Douglas Clegg

BIO

Douglas Clegg was born in Alexandria, Virginia, and graduated from Washington & Lee University with a BA in English Literature. He is the author of Goat Dance, Bad Karma, The Halloween Man, The Nightmare Chronicles, You Come When I Call You, Naomi, Mischief, and several other novels. He now lives in an alternate Manhattan, although this may change at any moment.

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INTERVIEW

September 27, 2002

Douglas Clegg's newest novel, THE HOUR BEFORE DARK, moves into a wider arena as it combines horror with psychological suspense. In this interview with Bookreporter.com's Jackye Thorn, Clegg reveals his thoughts on the dark games children play and what he finds frightening even when he's writing a novel.

BRC: Reviewers are saying that with THE HOUR BEFORE DARK, you are pushing the edges of the horror novel and moving toward psychological suspense. Is this a conscious decision on your part?

DC: Yes, in some of my upcoming novels, I'll be working with the landscape of the psychological suspense novel, although, to me, there's room for a love story, for terror, and for comedy within that form. On the other hand, if a story came to me that was completely a nightmare on paper, I'd go for it as well. I want to experiment sometimes, be more of a traditionalist at others. I believe readers will come along for the ride, so long as I make sure the story's a good one, and a page-turner.

I believe a really good novel is just that --- despite some kind of artificial genre expectations foisted on the book. Horror fiction is still my first love, but what I'm writing these days is closer to novels of psychological disturbance than anything else. Horror to me exists within the human psyche, therefore it's worth exploring in fiction. And exploring the human mind in its shadowy areas is a lot of fun, too. At least in fiction.

I truly believe that the human psyche is a landscape of both wonder and nightmares, and I'd like to explore both of those aspects fictionally. In some of my fiction, this takes the form of the fantastic; in others, like THE HOUR BEFORE DARK, it's in the form of the suppressed memory within a family --- the psychological underpinnings of a current murder story.

BRC: The Dark Game in the book is integral to the plot and something many adults can relate to --- the games we play as kids to help us cope with the realities of our universe --- did you have a dark game? What was it?

DC: In THE HOUR BEFORE DARK, Nemo and his sister and brother played it as children with blindfolds and that wonderful but sinister nursery rhyme that begins "Oranges and lemons, say the Bells of St. Clemens," and ends with "here comes a candle to light you to bed, and here comes a chopper to chop off your head." They were already reciting a rhyme of both wonder and nightmare, and somewhere in that game of make believe, they lost a week of memory from their lives. Now, as adults, they begin to piece together the week, through their unraveling of the secrets within their father's house.

For me, personally, my version of the game was volcanic activity. My imagined life was more important to me than my real one, in many respects. It was both a destructive and creative force in my childhood --- the little rituals and privacies I gave my imagination protected me from some unspoken terrors of my young life and also kept me from fully participating with others my age in their more acceptable daylight games.

To me, the Dark Game is simply a level of secrecy that some children create around themselves --- perhaps it's a game of make believe or "Let's Pretend," but it can move into a ritual of separation from the rest of life. But it's also a fountain of creativity.

The positive side of my own version was that I wrote story after story from the age of eight or nine onward; I sketched and painted and doodled into an imaginary world; and I composed music in my head, much of which I could still hum or sing to this day. Like I said, it was volcanic activity for me. The unpleasant side of this was that I generally felt separate from other children my age, and would watch them interact much more socially than I ever could. It wasn't until I was about fifteen or so that this changed.

The Dark Game for me was definitely a lifesaver. It was a place I could go to be creative, and ultimately, to practice storytelling for many years before I ever did it professionally. On the other hand, it also created mysteries in my head about what was really going on at home that I had refused to acknowledge. When I finally did, as I got older, I could see that the Dark Game had an equally destructive influence --- it kept me, at a certain point, from growing. So, I had to change, to allow myself to grow.

BRC: The fear in your books is so palpable. Are you frightened when you are writing?

DC: Yes. I get scared all the time --- and I have to tell myself "It's just a story. You're making it up," whenever I get in that moment of terror. There's a point in the book --- a crescendo of the story --- where Nemo Raglan, my main character, is forced to deal with the idea that he, and his sister, may be going insane. That they may have seen something terrifying, or else they are losing their minds. After all, their father has just been brutally killed --- it would not be out of the ordinary for a breakdown to follow. From having watched my father go through stages of Alzheimer's Disease, I truly believe that knowledge of losing one's memory --- or one's mind --- is one of the most terrifying events any of us can face. Consciousness is more fragile than we'd like to believe --- all it takes is one accident, or one genetic screw-up, and suddenly our sense of who were are, and who is around us, might change.

I find this the most terrifying prospect --- the disintegration of the mind, either through an imbalance, a perception, or perhaps even the haunting of childhood upon the adult --- all those unresolved mysteries and fears that are hangovers from our childhood.

In writing THE HOUR BEFORE DARK, I wanted to both explore this kind of fear, and also exorcise it to some extent. And enjoy the process --- THE HOUR BEFORE DARK turned out to be a painful novel to write, because I wrote it the year my father died, and then other deaths hovered as well --- my uncle, one of my editors, my good friend, novelist Richard Laymon, and even my beloved dog, Randy. On top of that, the World Trade Center came down within a few miles of where I live. I felt that 2001 was the Year of Death. So, writing a novel about the murder of a man's father was not the story I thought I'd be writing. But somehow, in writing the novel --- about a father who was the polar opposite of mine --- I was able to find the light at the end. I think creativity of any kind is an enormous gift that really helps take you through the dark times of life.

Writing the novel became my own form of redemption --- I had to grow with the characters in many ways, I had to face the death of loved ones in a way I never had to previously, to know that certain things will always remain unspoken between people, and I had to acknowledge that life has got to be more than a long line that's punctuated by birth and death at either end of that line.

I find a lot of personal redemption in writing these novels --- and THE HOUR BEFORE DARK held more meaning than many of my other novels for me. The family in it is completely unlike the family I grew up with, yet the problems of fragmentation of memory, of a beloved parent who is both hero and difficult taskmaster, and of the mysteries of who our parents truly are, existed for me as well as for the narrator, Nemo Raglan.

BRC: What kind of books do you read for "comfort food?"

DC: I read everything that I can --- if it interests me. Recently: THE LOVELY BONES, FLESH TONES, Shirley Jackson's THE BIRD'S NEXT, Ira Levin's THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL, a collection of Joyce Carol Oates' short fiction, a short story collection called DRAGONFLY by Brian Knight, and far too much nonfiction on the subject of smart drugs. There's a lot going on in the small press and I try to keep up with newer writers, because I believe first or second novels are usually among the best of a writer's work. My favorites to turn to are Dickens, John Irving, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Peter Straub, Anya Seton, and Daphne DuMaurier. Whenever I can, I re-read ALICE IN WONDERLAND and THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, and sometimes dig out various Robert Louis Stevenson stories from various collections. I read less when I'm writing a novel, so my reading of fiction tends to be confined to several months of the year. I read a lot of nonfiction while I'm writing a novel.

BRC: I know one of your books has made it to the silver screen --- what was it like to see your ink and paper characters speak out loud and move in three dimensions?

DC: Well, I had so little to do with it --- other than creating the characters and basic plot in my novel, BAD KARMA --- that the best part about it was imagining what the movie could be.

A very strong presence came to the movie by way of British actress, Patsy Kensit. The script doesn't really work for the movie. I felt bad for the actors, because some of them were very good, given the material at hand. I don't know what happened to this production --- good camera work, nice --- if different --- setting from the novel, and a lead actress who really knew what she was doing. Strangely, I wrote the novel in such a way that it could very simply be turned right into a movie --- cut some description here and there, and you had a script. But they veered from the novel a bit in the movie. The novel, called BAD KARMA, was essentially about a relentless woman who would stop at nothing to prove her past reincarnation "story" to the man she believed she was bound to, in this "bad karma." The movie, called "Hell's Gate" in the USA, keeps some of that, but seems intent on pulling the legs out from under the story.

I want to keep a sense of humor about it --- I'm not the first novelist to have a B movie made from one of his books, nor shall I be the last. For horror moviegoers, there are fun-bad moments in it, and something about the story structure holds up, but it's just not quite there. I would love to have done the running commentary for the DVD.

On the other hand, once I signed off on it with my agent in Hollywood, why should I be this movie's critic? Sometimes, a B movie is just a B movie. I hope there are other movies in the future, and I hope I can write the screenplay for one or two of them at some point, since I believe I have a fairly cinematic story sense.

BRC: After several books, what still challenges you, what do you think you haven't done yet and what do you want to do?

DC: Basically, I feel as if there are a thousand doors in my imagination. The act of writing a novel, novella, or short story, is about opening up each door and exploring it fictionally. That's how I see it. Behind each door, some new interest or obsession presents itself, or some aspect of the world that I want to understand or experience --- so I begin writing as if I've lived it. As if I'm there, with the people in the story. I consider this like a "false memory" thing --- there are times when I remember a story, and then feel as if it actually happened, as if there were people who lived, and all I did was translate the memory of that. When the novel becomes "as if it really happened" to my brain, I generally know the story worked.

Regarding what I haven't done yet? I haven't written the novel I've been thinking up that I want to write after the one I'm currently working on. I want to write many novels over my lifetime, many short stories, some screenplays, and maybe even make some movies at some point. I love being a writer, and I love that I get to see my books in readers' hands.

Not sure everything I want to do will happen, but I want to plan for it so that if it does, I'm prepared. I love storytelling. If all publishing ended tomorrow, I'd probably be down at the corner store of some small town telling some stories.

Currently, I'm revising a novel called THRILLER that will be out from Tor in hardcover in the fall of 2003.

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PAST INTERVIEW

September 15, 2000

While Stephen King has been grabbing all of the headlines recently for using the Internet to distribute his work, he is by no means the only established author who is utilizing cyberspace in new ways to distribute --- and market --- their work. Douglas Clegg, the acclaimed author of THE CHILDREN'S HOUR, THE NIGHTMARE CHRONICLES and YOU COME WHEN I CALL YOU, as well as last year's e-serialized NAOMI, recently inaugurated a website as part of a unique multimedia introduction to his trilogy THE HARROW HAUNTING, a very ambitious effort to combine conventional publishing and eBooks with other media. Clegg recently took time from his extremely busy schedule to discuss this groundbreaking project.  

TBR: You recently launched a website for your dark fantasy trilogy THE HARROW HAUNTING, which consists of three novels: NIGHTMARE HOUSE, which you are giving away via serialized e-mail; and THE INFINITE, which will be published in hardcover in September 2001. How can interested readers receive the installments of NIGHTMARE HOUSE? And will they need any special software to receive them?

DC: The site at www.ehaunting.com --- The Harrow Haunting site --- is the only place for the multimedia with regard to NIGHTMARE HOUSE, my e-serial novel. I want the emails to be able to reach anyone with any kind of computer -- be it desktop or handheld -- and not have to worry about any technical wizardry or sound. The www.ehaunting.com website is there for those who want a more multimedia experience -- but I've kept the gadgetry low there, too. I want the music and visuals and supplemental text to engage a visitor's mind and imagination, not crash a computer system with enormous downloads. With the ehaunting.com, I'm the writer-director, and I have a score and scenes from the movie, but not the movie itself.

TBR: I must confess, and warn your readers: I found the Harrow Haunting site addictive. My reflexes are well past the point where I am capable of rescuing computer princesses or wiping out nests of vampires; your site, however, combines the best features of role playing games with reading and graphics, without leaving us old folks in the dust. What was the impetus behind launching the site?

DC: With NIGHTMARE HOUSE, sponsored by Cemetery Dance Publications, I wanted to do something more with the subscribers than just send out the email episodes of the novel. So I decided to create an interactive website, a virtual haunting, with pictures and music. I also wanted to keep it fairly low-tech for now -- I can create Flash movies and I have all kinds of software at my disposal, but I wanted this to be something simple and nearly old-fashioned.  When I conceived of the site, I wanted images that were somewhere between scenes in a movie, a real place, a CD-Rom game, and a puzzle.  

TBR: Did you do all the work on the site yourself?

DC: No. Gail Cross at Desert Isle Design took my ideas and ran with them -- she created these stunning and mysterious images and notions in the graphics.  Jim Farris, a novelist who has primarily written in electronic format, had become well known for his short soundtracks in midi.  He began creating a few for me last spring for a rudimentary version of the site; then I asked him if he wanted to create more. He really went to town. I'd say things to him like: all right, this woman's going mad, but she's going mad in a really beautiful way, and he'd come up with a gorgeous piece that was just right.  A couple of the pieces are classical --- Saint-Saen's Danse Macabre and Beethoven's Fure Elise --- and the rest are his compositions.  He created a Nightmare House Lullaby, a Nightmare House Waltz, and more.  It really adds to the atmosphere of going to the various aspects of the virtual haunting at www.ehaunting.com. And all of these fine people can be reached via links on the www.ehaunting.com site.

All this is, I hope, helpful in creating a larger sense of the story in the minds of the readers of the serial novel -- I'm hoping it's like looking through a keyhole into images and moods of the setting of the novel, while still re-creating the novel in the reader's mind as one reads each installment.  

TBR: How long has the site been up? And will you be adding to it from time to time?

DC: The official launch for the site was Sunday, July 30th, and there are about a dozen different midi files of Jim's music, and more than twenty rooms and aspects of the haunting.  On August 20th, an additional set of "Forbidden Rooms" went up -- I don't want to spoil the story for anyone reading along by revealing some of the visual secrets too early. And as each novel in the Harrow Haunting trilogy continues (the conventional paperback of Mischief comes out on September 17th in stores everywhere), more of the virtual haunting will be revealed.

TBR: At this point, the Harrow Haunting site has been up for less than a month. What sort of response have you received so far? And how does that compare with the numbers for NAOMI, which you published via e-mail serialization last year?

DC: Regarding subscribers, just over 2,100 people are subscribed right now -- I would predict, safely, that 2,300 will have signed up by Sunday night's launch; and were I a betting man, I'd guess that 4,000 will be signed up within two weeks, and 6,000 by the end of the run of NIGHTMARE HOUSE.  To compare it with NAOMI -- 1,000 had subscribed by launch date, 4,000 at its peak. Then about a month after NAOMI ran, the number dropped to under 1,000 and fluctuated at between 1,000 - 1,200 during the year when there was no email serial.  

TBR: Are you satisfied with the reader response so far?

DC: I know this is not a high number with the King numbers being thrown around, but I think this is still a curiosity (what I'm doing) and what I've learned about the readership on the list is: they are serious readers and they don't just want Douglas Clegg's next novel, they want a good novel to read in serial installments. that's the challenge of being a writer: living up to that. It takes the best of everything I have within me to create a story for readers, and I'm happy to step up to that plate. They're not here for a phenomenon or an event, necessarily, but to actually get a book they will read and either enjoy or hate -- and I'll hear soon enough which way the pendulum goes. It's a little like walking a high wire as a novelist, and I love this aspect. I believed it last year with NAOMI --- the Internet is a broadcast medium and giving away a novel on the Internet is the way to go. Plus, by establishing the sponsorships, first with Leisure Books in 1999, then with Cemetery Dance Publications in 2000, I pioneered a way for a novelist to get paid while still giving the novel free over the Internet.  

TBR: Do you see a lot of authors broadening their readership in this manner?

DC: I see few writers trying this -- instead, they're going to the "pay 5 - 20 dollars" for a download of the book without revealing much about the book.  What writer can make a living that way? The sponsorship I received was in the five-figure range -- healthy enough for the sponsorship, and, assuming 6,000 people sign up for the book, the amount I've been paid is more than what I'd make on royalties from 10% of a hardcover price. Admittedly, if 100,000 people signed up, it would be less of a good equation regarding the sponsorship money, but you would not hear me complaining!  

TBR: This is your second eBook project. Do you have any advice for authors who are looking at e-publishing as a way to get their work in front of an audience?

DC: I know this flies in the face of what all the independent e-publishers are attempting, but I do think the writers on the Internet need to create publicity and marketing budgets for their own books. I think they need to seek out sponsorships or set up "contributions welcome" -type setups rather than charge per-book, and I firmly believe that they need to work hard to crossover into print, because right now the focus of the largest readership is still on print.  This may not be true next year or the year after, as technology improves, as reading entire novels on handheld devices becomes more common.  But I'm talking about today and tomorrow, which is all you can really talk about regarding the Internet.

TBR: Do you feel that e-publishing will adversely affect conventional book publishing?

DC: It's hard enough to get people to pick up a paperback by an unknown, but at least with a paperback you can resell it or pass it to a friend or donate it to the library -- but a download? If you don't like the book, it just takes up space on your computer and reminds you that you wished you hadn't paid for it. And if you love it, you'll probably want the finished book -- I know I would.  

Think of how hard it is to build an audience in bookstores for a new novelist without a huge marketing budget.  Sure, Stephen King and Mary Higgins Clark might command this, but then they've had twenty years of the biggest publishers in the world building their names internationally, as well as of having written books that have become popular classics. I'm certainly not there yet -- I'm just a storyteller who wants to reach a wider audience.  I don't think it's realistic for most novelists, because on the Internet we're forgetting that an invitation is required to enter the households of the potential readers. They have to really want the eBook to purchase it online, and they have to really want to read it on a computer, and when all is said and done, it's hard to part with even five dollars for a novel you may not like beyond the first ten pages.

TBR: I'm going to ask the same question in a slightly different way. Last year you gave away a serialized version of your book NAOMI via e-mail. I understand that it's going to be published as a conventional paperback early next year. Is there any concern that the sales of it will be hurt by the fact that it was available for free?

DC: I may attract 6,000 people to read my email serial, but I can reach more than 100,000 readers with my paperbacks -- in fact, when the paperback of NAOMI, my e-serial, comes out in March of 2001, I'm willing to bet it will reach 250,000 people, whereas the email serial reached 4,000, and it was free and got a lot of publicity. I don't believe every novel a novelist writes should be available free on the Internet, and I certainly intend to enforce my copyright on NIGHTMARE HOUSE, but I do believe that with electronic downloads, the e-novelists might consider giving one free complete look-see a year to try and build their audience (and some already do this).  

I also want to give something back to the readers with this. Over the years, I've come to understand how much readers have supported my life and work, and I want, now and then, to say: here's something for you if you want it, a novel of mine, and it's free for those who are interested as a thank you.

TBR: Well, NIGHTMARE HOUSE is a pretty nice gift to your readers! So you're not concerned that your book sales will be affected by essentially giving away some of your work via the Internet?

DC: I don't think giving away fiction on the Internet will hurt print sales at all -- in fact, I have anecdotal evidence from my own writing career that it will build an audience further! Print books are about possession: we, who love books, want to own them, have them, keep them on our shelves. Some people even smell them.  And if you love a story, I believe you'll love it in many different incarnations. After all, how many people read the book and then go see the movie? And then, rent the video? And buy both the paperback and hardcover? When it's a novel I love, I do that. Sometimes I buy the hardcover twice if the first copy got a little shabby from overuse.  

TBR: Now THAT'S a true booklover! Thank you, Doug. We'll keep reading NIGHTMARE HOUSE as it's released and look forward to the conventional publication of MISCHIEF on September 17, 2000!

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