Today I have the absolute pleasure of welcoming a good friend of mine to my blog. Carver Pike is a great supporter in the horror community, and a dear friend. He writes amazing books, both horror and not, and I asked him to please let us know a little about himself.
1. What sub-genre of Horror do you write?
This is a difficult question to answer because I tend to dabble in most subgenres of horror. Like my latest novel, Faces of Beth, is a possession story that also deals with mental health. Scalp is a creature story that’s also kind of zombie-like. It’s basically parasitic head lice. The one I’m working on now, Kin of the Fallen, will be a slasher story. My Diablo Snuff series is just wild. It really does bring in all the subgenres in one way or another. It’s probably the series that got me labelled an extreme horror author. Not all my books are extreme.
2. Which is the best book that you’ve written (in your opinion) and what’s it about?
I think Faces of Beth is probably my most mature novel. It’s the one I can see being on the shelf at a local Books-A-Million or Barnes & Noble. My personal favorite just because of how fun it was to write and how wild it is would probably be The Maddening, which is the 5th and final book in my Diablo Snuff series. Let’s go with Faces of Beth though. You asked what it was about? Without giving too much away, newlyweds struggle to deal with the wife’s mental illness while their family is tormented by a demonic presence.
3. What advice would you give budding horror authors?
Do your best to write something every day or at least most days. Finishing a book is simple math. If you want to write a 70,000 word novel and you write words every day, they will eventually add up to that 70k. If you write 500 words a day without fail, you’ll write that 70k novel in like 5 months. If you can do 1,000 words a day, you cut that time in half. Obviously, shit gets in the way. Trust me, I definitely know that. I used to knock out books in like a month or two. Across three pen names (because I’ve also written some erotica and dark romance) I think I’ve published about 35 books. I’ve slowed down a lot. Now, I’m lucky to finish two or three a year. So don’t get discouraged. It’s not a race. When you see authors cranking out a book a month, let them do them. You do you. Just focus on your work at your own pace and put out your best work. That’s all you can do.
4. Tell us about your background. Where you grew up and what life was like.
I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. My parents got divorced when I was about five. From then on, I would go back and forth between my parents. My dad pretty much stayed in Oklahoma but my mom moved to San Diego, California and eventually moved to the Fort Lauderdale area of Florida. Eventually, my dad settled in Florida to be closer to us. So, I bounced around a lot until about middle school.
No matter who I was with, everything revolved around horror. I always wanted to watch horror movies, every game of hide and seek had to be horror related (Freddy, Jason, or Michael Myers was doing the seeking), and even when I played with action figures, I didn’t play war. No, my G.I. Joe figures always landed on a distant planet where the beds or the couch were mountains and the carpet was an alien goop that if touched would seep through the skin and take over the body. When I discovered the school library, I checked out Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and any other book with a spooky title or cover. I was once kicked out of a sleepover on Friday the 13th because I told the host kid that Jason comes out on Friday the 13th to kill kids who host parties that day. He started crying and his parents weren’t too happy about it.
5. Who is your favorite author in the horror genre?
There’s no way I can pick only one. My go-to authors right now are Bentley Little, Richard Laymon, Brian Keene, Jeff Strand, Lucas Mangum, and I’m really digging Bryan Smith’s work.
6. You’re stuck in a haunted underground mansion for the night, how do you survive the ever-changing passages and deadly ghosts?
First, I’d make sure I have some of those glasses from the movie Thirteen Ghosts. That way I could always see the ghosts and be well aware of them so they couldn’t just sneak up on me. And I’d probably bring some salt. I don’t know why. They always have salt in movies though. I think Dean and Sam used salt a lot, too, in the show Supernatural. So, I’d get like a Costco sized package of salt. I’d just sit in circles of that shit right inside the front door and wait ‘til morning. The passages can change all they want to because I’m staying right next to the door! In my circle of salt! With my glasses on! And I need snacks like pretzels and maybe sugar free Twizzlers because I’m diabetic. I know they kind of cancel each other out since one is totally carby. I’m gonna die in there, Sian, aren’t I?
7. Who is your favourite villain? What book are they from and what was your favourite thing about them?
My favorite villain, and I’m just going with this one because it’s the first one that came to mind that’s not an obvious one like The Joker or Hannibal Lector is Luther Kite from the Andrew Z. Thomas series by Blake Crouch. I first encountered him in the novella Bad Girl by Blake Crouch and then immediately went on to read Desert Places and the rest of the series after that. This character has been in several of Crouch’s books and has even shown up in some of his books he’s written with Jack Kilborn/JA Konrath. I just like how demented he is. He’s a sick son of a bitch.
8. Where can we follow you?
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carver.pike.98
Newsletter: https://carverpike.substack.com/
