Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Since childhood I’ve been an artist and worked as a graphic designer in the corporate world and for newspapers for twenty-three years before I quit to write full time. But I’d already begun writing novels at 21, over forty-four years ago now, and have had twenty-two (ten romantic horror, two horror novels, two romantic SF horror, one romantic suspense, one romantic time travel, one historical romance, two thrillers, and four murder mysteries) previous novels, two novellas and twelve short stories published from Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books/Eternal Press; and I’ve self-published my last ten novels with Amazon Kindle Direct and my Dinosaur Lake novels and Spookie Town Mysteries (Scraps of Paper, All Things Slip Away and Ghosts Beneath Us) are my best-sellers.
I’ve been married to Russell for thirty-seven years; have a son and two grandchildren and I live in a small quaint town in Illinois, which is right across the JB Bridge from St. Louis, Mo. We have a quirky cat, Sasha, and the three of us live happily in an old house in the heart of town. Though I’ve been an artist, and a folk/classic rock singer in my youth with my brother Jim, writing has always been my greatest passion, my butterfly stage, and I’ll probably write stories until the day I die…or until my memory goes.
My published novels and short stories :
Evil Stalks the Night, The Heart of the Rose, Blood Forged, Vampire Blood, The Last Vampire (2012 EPIC EBOOK AWARDS*Finalist* in their Horror category), Witches, The Nameless One erotic horror short story, The Calling, Scraps of Paper (The First Spookie Town Murder Mystery), All Things Slip Away (The Second Spookie Town Murder Mystery), Ghosts Beneath Us (The Third Spookie Town Murder Mystery), Egyptian Heart, Winter’s Journey, The Ice Bridge, Don’t Look Back, Agnes, A Time of Demons and Angels, The Woman in Crimson, Human No Longer, Four Spooky Short Stories Collection, Forever and Always Romantic Novella, Night Carnival Short Story, Dinosaur Lake (2014 EPIC EBOOK AWARDS*Finalist* in their Thriller/Adventure category), Dinosaur Lake II: Dinosaurs Arising and Dinosaur Lake III: Infestation
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
That would be ALL of them. I just got 14 of my older 22 novels back from my last publisher and revised and republished ALL 22 with new covers. After 32 years with publishers, large and small, I started self-publishing in 2012 and have spent the last 3 years getting my rights back on all my 22 so I could self-publish each one. Here’s why I wrote the first one, Evil Stalks the Night.
The story behind Evil Stalks the Night from the author Kathryn Meyer Griffith
This book is special to me for many reasons. It was my first published novel in 1984 and as it comes out again in 2015, it’ll bring my over forty-four year writing career full circle. With its publication all of my twenty-two novels, two novellas and a sprinkling of short stories, will be out again. Sure, it’s been a grueling, tedious five years rewriting, editing, creating them in paperback and Audible audio books but I’m thrilled it’s over. I have my babies reborn and out in the world again and completely under my control for the first time in 32 years. Now I can finally move forward and write new stories.
I’ll start at the beginning because, though Evil Stalks the Night was my first published novel, it wasn’t my first written one.
That first book was The Heart of the Rose. I’d begun writing it after my only child, James, was born in late 1971. I was staying home with him, no longer going to college, not yet working full time, and was bored out of my skin. I read an historical romance one day I believed was horrible and thought I can do better than that!
And so my writing career began. Over 44 years ago now. Oh my goodness, where has the time gone? Flown away like some wild bird. It took me 12 years to get that first book published as I got sidetracked with a divorce, raising a son, getting a real job and remarrying. Life, as it always seemed to do and still does, got in the way. The manuscript was tossed into a drawer and forgotten for a time.
Then years later I decided to rewrite it; try again. I bundled up the revised pile of printed copy pages, tucked it into an empty copy paper box, plastered it with stamps, and took it to the post office. I sent it everywhere The Writer’s Market of that year said I could. And waited. Months and months and months. In those days it could take up to a year or more to sell a novel, shipping it here and there to publishers, in between revising and rewriting to please any editor that’d make suggestions or comments on how it could be better. Snail mail took forever, too, and was expensive. But eventually it sold.
In the meantime, as I waited for the mail, I’d written another book. Kind of a fictionalized look back at my childhood in a large (6 brothers and sisters) poor but loving family in the 1950’s and 60’s. I called it 707 Suncrest. I started sending that one out as well. Then one day an editor suggested that since my writing had such a spooky ambiance to it anyway, why didn’t I just turn the story into a horror novel…like Stephen King was doing? Ordinary people under supernatural circumstances? A book like that would sell easily, she said.
Hmmm. Well, it was worth a try, so I added something scary in the woods in the main character’s childhood past that she had to return to and face in her adult life, using some of my childhood and my young adult life (my heartbreaking divorce, raising my young son alone, my new love) as hers. It was more of a romantic horror when I’d finished, than a horror novel. I retitled it Evil Stalks the Night and began sending it out. That editor was right, it sold quickly to a mass market paperback publisher called Towers Publishing.
But right in the middle of editing Towers went bankrupt and was bought out by another publisher. What terrible luck, I remember brooding. The book was lost somewhere in the stacks of unedited slush in a company undergoing massive changes as the new publisher took over. I had a contract, didn’t know what to do and didn’t know how to break it. Heaven knows, I couldn’t afford a lawyer. My life with a new husband, my son and (at first) my minimum-wage assistant billing job and then my entry level one as a graphic artist a few years later, were one step above poverty at times. In those days, too, I was so clueless how to deal with the publishing industry. I’ve learned a lot since those days.
That was 1983, but luckily that take-over publisher was Leisure Books, also known as Dorchester Publishing. A publisher that quickly became huge. Talk about karma.
As often as has happened to me over my writing career, though, fate stepped in and the Tower’s editor, before she left, who’d bought my book told one of Leisure’s editors about it and asked her to give it a read. She believed in it that much.
Out of the blue, in 1984, when I’d almost given up on Evil Stalks the Night, Leisure Books sent me a letter offering to buy it. Then, miracle of miracles, my new editor asked if I had any other ideas or books she could look at. I sent her The Heart of the Rose and, liking it, too, she also bought it in 1985; asking me to sex it up some, so they could release it as an historical bodice-ripper (remember those sexy knockoffs of Rosemary Rogers and Kathleen Woodiwiss’s provocative novels?). It wasn’t a lot of money. A thousand dollar advance each and only 4% royalties on the paperbacks. But in those days the publishers had a huge distribution and thousands and thousands of the paperbacks were printed, sent to bookstores and warehoused. So 4% of all those books over the next couple of years did add up. To pennies anyway.
Thus my career began. I slowly, and like-pulling-teeth, sold ten more novels and various short stories over the next 32 years-as I was working full time, raising a family and living my hard-scramble life. Some did well, my Leisure and Zebra paperbacks, and some didn’t. Most of them, over the years, eventually went out of print.
Now, 32 years later, I’ve gone all in with self-publishing (I love the complete control and high royalties…about time!) and have finally brought out all of my 22 old/new books myself. Of course, I totally rewrote Evil Stalks the Night as well as my other early novels, because I discovered my writing when I was twenty-something had been immature and unpolished; and not having a computer and the Internet had made the original writing and rewriting so much harder. Also in the old days, editors told an author what to change and the writer only saw the manuscript once to final proof it. The bad old days that I don’t miss one little bit. There were so many mistakes in those early books. Typos. Awkward grammar. Lost plot and detail threads that all the editors never caught. So much for professionals. In the rewrites I also decided to keep the time frame (1960-1984) the same. The book’s essence would have lost too much if I’d updated it. The cell phone problem alone would have complicated everything.
As I finished the final editing and self-published it–with a stunningly haunting cover by my amazing cover artist, Dawne Dominique–I couldn’t help but reminisce about all the life changes I’ve experienced since I’d first began writing it so many years ago. Though it was actually published in 1984, remember I’d started writing it many years before; closer to 1978 or 1979. Now I’m as old as my Grandmother Fehrt, my mother’s mother and who the grandmother in the story was loosely based on, was back then. So strange. Time does move on…but I keep writing. Kathryn Meyer Griffith December 2015
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
No…other than I sit on my plush sofa, laptop on my lap, TV on for company and a cup of chocolate coffee and a snack on the side table next to me.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Anne Rice and a host of other horror/thriller writers.
What are you working on now?
My 4th DINOSAUR LAKE book and after that I think I will finally write the sequel to my best-selling 1994 book WITCHES. Witches II: The Guardians. My readers have waited a very long time for Witches II.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Awesome Gang, of course. Twitter, Facebook and any place I can list my books.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Never give up. I’ve been writing for over 44 years and have been published for over 32 of those years. Throughout my life, happiness, sorrow, trials and tribulations, divorce, remarriage, children, full-time jobs, discouragement…I never gave up. I just kept writing…and changed with the times. I self-publish now. I’m my own publisher and have learned all facets of it. Technology has amazed me. Heck, I started on an electric typewriter with White-Out, carbon copies and sending my ms in a copy paper box by snail mail; waiting months/years to see if a legacy published wanted it or not. So I love computers, the Internet, eBooks and self-publishing. I love finally having complete control over my books. So, new authors, NEVER GIVE UP. Roll with the punches and NEVER let a bad review hurt your sensitive feelings. Some people will love your books and some will hate them. It evens out, believe me.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Never give up. Develop a tough skin and write what your heart wants you to write; not what the latest craze is.
What are you reading now?
An old Stephen King novel I love: The Stand.
What’s next for you as a writer?
At my advanced age and stage of the game…I hope to write another book or two while traveling the US in an RV with my retired husband. These days with 22 novels under my belt, I think I can take a little breather, don’t you?
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
The Bible, a Stephen King novel and a book on: Surviving Living on a Desert Island.
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