David Robbins
© 2017

A few readers have expressed curiosity about my Horror books. Yes, Mad Hornet intends to make them available in print and ebook editions. One has already been reissued with more to follow.

In the meantime, I’ve been asked what inspired me to write the Horror novels I did. So here are some tidbits about the Horror of it all.

Do  you love scary books? Movies? Comics? Back in ‘the day’ scary was everywhere. From the classics like Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN and Stoker’s DRACULA to the Universal Monsters and more, pure Horror was around long before Jason and Freddy and Michael Myers came along.

As a kid I watched every horror movie on TV. I devoured every issue I could find of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND. Others like CREEPY, EERIE, and VAMPIRELLA were steady fare.

All that is by way of explaining how much I love Horror. It was only natural I would write some. A lot of my books, especially my science fiction but also ANGEL U and several of my Westerns, are steeped in fear. Of the several hundred I’ve had published, about half a dozen are pure examples of the genre. They were written to scare you silly.

My first Horror book was a werewolf story entitled THE WERELING that went through a big change before it saw print. As I originally conceived the story, it revolved around a mass-of-muscle weightlifter who is gonzo over werewolves. So much so, he buys a realistic mask and claws and takes to prowling around Ocean City, New Jersey---where yours truly hung out over a number of summers---and he gets so into the werewolf persona that he starts tearing people to pieces. Think PSYCHO in a werewolf costume. The first publisher I sent it to wanted to publish it---provided I made a change. The editor insisted werewolf stories ‘have to be supernatural’. I suppose I could have stuck by my literary guns, such as they were, but I had a family to feed, so I agreed. I added five pages, and presto, instant supernatural. If you come across a copy, try reading it without the prologue and the epilogue and see what you think.
My next Horror book stemmed from my interest in cryptozoology. Way back in 774 A.D. in the Assyrian Empire, they experienced what they described as a ‘plague’ of ‘creatures’ that attacked anyone and everyone. Another factor was a news article about seeds found in an ancient tomb, seeds that sprouted when planted. So I got to thinking. What if.....archeologists discover a buried tomb. What if.....when the archeologists open the tomb, they unleash a long dormant virus---the very virus that caused the Assyrian Empire plague? Those kernels became THE WRATH.



My third Horror novel stemmed from the exploits of a French lady by the name of Alexandra David-Neel. She was into mysticism and Tibet and fascinated by the concept of a tulpa, an entity or ‘thought form’ created by the human mind. She supposedly created one. So I got to thinking. Suppose a tulpa reflects the nature of its creator? And what if one were created by someone who reeked of pure evil? The result: SPECTRE.
 HELL-O-WEEN was my fourth pure Horror. The premise for this one was easy to come up with. You know all those movies that show teenagers being hacked to bits and turned into bubbly goo by a sundry assortment of human-and-otherwise killers and monsters? In HELL-O-WEEN, I take some teens and toss them into a version of Hell. Do any make it out alive? That would be telling.



In PRANK NIGHT something from ‘out there’ comes here to feast on us, but not in a way you might expect. It’s not our flesh the alien consumes---it’s the ‘sweet nectar’ of our very souls.



Finally, there’s SPOOK NIGHT. In my childhood I loved THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. So much so, I had long wanted to write my own Headless Horseman scarefest and did so in SPOOK NIGHT. With a crucial plot twist. This time, the goblin of the night is a Confederate soldier. For some, that should make him twice as scary.

There you go. Chills and thrills for those nights when you are home alone. Just don’t blame me if the cat rubs up against you while you are reading and you shriek like a banshee.