This time we talk things that go bump in the night, Bigfoot, and . . . greeting cards?
Who are you? Where are you? What kind of stuff do you write?
My name is Timothy G. Huguenin, I’m a horror writer living in Bartow, West Virginia.
Tell us about your most recent book, story, or other project.
My most recent published book is a ghost story called Little One. Kelsea Stone lives in Los Angeles and gets a call one day from a lawyer telling her that her birth parents have passed away (she was sent to a foster home at a young age and never knew them) and have left her their house in Canaan Valley, West Virginia. She flies over there to check it out, clean it up, and probably sell it or rent it out—and subconsciously, she deeply desires to know her parents and figure out why they sent her away. While she is there, she finds out that hers isn’t the only soul dwelling in the house.
In what genre do you primarily write? Why did you choose that one?
I write horror, usually set in the Appalachians (primarily West Virginia, because I grew up there). I don’t know why I like horror more than the other genres, but I do, so that’s usually what I write. I tend to shy away from slasher-type horror, and gravitate more toward gothic and/or weird styles, depending on my mood. I take a cue from Stephen King and try to focus heavily on characterization, especially in my novels, but I’m not nearly as good at that as he is. Early on in my life as a reader, before I really was serious about writing, Poe heavily influenced my tastes, and I’ve been drawn toward Lovecraft and Ligotti these days.
Tell us briefly about your writing process, from once you’ve got an idea down to having a finished product ready for publication.
I usually get an idea for a villain, or a monster, or some kind of creepy or disturbing situation, without even a skeleton of story. It’s just kind of a seed in my head. I’ll leave it in there for a while and see if it sticks around. If I keep thinking about it, usually that means it’s a pretty good idea, and it will start to germinate. I’ll try to come up with some characters, if I haven’t already, and figure out a conflict that the story could center around.
So there’s some time between when I get the first idea to when I actually get something on paper—though this process can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few months. When I think I have a seed that has sprouted enough (I can think of at least one or two characters and the conflict, with a general idea of where the story might go), I can start writing. Once that happens, I start typing and see what happens. Usually the beginning is hard, since the characters aren’t quite established yet.
But once I get through that, the story kind of lives its own life. Sometimes it goes where I was expecting; most other times I’m surprised by it. After I have a first draft, I’ll take a break from the book. Then I’ll print it out. I always print out hard copies for editing. Always, always, always print out your story at least once before you decide you’re done. You miss so much on a computer screen. (I splurged a little last year and bought a Brother HL-L2340D, a black and white laser printer that prints on both sides of the paper, and I would highly recommend that little workhorse to any writers who can afford it. And really, I make it sound like some big extravagance, but really, it is relatively inexpensive as far as laser printers go. I’m just an old cheapo by nature.) Anyways, I’ll run through the paper copy for initial edits, put my changes back into the computer, then I’ll email what follows from that to my wife, Emily. After I consider her comments and apply changes based on that, it will go to my other beta readers, if I have any.
My last two novels were improved immensely because of pre-publication beta reader feedback. If it’s a short story, usually Emily is the only person other than myself to read it before I submit it somewhere. After her comments, I might even go over it one more time on my own. For short fiction, that’s about it. I might revisit a short story every few months, but generally speaking that’s all I do. For my first two novels, I’ve hired a professional copy editor to help clean up my prose and mistakes after the beta reader stage. With something of that length, even the best self-editing writers cannot get by without a good, unbiased line editor. Also, I go through the novel again once or twice after editing. Even then, mistakes and typos can slip through the cracks. I am very particular about that kind of thing, and errors in a finished product really get me upset.
Why do you think it’s so important to edit on paper copies? Did you have an experience where you missed something editing on screen?
No specific editing disasters come to mind immediately, but I’ve always felt more comfortable reading from paper, so that naturally led to me editing from paper copies. Some studies have shown that reading from a screen decreases reading comprehension compared with reading from paper. How accurate those studies are in general I haven’t looked into, but I know in my own experience, I do not read as well from a computer, so it is easier for me to miss mistakes that way.
Who is the favorite character you’ve created? Why?
I am currently trying to find an agent for a novel I wrote about a boy and his friends trying to stop an evil hypnotist from taking over their town. It is my favorite thing I’ve written so far, and I reckon that my favorite character probably comes from that book. However, there are quite a few really good characters in there, and it would be hard for me to choose just one. I think I’ll go with the villain, Dr. Wolfgang M. Schafer (as he is called right now, and I don’t see myself changing his name before publication, but you never know for sure until it’s settled in print). He’s tall and lanky, with silver eyes and greasy black hair. He wears a top hat and a ratty black suit with a tie the color of dark blood. A barn owl named Trilby rides around on his shoulder and is known to attack meddling kids every now and again.
What’s the weirdest subject you’ve had to research as a writer that you never would have otherwise?
I know I’ve Googled some weird stuff while I’m writing, but for some reason I’m drawing a blank (maybe my subconscious doesn’t want to share! lol). Hmm. I’ve been reading a lot about Bigfoot recently, but that’s not really that weird. One of my questions I had a hard time figuring out (and still never found a good, detailed answer to) was how long it takes for a body to decompose without being embalmed. After death, bodies these days are pumped full of chemicals. I had trouble finding info about what happens if you don’t do that, specifically a timeline of decay stages. I even tried emailing some police and professors at a school that runs a lab on that kind of stuff for people studying to be forensic investigators, or whatever they call those CSI guys. But nobody would email me back.
What’s the one thing you’ve learned, the hard way, as a writer that you’d share to help others avoid?
There are some great short fiction magazines out there—some print and more online—and there even more bad ones. Now, I’m not talking about paying vs. nonpaying vs. token markets here. People have their own opinions on what their stuff is worth, and I’m not saying that all nonpaying markets are bad. I’m saying, there are some places that you might be tempted to submit to in desperation, then later regret it if you get accepted because it is presented in an embarrassingly unprofessional manner, and you will have doubly harder time selling it to a magazine with a greater readership. It is hard to get short fiction published by the good ones, so you might be tempted to just send your story anywhere at all, even if it’s a website with only tiny handful of viewers (most of which are the contributing authors), without a competent editor, and looks like some teenager’s Geocities project from the dial-up era. But it is better to hold on to a short story that isn’t getting accepted, keep tinkering with it every now and then as you improve as a writer. Eventually you will start writing better stuff, and new good markets do open up, giving you more options.
If you won $1 million (tax free, to keep the numbers round and juicy), how would it change your writing life?
I’m not sure. I reckon I would buy a house with better insulation, and I wouldn’t ration my heat as much. That would make it a lot easier to sit down and write in the winter. My electricity bills get pretty high in the winter, and I try not to turn my thermostat up past 60 in most rooms—and when I’m not in the room, I keep it turned down to 50. So when I sit down to write, I sometimes get really shivery. Also—and I don’t know if other people are like this, or if it’s just me—being cold makes me have to pee a lot. So in the winter I get up to pee quite often. I keep telling my wife if I ever make it big, I’m going to have someone build me a tiny house in our back yard that could be my lonely little writing shack. If I ever do that, I’ll make sure it stays warm when I’m in there.
What’s the last great book you read or new author you discovered?
Well, I’m usually late to the game with any kind of trend, including literary stuff, even in my own genre. Only last year I discovered Thomas Ligotti’s Grimscribe, which is from the early 1990s.Like almost everyone else who has read it, I was super impressed. I ended up buying Songs of a Dead Dreamer after that, and then Teatro Grottesco, which I haven’t read much of yet. I later found out he holds a very pessimistic, frankly depressing and disturbing philosophy that I don’t personally subscribe to, but he sure knows how to write some very unique stuff, with a prose style that hearkens back to Poe and Lovecraft in some ways, though not as verbose. More lately, I’ve also been enjoying Michael Wehunt’s work. He also writes in the weird vein of horror, though from what I have read so far, his stories tend to read more like Robert Aickman than Ligotti. I enjoyed his novella The Tired Sounds, A Wake, which was published by Dim Shores Publishing in a limited print run, so that one, unfortunately, isn’t easily available now. However, a few of his short stories can be read for free online (there are links on his website), and Apex published a book of his short fiction called Greener Pastures, which you can find on Amazon. Actually, Shock Totem originally published it, but they went out of business, or got bought or something, and Apex is the publisher who has it now. I know he’s currently working on a novel, and I’m looking forward to seeing how that turns out.
What do you think your next project will be?
I’ve started a Bigfoot novel set here in West Virginia. I’ve been kind of stuck on it recently, though. I have a few paragraphs down and a few character sketches, but it’s not really wanting to take off for some reason. One of my other goals for this year is to write more short fiction, so I’ve been trying not to worry about the novel as much this month and get some words down on shorter stuff. Also, you might find this kind of funny—I do—just yesterday I decided to try and break into the world of writing for greeting cards. I’m sending a few little verses to some companies. We’ll see where that goes. I had forgotten until recently that I used to write little poems for my friends all the time in high school, so it makes sense to try this out. I don’t really think I’ll get very serious about it, but if someone ends up wanting to pay me for something that took me fifteen minutes to write, I won’t feel bad about that.
What is it about Bigfoot that made you want to write a story about it?
For all the television attention Bigfoot has gotten due to recently made Bigfoot hunting reality type shows, I haven’t come across very many Bigfoot novels—and not any that I considered very good, either, based on reading some excerpts or reading reviews (if you have any suggestions, point me to them, I’d love to find some good ones). Though generally speaking Bigfoot has been associated with the Pacific Northwest, there have been multiple reported sightings here in West Virginia. Russell L. Jones, a Bigfoot believer, has written a book specifically on Bigfoot in WV called Tracking the Stone Man, which I found very interesting. In fact, Pocahontas County (where I live) and two neighboring counties, Pendleton and Randolph, have the highest reported numbers of sightings according to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO). The Monongahela National Forest is huge, over nine hundred thousand acres. Plenty of room for Ol’ Squatch to hide, if he exists. I was looking for a good monster in WV, and heard people have claimed to see Bigfoot activity in the area. Sounded like a good story to me!
Did you sit down and decide to write greeting card verse, or did you come up with a verse and think “this might work . . ..”?
I saw somewhere on the internet that you could submit stuff to a few greeting card companies who would pay for work. Figured it was worth a shot. So far I haven’t gotten any interest in mine.
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JD Byrne 