Grady Hendrix and Riley Sager Talk Horror, Thrillers, and Craft

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I’m so, so, excited to present the conversation below to y’all. I’ve been a huge fan of Grady Hendrix and Riley Sager for years, both as great writers and great genre thinkers (they are also in that rarified category of “men who write women well”), and the conversation below proves that these two are some of the best, and funniest, folks around. Grady Hendrix’s latest novel, How to Sell a Haunted House, was released in January, and Riley Sager’s new novel, The Only One Left, releases today. The following discussion delves into horror, thrillers, 1980s paperbacks, and so much more. –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads senior editor

Grady Hendrix: Let’s start out with questions neither of us has ever been asked before, where do you get your ideas? Or why do you write horror?

Riley Sager: In all seriousness, though, that last question does bring up an interesting point, which is that I don’t think of myself as a horror writer, although I know many people do. In my mind, I write psychological thrillers … that contain elements of horror. I think it boils down to intent versus finished product. I always set out to write a thriller, but slasher and supernatural elements often end up sneaking in because I love them and enjoy writing them. Because of that, what I call a thriller could just as easily be labeled horror by someone else. Which is awesome. I love straddling both worlds. Working in an industry that insists on putting genre labels on things, I like not being so easy to classify. Since you also blur genres, combining horror with humor and big-hearted emotion, I’m curious if you feel it’s the same with you. For example, I know lots of people who claim to not be into horror but read—and love—your books.

GH: For me, horror vs. thriller really feels like more a marketing department concern than something I’m too focused on when I’m writing.

I recently pitched something that got rejected because it was a “thriller” and they wanted to sell my next book as “horror,” so clearly I’m no good at telling the difference. In a world where your books or Silence of the Lambs can be sold as either horror or a thriller, and where Toni Morrison’s Beloved doesn’t get sold as horror at all, I think those genre boundaries are largely in the eye of the beholder.

And they cut both ways: I know people who won’t touch something marketed as “horror,” even as they hope someone reboots “Hannibal,” and I know some horror-heads who stay away from thrillers because for a while those were overly identified with Gone Girl. Which is pretty horrific, if you ask me.

RS: Well, I would love to read a Grady Hendrix “thriller,” because I know you’d put your own distinct spin on it. But there’s definitely this unspoken rule in the publishing world that once you establish yourself in a particular lane, you should stay there. You’re allowed to widen that lane every so often, but not too much. It then becomes a tricky balance of growing and expanding as an author, keeping your publisher happy, and not alienating those wonderful readers who’ve been with you since the very beginning. 

Sometimes, though, it’s unavoidable. My last book, The House Across the Lake, went full-on supernatural in a way I hadn’t done before. When writing it, I knew it was going to be polarizing and that I could lose some longtime readers—which, unfortunately, I probably did—but creatively, it was worth the risk. I had so much fun coloring outside the boundaries I’d set for myself with my previous books. But I also know my limits. I’d love to write a Jaws-esque thriller about something big with lots of teeth lurking under the water and munching on swimmers, but I probably never will. It’s too big of a swing and I’ll likely embarrass myself in the process. 

But Jaws had a huge impact on me. I think a lot of authors have these seminal childhood experiences in which we saw something or read something that seared itself into our psyche. Did you have that experience? What was the first thing that really scared you?

Mine was the Disney version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. When I was a kid, The Wonderful World of Disney had this Halloween special in which they showed the scariest parts of Disney movies. One of them, of course, was the climactic chase between Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman, including the bit at the end where the Headless Horseman throws this flaming jack-o-lantern into the covered bridge Ichabod has just crossed and it comes barreling toward the viewer. That part utterly terrified me, but in a way that made me want to watch it again, I guess to understand why it scared me, but also because I liked being scared. For a kid living a comfortable, mostly carefree life, fear was a potent emotion.

Scooby-Doo is another influence, although it never scared me. I always knew the monster or ghost was someone in a rubber mask who would be foiled by Scooby and his pals. But I loved all the places they went. Gothic mansions and “haunted” houses and abandoned theme parks. It was all so atmospheric. Whenever I get compliments about the evocative settings in my books, I say a little thank you to Scooby-Doo, because I’m convinced that’s where I get it from.

GH: Every second of that Disney Halloween special made me wiggle my butt with pleasure, from the Headless Horseman throwing his motherfucking head at Ichabod Crane, to the Evil Queen turning into a senior citizen and getting crushed by a boulder. I even loved that gloomy Magic Mirror MC-ing. Also harrowing was my first and only encounter with the wailing Banshee at the end of Darby O’Gill and the Little People, an otherwise drecky leprechaun movie starring Sean Connery which traumatized every child at Peter Mansfield’s fifth birthday party.

The two deepest brands pressed into my brain did not come from a publicly-traded corporation. One was the house around the corner that turned its front yard into a veritable horror prom every Halloween. On the night itself, the family who lived there dressed as monsters and every half hour they did a lip-synched dance routine to “The Monster Mash,” which I found simultaneously stupid and unmissable. As a kid, Halloween seemed deeply subversive since it was a holiday that didn’t celebrate things like patriotism or peace on earth and good will to all men but reanimated skeletons offering you trays of human brains and child sacrifice.

The other wound was Rhett Thurman’s carpool. Mrs. Thurman drove carpool once a week from first through sixth grades, and to keep us pacified she told ghost stories. Today, I’ve realized that most of them were pulled from Ye Olde Book of Standard Issue Local Ghost Stories, but she held us rapt with her delivery, bringing back our favorites on request, changing endings just to mess with us, and giving characters the names of people we knew. It was the first time I saw that you could hypnotize a car full of small boys into submission with nothing more than your voice.

RS: Well done, Mrs. Thurman! Is there a book or short story that had that same effect on you? For me, it’s definitely And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. It might have been the first book for adults I ever read, and it blew my mind. I was like, “This is what adults read? Sign me up!” I became a mystery and thriller junkie because of that book.

GH: The book that turned me into the writer I am today was, of course, Famous Monsters of Filmland’s Star Wars Spectacular. I inherited the magazine from one of my older sisters and it was already battered when I got it, but even creased and stained it still promised to tell me “All About the Most Fantastic Adventure Movie Ever Made!” A padded-out promo rag printed on pulp paper designed to cash in on the Star Wars craze, it was barely 50 pages long, but it set me on fire.

Its stilted, grandiose synopsis electrified my eight-year-old brain, but the most important section was “The Best Science Fiction Films Ever Made.” In the days before VCRs, it was impossible for a kid from South Carolina to see old movies, and here were fifteen I’d never heard of, boiled down to short, 200-word descriptions that were little more than punchy lists of marvels, their descriptions like some kind of word-drug injected directly into the base of my brain.

An unedited excerpt from the Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe entry read, “The Buster Crabbe serials. Featuring almost more marvels than the human mind can remember: The Sharkmen of the Underwater Kingdom. The Tree Men of Mars. The Octosac…the Gocko…the Clay Men. The Hydrocycle, the Spaceograph, the Gyroships, Nitrogen Ray Machine.”

“So many nouns hinting at so many things! No connective tissue, no boring plot, no tedious story, just one amazing thing I’d never heard of after another, flying at my face as fast as I could read.”-Grady Hendrix

So many nouns hinting at so many things! No connective tissue, no boring plot, no tedious story, just one amazing thing I’d never heard of after another, flying at my face as fast as I could read. I had no idea what they were talking about, but I wanted some. I didn’t need to see these movies, I just studied their descriptions until I knew them by heart. I knew that 2001: A Space Odyssey was about a starship full of hibernating space vampires. I knew that Things to Come was about a war between underground mole men and surface dwellers who were addicted to PBS. Buck Rogers was about space fighters in blimps getting mail order rayguns and robots out of a catalog and, also, something about scuba diving. Years later, I finally saw 2001: A Space Odyssey and was disappointed there wasn’t a single space vampire in sight.

RS: I was lucky enough to grow up with a local PBS station that showed lots of classic horror late at night. On weekends and in the summer, my parents let me stay up to watch whatever midnight movie was on, I guess because it was PBS and they thought it was educational. So that’s how I first saw The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby and Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte. Great stuff!

Switching gears, this is a question you’ve probably been asked before, but what’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received? When I sent my agent the first draft of Final Girls, the main character, Quincy, was all over the map in terms of actions and emotions. At one point, my agent wrote, “Who is this Quincy?” because she’d never seen the character act that way before. The gears of the plot were all in place and working well, but I had let the plot dictate the character and not the other way around. It forced me to go back and examine every single character action to make sure it fit and was consistent. Now with every book, I make sure to step back and ask myself, “Who is this person?” If I don’t know, it means the book isn’t working.

GH: I hear you! For me, the best writing advice I ever read was Elmore Leonard’s “Never use a verb other than ‘said’ to carry dialogue.” That’s it. No need to be fancy, no need to get cute. Something is said, or something is asked. Readers don’t notice those words when they read and they keep the dialogue moving and if you use anything different you’d better have a really good reason. This one rule taught me to stop being so clever, keep it simple, get the hell out of my own way (and the reader’s), and just tell a story.

RS: Finally, where do you see the thriller/horror genre heading in the next few years?

GH: The push for diversity is my favorite thing publishing has done in a long time. I’ve heard what white dudes have to say about horror. I’m bored of myself. I want to know what a Chinese serial killer story looks like, what a Kenyan possession novel reads like, what a trans body horror movie feels like. Give me more, more! MORE!

I would also like more sex, please. Reading ‘70s, ‘80s, and especially ‘90s horror paperbacks to write Paperbacks from Hell dosed me with more bad sex scenes than I thought I could survive, but what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And in the years since the ‘90s we’ve gone from boom to bust, and I think that what the world needs now is a reborn literature of flesh. Clive Barker and Poppy Z. Brite and Anne Rice tried, but they can’t do it alone. Everybody into the pool!

I don’t write sex scenes because I’m a middle-aged man writing mostly female main characters so that would be creepy, but I vow to one day write a sexy book. I’ve got a werewolf novel in mind and that one’s going to be chock full of sex because werewolves were born horny. And I think every writer should promise to try to write a sexy book, because if the results are terrible you have permission to seal them in a lead-lined casket and bury them at the bottom of a swamp and no one will ever read them. But we live in a world full of violence and pain so why can’t we make it nice and fun and sexy every once in a while?

Do you write sex scenes? Do they stress you out? Do you avoid them?

RS: That’s a really interesting observation about sex disappearing from horror. I wonder if it was a kind of subconscious striving for “legitimacy.” By the nineties, horror definitely had that reputation of being sex and violence. So by removing sex from the equation, creators hoped it would be seen as more reputable? 

I don’t write very many sex scenes, for the same reason as you. Also,it’s trickier than people think. There’s a fine line between sexy and ridiculous. Get too explicit and it veers into pornography. Use too many euphemisms and it becomes campy. I’m fine with leaving it to the reader’s imagination. Sometimes the Hitchcock solution of ending North by Northwest with a train entering a tunnel is all we need. But if you write that horny werewolf novel, I’ll write my Jaws-esque thriller with a bunch of sexy swimmers. And if they don’t work, we can burn them or bury them. Or both.

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