The year-long author series concluded on Monday, April 8 in Wygal auditorium with award-winning horror-fiction writer Peter Straub. The author has won some of the most prestigious awards in writing including the Bram Stoker Award (which he has been selected for on numerous occasions), World Fantasy Award and International Horror Guild Award.
Straub arrived in Farmville on the day of the presentation after being picked up in Durham, N.C. by English professor Dr. Craig Challender. Straub said that he had been visiting friends and searching for a possible new home for him and his wife — but it probably wasn’t going to happen. He described the car ride back with Challender as “gabby” and had fun seeing the professor again since the last time they saw each other was in 2009, when he presented to Longwood students for the first time.
Straub remembered coming to speak during a difficult time in Farmville — four days after the quadruple homicide that took place involving a criminal justice professor at the university.
This time, though, he was excited to see such a remarkable turn out to his presentation — and under much better circumstances.
Straub was introduced to his audience by Associate Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English and Modern Languages Rhonda Brock- Servais. She compared his novels to Russian nesting dolls, saying they are “unique but similar faces and designs – but different.” She enjoys his novels for their characters and the individual searches they go on.
When Straub took the stage, the first thing he said as the lights dimmed around him and the room darkened was, “Now we’re getting the Peter lighting.” The setting was a perfect tribute to the excerpt he read from the novel he’s working on currently, “Hello, Jack”, which focuses on author Henry James during the time of Jack the Ripper in London.
The excerpt showed Straub’s darker side. The passage was thrilled by shadowed words and darkened metaphors that complimented his style. Before starting the novel, Straub said he wanted to do something with Henry James and Jack the Ripper, mixing “what is real and what is imaginative.”
His process for his novels “is a battle itself,” said Straub. “The process is a b----.” Straub continued on to say that when beginning a novel, he goes in with confidence before turning left and suddenly getting lost. His wife has apparently heard him say more than once that he wanted to throw in the towel with a book.
Continuing on with his process, if the book makes it past his initial frustration, he revises it as he goes along, cutting chunks out here and there.
“Writing a novel is like building a house,” he said. “It’s a protection, it’s a labor — then there’s the heartbreaking moment when you give it away to someone else.”
Every city or place that has been mentioned in Straub’s books, he has been to himself. If he gets to know the location, it makes it easier to understand, though the most familiar place he likes to write about would be Milwaukee, which is one of the most impacting cities he’s lived in.
Only five years old when he left, Straub said the memories are still “vivid” and he was “walking around [with his] eyes open.”
Straub has also worked with famous horror author Stephen King. An experience he called competitive, the two co-wrote their second novel with a great sense of love and friendship. However, on their first book, “testosterone raised its ugly flag,” said Straub.
The second book that they are so fond of, “Black House,” was published on Sept. 15, 2001, and due to the release date, the hardbacks did not sell as well as the paperbacks.
Straub comments that it does not go unnoticed to him that he often appears four days after a tragedy.
However, being an award-winning author has not fazed Straub. His biggest accomplishment, he said, “Is having been able to produce a fairly decent body of work — which I’m still in the process of assembling.”
However, he believes the novel that made a real difference was “Cocoa”, a sequel to “The Talisman”, which he wrote with King. The novel took three years to complete and, at that point in his career, it was the longest he had ever worked on a book. “I could feel myself raising my game,” he said about the book.
Sales associates from Barnes & Noble sat outside the auditorium and sold copies of Straub’s novels to those who wanted to get his autograph, which he did during the reception in Wygal. The amount of books sold was the most that has ever been at one of the author series events this year.
Straub gave two pieces of advice to aspiring writers: To “read like a demon” and to “write your butt off.” He advised young writers to work as much as they can on their books, even if it doesn’t turn out well — keep writing and growing in your own rhythm.
“It is very helpful to work with the stuff that shames you,” he said, “because nobody forgets about that.”
