Today the Storytelling Blog visits with author David Massengill. Last fall, Montag Press released Massengill’s horror-thriller, Grave Regrets. We talked via email about the book and the writing process.
David Massengill is the author of three novels—Grave Regrets, The Skin That Fits, and Red Swarm—all of which are available from Montag Press. He has also written the short story collections Extermination Days (Demain Publishing) and Fragments of a Journal Salvaged from a Charred House in Germany, 1816 (Hammer and Anvil Books). His short works of horror and literary fiction have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Eclectica Magazine, Pulp Metal Magazine, Word Riot, The Literary Hatchet, The Raven Chronicles, and Yellow Mama, among others. He lives near Seattle. His website is www.davidmassengillfiction.com.
Disclosure: I have a business relationship with Massengill’s publisher, Montag Press.
KB: Tell us about your new book, Grave Regrets.
DM: My elevator pitch is “Slender Man meets I Know What You Did 25 Years Ago.” The novel’s a blend of the thriller and horror genres.
A murdered woman is found in her car in Seattle, a tree branch resting on her corpse. She clutches a cell phone displaying a website featuring horror fiction stories posted by the public. The story of the day’s about Spindly Arms, a killer with a face in the shape of a crescent moon and tree branches for arms.
John Larsen—one of the novel’s protagonists—is shocked when he hears about the murder. The 44-year-old wrote “Spindly Arms” in 1992, when he was a high school senior. Back then, John was the boyfriend of Vivian and best pal of Brandon until a major betrayal caused the three friends to go their separate ways. This was also the year these classmates had disturbing encounters with someone they called “the armless man,” a bald fifty-something with bulging eyes and prosthetic arms. The man lived in a ramshackle house on John’s paper route, and he was the inspiration for Spindly Arms.
Now all three classmates painfully regret past actions as some sinister stranger who remembers 1992 stalks them. Spindly Arms is reaching across the years, and he won’t let go of John, Vivian, or Brandon until they’ve paid for past sins, or they’re dead.
KB: I’m particularly intrigued by the urban legend in-real-life aspect. What inspired that?
DM: Slender Man was definitely an inspiration. In 2014, two adolescent girls brutally attacked a friend, and they claimed this attack was to appease Slender Man. Of course, he played no actual part in the crime. Slender Man was just a fictional character whose popularity had swelled through proliferating fan fiction about him. But at the same time, the character managed to become a kind of entity with its own power and sway. Slender Man wasn’t real, and yet he was. I found that especially creepy and decided to write a novel with a similar character, Spindly Arms.
KB: What attracted you to merging the thriller and horror genres? What are the challenges and rewards?
DM: My last two novels were mostly horror. The post-apocalyptic Red Swarm is about lethal, cockroach-like insects invading the Pacific Northwest. (I found myself recalling moments from Red Swarm when the pandemic began.) The Skin That Fits is a Southern horror/gothic involving a pair of naïve protagonists who journey into the Deep South and become entangled in disturbing rituals and supernatural possession. With Grave Regrets, I wanted to have hints of the supernatural but keep the book realistic.
I think of horror as exploration of “the shadow”—the part of ourselves or others or society that we fear or worry about or don’t understand—and death. Horror fiction allows us to safely venture into scary areas, through narratives and characters and symbols, and we come out of that exploration a little more comfortable with the shadow or death. Thrillers can lead us to scary places, too, but in my opinion these books are more about pace, plot, and suspense than the fear factor. The challenge of Grave Regrets was to keep the reader on edge about this Spindly Arms entity while constructing an involved plot and maintaining a breakneck pace. The rewards will be in positive feedback or reviews from my readers.
KB: Grave Regrets is your third novel. Any words of advice for writers working on a second book?
DM: Having your first book published is a truly life-changing experience. You’ve most likely spent years of writing and receiving rejections before this moment, and here it is, your first book-length work of fiction in print (or “e-print”). If this has happened to you, congratulations! My first book was actually a short story collection, Fragments of a Journal Salvaged from a Charred House in Germany, 1816, which was available only for Kindle. I was thrilled that a publisher actually wanted to release this work into the world.
I think authors can easily expect things will only be “up” after that first book, but they should brace themselves for more of the disappointment and rejection they’ve experienced in the past. There will be more successes, and more rejections, and more successes, and so on…. I’ve experienced this, and I’ve seen tremendously popular authors experience this.
My advice for any writer, published or unpublished: If you’re writing fiction because something deep inside you won’t let you quit, keep going. Come up with a schedule, whether that’s writing a little nearly every day or writing a lot every weekend. Become friends with rejection. Trust that your writing will improve with time. Know that the best part of writing is the process. And then relish it when someone publishes or pays for your work.
KB: What is your writing process? Does it differ between novels and short stories? Have other types of work you have done had an impact on your process?
DM: I try to write at least a little bit every day. Depending on where I’m at with a project, the writing time may actually be editing time. A novel is a very long haul for me. I anticipate the first draft will take about a year or two (or more), and then the editing about half that time. For over a decade—from my early twenties to my mid-thirties—I wrote only short stories. I appreciate how short story writing allows you to experiment with style and structure. If the story fails, you haven’t lost much time in its creation. But by experimenting you learn what you can do and where you’re strongest as a writer.
With both short story writing and novel writing, I’ve always known how my characters will change through the course of the story. By the time I’m writing the beginning, I know the ending.
As for other types of work, I’ve been employed as an editor in the medical industry for over twenty years. I find that my editing skills help tighten my fiction writing, and the fiction writing allows me the creative freedom/exploration/rebellion I haven’t had in any “day job.”
KB: What does storytelling mean to you?
DM: The meaning or purpose of storytelling can vary so much depending on what the story is. I may be telling the tale to entertain, spook, or heal my reader. I suppose storytelling ultimately boils down to connection, though, doesn’t it? The writer is connecting with a reader, and it’s a connection that’s happening oftentimes when the two people have never met and never will meet. And sometimes that connection is happening after the writer’s death. That’s pretty amazing, pretty magical.
I love it when my fiction reaches someone years after I wrote it, and I find out that person was somehow moved or provoked by whatever story I told. Once a story gets out into the world, you don’t know exactly where it will go or whom it will reach.
KB: What are you working on next?
DM: I’m deep into the first draft of a horror novella. Some of my favorite books are novellas (works that fall somewhere between a long short story and a novel), including Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, and James M. Cain’s masterpieces The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. I’ve decided to try my hand. The setting is April 2020. A man escapes COVID lockdown life in Seattle by fleeing with his sister and niece to a waterfront resort on one of the San Juan Islands. But will life be safer in a rented cottage? Perhaps there’s something—or someone—out there that’s more insidious than the virus.
KB: Is there anything else you’d like the blog readers to know about your work?
DM: My characters make up the core of my stories. I aim to write interesting human beings who are possibly likeable and definitely flawed. I want my readers to have feelings about those characters, even if those feelings are less than empathetic. Before I ever wrote thriller or horror fiction, I wrote literary fiction concerned with ideas or relationships. I used to have a rule that I’d never kill a character because that was too easy for making a point or ending a story. These days I have no rules.
If you enjoyed this author interview, you might like to hear about dystopian military fiction from Christopher Clancy.
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