Interview: Mary SanGiovanni (The Hollower, Found You)

Posted by pete in General, Literature, News, Reviews on November 12th, 2008

Hi Mary,
First thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to do this interview for Famous Monsters Of Filmland and I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your first two books and am looking forward to more sleepless nights because of you…..
Well actually because of your writing.

Mary: Ha ha ha
Thanks.  I’m delighted that you enjoyed the books.  And I’m looking forward to causing more sleepless nights.

Famous Monsters: In an email you sent me you said that your father was a big fan of Famous Monsters of Filmland growing up and you have heard about the magazine since you were a little girl. Was that your first introduction to horror and monsters? Or is horror something you were interested in at an early age?

Mary: Well, my father absolutely was an influence in my liking horror, but it took a while.  He introduced me to SF classics like I, Robot and Bladerunner, Star Wars and Dune. I got a little older, he told me about the movies of the fifties that blended horror and SF, like Them and The Blob and The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the kinds of monster stories whose props could be found in Forrest Ackerman’s Ackermansion, and whose news and reviews graced the pages of one of his favorite magazines growing up, Famous Monsters of Filmland. That, I think, was the very beginning – alien stories that bridged the gap into horror. I think the monsters in my fiction still have a tinge of the alien to them.
I used to be scared of everything when I was little.  Then someone (actually, it might have been my father, come to think of it) gave me the idea that maybe the monsters under my bed or in my closet or waiting to swoop in from outside my window could be tricked into sparing my life if they thought I was “one of them,” if I enjoyed the dark instead of hiding from it, and reveled in the scary stuff instead of avoiding it.  So far, it’s worked.

Famous Monsters: For me seeing the Wicked Witch of the West for the first time was my first recollection of being truly frightened. I was so scared that I ran and hid under my parent’s dining room table and have liked being scared ever since. Do you have one such defining moment?

Mary: My cousin babysat my sisters and me one night, and I was allowed to stay up long enough to see the opening credits of the first A Nightmare on Elm Street movie.  I was terrified at what that claw implied, what it was used for – and fascinated, too.  Slashers were popular during the part of the ’80s when I was growing up, and I remember the boys talking about all the gruesome scenes in Halloween, the Friday the 13th movies, and the Nightmare movies.  I found that graphic violence horrifying, but I couldn’t stop listening.  It was the same feeling I’d had seeing just the opening credits of A Nightmare, and it was thrilling.  When I finally did see the whole movie, it gave me nightmares until I was 22, and I still count it among one of my favorite movies. You never forget your first.

Famous Monsters: I remember reading my first book in the fourth grade, Little House on the Prairie, from that point on I was hooked on reading. Do you remember your first book, did you read a lot when you were younger and how much reading are you able to do now?

Mary: I always loved to read.  I read everywhere – at the dinner table, in the tub, in the car.  My parents always read to us as kids, they being big readers themselves.  One of my favorite weekend activities was going to the public library down the street with my mom and getting out stacks of books – I loved the smell of the place, the glossy covers and the teasers on the back, the quiet – everything about it.  And I read voraciously.
I’ve slowed down a bit in my reading nowadays, mostly because I’m tired, and have less time than I used to.  I read in the tub, which makes me dangerously drowsy.  And sometimes I read in bed.  Mostly nowadays, I try to catch up on all the classic horror novels I haven’t gotten to yet, and try to branch out and read mysteries, thrillers, non-fiction, etc.  I also get novels on CD, unabridged, when I can, since a lot of my time is spent commuting long distances.
My first book…let’s see.  I’m pretty sure the first thing I ever read by myself was a story in a series of Sesame Street books, something about Bert and Ernie, when I was five.  I remember it was like a veil lifting, that all of a sudden I could see those letters ad words together and know what they meant.  It was a feeling of power.  It still is.  After that, a few memorable books stick out in my head as being favorites, although in no particular order, chronologically or otherwise: Interstellar Pig, those Choose Your Own Adventure books, and the Judy Blume books.  My first horror books – first adult books, as a matter of fact, were Flowers in the Attic and its subsequent series, which my friend Valerie and I read with an almost religious forbidden delight, awe, and shock, My Sweet Audrina, and Stephen King’s Skeleton Crew. These were, incidentally, the first books I can remember reading more than once.  All of these – except the Judy Blume books – I have in my library now.

Famous Monsters: From reading your other interviews on-line it seems you are from a very close-knit family as I am. How much has it helped you in your writing career and life in general to be a part of such a close family?

Mary: My mother always said that family comes first, and it’s what you have when all else falls away.  I believe that.  I grew up in a big Italian (Irish) family, so aunts and uncles and cousins and sisters and family functions have always been a big part of my life.  As an adult, I appreciate those kinds of unconditional bonds more and more.  I guess as you get older, you realize that part of a successful, happy life is holding onto the people who matter most.
I’d say my immediate family had the most impact on my writing life directly, though.  Another thing my parents always told me was that I could be anything I wanted, so long as I got the education and training to learn to be as good at it as I could be.  They’ve been very supportive with my going to school, with my spending late nights and long weekends writing, and with going off to do signings and readings and panel events, and traveling to conventions and conferences and teaching or speaking engagements.  My mother and sisters have no real stomach for horror, but my father, an editor and writer himself,  is my first reader and first editor still, and nothing passes on to the hands of editors that doesn’t pass muster with him.

Famous Monsters: What does your son think about his mother writing about monsters?

Mary: He loves it. He’s also incredibly supportive.  I think he finds the prospect of potential fame by association exciting, ha ha.  But he loves scary stuff, too, and he and I bond over scary movies and creepy books and video games much the way my father and I used to.  He’s amazingly patient at signings, and tells everyone who shows interest that his mom writers scary books.  I think his classmates get a kick out of me being in the same business, so to speak, as R. L. Stine.

Famous Monsters: What do you do on your down time, if you have any?

Mary: I’d like to say I’m the kind of exciting person that does, say, mountain climbing or extreme sky diving or something, but lately, a lot of my down time has been spent sleeping.  I’m trying to pack a lot of life into the hours of the day and night I have to myself, though.  I also love movies – horror mostly, as well as foreign films, thrillers, and surreal films.  I love playing video games.  I surf the net.  I like computer art, so I dabble in programs to make people and landscapes – nothing I’m terribly good at, but it’s fun to play around.  I read, and take long bubble baths. I exercise when I can.  I used to take Tae Kwon Do until I hurt my leg doing a flying side kick.  I also used to take dance lessons – salsa lessons, specifically.  I love Latin dances, and hope to get back to it soon.

Famous Monsters: There are quite a few woman authors in horror right now beside yourself, which I think is wonderful. I think horror literature needs a good jump start and a woman’s perspective brings a fresh view to the genre. Why do you think this is happening at this time and what do you think women can bring to horror literature?

Mary: I think women have always been a prominent feature in horror, but before, it was as the beautiful, wide-eyed victim, the picture of loveliness and innocence in peril.  But I think horror has seen a shift from woman as victim (in the fifties, sixties, and even early seventies) to woman as heroine (in the seventies and eighties somewhat, but more so in the nineties), specifically in movies, which I say, with some reluctance, dominates the popular view of horror in the public mind.  The seventies probably kicked it off, with books/movies like Rosemary’s Baby and especially The Stepford Wives.  And I think that many of the current television shows, which may not be considered horror but which often blend horrific or supernatural elements, feature strong lead roles for women, a concept which is finally catching on in horror.  The CSI shows, Bones, The Ghost Whisperer, and Medium all feature women in strong roles.
Women are also producing the horror more often than in decades past, and I think that changes the dynamic of the story – the texture, maybe.  When women make horror movies, female characters are no longer relegated to the half-naked, ever-tripping, crying, screaming targets of strong silent slasher types.  Now that they write, direct, and produce, they bring a new insight into how women work – or specifically, how women in a modern society work, vying to remain Cosmo-magazine beautiful while also business savvy and as financially successful as men.  The same dichotomy, the traditional women roles and the non-traditional roles, carry over — beauty and brains, sexiness and savy, terror that the monster will bite those amazing abs in half, and the resourcefulness and strength of getting out of the situation without having to wait for some strong man to rescue them.  Women that can show fear and weakness, but can also find inner strength and abilities to help them survive.  They aren’t just running, but fighting back.  We’re seeing more Ripley’s – I think that’s an actual term for them – appearing as heroines in horror.  Another borrowing from other genres, we see women remarkably successful in supernatural works that blend romance and horror, YA and horror, Fantasy and horror, and Thrillers.  This lends a certain credibility to women as producers of sellable genre product, which carries over into horror.

Now let’s get to the books.

Famous Monsters: The Hollower was your thesis for Seton Hall and took you just under two years to write I believe. Anytime during this did it ever become a… my God what am I getting myself into experience or was the experience fun and fulfilling?

Mary: I had actually started the book prior to starting school, and figured this gave me a writer’s block failsafe at the very least.  But yes, there were many times where I thought, “Good God, what the hell am I doing?  I have to rewrite that entire chapter!” and it might have been easier if I’d had nothing and started from scratch.  Then there were truly exhilarating moments where I felt I’d learned something I could apply to the book and make it better, stronger, creepier, and it delighted me.  School gave me deadlines, and I think I work better with deadlines.  It gives me a time frame to parcel the work out into, and gives my brain a directive to put its best gray cells to work to give me something good.  Writers live for that sublime thrill of being in the zone, writing something they believe in so much that it actually carries them away.

Famous Monsters: To me you have created a fantastic monster, the scariest to come along in a long time as far as I am concerned. How and when did the idea for The Hollower first come about?

Mary: Thanks! That’s very kind of you to say.
I wanted to create a monster that scared me like the way Pennywise in It scared me, the way Freddy Krueger had scared me.  I wanted something different, though, something alien – something so alien, in fact, that its senses were beyond our understanding, and its rudimentary notions of our emotions were just about beyond its grasp.  I wanted something so alien it almost wasn’t even here, something that would never have to touch you, but could utterly destroy you from the inside out.  But when you have something like that, something so unfamiliar, you don’t want it to slip away entirely from the readers’ scope of experience.  So I considered what the embodiment of my inner fear would look like.  If all my insecurities, all my secret fears, all my dismorphic views of myself had a shape, they would look like the Hollower – a blank face able to take on the features of the people who could hurt me the most, an empty shell of a body churning with hatred, able to move the earth in ways that could make my worst sins and most terrible fears swallow me up and suffocate me.  The Hollower is everything you’ve ever hated about yourself, everything you’re afraid of other people seeing in you or finding out about you.  The Hollower is the little voice inside you that tears you down, makes you doubt, makes you feel insignificant or inferior or insecure.  To me, few things are worse than that private sanctuary in your head, that last bastion of peace and solitude, being torn down and away from you by anxieties you can’t stop.  The Hollower was everything I needed to get rid of in my head.

Famous Monsters: The first thing that grabbed my attention about The Hollower was the main characters; Dave, Sally, Cheryl, Erick, Sean and Detective DeMarco. They felt comfortable, like old friends, I could relate to them and care about them immediately, which is something I rarely see in a first novel. How do you go about your characterizations?

Mary: It was very important to me that the characters be people that readers would like, people readers could relate to.  To me, any story is really about the characters – all else rides or falls based on the strength of characterization, both in one’s heroes and in one’s villains.  My characters are composites, I guess – pieces of me, for sure, and pieces of people I know.  Their mannerisms, their word choice, their quirks are things I or others around me do.  But they’re packed together, those traits, in such a way that they create a different person, one who helps convey the theme, or illustrate a point.  The characters have to prove to me, in a way, that they have a place in the story, that their role in the book is significant in conveying what I want to say.  But conversely, all my plots, all my atmosphere, all the elements that bring about the theme, all grow up around the characters.

Famous Monsters: Do you base your characters on people you observe, family members, yourself?

Mary: Definitely, although sometimes it takes other people pointing it out to me, before I really see which character has which real-life person’s trait.  Especially difficult for me to notice off the bat are the traits I possess, although all characters are extensions of the writer the way all children are extensions of the parent.

Famous Monsters: Your writing moves effortlessly along and your sense of building suspense up to pure terror is what really drew me into the world you created. Do you write from an outline or just wing it and go back and edit later?

Mary: The very first novel I ever wrote, Thrall, which is still under consideration with publishers, was written totally by winging it, writing all the scenes that appeal to me and going back and filling in the bridge pieces later.  However, since I began writing for deadlines (and for an agent and publisher who request a synopsis with the fist three chapters of each new book), I’ve begun at the very least mapping out the entire story in a basic way, enough to form a four page synopsis or so.  I had always found the idea of doing a novel based on a guided synopsis kind of stifling, but when deadlines are looming, there’s an amazing comfort in having the bones of a book there for you already.  It’s like a pathway in a forest of words.  No one says you have to stay exactly on that path, but it’s there if you need it, and as long as it’s in sight, you can usually make it out to the other end okay, linearly and consistently.

Famous Monsters: The Haunting of Hill House, Hell House, and The Shining, are three of the top haunted house stories ever written in my opinion and I love haunted houses. Maxwell Feinstein’s house where the The Hollower is confronted and killed managed to scare the hell out of me as much as any of them. It was an invigorating roller coaster ride of frights. How did you manage to stick such a great haunted house into this story?

Mary: I’m honored to be considered in such company. I think it’s interesting that you saw it as a haunted house; I suppose it is at that, although I admit I hadn’t consciously written those scenes with that in mind.  I guess it goes along with the idea of a monster invading your safest places, your deepest and most personal sanctuaries.  The house, I think, represents, in a way, the character’s heads.  There are some rooms that are safer than others, but when you’re inside, you’re ultimately alone, as alone as you make yourself.  If you allow others in, there is strength in that, there is an openness in that which sheds light on the dark places.  I think that’s what the house is – a kind of physical representation of a mind infested with the kind of dark and brooding self-loathing that seeps into all the other parts of the brain, infecting it, changing it, and changing the thoughts and rationalizations in it.  For them to get out, they had to go all the way in.

Famous Monsters: When I got to the end of the first book and the three Hollowers came to pick up the dead one I loved how you described the third Hollower looking at the main characters, waving, then clenching his fist with blood dripping on to the grass…dread just seemed to ooze off the pages, it was truly fearsome. At that point I was really hoping for a sequel. Was a sequel in mind at the time you finished the first book?

Mary: Not initially, although now I think the sequel was inevitable and necessary.  I don’t think their stories were really complete, nor do I think was their character arc fully developed.  I think I was picking up speed, catching the wind, and was lucky that the publisher wanted a sequel so that I could really fly with the idea.

Famous Monsters: I loved how you named the new book Found You, the new Hollower said that right before the three of them took the dead one back. Was this always the title?

Mary: There was some debate initially about the title, because without an understanding of both the end of the first book and the beginning of the second book, and why that phrase was significant, the Leisure folks thought it might be misread as something like a romance title.  However, in my head, I’d always called it that while writing it, and after consideration, Leisure decided on that title as appropriate.  I’m glad they did, because I think it suits the new Hollower’s attitude.

Famous Monsters: In Found You, you went straight for the jugular and killed off my favorite character Sally in the first chapter; I’m not going to deny I shed a tear when that happened. Was that hard for you to do? I mean as her brother described her, she is like a kitten, everyone wants to care for her and you killed her horribly.

Mary: You know, I’m not going to lie; that was tough.  All the deaths in the second book made me feel a little guilty, like I was killing off people I had no right to take away from Dave.  But it seemed a necessary act to establish up front the vicious and sadistic nature of the new Hollower. It is definitely meaner, crueler, and I thought the opening death scene established, maybe more than anything else in the book, the truly evil capabilities of that kind of Hollower.

Famous Monsters: The new characters you introduce in the second book Jake, Dorrie, and Detective Corimar are just as real and believable as the first group, yet in the face of such impossible terror they rise to the occasion. That is why I love horror so much above other genres; everyday people are put in impossible situations against inexplicable evils and still put their life on the line to overcome that evil. What are your feelings on this?

Mary: I wholeheartedly agree.  I’m of the belief that horror stories are actually stories about hope; they are stories where we see the human spirit tested in the most extreme circumstances, and humans are given the opportunity to be something bigger, stronger, better than themselves.  They are given the unique opportunity to be more than human, to show for a gleaming instant the endless capability and possibility of the soul, which is, I think, so much bigger than the body.  To me, horror is a genre where we see not only the very worst, but the very best that humanity has to offer, and the worlds above and beyond us to which human souls can aspire.

Famous Monsters: Your second Hollower is a Primary and much more powerful than the first and he is very angry because the first one was killed. Did you enjoy wreaking havoc with this new one?

Mary: I did enjoy it; I love writing about the monsters, giving them a background, a history, and place in time and space (such as exists in my universe).   I think in Found You, there is a little more background about what the Hollowers are and where they come from, and why the insistent need to feed and to exact vengeance is so important.  I think writers tend to hold back in their first books, afraid to really explore, to break boundaries, to enter personally forbidden territory.  That seems to go away some in the second book.  I could do deliciously wicked and evil things to people with less inhibition, and I loved it.

Famous Monsters: You also use the perspective from the Hollower’s viewpoint more in this book, which adds a lot to the depth of the monster. Could you explain what thought processes went in to that.

Mary: There is a scene you may recall in which the Primary Hollower kills another character from the first book.  I had it in my head that it would seem chillier if I could still convey this character’s fear and confusion but without having the scene in that character’s point of view.  I thought there was something gleefully cold and evil about it being from the Primary’s point of view, seeing what went into scaring this character, and more so, seeing the utterly remorseless and callous way in which the killing was done.  I had that scene in my head early on, so I had to establish the occasional connection with the Hollower itself.  This also allowed me to give more of the Hollowers’ history and background, information which would be otherwise unavailable to the main characters, and to also provide ominous scenes of impending doom regarding characters who were not directly in the story, and might only be mentioned once or twice – not enough face time, so to speak, to warrant individual POVs when I could convey it all through one very vindictive, very hostile alien POV.

Famous Monsters: Again as in the first book, the climatic ending was beautiful. The catacombs replaced Maxwell Feinstein’s house where the final battle takes place but the horror is still as vivid. Your imagery and descriptive prowess really made it come to life for me. How are you able to bring these places to life?

Mary: Thanks. J I’m a very visual person – it’s in everything that I enjoy, a visual experience, something I can take in with my eyes and see over and over in my head.  So when I write, I tend to want the readers to see what I see first and foremost.  It’s important to remember all the senses in writing, to give the reader a full sensory impression of a place or person.  For me, the real pleasure of writing is in the description, in building living, breathing beings and fully realized and multidimensional worlds for you not just to read about, but to be in for a time.  To feel for a time.  I spent weeks in those catacombs, claustrophobic, sticky, breathless, in the dark.  I had to be there, to feel them, to bring them across on the page.

Famous Monsters: What are your favorite three horror stories?
Mary: I love short fiction, and it’s so hard to just pick three books, let alone three short stories.  Still, I think I’d have to go with “Stay,” by Gary Braunbeck, “The Masque of the Red Death,” by Poe, and…it’s a toss-up, I think, between “The Raft” or “The Monkey,” by Stephen King.

Famous Monsters: What are your favorite three horror movies?

Mary: Session 9, In the Mouth of Madness, and The Thing, I’d say, are probably my top three.  That’s easier.  Each of those has some enduring quality that holds up to multiple watching’s for me.

Famous Monsters: So what does the future look like for you? Can you tell us about any new projects you are working on?

Mary: Well, I have a few signings coming up in November and December (the website will have details).  I have a few short stories in the works, but my main focus right now is on the new novel, tentatively titled the Funeral Parties.  It’s a ghost story about that wistful need people have, when someone dies suddenly, to have wanted a chance to say good-bye, and what a very close, tightly-knit group of somewhat dysfunctional friends does in the aftermath of the loss of a friend, and what happens when they get a glimpse of the places people go when they die.  It’s probably the heaviest thing I’ve attempted yet, but I also feel it’s some of my best writing to date, and I’m very excited about it.  If all goes smoothly, it might possibly see a late 2009 release date.

Thanks so much, Peter, for the interview.  I’m honored to do it for Famous Monsters of Filmland.

Thank you Mary for giving all us monster fans some insight into the creation of a great monster. I personally look forward with great anticipation to your new book. I love ghost stories also and this sounds wonderful.

The Hollower and Found You review

www.marysangiovanni.com