10 Questions with Ed Kurtz
1. Who has been your biggest influence as a writer?
The great Texas noir author Jim Thompson, probably. I think The Killer Inside Me changed my life. Italian genre cinema of the 60s, 70s, and 80s is huge for me, as well—Fernando di Leo’s crime films, Mario Bava’s gothic horror pictures and Lucio Fulci’s gore-fests. Dan Simmon’s The Terror had a profound influence on me when it first came out, after which I wrote my first novel (still unpublished!).
2. What is your all-time favorite horror movie and why?
Without question it’s Fulci’s Zombi 2 (aka Zombie, aka Zombie Flesh Eaters). It was marketed as an unofficial sequel to the original Dawn of the Dead but has a unique style and approach all its own, including Italian horror’s tendency toward bleak hopelessness which I admit appeals to my darker instincts. Mostly, though, it’s the film that opened the door for me on my way to becoming an exploitation fanatic and all-around sleazehound, so it will always hold a special place in my heart.
3. Is there an overall theme to your writing?
If there is, the theme is the capacity in any ordinary human being for cruelty, brutality, or even downright evil if the circumstances are right—in the case, wrong—enough to permit that inherent side in all of us to bubble up to the surface. But there are also key moments of redemption in a lot of my work, in which the opposite occurs as well, so I’m not a total pessimist.
4. What made you choose to write a seventies style grindhouse era novel?
If I weren’t a writer, I’d want to go back in time to the early 1970s and make grindhouse movies for a living. The “homages” we see nowadays are nice, but I’m in love with the real thing (not the mention the scene that developed around their exhibition in places like the Deuce in NYC). Dead Trash is my homage to the period and all those great movies, a four-in-one “quadruple feature” I’d want to see playing someplace like the Harris on 42nd back in the glory days.
5. Is there any subject that is off limits for you as a writer?
There really isn’t. There are subjects that are handled poorly or exploitatively in a negative way, like all the graphic sexual assault common to the hardcore/splatter stuff from the 80s and 90s, but that doesn’t mean the same topic can’t be handled in a considerably better manner, much less make it off limits. I have a novella coming out next month that handles child sex trafficking, for example—a tough topic, without doubt, but one I felt I needed to write about and explore through the lens of the human potential for heroism. In the end, I don’t think there is anything I wouldn’t write about. Some I never will, but only due to lack of time!
6. Why do you often tackle the subject of race in your writing?
I’ve written a bit about this on my website, but I think being exposed to a lot of racial tension when I was growing up in the mid-South had a big effect on me and my worldview, which goes into my writing. I also write a good deal of historical or mid-20th century material, where racial inequality and racist attitudes were a part of the cultural fabric in this country. (They still are, it was just so much less shrouded in the past.) And the preponderance of my characters are imperfect, to say the least, and often angry, broken people either in search of redemption or downright incapable of it.
7. What current writing projects are you working on?
After DarkFuse picked up my crime novel Angel of the Abyss, I signed a three novel deal with them, so I’m hard at work on the first of that group which deals with the pre-war Nazi period in Germany. I’m also developing a new novella with my co-writer and partner in crime, as well as my usual short story output.
8. Do you like to listen to music when you write and do any bands or musical style influence your writing?
I rarely listen to music while writing, though recently I’ve found Phillip Glass to be unobtrusive and relaxing to work to, particularly his alternative score to Browning’s Dracula he recorded with the Kronos Quartet.
9. What appeals to you about writing about zombies?
Zombies are fun, and the first horror movies I ever really loved were usually zombie pictures. I haven’t written much in the sub-genre, but I do enjoy using them as a backdrop or framing device for something like Dead Trash, where the apocalypse is what links the four genre-specific parts of the book, or my story “Deathless,” which is a 17th century Imperial Russian take on the undead.
10. If you could invite five people to a dinner party (alive or dead, real or fictional) who would you invite?
Since I’m in the fiction game, let’s go with all fictional characters: Lou Ford from The Killer Inside Me, Count Dracula, Iago, Dante’s Lucifer, and Eeyore.
The great Texas noir author Jim Thompson, probably. I think The Killer Inside Me changed my life. Italian genre cinema of the 60s, 70s, and 80s is huge for me, as well—Fernando di Leo’s crime films, Mario Bava’s gothic horror pictures and Lucio Fulci’s gore-fests. Dan Simmon’s The Terror had a profound influence on me when it first came out, after which I wrote my first novel (still unpublished!).
2. What is your all-time favorite horror movie and why?
Without question it’s Fulci’s Zombi 2 (aka Zombie, aka Zombie Flesh Eaters). It was marketed as an unofficial sequel to the original Dawn of the Dead but has a unique style and approach all its own, including Italian horror’s tendency toward bleak hopelessness which I admit appeals to my darker instincts. Mostly, though, it’s the film that opened the door for me on my way to becoming an exploitation fanatic and all-around sleazehound, so it will always hold a special place in my heart.
3. Is there an overall theme to your writing?
If there is, the theme is the capacity in any ordinary human being for cruelty, brutality, or even downright evil if the circumstances are right—in the case, wrong—enough to permit that inherent side in all of us to bubble up to the surface. But there are also key moments of redemption in a lot of my work, in which the opposite occurs as well, so I’m not a total pessimist.
4. What made you choose to write a seventies style grindhouse era novel?
If I weren’t a writer, I’d want to go back in time to the early 1970s and make grindhouse movies for a living. The “homages” we see nowadays are nice, but I’m in love with the real thing (not the mention the scene that developed around their exhibition in places like the Deuce in NYC). Dead Trash is my homage to the period and all those great movies, a four-in-one “quadruple feature” I’d want to see playing someplace like the Harris on 42nd back in the glory days.
5. Is there any subject that is off limits for you as a writer?
There really isn’t. There are subjects that are handled poorly or exploitatively in a negative way, like all the graphic sexual assault common to the hardcore/splatter stuff from the 80s and 90s, but that doesn’t mean the same topic can’t be handled in a considerably better manner, much less make it off limits. I have a novella coming out next month that handles child sex trafficking, for example—a tough topic, without doubt, but one I felt I needed to write about and explore through the lens of the human potential for heroism. In the end, I don’t think there is anything I wouldn’t write about. Some I never will, but only due to lack of time!
6. Why do you often tackle the subject of race in your writing?
I’ve written a bit about this on my website, but I think being exposed to a lot of racial tension when I was growing up in the mid-South had a big effect on me and my worldview, which goes into my writing. I also write a good deal of historical or mid-20th century material, where racial inequality and racist attitudes were a part of the cultural fabric in this country. (They still are, it was just so much less shrouded in the past.) And the preponderance of my characters are imperfect, to say the least, and often angry, broken people either in search of redemption or downright incapable of it.
7. What current writing projects are you working on?
After DarkFuse picked up my crime novel Angel of the Abyss, I signed a three novel deal with them, so I’m hard at work on the first of that group which deals with the pre-war Nazi period in Germany. I’m also developing a new novella with my co-writer and partner in crime, as well as my usual short story output.
8. Do you like to listen to music when you write and do any bands or musical style influence your writing?
I rarely listen to music while writing, though recently I’ve found Phillip Glass to be unobtrusive and relaxing to work to, particularly his alternative score to Browning’s Dracula he recorded with the Kronos Quartet.
9. What appeals to you about writing about zombies?
Zombies are fun, and the first horror movies I ever really loved were usually zombie pictures. I haven’t written much in the sub-genre, but I do enjoy using them as a backdrop or framing device for something like Dead Trash, where the apocalypse is what links the four genre-specific parts of the book, or my story “Deathless,” which is a 17th century Imperial Russian take on the undead.
10. If you could invite five people to a dinner party (alive or dead, real or fictional) who would you invite?
Since I’m in the fiction game, let’s go with all fictional characters: Lou Ford from The Killer Inside Me, Count Dracula, Iago, Dante’s Lucifer, and Eeyore.
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