Mark LaFlamme is an award-winning crime reporter and columnist at the Sun Journal in Lewiston, Maine. His weekly column, Street Talk, where he often compares editors to bats, spiders, extraterrestrial slugs, and "other beings too diabolical to describe," has been named Best in Maine and Best in New England. In 2006, LaFlamme was named Journalist of the Year by the Maine Press Association. In this interview, LaFlamme talks about his books, writing, and what's inside the mind of the horror author, among other things.
When did your fascination with the 'dark side' begin and when did you start writing horror?
What dark side? I'm a perfectly well adjusted young man who dreams of pink ponies and marmalade skies. I whistle while I walk. I stop and sniff flowers at roadside. I retreat only occasionally into the basement to devise new strategies to raise the dead.
If I have such a gloomy nature, it was certainly born in youth, which was often turbulent and marked by uncertainty. When I was six, I discovered my father dying on a roof, the victim of a brain aneurysm. I don't think I've viewed the end of life quite right since that experience.
What were some of your favorite horror books and/or movies as a teenager?
I started reading Poe when I was preteen. I didn't grasp all of it of course, but I quickly grew fond of his tone. I read a lot of S.E. Hinton, Rumblefish, The Outsiders and such. I discovered Stephen King soon enough. I watched almost exclusively horror movies. Halloween was my first big wow.
Tell us a little about your books, The Pink Room and Vegetation. What was your inspiration for them?
The Pink Room was my second novel and the first that was published. Its beginnings are prosaic at best. I had insomnia. Every night, I tried to play a mental movie in my head to lull me to sleep. I saw a man walking down a dark road in the middle of nowhere. Car pulls up, windows goes down, and a man inside says: "We know you've been inside the house. We want to talk to you about that." I'd been reading a lot about string theory at the time. And I'm always thinking about the irrevocable nature of death. The three concepts got together, had a party and wrote a novel.
Vegetation originated even more mundanely. I was in the backyard having a smoke when a little ivy tickled my ankle in the dark. I jumped and tried to flee and ran face-first into a lilac bush. Plants were everywhere and they were out to get me. I went inside and consoled myself with corn on the cob. It occurred to me that if you offend the kingdom of plants, brother, the whole world really is out to get you.
Article comments