Ryan is a busy man; he has several short stories to his name and his first novel, The Summer I Died, behind him. Ahead of him he has shorts in two new zombie collections from Permuted Press and Elements of the Apocalypse also from Permuted Press, as well as a new novel. With all of the spare time he is also in the San Diego rockabilly band, The Buzzbombs.

How did you first discover Horror?

Long story, but I’ll try to be brief. When I was young I went to daycare at a woman’s house near my grade school. She was nuts. Everyday she’d sit all us kids down, give us PB&J and milk, and throw in a movie like Friday the 13^th or Nightmare on Elm Street. You never saw so many kids crying at once. In truth, she was a wonderfully caring person, but her methods would certainly be suspect these days. I was hooked from an early age.

What was the first punk record you ever heard?

I hate to say it, but I think it was Never Mind The Bollocks by the Sex Pistols. Consider it a gateway album—it lead me into heavier stuff like Minor Threat and The Misfits, and from there I became a treasure hunter, looking for that one punk band that would give me a perpetual hard on.

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

I started writing stories in elementary school, little stapled-together books about time travel and ghosts. The other kids in class would bug me to read them (not that they were any good--I remember spelling fart FOT because of my Rhode Island accent). The teacher sent a note home to my Mom saying I was distracting the class. She argued back, “He’s writing stories, and that’s bad?” It was just fun for me; it wasn’t until high school that I knew I loved to write, and remember telling my English teacher I’d be a novelist someday.

You rock out in a band named The Buzzbombs, who play all over San Diego. When did you start playing guitar?

Sometime around age 13. I wanted to be Kirk Hamet from Metallica.

If you strike it rich playing in a band or writing novels which would you choose?

Writing novels. The difference between success with writing and success with a band is that with the writing, the only person who has to be on time for the gig is me.

Your first novel was once described to me as Hostel with a brain. How did this book come about?

I went shooting with a friend. He had a big ass .44 magnum and the thing nearly knocked my on my ass. Dirty Harry I am not. Really, I just wanted to remember the feeling so I started writing a story about two friends shooting a gun (which is how the novel starts off) and then it just progressed from there into this bloodbath. Haha. And you know, I love gory, slasher movies, but it’s rare you care about the characters, so I was hoping I could do a slasher story with characters you routed for.

You also just finished a novella for Permuted Press. How did that come about?

You’re referring to Elements Of The Apocalypse, which will have four novellas in it. Simply put, Jacob called me. I guess he liked the stories I had submitted for the Undead anthos (I made it into both volumes 2 and 3). He was very specific about not doing a typical Water Apocalypse story, and I think we came up with something unique. It called With A Face Of Golden Pleasure, which is a line from a Ralph Waldo Emerson poem about the destructive power of water. The other novellas (by R.Thomas Riley. DL Snell, and John Sunseri) are very inventive and fun, too. It’s going to be a fantastic book.

You also live in San Diego, which has a very active horror community at the moment. Could you tell our readers about it? How has it influenced your career?

San Diego is certainly budding for horror fans. You’ve got great authors here like Cody Goodfellow, Nancy Holder, even sci fi guru David Brin. Plus you have Comic Con every year, which brings in tons of genre fans and promote the year’s horror films. And of course great bookstores like Mysterious Galaxy, where I went to see horror master Dan Simmons read just last week. I think many people come to San Diego to find what they can’t find elsewhere, so you are bound to find a community interested in the same thing as you. If you don’t believe me, just attend a late night screening of some horror film import at the Ken Theater, and watch all the enthusiasts come out.

You have a second novel Ratings Game which is done, and another on the way. Could you tell us about them?

Ratings Game stems from my 9-5 job as a magazine editor/journalist. As an editor, it’s my job to make sure our magazine sells better and wins more awards than the other magazines in the area (we swept the SD press awards last year, thank you very much!) The bottom line is that the most popular mag gets the advertising dollars. You see a lot of “borrowed” ideas popping up in rival mags, and you have to laugh. Either that or they borrow it and try to one up you somehow. And there’s the issue of content being swayed by advertisers. (Typical phone call from an advertiser: “You can’t run edit on that guy, he’s my direct competition!”) This led to the idea of two journalists competing for ratings by, well, let’s just say they’d kill to be number one. Unlike The Summer I Died, this one is meant to be a humorous take on today’s media, how it’s sensationalized for ratings (just watch Fox News to see what I’m talking about). A small press has expressed interest in it and wants the final edit by the end of March. The third novel is called The Bugboy, and is nearly finished. I worked in a group home with autistic and mentally retarded men for a year. There was a long history of abuse with these guys—and not even from their parents, but from their care workers in other group homes. So the story is about why and how people take advantage over people who can’t defend themselves, and what happens when one of them is pushed too far.

You are editor of Ranch and Coast magazine for a day job and on weekends your band plays all over San Diego…How the hell do you find time to write?

Haha. It isn’t easy. I write everyday on my lunch break for one hour, then at least another two hours when I get home. The constant complaint I hear from both my friends and my girlfriend is that they never get to see me. I think I may take a few months off after I finish The Bugboy and pay some attention to all the people who have been so supportive of me.

Plans for the future?

Hard to say. I’ve got a few ideas for novels I want to write, and the band wants to release our second album. I also want to take some time and travel, as I think that’s really the best research one can do for writing. You’ve got to be as curious as a cat, all the time, and then you’ll find yourself with so many ideas you won’t be able to find time to put them all down on paper.