N.A. Pacione Talks Quakes & Storms

Staci Layne Wilson / Horror.com: Quakes & Storms is a horror anthology specifically created to help out the victims of Hurricane Katrina, which just happened one year ago. What kind of feedback have you gotten from New Orleans residents and New Orleans fans on this?

Nickolaus A. Pacione: I got some feedback for this one; it was a mixed reaction more or less. It is trying to find a readership because it is a touchy subject. I got more feedback from MS and other areas that are in Hurricane Alley. Tornado alley I got a lot more feedback than those other areas. Some were calling me a cold bastard, namely from the horror boards for doing it while others were calling me a bold motherfucker for doing it. I am planning to go back down there to do a tour with the anthology. The book was originally set up to help the Tsunami victims in Asia then a mentor I knew from AuthorsDen died in a flood, so this was more or less a last gift to him edited in his memory.

Q: What's the theme of the book? Why will horror fans enjoy it?

NAP: The overall theme of the anthology is natural disasters, and the human condition involved of what happens during them. There are some rather haunting stories in this one, personal favorite of mine in there are the ones penned by Erin MacKay, Stephen C. Hallin, Pasquale Morrone, Trent Roman, and a few others in there. Melyssa Sprott penned a Cthulhu Mythos story in there. Earthquake Forces by Barbara Marjanovic brought about a lot of power behind the anthology.

This book isn't just hardcore horror fiction, there is something in there for the science fiction masses and the literary masses too. Shana K. Dines wrote a true story in there about a tornado that touched down in Indiana, and I wrote a horror story in there based in part on the tornado that touched down in Utica. Everyone in the anthology brought something rather nasty to the table, letting the storm become the major character in their stories.      

Doing horror and science fiction with natural disasters in them allows a lot of floodgates to be opened to reflect the human condition and how fragile the human body could be. I did the project in the memory of a literary fiction writer who encouraged me to span out to do other genres. The book overall became one of the most transgressive anthologies I edited.

Q: How did you become involved?

NAP: Quakes and Storms is my brainchild. No one ever came up with an anthology of this concept and at a level where it would either scare or bring hope, showing the true emotions of what happens during a natural disaster or its aftermath. I enlisted Macey Wuesthoff because I had this feeling the project is a book I couldn't go it alone.

It needed a second set of eyes so this was the debut for Macey as an editor, she did a damn good job looking over the stories on it.

Q: I hear some of your work has stirred up some controversy lately - has this actually been a boon to your career?

NAP: [laughing] Pending on the book and story that caused the most controversy, the controversial stories in my career are a few but the one that caused the most stir also made me the most infamous in the sense. That story got me published on a now defunct website. Past Scars and The Seasons of Black September are the two most controversial stories in that collection.

The controversial stories I wrote in 2005-2006 having to be "Greetings From The Bible Belt," "O.W.I.F." and "The Storms of Armageddon."

Tabloid Purposes I, the controversial works in the project are by myself (Leviathan's Ghost) NSM (A Perfect Shot), These Walls Are Crumbling by Paige Smith, and Macey Wuesthoff's In Death's Face.

TPII's controversial ones are penned by a few people in there -- Macey with the opener, mine with Bleed The Freak (which was written as a direct backlash at the political game in the genre,) and the one by NSM closing it stirred up the most controversy. TPII was a call out on my part to the people who blasted the book the worst. We were all pissed off coming into this project, and wanted to make some noise. Everyone who tried to get me in trouble because of this project were calling the works "libel."

The controversy these days are with a few projects I wrote, two stemmed right from Quakes and Storms with the concepts -- The Storms of Armageddon is controversial in the sense that I combined my political stances in with a science type scare. I have controversial stories in Tabloid Purposes II, and in Quakes and Storms -- I didn't write the controversial story in that one. Trent Roman takes credit for doing the controversial story in that one. Titled, The Drowning Of New Orleans.

This anthology sparked a lot of controversy alone with the different cover controversies -- one person tried getting me in trouble with National Geographic. Tabloid Purposes 3 will be controversial because there will be the story in there will get on the nerves of animal rights activists (namely one story, I smiled when I read it, thinking, "Oh Damn -- Hitchcock is going to love this." I encourage writers to push the boundaries without crossing the lines too far.

Controversy followed from the beginning of the career, I could tell you stories about some of the controversies stirred in different venues online not just the horror boards the controversies started. There were authors who were bored and decided to start a feud with me by posting all the stories on Tabloid Purposes right before the book came out. The other controversial aspects being I don't write with any erotic content, and in that there are other ways to become controversial.

The biggest controversy these days was me becoming part of the roster on Naked Snake Press. I am not at the liberty to say what happened there but it would be something a few authors actually tried to lobby to get House of Spiders 3 cancelled. Then other stories you might of heard people saying I wasn't a legitimate author, or a legitimate publisher. Some of the HWA chairmen then mailer tried to sabotage the very plans of the first Tabloid Purposes.

Being that I do favor self-published authors these days over the mass market, there is a lot of controversy there too. The story of me telling off the former HWA president is true. The most controversial story having to be The Fandom Writer by far, everyone was pissed off when I wrote that one, the population who wrote erotic fiction became the most pissed off at that one. So they would email me calling me a fucker and shit like that, I laugh at them because all they are doing is adding the sting to that story. That story alone made me really notorious. People either love it, hate it or love to hate it -- I had people who were from the mass market telling me that I sucked and would do posts saying my name referring to negative talent. So that was more a reason to do sequels to Tabloid Purposes, constantly flipping them the finger. I write stories that rattle the core, sort of the inner demons unleashed and nothing will hold them back.

Can't mention Quakes and Storms without mentioning Tabloid Purposes, and vice versa because authors on the projects also contributed to this one. Every story I get published the bastards are quick to take a piss on it or bully the editor into not running fiction. I was pissed off at the fact that some of them get their rocks off by high jacking message boards I frequent. They would tell people to "avoid Pacione like the plague" then they would brag about getting the story for free when I didn't send it out.

Spamming the boards until the editor closed the fiction section of the magazine, and forced the editor to lock the forum. This particular issue carried a story that was inspired by Quakes and Storms in the sense of concept. It was a cross between Erin MacKay's story in RJ's project, and the stories in Quakes and Storms. A story that brought about ghosts as a result of a natural disaster. It was the less controversial story in the catalog, but in the same it caused controversy in the content.

Q: What's coming out next from you?

NAP: Oh fuck, there are a few things…

Anthology-wise: Tabloid Purposes 3 (just waiting on the last two stories in the anthology.) I got a contest anthology in the works too which is going to be entirely true stories of a Gothic nature.

Collection wise: The Writings Collected: Volume Two

Novella: House of Spiders 3, The Drive By Ghost

Short fiction: Flying Cigars, Spectral Exile

I am planning to do a nonfiction book drawing from the four years I was in high school, and taking an approach that would call to mind a really young Rod Serling. Taking myself from now observing everything that happened back then. Then I am working on issue five of my magazine, The Ethereal Gazette. Still seeking submissions for this one. I am writing a shitload of short fiction, and planning to do some nonfiction works that are scarier than my fiction works. There are rumors of a Quakes and Storms 2, and a few authors tried to get my book signings cancelled in my own home town.

I want to do this because I live right across the street from the most haunted cemetery in Illinois. The nonfiction project I want to take a horror writer's approach at studying what they've became because someone who was once made fun of when they are younger. And when they get pissed on when they get older for what they do, it just makes them even more pissed off in nature.

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