Terry
M. West has spent the least year producing some highly-acclaimed horror
fiction. His work is being appreciated by many new readers, but not all
of Terry’s work has beenso highly regarded.
“My
soft-core film work just about destroyed my reputation and my life,” Terry
confided, openly.
Though
his horror fiction work was on the rise in the late nineties, Terry
took an opportunity in 2000 and wrote/directed a string of erotic parodies and
horror erotica of the After Dark kind.
“I
didn’t have an issue with what I was doing at the time,” West says.
“It was work. I was paid to create and I figured it would help me land other
gigs. The content didn’t detour me. I thought I could shine through it, you
know. A lot of people who work on adult industry material figure they are
bigger than it, and that they can somehow elevate the genre. I thought I was
doing that, but it was crap; plain and simple.”
His
association with soft-core did lead to his writing/directing chores on Media
Blaster’s FLESH FOR THE BEAST, a horror flick with heavy erotic
tones. The film has received extremely mixed reviews.
“After I directed Flesh for the Beast, I hit a wall; really hard,”
West explained. “My personal life fell apart and I had a falling out
with damn near everyone, friends and family alike. It didn’t help that I
was going through a mid-life crisis at the time.”
West
found himself experimenting with drugs to make the pain go away. “There was a
lot going on. I was being crucified unmercifully for the type of work I was
doing. I was going through a divorce that this lifestyle of mine had caused. I
went into this dark playground as a fairly nice guy, but there is something
about it that twists you, after a time. Bad habits are not only
acceptable, but expected and encouraged. I grew an
addiction quickly and quite honestly prepared myself to die.”
But
West managed to persevere and pull himself out of the tailspin. He sobered
up andremarried and he even has a child now. West took the better
part of a decade to focus on his family life, and he didn’t miss the creative
world at all. But horror was in his blood, and in early 2013, he rededicated
himself to being the best horror author he could be. He produced two collections,
WHAT PRICE GORY? and A PSYCHO’S MEDLEY, as well as
the horror/comedy novella, CECIL & BUBBA MEET THE THANG. His
short fiction has been accepted into numerous anthologies and he
has been praised by readers and fellow horror authors alike.
His
film work seldom gets mention these days, but the darkness of that period still
lingers in him. “I decided to write HEROIN IN THE MAGIC NOW to get it
out of my system, you know? I had written a short story, HARDCORE
CRUST, for an anthology called AXES OF EVIL. The story centers around
Gary Hack, a desperate junkie film director who lives in a New York City filled
with monsters. The universe Gary lives in has witnessed every creature of the
night come from the shadows and stand next to man. So, of course, a market for
monster fetish pornography blossoms and Gary jumps on it. But it turns out to
be a very dark and dangerous occupation.”
After writing the story, Terry felt that some of the demons were exercised from him. “I had toyed with the idea of writing about my experiences in filmmaking, and the story of Gary Hack gave me a safe environment to let it all hang out. Gary Hack is a dark caricature of me. He is what I was on my way to becoming. All of the doubt, self-loathing and pain Gary feels comes from me. He expresses what I went through and felt at the time. There is one line in the story, ‘Gary didn’t want to be a joke or a cautionary tale.’ And that is how I feel. The soft-core work I did is old, now, and I want it to be a verysmall footnote in my career.”
HEROIN IN THE MAGIC NOW will be available for both Kindle and Paperback versions on August 31, 2014!
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