Ask the Duo of Darkness a question, if you dare!

[Adam]

Jon Recluse wrote: "Play Twisted Sister at max volume until he snaps."

Twisted Sister would probably work. Or maybe Ratt.

[Jon Recluse]

You could always take over by wiring his bowel control to his sneeze reflex.

[Evans]

Anne wrote: "What scares me the most is doing anything cooperatively with most members of my family, much less my brother. How do you guys do that?"

When your brother is Adam, it's incredibly easy. He's quite simply the nicest guy in the world.

Seriously.

I can't even recall us ever having a single major disagreement or argument - that's pretty weird, now that I think about it.

Of course his view of things, his perspective of working with me, might be strikingly different. Rumor has it that I can be a bit of an arse from time to time.

[Evans]

Jon Recluse wrote: "One of them is imaginary."

The only thing that's imaginary is a world where Jon doesn't have a smartass comment ready to go - anytime, anywhere! ; )

Of course, I keed, I keed!

[Adam]

Evans wrote: "Anne wrote: "What scares me the most is doing anything cooperatively with most members of my family, much less my brother. How do you guys do that?"

When your brother is Adam, it's incredibly eas..."

Really, Evans. I had never heard this gossip that is circulating with these inflammatory allegations about your personality.
I've never known you to be anything less than the best brother I could ever have. You and I have always gotten along famously. I can't remember us having any fights either.
Maybe we need to beat the crap out of each other once in awhile.

[Adam]

Evans wrote: "Jon Recluse wrote: "One of them is imaginary."

The only thing that's imaginary is a world where Jon doesn't have a smartass comment ready to go - anytime, anywhere! ; )"

Oh, man! Cut Jon some slack. He only means well.

[Evans]

Adam wrote: "Evans wrote: "Jon Recluse wrote: "One of them is imaginary."

The only thing that's imaginary is a world where Jon doesn't have a smartass comment ready to go - anytime, anywhere! ; )"

Oh, man! C..."

I love Jon's sense of humor. The grumpy old men in the balcony were my favorite part of The Muppet Show.

Wocka! Wocka!

[Evans]

Jon Recluse wrote: "You could always take over by wiring his bowel control to his sneeze reflex."

Does that mean I'd have to blow my nose everytime I go to the bathroom?

[Evans]

Adam wrote: "I've never known you to be anything less than the best brother I could ever have. You and I have always gotten along famously. I can't remember us having any fights either.
Maybe we need to beat the crap out of each other once in awhile. ."

Nah. It's very refreshing to have one person in the world with whom you have no grievances.

And you'll keep it that way if you know what's good for you!!

[Adam]

Them's fightin' words fella!

[Evans]

Adam wrote: "Them's fightin' words fella!"

Mom always loved me more.

Now I see why.

[Adam]

Whatever
eases you
to sleep at
night, you bastard!

[Evans]

Adam wrote: "Whatever
eases you
to sleep at
night, you bastard!"

You know what eased me to sleep at night when we were little?
Mom holding me, rocking me and singing me lullabies while you screamed in the dark, alone in your crib in the basement. Happy times.

[Catherine]

Evans wrote:
"You know what eased me to sleep at night when we were little?
Mom holding me, rocking me and singing me lullabies while you screamed in the dark, alone in your crib in the basement. Happy times."

This explains a LOT.

[Evans]

The only thing it doesn't explain is why the extreme radon exposure during childhood hasn't killed him yet. Adam is one tough brother, I'll give him that.

[Adam]

I have built up my tolerance to life by enduring massive amounts of emotional abuse at the hands of my egotistic and megalomaniacal older brother. Its a wonder I can still get up in the morning and face the day with as much brute indignation that he has thrust upon me my whole life. Well, it's time to go back into the dark place and count my blessings again.

[Catherine]

You guys are hysterical. If you weren't so good at writing horror, I would suggest you start writing comedy.

[Adam]

I might try my hand at it someday, Catherine. It's usually easy for me to be funny when engaged in conversation, but when writing, the silly doesn't always flow as naturally.

[Evans]

Adam wrote: "I might try my hand at it someday, Catherine. It's usually easy for me to be funny when engaged in conversation, but when writing, the silly doesn't always flow as naturally."

Your silly always flows naturally...

[Adam]

Thanks, Evans.

[[deleted user]]

OMG! I haven't been over here in a while and thought I'd drop in. I will NEVER be the same!

[Evans]

It's a life changing experience to be sure! This board has gotten kinda quiet since CASUAL READERS came along...
: )

[Adam]

I agree. I almost forgot we had our own site here. Cindy should definitely steer some traffic our way. ;) Just kidding, of course.

[Marilou]

Evans,
Any time frame on when your novel will be released? Does it have a title yet?

[Evans]

Hi Marilou -

Hoping to have the book released by the beginning of summer 2014. It's most likely going to be titled TRANQUILITY'S END. It's a book that started its life as a joint project with me and Adam as co-writers, but somewhere along the line I kind of took it over and it morphed into something else. Be sure he will be getting copious credit, though. : )

I'll probably still continue to produce and release short stories here and there along the way, though, just to keep myself engaged.

[Marilou]

Great! I can't wait for ANY new stuff to come out!
Thanks!

[Evans]

Thanks so much for the support! It means a lot. Maybe Adam's Toes Up will help to tide you over in the meantime.

[Adam]

Nice one, bro! Thanks. I love the new cover art for Screamscapes.

[Steven]

Wow two guys, brothers, that write horror/scary/twisted stuff, and they never kicked each other around a bit growing up...so you must be big time people watchers huh? It's weird my brother and I had a time when we just didn't have a good day unless we pissed each other off. But again we never really beat on each other. We did turn our living room into a WWF Wrestling ring while my mother was at work though, and we got grounded from watching Batman (Adam West) cause we thought we could pull off those awesome fight scenes...our ceiling light didn't hold my weight as good as it did for Robin :O)

[Evans]

Yeah, that's the funny thing - even though he's got a twisted imagination and is one sick puppy when he writes, Adam is one of the nicest human beings on Earth. I can't recall that we've ever had a fight. Even though I try to provoke him on occasion, it never works and I just end up feeling guilty, so in general we just get along really amazingly. It boggles my mind that even after all these years and quite different paths we've taken in life, Adam and I are really able to communicate so clearly on this shared frequency we have, and our love of reading, writing and tastes in art and music in general has always been very similar.

[Steven]

Well it is truly an awesome thing that you have that type of relationship with your brother. My brother and I get along great now but the sad thing is we live on seperate coasts. He's back east and I'm out west now and where he reads mostly how-to and nonfiction stuff, I'm the fiction/ comic book reading guy. Although some nonfiction stuff has slowly become more interesting to me as well lately.

[[deleted user]]

Don't feel bad Steven. I only have one sibling and she lives in Southern Texas. I live in Kentucky. We have a really good relationship also, but rarely get to see each other.

[Steven]

Cindy, yeah it's weird how distance can change a relationship huh. But hey now my brother gets to visit a whole new coast and the few times I've gone back that way, I get to see how the area has changed.

[[deleted user]]

Wish I could afford to go see my sister. We are both broke as a joke and haven't seen each other for about five years now. Oh well, it will happen one day.

[Steven]

Yep just gotta set the goal of doing it and then get there.
Ok I have another question for the duo, How do your moods effect your writing? I've noticed a big difference in the stories in Screamscapes. It's like there's the nice/scary Evans story and then the "very interesting"/scary Evans story. Do you both listen to a lot of music while you write and does that effect your characters' moods and actions?

[Evans]

Steven wrote: "How do your moods effect your writing? I've noticed a big difference in the stories in Screamsca..."

I haven't noticed so much that mood has an impact on my writing, honestly. My writing tends to come from "some other place" and just wallop me upside the head unexpectedly quite often from out of nowhere. These inspirations come frequently enough that I can't write them all immediately as fully formed stories as they come, but I've gotten much better at being able to capture their essence enough that I can "bottle them up" and write them later.

Whether a story is "nice/scary" or "very interesting/scary" as you so aptly put it, is really outside of my conscious control. I never thought I'd write a western-themed story, but then ARBOREATUM came to me as a fully formed story and that happened to take place in the old west. Shocked me, honestly.

As far as listening to music while writing goes, it varies. If I'm writing for only an hour or two (or while editing), I typically won't listen to music as I find it to be distracting, the words in the music interfering with the words in my head.

If I'm in pure creation mode, however, and writing for an entire day feeling particulary inspired (I wrote BLACK DOOR in one long nine-hour session), I find soft music in the background helps to keep me from getting fatigued and gives a sense of passage of time.

If I do listen to music while writing, I typically listen to music that is not something I would listen to otherwise, and that tends to be more background "wallpaper" music. I also like to listen to music with very regular, staccato metronome beats that matches the pace of my fingers hitting the keys. The band that matches this best for me is PINBACK, a band I do not listen to at any other time, and their album SUMMER IN ABADDON probably loops over and over while I type, with me not really listening but my fingers dancing in time with the beat, as it's tempo perfectly matches my typing speed. I also enjoy having the band IVY and the album UNDERTOW on in the background softly (never listen to them either). I think they did some soundtrack work for Stephen King TV series or something similar at one point.

[[deleted user]]

Evans wrote: "Steven wrote: "How do your moods effect your writing? I've noticed a big difference in the stories in Screamsca..."

I haven't noticed so much that mood has an impact on my writing, honestly. My wr..."

Interesting question and fantastic response. Thanks to both of you. I learned a lot here.

[Steven]

I gotta say I am happy that you were able to understand my "nice/scary" "interesting/scary" reference. That part was hard for me to put into words. The feel of Arboreatum and stories like Pay Back or even Gertrude are so far apart, and they should be or it's just a book that becomes boring and drones on. The music thing, and I think you figured this out, was more based on music over songs. I can only imagine how words being sung would be distracting. I really enjoy listening to movie scores and such when writing but when drawing I can usually listen to anything. The only one I probably could listen to and come up with some great stuff while writing is Alice Cooper...even then I sometimes start to day dream :O) Especially when the song Steven comes on...I swear that's my mother's voice calling my name in that song...when I was young she used to scream my name from down the block while my brother and I were playing ball at the park on the corner ... Ahh the good old days :O)

Oh and a book I think you may enjoy that kind of falls into the horror/western feel, and one that has a bit of action as well, I'd like to recommend Richard Laymon's Savage. Most horror readers didn't like it cause it didn't have that true all horror feel for them but to me, it is my all time favorite Laymon title.

[Evans]

Steven wrote: "I gotta say I am happy that you were able to understand my "nice/scary" "interesting/scary" reference. That part was hard for me to put into words. The feel of Arboreatum and stories like Pay Back ..."

Cool. I love Laymon, but don't have that one yet.

[Adam]

Evans wrote: "Steven wrote: "I gotta say I am happy that you were able to understand my "nice/scary" "interesting/scary" reference. That part was hard for me to put into words. The feel of Arboreatum and stories..."

I got that one the other day at a thrift store for 50 cents. It does look a little different than Laymon's typical theme.

[Evans]

I gotta agree with you about Goodwill and Salvation Army stores. I've found some sweet finds at each recently.

[Steven]

Yeah these little places are so under estimated. I found a fantastic, very well cared for, R.L.Stine, hardcover title, full of short stories, with very cool illustrations, and it was marked 5 bucks...the guy changed his mind and charged me a buck :O) Talk about awesome. Not only do I love the book but my son and niece have really enjoyed it as well.

[[deleted user]]

Adam - How the He.. do you manage to read 17 books at once? Wow! Fascinating. LOL

[Adam]

My currently reading shelf is cluttered with books I began and gave up on but may return to one day, Cindy. I am a great multitasker, but there's no way even I could keep up with that many storylines at once.

[[deleted user]]

I hear ya! I just noticed when I went to get the name of that Robert Palmer book that you said was good.

[Adam]

Oh, sorry. It is Robert Plant.

[[deleted user]]

Duh, my mistake. I got the right one. Just had a dumb blond moment.

[Adam]

Cool, Cindy. I hope you like it. I am a big fan, so I listened to Zep and Plant solo stuff while reading. Had a blast with it.

[[deleted user]]

Thanks! I'm sure I will love it.

[Steven]

So Adam, after you put in the search on Amazon for that title and got a list of goodies instead, did you make a purchase? :O) Geez man...who knew Amazon sold stuff like that anyway LOL :O) You know you need to write a story based on this auto correct mishap right ?