{"id":356,"date":"2015-04-09T16:43:02","date_gmt":"2015-04-09T16:43:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/?p=356"},"modified":"2015-05-03T14:28:22","modified_gmt":"2015-05-03T14:28:22","slug":"halloween-in-april-interview-with-j-tonzelli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/halloween-in-april-interview-with-j-tonzelli\/","title":{"rendered":"Halloween in April: Interview with J. Tonzelli"},"content":{"rendered":"

For this week’s author spotlight, I’ve got a special treat for all you fans of fall. My\u00a0writer today is J. Tonzelli. He’s the scribe of End of Summer:\u00a0Thirteen Tales of Halloween<\/em>, a book that might have the coolest creepy\u00a0cover ever. But this author\u00a0has even\u00a0more to offer than\u00a0one (completely awesome) collection of short stories, and he was kind enough to share his experiences, inspirations, and\u00a0advice for other horror and fantasy\u00a0writers out there.\u00a0Halloween in April indeed.<\/p>\n

A few icebreakers to start: when did you first decide to become a writer, and who are some of your favorite authors?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"J.<\/a>I\u2019ve been writing since I was fairly young, so I guess I\u2019ve always had the itch to do it. When I was young, I read mostly horror-centric stuff: R.L. Stine, and the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark<\/em> books. I read In a Dark Dark Room<\/em> over and over. I was really infatuated by this notion that you could be in a room by yourself reading only someone\u2019s words, and that someone still had the power to scare you. This wasn\u2019t someone sneaking up behind you and screaming, \u201cboo!\u201d or a scary movie on the television in front of you. It was just words, and they were terrifying, and I loved that.<\/p>\n

I matriculated from Stine to Stephen King in the summer between fifth and sixth grade, when I read IT<\/em>, but then eventually I began reading all genres both fiction and non-fiction. My go-to authors are Ray Bradbury, Dennis Lehane, Per Petterson, and Norman Partridge. I love David Sedaris. I\u2019m also really digging Jonathan L. Howard\u2019s Johannes Cabal<\/em> series right now.<\/p>\n

Halloween plays a major role in your fiction. What is your earliest Halloween memory, and do you think that formative experience shaped your love for the holiday?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I actually share this memory in the foreword for \u201cThe End of Summer,\u201d but one of my earliest Halloween memories was being puked on during a Halloween party while I was in elementary school. Some kind of flu or nasty bug had been spreading slowly around the school that month and making all the kids sick. I guess it was her turn. Ironically, she was dressed as a witch, and I was dressed as the devil. Talk about mutiny!<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>To offer up a more serious answer, I think it\u2019s because I\u2019d always been into horror even at a young age, which sometimes made me feel like an outcast. I didn\u2019t share the same interests a lot of the other kids did \u2013 sports or video games, for instance; wrestling was big at that time, but I wasn\u2019t interested. So I sometimes felt isolated because of it. I\u2019d hide the covers of books I was reading so the other kids couldn\u2019t see them. If I was watching a horror movie at home, and my parents or brother came into the room, I\u2019d turn it off real quick. I hated being judged or ridiculed for my interests. But Halloween was that one time of year when everyone <\/em>was into that kind of stuff, so it always felt like a safe day where I could sort of live vicariously through all of these people having a good time wearing the scary mask and watching the scary movie and not feeling weird for enjoying it. I sometimes felt like a horror cheerleader, trying to make my friends realize that this kind of stuff could be fun all year. It hardly ever worked \u2013 my schtick probably got old pretty fast. Some of that carries over into The House on Creep Street<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Your book, The End of Summer: Thirteen Tales of Halloween<\/em>, was released in 2013. What was the most rewarding part of writing a short story collection of Halloween stories?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The most rewarding aspect was simply seeing that book though to the end, as my main goal was to see if I could even do it \u2013 not necessarily put together a collection of writing, which is its own reward, but to see if I could keep it contained to a common theme (that being Halloween) and explore its myths and folklore in different ways. Originally, \u201cThe End of Summer\u201d<\/em> wasn\u2019t necessarily Halloween-themed. I wasn\u2019t even so much trying to stick with a horror theme. I was just writing whatever concept I thought would interest me as a reader. At that point, there wasn\u2019t a \u201cbook\u201d in my mind \u2013 I just wanted to write. But as I wrote, I noticed that I was subconsciously either setting the story on Halloween, or injecting into the story some kind of Halloween-like imagery or setting. Once I became cognizant of that, it seemed to me that I had to follow through with this impulse to see if I could concoct an entire collection of stories all relating to Halloween. For better or worse, I did!<\/p>\n

Your most recent novel, The House on Creep Street, was a collaboration between you and author Chris Evangelista. How is the creative process different when writing with someone else?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>I\u2019ve known Chris for fifteen years now, and we\u2019ve been sharing writing projects together for almost that entire time \u2013 just in different ways, and mostly for fun. I\u2019m convinced we were fraternal twins somehow separated at birth. We both share a lot of the same interests and sensibilities, the same weird sense of humor, and we both approach writing in the same way. It\u2019s scary how in-sync we can be when working on something together; sometimes it gets to the point where we can literally finish each other\u2019s sentence, and I don\u2019t mean on the page, but out loud when we’re outlining every new adventure. When we start a new novel together, we\u2019re both in step right from the start about the story we want to tell and the themes we want to convey. We know how we want to tell that story, and more importantly, how we don\u2019t<\/em> want to tell it. We go by the pen name of The Blood Brothers for these books, and a large reason behind that, besides that wonderfully corny pun of a name, is that we just genuinely feel like brothers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe House on Creep Street\u201d is the first in a series called \u201cFright Friends Adventures,\u201d which are horror adventure stories for younger readers, highly influenced by stuff like the Goosebumps<\/em> books, the show \u201cAre You Afraid of the Dark?\u201d and movies like The Monster Squad<\/em> and The Goonies<\/em>. We grew up devouring that kind of stuff, and we felt that those kinds of fun, adventurous morality tales were ripe for another exploration. Our goal was to keep them as timeless and classic as possible.<\/p>\n

Out of your published works so far, do you have a personal favorite piece?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I love a lot of what I\u2019ve published, and not because I would ever dream of flat-out stating they\u2019re excellent \u2013 that\u2019s for the reader to decide \u2013 but because I feel like everything out there so far with my name attached to it reflects me, and my personality and interests and passions, in some way. Even if there\u2019s something of mine I look back on with a bittersweet feeling of hesitation or regret, that book or story still reflects who I was, and the place where I was in my life, at that time. Every story invokes recollections of, \u201cOh, I wrote this when I\u2019d found out so-and-so had passed away\u201d or \u201cI wrote this while I was still going through that break-up,\u201d etc. Everything I\u2019ve written is the equivalent of a photo album. If I were to go back and read my stuff, I could tell you exactly what I was going through at the time I wrote it.<\/p>\n

To offer a specific favorite, I love the opener of \u201cThe End of Summer,\u201d a story called \u201cStingy Jack,\u201d because that wry, weird kind of humor really defines my personality. I also love \u201cThe House on Creep Street\u201d based strictly on its origin, which were childhood writings of mine that I\u2019d forgotten about and subsequently rediscovered several years ago. As a kid, I\u2019d been fascinated by the idea of nighttime adventures, with my real childhood friends by my side, so I had written all of these stories where we encountered something weird or supernatural in our neighborhood. They were terrible, obviously, since I was twelve or so when I\u2019d written them, but they were also charming in a way. It seemed like a fun concept to strip down and rebuild, which we did, and which led to \u201cFright Friends Adventures.\u201d<\/p>\n

What upcoming projects are you working on?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Blood<\/a>I keep going back and forth on a solo project I\u2019ve been working on for the last year or so \u2013 my take on the historical mash-up. I originally abandoned the concept several months ago for fear I wouldn\u2019t be able to pull it off, but now it won\u2019t leave me alone. It\u2019s getting to the point that it\u2019s almost screaming in my ears for me to keep trying, so I\u2019ll likely get back to it sometime soon.<\/p>\n

Chris and I are currently doing a rewrite on the second book in our \u201cFright Friends Adventures\u201d series that a publisher is excited to release. It\u2019s called \u201cBeware the Monstrous Manther!\u201d and it\u2019s about Joey, the main character in the series, and his creepy new neighbor across the street, who Joey suspects of kidnapping his neighborhood\u2019s pet population for dastardly reasons.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m also pretty consistently contributing to the film site Cut Print Film, where I write reviews, interview filmmakers, and do write-ups on genre titles that have a certain cult appeal. I\u2019ve been doing that for about six months now and it\u2019s been pretty rewarding. I\u2019ve gotten to talk with filmmakers I really admire and it\u2019s nice to collaborate with a huge group of like-minded film enthusiasts. Plus I get to see movies for free, and who wouldn\u2019t love that?<\/p>\n

Big thanks to J. Tonzelli for being part of this week’s author spotlight. Be sure to check out his main website<\/a>\u00a0where he features\u00a0several free short stories (and who can resist that?). You can also visit the official site for “Fright Friends Adventures<\/a>,” which has resources for both parents and kids. And for film buffs,\u00a0you won’t want to miss his contributions to Cut Print Film<\/a>. Calling all cult classics.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Happy reading, and happy early Halloween!<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For this week’s author spotlight, I’ve got a special treat for all you fans of fall. My\u00a0writer today is J. Tonzelli. He’s the scribe of End of Summer:\u00a0Thirteen Tales of Halloween, a book that might have the coolest creepy\u00a0cover ever. But this author\u00a0has even\u00a0more to offer than\u00a0one (completely awesome) collection of short stories, and he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":453,"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions\/453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}