Having missed March, my Interview With... series is back with the prolific horror writer, Amy Cross. With well over 80 books to her name it will take me quite a while to read them all, but if the quality, both in writing and in horror, are all like the first book of Amy's I read, The Haunting of Emily Stone, I am certainly in for a treat as I add more to the ever growing list of her work I have on my Kindle.
Below is my interview with Amy, and links to her social media and Amazon pages:
When did you first realize you wanted to be a
writer?
I'm not sure, but I think an early influence was
probably my mother. She used to write short stories for me, just a page or two,
and the deal was that for each story she gave me, I had to give her one in
return. I was only six or seven then, and I don't remember what I wrote, but I
guess that got me started with the idea that writing stories was a possibility.
What are you working on right now?
I tend to write about three months ahead of
release, so at the moment I'm working on things that should come out in the
summer. I've been promising new Dead Souls, Grave Girl and Mass
Extinction Event for a while now, so I'm focused on making sure I finally
get those out. But as for what's coming in the next month or so, I would say
vampires, ghosts and a computer genius are going to feature heavily.
Why did you choose the genre you write in?
I tried various other genres, but I didn't really
enjoy them and I don't think the results were very good. For now, I prefer
writing horror and paranormal fantasy, sometimes straying into thrillers or
more traditional fantasy. I tried writing a romance novel once and I couldn't
do it, so I re-wrote it as a horror story and released it as Other People's
Bodies.
What is your work schedule like when you're
writing?
I usually start writing at 8am, sometimes a
little earlier, and go through until midday, and then I take the dog for a
walk. That's when the ideas come. And then I start again at 2pm and work until
6pm. Sometimes I do a little more in the evening.
How much research do you do before and during a
writing project?
It depends on the book. For something like The
Priest Hole or The Death of Addie Gray, where parts of the story are
set in the past, I need to look things up so that I don't make any historical
blunders. With The Priest Hole, for example, I had to read about that
period in British history, just to make sure that I didn't include any
anachronisms.
How does your writing process work?
It's quite scatter-shot. Sometimes I have a plan
for the week, and then suddenly a new idea comes along and I decide to write
that instead. I recently went on a binge of writing short stories, some of
which I put out in a collection. The rest are sitting in a file on my laptop,
waiting for an opportunity to come out.
Sometimes I plan out the structure of a book
ahead of time, other times I dive straight in. When I plan the structure, I
usually divide it into eight parts, which helps me to see how the plot and the
characters are supposed to move along. Some books get written very quickly,
while others sit around waiting for me to get started. The Death of Addie
Gray, for example, started as a short story I wrote last year, and then
gradually it expanded and expanded until it was around 70,000 words.
Who are your writing influences?
The first book I read and truly loved was Wuthering
Heights. That one has always stayed with me.
What other authors do you read?
I just finished Peter Ackroyd's book London,
which was a fascinating look at the history of the city, and now I'm going
through a collection of Lydia Davis short stories.
What do you like to do when you're not writing?
Cooking. It's a good way to separate the writing
day from the evening. I'm not a particularly good cook, but I try to keep
improving, so I think I've gone from being bad to being pretty okay. Other than
that, the dog is always happy to go for another walk.
Do you hear from your readers much? What kinds of
things do they say?
Yes,
I do, mostly via Facebook. It's always good to hear what people liked, and what
they didn't like as well. I try not to promise release dates for books these
days, since I almost always miss those deadlines.
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