Interview with Mort Castle by Emmanuel Paige

Mort Castle is an American horror author and writing teacher, with a dozen books, novels, and collections, as well as hundreds of short stories to his credit. He contributed to How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction by J.N. Williamson, served as editor of both Writing Horror: A Handbook By the Horror Writers Association and the updated and revised On Writing Horror. He is a founding member of the Horror Writer’s Association. He has been (and is) a musician, stand up comedian, high school English teacher, a magazine and comic book editor, and a mentor, and teaches in the fiction writing department of Columbia College Chicago in the largest college writing program in the nation. He is a Bram Stoker Award nominee (six times), and has been nominated for the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for the collection, Moon on the Water. In 2000, The Star / Chicago Sun-Times Newspaper Group named him as one of “21 Leaders in the Arts for the 21st Century in Chicago.” Along with Gary Braunbeck, Gemma Files, and Cody Goodfellow, Castle is one of the four authors in the forthcoming Dark Arts anthology Mighty Unclean, the deluxe edition of the comics formatted book he edited and produced. J N Williamson’s MASQUES will be released in May, and there’s a new collection of stories announced from Full Moon Press for 2009, entitled New Moon on the Water. The Polish edition of Newsweek cited two of Castle’s books as the “best published in Poland in 2008.”

Macabre Cadaver: Hello Mort, thank you for taking the time to chat with us. Let’s get right to business.

You stated that you have a crazy schedule and keep saying that it is time to slow down—but never do. Has it always been this way, or is this a new development in your career?

Mort Castle: Like Jimi Hendrix had it, “I want to see and do . . . everything.” As you age, you have to be careful that your interests and activities don’t diminish and that you don’t become narrow in your views. You have to keep on doing—or you’re sitting on the sofa, clucking your tongue about how crummy the world has become and listening to the sound of your brain turning to pudding.

Yeah, I’m busier than I had thought to be at this stage of the game—but I’m having more fun with it. Still teaching, still writing, and playing a lot better slide guitar and banjo than I used to.

Macabre Cadaver: When I was a kid, way back when, I had a copy of How to Write tales of Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction by J.N. Williamson, and I read it over and over until the pages were dog-eared and falling out. I remember your piece in it, about setting and character. That was the best collection of writing tips I have ever read.

Mort Castle: I’m glad. I loved that book, loved being a part of it. And the hell with modesty. You check your copy, you’ll see that Jerry Williamson noted I had the idea for the book. And what a good book it was and is.

And it brought us royalties for 12 years.

Macabre Cadaver: Your writing career extends over four decades, with a novel about every ten years, and numerous short stories and collections in between. Have you ever regretted not pumping out a novel every year, or have you relished taking your time and completing the books as they naturally develop?

Mort Castle: My first love is short stories. Were you able to support yourself in our time(s) with nothing but short stories, that’s the way I’d have gone and would go.

I have to admit, had there been publishers saying, “We need another novel from you,” then maybe I’d have gone that way—as long as I could have been sure of not just pumping it out. I look at some of the folks who’ve done that—become known as prolific . . . Yeah, they can turn out another mediocrity every three months. And they have written on their tombstones, HE WROTE 12,564 NOVELS NO ONE COULD REMEMBER READING AFTER HE TURNED THE LAST PAGE.

But there wasn’t a demand for Mort novels, okay? Surprising, maybe, because THE STRANGERS was strong enough that it got major motion picture interest and options and CURSED BE THE CHILD (It was #9 on the list of 10 Best Novels in Poland in 2008 according to Polish NEWSWEEK) sold about 100,000 copies.

But okay, there was always a market for my short stories.

And, going full circle, short stories give me something that novels have not provided. I have 15-20 short stories out of all I have done that I consider “Yup, got it right with this one.” They are my shot at literary immortality. I’d put them up alongside the work of anybody.

I’ve never had a novel that made me say, “Yeah, this is a perfect novel.” I’ve had stuff in every novel I’ve published—and, by the way, I’ve published seven novels, even though I don’t claim some of the early ones—that has pleased me, but no book in itself has ever let me congratulate myself for doing it absolutely right. (There are such books. David Morrell’s FIRST BLOOD. Stewart O’Nan’s LAST NIGHT AT THE LOBSTER. Ron Hansen’s ATTICUS.)

Macabre Cadaver: In your own words, finish this sentence: Mort Castle is . . .

Mort Castle: He definitely is.

And if you’re at all hip to Zen, you understand what I’m saying.

Macabre Cadaver: Do you work better with a deadline?

Mort Castle: Sometimes. Except when I don’t. In the early days, it was essential for me. Now, well, there’s no deadline I won’t shrug off if it means instead that my wife Jane and I are going to see a play on the spur of the moment.

Macabre Cadaver: Do you like teaching and mentoring better than writing in general?

Mort Castle: Back to Zen, my friend. There is no separation between Mort Castle, writer, and teacher, and mentor, and colleague, and . . . Hey, my favorite cartoon character is Popeye, because just like that squinty eyed sailor, “I Yam what I Yam and ‘at’s all What I Yam.”

Macabre Cadaver: Who was a major influence on your writing career?

Mort Castle: Mrs. Curlin and Mrs. Nanberg and Mrs. Kurtz, grade school teachers who read us Poe’s horror stories and didn’t worry about whether we would be traumatized bedwetters and psycho killers.

Plenty of writers I’ve never met, but above all, Hemingway. He makes you honest to God see.

That fine blues musician, Josh White, who was very patient with this (then) smart mouthed kid and taught me some guitar and ever so much about what it means to be an artist—to spend a life making art.

The poet Lucien Stryk, who first helped me think of myself as an Artist (yeah, capital A) and not to think it pretentious to do so.

(Digression: Most of these yaps who say “Art is too high hat. I just make entertaining stories” are way off because their stuff is not entertaining to an audience who wants something more than a shoot ‘em up video game.)

And of course, my dear spiritual big brother, the late Jerry Williamson, who actually taught me a number of writing techniques, particularly about “auctorial distance,” and never stopped caring about his art and craft and the people he helped in the art and craft.

Macabre Cadaver: Who is your favorite author?

Mort Castle: That above mentioned Hemingway is the guy I read and read again. But there are dozens of superb writers. You can read 24 hours a day for the next 100 years and always find it a worthwhile endeavor.

Macabre Cadaver: What is your writing schedule?

Mort Castle: Now, I write when I feel like it.

Usually feel like it three or four times a week. Usually feel like it when I ride the train to the city and back and my mini-keyboard does a fine job. Usually feel like it when I’ve signed a contract and want to churn it out to meet a deadline.

When I writes, as Popeye might put it, I writes.

And when I don’t, I don’t.

Macabre Cadaver: What is the most recent novel you have read?

Mort Castle: Not naming it, because it was so damned bad that this Mr. Bestseller had no business seeing this in print. A protagonist whose motivation came right from the Fox Network. Dialogue that made me think the author had not only never heard humans, he might well not have been human. A twelve page plot stretched over 600+ pages.

Last good novel I read was Garrison Keillor’s PONTOON—and that guy is a major American novelist, not just the “humor book” writer or “radio host” he’s thought of as—or dismissed as.

Macabre Cadaver: You are a musician as well as a writer? What instruments do you play? What is your favorite style of music?

Mort Castle: I play anything with strings, fiddle, guitar, banjo, dobro, lap steel—and harmonica. I play lots of instruments passably instead of any one of ‘em really well. If you want Mort in the folk mode . . .

Here you go—this 1965 album is still listed on ebay.

Macabre Cadaver: Is the horror genre dying? Is it still a viable form?

Mort Castle: No genre ever truly dies. So, of course it’s viable . . . Viable enough so that “historical horror” by Dan Simmons, a book called DROOD, just got nice notice in The New Yorker. Most of us who’ve lasted have stopped worrying about “what it’s called”; we write what we wish to write, try to do it well, and if we succeed, we find a publisher who’ll put it out there, maybe calling it “dark fantasy” or “supernatural suspense” or “Neo-Platonist Post Deconstructionist Modernistic Imagism.”

Genre is a label and a label is what gives the minimum wager his direction as to what shelf to put the book on at Borders.

Macabre Cadaver: Today the Internet is king, and word processors, desktop publishing, POD and vanity presses are lucrative and thriving businesses. Fiction writing has become this hideous thing of gargantuan proportions where would-be writers of every walk of life have now written a book and are seeking to be published or have self-published. How is the publishing industry to cope with this over-proliferation?

Mort Castle: I’m not so sure there’s over proliferation.

The wonderful Web has made it possible, however, for more people to be deluded that they are in fact writers—because they have been Web published. Or self-published on the cheap. Or . . .

In the meantime, big publishers and small publishers put out books, period—and the vast majority of those books are competently written—and find their audiences, whether that be a niche of 500 (what a typical book sells in the USA on average) or 50,000.

And the deluded, with their over “80 copies sold if you count my mom buying 53” and “The website had over 12 hits in 12 months,” continue to think of themselves as writers.

By their lights, they are writers. According to their friends, they are writers. Judged by writers, they ain’t no writers.

Macabre Cadaver: What do you think of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)?

Mort Castle: Gets people writing, so that’s good. Gets people writing, so that’s bad.

Macabre Cadaver: As the editor of a magazine, I find that a lot of submissions seem to be of an unfinished quality, rushed, and carelessly formatted. Do you think that writers are in a hurry and skip the essential revision process in order to seek publication quicker?

Mort Castle: Sure. That’s as it’s always been.

This is a game for the patient. If that’s not you, try shoe sales or standup comedy. You know pretty quick if you’re doing it right—or if you need to work on the shtick and the shpritz.

Macabre Cadaver: Do you think the quality of writing today is less than it was, say, an hundred years ago?

Mort Castle: What is good is very good—same as always.

What is bad is very bad—same as always.

What’s in the middle is still the middle, with the best of the middle learning toward good—and most of the rest leaning toward bad.

That might be different than 100 years ago, but what do I know? I’m old but not that old.

Macabre Cadaver: Do you think that word processors and the World Wide Web are detrimental to writing?

Mort Castle: These are tools, period. They are neither good nor bad. A hammer is good if I drive a nail with it. Less good if I smack my finger, and still less good if I thump you on the head.

I love being able to research on the ‘net. I hate being able to fool myself I’m researching if I simply dawdle from this website, listing all the three legged Kentucky Derby winners to this one, showing me Mennonite pornography.

Word processing? I did a grand job of it with my Smith-Corona typewriter—and Shakespeare did okay with his model “fresh from the goose’s tail.”

Macabre Cadaver: Are kids reading more or less these days?

Mort Castle: Probably more—at least the kids I see. You know, I work in many high schools—and all these kids are carrying non-assigned books with them. Harry Potter and Stephanie Meyer and all that stuff with dragons and angels and stuff.

Maybe they play a lot of videogames and waste hours texting each other to no particular purpose (kids are supposed to have a purpose?) but they are reading.

Macabre Cadaver: If a newbie writer told you they were considering a career as a “Best Selling” novelist what would you tell them about the business of writing and publishing today?

Mort Castle: The truth: You can starve to death or you can make a fortune—but it’s tough to earn a living.

Just like always.

Macabre Cadaver: Where do you get your ideas for your stories?

Mort Castle: Everywhere. If your sensory inputs are functioning three days out of seven, you should never run out of ideas.

The root of creativity is making connections. When I learn about Marilyn Monroe’s seeking “Daddy” all her life and that Hemingway always wanted a daughter . . .

When I hear a kid ask “Mom, am I pretty?”

And Mom says, “No.”

When I see the reconstructed gallows where we had the last legal hanging in Illinois . . .

—get the smell of that waiting room at the hospital’s surgical unit . . .

You don’t have to seek ideas. They come to you.

Macabre Cadaver: Do you have any words of wisdom for aspiring writers?

Mort Castle: From the late poet Bill Wantling: Walk slow and drink a lot of water.