Meet Wile E. Young

We recently connected with Wile E. Young and have shared our conversation below.

Wile E., we are so deeply grateful to you for opening up about your journey with mental health in the hops that it can help someone who might be going through something similar. Can you talk to us about your mental health journey and how you overcame or persisted despite any issues? For readers, please note this is not medical advice, we are not doctors, you should always consult professionals for advice and that this is merely one person sharing their story and experience.

Battling chronic depression, there have been a lot of times I’ve wanted to lay down and just give up. I honestly don’t know what reason or cause I had to keep going during those times. A determination not to give up despite the fog of depression? Keeping on for the sake of my loved ones? A dogged belief in my own destiny?

I think it might have been a combination of those, plus the belief of changing tomorrow to something better.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I am an author who grew up in a true Southern Gothic environment. My time was primarily split between Atlanta, Texas and Uncertain, Texas.

Both of these locations provide different looks into the foundation of my writing. Atlanta provided the small-town life (church every Sunday, people knowing everyone else, Friday Night Football, etc.). Uncertain provided the landscape, the wild primeval swamp and backwoods that color so much of everything else.

This is what you’re going to get with my writing (usually). Characters that are a little more down home, common sense over book smarts sometimes, and tired. Then, they’re going to be confronted by something no one should have to go through, and they’re going to do the best they can.

My other big strength is my passion for writing villain protagonists. We’ve had so many stories with heroes and normal people. It’s fun and intriguing to see a protagonist who is neither of those things.

My Splatter Western novels revolve around such a character, a gunslinger who is in no way a hero, but he chases after worst people, usually…

The next novel I’m writing features another, the elevator pitch was “What if therapy worked on Michael Myers?” You’ll all just have to wait and see the answer.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I think I’m going to answer these with one answer to quality, skill, and area of knowledge.

1. Quality- A love of reading. From a young age I’ve loved to read. Pretty much anything I could get my hands on, I was reading. I would take a book everywhere (a habit that endures to this day), and wasn’t confined to any specific genre. I think this would be a quality I would encourage anyone to foster as well as strengthen. Read everything you can, read outside genre, this is the foundation on which writing is built.

2. Skill- Discipline to the craft, this is a skill that can be learned. My mentor taught me to act like my craft was day job, I’ve got a certain quota of words I have to meet a week. Until you can do it full time, treat your craft like this, and you’ll always be able to continue a steady output of stories.

3. Area of knowledge- I’m a historian, my college major was history, I’ve always had a deep love of it. I intensely research everything for accuracy when it comes to its historical basis, and while I’ll bend some things for the sake of the story, I never want to outright contradict what actually happened. This has made my historical horror novels have a layer of depth I see others lacking.

We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?

I think it is better to focus on being well rounded as a writer. If you focus primarily on your strengths, you can be pigeon holed into writing the same material over and over again. I see this as a trap, trading short term success for long term trouble. If people begin to think of you as “the Splatter Western” guy, eventually, that’s all you will be.

Focusing on the areas you’re weaker in, be it prose, the subject of the novel itself, plotting, etc., this can turn you into a more well balanced writer able to reach heights others won’t.

I look at Brian Keene, Josh Malerman, Ronald Malfi, Jonathan Janz, all of these writers have had and continue to have stellar careers, and some of them hit later than others. Ronald Malfi and Josh Malerman both have begun to have career upswings in their forties that continue to climb.

What connects these individuals besides being horror novelists? None of their books are the same, each is a new swing, and a new experiment.

I think it’s important to follow that example.

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