|
Mistress of Terror
Gouldsboro Writer’s Horror Tales Appear on the Web and
in Print
By John Hubbard
GOULDSBORO—It was
a gray, snowy afternoon when the interviewer knocked on the door
of the brown trailer. Shivering a little as he waited, he gazed
around at the descending whiteness, which shrouded nearby Birch
Harbor village in mystery.
And, perhaps,
horror.
T.M. Gray
answered the door, a dark-haired woman with a gold ring piecing
one nostril. She ushered the visitor inside and introduced her
husband Bob, her 16-year-old son Tom and her 10-year-old daughter
Robyn. Each politely said “hello,” then returned to television or
homework.
Gray led the way
to her kitchen, where a computer sat on one side of the room,
surrounded by bookcases.
Two white skulls
lay on the shelf that held the computer’s tower. The screen was
alive with the image of a green, snakelike plant.
T.M. Gray is a
horror writer.
A lifelong
resident of Gouldsboro, Gray has turned out scores of short
stories and two novels during her career, which might be said to
have started in grade school. She used to read stories to her
classmates during recesses.
She has been a
writer of horror fiction for 25 years. An agent in Arizona works
to get her published.
“He keeps saying
‘The future’s bright,’” Gray said.
She does not go
in for “vanity press” publication, where the writer pays for
publication. That, she says, is the kiss of death for a writer.
She got her
material published the first time by going on-line. Her first
story was published in “The Bloody Muse,” a horror Web site that
is no longer running.
She has her own
Web site now,
www.horrorseek.com/horror/tmgray.
Next, she wrote
“Extremes 3: Terror on the High Seas,” a compact disc published by
Lone Wolf Publications of Oklahoma City for readers with
computers.
Despite his
fascination with the white skulls by the computer terminal and the
ornate jewelry Gray wore, the interviewer’s attention was drawn
outside the trailer to the descending whiteness--The White, as he
now thought of it. The White vibrated against the window above the
small table where Gray sat, fingering a paperback book called
“Objet d’Evil,” a collection of short horror that includes her
“Night Song.”
With her
nose-ring, the silver jewelry covering the fingers of one hand and
the silver chain connecting a ring to a watchband, Gray looked the
part of a horror writer. She says she is known among horror
writers as Maine’s Mistress of Terror.
Stephen King is
one of her idols.
She says she has
several things in common with the wildly successful
author-producer, whom she met when she was 17. Both are Mainers
who grew up in poor families, and both are driven to record their
thoughts on paper.
“I get up in the
middle of the night and just have to write,” Gray said. “Even when
I’m on Bob’s boat, I sometimes tell him to stop so I can write
something down.”
She helps her
husband on his lobster boat during the fall, after son Tom goes
back to school.
“I get a lot of
material out of Maine,”
she said. “Its foggy and rainy nights are excellent for writing.”
The mention of
fog reminded the interviewer of the gray-white outside, patiently
waiting for him. He dreaded going back out there.
“On one
lobstering trip we got lost,” Gray was saying. “He turned to me,
and I didn’t know if he was joking, and asked, ‘Do you know where
we are?’”
“I knew where we
were!” Bob Gray insisted from around the corner.
“Yeah, I guess he
did. But I didn’t,” Gray said. “He was just kidding, but there we
were in this fog and I couldn’t see anything, and it was dead
quiet.”
Dead quiet. The
words hung in the air as The White swirled outside. The
interviewer reached for the coffee mug Gray had placed on the
table for him, grateful for the warmth.
Gray has used Maine weather and the rain and wind-beaten quality of Maine scenery in
many of her stories.
She also is an
editor of a young adult Web page on-line. She writes a review of
horror videos at a Web site called “Gathering Darkness.”
One of her most
prized accomplishments in horror writing has been that two of her
stories have been recommended—last year and again this year—for
the Bram Stoker Award of the Horror Writers Association. Every
year a vote is taken on stories, novels, and movies in the horror
genre. Recommendation is only the first of several steps toward an
award, but a critical one and one that bestows honor on authors.
As the
conversation came to an end, the interviewer gathered his
belongings, and his courage, to venture outside into The White. It
was, he thought, not unlike the fog that bedeviled the Grays on
their fishing trip.
It was quiet
outside the trailer. Dead quiet.
Oh, well, what
the heck, the interviewer thought. It’s only a snowstorm. |
