Words & Appearances

In just a few short days I’ll be catching a plane to Portland for the 20th anniversary of the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival. This will be my third consecutive year as a guest of the festival, and it’s always a great time. There’ll be movies, of course, including a black-and-white 1960 Christopher Lee flick that I’ve never seen before, and way cooler guests than me, like Dr. Herbert West himself Jeffrey Combs! What’s more, Ross Lockhart and I are planning to debut Painted Monsters & Other Strange Beasts at the festival, which only seems fitting. If you’re going to be there, we should have copies, and if you’re not it’s available for pre-order from the Word Horde site.

Partly to help boost awareness about the book, I’ve been doing a lot of interviews lately, and a few of them have already gone up, with some more–including at least one that I’m very excited about–waiting in the wings. First off, I answered a few questions from Word Horde’s new social media manager Sean M. Thompson about monsters, the role of genre in fiction, and buying clothes for skeletons:

Don’t get me wrong, I love thoughtful, meditative horror as much as anyone, stories that stick with you, that carry a hefty thematic weight and leave you thinking, and I hope that my stuff manages that at least some of the time. But most of my favorite horror stories also have something of the spook house in them. Something of the carnival barker challenging you to “Step right up!” It’s why House on Haunted Hill sits right alongside The Haunting in my personal pantheon, and always will.

Sean also interviewed the great Nick Gucker, who provided the fantastic cover art for Painted Monsters. Not content with answers to those more restrained questions, Mr. Thompson also hit me with a Random Ass Interview, in which we talked Del Toro films, zombies biting vampires (and vice versa), and how I became a skeleton who likes monsters. In the meantime, I also participated in author Scott Cole’s brilliant 20Q7A interview series, in which participants are all asked the same 20 questions, but are only allowed to answer 7 of them. I talked about movie monsters, comics, and what food I would eat for the rest of my life.

It’s not an interview with me, but Scott Nicolay recently talked with phenomenal up-and-comer Daniel Mills on his stunningly great Outer Dark podcast, during which Daniel had some extraordinarily kind things to say about Painted Monsters and yours truly:

Orrin is one of those writers who… he makes it look effortless. His stories are so… they’re so approachable, they’re so easy to read, and by the end of them you’ve somehow become turned around.

Like I said, I’ve got some more stuff coming up very soon, but you may not hear a lot from me between now and when I get back from the HPLFF, by which time Painted Monsters should be a real thing that I’ve physically held in my hands. If you follow me on social media, you can also expect pictures and sporadic updates from the festival itself. More soon!