by Gail Z. Martin
Ok, so I write about ghosts, vampires, necromancers, magic and monsters. Ever wonder where that came from?
Big surprise: I’ve loved spooky supernatural stuff since I was a kid. One of my earliest favorites was a story written for elementary-aged readers in the Jack and Jill magazine called “The Ghost in the Glen.” I made my mom read it to me until the cover fell off the magazine. I discovered Fate Magazine when I visited my grandparents. Fate is full of first-person accounts of supernatural occurrences plus stories about the occult, the spooky, and the just plain strange. I used to sneak away with a pile of Fate Magazines and read them for hours.
By now, I think everyone knows I loved the original Dark Shadows when I was in preschool, and that alone probably did a lot to determine my present life course. Other early favorites were Twilight Zone, the old Alfred Hitchcock show (as well as the spooky Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators series of books), ScoobyDoo, Night Gallery, Tales from the Crypt and any old monster movies I could pick up on the local UHF channel (these were the days before cable).
Another early favorite was a book called Jane-Emily about a girl whose spirit is trapped inside a silver garden gazing globe. I have never been able to look at a garden globe without thinking of that book! I decided Shakespeare was interesting when I found out Macbeth and Hamlet had ghosts in them. I also read as many first-person accounts of haunting and ghosts as I could get my hands on, and still enjoy those kinds of books. I think Blackwood Farms by Anne Rice is a perfect ghost story—vampires AND ghosts, plus some witches and a haunted house!
So there you have it. If you don’t want your kid to grow up to write about vampires and necromancers, you probably ought not let them read every scary book they can get their hands on!
Watch for my Days of the Dead online tour beginning October 25! Book giveaways, free downloads , character interviews, never-before released excerpts, and other cool stuff. Get more details at www.ChroniclesOfTheNecromancer.com.
