1. What makes We Sold Our Souls distinctive from your other (amazing) work? 

The biggest thing that makes this different is that it’s packed from tip to tail with heavy metal. I’ve always thought that books about bands were a little weak, so I tried to deliver a book that captured all the chaos, hard-rocking, go-for-broke, on-the-road energy of touring with a band of mercenary musicians who take no prisoners.

2. Is there any chance for an adaption for any of your works? If so which? Or which would you like to see the most? (Personally I want a Netflix version of Horrorstor IMMEDIATELY) 

Actually, they’ve all been optioned, but I can’t give too many, or any, details under threat of a Hollywood telepath making my head explode.

3. Do you feel good comedy in a work helps or hinders dark fiction? 

It’s funny you say that, because I can’t tell what’s funny and what’s not when I’m writing. I just try to write about the world I see around me and that often means including the ridiculous, embarrassing, or utterly stupid moments. To me it’s realism, but reality has a great sense of humor.

4. Your last release was non-fiction (and amazing), what inspired you to write it? Can we look forward to another non-fiction release in the coming years? 

The inspiration was that my publisher asked! I would have written Paperbacks from Hell for free, but to have my editor call up and ask if I wanted to turn my Tor.com articles about ridiculous horror paperbacks into a book was like a UFO landing and offering me a joyride. How could I say no? And right now I’m thinking about writing a Paperbacks from Hell about the teen fiction of the Seventies and Eighties.

5. ***Mildly Spoiling*** Are there any different endings, characters, settings, or situations that were way different in the first draft?

Absolutely! This book went through three major drafts, all of which were far longer and way darker. But, ultimately, they weren’t right. I don’t want to write a book that ends on a note of despair, and it wasn’t honest anyways. As dark as the world can get, there’s plenty of hope if you look at it the right way.

6. Who are 3 authors that inspired you to write? 

Everyone I read as a kid provided fodder for my brain, whether it was a totally lunatic book like Stephen Peters’s The Park is Mine about a Vietnam vet taking over Central Park and killing a lot of people, or Shirley Jackson’s classic, chilling The Haunting of Hill House.

7. ***Mildly Spoiling*** Are there other topics/themes you’re currently working on or would like to see/plan to include in future releases? 

I’m already working on my next book, and I’m deep in the first draft now. But if I talk about it I will die.

8. What was the first horror film you remember watching?

Darby O’Gill and the Little People, a Disney flick starring Sean Connery about leprechauns. It’s pretty boring, but then at the last minute a ton of truly terrifying ghosts appear. I saw it when I was five years old at Peter Mansfield’s birthday party and it pretty much traumatized all of us for life.

9. What do you think the most subversive genre film(s) and genre book(s) that you found to be incredibly original or well handled? 

The most subversive book I’ve ever read is Daniel Kraus’s Rotters. Inexplicably marketed as YA, it’s about a kid whose mom dies and he’s sent to live with his father. The two don’t get along until they bond over their mutual love of grave robbing. One of the most anti-social books I’ve ever read, it takes everything we’re supposed to value — respecting the dead, cleanliness, kindness — and beats them to death.

10. What is one rational fear and one irrational fear you have? 

All fears are rational, whether it’s my fear of the people who live in my walls, my fear that I’m going to wake up covered in spiders, or my fear of being nailed inside a small box and buried alive. Any and all of these could happen.

11. My Best Friend’s Exorcism is steeped in a highly detailed 1980’s America, is there a particular era you’re fond of? Comparatively what is an era you’re sick of hearing/seeing? 

I’m a huge sucker for the 19th century, and I am absolutely sick of hearing about the Eighties. I lived through them. They weren’t all that.

12. Who in the industry is someone you would love to collaborate with? 

I’m a terrible human being and I would never make anyone else work with me unless they were being paid a LOT of money.

13. Is there a genre of horror you find most effective? Which genre do you hate? 

I’m a lover, not a hater. As long as it’s well done I’ll take any horror in any genre you can dish out.

14. What was one particular story that genuinely scared you? If so what’s the title and author? 

Richard Matheson’s “Born of Man and Woman” is still one of the best horror stories of all time, as far as I’m concerned.

15. One of my favorite qualities present in all of your releases so far, is the impeccable packaging (Horrorstor and MBFE being my favorite), is that something you handle or work with Quirk to achieve?

Quirk is great because they allow me to be involved with the design of my books. I’m not a designer, but we have a great back and forth and it helps that their art directors are always underappreciated geniuses.

16. Is there any music, shows, movies you use for background noise often? If so which? 

While writing We Sold Our Souls I listened to a ton of metal, as you can imagine. Wolves in the Throne Room, Sleep’s Dopesmoker, and Woods of Ypres were my background noise for a lot of it.

Follow Grady Hendrix on Twitter, Facebook, his authors page at Quirk and at his official site here.

Purchase Grady’s Work: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Powell’s