Discussed:
- Ron’s latest release, Cradle Lake
- How much he embraces similarities between himself and his characters, especially in writing a book with a main character who is an author, even playing on the meta-fiction themes.
- “When people say ‘write what you know,‘ they’re saying, write within the confines of what you believe life to be. I think there’s a real honesty in that.” – Ronald Malfi
- How Ron puts his signature touch on using Horror motifs in his fiction.
- “People think you don’t have a story unless your character undergoes some big change at the end and redeems himself… sometimes a story is just as good as holding up a mirror and showing a reflection of things in society and real life, and sometimes those things don’t have an explanation, or those things aren’t redeemed, or there is no absolution.”
- The 800 page manuscript he just turned into his agent and a little bit about this unreleased story.
- His next book out with Medallion Press, December Park (out in 2014)–what he calls his most sentimental and autobiographical story to date.
- How he thinks about character first before story (giving example of Floating Staircase), and how ghost story is what happens around the plot of that character’s story.
- “The characters and their problems come first. If you’ve got really good characters and really good problems with those characters from the get-go then the stories build themselves around them.” – Ronald Malfi
- In the intro, I mentioned the Introduction to Writing: Science Fiction and Fantasy course taught by Michael A. Stackpole.
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“All about that moment I love, the moment where something approaches. The moment where you close your eyes and hope it goes away. It will. But there’ll be another story right behind it. And another. And another.” -Alasdair Stuart, host of the PSEUDOPOD podcast.Available exclusively on Kindle. Visit www.01publishing.com for more great fiction.
AISFP COFFIN HOP GIVEAWAY Details:
The Coffin Hop is an annual blog tour amoung indie horror authors and artists with over eighty sites offering fun content and giveaways. This year, they’re releasing an anthology by many of these authors, called Coffin Hop: Death by Drive-In
Running tally of books to choose from:
Total Coffin Hop Posts so far:
Book Review: ANNO DRACULA: JOHNNY ALUCARD by Kim Newman
SF Book Releases This Week: Oct. 29, 2013
AISFP 236 – Ronald Malfi and Kevin Lucia, Part One
Book Review: APOCALYPTIC MONTESSA AND NUCLEAR LULU
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Kevin Lucia, Guest Co-host
Kevin Lucia is a Submissions Reader for Cemetery Dance Magazine and his podcast “Horror 101” is featured monthly on Tales to Terrify. His short fiction has appeared in several anthologies.
He’s currently finishing his Creative Writing Masters Degree at Binghamton University, he teaches high school English and lives in Castle Creek, New York with his wife and children.
He is the author of Hiram Grange& The Chosen One, Book Four of The Hiram Grange Chronicles. His first short story collection, Things Slip Through is forthcoming in November. He’s currently working on his first novel.
Timothy C. Ward
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Podcast: Download (Duration: 41:24 — 38.0MB)
As a reader of Ronald Malfi and his work I completely enjoyed this interview and am looking forward to the second half of it. Your questions and discussions were right on. Mr. Malfi is the genuine article when it comes to writing. I read and review over at horror Novel Reviews and The Floating Staircase was one that came across our page. Horror from my opinion does not need to be blood and guts thrillers…a good read is much more like what is being discussed here. I want to know characters and what is right and wring in this world of human beings. There are plenty of stories out there to shock us but the best i have read are the ones that delve deeper in human nature and the horrors that walk around on two legs…called people. Thank you….just me…Vitina Molgaard
Thanks so much for stopping by, Vitina! Ron is really good. I’ve read and enjoyed The Narrows and Floating Staircase. Hope we get a chance to talk story more in the future. I’ve got HNR on my list.
I’ll work hard tonight to get the next part ready for tomorrow. In it, Ron and Kevin talk about Peter Straub as one of their favorite authors, and it makes me really want to read him.