Gail Smith is the pen name of romance author Linda Mooney.  She likes to combine elements of urban fantasy and science fiction in her sensuous romance novels. Her horror novellas, Code 30 and Journal, are available in ebook formats from Tease Publishing. In this interview, Gail talks about her work, what's inside the mind of a horror author, and some of her favorite horror books.

Thanks for the interview, Gail. What got you into writing horror?

When I was very young, my parents would travel to a tiny town outside of San Antonio to visit my grandparents, I would spend hours in the living room watching the Saturday afternoon horror movies on Channel 5. Of course, back then, the worse ones were the original Frankenstein, the Mummy movies, and so forth. I loved them. They never scared me, but I was fascinated by them. As I got older and was flexing my writing chops in school, I would write ghost stories, mostly. Some bloody, but not that much. Not until I discovered Lovecraft and Poe. And Hammer horror films. I'm still a HUGE horror buff.

What types of horror books do you enjoy reading? Any favorite authors?

Oh, wow. My favorite all-time horror writer is Jack Ketcham. His stuff gives Stephen King nightmares. And in the "graphic novel" writers, I love Steve Niles. Give me the gross, the groady, the dripping with decay any day.

Tell us a bit about your horror books, Journal and Code 30.

I write all my romances in 3rd person, but I write my horror in 1st person, because I think it gets across the absolute depravity of the situation a lot better. Journal is a different slant on the zombie genre. It's one woman's account of trying to survive right after a major cataclysmic event has occurred, and when people die as a result, they're resurrected as the living dead. I will warn you now — my stuff does not always have a Happily Ever After. In fact, one reviewer was thrown for a total loop when she got to the end of Journal. She never saw it coming.

Code 30 is perhaps my favorite novella I've written to date. The heroine is a street cop, and she and her partner come across some serial killers who are not your "typical" hack-and-slashers. There are strong paranormal elements to each of the three chapters, which are three separate series of events which all tie together. The title refers to the police call sign for Officer Needs Assistance.

What's inside the mind of the horror writer?

I think a horror writer disassociates himself from the true, vile nature of the beast. I do know that, if I hadn't been such a horror fan, and learned all the tricks used in horror movies and such by reading up on them via magazines such as Fangoria, that a lot of what I see (and write) would turn my stomach. The stories I tell I do from the mind of the person directly involved. That way I can step back later and "not be" that person whom I left hanging on page 26, LOL!