From Publishers Weekly:
I’m a happy person, though you wouldn’t think that based on a particular question I’m often presented with: what happened to you as a child? Hell, even my own mom has asked me that.
I write dark psychological suspense—tinged with horror—and the title of my sixth and latest release, The Dead Girl in 2A, does nothing to belie that fact. The space of fiction in which I exist is a cold, barely lit world where paranoia rules and people quite occasionally die—a place where trust is a rare commodity, hope is even more precious, and suffering is a requirement for (but not a guarantee of) absolution.
So people ask about my past: how I was raised, why I choose to write what I do.
My answer is always: I don’t know—however, I do have a theory.
To my memory (that’s the paranoia kicking in), I had a perfectly normal, suburban childhood: great parents, went to a good university, got a business degree. I was 33 when I decided to write a novel, having no prior experience with such an endeavor. And what I chose to write was dark. Really dark.
I got an agent with that first book, but it didn’t sell, nor did the three after that. But I kept writing and sold the following six books.
. . . .
So, here is my theory. I don’t think my dark thoughts are any different than those everyone has. When people ask about how I think of such things, I want to challenge them to tell me they don’t have morbid ideas of their own. I know they do, but they just don’t want to make that obvious, lest they be judged.
We all try so hard to hide what makes us stand out, and that’s a damn shame.
Not me. I relish my macabre side, and I love that I can create an environment that scares people, makes them lose sleep, yet keeps them turning the pages. And perhaps my greatest asset is the ability to turn it on and off.
I don’t think about my stories until the moment the laptop is open and my fingers are poised over the keyboard. Then I go into that world, maybe for only 30 minutes or an hour, imagining what happens when I place ordinary folks in extraordinary (and quite unpleasant) situations.
Link to the rest at Publishers Weekly
This is the key to why the form works:
“Everyone believes very easily whatever they fear or desire.”
– Jean de la Fontaine
So, here is my theory. I don’t think my dark thoughts are any different than those everyone has. When people ask about how I think of such things, I want to challenge them to tell me they don’t have morbid ideas of their own. I know they do, but they just don’t want to make that obvious, lest they be judged.
Alfred Hitchcock put his fears into his movies and TV series.
Thomas Harris doesn’t make anything up:
“I don’t think I’ve ever made up anything,” he tells me as we drive across Miami’s 79th Street Causeway, which takes us past a small island called Bird Key where a climactic scene in his new novel, “Cari Mora,” takes place. “Everything has happened. Nothing’s made up. You don’t have to make anything up in this world.”
Hannibal Lecter’s Creator Cooks Up Something New (No Fava Beans or Chianti)
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/18/books/thomas-harris-new-book.html