Interview with TexArcana Author J.C. Alegria

This is an interview with J.C. Alegria, one of the authors from our upcoming anthology, TexArcana! J.C. Alegria wrote the short story, “Buck and a Half.”

Alexis: Tell us about yourself! What would you like readers to know about you?

J.C. Alegria: Retired airline pilot with a passion for reading and storytelling. Seven publishing credits

so far: two aviation articles and the rest are spooky short stories. I live quietly in the

woods of western Pennsylvania. With the owls.

.Alexis: Owls are amazing creatures! I love seeing them on my walks. So, what book or books have most influenced you as a writer?

A picture of a beautiful barn owl!

J.C. Alegria: Better to list authors: Ray Bradbury, E.A. Poe, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Robert

McCammon, Elmore Leonard, Donald E. Westlake, et al.

Alexis: That’s a great list! I particularly like Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allen Poe, and Stephen King. Dean Koontz’s Watchers is one of my all-time favorite sci-fi/horror books, as well. I loved the idea of a hyper intelligent dog! If you write horror, what are some of your biggest fears, and how have they inspired your writing?

J.C. Alegria: The frailty of sanity and how easily our minds can deceive us and blur reality, and how comfortable evil seems to be curled up in the human spirit. I think these are things that frightens us all at some level.

Alexis: I agree. It’s always so disconcerting how easily evil seems to get into everything in the world, isn’t it? So what do you like to do other than read or write? Do you have any interesting hobbies?

J.C. Alegria: I am an avid scuba diver.

Alexis: Interesting! What TV shows/Movies do you like to watch or stream?

J.C. Alegria: I enjoy well-written horror stories that focus more on psychological and supernatural elements rather than violence and gore. “The Lady in Black” (2012) is a good example: a terrifying movie that was rated PG-13. I also enjoy good crime stories along the lines of Elmore Leonard.

Alexis: “The Lady in Black” is truly terrifying. What’s your favorite animal?

J.C. Alegria: I’m a dog person.

Alexis: Do you like playing video games? What’s your favorite game right now? Has a video game ever influenced you as a writer?

J.C. Alegria: The last video game I played was about 40 years ago. It was “GALAGA.” Joy stick and two buttons to destroy alien spacecraft. Booth-type machine in the lobby of a movie theatre. Cost twenty-five cents, and I kicked butt.

Alexis: Sounds like fun! Do you have pets?

J.C. Alegria: I’ve had dogs most of my life but do not have any now. However, I frequently dog sit for friends and enjoy the company of two wonderful German shepherds. I thus get a weekly dose of canine affection, a necessary inoculation against a crazy world.

Alexis: What advice do you have for other writers or people just getting started in writing?

J.C. Alegria: Whatever you do, read these two books: Make Your Words Work, by the late, great Gary Provost, and, of course, The Elements of Style. Then study how authors you enjoy construct sentences and paragraphs to deliver clear prose. In my opinion, the best style is clarity. Learn how to combine sentences without using conjunctions and know that adverbs are not your friends. Learn how to express a character’s thoughts without constantly using “he thought.” Imagine a scene and write it down, remembering that you are playing a movie in your reader’s mind. That’s a privilege. And have fun telling a good story.

Alexis: How do you choose what books you want to read?

J. C. Alegria: Previous experience with authors, themes, and I may skim through reviews, but I never read a synopsis; I don’t want to know the story before I read it.

Alexis: Do you like Greek/Roman/Norse/Asian/African mythology or folklore? What’s your favorite myth?

J.C. Alegria: Icarus.

Alexis: Thank you for talking to me! To learn more about J. C. Alegria, check out his author bio below!

Author Bio for J. C. Alegria

J. C. Alegria, a retired airline pilot, was raised in both Latin America and the United States. His previous publishing credits include two cover-feature aviation articles for FLYING magazine and the horror short stories Ghoul is my Copilot (Murky Depths, 2008), Cathedral (Tell Tale Press, 2019), and The Strange Death of Ebenezer Scrooge (Silver Shamrock, 2019). He also has two novel-length manuscripts ready to fly; the first is a horror/thriller with wickedly ruthless characters and the other is an aviation-based adventure story set during the Sandinista Revolution of 1979, a tale which takes a hard, unflinching look at greed and the cold brutality of Man. An avid reader and huge fan of spooky tales, he lives somewhere in the woods of western Pennsylvania, where he is currently working on his next story. Usually at night.

Review: Three of Neil Gaiman's Graphic Novels

I’ve been trying to take my children to the local library for books at least once a week this summer, and of course, I find tons of books there as well. However, I already have such a stack of books to read on my nightstand, that I decided on my last library visit to focus on checking out graphic novels, which are very quick to read, and often quite expensive to buy. Luckily, the local library has a nice collection of graphic novels.

The first to check my eye was Neil Gaiman’s Snow, Glass, Apples, which has a very beautiful, arresting cover. Once I’d picked it out, I decided I should go all in on reading Neil Gaiman graphic novels, so I picked out two more, A Study in Emerald and Violent Cases. I had read the short story versions of Snow, Glass, Apples and A Study in Emerald, but Violent Cases was completely new to me. All three books had very unique settings and very original art styles.

Cover of Neil Gaiman’s graphic novel, Snow, Glass, Apples, illustrated by Colleen Doran

Snow, Glass, Apples had to be my favorite, both as a story and because I loved Colleen Doran’s illustrations, which suited the creepy, unsettling nature of the story. Gaiman’s story is so strange and yet based on such a familiar story, but with so many horrifying twists. I have read what Gaiman himself wrote about this story—that he wrote it to prove to an audience that fairytales, even in this day and age, even though they’re so familiar (or perhaps because they’re so familiar) have great power. And this one certainly does.

The art style is (according to notes by Colleen Doran), inspired by Harry Clarke, and Irish illustrator and stained-glass artist famous for his illustrations of Hans Christian Anderson fairytales and Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories. What ever inspired them, the art is gorgeous, free-flowing and surreal, yet exquisite and detailed.

I’d recommend this book to anyone who likes fairytales or fantasy (though it is definitely not a children’s book, so parents should be careful), and who enjoys graphic novels.

Cover of Neil Gaiman’s A Study in Emerald, illustrated by Rafael Albuquerque

A Study in Emerald is a Cthulhu mythos/Sherlock Holmes mash up (as you might guess from the title and cover). I enjoyed the story quite a bit, though I read it as a short story before I saw the graphic novel. I loved the world of this story—it would be a amazing to have a whole novel set in this kind of universe. Though, honestly, perhaps because my imagined imagery was different or more ominous, I felt the story lost a little something for me in the graphic novel format. Still, the illustrations are beautiful and disturbing.

I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in Sherlock Holmes or Cthulhu, or anyone who enjoys creepy, unsettling stories.

Violent Cases is the first collaboration between Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, and one of the first published comics either man worked on. The story is very dreamlike, sometimes highly realistic, sometimes very surreal. I liked the idea of these ordinary people knowing mobsters like Al Capone, and seeing both the monstrous and the human side of such a larger than life man. Somehow, the personal details of the stories make Capone even more terrifying. I also liked the idea of a half-remembered but very disturbing childhood memory sort of haunting the protagonist.

Overall, I’d recommend Violent Cases to anyone who enjoys dreamlike graphic novels, especially ones with a little bit of noir.

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Review: Black Thorn, White Rose

One of the great things about having a nice long Christmas break is that I finally get the time to read through all the books I’ve steadily accumulated over the year. This Christmas, in part because Covid has kept us from going out or doing many parties/activities/concerts, I have read a lot of books!

One I read recently is Black Thorn, White Rose, a collection of fairytale retellings edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. I’d read a couple of other books in their collections of retellings (The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest and Black Swan, White Raven) quite a while ago, and I was interested to read more. Black Thorn, White Rose is the second book. Like other books, I didn’t love every story, but most of the stories were entertaining and fun to read, and a couple were brilliant little gems. I loved Godson by Roger Zelazney, Tattercoats by Midori Snyder, and The Black Swan by Susan Wade. Godson is a dark and clever tale with plenty of funny little twists to keep it interesting. Tattercoats is a sweet and touching story about a married woman reconnecting to her husband by exploring her dark, mysterious, and wild side. I loved that this story shows that even a happy marriage takes work, and that sometimes exploring and freeing ourselves is the best way to connect with another person. The Black Swan is something of the opposite of Tattercoats—it’s more of a haunting fable about the consequences of someone molding themselves to shape the desires of the people around them, and maybe about the subtle and heart breaking consequences of not recognizing that a true love would never want a change like that.

Cover of Black Thorn, White Rose

The only story I could not get into was The Sawing Boys by Howard Waldrop, which had maybe just too much dialect and too many characters with complicated names. I got confused and skipped over it.

I also had mixed feelings about Peter Straub’s Ashputtle. It was a very intense and horrifying story, but some of the madness and violence felt like it came out of nowhere. I could quite grasp the main character’s intense hatred of her stepmother or the child in her care, and some of the rest of the story felt too bizarre to really make sense. It did, however, have some visceral and powerful imagery.

There were also several stories I enjoyed, including Stronger Than Time, Words Like Pale Stones, Ogre, and The Brown Bear of Norway. Both Stronger Than Time and Words Like Pale Stones were haunting tales, while Ogre was a charming comedy about community theater. The Brown Bear of Norway was a strange and sweet romance about adolescence and change.

Overall, like their other collections, I’d recommend Black Thorn, White Rose to anyone who enjoys fairytales and fantasy short stories. It’s fun and quick to read, and I always love seeing a creative spin on beloved stories.

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