HARRY SHANNON: Okay, you guys, settle down. Ladies first. Alex, what in the hell possessed you to write a story like "Premature"? And I mean that in the nicest possible way. What draws you to such dark fiction?

ALEX SEVERIN: Hi Harry. I'm not sure I can pin it down to what draws me to the dark side. The darker something is, the more interesting and inspiring I find it. I think that all things dark allow a writer to explore what it is to be painfully human; we all have fears and phobias, things that make our guts tighten when we think about them. I was really excited by 'Premature' when I came up with the idea. Although the tone of the story is very dark and the subject matter is very dark, I think I managed to write it sympathetically and didn't sensationalize the piece…..that makes a change! LOL!

HS: Since we are not sexists here, the same type of question for you, Mr. Philbin. I believe you dedicated your portion of "Broken" to all the hairy-palmed misogynists of the world. Nice turn of phrase. How did you come to be so cheerfully sadistic?

HERTZAN CHIMERA: God, in his wisdom allowed me to rebel against my social conditioning - obviously I will rot in Hell, become the manure of a new generation of infidels and re-spawn more rotting weeds that will be extinguished by The Almighty. All in a day's work, I guess.

HS: Wrath, since you could probably kick my butt loaded on Valium with your arms tied behind your back and your legs in irons, let me re-phrase that question: How, kindly-mannered and highly educated sir, did you come to be so intrigued by the macabre?

WRATH: I've always been intrigued by what I call "the fantastic", those ideas and events outside the norm. Anything that took me away from the drudgery and misery of everyday existence was to be treasured. I wanted to experience the extremes of life. Raw, bleeding, passion! Joy and beauty and ecstasy so profoundly intoxicating that you would sacrifice your life for the merest taste of it. Terror so overwhelming that it set your nerves aflame! I wanted ideas that would tax reason and imagination to its limits and only in horror did I find those things.

HS: Let's have a little bit of a round-table discussion, and I will try to make sense of it later. Name some of the writers you feel have influenced your own work?

AS: I don't like to think I'm influenced by anybody, per se, but I am an unashamed Ricean and I will admit to being influenced by her. (Shifts in her seat, black velvet and antique lace whispering in the candle-lit haze.) LOL! Yes! Anne Rice is the undisputed Queen! Seriously though, I really did start writing because the Vampire Chronicles had a profound effect upon me. Another book that had a profound effect on me was 'Resurrection Dreams' by Richard Laymon. I'd never read anything like it and very little has had such an influence on me since. Another writer I hold in esteem is the Marquis de Sade. I often hear de Sade described as a man out of time, but I think that he would have been as demonized and as misunderstood if he'd been born last century or this century or next century. Other literary loves of mine are Clive Barker, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, Jeffrey Deaver, James Patterson, and many small press authors - Kailleaugh Andersson, Simon Logan, Rich Logsdon and L.J. Blount (Myth Spinner). And my two co-conspirators, of course. *grins*

HC: Oh, my... Writers who influenced me. It is not that easy. I read for escapism and pleasure, not as a form of content research, whether style, atmosphere, character or story. I am influenced by music, art, cinema - anything that IS NOT writing or written.

W: Probably the two biggest influences on my current style were the philosophies of Arthur Schopenhauer and the perversity and madness of Marquis De Sade. If you read through all the lurid descriptions of rape and torture there's some pretty heavy ideology in some of De Sade's work. I think I read it more for the philosophy than the sex. The constant sodomy and scatological references get tiresome after a while but the ideas this man had were intense. The first true literary influence and the reason I turned to horror in the first place was probably Stephen King and a French surrealist named Comte de Lautremonte. Lautremonte wrote a morbid little grimoire called "Les Chants De Maldoror" that was just one long diatribe against God and life in general. I fell in love with the guy's style. His work was just so oppressive, but yet so beautiful. I also read a lot of Baudelaire, Dostoyevsky, and Sartre. I use to have Baudelaire's epic poem "Le Fleurs de Mal" memorized and would burst into a recital at the drop of a hat. I think I was 19 or 20 back then.

HS: In your opinion, does horror fiction serve a true psychological or spiritual purpose? And if your answer is yes, tell us why and how it does so?

W: In all art there is the passing on of ideas and emotions from one human being to the next across distances of time and space. It connects us all closer together to know that the same things that scare the shit out of rich kids in California scare the hell out of poor kids in Georgia, or businessmen in Hong Kong, or athletes in Brazil. It reaffirms our humanity to share emotions in this way and the more intense the emotions the deeper the connection. That would make horror the most profound cross-cultural cross-generational medium of expression. And erotic horror would have to just be off the charts in terms of showing us how different and yet how similar we all are in our passions and desires.

AS: Yeah, what Wrath said! The thing I love about writing erotic horror is what it makes the reader *feel*. To be able to arouse and repulse a reader in the same sentence is something that excites me. Erotic Horror - the term in its self should be a misnomer; things that are horrific *really* shouldn't be erotic to us, should they? But….they are! Some people are made extremely uncomfortable by our beloved genre.

HC: Don't give a shit - that's my creative mantra. You got to write from the soul (wait a minute, all my responses sound very religious - let it go on the record that I am a devout atheist). No, I don't care where sex-horror sits in the realm of society, whether it is an open recreational device or a guilty secret. The idea of getting into someone's mind and monkeying about is the BIG THRILL for me. A sort of reverse VOYEUR.

HS: How did the idea for "Broken" come about, by the way? Were you already fans of one another's work?

W: Well, we were all talking on one of the e-mail lists about erotic horror and I think it was Hertzan who suggested we team up to write a Tricephallic?

HS: Three penises?

W: Actually, I still have no idea what the hell a Tricephallic is but we wrote one and that was the story "Broken". The book was just a natural progression from there. Hertzan and Alex were churning out a bunch of stories together and Alex and I had just finished writing "Hail Mary". It just made sense to put it all together into a book.

AS: We were all familiar with each other's work. Wrath and I had known each other for a while and had been working on 'Hail Mary' when Mike suggested we write a Tricephallic. (That's a three-lobed brain, I do believe!) When we wrote the story 'Broken,' we just knew we had something special and there was a collection ready and waiting to be born.

HC: For me, Broken was our lives, or that's what I always thought we were writing. I don't know if the others know this but the first part of my life was the first part of Broken.

HS: Were you involved in commenting upon, editing or proofing one another's work in any way?

AS: Nobody on earth tries to mess with Mike's sentence structure! LOL! You just check his spelling and move on! We all went through the ms with an eagle-eye three times each. We're all very single-minded when it comes to our writing and what we want a piece to look like and feel like, so we just checked the basics. Wrath was chomping at the bit for a traditional-monster story. I know he likes zombies so I gave him 'Zombie Fucker' to get his teeth into! *grins* I think all of us loved writing that one, I know I did!

HC: Zombie fucker - if ever a short story had to be made into a Hollywood arthouse movie in the vein of NEKROMANTIK then this would be it. Casting director, arrange those cadavers across my couch!

W: I was probably the most outspoken when it came to making corrections or comments. I definitely had a vision of what I wanted the finished product to look like. I think Delirium put out 4X4 while we were right in the middle of writing the final stories for Broken and they had some pretty straight forward traditional horror stories in there so I thought maybe we needed some more traditional stories. Traditional meaning a clearly defined monster, non-human, and a clearly defined hero/victim. See, most of our stories blur the line between protagonist and antagonist. So, I asked Alex if she could write something featuring a traditional monster that we could all collaborate on, something with a vampire or a zombie. I think I hounded her about it for a few days. Then she came back with "Zombie Fucker". I was just like, "Why fight it? We're perverts and degenerates and we might as well just go with it" so the three of us just let loose on Zombie Fucker and far from a traditional piece it wound up being the sickest thing in the book. After we read the manuscript we really weren't sure John would actually publish it. It was just so fucking twisted!

HS: Give us an idea of how the various stories were written. I see that Wrath co-wrote quite a few with either Hertzan or Alex. Was that planned?

W: Usually I would start out with an idea and I would think "Man this would be great to write with Mike!" I think it was probably the same way when Mike and Alex collaborated together. Some ideas just seemed to call out for certain styles. "Killing Sarah' was definitely something that I needed Mike's style for. Alex and I came up with "Hail Mary" together while brain storming via instant messages. We were so excited when we finally sat down to write it that it all just sort of flowed out. I think in all the pieces what made them work so well was that we were trying to impress each other. At times we even seemed to be vying for control of the pieces which made it twist and turn into different directions, particularly on the three-way collaborations. It made some of them turn out really weird. But that's a good thing.

AS: Wrath's writing style is very structured and disciplined; sometimes it was difficult to get into a piece and make my mark on it, considering he likes to write a War & Peace-length tome before he hands it over! LOL! Just kidding, Wrath; love ya really! The end results of Wrath and I writing together were well worth it though! Mike and I write very easily together; I slip into his abstractness very well, which was actually surprising to me the first time; our solo efforts are so different from each other. Let's face it, Mike's work is different from everybody on the planet! With our collabs, it's sometimes hard to see the join. Both of them kept me on my toes though; both incredible writers.

HC: Wait a minute, did I spot some tension there? Good. That's what keeps us fresh as a writing team - that tension. We all hail from extremely different social backgrounds and that variety and aggression we bring to our work is evident in every raw scene.

HS: Did you guys start from the germ of an idea, or was there any set way you went about creating the various collaborations?

AS: With Wrath and I, we usually had a little discussion about the progression of the story and the general plot, particularly with 'Hail Mary'. Once we started though, the story flowed - our visions were very similar. We practically came up with the idea simultaneously and decided it was something we would like to work on together. Me and Mike? He writes a paragraph and tells me to move my arse and write another one! And vice versa! LOL!

HC: Arse moving is good, no? With Wrath, I just shot to attention, every nerve and fiber ready for the gush, and shouted, "Sir, yes sir!"

W: Man, you guys are making me sound like a control freak!

HS: No, just a mountain with eyes.

(Laughter)

W: I guess I did have an idea of how I wanted certain stories to go, but they almost never went that way. Once Alex and Hertzan started putting their own twisted ideas into it I just had to ride the wave and let the stories take me where they would. It was all pretty exhilarating actually. I don't think we ever knew how it would all turn out.

HS: Ever have any serious disagreements?

AS: The cover was a bit of a sore point! John (Turi) came up with version after version and we all liked a different one! We did finally agree though. Mike's artwork is so pertinent to the way the collection reads and how it felt writing it. Now, I don't think there could be another cover for it; this one is just so 'Broken.'

HC: Hmm, that cover. There is an old oriental saying "Nothing of value comes easily." Ask any street hooker and she may say the opposite, anyways.... Stylistic wranglings aside the cover brief I gave myself was THREE SETS OF EYES, ONE VOICE.

W: True. We disagreed like crazy. I think we all wound up giving just a little and Mike and John came out with a design that we could all live with. Now I couldn't imagine it looking any other way. I love the way the cover looks. I think Mike didn't like the shadowing behind the letters. I don't remember what the disagreement was about actually.

HS: Do you have any plans to repeat this chaos again with a second collection? Have you talked about that?

AS: Mike and I are near to completing another collection of collaborations - we write together constantly. I'm sure Wrath and I will work together on another story at some point; both of us adore Religious Erotica and write it well together.

HC: The good thing about this collection is how it drew out the worst of all three of us. You got the Wrath/Severin religious tales, I write slightly differently with Wrath than I do with Severin. You get our Tricephallics (tm) and our single stories, so you get a taste of the entire cheese selection.

W: I don't know if this could be duplicated.

HS: What about individual projects coming up? What else is planned for the next year or so?

AS: Well, myself and Mike are about to complete and shop our collection around. I'm working on my debut novel (Book One of the Lily Transyl Chronicles) and have a contract pending for a three-book deal. And I really gotta update my e-zine, Shadow of the Marquis! My authors are going to be pissed off if I don't do it shortly! Cracked ribs kinda slow a girl down though! Ouch!

HC: MY first novel SZMONHFU twisted a few necks. This collection is gonna wring a few, too. But UNITED STATES, my second Eraserhead Press novel - THAT is really gonna make the people sit up and listen. We are talking about the Renaissance of BEAT literature for the year 2002. We are talking landscapes of the mind stinking in piss and tasting of razor blades, you know, stuff you can find in any transdimensional psychosexual café these days. Plug in, sirs or madams.

W: Well, I just finished a novel, a very extreme psychological thriller that I'm now ready to start shopping around and I'm working on another novel right now. This novel is real psycho-sexual and probably more extreme than the first one. It's real research intensive. I have all kinds of cannibal and necro-sex sites book marked as source material. I'm sure the wife is getting worried seeing me surf the "Hanging Bitches" website. All the rope has mysteriously disappeared from my house. I'm also doing a reading at Horrorfind with Jack Ketchum. Very excited about that. And I have a collection just as sick if not sicker than "Broken" called "The Book of A Thousand Sins" that has recently been picked up by one of the new small presses.

HS: Who is the publisher?

W: No contracts have been signed yet so I'll keep the name of the publisher secret for now. I'm real excited about working with this publisher because she seems to have a real understanding and appreciation for my work whereas I think some of the publishers who have expressed interest in publishing me in the past really didn't get it. It took her forever to finally read it though. I threatened to bite her nipples off if she doesn't read it before Horrorfind weekend. A week later I got my reply. Don't try this at home folks!

AS: Research. Riiiiiiiiiiight.

HS: I want to thank you guys for your time, and for providing me with such entertaining and persistent nightmares. Best of luck with "Broken." Any last words….?

AS: Buy Broken! Go on, you know you want it. And thanks, Harry!

HC: waves the stars and stripes limply - yeah, oversell us, you feelthy Kapitalists.

W: Yeah, by the damned book or else! (cracking knuckles and flexing biceps)

HS: Yeah, that's the ticket. Like Wrath said.

W: What did you just say?

HS: Wrath sir. Your Holiness.