Blurring The Line is the new anthology of horror fiction and non-fiction, edited by award-winning editor Marty Young, published by Cohesion Press. You can get your copy here or anywhere you normally buy books (the print edition is coming any day now).
To help people learn a bit more about it, I’ve arranged for each fiction contributor to answer the same five questions, and I’ll be running these mini interviews every weekday now that the book is available.
Today, it’s:
Gregory L Norris
1. What was the inspiration/motivation behind your story in Blurring The Line?
A few years ago, my sister’s car went in for repairs and my partner Bruce and I took her to work, several miles down the road from our old apartment. She worked the third shift in a rural part of our town. It was winter. Out there, the highway cut through long swathes of pine forest. The turn off to her job was defined by a traffic light that seemed to have a mind and will of its own. It would stay red on us even though we were the only car on the road. We dropped her off at work for the better part of a week. On the last night, after the insufferable wait for the light to turn red, we made the turn, traveled up the hill to her job, only to slam on the brakes as the largest buck deer I’ve ever seen clomped across the pavement in front of us, eyeing us with contempt and snorting loudly through its nostrils. It was such a haunting, unforgettable encounter, I knew it had to be written out as a short story, which I did. “1-2-3 Red Light” is the result.
2. What does horror mean to you?
I grew up on a healthy diet of creature double-features and classic SF/Horror TV, the dreamy gothic daytime soap opera Dark Shadows a staple among them. I love the elegance of a quietly creepy moment attained by reading an author’s words, suggesting the cause of the shiver teasing the nape of the reader’s neck. And I also appreciate the unapologetic spatter of a well-written, gory scene when it’s done properly. When the writing is crisp and the delivery effective, Horror can be a beautiful thing.
3. What’s a horror short story that you think everyone should read?
I recently reread “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Poe to prep for an appearance on a show to discuss the short story. Stunning writing, truly — and as much a work of horror as the defined beginning of the first modern detective story. A classic and an experience!
4. What horror novel should everyone read?
This past summer, I read and devoured Roxanne Dent’s novel, The Janus Demon (from Great Old Ones Publishing). It’s the tale of a gumshoe named Mick Grimaldi caught up in a complex series of crimes perpetrated by underworld figures from a supernatural realm. Roxanne is, to me, one of the finest writers around, and her novel kept me captivated. For days after finishing the novel, I struggled to find anything as good to read among my unread books, and in fact picked hers up again and read it for a second time cover to cover.
5. Name something that you think just might be real, or might not…
I was recently asked to write a real-life ghost story for a publisher, and was forced to decline because all of my ghost stories have come from my imagination, not real life. When I was a teenager living in a small New Hampshire town, I saw an object in the sky skimming just over the tops of the tall pines and to this day wonder of the truth behind that one or two second fragment of time, which haunts me to this day decades later. So, yes, I wonder about alien visitations to our fair Earth, and whatever sinister plans are taking place without our worldwide knowledge.
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Previous posts in the Blurring The Line interview series:
Marty Young
Tom Piccirilli
Lisa Morton
Tim Lebbon
Lia Swope Mitchell
Alan Baxter
James Dorr
Peter Hagelslag
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