by David Byron
I had written a post-9/11 screenplay adaptation of Light, and she said, you guys were like the lennon & McCartney of horror! So I contacted Skipp and proposed: what if we did the thing no one would ever see coming, which we both have sworn would never happen? It was an intriguing idea, and I already had a script ready, so I figured, why not?
But John didn‘t want to; he just feels we see things too differently. We had talked about the difference between setting it in contemporary times vs. doing a period piece – he felt it should be the latter, I felt it worked either way but period was much more expensive, hence harder to sell and get made… and not ultimately the writer‘s call anyway. But John said no, and his answer was final…
So, okay… I‘m just doing it myself now LOL. Ah, the classic schism at the heart of S&S, some things never change….
What would you say is the first thing that ever „"horrified"" you? I know this may cover a lot of ground. CS: It as probably in the womb, when my twin died. I had a fraternal twin and my mom miscarried; she told me when I was a kid, and I looked at her and said how do you know the twin that died? Maybe I did and he‘s just pretending to be me? I was an odd child.
After that, probably when I was ten months old, and pulled an electric skillet of frying chicken down on my head. I had 2nd and 3rd degree burns covering the entire left side of my face and all the way back to my ear. The healing process was long for a toddler, and to prevent scarring my parents had to tie my hands to my waist (so I wouldn‘t pick the scabs) and keep my hyper-stimulated from the moment I woke up until I passed out from exhaustion. Which may explain a lot about me LOL.
The other strange thing was the nightmare – for years afterwards I would have this terrifying dream: a black wire stretching across space, quiet and peaceful murmuring, a butterfly flitting around the
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wire… then it lands… and the wire snaps and I‘m buried by a mountain, muffled screaming, total panic, trapped…
The last time I had the dream I was 8 and literally fell out of the top bunk, ran and fell down the stairs, and my father caught me in the street. The next morning I had only memory fragments. My mom handed me a story she had written about it; it was in first person and talked about the accident in ways that suddenly clicked in my 8 year-old mind. Two things happened then: I never had the dream again (though I remember it), and I saw the direct linkage between imagery and the subconscious mind as a young child. It was around that time I had started reading Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury, and Edgar Allen Poe. So I guess becoming not just a writer but the writer I became might have some causal relationship?
The next time, and first I was truly, consciously horrified, was also around 8, when I saw my first black and white photographs of the Holocaust. Half of my family is Jewish, and my mom explained that, had we been in Europe then, we would have been sent to the gas chambers. That was another click-point for me: it started what became a lifelong fascination and study of the Third Reich, and also filled me with a rage that completely belied my age. Maybe it‘s a past-life thing, who knows… I have a novel in the works that addresses that, but maybe only now am I actually old enough – and experienced enough – to write it.
Apart from that, though – I was always tuned to dark frequencies. Some of my earliest childhood drawings are of skeletons, monsters, people covered in blood. Maybe some people are born to do this. I think I was, anyway LOL… I turned my personality defects into career skills…
Speaking of horrifying, is it true you were once a roller-skating messenger? CS: Yup… I might have been the first roller
skating messenger in NYC; it was the early 80s, pre-rollerblades,
and I never saw another one on the streets until my last day – we
had just sold Light -- when I caught glimpse of a guy skating
through traffic on 46th Street.
I had just graduated from the Berklee College of Music in Boston
when I first had the idea that became The Light At The End… once
I graduated I moved to NY and roomed for a while with John and
a bunch of crazy friends from PA. We were all in our 20s and in
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the big city to make or dreams happen. As it happened, I got a job with the messenger service John worked for, and ended up combat-skating 20 miles a day through midtown Manhattan traffic. Perhaps not the most glorious thing for a guy with a freshly minted Bachelors Degree to do LOL.
But as it happened it was key to the success of Light in three ways: first, it gave me a gutter‘s-eye knowledge of the city; second, we came to realize that messengers were the perfect people to hunt a punk vampire in the subways; and third, it actually sold the book, as I delivered it to Lou Aronica at Bantam Books as a messenger run LOL!
I heard you once stated that „"The world is beautiful and ghastly at the same time."" Do I detect a note of cynicism there? If so, does taking a cynical outlook toward certain aspects of life help you with your writing?
CS: Cynical, moi? LOL. Thought I was being mildly accurate…
The world IS beautiful and ghastly at the same time, isn‘t it? I mean, last time I checked. I can‘t help but experience the paradox of it constantly. So much beauty, so much absolute fucking cruelty and ugliness and horror…
Does it help my writing per se? It definitely fuels my writing. Writing about what I see gives me a place to put the feelings. I don‘t want to just dwell in awful places of the mind anymore than I want to in life – personally, I‘d rather be skiing LOL -- but along the way I came to realize: Bad Life Sometimes Makes Good Art! Certainly having a creative outlet for experience makes it endurable… and passing it along is both cathartic and maybe a way of paying it forward. I got this myspace message recently:
Subject: A sincere thank you
Body: I had become a fan of reading thanks to you.
I was only concerned with skateboards, and getting high and stealing things up until I first read one of your books. In 1993, when I was in the 7th grade, my mother was trying desperately to get me into something more positive than what I had been, so she urged me to try reading a book.
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To pique my interest, she pulled Animals down from the new release rack at Target. Now, we both know well that yours and Skipp's writing is not exactly appropriate for a 12 year old, but the depth of the characters and story struck me dumbfounded. I have read that book countless times over these last 16 years along with many others, but yours are the ones that I continually come back to.
The Scream and Animals in particular are what sparked my creative brain and led me to the career which I now have and love, that supports my wife and children.
Thank you very much. That message meant a lot to me, you know? Because I was that kid once. And, whatever vagaries or tribulations of life and career come and go, it feels good to know that my work is out there, polluting young minds and turning them into artists! LOL! Seriously, my path in life and my work have cost me relationships, I‘ve made and lost small fortunes; made and lost relationships again (ouch?) and made and lost fortunes again (ouch LOL…???) But the work…. the work lives on.
We live in a world where validation and worth are largely externally measured and validated, where you literally end up handing over the power to define yourself on your own terms to strangers, friends, family, society. But there is nothing more powerful or dangerous in this world than being self-defined. Not to mention, fun………LOL!
If you doubt that, try it some time! If you do, notice how will people call you bad when you don‘t do what they want you to, and good when you do? But the beauty of it is, once you‘ve been thus damned… you‘re free! After they‘ve tagged you with the worst name imaginable, what else can they call you? So go ahead, tap that magical bitch or bastard within, and go for it!
You don‘t have to be an asshat about it: karma is like gravity – it‘s more than a good idea, it‘s the law! But no one give
s you permission to live your own life. And ask yourself in all things: exactly how long will I be dead? Then live accordingly.
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You are one of the only writers I know who can mix horror and humor – successfully. Do you feel horror and humor go well together? CS: It‘s the Reese‘s Peanut Butter Cup theory: two great tastes that taste great together! I think so, but then I think that that‘s true in life! Sometimes the only thing to get you through pain is to start laughing at it.
One of my all-time favorite cartoonist in the world is Gahan Wilson – as it happens, he‘s a wonderfully macabre writer, too. But his cartoons always ping something in me: they‘re captured moments of morbid absurdity, and they‘re priceless. I always think of one: a rumpled and gore-spattered soldier standing in the middle of a charred landscape, clutching his gun, a manic toothy smile on his trollish face. The caption read: I think I won!
Actually, the funniest creatives I know are horror writers! They tend to be gregarious and weirdly well-adjusted, or at least their craziness is copacetic with mine. Know who, as a rule, the really moribund, depressive unto destructive creatives are? COMEDIANS!! Seriously… but stranger still, the darker, edgier comedians tend to be happier people off-stage. At least the ones I‘ve met LOL…
As for my work, yeah, there have been a lot of blackly funny bits tossed in and threaded through, though the last few books have gotten, um, pretty dark LOL. Maybe it‘s time for me to do a twisted romantic comedy?
How did you become involved in film? CS: I jumped in, feet first LOL. My first Hollywood experience was an uncredited rewrite of a film about killer robot teachers in high schools of the future controlled by gangs. It was Hollywood Boot Camp for me; they picked us up from the airport in a limo. John and I were ensconced in adjoining suites in the Hollywood Hilton, paid very well and chained to dueling computers for six to eight weeks. It was great but also frustrating after a while, and a crash course in the many layers of unwritten rules in the great weasel dance, where every cliché you‘ve ever heard about Hollywood is true… but fleshed out!
I‘ve worked in publishing, television and feature film for over two decades, and I‘m still here. What might possibly bother me is that that doesn‘t bother me more LOL. But it is what it is: you learn, grow a skin, and acclimate… or go do something else. Me – I can
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love or hate various aspects of it, but at the end of the day I live for the moment when the room goes dark and the screen lights up, and everything else is just what you go through to get there.
I was on set when they were shooting the feature film version of ANIMALS; it‘s a rush to see an small army of people all mobilized and busily engaged in making something that only existed on paper… and in your head! At one point I had my laptop set up on the edge of a scene the director was shooting, doing rewrites on a scene that was to be shot the next day, and listening to the action on the headset as they rolled camera. I looked up and thought, ya know, for a writer it doesn‘t get much better than this LOL!
I‘ve been in spastic-colon inducing power struggles and meetings where the tone cranked up to bar-fight levels, had to deal with directors getting fired off movies in post production, getting ripped off and double-dealt, and had deals blow up just as the light turns green. I‘ve also met and worked with some of the most amazing people you‘d ever care to meet.
Booms and busts, feast and famines, strikes and striking gold, and more than a few long dark nights of the soul. One thing I‘ve learned about it is: just when you think everything is set, something will happen. But then, just when you think everything is doomed… something will happen.
It‘s not a life for the feint of heart. But if you love it, it‘s the only game in town.
Any funny anecdotes to share about film or fiction? CS: LOL, how many pages do you have? Hollywood is its own 24/7 reality show. Publishing is not nearly as funny by comparison – I think one of my funniest memories there was back at the height of the Splatterpunk heyday, one day when we were at Tor Books and had just had lunch with Melissa Singer. The elevator was very slow, and while we were waiting I looked through the window at the receptionist, who seemed really nervous, looking at these guys who looked, well… bad. Melissa introduced us to her and we all chatted, waiting for the elevator. It‘s been a long time, but somehow I ended up drawing dotted lines on the receptionist‘s wrists with a rollerball pen. There was one of those little saw-tooth locks on the sliding window, but it had no lock on it.
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I looked at her like some satanic Harpo Marx, then took the little sawtooth metal part, slid the window back, took her wrist and started making little sawing motions across it, smiling the whole time. Then the elevator came, and we left.
Found out later, she was a temp, and quit that day. Scared her half to death. Ah well…. LOL.
What is Stealth Press all about? CS: Stealth Press was my brainchild and a result of watching the big paradigm shift in mainstream publishing that started in the mid 90s and continues to this day. Like I mentioned before, the center imploded, and now while there is a never beforeseen ability to get your work out there, it‘s harder and harder to aggregate sufficient audience to sustain an artist‘s career. Mainstream publishing today is a lot like AM Radio in the 50s – a handle of ―stars‖ sold to you over and over, and the midlist, like the middle class, is reduced to peon status.
With Stealth, I found a way to do collector‘s grade hardcover editions and sell them for the same price as a library or retail grade book – kinda like the literary equivalent of Godiva Chocolate for Hershey Bar prices. I partnered with some dot.com guys and we secured a couple of million in private venture capital and lit up a company. This was in 1999, and the dot com bubble was still puffing up, but Stealth was almost quaint in that it actually made a product and sold it for a profit.
It ran for about three years and published 30 titles – all out of print books from established authors, and it was building nicely. But then right as the dotcoms started to seize up some innate power struggles evolved between myself and one of the partners, who was a total sleaze who dreamed of being on the cover of Forbes. Knew nothing about books, and didn‘t care, but he got high off the cracklike waft of a well-cooked Excel spreadsheet and he was really good at sucking up to the investors.
And, as it turns out, they were really good at letting him! He became Renfield to the investors‘ Dracula, selling his soul for the promise of a fly. And the whole thing became my crash-course in Wall Street weaseling 101 – the investors backed this dweeb, going yup yup yup until he burned through the initial investment and drove the company $100K in the hole. Then they went whoa, what have you guys done???
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It was comical: a black farce designed to drive the company to a point where the investors, who were also on the Board, could vote to give themselves 95% of the company. Classic-burn-the-bridgeto-own-it stuff, all driven by ego, hubris and greeeeeed LOL. I basically got pushed out of the very thing I had created. I dumped out in 2002, and it shambled along for about another year or so before going belly-up. The company‘s credibility was completely blown. But here‘s what really strange: my original vision and business model actually worked! The degree of failure in the company was directly proportionate to how far it drifted from the core concept. And nothing has happened in the intervening decade to address the core problem – and opportunity
– that Stealth was originally envisioned to solve.
So I think I might be lighting up the 2.0 version of the company in the next eighteen months – leaner and more strategic, but taking the lessons learned while staying true to the vision of it. We‘ll see how it goes; I‘ll keep you posted LOL…
Where do see yourself say…ten years from now? Twenty? CS: Dunno… dead? LOL. No wait, happily on a tropical island somewhere, basking in the sunset of my many successes? I‘ve been through two longish marriages and a recently
ended engagement, so who knows in that department, but I‘m enjoying myself these days – I‘m kind of a custom fit in a largely off the rack world LOL. I‘ll probably be still searching, still working, still following this strange road I‘ve chosen. I don‘t really see myself as ―getting old‖: just me… me… me… me… me…boom, gone. That said, I don‘t think I ever thought I‘d even live this long, so every day is the bonus round now LOL. It‘s all a weird gift.
What is your secret to success? Any advice to struggling writers? CS: Gawd… don‘t quit yer day job?? LOL… Last year I was invited to speak at a screenwriters group in LA – I never have a speech for these kinds of things, just a billion anecdotes from The Life. On my way up I decided on a quiz: when I got onstage I asked for a show of hands: how many people here write full time for a living? No hands go up. How many
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people here work a day job and write on the side? All hands go up. How many people here dream of one day quitting your day job to write full time for a living?
A pause. Then one, two, three hands hesitantly snake up. More followed. I watched until maybe half the room had there hands raised, and said you poor sick misguided bastards… do have ANY IDEA the hell you‘re dreaming of getting into? LOL.
Actually I just posted this on Douglas Clegg‘s Myspace page yesterday: he was hosting an impromptu forum on writing:
10 Rules I Just Made Up
1) Take a business course and learn contract until you can write boilerplate. 2) Study the business of publishing, entertainment, and copyright law... at least enough to function like the smart creative ambitious adult you are (or want to be.)
3) If you've learned all the rules, you know what you have to break.