L.K. Scott is a #1 Bestselling Amazon author. As a horror and mystery writer he has always had a taste for the macabre and the mysterious. In addition to his writing he has a BA in film and has written, directed, and produced over a dozen films. Born in Sunnyside, Washington, L.K. Scott now lives in Solvang, California with his partner Seth, where they enjoy surfing, traveling, and wine tasting. When he’s not writing you can find him tending to his garden of endangered and exotic plants, or hunting down the best Mexican food around.

“Friend” L.K. Scott on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/logan.scott.9889

Follow him on Twitter @LKScott1

And visit his website Dreadful Notions https://dreadfulnotions.wordpress.com to discuss horror writing tips, and to share and promote your own work! (A few of his articles have been reblogged here)

For a list of his books to purchase, please visit his Amazon Author page

Author Q&A

1. Will you ever write another mystery featuring Eric De la Cruz?

I don’t have any stories for Eric at this time, no. But who knows? Tomorrow I may wake up with a great idea he’d be perfect for. I’d like to write at least one more. A sort of mystery/comedy like She Tried the Window.

2. Penny Holloway, one of your supporting characters from She Tried the Window recently re-appeared in your short story, Murder After Sunset. Can we expect a series from her? If so, what makes her different from Eric De la Cruz?

Penny Holloway has an interesting, underprivileged life, but she’s so passionate about adventure. I’d love to write a series featuring her as the protagonist as she adventures around the world solving mysteries and uncovering sacred objects. Maybe something like Carmen Sandiego or Tomb Raider. She’s different from Eric in many ways. Penny, unlike Eric, is more rational and thoughtful. She’s clever and witty and sexy where as Eric is an asshole, a little spoiled, and opinionated. Eric is an angry, horny, whirlwind of drugs and drama, Penny is a calming ocean breeze. They couldn’t be more different.

3. How closely related is your novel Massacre’ade Party to your real life?

The events of Massacre’ade Party was actually inspired by a true story. I had witnessed a crime one night while Gogo dancing except at the time I didn’t know it was a crime. It wasn’t until the following morning when my friend received a telephone call from the police station that I realized I had seen something peculiar. I remember knowing I had seen something strange, but I wasn’t sure precisely what was strange about it. Everything else in the novel was just a crazy exaggeration of actual events.

4. You were actually a Gogo Boy in West Hollywood?

Back when I was younger and in the best shape of my life I worked as a Gogo dancer all over Southern California to help pay for college, which opened up a lot of doors for me. I was even voted Top Male Model two years in a row for a couture clothing company.

5. In 2015 your novel caused a bit of controversy. Do you believe this had a negative impact on your success?

Actually quite the opposite. When word got out I was doing a book signing in a small conservative town, a group of conservative bible thumpers tried to protest because my novel featured a gay character engaging in sexually devious acts with other males, including, but not limited to, drug and alcohol abuse. The amount of support I received to combat those haters was tremendous. I don’t know if I would’ve made it to the Bestseller list without them.

6. Do you prefer writing horror or mystery?

That’s a tough one. They’re not totally different, they function best hand in hand. I think I prefer writing and reading horror, though I think mystery tends to be a bit more creative and witty. I do love them both but my favorite changes between them day to day.

7. What are some of your favorite horror and mystery novels?

Horror:

The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

We’ve Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Bag of Bones by Stephen King

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

The Machinery of Night by Douglas Clegg

Mystery:

The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

Death of a Party by Carolyn Hart

8. Who are your greatest influences when writing?

My late grandmother, Cloe Garrison, first inspired me to write. She read to me for hours every night since as young as I could remember. Even at five and six years old she was reading to me Shakespeare and Poe and Agatha Christie, explaining the language and situations when I didn’t understand, and when I started to get sleepy, we’d switch to picture books. She took me to every play at the high school and community college and watched classics and musicals on television. As an adult my grandmother and those authors still stick with me. Only now I’ve added Stephen King to that list.

9. Do you currently have something in the works?

I am currently working on a novel titled Evilution that I may turn into a series depending on their success.

10. What is Evilution about?

A certified emergency response team is sent to investigate an oil tanker that lost communication, but when the only witness kills himself, it causes a chain of events that cause them to be stranded on an uncharted island filled with bizarre and horrific experiments involving the self-regeneration of nanotechnology and “gray goo.” Basically it’s a zombie novel (possibly a series) that I wrote as a grim parable of the future in technology. I wanted to present the question: “If technology allows us to live forever, should we? And of the people who do take advantage of that, are they most likely the kind of people we don’t want to live forever?”

The first will take place on an island in the Pacific Northwest. If the book is well-received, I will write the sequel which takes place in a city on the mainland with a new cast of characters, but with cameos from previous ones.

11. When do you expect to release it?

Depends on the publisher. I’m currently writing revisions to my rough draft and the publisher who I intended it for is changing owners so the company may focus in a different genre. Otherwise I will seek an agent, a publisher, or just self-publish it. I’m not opposed to any option.

12. As a #1 Bestselling author, could you give some advice to new authors other than the obvious ‘read, read, read, and write?’

You don’t have to write great, you just have to write well. Kill your adverbs, show your characters actions and limit their thoughts. Write intelligently. You’re not doing your readers any favors by dumbing things down. Readers are smart, so let them be.

13. Your writing style has changed dramatically from Massacre’ade Party up until now. Why such a drastic change?

I graduated college. I still take writing classes each week, and each week I get a little better. I will continue taking writing classes for as long as I’m physically and mentally capable. A great writer should never stop learning how to write. One day I hope to write with the elegance and atmosphere of Susan Hill, the complexity of characters like Stephen King, the uninhibited raunchy and gross-out factor of Douglas Clegg and Chuck Wendig, and the sophistication of Jane Austen. That’s the dream.

SPECIFIC INFORMATION ABOUT UPCOMING RELEASE: EVILUTION

Evilution is a unique story for its glimpse into the not too distant future. Technology is continuously evolving and soon, within the next fifty years, technology will have the capabilities to evolve itself, growing more advanced without the need for human intervention. According to over a dozen studies in science and research across the globe, nanotechnology in fifty years will be able to regenerate dead cells and destroy cancer cells, viruses, and diseases giving humans the ability to live forever. This technology is already available and currently in its testing phase. The concept of immortality is no longer paranormal or science-fiction. This is real life and it’s happening now.

This technology at first will be available only to those who can afford it. The wealthiest and the most powerful of the elite. There is such a thing as too much power and those who do not understand that are not the kind of people who should be in power. Do we really want the sociopaths and psychopaths living forever? Changing the fate of the world according to their own selfish desires forever?

Evilution is a novel that, in a narrative fashion, confronts the wide spectrum of possibilities where everything that can go wrong, does. Failed experiments that cause only partial regeneration of dead cells, corroding parts of the body to feed the rest, gray goo made of nanotechnology that devours all matter in order to continue replicating itself, and finally, immortal villains leading the world into annihilation.

Members of a certified emergency response team are sent to investigate an oil tanker after the communication is severed during a Pacific storm. When they arrive they find the oil tanker nearly completely abandoned except for a single witness driven mad from fear. When the man kills himself, the team is left stranded on the island where nano-experiments have been set loose feasting on every living thing on the island, including the C.E.R.T. members. Their mission goes from investigating the oil tanker to saving the world from an unstoppable hunger that will inevitably spread to the four corners of the earth.

This excerpt is an un-edited proof copy intended for promotional purposes only. Please leave reviews based on the final, edited print version.

Sheets soiled by muddy boots and cargo pants from the day before wrapped around his waist as he reached for the bottle of Four Roses on the nightstand, its contents dwindling as the soundless night exploded into a fiery dawn. Naked and chilled on the floor, he had at some point in the night pulled the blankets and pillows off the bed. He hoisted his achy body to a sitting position and felt the sting of dried blood crusted over split knuckles and when he rushed to the bathroom found more vomit around the toilette than in. When he finished angry pain hammered into his brain like a railroad spike through his skull curable by a gargle of water and two Scotch backs.

A line of daylight cut between the curtains and sliced through the dark haze of his bedroom when he returned. Down the center of his face and chest. He shielded his eyes with his hand and let himself fall to the mattress. Through the empty liquor bottle on the nightstand, Rebecca smiled at him from the photograph. These days her smile looked sad. He shut his eyes and waited for the pain to subside, but it never did. It never will.

It is a universal truth widely acknowledged that a man suffering the loss of his departed wife should wish above all else to have her safely returned. The world is different now than it used to be. People were still hit by cars, struck by lightning, dying of cancer, and even through the physical damage is the end  to life, the soul—Travis’s soul—continued to suffer.

She was a slender and simple beauty, genuinely kind with a passion for the wild outdoors as a girl born and raised in the country should. She possessed the skill of a talented a abstract painter that he only learned to appreciate after he found the red crayon that had saved them from a cold and bitter darkness the previous winter.

It was neither a bus nor lightning but a black 2000 Chevrolet Suburban that struck Rebecca Pates driven by a college sophomore girl who had been looking at her phone instead of the road.