THE AUTHOR'S INSIGHT INTO DEVIL GLASS
     
Robert Cales

 

            I was about seven years old when I had my first experience with Horror and I still remember the name of the movie, Dracula Has Returned From The Grave. In retrospect it wasn’t a great movie; it probably wasn’t even a good movie, but it scared the hell out of me. It scared me, but more to the point, it left me with an unquenchable thirst for Horror. I grew up seeing all the movies starring Lon Chaney, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Boris Karloff.

            As I grew older my hunger for the genre began to change. I still wanted to be scared senseless, but I was growing tired of the mediocrity. I wanted good Horror. To get it I started reading, beginning with Stephen King. After consuming much of his work I included Anne Rice in my literary diet. I devoured the “Vampire Chronicles” with the same intense desire that drove Lestat to drink the blood of his victims.

            I was about thirty-two when a completely startling three-way collision occurred between my imagination, my love of Horror and my desire to write. From that explosive spark came the original idea that developed into my first novel, Devil Glass.

            I am a voice from within my target audience. I wrote my novel for myself as much as for anyone else. It was a labor of love in the truest sense.

            For years I referred to Devil Glass as Horror, and then came to the realization that that category was somewhat misleading. I now call the novel a love story laced with Horror. It’s a story of three best friends bound by love, friendship and a dangerous secret. And in this story these friends face a horror that is truly unspeakable.

            The very concept of the opening between two worlds was well beyond comprehension. The winged predators from the other side of the opening left little time for examination…or anything else.

            At nearly fifty my main character, Joyce Robbins, is still strikingly beautiful and works for a well-respected museum in the Midwest. As an archaeologist she’s destined to uncover a horrid looking artifact containing the only example of Antitheus Vitrum the world has ever seen. Antitheus Vitrum, an aberrant crystalline structure predicted to exist by an archaic numerology based science, has finally been discovered and has a dark secret with the potential to reduce humanity to a prey species.

            As one deeply in love with the Horror genre I would never have been satisfied with penning a story about vampires, werewolves or any other tale already explored. Please forgive me, but I have just released something horrible upon the world, something the world has never before seen. Did you think the flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz were cute? They’ve grown up, they’ve been on steroids and they’ve got real big teeth.

            Just when you thought you’d seen it all…