So, tonight I was chatting with my wife over a lovely dinner of t-bone steaks and red wine, and I mentioned to her in an affectedly offhand way that I’d been asked to guest post on a blog.

“What about?” she asked.

“Well, the idea was to look at how a complete skeptic can write fiction about the paranormal,” I responded.

She looked at me with one eyebrow raised.  “And what are you going to say?” she asked.  “How does a skeptic write paranormal fiction?”

“Well,” I said, and I slipped into the supercilious tone that I sometimes use when answering questions in my biology classes, and which undoubtedly annoys the absolute hell out of my students, “I think that the main reason is that I am aware that my books are sorted into the ‘Fiction’ section on Amazon.”

“Are they?” she said, in a “You wanna watch that attitude, bub?” sort of way.   Then she frowned thoughtfully.  “But, you know, that doesn’t really explain anything.  Because let’s face it.  For a guy who doesn’t believe in all that stuff, you give every evidence of being obsessed by it.”

“I’m not obsessed,” I said, bristling a little.

“Oh?” she said sweetly.  “Would you mind telling me what poster you have on your classroom wall?”

I mumbled something inaudible into my wine glass.

“I am referring, of course,” she said, “to the one with the large picture of the UFO, that is captioned, ‘I Want To Believe.’”

Slam-dunk.  Buzzer sounds.  End of game.

 Dammit.  I hate it when she’s right.  Which, unfortunately, seems to be most of the time.

The problem, of course, is that if my glib one-liner won’t do as an answer, I’m thrown back to the original question: why would a guy who is a 26-year veteran science teacher, who teaches (amongst other things) a Critical Thinking class, who writes daily on a blog that has as its prime purpose poking fun at weird, counterfactual beliefs, write a short story about a guy whose life is in danger because he just had wild sex with a vampiric ghost he met while exploring an abandoned house?

Oh, and that’s just the last thing I wrote.  Here’s a brief sampling of other topics from my fiction:

• A woman who, like most of us, sees things out of the corner of her eyes.  However, unlike most of us, the things she sees are real.  And dangerous.  (“Periphery”)
• A college student who finds that reality changes every time his back is turned.  (“House of Mirrors”)
• A guy who gets possessed by the ghost of his great-great-grandmother.  (“The Conduit”)
• Two high school students who discover that they can read each other’s minds.  (“Shadowboxing”)
• Ten people trapped in an apartment building during a hurricane.  With the monsters.  (“Convection”)
• A skeptical biologist who finds out that local children are being replaced by duplicates.  Oh, yeah, and then he runs into Slender Man.  (“Signal to Noise”)

So, anyway, you get the idea.  My wife’s use of the word “obsession” is actually pretty apt.  But the question is, why?  When the subject of the “I Want To Believe” poster came up, my wife asked me, “Do you really want to believe?”  And I said, “Hell yeah.”  Do you have any idea how cool it’d be if that stuff existed?  Bigfoot?  UFOs?  Psychic stuff?  Ghosts?  Man, it’d be awesome.  Of course, being (not to put too fine a point on it) a great big weenie, the first time I saw Bigfoot I’d probably piss my pants and then have a stroke.  But still.

 There’s the inevitable problem, of course, of the huge revision in my worldview that would have to take place if even one of those things turned out to be real.  For one thing, I can’t even begin to estimate the number of retractions I’d have to write in Skeptophilia.  (“I hereby apologize to all of the psychics and mediums I’ve insulted over the past four years…”)  But still, and in all seriousness:  isn’t that what being a skeptic means?  If you are honestly a skeptic – and not just a professional scoffer – you revise your opinion based upon the facts and evidence at hand, regardless of how uncomfortable that revision might be for your pride.  On some level, honest skeptics are always waiting for evidence, because they are never quite sure they have the complete picture.

Of course, in the meantime, the real reason I write all this stuff is: it’s fun.  How would I react if suddenly confronted with Slender Man?  How would I handle it if every time I turned around, everything had changed – and the only one who realized it was me?  It’s a rush creating a new world, a world whose rules are different from the ones science has uncovered.  It’s a blast to try to come up with a self-consistent scheme by which the universe could work… and then send some characters in to play inside it.

Or scream in terror.  Or get chased by monsters.  Or get eaten.  You know how it goes.  Not all universes result in a happy ending.  Which, now that I think of it, would also make a great caption for a poster.

(editor’s note: Gordon Bonnet is a writer, musician, teacher, and scuba diver, and currently lives in upstate New York. Also: he’s awesome. That’s not opinion, that’s scientifically proven. On the Electro-Badassery Scale, he registers at 35.7K volts of Awesome, which is why his hair sometimes does that thing at the top, and why when his socks land on the laundry pile they make that snap-sizzle noise. Author of Skeptophilia, as well as 15 delightful works of fiction, he blogs at, shockingly enough, Skeptophilia, where you can find his charming wit and big science-licious brains at work…)

Sometimes, regardless of how bright and sunny the day, regardless of the obvious physical prowess and protective capabilities of your companion, regardless of your own skeptical nature, sometimes a place will give you a case of the full-on squinkies. This was the case for me a few weeks back, when I was trekking out through a cemetery to a second hidden cemetery with my cop friend whom (until I have permission to call him by name on the interwebs) I will refer to as various fun names. Today, let’s call him Constable Cthulhu. Dude doesn’t actually look like a giant squid-thing, nor does he eat souls (as far as I know) but I’ve always wanted to say I spent a Friday morning chillin’ with Cthulhu.

<Probably I wouldn’t go strolling through graveyards with him if he looked like this>

Pretty early in the trek, Constable Cthulhu and I established that, for a writer, I have a remarkably crappy eye for details…in fact, it’s possible I have absolutely no eye for details at all. If we played his “stop, look, and listen” game, I’d lose every time.

Constable Cthulhu: Wonder what those people are doing here.

Me: What people?

CC: Just checking out the graves, I guess.

Me: Who? Where?

CC: Uh, those two people right there? *notes my oblivious “wherezat?” stare*… *points helpfully with his “just in case Writerghoulie is a homicidal maniac, I grabbed this stick, which I’m totally pretending is just a walking stick” stick*

CC: The couple behind that low stone?

Me: Which stone? What couple?

CC: AJ, seriously? With the camera? By the tree? Right THERE.

Me: Oh, those two. I saw them. I thought you meant some other two.

CC: (not buying it) Uh huh.

I double-checked the map on my iPhone to make sure we were going in the right direction, amazingly didn’t get us lost once, and we ended up on a churned-up finger of land jutting into a pond that I won’t yet name. I use the term “land” roughly: it’s a raised pile of dirt, rocks, weeds, vines, and chunks of cement. There we discussed investigative techniques specific to the terrain, possible crime scene difficulties, the whos-whats-wheres of Canadian police procedures if this spot were a body dump, all the while keeping in mind that we were standing above/in/around the final resting place of hundreds of people who no longer had headstones.

Now…this is a cemetery that had been given to the church over two hundred years ago, abandoned due to disuse, and then in 1928 was flooded, submerging an estimated 663 graves underwater (some dating back to the late 1700’s). This place…boys and girls, it has started to fascinate me. It has the power to overrule all my logic and give me the nerve-plucking, gut-shriveling willies. I think it might be, specifically, the underwater part of the equation that’s giving me trouble. Algae. Darkness. Cold, wet abandon. Mud and silence.  The destruction of identity. It’s not right. It bothers me a lot more than a regular cemetery ever could.

I think I hid my horror well behind dual masks of legitimate curiosity and profound sadness. It’s important that I hide my fear. After all, I’m the Writerghoulie. I write horror…or, more accurately, Horror Light, otherwise known as “comedic dark urban fantasy” or “snarky splatterpunk.” I craft a flippant brand of fear for a living, so I’m not supposed to be a gigantic chickenshit. I’m also a scientist, so hearing ghosts in the wind or jumping at shadows is not gonna cut it, especially not in front of this indomitable powerhouse of a cop. Nu uh. I have a reputation to uphold. I’m supposed to be brave, too. Like, way-WAY brave. Researching this third book in the series with actual law enforcement input has made me feel like the star of my own version of Murder She Wrote….or, since I goof around a lot more than JB Fletcher ever did, perhaps a female version of Richard Castle (without the money or fame.) The last thing I need is to advertise that I’m a bumbling noob with a growing suspicion that maybe the things that go bump in the night don’t always have a scientific explanation.

Long story short: we spent three hours exploring, during which I got him stabbed in the hand. Hey, what do you expect being alone with a horror chick, a walk in the park? No. No, my friends. You get a walk in the park-like settings of an abandoned graveyard. With pain and blood. In my defense, it didn’t bleed that much.

On our way back to the car, Constable Cthulhu indicated with his stick again.

CC: More company. What do you think they’re doing?

Me: Hunh?

CC: Those two guys right there.

Me: What two guys WHERE?

CC: Seriously? (he stops dead in his tracks) You don’t fucking see the two dudes?

Me: WHAT DUDES?

CC: Holy crap, AJ. The two men in the bright yellow vests with the neon orange X’s on their backs?

Me: Where?!

CC: RIGHT THERE WITH THE BACKHOE?

Me: Oh hey, look! There’s two dudes with a backhoe.

CC: Oh. My. God.

Me: Guess they’re digging a new grave.

CC: How could you not see them?

Me: I’m short! They’re…behind the…things. And stuff.

CC: You didn’t hear the backhoe?

Me: It’s not running! Wait–*listens* Oh, yes it is.

CC: *facepalm*

Me: Listen, Officer McCopEyes, I was paying careful attention to you.

CC: I wasn’t saying anything.

Me: I was watching you walk. For character research.

CC: That the story you’re sticking to?

Me: Give me a minute, I’ll come up with something more plausible.

We walked in companionable silence a bit more before I cracked a smile.

Me: You gotta admit, I’m getting better.

CC: You’re so not.

Me: A little better?

CC: I didn’t think it was possible, but you might be getting worse.

Me: But I could totally learn to see like a cop, right?

CC: No. *shakes his head* No you couldn’t.

*snerk* Someday, I hope to report that Officer McCopEyes was wrong: that I have become very good at noting details, and do so effortlessly and accurately and habitually wherever I go. Hey, miracles happen. Until then, I remain your dutiful Writerghoulie, reporting from the front lines of Horror Light research.

May the things that go bump in your night lack the teeth to bite.

(editor’s note: In order to finish her second novel, AJ Aalto requires the following: dark chocolate, white wine, a copy of Seeing Details For Dummies (that’s gotta be a thing, right?), a wicked icestorm (somebody arrange that for me, wouldja?) and a good haunting.)

In a moment of zero-foresight, I thought it would be a grand idea to interview my mentor, Rafe Brox: personal trainer, editor, and general bossyboots. Dude’s clearly insane. Wears kilts to work. Can deadlift like 500 pounds (an estimate, I’ve lost track; there’s no way I’m going to try and match his personal best.) His clever wit and critical eye make him an excellent editor…’cept he’s MEAN. He’s a BIG, BIG MEANIEPANTS. You should see his Dangerously Disapproving Glare!

<The Disapproving Glare! Good thing I have no ego to crush>

Jeez Louise, it’s enough to shrivel your innards. Not only has he forbidden me from eating carbs, but he doesn’t think my spelling “quirks” or tech-uselessness are charming at all. I forgot about that, in my zero-foresight moment. I remembered soon enough …

Me: Do you remember the first thing you wrote?

RB: The very first thing? No. But I do have a copy, somewhere, of a thirty-page school project I wrote on dinosaurs in second grade (that’s “grade two” for you Canuckistanis).

Me: What made you keep it?

RB: DUDE, DINOSAURS. Also, I rocked the face off that unit.

Me: You do a lot of flash fiction, I’ve noticed. Has this always been the case? Do you think flash requires different skills or discipline than longer works?

RB: I think your definition of “a lot” is a lot more liberal than mine is; splashing out one, two, three, four things of the 100-300 word variety doesn’t seem like a lot of productivity for me when a single blog post or strongly-worded letter is often longer than that (when I get rolling, I really get rolling). However, flash fiction plays to my strengths – clever wordplay and catchy phrasing – while also playing to my weaknesses – a complete inability to develop any kind of plot whatsoever. I can write a mean scene or scenelet, but if you ask me to string them together or figure out what’s supposed to happen next, I’m the next thing to fucking useless. My longest work of fiction was a plodding, sophomoric vampire story that I did for a creative writing course in college, and it was maybe thirty or thirty-five pages (and NO YOU CANNOT SEE IT); most of my output then, and since, has been under a dozen pages or so. Two to ten thousand words is really my functional limit, because I can’t abide fluff and filler and having to both create and consume the density of ideas and whatnot that seems to fall out of my head seems like an overwhelming notion.

I read a shitload of Stephen King’s doorstop books, and they’re like eating Cheez Puffs – lot of air, lot of filler, fairly tasty. But since I’ve moved on towards cyberpunk and short-form Sci-Fi, my taste has gotten… more economical? More focused? Less tolerant of stage-setting description and more keen for LET’S DO SOME SHIT AND EXPLORE SOME CHARACTERIZATION AND STOP LOOKING AT THE GODDAMNED WALLPAPER ALREADY.

Me: So your weaknesses are: building a plot, and fucking finishing something. I cannot tell you how encouraging this is as someone who is going to collaborate on a novel with you *sour smile*. How do you intend to overcome these stumbling blocks?

RB: *holds a mirror up in front of you*
I WILL DELEGATE IT TO THE PERSON WHO IS BETTER AT THOSE THINGS. Duh. You outsource your IT needs and (desperately needed) editing, right?

Me: *simmering glare* Yes, surely I do. To a sassmouth editor.

Sassmouth Editor: So even if I have to bludgeon that Jones character, I bet you’ve got plenty of coattails to ride. And I bet you think I just said you have a fat ass, right?

Me: Speaking of sassmouth editing, how many years have you been trimming other people’s words?

RB: I did it professionally for a few years in the mid-late 90’s for the Outfit That Does Not Deserve To Be Named (because they were lying, writer-scamming scumbags who underpaid their editors and got rich off the sweat of our brows), and have intermittently kept my hand in as a freelancer ever since.

Me: As an editor, you must have certain pet peeves, things that writers do that drive you bonkers? (Oh, hey, that explains a lot.)
RB: If you’re going to use a colloquial phrase, don’t fuck it up, Little Miss “All of the sudden.”
Me: That’s it? One little thing? And it happens to be MY bad habit? Sheesh!

RB: Word repetition or phrasing clunkiness really irritate me; there are so many words in this language, find the right one or combination of them. I’m not one of those “read your book aloud” proponents, but at least do it with some of the goddamned dialogue.

Me: Better question: which of your own bad habits piss you off the most?

RB: I completely suck at establishing any kind of dramatic tension, and I can’t write sex scenes to save my life. As you’ve no doubt noticed in your, shall we suggest, intense perusal of my flash fiction of an erotic sort, there’s an almost comical aversion to actual fucking being depicted; it’s all oblique and suggested rather than shown.

Me: What would you like to see more of in fiction …and don’t say dinosaurs.

RB: I’d like to see stories that aren’t dependent on either the hero, villain, or sidekick being a complete moron. I hate the communication breakdown trope; if people have reasons to keep secrets, that’s character, that’s motivation. If someone could defuse the entire plot by saying something that any sane person would totally mention in casual conversation, then that author needs to get slapped upside the head with a trash can lid.
Also, female agency and fewer pathetic, abject, failings of the Bechdel Test, because, really – women are people, and they’re the majority of the populace. Tokenism, whether it’s gender, race, sexuality, or whatever, pisses me the fuck off.
Also, I think there should be more foul-mouthed motherfuckers in every brand of fiction.
[and if you have to Google shit as a result of my answers, I have totally won this interview, so there]

Me: I haven’t Googled a single thing yet *sticks out tongue* (I’ll Google later) If you could sew two writers’ brains together to make the ultimate Wordhero, which two would you blend and what do you think would result? (other than jail time, Dr. Frankeneditor)

RB: Easy: Steven Brust and Christopher Moore, because that would be some funny, clever stuff. If I wanted to get some grit and spikes into the mix, add Elizabeth Bear and Richard K. Morgan and Hal Duncan. Though if I wanted to make cyberpunk melt, John Scalzi covered in Pat Cadigan would be fairly awesome. Though I would kind of like to know what GRRM would write if you were inside his head, but I think that’s a transgression of the Geneva Convention to either him, or fans of epic literature.

Me: George RR Martin and moi? I think we’d get along well. “Let’s kill this guy, AJ, everyone loves him.” “Ok, but let’s do it stupid-crazy…and naked.” “I like naked.” “I know, George, I know.”

RB: I read too fucking much, and have an absolutely irreverent attitude towards things, so there are a nigh-infinite number of flavor blends I could come up with here if you don’t get off your duff and ask another frigging question, toots.

Me: Are you an outliner or a “pantser”? (I so know the answer) How important do you think it is to outline before writing?

RB: Outlining kills any hope I have of writing anything, because once it’s out of my head and on the page, whether it’s paper or pixels, it’s done. I can revise, correct, or rewrite whole swathes of it, but if it’s outlined, it’s dead bones and is beyond any hope of being resurrected. I’ve got sketch notes for shit going back twenty years that I look at and say, “Yep,” and that’s all there will ever be of those things.
So, yeah, shameless and unapologetic pantser here, because I can’t think out a plot ahead of time anyways, so I have no fucking idea where anything is going to go until I get there. The irony, of course, is that I don’t wear pants (in the North American sense), and haven’t for nearly six months.

Me: there’s a fair amount of ego involved in putting words on paper and then assuming other people would want to read them, yet as a group, writers seem to be a sensitive group. Do you experience this “read my genius/but be gentle!” brand of insanity, or do you have a thick skin when it comes to criticism?
RB: I tend to write and ignore the fact that it might be read by other people because, by and large, it isn’t. My blog (pick one, whether it’s my LiveJournal, my WordPress workout blog, or whatever) gets an embarrassingly trivial number of hits, so it’s not like I’m fucking Neil Gaiman or something. I do write to amuse whomever happens to read my shit, and, ostensibly, maybe sell some words for some filthy lucre, but at the end of the day, I mostly do it to amuse myself and maybe my friends. If I suck, I suck in a vacuum… and if I’m awesome, I’m awesome in a vacuum, too.

Me: Tell us about your educational background, your current works in progress, hobbies…

RB: I have a Bachelor’s degree in English, with a concentration in Creative Writing, but have been doing tech support almost exclusively for the last fifteen years, albeit very *literate* tech support. Once you get that taint on you, it never comes off. This is where you try to look smug about the fact that you can’t tell one end of a battery from the other, and I shake my head in condescending, vaguely contemptuous sadness that you’ve somehow managed to survive to adulthood.

Me: I CAN PUT BATTERIES IN PROPERLY! My vibrator is shuddering proof of that, Captain Smarmy!

RB: The fact that your G spot is the only thing that motivates you to even rudimentary technical competence speaks volumes to my job security, and that of the soft-headed Viking you bewitched.

My only real WIP is that abandoned bastard love child SF-noir thing I’m writing with you. Which is obviously going to gain sentience from the bowels of Google Docs and become an evil AI or something.

Me: Oh, obviously.

RB: Or, you know, just languish until we get our shit together.
I have become a gym rat because, well, fuck, just go look at the bio page on my WordPress blog. I like being hot, I like being strong, and I have every intention of doing both while living forever. I may or may not make a paying gig out of being a personal trainer, but it’s crossed my mind a time or two. I just suck at selling myself.
Me: Do you think your “writing for your own amusement” and suckage at selling yourself would change if your writing was published for a large audience?
RB: I’ve heard a lot of people whose thoughts and opinions and intellects I respect say that you should write stuff you’d want to read; I don’t see my attitude changing in that respect, though I do admit to a tremendous amount of artisanal nerd rage when I see bad writing be wildly successful, or even moderately successful. It’s disheartening to see crap rake in the bucks.
It’s an unflattering combo platter of envy and disgust; these are people who have, yes, written an entire novel, but the level of craftsmanship is so low that I’d be embarrassed to have my name on it.
I have every expectation that I would mortify anyone unlucky enough to be saddled with the job as my publicist, but I think I’m charmingly crass and, if nothing else, pretty honest about who I am, so it’s not like anyone would be surprised. I mean, you’re hardly fit for polite company and you’re doing all right.
Me: Hey–OW! *smirk* thanks. I think that’s enough punishment for Writerghoulie for now. Thanks for joining me, Broxpocalypse.
(Editor’s notes: AJ Aalto’s rewrites continue, thanks to the keen eye and infinite wisdom of her editor. Death Rejoices will probably be complete just in time for AJ to check into the loony bin.)