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Tag archive: Nuts & Bolts Archives - Horror Writers Association [ 4 ]

NUTS & BOLTS: INTERVIEW WITH JOEL HODGSON, CREATOR OF MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000

By Tom Joyce

Like his friend Jerry Seinfeld, Joel Hodgson was a rising comedy star in the 1980s, with appearances on Saturday Night Live and Late Night with David Letterman. Then he realized he wasn’t having any fun, and walked away from Hollywood to start a low-budget puppet show in Minneapolis.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 began as a local TV oddity, distributed fan-to-fan via mailed VHS tapes. Its fan base has grown steadily over the decades, as the show picked up a Peabody Award, two Emmy nominations, and a place on Time Magazine’s list of “100 Best TV Shows …

NUTS & BOLTS: INTERVIEW WITH NOVELIST AND HAUNTED TOUR OWNER JAN-ANDREW HENDERSON

By Tom Joyce

While working as a ghost tour guide in Edinburgh, Jan-Andrew Henderson found a spot with all the makings of a real-life horror story – an eerie graveyard, a long-buried (literally) human tragedy on a grand scale, and a vicious supernatural entity called “the Mackenzie Poltergeist.”

That served as the inspiration for City of the Dead Tours, which he now owns and has turned into one of the UK’s most popular haunted tours, renowned among tourists and travel writers for its mix of entertainment and historical fact. Jan-Andrew, a multiple-award-winning author and HWA member, did the research and …

Nuts & Bolts: Interview With Indie Horror Director Chris LaMartina

By Tom Joyce

True to the throwback aesthetic of his 2013 indie film, WNUF Halloween Special, writer, director, and producer Chris LaMartina took a low-tech approach to promoting it. He used atypical tactics, such as leaving VHS copies lying around at conventions, in the hopes that curious attendees would take them home and pop them into their VCRs.

And the approach seemingly worked for his horror-comedy–a pitch-perfect reproduction of a bootlegged VHS recording from the ’80s, complete with commercials, which depicts a local news station’s disastrous Halloween broadcast from a haunted house. WNUF gained rave reviews and a cult …

Nuts & Bolts: Interview With Screenplay Writer John Penney

By Tom Joyce

Even literary legends can make a bad call sometimes. John Penney discovered that when he disregarded some early career advice from famous author Ray Bradbury, to the effect that he should give screenwriting a pass if he wanted to be a serious author. 

Fortunately, John proved Mr. Bradbury wrong, and has spent the past 30 years producing horror in one form or another as an award-winning screenwriter, director, novelist, and short-story writer. In this edition of “Nuts & Bolts,” John shares some of his insights on novel and screenplay writing.   

Q: What are the main differences between

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