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The Editors at Haunted Pelican Press caught up with Deborah LeBlanc recently and asked her to share her thoughts on writing, Five Strokes to Midnight, and what other delicious servings of darkness she has in store for her fans. Deborah's the author of four novels including FAMILY INHERITANCE, GRAVE INTENT, A HOUSE DIVIDED, and MORBID CURIOSITY. You can learn more about Deborah at her official website: www.deborahleblanc.com.
You were recently elected president of HWA. What are your thoughts on the organization?
I’m extremely honored to be serving the members of HWA in this capacity. I think the organization has a lot of potential. The challenges it faces now are no different than the challenges faced by other organizations or companies that have been around for a while. They get used to doing things a certain way and find it difficult to break old habits. I’m confident, however, given the current level of enthusiasm for change and the willingness of so many members to help, that HWA will quickly become the premier writers’ organization it was meant to be.
Your fourth novel, MORBID CURIOSITY, was recently released by Leisure Books. Tell us a little bit about it and what inspired the story.
Morbid Curiosity is about a set of sixteen-year-old twin girls whose lives are turned upside down after their father dies and their mother is committed to a hospital after she attempts suicide. Without parents, the girls are eventually shipped off to Mississippi to live with grandparents they hardly know, and it’s there they decide to take control of their lives by way of Chaos Magic. The one thing they don’t count on conjuring up, though, is their own death sentence.
The inspiration for this story came while I was doing research on shamans for another book. I found a link on a website marked ‘sigils’, and curiosity sent me clicking away. The information I discovered on sigils and Chaos Magic blew me away. The intense measures that many practitioners (most of them teens) use to ‘charge’ and ‘feed’ their sigils is nothing short of horrifying. Some claim to have gone so far as committing murder. I couldn’t NOT do a story on that.
One of the unique aspects of FIVE STROKES TO MIDNIGHT are the individualized themes for each author. How did you go about choosing your theme, which is ‘curses?’
I didn’t so much choose the theme as it chose me. Considering where I’m from, ‘curses’ as a topic was almost a given. I grew up in a culture that has more folklore revolving around curses than probably half the planet combined, so all I had to do was embellish on a couple of them to create the stories.
Tell us a little about the two stories, Bottom Feeder and White-Hot, you wrote for the FIVE STROKES TO MIDNIGHT anthology.
Both involve curses, of course, and they’re more extreme in content than anything I’ve written in my novels. Think revenge to the Nth degree. White-Hot, (the novella) was written from a man’s point of view. Normally I don’t have problems writing from either gender’s point of view, but in this story I hit an unusal roadblock. There were physiological aspects to a man that I didn’t know and needed to know, in my opinion, so certain segments of the story would ring true. Things like: “What sort of pain would a man experience if he maintained an erection for 12 hours and nothing he tried allowed him release? Would the pain be more mental than physical, or equal in both? Needless to say, the questions raised eyebrows, produced a lot of throat-clearing, and never received definitive answers.. But, man, was it ever a blast to write!
Why do you think readers enjoy being scared (or “what’s the appeal of horror?”)
For me, it’s the adrenaline rush and all the ‘what if’s’ that are presented. In the broadest sense, horror delves into our innermost psyche, where our greatest fears live. It pushes them to the surface and forces us to look those fears full in the face. It ‘speaks’ about things we’re often too afraid to mention, and it boldly answers ‘what if’ questions that we dare not contemplate….”What if spirits could communicate with a young girl through a television set, then physically capture her? What if a boy saw dead people and the only person capable of helping him was a ghost? What if the spirit of a madman, a murderer was able to return to the physical world through a person’s dreams?” Horror dares to look behind the curtains that separate this world from the next, sanity from insanity, and normalcy from the macabre. Ya gotta love it!
What do you think readers will like best about FIVE STROKES TO MIDNIGHT?
Being an avid reader, especially in this genre, I’d be scrambling to get a book like FIVE STROKES simply for the diversity it offers in style, voice, and theme.
Are you still involved with parapsychology? Can you tell us a little how became involved with it?
Yes, I am still involved in it and hope to be for many years to come. It provides great fodder for stories.
I started working with professional paranormal groups about 10 years ago when a close friend of mine introduced me to a group he belonged to. I went along on a 'hunt' and have been hooked ever since. I've scouted for MTV's FEAR program and America's Most Haunted Places. And, no, I've yet to see a full-fledged, verifiable ghost, although I have witnessed some pretty wild, unexplainable events.
Can you give an example of any unexplainable incidents you’ve encountered during your parapsychology work?
Absolutely, and with pics!
Over the last few years, I’ve visited hundreds of cemeteries, specifically to track paranormal activity. My camera’s caught flying orbs near Poe’s grave in Baltimore, squiggly strings of white light that wove through tombs in old family plots in Nebraska, and child-size shadows perched atop two headstones in Atlanta, Georgia. Strangely enough, the cemetery purported to be the most haunted in America, Big Woods Cemetery near Lake Charles, La., offered nothing but hungry mosquitoes.
The most fascinating experience I’ve had in a cemetery came from one in Mire, La., where my maternal grandfather is buried. Late one evening, after bringing my youngest daughter (who was fourteen at the time) and two of her friends to the movies, we went out to get burgers. While we’re eating, my daughter decides to tell her friends about some of the weird things her mom does for fun…like ghost hunting. The friends get wide-eyed, of course, and have a million questions, their last one being, “Can you take us to a cemetery and show us how you hunt for ghosts…like now?”
Well, by this time, my daughter’s giving me this, “You’ve gotta, Mom!” (Interpret…Because they’ll think I’m so cool!), look. Geez…
Now I’ve got two fourteen-year-old girls, and one fourteen-year-old boy hounding me to go to a cemetery. I envisioned angry moms pounding on my front door later that night, insisting I be taken away to a mental ward.
Okay, what’ll it be, daughter—moms, daughter—moms—ah, hell, the daughter won.
To minimize the potential for any lasting psychological damage, I think of the most benign cemetery I know—St.Theresa’s in Mire, La. It’s a small cemetery that sits on a corner lot in the middle of town. Beside the cemetery is a Catholic church and across the street is a Chevron station and City Hall. Streetlights are everywhere. I mean really, the spookiest thing about the cemetery is the creak of the gate when you open it.
So, we go inside…
I always carry my digital camera and a flashlight in my car, which were the minimal tools we needed for this adventure. The kids stayed close to me, whispering to each other, looking over their shoulder every few minutes as we walked through the graves. Somewhere in the distance a car backfired, and my daughter’s female friend gasped so loud, I thought she’d swallowed her tongue. We had a good laugh over that, and before long the kids began to relax and wonder off on their own to different tombs. All the while I’m snapping pictures, hoping for an orb or two, but getting absolutely nothing. As you can see in the pic below…
Then we happened upon my grandfather’s grave, (Below) which I hadn’t visited in over ten years. I was three when he passed away, so my daughters never knew him.
Well, for some reason, I get this overwhelming urge to ‘introduce’ my grandfather to his youngest great-granddaughter. So I call my daughter over, show her the tomb, then say aloud, “Pop-pop (that’s what the grandkids called him), this is your great-granddaughter, Sarah.” The moment the words are out of my mouth, another urge hits me, and I start snapping pictures.
Below is one I took while standing at the head of his tomb…
This image, which essentially stood at the foot of my grandfather’s tomb, wasn’t seen by any of us. Had it not been for the camera, we would have never known it was there. Is this my grandfather stopping in to say hello? Who knows. But it sure is cool to think just maybe…
Be sure to read the interview with Tom Piccirilli!
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