Know a Nominee, Part 14: Hal Bodner
Welcome back to “Know a Nominee,” the interview series that puts you squarely between the ears of this year’s Bram Stoker Award nominees. Today’s second update features Hal Bodner, nominated in the category of Superior Achievement in Short Fiction for “Hot Tub.”
DM: Please describe the genesis for the idea that eventually became the work(s) for which you’ve been nominated. What attracted you most to the project? If nominated in multiple categories, please touch briefly on each.
HB: “Hot Tub” is based, as many people already know, on a true incident that happened when I first moved to Hollywood roughly 30 years ago. At the time, I lived in an apartment with a lot of other very young Hollywood “hopefuls”, all of whom were poor. Some got by with extra work, some worked minimum wage jobs, others of us hustled and some even dealt with drugs. A couple of the girls had steady secretarial jobs and, on weekends, they would spring for a case or two of beer. On Saturday
nights, we’d all gather together around a huge hot tub in the court yard and have a little party.
Well, the brother of one of the tenants – an extremely good looking young actor – was in the hot tub sometime on Wednesday night, overdosed on cocaine, and drowned. The building maintenance man put the cover back on when he came in before dawn the next morning–without realizing anyone was
in it. Sometime on Friday morning, one of the kids turned on the heater to start heating the water for the weekend party.
That Saturday, when we uncovered the hot tub, we found the corpse of the actor – now, not so goodlooking! He had been parboiling for three days. The impulse for “Hot Tub” came from that memory.
DM: What was the most challenging part of bringing the concept(s) to fruition? The most rewarding aspect of the process?
I originally started the piece with some idea of doing a riff on the old “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” idea. I wanted to capture that horrible feeling of desperation that young Hollywood hopefuls often have, and how they mask it by false cheer and latch onto anything that might even remotely be a positive boost to their “careers.” And it was terrible – maudlin and boring. No matter how I try, I just can NOT write anything with an overwhelmingly serious tone. My strength is, and always has been, comedy.
So I walked around for about three days, literally running my hands through my hair until I looked like Albert Einstein had plugged his finger into an electric socket, and making my husband crazy. Then, out of nowhere, I remembered being in Las Vegas and seeing this incredible looking poor boy at one of the hotels. And something clicked.
I sat down to write it yet again (after about a dozen false starts) and suddenly the voice of the main character was just… THERE. The piece flowed from that and, all in all, it took me a total of maybe five hours to write and edit. Once I find a character’s voice, things become easy for me. But it sometimes take awhile to zero in on what that voice should be and, if I force it, it doesn’t work.
DM: What do you think good horror/dark literature should achieve? How do you feel the work(s) for which you’ve been nominated work fits into (or help give shape to) that ideal?
HB: I think good horror (with a stress on “good”) needs to work on multiple levels. I have friends who often tell me, “Relax. Everything you write doesn’t have to have some deep seated meaning.” And that’s true. BUT, for me, it needs to mean something. It has to say something, to communicate some kind of message.
In recent years (especially with the advent of self publishing) I’ve read tons of stories and even some novels where its obvious the author had a cool basic idea or a “What if…” moment — and that’s ALL they had. They wrote the story and the plot is mildly interesting and clever, the characters are decently motivated but indistinguishable and the atmospherics, or the monster, or the general plot itself is technically “horror” and, even if it’s not, there’s enough gore and bloodshed and horrific death to justify calling it that.
But, very little of the stuff is actually about anything! It’s a story. Period. It doesn’t make the reader think. It doesn’t affect the reader. There are no layers, no subtexts of meaning. I don’t think that’s necessarily bad writing but it’s not the kind of writing that I’m able to do. If a piece doesn’t mean something (and I’m not always sure what it means while I’m writing it), I find it boring. And, by the way,
possibly the BEST example of a living multi-layer sub-textual author is Jack Ketchum. Dallas never writes anything that doesn’t have additional facets under the surface. He’s brilliant that way.
DM: I’m curious about your writing and/or editing process. Is there a certain setting or set of circumstances that help to move things along? If you find yourself getting stuck, where and why?
HB: Once I’ve “got it”, I’ve got it. I’ve written entire novels in three days – good ones. As I said, “Hot Tub” took me a couple of hours once everything gelled in my mind. It’s getting to that point where
everything falls into place, both consciously and subconsciously, that makes me a very difficult person to live with. I’m one of those authors who stalks up and down the hallways, pounds up and down the stairs, slams cabinet doors closed and mumbles incessantly to himself while an idea is germinating.
DM: As you probably know, many of our readers are writers and/or editors. What is the most valuable piece of advice you can share?
HB: Learn how to construct a freaking sentence! Once you KNOW how to write, you can violate the rules all you want. But, you need to know your ass from a participle first. Consciously ignoring the rules is one thing but its obvious that some people have no idea how to actually write a sentence. I do it all the time but I am fully aware of what I’m doing. I get away with a lot because, when you’re writing in the first person, it’s technically a form of dialogue and the rules are relaxed. My personal bete noir has always been punctuation because I think in French. Commas, in particular, are used QUITE differently in
romance languages.
All of the basic writing skills, not merely grammar, are vitally important. Bad writing–and by that, I mean bad craft in the writing– is something we’re seeing with increasing frequency. I’ve seen often read authors who think it’s okay to substitute a mere trait for character, make due with a mildly interesting series instead of putting in the work to create a plot, or to affect pretentious language and the spew from a thesaurus as an excuse for literacy.
Nor are editors immune. Everyone who has a cool idea for an anthology fancies themselves an editor nowadays. And many small presses confuse a rudimentary knowledge of high school composition and their own personal “tastes” with knowing how to properly edit a manuscript.
DM: If you’re attending WHC this year, what are you most looking forward to at this year’s event? If not attending, what do you think is the significance of recognitions like the Bram Stoker Awards?
HB: One would hope that everyone involved with the Stokers would look upon the awards as they were intended – to be a promotion of the horror genre in general, a celebration of the best that our field and of what our most creatively warped minds can produce. The actual winning of the thing should not be the priority that some people have made it. Our focus, not only as nominees but also throughout the year, should be on the Stokers as a mechanism to create a buzz for the horror industry as an institution. We should all be doing out part to promote that. Taking home the statue is, and should be, a secondary concern.
DM: What scares you most? Why? How (if at all) does that figure into your work or the projects you’re attracted to?
HB: People scare me, especially in recent years when folks no longer have opinions, they have Causes instead. Minor social gaffs and mistakes, not only on the part of public figures but also on the part of common people, spark outrage on a national level. Moreover, people want vengeance on anyone who doesn’t think the way they do; the notion of discussion to educate, re-educate and to make something think with the potential to change minds seems to have vanished from modern society.
This kind of strong, unwavering conviction that one is RIGHT simply terrifies me. It slams down the door on rational thought, strangles intellectual development and slaughters people’s ability to think. As an author who predominantly writes satire, I try to do my best to draw attention to this. Sadly, in today’s world, people are so invested by their personal beliefs and mores that they are largely blinded to satiric purpose – they are too easy to seize offense at the surface meaning and fail to understand its import.
DM: What are you reading for pleasure lately? Can you point us to new authors or works we ought to know about?
HB: For pleasure, I read non-fiction. Reading fiction is too much like work.
About Hal Bodner
Hal Bodner is the author of the best selling gay vampire novel, Bite Club. He tells people he was born in East Philadelphia because so few people know where Cherry Hill, New Jersey is located. The first person he saw in his life was C. Everet Coop, future US Surgeon General, who delivered him. Thus, Hal was ironically destined to become a heavy smoker.
He moved to West Hollywood in the 1980s and has rarely left the city limits during the past twenty years. Hal is so WeHo-centric that he cannot find his way around Beverly Hills, the next town over.
Hal has been an entertainment lawyer, a scheduler for a 976 sex telephone line, a theater reviewer and the personal assistant to a television star. For awhile, he owned Heavy Petting, a pet boutique where all the movie stars shopped for their Pomeranians. Currently, he owns an exotic bird shop.
He has never been a waiter.
He lives with assorted dogs, and birds, the most notable of which is an eighty year old irritable, flesh-eating military macaw named after his icon – Tallulah. He often quips he is a slave to fur and feathers and regrets only that he isn’t referring to mink and marabou. He does not have cats because he tends to sneeze on them.
Rapidly approaching middle-age (assuming that more than a few hundred year old people are still around), he remembers Nixon.
He got “married” very late in life to an incredible man. Sadly, after five amazing, if turbulent, years he was widowed and can sometimes be found sunbathing at his husband’s grave while trying to avoid cemetery caretakers screaming at him to put his shirt back on.
Hal recently took a crack at writing erotic paranormal romance — which he refers to as “supernatural smut” — with “In Flesh and Stone” and “For Love of the Dead”. While he enjoyed writing them immensely, he has resolved to return to his comedic roots with additional “Chris and Troy” novels and the adventures of the reluctant super hero, the Whirlwind.
He blushes to admit he is currently romantically involved with a man roughly half his age. As a result, he has recently discovered that the use of hair dye is evidently not an adequate replacement for Viagra.
