Once I’d removed J. F.’s hands from around his throat (“How can you not know who Karl Edward Fucking Wagner is?” he screamed while throttling him), we sent the young writer on his way and proceeded to grumble about “These damn kids!” for the rest of the day.
If you don’t know those names I mentioned above, you need to correct that. Now. Horror fiction has a rich history, and it is your heritage as a fan, as a reader, and especially if you’re a writer. Seek it out. Learn from it. M. R. James. William Hope Hodgson (one of my favorites). Lord Dunsany. Arthur Machen. Clark Ashton Smith. Edward Lucas White. Ambrose Bierce (another one of my favorites). Hell, explore the modern era, with John Farris and Robert Bloch and so many others. And for God’s sake—learn who Karl Edward Wagner was so that J. F. Gonzalez doesn’t throttle you next. Seriously, go look for this stuff. Read it. You’ll be glad you did.
As for the story itself, I got the idea while walking around Fell’s Point in Baltimore. At the time, I was still shocked that the kid had never read Robert W. Chambers. Things came together and the story came out in one sitting. It was originally published in one of John Pelan’s Darkside anthologies and was reprinted in my out-of-print short story collection Fear of Gravity.
BRIAN KEENE is the author of over twenty-five books, including Darkness on the Edge of Town, Urban Gothic, Castaways, Kill Whitey, Dark Hollow, Dead Sea, Ghoul and The Rising. He also writes comic books such as The Last Zombie, Doom Patrol and Dead of Night: Devil Slayer. His work has been translated into German, Spanish, Polish, Italian, French and Taiwanese. Several of his novels and stories have been optioned for film, one of which, The Ties That Bind, premiered on DVD in 2009 as a critically-acclaimed independent short. Keene’s work has been praised in such diverse places as The New York Times, The History Channel, The Howard Stern Show, CNN.com, Publisher’s Weekly, Fangoria Magazine, and Rue Morgue Magazine. Keene lives in Central Pennsylvania. You can communicate with him online at www.briankeene.com, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pages/Brian-Keene/189077221397
or on Twitter at www.twitter.com/BrianKeene