How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive is a novel about a director who wants to make the perfect horror movie using a cursed camera—involving very real horror for his cast—and the scream queen he loves who wants to survive the night.

On a thematic level, it’s about how horror movies are made and why we love them, through the lens of one of the most iconic periods in horror movie history—the 1980s slasher era. The reading experience combines campiness and a degree of meta awareness with surprising, horrific kills to recreate that experience of watching your first horror movie, with all the gasps and chuckles.

But before there was a “Horror Movie”, there were conspiracy theories, Sci-Fi robberies and Zombies! Craig DiLouie takes us through his writing journey.

1. What was your first published work?

I did a lot of writing in the 1990s that went nowhere, as back then, you had to get published and gain credits in order to get published, a Catch-22. Fortunately for me, the print-on-demand revolution made publishing more accessible, as it spurred the proliferation of small presses. My first published novel was a weird little novel about conspiracy theories, titled Paranoia. That microbrew press also published a sci-fi novel, The Great Planet Robbery, and then Tooth and Nail, an apocalyptic zombie novel that changed everything for me.

Commercial success in fiction is about writing the right book at the right time, and I lucked into catching an enormous upswell in interest in zombie fiction. These days, there are hundreds of authors and thousands of titles in zombie fiction, thanks to self-publishing, but back then, there were maybe a couple dozen of us doing it. After Tooth and Nail hit it big, I moved on to Permuted Press with two more zombie books, and sales were good enough that I was able to score an agent and start writing horror for big publishers like Gallery (Simon & Schuster) and Orbit (Hachette). I’ve been doing that ever since and loving every minute of it. I feel very lucky.

2. Is there a story inside that you have seeds of but can’t seem to connect that’s dying to get out?

All the time! Which is a good problem to have, as it’s better to have too many ideas than the other way around. Often, I’ll come up with a basic premise or more likely a situation, but there’s no story there yet. I could say, “vampires in space,” and that might be interesting and somewhat high concept, but there’s no story there yet. It’s the story that brings the concept to life.

The good thing about this for me is I end up focusing on the most appealing concepts, as I vet them with my editor. The ideas that end up on the cutting-room floor never stop percolating, however, and usually wind up excellent fodder for short stories.

3. How do you handle a rejected story?

Again, I am super lucky to have achieved success with my zombie fiction back in the day, which led to me gaining agented representation and working with big publishers ever since. Currently, I’m what’s called a “stable writer” for Orbit, which means I work on a contract; currently, I’m set to have a novel come out every year through 2027. This involves me pitching a set of ideas to the editor, who works with me to develop what he believes is the most appealing. The others are rejected, but at that point, I’m a hundred percent focused on the one that made it.

That being said, I am a member of the mass rejections club, about a decade’s worth from the 1990s. Back then, I’d stick the rejections in a thickening folder and move on. I wasn’t concerned with the rejections so much as worried no one was looking at my pitches at all. Back then, submitting to the “slush pile” was like being in a Kafka novel, where you feel invited to a big party you aren’t allowed to actually attend. I imagine it’s not that different today for many writers trying to break into traditional publishing. You just have to keep putting yourself out there.

4. What does literary success look like to you?

Honestly, exactly what I’m doing now, working with a big publisher as a stable mid-lister. I wanted to be a fiction writer since I was nine years old, and back then, my dream was to see my name on the spine of a book in the bookstore. That was my dream, and I now feel like I’m living it.

Otherwise, I’m happiest when I get a certain type of review. Good reviews are always a happy thing for authors, but sometimes, you get that one review, that one perfect review, that makes all the bad reviews melt away and keeps you going. In that review, the reader perfectly understood exactly what you intended with your work in every respect. Reading is magical, if you think about, but achieving that kind of connection with a reader is magic on another level. When I get a review like that, like I said, it keeps me working hard, and I think: This next book is just for you.

5. Do you read your book reviews? How do you deal with bad or good ones?

Not anymore unless they’re from a source like a magazine or blog. It’s honestly not healthy.

6. What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?

Probably getting started with a novel. I think it’d be ideal to follow the process of dashing off a first draft with just a concept, and then going back and crafting a very solid second and final draft to submit to the editor. Unfortunately, that’s not how my brain works, I have to nail it on the first try, which creates some pressure. To make it work, I do a lot of planning to an extent I know my premise, basic plot structure, character arcs, and theme before I start writing. Know these elements to the point where I have the essential story internalized. Even with all that, it’s till daunting to come up with that perfect first sentence and then get started. That part is akin to exercise—it’s hard to get on the treadmill, but once you’re on it, it’s hard to get off.

7. As in most times, the truth is stranger than fiction, what has been the hardest scene or chapter you’ve had to write, if you were channeling personal experience?

I believe that writers do write from experience, but I also believe one should avoid writing directly from experience. That way I stay true to the characters and story rather than the representation of something that actually happened.

As an example, I once collaborated with another author where we were writing about a Christian doomsday cult. He said he had a problem mining emotion, as he wasn’t a hardcore Christian like the characters; it was hard to empathize. I said, Do you love your kid? He said yes, more than he loved himself, and I said: Now write as if Jesus is your kid. The result was pretty beautiful.

That being said, probably the toughest thing I ever wrote because it felt close to home was The Infection and Suffer the Children. In The Infection, a man frets over what happened to his wife while the world is ending outside his window, for which I mined every feeling I had on 9/11 when I lived in NYC and couldn’t reach my wife, who was on the 87th floor of the World Trade Center when it was hit (she did eventually get out safely). In Suffer the Children, the world’s children die due to a parasite and return three days later needing blood to go on “living,” resulting in the children being vampires but the real monsters being the parents who need to keep them fed to survive. In that one, I really had to dig deep into every existential fear I had about my children and how far I’d go to keep them alive.

8. What inspired your latest work?

The idea for How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive had two things that really appealed to me. First was a great theme, in this case the things we do for art, why people are drawn to horror (an emotion we do our best to avoid in real life), and how far is too far when it comes to horrifying people. The novel is really a story about horror itself, which was a lot of fun. Second is terrific nonfiction topics that would be a blast to explore, namely moviemaking, the 1980s slasher era, and the crazy life of directors and actors. As a bonus, there have been a lot of cursed film books lately, and this one differentiates itself by being about a cursed camera.

9. If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?

Probably not a lot, because when I was younger I thought I knew it all when it came to this game, having yet to achieve wisdom, which Aristotle aptly defined as finally figuring out how much you don’t know, and over time, let’s say based on that definition I became very wise. Plus, if I knew how hard the entire journey in writing was going to be, I might have found something else to do; I believe I became successful in fiction because I didn’t know I couldn’t be successful. Though, who am I kidding; I would have written fiction anyway, as I feel like I was born for it.

One thing I’d say to myself for sure, though, is get over the impostor syndrome and get out and network with other writers. Go to the conventions and meet people. They’re awesome, and you belong there.

10. Best advice you’ve ever gotten from a fellow writer?

Nietzsche once said something like a single sentence can break your entire world, and I’ve always believed that is true. I’ve been to a lot of conventions, and I’m always on the lookout for that one little takeaway that can change my entire writing game. At one con, someone said, “Always sell the book on its nonfiction topic,” which blew my mind. It got me thinking about theme and how to describe a work. When Suffer the Children came out soon after, I promoted it with the question, “How far would you go for your kids?”, which proved very effective as a hook. Those takeaways are getting harder to find as I continuously study and experiment and learn, but when one does find its way to me, it’s pure gold.

11. What is your go-to comfort horror/Sci-Fi book?

There are a few books I’ll re-read every few years. Jack London’s The Iron Heel, George Orwell’s 1984, Jeff Long’s The Descent, anything by James Morrow, and some others. After my last move, I had to scale down my bookshelves, so I only keep and display books I love enough to re-read.

12. If you were to genre-hop, which genres would you most like to try writing?

I’ve done quite a bit of this already. I’ve written sci-fi, fantasy, contemporary military fiction, and WW2 military fiction. I haven’t done a Western yet; that might be fun. Before horror, my first love was sci-fi, though. I think if I had to hop genres, I’d go there for sure. Though, I’m happy writing anything with a speculative element, where I can show ordinary people in extraordinary situations to find out what they’re really made of, where I can clash the strange and the normal like a kid mixing stuff with a chemistry stuff just to see what happens.

Learn more about Craig and his work here!