A Horror World Conversation with Al Sarrantonio
By Steven E. Wedel

If it can be done in the horror genre, you can bet that Al Sarrantonio has probably done it. Books published? Over 40 of them. Awards? Pfft. Pick a speculative fiction genre and he’s been at least nominated for its top honor. Editing? The man has collected some of the best stories of the past decade and worked with the best horror authors around, including my favorite, William Peter Blatty. Foreign languages editions? A dozen or so.

Oh, and he doesn’t limit himself to speculative fiction. Besides his horror, science fiction and fantasy, he’s also written mysteries and westerns.

You’d have to go a long way to find a more diverse or accomplished author. All of which makes it a little hard to kick off an interview. Where to begin?

Horror World: Thanks for your time, Al. We really appreciate it. Since you’re doing everything else, why not take on the romance genre?

Al Sarrantonio: I don’t think so. Not that I haven’t thought about it in the past, for the sake of the paycheck (I just finished putting my last kid through college, thank God). But, man, all those frilly clothes and bare chests. When I was editing books at a big New York publisher in the 1970s we used to call them Rodice Bippers. I’ve done TV novelizations (a couple Babylon 5s) and other lesser-than work to put ketchup on the table – but I’ve never sunk that low. Well, almost, but that’s another story for another interview…

HW: How long have you been writing, what got you started, and when did you begin?

AS: My first professional piece was accepted when I was 16 – by the legendary publishing pirate and non-payer Ray Palmer. It was a nonfiction piece about UFOs that appeared in his Flying Saucers magazine. I didn’t even get an acceptance letter – but I did get a cover credit! Palmer was the guy who started Fate magazine, and edited Amazing Stories for a time. I first knew about the “sale” when my subscription copy arrived. I was high for a week. Boy, was I a dope, and have learned a thing or two since about the biz.

HW: What got you interested in horror?

AS: My Aunt and Uncle gave me the wonderful Alfred Hitchcock YA anthologies that Random House did for three Christmases running when I ten, eleven, twelve years old. They changed my life. Stories by such greats AS Ray Bradbury, Manly Wade Wellman (both of whom I got to know much later) and others, just crème de la crème stuff. There was also Poe, who I didn’t know personally but who I read in a great little collection from the Scholastic Book Club in grammar school. I can’t speak more highly of those clubs (Arrow Book Club, etc.), I don’t know if they exist any more (they did when my kids were in school) – you got a flimsy magazine every month with choices and you cut out your order slip and gave it to teacher with a check or cash. Biggest part of my month, the hell with English and Math, I waited for those books like Ahab for the White Whale. Better than the library, I got to keep and dog-ear the damned things. By the way, anyone who owns a hardcover copy of my first story collection, TOYBOX, published by Cemetery Dance, will notice on the dedication page that the dedication itself, which is to my Aunt and Uncle, is shaped like a Christmas tree. Cute, yes? Dorchester flattened it out when they reprinted in paperback, but what can you do?

HW: Is horror your first love? What inspires you to write in other genres?

AS: Actually (blasphemy alert) my first love is science fiction. It was the first thing that TRULY CHANGED MY LIFE, when I saw, at school lunchtime, in a truncated version, the movie ROCKETSHIP X-M when I was in the second grade. I was mesmerized, and stumbled home a changed boy. I have an unfinished essay praising this pissed-on masterpiece which I have to crank out to the end some day. The movie is almost poetic in its presentation of a trip to Mars. Ever since that day in February of 1959 Mars has been grafted onto my head. I want to go there, I want to be there. Please – can anybody help? And the funny thing is that I don’t much like horror movies, never have, even though horror fiction comes more naturally to me than science fiction.

HW: What inspired your first novel, THE WORMS, and how did you go about getting it published?

AS: I started THE WORMS, literally, after reading THE RATS by James Herbert and saying to myself, “I can do this.” I had published a boatload of short stories by then, and Eric Van Lustbader, the novelist, had bugged me about writing a novel and suddenly it seemed like the right time. AS far AS getting it published goes, I didn’t even try to get an agent at that point. I knew some folks in the publishing business and, well, it clicked with Doubleday. So did the next one, CAMPBELL WOOD (both THE WORMS and CAMPBELL WOOD sold to Berkley for paperback reprint) and then I was on my way.

HW: Is it harder to get published (with a reputable house) today than it was when you started? Why, or why not?

AS: It’s always hard to get published. Let’s look at Poe again, who constantly struggled to get his stuff into print. It’s a tough business, and you have to be tough to make your way in it. I don’t know any writer worth his salt who doesn’t have enough rejection slips in a box somewhere to wallpaper his office with. It’s almost AS bad AS acting – although (sorry, Bogart) I think it’s a nobler and more artistically difficult profession.

HW: After 40 books, what keeps you coming back to the keyboard?

AS: There’s a healthy balance between Mammon and Muse. My Dad, who was an Aerospace engineer (he helped design the tail of the Space Shuttle – one of the only pieces on the damned thing that hasn’t screwed up) had a professor in his Shakespeare class at NYU just after WWII who walked into the classroom the first day and chalked on the blackboard: SHAKESPEARE WROTE FOR MONEY. That’s always been one of my mantras. Along with, of course: AND HE WROTE GODDAMNED WELL. Which is another (and, truth be told, premier) mantra. If you can’t give it your best, get out.

HW: What is your writing schedule like, and how has it changed over the years?

AS: Once I got it down (about thirty years ago) there has been very little change. I write in the morning, starting around 7 or 8 A.M. and I write until I’m finished for the day. Ten pages of stellar prose, and then, CLICK, I stop. Even if it’s in the middle of a sentence. In fact, it’s better if it’s in the middle of a sentence, because it gives me a place to pick up the next morning, and helps the unconscious gurgle of creative juices at night, which is very important. This is a mysterious process, I don’t know how it works, I haven’t met another writer yet who knows. In its own way, it’s magic. But back to the schedule: That’s five days a week, Monday through Friday, unless I’m on a tight deadline, which has been known to happen. I’ve written on Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years Day, my birthday, Larry Storch’s birthday, etc.

HW: What did you do for money before you started earning a living from your novels?

AS: AS per above, I edited books for about seven years. Learned a lot, worked with some great people (and not), learned a whole lot about the business. Before that I worked in a book warehouse, and before that held the typical roster of shit jobs: supermarket clerk, electronics circuit tester (where I had a circuit board blow up in my face once, a reversed capacitor, thought I was a goner), etc.

HW: How much of your past jobs and other life experiences find their way into your fiction?

AS: That’s not a trick question, and the only answer for any writer is: all of it. Especially the shitty parts. Any job environment, I think, is a microcosm of larger social orders, a stinking, fetid Petri dish of failed dreams, twisted egos, morons with badges, and truly well-meaning and/or good people who get crushed under the heel and never even knew there was a boot. A writer is an observer, first and foremost: he/she sees things. Notices the spaz in the corner drooling on himself (and hopefully feels empathy, and makes up a history, even if it’s complete wahoo baloney), looks at the ugly and the perfect (which is worse) and makes that clay into vignettes of the human condition. Anyone who doesn’t write about the human condition is a pornographer, or worse.

HW: How important was the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop at Michigan State University to your personal development? Do you recommend writers seek out workshops?

AS: I can’t make a blanket recommendation for writers workshops because I believe that you only get out of them what you bring. Over the years I’ve come to believe that you cannot teach anyone how to write – but you can teach them how to teach themselves how to write. Read that last sentence carefully. This is a lonely profession, you against the keyboard, and there’s no monkey in the middle. The only worthwhile writers workshops are the ones that realize that, or at least provide an environment that acknowledges that. The rest is just ego-bullshit, something I’ve never had any patience for. AS for Clarion: I got a lot out of it, a heck of a lot, but I went into a writer’s block for two years afterward (the only one I’ve ever had) and when I came out if it I began to sell steadily. Calling Dr. Freud…

HW: How does your family feel about your subject matter?

AS: Ah. I’ve written very little of what I would consider…difficult or controversial or strong material (well, maybe my story “Billy the Fetus” lands outside that zone) – but what I have done is gone through my own tough-nut censor first and I’ve never had any backlash from anyone in my family. I think I can say that I’ve never written anything that didn’t pass my own moral test, no matter what the subject matter. There were a couple of stories I’ve written that upset me or made me want to puke because of a graphic image, but at the end of the day I concluded that they had a solid core of morality, and so they went to pub.

HW: Tell me about your Halloween series. What inspired it, and where will it go? How many books will you give us in the series?

AS: Well, we’re at a crossroads now with the Orangefield books. HALLOWEENLAND is about to be published in paper by Leisure, and limited signed hardcover by Cemetery Dance. I’ve engineered the paper reprints (which reach hundreds of times more readers than the hardcovers) so that there is a definite trilogy, consisting of HORRORWEEN, HALLOWS EVE, and HALLOWEENLAND, in that order. HORRORWEEN is the problematic one, because it was a fix-up novel (A.E. Van Vogt’s term for smashing some shorter pieces together with bridging material to make a novel-length piece. I actually knew Van Vogt, met him in the early 80s). For me it was an easy decision to cobble these three hardcover limited-edition long stories together (the novelette “Hornets”, novella “The Pumpkin Boy” and short novel “Orangefield”) because there was no other way they were going to reach a wider audience than they had already. Nobody wanted to publish them AS a collection (which, with a new long piece, would have been called FOUR FOR HALLOWEEN), which would have been my first choice. But Leisure was willing to bring them out AS a novel. If you read the paperbacks in the order I listed above, there is an arc, centering on my protagonist Detective Bill Grant (no one, AS far AS I know, has yet noticed the name similarity between my cop and one of my mentors, Charlie Grant), and it has a beginning, a long middle, and an end of sorts. But that doesn’t mean I’m through with Orangefield. I’m in the middle of an Orangefield short story now, and there definitely may be more novels in the future.

HW: Of the many anthologies you’ve edited, which one do you feel has had the biggest impact and why?

AS: I hope it was 999, because I published that at a critical time (the turning of the millennium, and a turning point in the horror genre) and I had great hopes that it would help to fuel a revival in the horror field. To some extent that has happened, though I don’t know how much of it was due to the book. There has definitely been an upsurge in horror publishing since 1999, when 999 came out, but I think the greatest expanding bubble has been online. Then again, I’m not averse to taking any credit that’s thrown my way.

HW: Talk to me about some of the other authors you’ve worked with. Do you have any entertaining stories you can tell about them?

AS: You want me to tell tales out of school? Are you nuts? Oh, what I could tell you about Asimov, McCammon, Lansdale, Walter Tevis (actually, they were/are all extremely decent people – actually, wonderful people.

HW: You were book reviewer for Night Cry magazine. I remember spending a lot of time I was supposed to be cleaning grocery store floors sitting in a stockroom reading Night Cry and Twilight Zone. What are some of the best genre magazines available today? Or, maybe, instead of choosing the best, what are some of your favorites?

AS: Fantasy & Science Fiction has always been my favorite genre magazine, but in the horror category Cemetery Dance is it, and has been for quite some time. And it’s still considered a semi-pro magazine! When I wrote the introduction to 999 I bemoaned the fact that there were no steady professional magazines publishing horror fiction. Here we are eight years later and nothing’s changed. Thank heavens that CD is still around, and there are of course others such AS Subterranean Press’s magazine, and lot of worthy online efforts. But is there anything sitting next to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine on the newsstands? You know the answer.

HW: Now, your Web site is a little out of date on the page talking about upcoming works. Tell us what you have coming out soon.

AS: I have a major update, looooong overdue, on my website soon. I spent the last couple years writing too much, and working on editing projects (including the definitive edition of Ray Bradbury’s THE MARTIAN CRHONICLES, which will be out in a 1,000 page plus limited edition (including an obscene amount of extras) and with Ray’s autograph, hopefully in the next year or so from Hillhousepublishers.com) and not paying enough attention to the new millennium AS far AS ways to promote my work.

HW: What advice would you give to a young author looking to sell that first book, or score a slot in your next anthology?

AS: I will give you Fred Pohl, the great science fiction writer’s, advice: “A writer is someone who writes, not someone who talks about writing.” Write! And rewrite! And then send it to a reputable editor. And when he or she cans it, send it to another. And make sure the next thing you write is better than the last. There is no magic bullet. Like I said above, I still don’t know how it works, or quite where it comes from. I think you’re born with it, but I also think you have to want it bad enough to make it happen. A successful writer is composed of equal parts talent and ambition. Ambition powers the talent. I really believe that. I wrote a hell of a lot of bad stuff before I wrote anything good. It’s just you and the keyboard but, wow, what a rush when it works. And what a rush when you see the cover art for the first time, or when you open that box of author copies from the publisher.

HW: How important is it to promote your own work? What do you do to promote a new release?

AS: I’ve found self-promotion to be something of a chimera. I know it can work, but I have no idea how. I do know that if you promote what isn’t there, you’re like the boy who cried wolf. I’ve done book signings where we’ve sold fifty books in a hour, and others where you listen to the crickets in the corners. I think getting reviewed is important – even if some of the reviewers don’t know what they’re talking about. An agent in my business is fond of saying, “Everything helps, nothing works.”

HW: Has winning the Bram Stoker Award, and being a finalist for the Locus Award, International Horror Guild Award and World Fantasy Award had a noticeable effect on how you approach your writing or how publishers treat you?

AS: I wish I could say yes. I’ve talking to a lot of editors, and most of them (not all) say that awards produce a burp in sales, or not even that. I think it’s nice to have something to put on a cover, and if it gets that extra second of attention that’s good. A MacArthur Foundation Award would be nice, actually.

HW: Is there anything you’d like to add?

AS: My God, you’ve drained me dry! It was a wonderfully stimulating interview, and thank you.