C. Sanchez-Garcia is the author of the novellas Mortal Engines and The Color of the Moon. The latter ghost story, his most recent, was deeply influenced by the famous old Japanese ghost story of "Hoichi The Earless." In this fascinating interview, Garcia talks about his work, the Japanese influence, and compares the Kwaidanshu ghost stories of the East to the traditional Western ones.

Tell us a little about yourself and the type of fiction you write.

I’m a new author, and I’ve been writing consistently for about two years or so. I wanted to be a writer ever since I was kid, but it took me this long simply to develop the ability to sit at a keyboard and write. I write different things, but my natural home seems to be erotica. It's something which is very primal and basic to life, and it’s a genre which has been taboo for so long, that now that it's opening into the mainstream you can go almost anywhere with it. It’s the literary equivalent of punk rock. But I don’t want to write crap. As much as possible I want to write character driven stories that are about something. So if I write erotic horror or erotic science fiction or literary, I still have the same goal. I want the stories to have heart. I want them to be about something and to say something. That’s the goal I always aim for. I don’t claim to hit it, but I aim for it.

The main theme of my own life has been a failed search for God. So a lot of my stories seem to arrive at spiritual themes by the time I reach my final draft. It takes me a long time to write a story because I overhaul it and overhaul it and overhaul it. I don’t even know what the story is supposed to be about until the third or fourth draft. My novella The Color of the Moon took me about ten years to arrive at its final form. If any of your readers would like to see it, you can visit the Whiskey Creek site here or you can see the book in some detail here (more or less). There's a link there to read the opening scene of Mortal Engines and The Color of the Moon here.

When did your love for the dark side of things begin?

I’ve always loved a good story. I read the novel Dracula when I was ten and it scared the hell out of me. I used to go to monster movies and have these terrible dreams. I’m still that way. Tell me a good story. So you have to ask yourself – what is a good story? Horror stories tend to be plot driven. But the best ones are character driven. To tell a really scary story I believe you have to care about the person The Very Bad Thing is about to happen to.