TM WRIGHT: It seemed very natural.  I was twelve or so, perhaps a few years younger (it’s been a long, long time and my memory, you know, could be better; or maybe it couldn’t) and one night, as I lay in bed waiting for sleep, I glanced at the six-foot-tall, dark wood clothes tree near the door—the clothes tree had my coat, a winter hat and a pair of red mittens hanging from it—and I wondered, “What if that clothes tree came to life?”  Silly?  Sure.  But that’s often the stuff of pre-or-even-post-adolescent imaginings; silliness.  So I wrote a story about a clothes tree that came to life at night.  That’s all I remember.  I remember nothing about the story’s “plot” (there may not have been a plot; imagine that!  A T.M. Wright story that has no plot to speak of!)  After that, I knew writing was the business I’d be in for the rest of my life, even if I became a lawyer or a priest (two occupations I considered, for some strange reason, though briefly), I’d still be a writer.  So you see, and as I said, it all seemed very natural.  Because it was natural.  I can’t remember ever NOT thinking of myself as a writer.

TM: I didn’t learn that it had been nominated for a World Fantasy Award until some years after its 1978 publication, so it all seemed like an anti-climax.  I didn’t win: I would have liked to have experienced the expectation of possibly winning, but it didn’t happen. 

Actually, the novel has seen seven editions—two foreign editions and five American editions.  It may see an Italian-language edition soon, however.  It’s also on a couple of “Best of the Genre” lists, though I won’t go into detail because, well, that would be patting myself on the back, which I simply refuse to do (he chuckles).  Oops, there goes my tennis elbow!  Damn!

DL: Stephen King was very vocal about his fondness for your work early on. What was it like to have the most successful author in the field comparing you to guys like Straub and Campbell?

TM: The 1984 (TOR Books) novel’s first cautious steps toward “success” came in 1990, when the book was optioned by Robert Lawrence Productions, and then when the option was exercised, in 1993 (which was a bit of a boost to my ailing bank account): then, to make a very short short story of it, for the next seven years I saw one “first day of principal photography” after another come and go, watched dozens of “names” in Hollywood become “attached to” the project (one, Sharon Stone, was even paid millions BEFORE shooting began; and, of course, to this day, it has yet to begin), as actors, directors, producers.  Every Hollywood trade magazine you can name, as well as “People”-type magazines, had something to say about the project, in the 90’s and early 2000’s, and, every time I read that this personality or that personality was “attached,” my hopes that the movie would actually be made skyrocketed.  Then time passed, nothing much happened, and today I hold out little hope at all that “A Manhattan Ghost Story” will see production as a feature film.  And it is such a filmable novel, and such a dreadfully expensive screenplay by Ron Bass (he made several million for his adaptation).  Oh well.  
 
DL: How were you involved with this ill-fated transition from page to screen?

TM: I wasn’t.  That “ill-fated” transition was caused by factors way beyond my control.  I remember asking Robert Lawrence if I could have a stab at writing the screenplay.  As far as I recall, he didn’t respond.
 
DL: Is the project still in development?

TM: If you go to Hollywood.com and search for “Manhattan Ghost Story” you’ll see that it’s been “announced,” which means about as much as a ten-day weather forecast.  Wayne Wang is listed as Director, and Touchstone as the production company, Ron Bass as screenwriter (along with three others) and a bunch of other information which I at one time thought was useful.  If I sound a little depressed about the whole thing it’s because I’ve actually overcome my good feelings about the whole thing and have decided not to think about the project until it comes to mind.  Which it does once a day, at least.
 
DL: Which of your works is your personal favorite?

TM: Actually, I have several: it’s difficult to choose a single book out of the thirty-one I’ve seen published and declare that it’s the best (or even my “personal favorite”), that it achieves its goals (set almost unconsciously by yours truly) better than any of the others, because my approaches have changed over the years: I’ve become less almost-conventional in my narrative and story line (which means I’ve become even less conventional), and my story lines have become more abstract (see “Blue Canoe,” 2009, (PS Publications, UK) my latest, and “I am the Bird” which preceded it by a few years, both of which are first-person very unreliable narrators and very surreal story lines) and compare them to “A Manhattan Ghost Story,” TOR, 1984, or even “Strange Seed,” my first novel, published in 1978 by Everest House: in the older books, there’s at least the hint of a plot—the characters encounter a situation or situations which change them: that’s not really the case with “Bird” and “Canoe,” and even my 2005 novella, “The Eyes of the Carp” (Cemetery Dance) in which the first-person narrator may or may not be a serial killer (depending on your interpretation of his narrative), whose wife may or may not be dead, and who (the first-person narrator) may or may not be setting himself up to pay for his killings.  But, to get to the point here (at last), I’d say that, of my “plotted” novels, which appeared from 1978 to, oh, 2003, my favorites, as far as the quality of the writing and story telling are concerned, are “A Manhattan Ghost Story,” “The Waiting Room” (Manhattan Ghost’s sequel), “The School,” TOR, 1990, “Boundaries” (TOR, 1990) and “Cold House.”
 
DL: What has it been like working in the genre all these years? How has it changed?

TM: When I was writing for Playboy Press, then TOR and, for a few years, Victor Gollancz, UK, I could use my work to explore questions about who the hell we are and where we’re going (if anywhere) when Death pulls up to the curb and says, “Get in!”  To one extent or another, all of my books explore those basic questions, though not always in an overt way (save for “Boundaries,” which dealt with whole societies on “The Other Side,” and “Sleepeasy,” originally published by Gollancz in 1993, which dealt with an unseen and unknowable and unnamed “creator” giving those who had passed over a sort of patch of heaven where they could let their imaginations build a place of happiness and  contentment; but imaginations can be tricky damned things…) and a few others.  I didn’t sell a whole hell of a lot of books, but I made a living at it.  Thing was, I was two or three steps away from the “horror” mainstream.  Other writers had their own unique ideas to deal with, but usually kept their literary approach to those ideas as “readable” as possible:  it was, and is, important that readers be able to comprehend what’s happening in a novel (or novella or short story) without a scorecard, but my work often requires a scorecard, which, of course, readers have to keep mentally (one reviewer said that, while reading one of my novels, a reader should “take notes,” because I’m just not a font of information about the characters’ motivations, which is the storyline—whether my narrative is first or third person--but that, the reviewer concluded, the process “would be generously rewarded”). 

So then, some years after my last book for TOR and Victor Gollancz and Leisure Books appeared, I found the small press: Cemetery Dance and PS Publishing and the short-lived Nyx Books and Catalyst Press, four publishers which, for one reason and another, I could write about my “basic questions” in my “reader-keep-a-scorecard way.”  Which is what I’m doing now—having published my last four novels/novellas through these publishers, I’ve also written more than several short stories for PostScripts and a few for Cemetery Dance, all of which explore my favorite not-so-real worlds the way I like to explore them (see, for instance, “The Blue Faced Man,” in PostScripts magazine, as well as “Raindy Day People,” and, also, “The Marybell Women” in Cemetery Dance Magazine. 

But I’ve strayed somewhat from your original question, at least the part about “How has it *the genre) changed?”  I can’t see that it has changed a great deal: many writers, in the past few years, have discovered zombies in a big way, but zombies have been with us a long while, and they’re certainly fun.  But I see that writers are still exploring themes that writers were exploring over thirty years ago (actually more), when I got a response in the mail from Doubleday about a novel which then existed only as a title—“Strange Seed”: the response was, “Send it along when it’s ready.  It sounds interesting.”  And I turned to my cat, Oily—23 pounds and tough as a badger—and said, “Well, all I’ve got to do now is write the damned thing.”

DL: Which other authors, past and present, have influenced you the most?

TM: It’s mostly past—Shirley Jackson, Harlan Ellison, Weldon Kees (a poet who apparently committed suicide in 1954, but whose “Robinson” poems remain among the best of the twentieth century, in my opinion), T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, H.G. Wells, Bram Stoker (solely for “Dracula,” which, when I was not quite twelve, I found absorbing as hell, despite the archaic narrative).  Stephen King hasn’t influenced me as much as entertained me: we’re contemporaries, born 12 days apart, and we started publishing within two years of one another.  Believe it or not, his success has been greater than mine. 

There are many more writers than I’ve listed above who’ve “influenced” me, but the ones above had the greatest influence.  My father had the greatest influence on my desire to become a writer, but that’s a story I’ve told more than once, and it’s just too damned sad to repeat.
 
DL: If you had to pick one novel from the past few years that really stood out to you which would it be?

TM: I’ll pick two: “The Tribe,” by Bari Wood, first published several decades ago, though I didn’t read it until recently after Centipede Press asked me to do an introduction to it for a new limited edition hardcover.  The book’s very character centered, which I enjoy, and it asks important questions (which it doesn’t answer) about murder, retribution, collateral damage when payment for murder is exacted, and about the ways personality can deceive us.  Quite an absorbing story.

The second is Erik Tomblin’s “The Space Between,” which appeared in 2009 from Blue Fairy Books and which is a stunner—a story of love, murder, and the “surreal machinations of fate and time” (quoted from a blurb I wrote for the novel).  Erik is a first-class writer and I’d recommend “The Space Between,” and his earlier “Riverside Blues,” a great southern gothic tale, to anyone who appreciates superb story telling coupled with remarkable craftsmanship.

Oh, and let me add—anything by Tom Piccirilli.  He’s flat out one of the best writers writing.  

 
DL: Between 1995 and 2002 you didn't have any new novels published. What was going on during this period of your life?

TM: Actually, the paperback edition of 1990’s THE SCHOOL (TOR) was published in 1996, the sixth edition of A MANHATTAN GHOST STORY was published in 1997 (with a balloon on the cover that read, “Soon to be a Major Motion Picture Starring Sharon Stone” LOL) and the expanded version of Victor Gollancz’s 1991 edition of THE LAST VAMPIRE was published by Leisure in 2001.  All of which leaves several years, anyway, when I wrote practically nothing except a couple of short stories and a bit of poetry (one of those short stories, Tower Man, appears in BONE SOUP).  How did this come about—these four or five years of no novels?  I wish I could say.  It could have been laziness, it could have been fucking depression (for which I’ve been treated off and on throughout the last few decades), it could have been an unhappy marriage (I’ve been married a few times more than once), or I simply could have been temporarily burned out.  Or maybe it was a combination of all those factors, which seems likely.  When I did get back to work, around the end of 1999, when I started rewriting THE LAST VAMPIRE for Leisure, it was in earnest, even though the money flowed to me from publishers at literally one/tenth the level it had in the 80’s and early 90’s.  
 
DL: What was it like being nominated for a Bram Stoker Award in '03? 

TM: That was for “Cold House,” from Monica O’Rourke’s late and lamented Catalyst Press, which saw a small printing in trade paperback, a 100-copy printing as a hardcover, and, because I was not a finalist for the award, I really didn’t get too awfully excited about it.  Many writers and reviewers at the time called the book my best and I agreed: now I see it as a book that helped me change my narrative style and story approach enough that I could later write really confusing novels and novellas—ones that require a “score card” (if you’ll recall).
 
DL: Jack Ketchum wrote the intro to that novel, 2003's Cold House. Is there any history between you and Mr. Mayr? What are your thoughts on the man and his work?

TM: Dallas is a great guy and a wonderful writer.  He also wrote the intro to the Etwisted’s 2006 hardcover edition of “Strange Seed.”  His novels and short stories are among the best in the genre—sometimes they tend toward “extreme” horror (perhaps more than “tend toward”) which I find fascinating but, at the same time, a bit uncomfortable to read, though I shrug off that discomfort and read happily.  We’ve met in person only a couple of times—the last time being the 2003 Stoker Awards Dinner in NYC, for which I was the toastmaster.
 
DL: What types of films interest you? Could you give us a few examples?

TM: I like Asian horror films, or films based on Asian horror films—“The Grudge,” for instance, and “The Eye” (the Asian version), and “The Ring” (I like both the Asian version and the American).  And I like ghost stories; “The Others,”  with Nicole Kidman, “The Other,” (from the book by Thomas Tryon) “The Haunting” (the original adaptation of “The Haunting of Hill House,” which is beyond a classic) and “Ghost Story” (from the Peter Straub novel) which, though very flawed, ranks as one of the best films of its type.  Beyond all that, I like character studies—“Trouble in Mind,” from Alan Rudolph, 1985, is a noirish and off key character study/love story that I rank as my favorite film; it stars Genevieve Bujold, Keith Carradine,  Kris Kristofferson, and Devine in his only straight role.  “Affliction,” with Nick Nolte as a very troubled small-town sheriff, is a gritty and sometimes brutal character study.   And “Panic,” starring William H. Macy as a hit man trying to get out of the family business is a must-see.  Macy also stars, with Debra Eisenstadt, in a small film made in 1994 titled Oleanna, about a college professor against whom a failing student brings charges of sexism and, later, attempted rape, which the college professor clearly finds preposterous: the two-character movie is extraordinary in its depiction of a man trying to cope with rising anger as a result of charges which, even if never proven, could ruin his life.  It’s based on a play by David Mamet.  Oh, and practically anything by the Coen Brothers, most especially “Miller’s Crossing,” “Raising Arizona,” “Fargo,” and “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou.”  Then there are the films that a lot of horror lovers groan about—“The Remains of the Day,” for instance, and “Barry Lyndon,” which rank in my top ten.  But I also cannot zip past “Blade Runner” if it’s playing on cable—no matter what part of the movie is playing when I chance upon it.  If I could retrieve the DVD from the storage area, 100 miles away, where we’re keeping a lot of our stuff, for the time being, I would.  In my formative years (whatever they are, and whenever they were), I listed “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” “The Servant,” with Dirk Bogarde, “The Sergeant,” with Rod Steiger, “The Fox,” “2001, A Space Odyssey,” and “Night of the Iguana” as my favorite films.  They’re still up there on my mental list, but they’ve been supplanted by some of the titles I’ve mentioned.  I do love movies; I could go on for another 100 pages about them, but I won’t because I’m merciful. 
 
DL: What about your taste in music? What do you find yourself listening to?

TM: John Prine, Randy Newman, a lot of classical (though no “light” classical), Enya, Karen Marie Garrett (a new composer/pianist with a lot of talent), Moby, Mark Isham, Marianne Faithfull, the soundtrack to “Trouble in Mind,” which, when I’m writing, I listen to almost constantly, a lot of Celtic music, Cat Stevens, The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, The Chieftans, Van Morrison, Tom Waits, Steve Goodman…oh the list is long.