A Horror World Conversation with Bentley Little
By Steven E. Wedel

Bentley Little. If you’re a reader of Horror World, you know the genre well enough to know this man’s name. You probably also know that he is almost as difficult to interview as J.D. Salinger or Mary Shelley. So, for him to open up to Horror World is a big event, and one that we are very grateful for.

My own personal experience with Bentley’s work began with THE STORE. Man, I thought it was creepy when the animals were dying on the construction site, but when it came to employees doing things I recognized from my long-ago job at a certain retail giant … Well, that was a different level of creepy.

But, enough fanboy blabbering from me.

Horror World: Bentley, thank you for taking the time to talk with us. You had a new book, HIS FATHER’S SON, (Signet) come out in September. Your regular readers will know that many of your books are inspired by things they can see going on in our sometimes scary culture. What inspired HIS FATHER’S SON?

BENTLEY LITTLE: A friend of mine moved back to Puerto Rico a few years ago to help his aging parents.  A loser brother of his had dumped two kids off with the parents and they were basically too old to care for the children.  After being there awhile, my friend started to notice that his dad was behaving strangely.  He took his father to the hospital, where they discovered that his dad had had a stroke.  He was also diagnosed with senile dementia.  The family was told that the dad should be remanded to some sort of nursing home or care facility.  They could not afford to do that, so my friend was warned that his dad might become violent.  Doctors advised him to hide all knives and other possible weapons.  Indeed, the dad did attack my friend’s mother.  That was sort of the genesis of the novel.

HW: One Amazon reader commented on how this is a departure from your THE books (THE STORE, THE ACADEMY, THE RESORT, etc.). Can you talk to us about the deviation from your title formula, and how this book differs from your previous ones?

BL: Titles are not my strong suit.  Never have been, never will be.  I called my first novel The Revelation because I was a huge admirer of Stephen King and titles like The Shining, The Stand and The Dead Zone had done all right by him.  My publisher wanted to continue with that trend for a long time, although recent editors have wanted the titles to be more “dynamic” and to, if possible, incorporate verb forms.  So The Point became The Burning and the novel after that became The Vanishing.  Usually, I come up with a title after I have finished writing the novel.  His Father’s Son was no exception.  Once more, I’d completed the book and was floundering around for a title.  I came up with several ideas, but they were all crappy.  An editor actually came up with His Father’s Son, and I agreed that it was better than anything I could come up with.  So we used it.

HW: Reviews have been good, and it would seem you have another winner on your hands with HIS FATHER’S SON. In a genre known for its ups and downs, where even the best authors miss a few, you have consistently put out books that have been well received by fans and critics. What’s your secret to success?

BL: I have no secret.  I simply write the type of stories that I like to read.  Some books are better than others, but I think that, overall, my work is pretty consistent because I don’t take into account what’s popular or hip or critically successful, I just sit in my room and write the stories that come to me.  Which means there’s an identifiable sensibility in my fiction.  It’s why a person who reads one of my novels and likes it will probably like all of them—and why someone who picks up one of my books and hates it will probably hate the rest of them as well.

HW: You’re also known as one who is proud to wear the label of “horror author.” That gets you a thumbs-up from us here at Horror World, but can you tell us why you’ve chosen to forego the “thriller” or “dark fantasy” or any other new category moniker?

BL: Because those candyass euphemisms make me cringe in embarrassment.  When I hear the word “thriller,” I think of spies and assassins.  “Dark fantasy” brings to mind wizards and knights in black armor.  Neither of those labels appropriately describe supernatural fiction or fiction that deals with ghosts, monsters and brutal psycho killers.  “Horror” does.  As far as I’m concerned, horror fiction is the highest from of literature.  It offers a writer the broadest possible canvas on which to work and allows for the creation of metaphors far more powerful and lasting than those found in any other type of fiction.  Its practitioners should be proud to own the label “horror.”  They should be speaking up for the genre and demanding it receive the literary respect it is due.  They shouldn’t be running from the word and denying that they write it.  I have no respect for authors who write horror but claim they do not, or insist with pretentious sanctimoniousness that they refuse to be labeled.  They can all go to hell.  I’m a horror writer and proud of it.  I’ll never run away from that.

HW: The market has certainly changed since you burst onto the scene in 1990 with THE REVELATION. Do you think it’s primarily internal or external forces to cause the market to ebb and flow?

BL: Both.  There was some internal damage done in the late 1980s and early 1990s when publishers, seeking to capitalize on the remarkable success of Stephen King, put out a bunch of crappy books by hack writers (I now see some of those same names on romance and western novels).  A lot of readers got burned by that and abandoned the genre, mistakenly assuming all horror novels were equally bad.  Also, externally, people don’t read as much as they used to, and a lot of horror fans get their fix these days through movies rather than books, which definitely has an impact on sales.  As does the fact that a lot of people spend their leisure time playing games or surfing the internet.  But horror fiction has always been here and always will be here.  There’s no need to worry about it.

HW: What advice would you give to the young horror novelist looking to break into the business today?

BL: I’m a bad person to ask because the route I took to publication was unique and probably not duplicatable—and I know no other way.  In the early 1980s, I started selling short stories to small press magazines.  General readers never saw these publications, but other writers did, and editors did, and I gradually worked my way up to paying markets.  In 1986, I wrote The Revelation as my master’s thesis.  I send it out to a few publishers who sent me form rejection letters.  At a book signing, I asked Robert McCammon if he had any advice on how to get the novel published.  “Get an agent,” he said.  But I had no idea how to do that, so the manuscript collected dust while I kept writing and selling short stories.  Then I met Dean Koontz at a book signing, and we both had stories in the same magazine.  He remembered my piece, enjoyed it and asked if I’d written anything longer.  “I have a novel,” I admitted shyly.  He took down my phone number, called me up the next week and gave me the name of an agent, Dominick Abel, whom I’ve been with ever since.  After two years of getting nowhere, The Revelation finally sold.  Five years after that I was making enough money to quit my day job.

But it was a long, hard slog, and I was fortunate that a series of lucky breaks came my way.

I guess if I were to give advice to aspiring authors, I would say write a lot and submit everywhere.  You’re going to need a thick skin because a lot of your stuff will be rejected, but there are many editors out there and they all have different tastes.  What might be rejected by one could very well be embraced by another.  Don’t give up.  Oh, and try to have a famous writer hook you up with an agent.

HW: OK, I have to ask about your status as being a bit reclusive. What’s up? Not many authors would even think about operating without a MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Livejournal, or at least a Web page with a link to his publicist. And yet you not only don’t have those things, you don’t make many public appearances, but continue to be a fan favorite. Tell us about your decision to distance yourself from the usual publicity channels.

BL: I’m actually not that reclusive.  I’m a pretty visible part of my community.  But horror, for me, is a literary preference not a lifestyle, so I am absent from conventions and a lot of events in the horror world.  And I decided early on that I wanted to be judged on my work not my efforts at self-promotion.  I’ll do interviews, but I’m not about to blog or Twitter or document the mundane details of my everyday life in a pathetic attempt to interest people in my work.  The books are out there.  Buy them or not.  But I’m not going to be a dancing monkey and entertain you with my antics in the hopes that hearing about my lifestyle will encourage you to read my novels.

HW: HIS FATHER’S SON is your 19th or 20th novel, right? And if I’m looking at my dates right, you’ve put out a book a year going back to 1990. Is it still as much fun today as it was the first time you sat down to write? What keeps you working?

BL: It’s not always fun.  Some novels are definitely more fun to write than others.  Sometimes I’ll get halfway through a book and realize that I don’t want to be there.  I force myself to slog through to the end because, well, that’s my job.  But, overall, writing is as enjoyable as it ever was, and there’s nothing on earth I’d rather be doing.

HW: You don’t shy away from graphic depictions of sex and gore in your books, and yet the reader is never left thinking he was shortchanged on plot or characterization. How do you balance the visceral and the cerebral?

BL: That’s what I love about horror fiction.  It encompasses everything.  If you’re a romance writer or a western writer, you’d better stick to the subject.  If you’re penning mainstream literature, a grisly death is not only going to throw your narrative way out of whack, it’s going to alienate your readers and the critics.  But with horror, everything goes into the mix.  You can have a tender love story, a gruesome disemboweling, a comedic interlude, an arousing sex scene, anything you want.  And within this extremely malleable framework, horror deals with the big issues: love, death, good, evil, religion, sex.  Horror fiction—there’s nothing like it.

HW: Do you have any personal taboos, or is anything you can think of fair game for your stories?

BL: I have no taboos.  Some of my editors do, and I have had scenes that have ended up on the cutting room floor, so to speak.  But I’ll write about anything if it’ll serve the story.

HW: What can we expect to see coming from you in the next year or two?

BL: A new novel, some short stories here and there.  The usual.

HW: A hundred years from now, when we’re all dead and your books are being discussed in university classrooms, which one do you think will be seen as your magnum opus? Or have you written it yet?

BL: I don’t know.  I’m probably too close to be an impartial judge.  I have no idea what I’ll be writing in the future, but of the existing novels, I think maybe The Ignored has the best shot at longevity.  It’s one of my most ambitious books, and rather than deal with a specific issue or problem, I think it sort of captures the totality of our society at a certain point in time.  It might have the broadest scope of any of my novels.  But who can tell?

HW: Is there anything you’d like to add? Anything I forgot to ask?

BL: Nope.

HW: Thank you again for your time, Bentley, and for your many contributions to the genre. I know many of us will never look at a university, a resort, or even our mailman in the same way again because of you.

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