I welcome into my blog today, that fine fellow of fright, that good guy of the gruesome, that charming chap of creepy creatures, Mr. Stephen D. Sullivan!

Stephen—or, as I like to call him, Steve—has over sixty published titles to his name and has helped create more comics and games than he can either list or remember.

Steve's a Scribe award-winner for “Best Novel Adaptation, 2016” for his Manos: The Hands of Fate.

He is also one of the Monster Kids on Monster Kid Radio.

And to all appearances, Steve is a normal and nice person living with his wife in a small town in Wisconsin.

YEAH, RIGHT!

Do normal and nice people write books like his latest?

The monsters aren’t only in the museum!

Despite a lifetime of traveling with their father to collect strange artifacts, twins Topaz and Opal Cushing have never fully believed in monsters or the supernatural. Oh, sure, they share an eerie psychic connection, and their tarot card readings often come true, but… Werewolves? Vampires? Living mummies? None of those could be real. Those legends are just for rubes. Right?

Since the girls’ father has been away, though, strange things have been happening in the family’s little exhibit—and in the waxworks studio that shares their dilapidated Victorian mansion on the outskirts of London. Now, the twins’ dreams of a fun, romantic summer season are turning into a nightmare, and the monsters are running...

Do normal, nice guys who live in a small town in Wisconsin write stories like that?

Stories destined to chill, thrill, and invade your nightmares with terror and with...with...oh, it's almost too horrible to say...with Entertainment!

Cushing? Cushing? Where have I heard that name before?

Give me a moment, I'm sure I'll get it before my memory completely peters out. And when I get it, I'll be sure to hammer it down before I forget it again.

Well! Mr. Sullivan has a lot to answer for!

So let's put some questions to him.

In your young childhood, where did the monsters reside -- under your bed or in your closet?

Well, I was in the top bunk, so the only monster under the bed was my little brother. Closets didn’t much scare me, either—though maybe a bit of the dark corners could have been creepy, I suppose. Weirdly, as a very young child, I became convinced that there were spirits lurking in the plumbing under the toilet. The water held them down. So when I flushed, I would have to run out of the room before they could escape and get me. Is that weird?

(Yes, Steve, yes that is weird.)

You have a great love for classic monster movies, both the American Universal films of the 1930s and 40s and the British Hammer films of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Do you remember the first of these classic films you saw and was it a Universal or Hammer film?

I’m sure that I must have seen a Universal film first, but it’s so long ago, I can’t really remember what it was. I knew the Universal monsters from their Aurora model kits, and my brother and I had a set of 8x10 glossies of the monsters. I got to see the whole cycle when WCVB (Channel 5) in Boston started doing their Horror Classics double feature on Saturday nights, but I must have seen something before then. (Because WCVB went on air in 1972, when I was 12.) The first Aurora kit I saw was certainly The Creature, who remains my fave. I probably saw that when I was five. It might have been the first Universal film I saw, too, but I just can’t be sure. I feel like they’ve been with me my whole life. The Hammer films I didn’t see until later when CBS started showing them late night—just in time for my teenage years. (Thank you, Hammer!)

You are a fan of the great Peter Cushing, especially his Hammer films. Now, as you know, I am not too familiar with these films, so as October is Peter Cushing month on TCM, recommend your three favorite Cushing/Hammer films for me to DVR.

Wow, that’s a tough ask! Clearly Dracula/Horror of Dracula (US title) needs to be there, because of his Van Helsing. Van Helsing is also in Brides of Dracula, which is a great film but has no Dracula, so maybe I should go for something different for your second film… His Baron Frankenstein is also iconic, and the first in the series is an obvious choice, but I’ll go for Frankenstein Created Woman, which is an unexpected twist on the story, and I really like it. My friend Joshua Kennedy would surely recommend The Gorgon (his fave film), while others might say The Mummy, but I think maybe for my last recommendation I’ll go with one of the Karnstein films. I was about to say Twins of Evil in which Cushing is a complete bastard, but then I remembered he’s also in The Vampire Lovers, which is my favorite in that trilogy. Cushing’s part isn’t as large in that film, but it is, in my opinion, the sexiest of the Hammer films. For non-horror Hammer with Cushing, a sure bet is Cash on Demand. But really, Cushing was so good that you can’t go wrong with any of his films.

In a battle between the Universal Frankenstein’s monster and the Hammer Frankenstein’s monster who would win?

I think Universal’s monster, clearly. I don’t buy Igor’s talk of the monster being as “strong as 100 men,” but he clearly is super-powerful. The Hammer monster is tough, but even one bullet can put him out of commission. I think Universal’s monster has 3 or more bullets in him at the start of Son of Frankenstein, but charge him up and he’s ready to go with no problems, bullets in the chest and all.

Though I should point out that in real life, probably none of the Universal actors would have stood a chance against Christopher Lee (Hammer’s monster), who was in some branch of Special Forces that was so secret that his work is still classified. Though maybe if Lon Chaney, Jr, got in the first punch…!

When did the idea for Dr. Cushing’s Chamber of Horrors dawn on you? Although I understand it may have been in the cold sweats of the night.

A lot of the ideas for Dr. Cushing have been swimming around in the back of my mind for ages, but the desire to give them shape and form them into a coherent story came from conversations with Monster Kid friends. Universal had announced their upcoming Dark Universe film project, and a lot of us were worried that they might screw it up. (They pretty much did, though I enjoyed the films.) That got me thinking that somebody—me—should write the kind of old-style monster rally that all of the people I know wanted. Sure, I couldn’t put it up on the screen (though if you want to option it, call me!), but being a novelist, I could write it so that people could view that amazing monster rally story in their own imaginations.

You have twins, Topaz and Opal Cushing, as your protagonists. Can you describe them for me?

As you said, they’re twin sisters, but fraternal; Topaz is the “light” sister, blonde and always seeing the best in people, Opal is the “dark” sister, brunette and more worldly. They’re very similar in a lot of ways, because they’ve been raised by their eccentric father, Dr. Cushing, and he’s brought them up to be hunters of rare artifacts and curators for his growing museum of the weird, while he’s away on expeditions. So, they have an odd combination of being responsible for the family business, and also growing up largely unsupervised. That makes them free spirits compared to other eighteen-year-olds, and a bit odd, too. They also have a psychic bond, and they’re good at fortune-telling using Tarot cards. And naturally, they’re also at that age where young men and romance are becoming an issue. They love their dad and are pretty happy being on their own while he’s away, despite the family finances always being precarious.

Which is more important in Dr. Cushing’s Chamber of Horrors -- horror or humor?

There’s some humor in the Dr. Cushing novel—and certainly, black humor throughout—but in the end, it's really a classic horror story, with elements of adventure mixed in. It’s very much in the tradition of the classic Universal and Hammer monster films.

Which of the great monsters from these films would you want to have dinner with—assuming you are not the dinner itself?

Dracula would likely be the most interesting conversationalist—or Imhotep, the mummy, but obviously being around either of them would be super dangerous. The Creature and the Wolfman are my favorites, but I can’t imagine sitting down at a table with either one. Even Larry Talbot, the Wolfman’s human form, might be a little hard to take, with his death wish and all. I’m assuming Van Helsing doesn’t count as a monster. So, I guess I’d have to say Carmilla Karnstein, because she’d have all that accumulated vampire wisdom, plus, being played by Ingrid Pitt, she’s incredible to look at, and since she really only bites girls, I’d probably be fairly safe.

I understand that Dr. Cushing’s Chamber of Horrors is the first of a proposed series of books. When can we expect the next one?

I’m hoping to do at least three Dr. Cushing books, maybe as many as five or six, but I have a number of other projects that need to be done before I start the next one—assuming someone doesn’t throw a pile of money at me to start Dr. Cushing’s Caravan of Horrors right away. I have two Frost Harrow novels nearly ready for publication, and I’m also working on a Waldemar Daninsky novel, based on the werewolf films of Paul Naschy. I’m very excited about that.

But I hope to get the Cushing family back into the mix shortly, and maybe start working on the next novel sometime in 2021. If that’s too long a wait, though, I always release a new Dr. Cushing story at Christmas time—and there are a bunch of them up on my site for free right now.

Thank you, Steve!

Dr. Cushing's Chamber of Horrors can be purchased from these fine online stores in both digital and paper editions.

Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/y4wjflsh

Barnes&Noble: https://tinyurl.com/y235ejq3

Books-a-Million: https://tinyurl.com/y3kk4qzd

Indiebound: https://tinyurl.com/yyftpkxe

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