American - Writer | October 28, 1951 -
If you know everything, it keeps you from writing. You don't want a story to burn you out instead of surprising you.
Joe R. Lansdale
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In some ways, I don't consider a single Hap and Leonard novel the best, but I consider them my best characters.
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When I wrote 'Savage Season,' it was three years later before I wrote the second Hap and Leonard novel. Whenever I wrote one, I never intended to write the next one.
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I have been on a horrible sea cruise. When my wife and I went to Mexico, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands, I was seasick for a lot of the time. I didn't like being trapped on a ship with a bunch of shuffleboarders.
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I do better just letting the stories develop. I don't outline very well, and I can't follow it if I do. Once I've outlined it, why write the damn book?
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I work in the mornings almost exclusively.
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'Night They Missed the Horror Show' is my signature story. It changed my life, so it remains my favorite.
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Edgar Rice Burroughs taught me pace and gave me a sense of action and adventure.
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Robert Bloch taught me about mixing horror and humor.
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I was well under the spell of the old Gold Medal Crime novels when I wrote 'Savage Season,' and I wanted to write a modern version of that. I had tried the same thing with 'Cold in July,' and I wanted to give it another go.
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I always disliked that anytime you had gays represented in - and there were some exceptions, certainly - but represented in popular fiction, they were usually the goofy neighbor next door, you know? And I just thought, 'Well, I know a lot of gay people, and they're just as varied as the heterosexual people I know.'
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I was born in the '50s - 1951. So I grew up during that part of the '50s when everything was supposed to be at its best in America, they claimed, and then eased into the '60s.
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