I had the immense pleasure and great honor of interviewing one of my heroes earlier this year. Back in February of this year, I made a post on Twitter about how The author Ray Garton had touched my life with his writing and how I would be forever grateful to him, and how I had written a blog post about one of his stories, a novella called "Monsters," and to my great surprise and pleasure, Ray Garton himself replied to my post and thanked me for my kind words and consented to do an interview for my blog. I was blown away. I mean, I got to talk to one of my heroes who's writing I had admired for years, and here he was, talking to little old ME. I'm still geeked about it. But that's just the kind of guy Ray Garton was. He was amazingly humble and willing to reach out and encourage other writers on their journey. He was a big horror nerd, and he loved talking about horror as we all do. He loved cats too. I told you the guy had good taste. It was a blast interviewing him. Little did I know this would be one of the last interviews Ray Garton would ever do, as he died of complications from stage 4 lung cancer on April 21st, 2024. With his passing, we lost one of the greats of splatter-horror and his voice will be greatly missed in the horror world and indeed in the world at large. Here I present to you my interview with Ray Garton in hopes that it gives you a glimpse into his life and his writing and that it shows you what a cool person he was.
Where did you first hear about my blog Out Of The Box?
I read your blog post and was kind of blown away that my story "Monsters" had such an impact on you. It was written at a hugely emotional time in my life and tells a story very similar to my own.
Would you mind sharing your story for those of us who don't know what the novella is about?
I was living in Angwin, California, which is a Napa Valley village occupied by Pacific Union College, a Seventh-day Adventist college. Adventists don't believe in fiction. They think its wicked, just lies, all of it. But horror fiction is the absolute end-all worst.
I maintained my sanity growing up in my uneducated, strictly Adventist family by watching horror and monster movies on TV, reading horror fiction, and then I finally started writing it, almost obsessively. It was all I did in my spare time. I got an early start and sold my first novel just a couple of years out of high school. I attended all Adventist schools, including a boarding school for the last two years of high school. Trying to fit in was traumatizing. For the entire 12+ years I was in those schools, I was putting on a performance. I was not me, not at all. By college, I was angry, fed up, and exhausted. So I walked away from all of it. It was when I went back later to live in that village that the trouble started. Word got out that my first horror novel was being published. People stopped talking to me. They crossed the street when they saw me coming. I was vandalized. Threatened. I finally left and moved to Los Angeles. But that kind of shit sticks to you. It follows you everywhere. Becomes a permanent part of your life. It has haunted me forever, the idea that I'm a useless worm without their interpretation fo God. They were an apocalyptic cult and I spent half my life living in abject terror of the Last Days.
So it would be fair to say your experiences left you with a bad taste in your mouth regarding religion?
I came out of it hating religion. I am not a believer. I think religion does more harm than good and I speak out against it at every opportunity. I do not hold it against believers, I still have friends who go to church, who believe in God. But they know not to bring it up with me. It's when people start shoving it at me that I get nasty.
So I can already see similarities between your experiences and those faced by the main character in the story "Monsters"
"Monsters" is an exaggeration of stuff that really happened. And given the emotional state I was in when I wrote it---I wrote it while still living in that village---I guess it's not surprising that it had an emotional affect on someone.
I can't tell you how delighted that you got some good out of it. Thank you for sharing that. You've made my whole month.
Talking with you has made my whole month, definitely! You're one of my heroes and it has been an honor chatting with you. Is there anything else you'd like to share?
By the way, that line---"They always win."---belonged to the protagonist of the story. That was his world view. It's not mine. They don't always win. Although when I watch the news, that's getting harder and harder to cling to.
"Monsters" is stupidly out of print and ridiculously hard to find, like all the books I love it seems, If you want to read it, I'll let you borrow my copy. Just you have to promise to return it! I read it every few years and it reminds me why I'm doing what I'm doing here in my life, why we have to keep showing the true God of love to people through our actions, because people have been hurt and scarred by the worst the church has to offer and that is scarrier than any horror story out there. If you want to check out one of Ray Garton's books that is more readily available, I suggest the book "Bestial" which you can get here:
https://a.co/d/0fw5b3Qh
If you want to read the blog post I wrote about "Monsters" to which Ray Garton is referring in this interview, it's right here:
http://youcanhaveabigbox.blogspot.com/2024/02/in-end.html
Here is a poem I wrote about the novella "Monsters"
Monsters
If you call a man a monster, he becomes what you say
Dark that won’t dissipate in the light of day
Nightmarish visions, grotesqueries abound
Terror filled visages too many to count
So he takes pen to paper in an attempt to tame
The hideous countenance he cannot name
A modest success, his foot in the door
Yet shunned by his family who call him a whore
For propagating darkness instead of the light
They twist and turn scripture to defend what’s not right
Yet he marches on to a drum of his own
Finds himself a companion, a career, and a home
Til a voice from the past casts his present in doubt
He’s possessed by a demon he thought he’d cast out
Harsh violence and murder return to his door
Tormenting him til he can’t take anymore
He tries to run but he cannot hide
Water sinks ships once it is let inside
So he cowers in fear, contemplating his plight
They hunt him down, pitchforks and torches alight
And I heard him exclaim as he drew his last breath
“This judgment of God is a fate worse than death!”
