This month - Conor Metz
Interviewer: Aigner Loren Wilson (she/her) is a double Ignyte Finalist for best novelette and best critic. She is a senior fiction editor for Strange Horizons, and her writing has appeared in F&SF, Lightspeed Magazine, Monstrous Futures, and more. You can follow her on her website, newsletter, or on Facebook.
Horror Author: Conor Metz is a horror writer out of Bellevue, Washington. He has loved monsters since the zombies from Michael Jackson’s Thriller gave him his first reoccurring nightmare at 4 years old. Most of his life has been spent in the Seattle area, with about a decade in Los Angeles writing screenplays. When Conor isn’t writing novels, he’s hard at work seeking out obscure horror films and trash cinema. He also may be found scaling random structures without thought of how he’ll get down or poorly practicing martial arts. Eventually, he plans to use this experience to become the notorious Seattle Ninja.
This interview is a part of the HWA Seattle Member Blog Interview Series. HWA Seattle members who would like to be interviewed for the blog, reach out here.
Aigner Loren Wilson: I saw that you used to write screenplays. Were they horror screenplays or some other genre? Any movies or shows your readers could watch that you’ve written?
Conor Metz: So, I wrote a lot of different genres back then. I started out writing a lot of crime comedy movies (I was a huge fan of Elmore Leonard in college). Later I dabbled in things like science fiction, which is my second greatest passion after horror (I especially love sci-fi horror). And finally, some of the last couple scripts I wrote were horror as I thought those might be the easiest to make on a low budget.
Pretty much everything I did, though, had elements of comedy as I guess I’m just generally too goofy of a person to ever write something completely serious. Sadly, nothing ever came of any of these scripts except one that I directed myself on an ultra-low budget in 2008 (don’t seek it out, I’m embarrassed by it now).
ALW: Does your background in screenwriting show up in your fiction writing at all? In your bio, you mention that you take a cinematic approach. Could you go into that more?
CM: Funnily enough, I’ve never had any characters in my novels who were screenwriters, but a few are either aspiring filmmakers or ones who gave up on their dreams, as that was the case for me at different points in my life.
To describe my cinematic approach to storytelling though is that I tend to really see things in my head like a movie. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I write like a screenplay as the two writing styles could not be more different (I spent a few harsh years making a full transition out of screenplays and the results were not very good until I had enough distance).
To elaborate a little further, I do really enjoy diving into my character’s thoughts, but I also have a focus on making things exciting and will get quite sparse with details at times to give a faster pace to the action and really put a focus on suspense. Or I may slow things down significantly to really draw out the tension. I’m always very focused on how things read to make sure I’m hitting the right pace as if the reader could be watching a film in their head.
ALW: What themes or topics does your work usually touch on?
CM: All of my books so far have touched on struggles I’ve faced at different points of my life.
So, the themes tend to vary from book to book. I think my first few I just wanted to do some fun monster stories or turn old tropes on their heads, but in my last few I’ve tried to focus more on writing social horror (I say trying because none of those books have released yet, I am still shopping around my first one and have two others I am revising.)
ALW: I love hearing about how an author got started writing. Can you share what sparked your passion for writing and led you to pursue a career as an author?
CM: I think all the credit goes to my brother and that’s probably why siblings play a part in a number of my novels. My brother always seemed to excel at things in our youth that I never felt as naturally gifted at. He could draw and liked to write stories and he was the one who first decided he wanted to be a director. I guess part of me was jealous enough at his natural talent that I started attempting these things to show him up.
However, I did find a real love for filmmaking throughout my teenage years. This led me to major in film production in college and as I became fast friends with another student who wanted to be a screenwriter, we would write screenplays and share them with each other, encouraging each other to improve. What really cemented my love for writing (aside from the act itself) was hearing people’s reactions to what I’d written.
I vividly remember one script I wrote the summer before my junior year that got passed around between a lot of people I knew who absolutely loved it. That felt extremely validating that people were actually responding positively to what I wrote. Sadly, after almost a decade writing screenplays, I decided it wasn’t worth it to continue. Unlike short fiction or novels, most people are reluctant to read screenplays and there’s no easy way to share them. I realized at a certain point I had to cut that cord and pivot to something where I knew people would actually have a chance to read what I was writing.
ALW: If a reader was unfamiliar with your work, what’s the story you’d suggest they start with?
CM: I guess it would depend on the person’s interests. Out of all the novels I have published so far, I’d recommend The Edgewood Nightmare because I felt it was narratively the strongest and had my favorite characters. Normally I’d recommend the latest thing I’ve written, except I haven’t published my last three novels yet, so until the first of those is available, I’ll stick to the recommendation I made here.
ALW: Do you have any upcoming releases or projects you’re working on that you’d like to talk about?
CM: Well, I’d love to talk about the novel I’m shopping around which is called Bleeding Hart, but since it’s not available for anyone to read yet, I don’t really want to share too much about it. Hopefully, I will have some news about that in the coming months, though, at which time I’d love to share more!
ALW: What are you reading, watching, or playing right now?
CM: Well, I tend to go through vicious binge cycles of content and after having just come out of a few months where I wanted to do nothing but play video games, I’ve switched now to comic books (which is the other thing I’m typically reading when I’m not reading novels). I think the filmmaker in me always gravitated toward the visual storytelling of comics and while superheroes are a big part of that, I tend to gravitate much more to independent comics.
I’m currently working my way through the wonderful Usagi Yojimbo for the first time. Some of my other favorites include Preacher, Y the Last Man, Hellboy, Swamp Thing, Madman, Saga, and the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. If you’re familiar with any of these, you probably noticed a common theme in my interests. I love monsters.
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Thanks for reading. I hope you’ve found a new author or a deeper love for an author you already know.
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