Writing, of course, it's not all in your head. Not talking about the 'manual' act of typing here either, but that, when your fiction's really working, your whole body's involved, and then some. Stephen Graham Jones More Quotes by Stephen Graham Jones More Quotes From Stephen Graham Jones Most zombie stories, the problems they solve are not the actual zombies. The problems they solve are the human interactions. Stephen Graham Jones human problems most zombie In the 40 years since 'The Amityville Horror', dramatizations of those supposedly-real events have gotten loose enough - special-effects laden enough, star-power re-packaged enough - that the audience no longer trusts the dramatization's loyalty to the core story. Stephen Graham Jones story events loyalty enough Vampires have become tragic or romantic figures. Vampire are largely seduction tales. They're no longer the scary creature in the dark. Stephen Graham Jones become vampire dark romantic You can't negotiate with a zombie. They have only one impulse - that's to eat us or our brains. Stephen Graham Jones eat us only you Every time I lock my people in a spacecraft or land them on an asteroid, the blood wells up again, and I'm writing horror. Horror's my default setting. It's also where I prefer to write. Stephen Graham Jones writing time blood people You have to want the haunted house to scare you. It completely steals your money to go through with one of those people who shrug it all off, who touch the monsters' faces to show they're fake. Stephen Graham Jones you fake money people The way humor's usually used in horror, it's as a pressure-release valve; without it, the drama would escalate out of all control almost immediately. Stephen Graham Jones control humor drama way I see so, so many novels written by people who are obviously short story writers. What they end up doing, it's going the full distance, covering three hundred pages or so, but they do it by just writing five or six long stories, and weaving them together, making them interdependent. Stephen Graham Jones end together long people With the Romero zombie, you usually did not have a reason for the infection, the plague, the virus, whatever it's called. Stephen Graham Jones whatever you plague reason When Ellen Datlow was running the fiction at 'Omni' in the late '80s and into the '90s, I had a subscription. It was one of two subscriptions I'd saved for, the other being 'Spider-Man.' And they each opened my mind and my heart in wonderful ways. Stephen Graham Jones being late mind heart I feel very at home in L.A., I think, because it's dry, and there's sun, like the West Texas I grew up in. Stephen Graham Jones feel think sun home For me, the facts in anything are always secondary. You don't lie convincingly with the truth. You lie convincingly with being a good liar. Stephen Graham Jones good me you truth I figure anytime you put an adjective before 'writer,' it's a way of dismissing the writer. Stephen Graham Jones figure before you way I think America would do anything through a drive-through. Stephen Graham Jones anything through think america Stories need stupid decisions that, at the time, seem absolutely rational and necessary. Without stupid decisions, the world isn't thrown out of balance, and so there's no need for a 'rest of the story' to balance it back. Stephen Graham Jones rest stupid time world If you keep having to dip into the story's past to explain the present, then there's a good chance your real story's in the past, and you're just using the present as a vehicle to deliver us there. Stephen Graham Jones good you chance past If the main character's not in jeopardy - physical, psychological, emotional, whatever - then you don't have any tension, and you don't have a story. Stephen Graham Jones story you emotional character Making people laugh is so much more difficult than making them sad. Too much fiction defaults to the somber, the tragic. This is because sad endings are easy in comparison - happy endings aren't at all simple to earn, especially when writing to an audience jaded by them. Stephen Graham Jones sad simple happy people People shouldn't go broke making a haunted house. Or, we should pay for our enjoyment, definitely. Stephen Graham Jones go enjoyment house people In 1990, I was an undergraduate freshman archeology major sneaking over to the English building and unearthing an amazing repository of books I'd never even suspected. By 1998, I'd have my Ph.D. Stephen Graham Jones english amazing never building
