The award-winning horror author Ronald Kelly turns his writing to his life as a Southern storyteller. His new book Southern Fried and Horrified explores his life, successes, the collapse of mass marketing publishing, and the early influences found in his writing. Though the book officially comes out September 6, 2022, Ronald Kelly’s publisher has provided us with a preview. You can preorder your copy of the hardcover special edition now here.
Here’s a preview:
When folks ask me that writer’s question, you know, “How did you get into horror
in the first place?”, I like to tell a little story. Now, most of you who have listened
to enough podcasts or read enough interviews know exactly what story it is. And
you’re probably rolling your eyes and thinking “Aww, here he goes again!” Well,
since it’s my story and maybe some of you haven’t heard it… here I go again.
When my mother was pregnant with me, she moved away from Nashville,
back to her hometown of White Bluff while my father was in Europe. She rented a
little house where she intended to stay until Daddy came home from the service.
Well, one afternoon, she climbed up into the attic to store a couple of boxes anddiscovered a whole stack of EC Horror comics. Tales from the Crypt, Vault of
Horror, Haunt of Fear, Crime SuspenStories. Now, this was early 1959, so it was
safe to say that they’d probably been up there for nearly ten years. Having an
interest in spooky stories and the macabre, Mama brought those comic books
down and read them the entire time she was pregnant with me. So, while some
kids got read fairy tales and Bible stories while floating in the birth chamber, I was
being fed a steady diet of grave-bursting zombies, flesh-eating monsters, and
crazed axe murderers.
I like to think that’s why I gravitated to ghosts, werewolves, vampires and
such from the very beginning.
Even as a very small child, I loved weird and frightening things. Particularly
after starting grade school, my infatuation with Halloween and monsters seem to
take a firm hold and that was what most of my thoughts and interests seemed to
revolve around. I took to drawing when I was five or six and, at first, the sketches
were minimally detailed and crude, exploring ghosts tales I’d heard or things I’d
seen on television: the flying monkeys from Oz, the Loch Ness Monsters, the
specter-like man in search of his golden arm, and, of course, Ol’ Bloody Bones.
My infatuation with cinematic monsters began when I was six years old.
Up until then, my television viewing consisted mostly of Captain Kangaroo,
Romper Room, and The Bozo the Clown Show (which was sort of like Pennywise
with ADHD on methamphetamine). That and Saturday morning cartoons; you
know, The Flintstones, Bugs Bunny, Mighty Mouse, and Popeye. Eventually, in the
late 60s and early 70s, there would be better stuff: Scooby Doo, Space Ghost,Johnny Quest, The Herculoids, and manic psychedelic live-action shows like H.R.
Puffenstuff and The Banana Splits.
When I started first grade, a show came on at three o’clock in the
afternoon called The Big Show. It was local and hosted by Nashville Channel 5’s
handsome weatherman, Bob Lobertini. The Big Show featured every Universal
Monster movie and 1950s giant atomic monster flick that you could imagine.
Since we lived next to the school, I would run like a scalded hog to get home just
in time to plop down on the couch before the show started. Baking was Mama’s
culinary specialty and she always had chocolate chip cookies, a piece of cake, or a
slice of pie, and a cold glass of milk ready for me.
The first monster movie I ever watched was The Creature from the Black
Lagoon. It both horrified and fascinated me. Just the opening scene – the
Gillman’s clawed hand reaching thorough the tent flap and grabbing that guy’s
face – told me that this was something entirely different than The Three Stooges
or Rocky and Bullwinkle. I mean, this was a primordial missing link in the Amazon
jungle, flaying the flesh off a screaming man’s skull. So, naturally, I was hooked.
And it also provided me with my first “full-grown woman” crush with swimsuit-
clad Julie Adams. Now, you remember Sandra and what had happened to me
back in kindergarten. After that humiliating incident, I had wanted nothing more
to do with the female race, until Julie started back-stroking in the Black Lagoon.
Good thing she escaped the Creature at the end of the movie. Can you imagine
what sort of freaky kids they would have spawned?
Having been terminally bitten by the “monster bug”, I began to expand my
interest in monsters, the macabre, and horror in general as I grew older. Firstthere were Aurora monster models at age eight through twelve. My mother, a
horror enthusiast herself, kept my monster addiction well supplied. During our
weekly visits to town, she would buy me a new monster model or a new issue of
Famous Monsters of Filmland. I wanted to buy Creepy and Eerie, but Mama said
they were much too ‘adult’ for me… especially the buxom Vampirella (which she
considered to be the slutty, half-naked daughter of Satan himself). My mother
also let me decorate my bedroom with posters of Count Dracula and King Kong. I
did my very best to convince her that I would benefit greatly from a room painted
entirely in black with a casket-shaped bed. She wasn’t about to go quite that far,
however, much to my disappointment.
Model building was a huge hobby of mine between the ages of ten and
twelve. I built all the Aurora classic Universal movie monster models, which in the
early 70s were the glow-in-the-dark models in the square box, not the older
versions in the rectangular box. I never used the glow heads, hands, or feet,
though. Even at that age, I was a stickler for detail, and so I painted the models as
close to the cinematic monsters as I could (or I imagined them to be, since all of
the Aurora models were from monster movies filmed in black and white.) I always
saved the glow-in-the-dark pieces and built a “mini-monster” from the head,
hands, and feet. There were other model series I built as well, like Planet of the
Apes, Dark Shadows, Pirates of the Caribbean, Prehistoric Scenes, and Monster
Scenes. The Monster Scenes models have become somewhat controversial over
years for the fact that most of the sets involved torture, sadism, bondage, and
sordid scientific experimentation. I never made that connection at age ten, but,
looking back, the subject matter does seem questionable for young model-
building boys who gleefully built pendulums and Iron Maidens to torment andterrify the scantly-clad female Victim. Joining ghoulish Dr. Deadly and the
Frankenstein Monster was none other than sexy Vampirella in her nearly non-
existent blood red outfit, showing off enough undead flesh to tempt and tantalize
any prepubescent male. And, like the magazine, Mama refused to let me have the
model version either, because I would actually be holding the nubile temptress in
my sweaty little hand.
Of course, Halloween was always a huge holiday for me; one that I
anticipated with the same reverence as Christmas. The month of October was
always filled with planning Trick-or-Treating routes, the selection of just the right
costume, and decorated the house, inside and out, for the big night.
But as I left childhood and approached my teenage years, I knew my
indulgence in Halloween wouldn’t last forever… that, as a faithful aficionado of All
Hallows’ Eve, my days were numbered.
