by Scott Sandin

met Ray Garton on September 1, 1979. It was a Sunday. We were teenagers then, and we had arrived at the same boarding academy to start our junior year in high school. At one of the first social gatherings of the student body, both Ray and I gravitated toward the same cute little blonde, Tina somethingorother. After a few ridiculous moments of competing for the girl’s attention, Ray and I discovered that we shared a passion for horror movies.

Ray Garton and friend. Ray's on the left. [Photo: Derek Sandin]

Poor Tina lost both of us at that moment, and it was at this point that Ray Garton officially became my Best Friend. During our two-year stint at this boarding school, Ray and I did our best to break as many rules as possible without getting kicked out. I got suspended once, but Ray never got caught. He was too charming. Everyone loved him. He had everybody fooled.

Ray’s first claim to fame came at the Fall Talent Show, when he brought the house down with his comedy sketch using a ventriloquist dummy. Yep, Ray is a ventriloquist. Next, he gained notoriety by sharing his short stories. Ray had several very disturbing tales typed up, and these pages would circulate all over campus from classroom to classroom, dormitory to dormitory. They were in particularly high demand during long, boring assemblies where Ray’s stories passed clandestinely, one page at a time, from student to student, down aisle after aisle as an oblivious speaker droned away on the podium.

For many kids at this church school, Ray’s stories were their first exposure to spine tingling fiction. Someday, Ray and I will collaborate on a full accounting of our adventures at Rio Lindo Academy. Of course, we’ll have to tone it down a bit because no one would ever believe the truth.

After high school, Ray and I enrolled at the same college. We were dormitory roommates our freshman and sophomore years. Ray studied behavioral science while I was a business major. Shortly before our junior college year began, Ray and I moved out of the dorm into an apartment, and Ray quit school to focus on his writing. And write he did. Ray is the only guy I’ve ever known who types 120 words per minute, and this was before word processors. This was 1983, and Ray wrote his first novel, Seductions, while I watched and proofread. I guess my proofreading was pretty good because Ray dedicated this, his first book, to me. What an honor! A few months after Seductions was released, Ray and I stopped in at a bookstore in Ray’s hometown to revel at the display of his books for sale. On a lark, I took a copy of Seductions off the shelf, pulled out a pen, and told Ray to autograph the title page. He did so and handed it back to me. I then signed my name on the dedication page and returned the book to the shelf for some lucky reader. I’ve always wondered who bought that book.

After selling a couple more books, Ray moved to Southern California. I followed him a year later after finishing college. I took a job with a large accounting firm in downtown Los Angeles, and once again Ray and I were able to share an apartment. L.A. turned out to be a bad move for me. I hated the city, and I hated my job. The only forgiving aspect of my time there was being able to participate in Ray’s developing career. This is when Live Girls came to life, and I got to read it first! Ray continues to this day to consult with me on his writing efforts, but now it’s all through e-mail. Back then, I read each page fresh out of the typewriter (or still in the typewriter to make corrections easier) with the author in the same room. I was genuinely part of the creative process, and it was very gratifying. My contributions to Ray’s work were subtle, but I’m quite proud to be listed among the "acknowledgment" names in nearly all Ray Garton books. I worked for it!

After a horrible year in Los Angeles, I moved home to Napa. A year or two later, Ray wised up and moved back to Northern California, also. I’ve changed jobs three times since then, but Ray is still an author. And now he’s a film critic. When I first perused Really Scary, I thought I’d do Ray a favor and suggest to the host that they feature an interview with Ray Garton. The host, Val, recognized my name from all of Ray’s books and asked me to put together a few questions for our mutual friend. I agreed to the job because I know that Ray can’t stand Barbara Walters, Larry King, or Dan Rather. So here it is: Scott Sandin’s interview with Ray Garton.

At what point in your life did you become certain that you would be a professional writer?

Ray Garton: I was eight years old. It didn't hit me like a bolt of lightning, or anything, but it was about that time that I became certain I would be a writer of some kind. To be more specific, I knew I was going to tell stories. That's what I was most interested in -- telling stories. I consider myself a storyteller first and foremost.

Was there any specific horror novel that inspired you to change the course of your life and write for a living?

RG: I’ve always had a great love for reading. Even before I was old enough to read myself, I loved being read to. I read just about everything I could get my hands on when I was a little kid. I was especially fond of comic books, specifically Batman and horror comics. Before I could write, I used to draw stories in comic-book panels. They were usually pretty dark and violent, too, much to the disappointment of my parents. As I got older, I began to write short stories of all kinds -- I think my mother still has all of them -- but most of them were still pretty dark. The light clicked on, however, during the summer of 1982 when I was perusing the paperback rack at a drugstore in Petaluma. As I recall, Scott, I was there with you and your sister. We were on our way to see a double bill of A Boy and His Dog playing with Zardoz at the local art house theater. Anyway, I picked out one of those thick, cheesy horror novels with the glitzy embossed cover artwork and a sensational title, which I honestly can’t recall. A week or so later, after having read it, I was complaining to you about the shallowness of the characters and predictability of the plot. You listened politely, then told me that if I didn’t like all the crap I was reading, then I should write something better myself. That’s when I decided to take the plunge and become a writer.

How did you "break in" to the publishing industry? How did you obtain a literary agent?

RG: My first agent was a friend of my then-girlfriend's family, and I met him through them. I sent him some short stories, but he told me he didn't handle short fiction and asked if I had a novel. I sent him Seductions, and he sold it rather quickly, just as he did my second novel, Darklings. I've had other agents since then. I'm often asked by aspiring writers how to get an agent, and I have to tell them I honestly don't know. My writing career started out very easily, and that was deceptive. It spoiled me. Things got increasingly difficult after that. It's been uphill from there.

Increasingly difficult? Describe this uphill battle.

RG: As in any profession, a certain amount of success comes from being in the right place at the right time. Back in the '80s, when I started out, horror was king. It's often referred to as the Golden Age of horror fiction. Publishers were snatching up horror novels all over the place. I came along at a time when publishers were buying what I was writing. That's not the case anymore. The publishing industry changed a great deal in the '90s and horror fiction fell out of favor. On top of that, I made some bad choices in representation. Richard Curtis was my agent when I wrote Crucifax. There was a scene in that book involving an abortion that my editor wanted me to remove or water down. I disagreed and went to Richard with it, thinking he would support me. He agreed with my editor. Looking back on it now, I realize he was right, but at the time, I was young and stupid and thought I was right. I left Richard over that, and it was a big mistake. My subsequent search for good representation slowed me down, and it was my own damned fault. I've since gone back to Richard with my tail between my legs and I plan to stay there. In the last couple years, I stopped writing altogether because of a problem I had with my hip, which required two operations, the second being a total hip replacement. The pain involved brought 18 years of writing momentum to a screeching halt. I'm just now trying to get back into the routine of writing, and it's not as easy as I thought it was going to be.

So, the uphill battle has been made up of a combination of changes in the industry, my own bad choices, and more recently, a bum hip.

Define the term "splatterpunk".

RG: I don't remember the exact year or exact convention, but at a horror convention in the late '80s, I was on a panel with a couple other young writers and a few veterans. One of the veterans started slamming the work of younger writers, claiming it was too violent, too explicit. He thought horror should be quiet and subtle. "Splatterpunk" was born at that convention as a response to this and other old-school writers who didn't approve of the new generation of horror fiction. It was just another label, and it referred to horror fiction by younger writers whose work tended to be explicitly violent. I was included in this group, although I always fought the association. While it's true that much of my work has been on the violent side, I've never written explicit violence just for the sake of explicit violence, which seemed to be part of the spirit of splatterpunk. Fortunately, it never really caught on -- before you knew it, people were asking, "What was splatterpunk?" I, for one, was happy to see it go.

How many works have you published?

RG: I've lost count of the short stories I've published -- probably between two and three dozen. If you add up the novels, novellas, collections, movie novelizations, TV tie-ins, and young adult books, I've got 39 titles to my name so far. That includes my upcoming novellas Zombie Love and Crawlers.

Which of your novels was the most fun to write? Why?

RG: Every novel is fun, even though it's hard work -- I'm very fortunate to be able to make my living doing something I truly love to do -- but the most fun so far has been Sex and Violence in Hollywood. It started out as a novella about the spoiled son of an obnoxious movie producer who plots to kill his father. But at some point, it took an unexpected turn and assumed a life of its own. I really had no idea what was going to happen from page to page. The characters took the reins from my hands. The first draft was over 900 pages long, and for most of that time, it felt like I was nothing more than a typist taking dictation. It was the most fun I've ever had writing a book, and if I knew how to duplicate the experience, I would. But I don't. It was one of those things that, as they say, just happened.

Religion plays a large role in many of your stories. How was religion part of your childhood?

RG: I was raised a Seventh-day Adventist and religion played a big part in my life growing up. The Seventh-day Adventist church is a Christian sect based on a combination of the Bible and the writings of a woman named Ellen G. White, whom the church maintains was a divinely inspired prophet of God, and I grew up following all the Seventh-day Adventist rules. We went to church on Saturdays instead of Sundays, we didn't eat pork or shellfish, I wasn't allowed to go to movies or dances, and I spent most of my childhood living in fear of the Time of Trouble, which is supposed to come just before the Second Coming of Christ. During that time, Seventh-day Adventists believe they will be persecuted by other Christian religions. They foresee a time when laws will be passed requiring everyone to worship on Sunday, and Adventists, who worship on Saturday, will be hunted down, imprisoned, and ultimately executed for their beliefs. I used to have nightmares about that when I was a kid. My parents meant no harm when they taught me these things -- they were just passing their religious beliefs down to me, as all parents do -- but that stuff scared the hell out of me. I was a very scared kid -- I mean, most of the time. I panicked every time a TV show I was watching was interrupted by a news bulletin -- for those first few seconds, before the newscaster revealed the nature of the bulletin, I was holding my breath, absolutely terrified that he was going to announce the passage of the National Sunday Law that I had been taught could come at any time. For a kid, I was on edge a lot. I actually spent time and lost sleep worrying about the coming Time of Trouble. I think the roots of my love of the horror genre are in Seventh-day Adventist doctrine. Of course, the Seventh-day Adventists wouldn't be too happy to hear that, because they disapprove of fiction, as well.

I'm still a Christian, but I'm no longer a Seventh-day Adventist. I don't belong to any church, and I hesitate to say that I'm a Christian these days. The word "Christian" has somehow come to represent a loud, high-profile group of people who want to legislate morality, pass judgment on and condemn everyone who doesn't live life according to their rules, and behave in other ways that are extremely un-Christ-like. Whenever the topic of religion comes up in a conversation, I like to quote one of my favorite movie lines from Woody Allen's Hannah and her Sisters. Max Von Sydow's character has been watching televangelists on TV, and he remarks that if Jesus Christ were to come back and see everything that's being done in His name, "He'd never stop throwing up."

Which of your life experiences provides the most (or the best) material for your stories?

RG: That's an interesting question. It seems a good deal of my work has come directly from my own experiences -- that's not very surprising, I suppose, but I've never given it much thought until now. I wrote Live Girls after a visit to Times Square, where I visited a peep show that inspired the book. I wrote Crucifax while living in the San Fernando Valley, which is where the book was set. I wrote Lot Lizards while sitting at the coffee counter of an all-night truck stop that served as the location of most of the action in the book. But I think the biggest influence on my work has been my experience with the Seventh-day Adventist church. I've written stories about it, and it shows up in a lot of my novels in one form or another. Like I said before, I think the Seventh-day Adventist church is largely responsible for the fact that I write horror fiction.

What is your creative process like? Do you write an outline and adhere to it while writing a book?

RG: I've only recently started using outlines, and I use them only as a guide, I don't stick to them very closely. Once I write a complete, detailed outline of a book, I feel like I've written the whole book, and I want to move on. So I write sketchy outlines, and I never complete them. I'll outline the first few chapters of a book, then I'll start writing. I'll write for awhile, then stop and outline some more, then go back to writing. Usually by the last third of the book, I've abandoned the outline altogether because by then, the characters usually have taken over and are doing things that surprise me. Before I started using outlines, I just sat down and started to write and went wherever the book took me. To be honest, that's the way I prefer to write. I like to discover my characters and plot twists rather than planning them. That's why Sex and Violence in Hollywood was so much fun -- writing that book was one surprising discovery after another. But writing that way usually takes longer, so I've started using outlines just to keep a handle on things, and to keep me from writing myself into a corner, which happens a lot when I'm winging it.

What sort of correspondence do you receive from your fans? What sort of communication from them is most important for you?

RG: I love getting responses from readers, whether it's by mail or on Internet message boards. Writing is very solitary, isolated work, and I haven't gone to a convention in years, so it's nice to know my work is being read and enjoyed by people. The Internet is also a good place to find honest criticism, which is always healthy.

You're a big movie fan. Have movies influenced your work at all?

RG: I wasn't allowed to go to movies when I was a kid because the Seventh-day Adventist church frowns on going to theaters (although I think they've loosened up on that since then). I used to cut movie ads out of the newspaper and pin them to a corkboard in my bedroom, and I would sit and stare at them sometimes, wondering what those movies were like. One of my favorite ads was for Trog -- I later saw the movie and was terribly disappointed because it was awful. I went to my first movie in 1977, The Goodbye Girl, and I've been going ever since. So far, God hasn't struck me dead.

Yes, I think my work has been influenced by all the horror movies I've seen, and continue to watch, although maybe not as much as it's been influenced by other writers in the genre -- books and movies are two very different things. I think if I were influenced mostly by movies, I'd be writing screenplays instead of novels. I think horror movies have been somewhat influential for a lot of horror writers my age and younger. Some people in the genre have complained about this, but it makes sense to me. So many of the greatest horror movies have been adapted from great horror literature that it seems natural.

How did you get this gig doing movie reviews for Really Scary?

RG: I asked for it. I love writing about movies, and Val was generous enough to give me the job.

Having had all your writing efforts reviewed and criticized by other professionals, do you approach your film reviews any differently?

RG: For one thing, I only review movies I've watched. I've read reviews of my work in which the critic has screwed up the names of the characters, and sometimes even the events in the book, as if he/she only skimmed the book, if that much. I usually watch a movie twice before reviewing it. On one occasion, I watched a movie that was so bad I couldn't finish it. In that piece, I reviewed the forty or so minutes of the movie that I watched and pointed out why it was so bad that I couldn't sit through the rest of it.

I think reviews should be entertaining as well as informative. But while I try to accomplish that with each review, I also try to avoid coming off as if I'm trying to prove how clever and witty I am. The purpose of the review is to explain why I liked or disliked a movie -- the focus of the review should be the movie, not me. I'm very annoyed by reviews in which the critic seems more interested in showing how smart and funny he/she is than in writing intelligently about the book or movie being reviewed.

I know how it feels to get a bad review. Any writer who says he/she is not bothered by bad reviews is not being entirely honest. But I have to call it as I see it. If a movie is bad, it's my job to point that out when writing a review.

What projects do you have in the pipeline right now? What Ray Garton publications can we look forward to in the future?

RG: Cemetery Dance Publications will be publishing a new edition of my 1991 novel The New Neighbor.Ê It was originally published as an extremely limited and very expensive edition by Charnel House, so limited and expensive that few people read it.Ê The new edition features some beautiful artwork by a talented artist named Caniglia.Ê Cemetery Dance will also be publishing my new novel Scissors, my novella Crawlers, and my third collection of short stories, Slivers of Bone, all in the near future.Ê And Subterranean Press will soon publish my novella, Zombie Love, and a short-story chapbook, The Man in the Palace Theater.Ê And early next year, Bloodletting Press will publish a limited hardcover edition of my second novel, Darklings. Ê

Now that you're a "critic" yourself, how do you explain and define the roll of professional critics in today's environment of entertainment and the media?

RG: I have to agree with director George Roy Hill, who said, "Critics are the little people who come onto the battlefield after the war and shoot all the wounded."