With Roy Hudson
Ilene: Thank you Roy Hudson (https://www.facebook.com/royhudsonauthor) for allowing me to interview you today.
Roy: No sweat!
Ilene: What inspired you to write?
Roy: Strangely enough, I decided to be a writer at the age of four. I noticed that cartoons and comic strips had authors, and decided I wanted to create those. Using crayons and bond paper, I wrote and illustrated my very own comics. Those pages have been lost to time, but my interest in writing novels came about in seventh grade when I began reading Stephen King and Michael Crichton (RIP). Crichton’s The Terminal Man made me want to create the same emotions in readers that he incited in me.
Ilene: What authors do you read?
Roy: I’ve always been a firm believer in the aforementioned Stephen King and Michael Crichton, as well as Ray Bradbury (RIP), William Diehl, Edgar Allan Poe, and YA author James Howe. Lately, I’ve been trying some mainstream authors I’d never read before. I’ve read Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (and loved it) and picked up some classics by Benjamin Franklin and Robert E. Howard (as well as REH-inspired comics by Roy Thomas and Dark Horse Comics), and John Scalzi’s You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop: Scalzi on Writing.
Ilene: What type of books do you read?
Roy: I’m particularly drawn to horror (the genre I’m most comfortable writing), but also enjoy YA, mysteries, graphic novels, and humor. I occasionally read contemporary/mainstream fiction, but almost never erotica/romance. I don’t mind elements of romance (I even write some into my novels and stories), but if the plot relies solely on sex and relationships, I’m not interested.
Ilene: Could you tell us about yourself and your writing?
Roy: I’m 32 years old and am a lifelong resident of Augusta, GA, but the stuff “about me” is boring. I’ll stick to talking about my writing (which is also revealing of me).
After the aforementioned comics at age four, I forgot about writing until junior high. Once again, the comic book bug bit me. However, in English class, one of our assignments was to keep a daily journal. I could have done that, but instead I decided to write adventures of the characters I drew for fun. I enjoyed writing fiction so much that I decided to do some other short stories. I entered a short into a school contest in eighth grade. I didn’t win, but one of the teachers read it and complimented me. She told me not to give up, and I took those words to heart.
After reading the aforementioned The Terminal Man, I decided to try writing a novel in a five-subject notebook. It was very sloppy, and wasn’t quite the standard novel length, but I later used the idea when I had better writing skills.
When I was a freshman in high school, my family bought a computer. I taught myself to type and wrote my first “real” novel (as-of-yet unpublished) on MS Works. I’ve revisited it for editing purposes many times since then, and feel it might just be ready for the public.
After high school, I took a correspondence course in writing, but went to college in 2008, after nine years out of public education, so as to gain experience that editors would take seriously.
While attending the University of South Carolina-Aiken, I worked on the campus newspaper, The Pacer Times, and had a poem published in the university’s literary magazine, Broken Ink.
Last August, I self-published a novel called The Odic Touch on Amazon and Smashwords.com, as well as a horror anthology called Halloween Tales in early October. I have since unpublished The Odic Touch in the hopes of submitting it to a publisher, but Halloween Tales is still available.
After earning two (small) paychecks from Amazon and Smashwords, I had the confidence to submit some short stories and another novel to small presses, with good fortune. Firefly & Wisp accepted two short stories for their horror anthologies 13 Tales of the Paranormal and A Thorn of Death, as well as a novel called Relic, which will be available in October.
Ilene: How did you come up with Relic?
Roy: After a trip to Hollywood, CA, in 2003 and a lifelong love of movies, I decided to write a love letter to horror movies. During that visit to Los Angeles, I saw a stage production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera, a musical which gave me the idea for a plot when the film version was released a few years later.
Ilene: How would you describe Relic?
Roy: I would describe Relic as a tribute to the classic Gaston Leroux story, updated for the modern horror movie generation.
Ilene: What are your upcoming projects?
Roy: Other than Relic, I’ve submitted to Firefly & Wisp a short story collection and a zombie novel with the War on Terrorism backdrop and an all-too-timely theme of prescription drugs taking over. With the whole bath salt “zombie” outbreak, I had second thoughts about publishing it, but if I don’t release a story about drug-addled zombies, someone else will.
Ilene: How do you come up with the plots? Do they write themselves, do you use an outline? How do you work on the plots?
Roy: I usually come up with the characters first. Once I work them out, their stories present themselves. I try not to write an outline, because I’m such a lazy writer, if I write the “ending,” even if it’s the bare bones, I get the idea that I’m done with that story and need to move on to something else. It’s not the best way to write, but in writing without an outline I allow the stories to write themselves. Sometimes the plot twists surprise even me!
Ilene: Thank you for your time in letting me to interview you.
Roy: You’re welcome. Thanks for the opportunity!