THREE QUESTIONS: Kristin Dearborn

If you have any questions about whether a girl with a sweet-sounding name like Kristin Dearborn can write horror, you should read her story “Rabid Raccoons” in The Zombie Feed Anthology Vol. 1. If you like nasty undead rodents with those freaky little hands, horrifying last stands, and some old-fashioned evil vengeance, you’ll love “Rabid Raccoons”! I’m so thrilled to have had a chance to ask Kristin THREE QUESTIONS, and her answers are insightful and fun! Check them out below, and then definitely check out The Zombie Feed Anthology for a taste of Kristin’s excellent work.

You can pick up your copy of The Zombie Feed Anthology on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com, or from The Zombie Feed directly. Get it on your Kindle or your Nook (or in any e-format from Smashwords) for just $2.99! Seventeen awesome zombie stories for $2.99? Yes, please! :D

1. The Writing Question: Do you tend to plan your stories before you write them, or do you write and just see what you discover in the process?

I start a story or a book knowing the first scene (which almost always changes) and the last scene, the denouement, if you will. I have no idea how I will get from point A to point B. My favorite technique is to speed write the first draft, which leaves me with a messy shamble of a draft with plot holes and missing scenes and scenes that don’t make sense because of added and deleted characters. Then I make an outline based on what I have, with things I want to get rid of in red, things I want to add in blue, and stuff that just is in black. Then I spend a ridiculously long time editing. And that is my method.

2. The Horror Question: What work of horror do you consider the most terrifying/freaky/scary, and why?

I love The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, which I think is Stephen King’s least appreciated work. The woods are a wonderful, terrifying place to spend time. They are beautiful in any season, secluded, peaceful. But at that moment when the bugs and the birds go silent, when you feel that there is something there with you and it isn’t human…it could be anywhere, behind a trunk, up a tree, there are a million places to hide, and you just know it will run faster, smell better, see better, and know the lay of the land better than you do. And that is what Tricia comes face to face with in the God of the Lost. Readers are never certain whether Tricia is hallucinating due to pneumonia and starvation or if the God of the Lost is real. It’s one of the most terrifying monsters in monster history, methinks (other contenders: The Thing [1982 Carpenter version], the Aliens from the Alien franchise, and the Outsider from Dean Koontz’ Watchers.) The thing has wasps for a face! There’s nothing more terrifying than that! Wasps alone are little flying nightmares, but as icing on a cake of monster…yikes. So that’s my favorite horror story, because I can empathize with the protagonist. I hope they never make a movie, because they can never do that monster justice. The pop-up book certainly doesn’t.

3. The Oddball Question: If you could be friends with one fictional character, who would it be and what kind of venue would you meet at?

This question has me so conflicted…a million good answers are coming to my mind…my first knee jerk answer is Cassidy the Irish vampire from Preacher…we’d go to a bar and drink until I puked…but honestly? I can’t hope to keep up. And he’s not exactly a nice guy. I feel like I would wind up a snack.

Once I got over that fancy, I know that I would be friends with the fictional character who I have adored since childhood, my TV boyfriend of all times, MacGyver. He’s smart, he’s handsome, he’s kind, he wouldn’t drink my blood, and I wouldn’t have a hangover after hanging out with him. We’d go for a hike in the woods. I know I just talked about how scary they are, but if I was with MacGyver, he would prove that the monster is really just a bunch of oil thieves trying to keep the authorities away from their schemes. Then we would drink cocoa, and talk about really smart stuff, and I could run my fingers through his mullet. I would be 100% safe from everything if I was with MacGyver, with the exception of rock climbing accidents. However, the fact that he could never commit is slightly worrisome…lots of ex-girlfriends, no long term lady loves. For him, I can deal.

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Kristin Dearborn is an expat for a year, teaching English in South Korea on a Fulbright Fellowship. When she’s not struggling with the Korean language or high school boys, she is reading, writing or watching horror. You can find out more about her at www.kristindearborn.com, and you can find her work in Encounters Magazine, Unspeakable: A New Breed of Terror, and most recently The Zombie Feed.