Get Ready to be scared! Joining me today is PETE ZIMMERMAN to showcase his Horror title The Water Has Memory.
SHR: What makes this particular book your favorite?
PZ: This is my first short story to be published and is an homage to HP Lovecraft, one of my favorite authors. It is dry horror, the kind done sometimes done by Poe. Not that I am as good as those two.
SHR: Who published it? When?
PZ: Mocha Memoirs published it, which is ironic because it is largely an African Amican publishing house, and HP Lovecraft, while a gifted writer, was a terrible racist which has always bothered me. So I am very glad that something in his style is of some financial benefit to a business owned by persons of color. I admire his work, but I kinda hope he spins in his grave over that! It was published in February 2012.
SHR: Tell us a little about what you went through to get it published.
PZ: I was away from my wife for 6 weeks to take a class in NC trying to finish my masters in divinity at Wake Forest Divinty School. One of my good friends ran a publishing house mostly ebooks and I told her that since I was alone a lot in a little dorm room, I was working on a short story that was horror. She read it, and though not a horror fan, liked it. She had a friend in the business who did publish horror and sent my work along to Mocha Memoirs. The rest is history.
SHR: On writing in general: What’s the hardest part for you? Why?
PZ: The hardest part is committing the time. Are you going to be serious about it or not? You have to decide if it is something you only do for fun, something you do that you want to get good at (which requires commitment) or something you want to do for a living which takes it even further down the road of commitment. Stephen King says he was not a good writer at first. I want my first published work to not be my best, because I want to get better, and that takes work.
SHR: Unrelated: What’s your favorite color?
PZ: Black. I mean, damn, I am a horror writer!
ABOUT THE WATER HAS MEMORY:
GENRE:
Horror / Suspense
BLURB:
An old friendship brings Nigel all the way from England to the distant desert of Arizona, where he seeks to save the life, and mind, of Richard. What dark experience could have so effected his hale and hearty friend from college?
Medical Notes on Richard Lawnley, with a final word By Dr. Nigel Hawkston June 12, 1929:
Though I am very tired, I feel I should preserve my thoughts of what occurred tonight at Mission San Xavier del Bac in Richard’s room. I need to be thorough for Richard’s sake, for the sake of the profession of medicine, and to finally, those others that will read these notations for more consequential reasons.
It is still dark as I write, so forgive me if the lines are not straight. The electricity has failed here at the mission and I write by the light of my electric torch. ….
WHERE TO GET IT:
And be sure to check out MOCHA MEMOIRS PRESS!