Interview with The Pulse Magazine - talks about forthcoming works.

Up until this year Joe McGee, a 21-year-old horror writer out of Worcester, has focused primarily on short-story writing. He began his career 5 years ago with a short story assignment in school and has since evolved and developed into a nationally recognized, award-winning professional writer. Following a similar path to fellow MA native Matt Damon, Joe is now crafting his original school assignment into one of two screenplays. However, unlike Damon, who wrote the first version of Good Will Hunting while attending Harvard, Joe wrote Pictures while attending Worcester’s North High.

Suffice it to say, it will be some time before we know whether Joe’s Pictures is the next Oscar winner, but that’s OK with the author because writing movie scripts has never been his main focus. While he appreciates all mediums of the horror genre, his prime interest remains in literature. “Books tell a deeper story, you get to see what the characters are thinking and why,” he explains. In the vein of this appreciation, Joe is pursuing a career in novel-writing ~ with over 30 books planned for eventual release.

Joe’s first full novel, In The Wake of The Night, is being published by Publish America and is set for an early November ’06 release. Joe describes the novel as a mix of horror and sci-fi elements including “grotesque visions and unworldly monsters.” While such a description may seem heavy on terror, Joe is quick to emphasize that storytelling and characterization are important to him and that he is a writer first and a scare artist second. Indeed, his commitment to thorough storytelling may be the strongest undercurrent pushing him through the multi-faceted sea of book-writing.

Joe’s work on another novel, The Fallen, perhaps best illustrates his ambition for more epic storylines. The novel will have an Armageddon context that pieces together many mini-stories which each showcase different individuals’ experiences. Currently in the middle of the writing process, Joe has realized that the book may literally be huge, with the first section alone weighing in at over 15,000 words. The novel is tentatively scheduled for a 2008 release, but you don’t have to wait that long to get your fix of Joe’s writing.

In addition to Joe’s plans for novels and screenplays, he also has two novellas (typically about twice the length of a normal short story) and two short story compilation projects set for release within the next year. One of the projects is an anthology of 24 short stories, 24 Hours of Night, co-written with Brian Fatah Steele. The other project is a book titled Seven Days (which, incidentally, bears, as do many of McGee’s CD-Roms and hard copy works, the curiosity-piquing “May contain some adult language, violence, sexuality, gore, and adult content and themes” warning!) that brings together short stories from Joe and six other horror writers including Kealan Burke and Scott Nicholson. Seven Days is being written for the benefit of the American Diabetes Association, with all profits going to the cause; it is a project with special significance for Joe as he is personally afflicted with diabetes. The book has already garnered recognition from Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine.

Asked about all the hard work and extensive time commitment, Joe beams and responds, “I love it, it gives you the opportunity to put so much of yourself and your emotions on the page.” Who knew a horror writer could be so sentimental.

Check out www.josephmcgee.net for special sales on signed copies, blogs, plot synopses, reviews, and sneak previews.