUNDING, you have to stir it with the tip of your tongue, poke away at the motherfucker, bring it back, no, not just bring it back but bring it back worse.
Talk to me. Talk to me.
Goddamnit.
Talk to me.
###
Then we talk.
Some of us get through on the telephone.
We call out, in the night, and are heard.
You abandoned me, you promised to love and cherish and promised forever and then I got sick and you abandoned me
…think I didn’t know, think I didn’t know what you were you doing with those men, your secret men, secret men and their secret diseases, disease
you shared…
…never a daddy, never a father,
fulltime absence, fulltime betrayal …
Shame! The shame of it. The shame you brought me
there were crazy people there, they hurt me, you left me there with crazy people
a cigarette lighter and burned me and burned me and burned
made me confess though i had done nothing, with water and pipes you made me confess though i was an innocent though i am an innocent
don’t know why don’t care why but know what you did and hate you and hate you
I CAN TALK I CAN TALK NOW YOU BASTARD I CAN TALK
AND TELL YOU YOU BASTARD I CAN TALK
I CAN TALK AND I CAN TELL YOU
We talk, the dead talk, and what we say, no matter what we say is always this:
We do not forgive.
###
The call comes at three in the morning. Maybe four. Some time in between.
That’s what the bedroom clock tells you. You try to make yourself think, Some jerk, some drunk, some wrong number Drunken Jerk as a weighted fear presses down on you and you have to say something:
“Hello…”
###
I’ll call you.
NEW MOON ON THE WATER can be purchased here. (Can be—hell … should be!)
http://www.darkregions.com/books/new-moon-on-the-water-by-mort-castle
SHADOW SHOW
ALL AMERICAN HORROR OF THE 21ST CENTURY
ILLUSTRATED MASQUES
THE STRANGERS
CURSED BE THE CHILD
Fantastic interview! I loved Shadow Show!
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First. Jewish. Sumo. Champion. Excellent. And a great, fun interview, too!
Awesome!!!!!!!!!!!! Great work. 🙂 🙂
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Love the interview and excerpt. Thanks, Mort.