Few horror novels provoke the kind of response as J.F. Gonzalez’s SURVIVOR. About a woman who finds herself the victim of a kidnapping – and subsequently the planned star of a snuff film – the book never flinches. (You can read our review here.) We talked to Gonzalez about the dark origins of his pitch-black plot.
BOOKGASM: You’ve said that the road rage incident which opens the book was based upon an event that happened to you. But where did the inspiration for the snuff-film element come from, and what gave you the idea to connect one to the other?
GONZALEZ: I’d been trying to write a story loosely based on that incident for a few years and nothing was working. Then one afternoon I was watching the news, kind of daydreaming about my work while watching it, which a lot of writers do, and there was a news story about a pornographer being brought up on animal cruelty charges for making crush videos. Crush videos are S&M-tinged films where women wearing spiked heels torture and kill small animals by stomping on them. One of the videos found reportedly contained footage of this same woman stomping on a doll, which suggested the torture and murder of a human infant. As I watched this, I couldn’t help but think that if there were weirdos out there who got off on this stuff, there had to be a few even sicker weirdos who would get off on the real thing. And that scared the living shit out of me.
I was thinking about my road rage story when this news item came on, and all of a sudden, the basic seed kind of sprang from that. That’s
basically how they became connected to one another.
BOOKGASM: SURVIVOR is, by design, a novel that will make its readers uneasy, perhaps some even revolted. The question is, why set out to do something that has such a polarizing effect? And as you were writing it, did you ever disturb yourself?
GONZALEZ: My original intention wasn’t to write something with a polarizing effect, but to simply disturb the hell out of the reader, period. At the time I started writing the short novel MATERNAL INSTINCT – which I later expanded into the novel SURVIVOR – I had no idea how the novel was going to progress, or end, for that matter. The characters were telling me this story. I was appalled as anybody by what happened, but I also realized that if I opted out, if I forced certain plot points or motivations to go a certain way to a more safe and “happy” way, that it would ring false.
The villains in SURVIVOR don’t care about happy endings for the people they exploit; those are the kind of people they are, and I had to be true to their nature. So as difficult as it was, I wrote it the way things played out. And yes, I did disturb myself while writing it. When I finished MATERNAL INSTINCT, my first thought was to stick it in a drawer and forget about it. It wasn’t until I talked to a few people about it – one of those “what are you working on” topics of conversation writers talk about at conventions – that I mentioned it, and several people asked to read it. The reaction these people gave me after reading it was so favorable that I allowed it to be published.
BOOKGASM: What has the response been like? Have you received any hate mail? I imagine you’ve been the recipient of several messages containing the phrase “How could you?”
GONZALEZ: For the most part, the response has been very favorable. Those who understood what I was doing responded favorably. So far, only a few people didn’t get it and came away thinking SURVIVOR was nothing more than an exploitative piece of violence. I knew the book wasn’t for everybody when I wrote it, and it’s certainly very different from the rest of my work. But no, I haven’t received hate mail or received any disgruntled messages from readers.
BOOKGASM: You’ve also said your next book for Leisure, though still horrific, won’t be as extreme. What’s it about?
GONZALEZ: I normally do not write what is known as “hardcore” or “extreme” horror, whatever that is. I’d say 10, maybe 15 percent of my fiction output has consisted of some pretty brutal material and that’s about it. The novel I wrote immediately after completing SURVIVOR was THE BELOVED, which Leisure is publishing next year. It’s completely different, a pretty straightforward supernatural horror story about a family whose lives are disrupted by a succubus. After SURVIVOR, I felt the need to write supernatural horror because writing about human monsters was just too depressing, so it was nice to return to it.
BOOKGASM: Aside from SURVIVOR, what’s new in the world of horror that you think everybody should be reading?
GONZALEZ: My reading tastes are varied and eclectic. I’m currently re-reading FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelley because every once in a while, I like to dip back into the classics. Next on the list is probably CORALINE by Neil Gaiman because I haven’t read that yet and I love Neil Gaiman’s work. I also just finished Stephen King’s latest novel, CELL, and loved it.
As to who I think people should be reading in horror, that’s hard to say. I’m partial to the works of Stephen King, Ray Garton, Douglas Clegg, David Schow and Michael Marshall Smith. Richard Laymon, Karl Edward Wagner, Robert McCammon, Jack Ketchum, Peter Straub, Robert Bloch, Hugh Cave, Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell and Michael McDowell were big influences on me growing up and I continue to dip into their stuff when I come across it, especially if it’s something I haven’t read before.
Leisure is publishing a novel called WOLF’S TRAP by William Gagliani that I thought was a lot of fun. I try to read a wide variety of fiction, from science fiction and fantasy to slipstream to thrillers to so-called mainstream literary fiction. I read a lot of non-fiction, too. As far as up-and-coming writers in horror, my definition of an up-and-coming writer probably differs from most people. Brian Keene certainly fits in that category. Writers who impress me in the small press are Mehitobel Wilson, Wrath James White, Geoff Cooper and Patrick Lestewka. That’s just to name a few off the top of my head.
Related posts:
- Survivor
- Leisure builds solid horror lineup for 2006
- Q&A with HERETIC’s Joseph Nassise
- Q&A with FROZEN’s Jay Bonansinga
- Q&A with WOKEN FURIES’ Richard K. Morgan
