'Tis Himself: Horror Writer Tom Piccirilli

By: Denise Dumars
Date: Wednesday, May 24, 2000

Tom Piccirilli is a survivor. An alumnus of the small press, his career has blossomed at a time when some of the genres and forms in which he writesmost notably horror and mystery, short fiction and poetryare hardly thriving. Yet he has risen above the pack, published both horror and mystery novels, garnered award nominations for both fiction and poetryand still keeps testing the waters of other genres, including fantasy and even Westerns.

Piccirilli is probably best known for his occult-oriented 'Self' stories. 'I started studying, researching the occult when I wrote the first draft of [the novel] HEXES, and about that time began one of my earliest short stories, entitled 'Convene.' You can call that one a proto-Self story. It was about a college student who finds out that some of his professors and fellow students are witches, and how he wants to take over the coven.'

College professors as witches? Who ever heard of such a thing...

'I submitted the tale to Ken Abner at TERMINAL FRIGHT magazine, and it took him awhile to get back to me. Actually, he and I have a running gag about this because neither of us remembers exactly how much time passed,' he laughs. 'Maybe it wasn't all that long, and I was just more impatient waiting to hear from editors than I am now. So I sent another copy to Crispin Burnham, and he promptly accepted it for ELDRITCH TALESand never did publish it.'

This is pretty much how the small press operates, for those readers who have never participated in that great experiment. 'Ken phoned and asked for a similar story, traditional dark fantasy. I wanted to get something to him as soon as possible, and 'Neverdead' was half-written, right up to the point where Self makes his appearance.'

So began the Self mythos, which Piccirilli goes on to explain. The Self stories are about 'a necromancer and his demonic familiar second-self wiseass sidekick (or maybe it's the necromancer who is the sidekick!) wandering modern day America and dealing with all kinds of evils. It seemed to be a good way to do a series similar to Manly Wade Wellman's 'Silver John the Balladeer' series. It was a well I could continue to return to, because the material was so rich. Self seemed like a character I'd want to write about again, and after I sold the second Self tale, 'Bury St. Edmonds,' to Ken we discussed the possibility of publishing several more in the magazine.'

Piccirilli found himself returning to his occult research, specifically for the purpose of using historically accurate material in his tales. 'I wanted to create my own kind of mythos, which I could return to over the years. True historical accounts of the Inquisition and the hysteria surrounding the witch trials are fascinating and shocking, with descriptions of some of the most terrible and savage periods in world history. So the challenge was to use realand realisticaccounts from history, along with ceremonies, ritual, legends and superstitions in order to weave them into a cohesive body of work. With each new Self tale I try to play with elements of a different legend, religious practice, or piece of folklore while allowing the reader to learn more about the dual identities of Self and the necromancer.'


Piccirilli's horror novel, HEXES, is also informed by his occult research. The point of view is extremely unusual in this novel; it's almost like a stream-of-consciousness work, which may not be unusual for a literary novel but is very unusual in a horror novel. He explains: 'The book required that I go places my protagonist couldn't go. I had to show certain characters alone with their troubled thoughts in their own personal long dark hours of the soul. One of the factors I wanted to include is that even during all the supernatural occurrences, there were still some very human, even petty troubles happening to the cast. People still argue about what to eat at dinner and what to watch on television. Too often, I think, horror focuses too directly on the monster, or the battle of good versus evil, or the race against time, or the end of the world, and so you wind up reading about dull characters who defeat big, loud bad critters and that's about it. I wanted everything to play back into the history and lives of the cast.'

Piccirilli talks about the intersection of horror with both traditional and occult religions in his life and in his work. 'There's not really much of a distinction for me between what's generally considered to be the occult and what is believed to be religion. For me, raised as a Catholic, going to catechism was a terrifying experience. Here you are, only eight or nine years old, and you're walking down in the cellars of churches named after strange saints, and you're going past all these men in black robes and women who are the 'brides of Christ'that alone is enough to freak out a kid,' he laughs. 'There I amstaring at icons of a bleeding, broken Christ in tortuous poses, having a nun tell me that somebody else died for my sins, and you can almost here the 'you little fucker!' in their voices,' he says.

'Like it's your fault!' he continues. 'I've said it before and I'll say it again: that was some seriously scary shit for me. So, my curiosity and concern over what this stuff really meant led me to study the Bible and try to see how it fit into the larger spiritual world when compared with other religions.'

Piccirilli's spiritual study led him to numerous world religions and myth systems. 'When you're dealing with theology, mythology, and magical practices, you're dealing with the foundation of mankind, really, as well as the foundation of God. Once I started researching, I just kept going, and took some of the more scary and fun parts and put them into HEXES and my other work. I mixed religious and occult ceremonies because I thought it would help to make a better tale.'

HEXES is a novel about occult forces; even though it's told in a nontraditional way, it takes on a theme that is traditional in the history of the horror novel. 'Here you've got a guy who, as a child, releases evil, and is forced to battle it throughout his adolescence, who loses his family and his girlfriend to this horror that is a part of him, and in a moment of weakness abandons his remaining friends and neighbors and decides to make a run for safety. Five years later he returns to discover that part of the world he knows remains the samethe burger joint is the same, the quaint country roads and houses are the samebut beneath it all lurks a madness and spiritual corruption that he must battle again,' he says, describing the version of the fight against evil that takes place in the novel.

'That confrontation is actually his redemption, and that makes for a character who's got a great many facets to his personality. In essence, I think he is someone who gets to completely liberate himself from his own sins and failures in ways that most of us only wish we could. That makes him very appealing to me.'

Piccirilli also writes mysteries. His two novels in the field, THE DEAD PAST and SORROW'S CROWN, are now available. THE DEAD PAST seems like an interesting mix of cozy detective and noir fiction. 'Writing THE DEAD PAST allowed me to find the balance I'd been looking for in my work. I wanted to play in the gray area between the cozy and the hardboiled series, taking elements from both ends of the spectrum and putting my own spin on them. Part of my having fun with those books was providing lots of inside jokes where the cliches of the field are concerned; I get to toy with all of that and hopefully bring a fresh approach to the field,' he says.

One of the Piccirilli's in-jokes that horror fans might pick up on in THE DEAD PAST is a sly reference to horror writer Poppy Z. Brite. He explains the homage: 'Poppy has always been extremely generous to me with her time and help in a number of instances. The two of us became pen pals years ago, and through we rarely see each other I consider her a true benefactor.'

He adds, 'Pet books are all the rage, so in the series I put in a petbut not the typical cute crime-solving kitty. Instead, I have a rottweiler named Anubis who occasionally gets to rip out a bad guy's throat.'

Well, so much for the cozy aspects of the novel! 'The much larger story of THE DEAD PAST is as much a mainstream tale as a mystery, with the main character trying to maintain a long-distance relationship and having a number of serious considerations to contend with.'

Regarding the set-up of his mystery novels, Piccirilli explains, 'I decided that having a wheelchair-bound grandmother and her grandson working as a team, loving one another but not fully understanding each other, would be a nice hook in developing the characters. Their personal lives and family history play into the books a great deal, so I enjoy building the backstory. All my mysteries have a darker side to them, and all my horror stories have mystery elements as well. I think most authors dance between genres,' he says, echoing a sentiment many writers have expressed, especially when the public tends to pigeonhole a writer into one genre or another.

Piccirilli's upcoming horror novel, THE DECEASED, has an unusual cover style that caught him some ribbing from his interviewer. Specifically, it looks like it says, 'THE DECEASED TOM PICCIRILLI.' 'Yeah, I was getting some crap about that at the World Horror Con! I think my publisher is going to try to tweak the cover a little bit. Still, it's not as bad as the cover that read DYING INSIDE ROBERT SILVERBERG.'

The novel should be available in July. 'Anyway, THE DECEASED is a horror novel concerning a lot of weird elements, including a boy who can turn animals into people; time travel; a haunted house; insanity; and a young man who must confront the ghosts of his murdered family in order to learn why his sister went mad one night with an ax...and what she did with their heads,' he says, pausing pregnantly for effect.
(Readers can get the first two chapters of the novel excerpted at the Previews section of the Masters of Terror website at: http://mastersofterror.cjb.net/)

Piccirilli describes a childhood like many of us hadliterally steeped in horror media. 'I was hooked on horror nearly from birth. My father loved horror flicks, and one of the first movies I remember seeing was the original PLANET OF THE APES filmat the drive-in when I was three. Other great films we saw together included THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES, TALES FROM THE CRYPT, WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS, and HORROR HOTEL, which features a very young Christopher Lee as a Satanist. You'd be surprised how many comic books had a horror or occult theme in the 70's. TV shows like NIGHT GALLERY, THE NIGHT STALKER, and the Richard Matheson-scripted series GHOST STORY/CIRCLE OF FEAR really left their touch. My dad and I would watch Creature Features and Chiller Theatre, where a claymation hand with six fingers would rise up to the tone of 'Chillleerrrr....' he intones.

Piccirilli tries not to worry about genre stereotypes or what kind of writing is 'in' at the moment. 'I don't let myself get caught up in targeting an audience. I've been lucky enough that my work has always found a home somewhere.' And he has a few words of advice for aspiring writers: 'If the work is strong enough, and the product handled properly, then it'll find a readershipor the readership will find it. As a writer and as a reader I'm constantly on the lookout for new challenges that will help me broaden my scope and view of the world.'

And with a horror novel, mystery novel, and collection of poetry currently in print, that scope seems very broad indeed.