Douglas Clegg: Well, I knew it was not a novel I was going to sell in the next 24 months… 

I have four books coming out between now and a year from September. Perhaps five. I had been thinking about Naomi for a few years -- actually, since 1991. It was time. Then a friend, who is an online book publicist, suggest I send short stories out free in email to reach readers who had not yet discovered my fiction. Instead, I figured: why not a whole novel? I didn't count on the huge amount of attention this would garner -- Business Week, Publisher's Weekly, The Dallas Morning News, etc. I just thought it would be me and maybe a couple of hundred people reading it, if I were lucky. Now, it's thousands. 

Crescent Blues: What are the four or five books? Have you started them yet? 

Douglas Clegg: The Nightmare Chronicles, You Come When I Call You, an as yet-unnamed horror novel to be out in paperback in the fall of 2000, and a short novel called Purity to come out sometime in the winter of 1999 - 2000. There may even be another novel out in 2000, but I'm not really sure at the moment. Since they're coming out within the next 14 months, of course I've begun them and finished them. I pretty much do various minor rewrites until I absolutely have to turn a novel over to a publisher. 

Crescent Blues: Bad Karma is a thriller (though, I find, with traces of the horror element). What was it like writing a book so different from your usual genre? 

Douglas Clegg: It was fun. I wrote it in under a month. It had a strong linear plot. I did it as a kind of experiment to see if I could write anything other than longer non-linear novels, and it was a bit of a success with readers, so I'm happy for that. It was also extremely short. I really wanted to see if I could work in other forms. 

Crescent Blues: I know you never made your association with Bad Karma any particular secret, so just out of curiosity, why did you write it under the pseudonym of Andrew Harper? 

Douglas Clegg: Just so that the 70,000 or so readers per book that came to my other fiction would not think they were getting too similar an experience to the Clegg books. And because, I don't know -- I always wanted to have a pseudonym. I can name ten reasons, all of them frivolous. 

Crescent Blues: Who is Andrew Harper (if he is anyone?)? 

Douglas Clegg: No idea. Me. Just a guy who writes. He actually has two other novels in a drawer, one a sequel to Bad Karma, and one, a gothic romantic thriller. 

Crescent Blues: Do you plan any other work outside the horror genre? 

Douglas Clegg: Not at the moment, but I won't rule it out. I read all kinds of genre fiction and would like to be published in various ways. But for better or worse, horror is my voice. 

Crescent Blues: So what, exactly, is a gothic romantic thriller?  

Douglas Clegg: It's something that's close kin to anything by Daphne DuMaurier or Sandra Brown or even recent Nora Roberts novels. A woman is haunted by some event from the past. Love is heavily involved and cause for major motivation, and it's emotionally or physically brutal, with at least the threat of violence if not the fact. Rebecca pretty much fits that, as does Unspeakable by Brown and River's End by Roberts. Hitchcock films like Vertigo and Marnie also fit into that description: gothic romantic thriller, GRT. My book is called Tell Laura I Love Her, and it probably will sit in a drawer for awhile. It's up to about 100,000 words in length, but not quite where I want it to be. 

Crescent Blues: Which of your books would you like to see produced as a movie? 

Douglas Clegg: All of 'em. 

Crescent Blues: Which actors/actresses would you like to see play the roles and why? 

Douglas Clegg: Never thought about this. I have no idea. Although I would love to see Jennifer Jason Leigh as Agnes Hatcher from Bad Karma. Mainly because she would make it work. Laura Dern might make it work, too. Not sure they'd want it! 

Crescent Blues: Between 1991 and 1994 you took time off from your novels to concentrate on your short stories. Was this a reflection on your popularity -- everyone suddenly wanted a short story from you -- or more a case of feeling you needed a break from novel writing in general? 

Douglas Clegg: It was for a variety of reasons. One was my then publisher just forgot to schedule a book that was supposed to come out in '92 or '93. That was You Come When I Call You, which was finished then, although not in as good a shape as it is now (the additional years helped.) But, I also just began writing more and more short stories, and was working on The Children's Hour, which came out in '95. And two other novels which I haven't really shown around yet (one, an all-out vampire novel, and the other, a novel called Therapy -- although my current publisher was going to publish this, but we went with The Halloween Man instead.)  

I would say I have ten horror novels in my head and on paper as works-in-progress at any point in time. It's a matter of me scheduling them, and one novel taking precedence over all others for a time. So, there were two years when nothing came out in novel-form, but I was still writing books under contract then. 

Crescent Blues: Which novel do you feel is your best? 

Douglas Clegg: This is hard for me to say. You Come When I Call You, which comes out in limited edition in the late fall of '99 and in paperback in the late spring of 2000, is my most risky and out there and has tortured me for a long time. This attaches me to it, and makes me hope it's my best. Neverland is my favorite, because I think I captured something about what makes a horror writer as a child in it. But I like The Halloween Man a lot. Hell, I love em all, warts, boils, farts and burps. They're my kids. 

Crescent Blues: When you're writing your novels do you manage to sleep with the lights off? 

Douglas Clegg: Oh yeah. I delight in writing these stories. 

Crescent Blues: Are your characters or novels based around people you know or places you've visited? Would you go out of your way to visit somewhere to research it for a novel? 

Douglas Clegg: Yes, and I have visited places and researched. As short as Bad Karma is, I researched it over a two-year period at a hospital for the criminally insane. Most of my research involves what I'm already interested in, so it never feels like work. 

Crescent Blues: I've been told that journalists learn never to be affected by writer's block. Would you say this is the case for you? If not, are there any particular parts of writing which you get stuck on, e.g. love scenes, the final scene, etc. How do you deal with them? 

Douglas Clegg: Yep, I definitely don't have writer's block. I just write. Some days, it's a good dose of prose, and some days, it's just slow and dull and I know I have to rewrite later on. I just follow the story. I have found that when I get stuck, it's because the book has gotten too boring even for me, so I go back and cut until I get to the interesting part. That always works. 

Crescent Blues: Would you ever consider another career apart from writing (lounging in the Bahamas not included)? 

Douglas Clegg: Well, I edit and write. I'd consider another career if it made me this happy and fulfilled, but if I knew what it was, I'd already be doing it. 

Crescent Blues: Could you tell the Crescent Blues readers who might not have read your books, about your novels and current projects? 

Douglas Clegg: A tall order. My horror fiction is pretty much entirely character-based, but it's also supernatural in content. My upcoming short story collection, The Nightmare Chronicles (September '99, in paperback) would be a good sampler for someone who wanted to try my fiction. Unfortunately, I have a hard time describing my fiction -- I think it is what it is. I definitely believe in an old-fashioned sense of story, with beginning, middle, end, and I would not write a story unless I felt I could give a reader like me a real experience. 

Crescent Blues: Apart from the novels you are currently writing (Naomi, etc.) do you have any particular long or short term goals? 

Douglas Clegg: Sure, but they're all personal. My fiction is for the public and for myself. My long-term goals are just for me and my family. I want everyone I care for to be healthy and happy, and I want to build a nice house for my partner and myself, and I want to travel some more around the world and… But otherwise, I just want to get the world reading and communicating. 

Crescent Blues: Is it true that most horror writers live in spooky houses with a host of cats, mad dogs and the statutory ghost, undead being or gargoyles? ** 

Douglas Clegg: Most horror writers are scary because they live completely ordinary lives. All their madness is in their fiction. 

Crescent Blues: Is there anything you'd like to add? This is your soapbox. 

Douglas Clegg: I wish I had a soapbox. I take the long view of existence -- nothing is awful as long as we just keep the planet in orbit. 

Stephen Smith

Click here to read more about Douglas Clegg and Naomi.