Огнестрельное и газовое оружие

Elaine Lamkin: Rick, thank you for taking time to talk to Dread Central about yourself and your new 10-part horror series, Dolor. And has working in the entertainment business always been your goal? I'd never seen a possessed teddy bear, and that's how "Lila", the first book of Dolor , began. I wanted to write a story about what was wrong—why that little girl was putting the bear outside of her door for her dad to check on her. I have three left to write, but I know where it all goes—you're going to have nightmares because of it. So I shared it with a few other friends, and they were really intrigued. The unanimous response was, "I want to know what happens next." So I wrote "Chrissy" in the beginning of October, 2008, and shared it with the same people. However, I started writing ideas in various notebooks that I had when I was nine. I love Dread Central and am a devoted reader…so here we go! In August, 2008, I kept dreaming about this teddy bear. I finished seven of the novels between September, 2008, and now. First, how about a bit of The Rick Florino Story? I never had any Van Wilder tendencies [laughs]. Then I was on a roll and kept writing. Working in the entertainment industry was always the by-product of wanting to be an artist for me. I've been blessed to be able to write for a living as editor for ARTISTdirect.com and a freelance writer for Shockhound.com, Shallow Graves Magazine , LAX Magazine , Inked and many record labels, PR firms and management companies that have hired me to write bios and/or press releases for their bands. And will the series run on a roughly monthly basis? I read that you graduated from Boston University at the age of 19. It's an incredible program that allows students to begin college during their junior year of high school. I thought it would be really unique to have a horror saga that intertwined ten first-person diaries. I always knew for Dolor that I wanted to write each story in the first person from a different narrator's perspective. I promise that.

EL: Dolor: Lila , the first book in the series, is already available. I wrote most of the articles, took a lot of the pictures, edited everything, and sold the ads. My real entry into "the biz" came with Ruin Magazine though. My dad took me to see Tango and Cash when I was five years old, and I instantly fell in love with movies at that moment. I'd started school early, so I was 15 when I entered Boston University officially. I majored in Film Studies and had a concentration in Philosophy—focused on Metaphysical Philosophy. I remember listening to AC/DC's Back in Black too during that Tango day. I thought about that and wondered how it could become inverted—how it could be changed into something strange, satanic, and untrustworthy. I went to BU's high school, BU Academy. There is a history of serial novels going back to Dickens but not so many in the horror genre: The Green Mile by Stephen King, The Blackwater Saga by Michael McDowell, and John Saul’s Blackstone Chronicles spring to mind immediately. My love for music and movies was truly born at the same time.

As for my field of study, I majored in Film Studies at Boston University's School of Communications. "The Rick Florino Story" could require its own 10-part series [laughs], but I'll keep it to a few sentences for our purposes. The bear would sit outside of a little girl's door when she was scared, and something was definitely wrong in the dream, but I couldn't figure out what it was. What was your field of study? I knew, from then on, that I wanted to create my own stories for the rest of my life. I got to meet and interview all of my idols, and it was an extraordinary two years for me, but ultimately I feel like it was just a steppingstone toward becoming a fiction writer.

EL: How did the Dolor series come into being? My writing comes first—always. I wrote that book in two days during September, 2008, and I emailed it to a few friends. I founded Ruin when I was 21 years old, and it was a full-color glossy heavy metal magazine that was available exclusively in Hot Topic stores across the US. I had all ten diaries loosely outlined before I began writing "Lila", and I wanted "Lila"'s narrator Caleb to be a strong, VERY likable character at the end of his rope. I had written the story for myself, and I was really nervous about the reactions, but they absolutely loved it. After my four years were up, I wanted to get right to work. It seems your first love is music and the music industry.

Rick Florino: Thank you very much for taking the time to interview me! I started to also think about the image of a teddy bear, and how it connotes childhood and innocence. Ten novellas is quite an undertaking.