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AOTW: From what we have heard, everyone who reads and/or writes horror has one --- THE book --- the one that introduced them to the genre and made them seek out everything they could in the field. What was your first introduction to horror literature?
Whitley Strieber: I was actually introduced to horror by EC Comics. I used to read these stories of the Crypt Keeper and the Old Witch and so on as a child. When my father forbade them, they immediately became an obsession. I had a clubhouse in the back yard, and I used to keep them hidden under the floor. There were also lots of scorpions and black widows down there, so just getting one out was in itself horrifying. But then there was the process of reading by lantern-light with my friends, and getting so scared that we could not move, let alone leave the little pool of light in the clubhouse and dare the dark backyard.
Tananarive Due: My earliest memories are of reading a delightful children's book by Ruth Chew called What the Witch Left, which gave me goosebumps; the Shirley Jackson story "The Lottery," which still horrifies me to this day; and Stephen King's novel The Shining, which I received as a 16th birthday present and scared the crap out of me. Also, my mother raised me and my sisters on old black and white horror movies, so I was pretty much doomed from the start.
Darren Shan: I don't actually have a single starting point --- I remember being fascinated by horror since I was five or six years old! I watched loads of horror movies whenever I got the chance, and read horror short story collections. But I suppose the book which confirmed my love of horror, and set me off reading every horror book I could find when I was a teenager, was Salem's Lot by Stephen King, which I read when I was 10 or 11 years old.
Christopher Schildt: The writer that drew me to the horror genre was Edgar Allen Poe. All of his works are masterpieces of horror, but the one that I found the most compelling was The Tell-tale Heart. My grandmother had me read it when I was young for its moral principle about lies and deceit. Later she gave me a complete collection of Poe's works.
Kelley Armstrong: The first question and I'm in trouble already. I really can't remember a single book or experience that latched me onto horror. As a kid I loved Scooby-Doo and lived for Halloween and haunted houses. Then I moved onto sneaking into horror films underage and persuading my mom to let us watch 'The Birds' at my first sleepover party --- I convinced her it was a nature film. My high school reading memories consist of Stephen King, Stephen King and more Stephen King --- I managed to base all my grade 13 English major essays on his work. That's the best answer I can give. Sorry!
David Searcy: Although I'm not sure the things I write really sit very happily within the genre, I certainly grew up devoted to it, continue to be influenced by it and tend to locate, if not the beginning, at least the center of that influence in Algernon Blackwood's story, "The Willows," which presents, I think, in the clearest terms the frayable edges of experiences where the primary, terrifying facts of the world peek through.
R.L. Stine: Believe it or not, my introduction to scary literature was Pinocchio. My mother read it to me every day before naptime when I was three or four. The original Pinocchio is terrifying. First he smashes Jiminy Cricket to death with a wooden mallet. Then he goes to sleep with his feet up on the stove and burns his feet off! I never forgot it!
Douglas Clegg: The Bible. I was four or five when my mother began reading this to me --- and then have read it over the years for inspiration. This is one of the best horror novels ever written, and the author balances the terror of men walking through furnaces, kings going mad, epic floods that would make Jerry Bruckheimer envious, etc., with terrific love stories and fascinating family histories. It's a bit of a saga as well, so the author managed to really bring it all together. And the last chapter's a doozy --- the single most terrifying climax I've ever read (called Revelations.) But the first popular novel I read that got me to want to write horror was probably The Other by Thomas Tryon. Followed by Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin, The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty, and then a bit later, Salem's Lot by Stephen King.
Ameilia Atwater-Rhodes: If I had to pinpoint one story that I can remember having caught my attention, it would be Dracula. Before I was reading horror, I was watching it; Stephen King's works and Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire were other influences in my tastes. When I realized those works I loved were books, naturally I started reading them --- and when I started writing, it wasn't surprising that I mirrored the genre that had entertained me most.
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