My taste in writing ranges from old comic books to classic literature, from the humor of P.G. Wodehouse to the bleak, noir worlds of Cornell Woolrich and Horace McCoy. I enjoy things that are difficult, like Russell Hoban\u2019s Riddley Walker<\/em>, which uses language that is almost like a code to be cracked. As far as favorites, I often cite Martin Amis, A.S. Byatt, Doris Lessing, Octavia Butler. My taste in horror skews weird. I like demented things like Jon Bassoff\u2019s Corrosion<\/em>, the weirdness of David Mitchell\u2019s Slade House<\/em>, or anything by Tony Burgess, who is some kind of a freak genius. But then, I\u2019m just as happy reading ghost-y 19th century authors: J.S. Le Fanu, Th\u00e9ophile Gautier. My favorite short story is Joe R. Lansdale\u2019s \u201cTight Little Stitches in a Dead Man\u2019s Back.\u201d<\/p>\n Oh, and I should mention non-fiction, since I\u2019m a non-fiction writer. I love writers like Joan Didion whose essays are smart and provocative, with such beautiful prose. I\u2019m in awe of horror writers\/researchers like Gary Rhodes who do deep, deep research, turning up brand new information about very old things.<\/p>\n You’re a two-time Bram Stoker Award nominee for your excellent nonfiction articles. What draws you to writing horror nonfiction and in particular to writing about classic horror?<\/strong><\/p>\n As far as classic horror, I do like all kinds of horror, but I\u2019m particularly drawn to silent film. I think that goes back to what I was saying about wanting to know what\u2019s behind everything. I like seeing the horror film in its infancy, before it became so imitative. I particularly like writing about obscure or even lost silent films, because they are so far removed from the world of the internet. Some of the films I write about have barely any trace online, except for maybe an IMDB listing, which is often filled with inaccuracies. When I first started writing about the 1913 film The Werewolf<\/em>, there were only a few references to it online. (Now there are many, the majority of which are sourced from my own work, whether credited or uncredited.)<\/p>\n Do you remember the first horror movie that really captured your imagination?<\/strong><\/p>\n My parents weren\u2019t particularly horror fans, so I didn\u2019t get a lot of exposure to them at a young age. My brother and I surreptitiously watched Jaws<\/em> on HBO and thought it was just the greatest. I remember seeing a thriller called Paper Man<\/em> that had a scene where someone is crushed by an elevator and it haunted me for decades, until I recently rewatched it and found it is pretty silly. I was captured by horror lit long before film. I devoured books about witches, vampires, and mummies. My favorite books on those subjects were non-fiction, even back then. I had a children\u2019s book on werewolves that contained Medieval woodcuts, and one on vampires that included that famous Vlad the Impaler woodcut of people on spikes. (They don\u2019t make kids\u2019 books like that anymore!) The fact that they were non-fiction books made me feel like vampires and werewolves were a real part of history. So, when I was much older and could choose movies for myself, I gravitated toward the subjects I\u2019d always been drawn to.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Kelly-Robinson.jpg\")
<\/a>In a way, I\u2019ve always been a writer. I was reading at age 3, which almost seems freakish, so by the time I was in schooI, I\u2019d already been reading a while. My kindergarten teacher used to have me read books to the class while she sneaked out for smoke breaks! I started writing soon after, writing stories, poems, and scripts for puppet shows that I would come up with and perform for the class. I was always obsessed with the Scholastic Books order forms, and I made up one of my own, making up titles of books my friends could \u201corder,\u201d and then making and drawing books by request for the titles they wanted. (One was called The Girl Who Snuck Into the Boy\u2019s Bathroom<\/em>.) I talked my teacher into letting me single-handedly make a school newspaper, which I duplicated on one of those old ditto machines with the smelly purple ink. It was called The Classroom Clammer, which had nothing to do with clams, but I guess I was going for \u201cclamor.\u201d It featured news stories like \u201cRobbie is moving!\u201d and \u201cD.C. has a lot of cats!\u201d So, when I say I\u2019ve always written, I really mean it.<\/p>\n<\/a>I\u2019ve always been interested in the story behind the story. I think I\u2019m just a question-asker by nature. For me, the thing itself isn\u2019t enough. I want to know the origin of the thing, you know? And that curiosity extends to the books I read and the films I watch. Nothing happens in a vacuum, so even the oldest horror films were inspired by something. Today, horror films have the entire history of the genre to inspire them, but the further back you go, to say, the 1890s, those films had to draw from non-film sources. Some of them came from books, obviously, but also from stage plays, vaudeville acts, comic strips. Some short films were even inspired by popular catch phrases of the day.<\/p>\n