It is daybreak at the Gates of Heaven. The sky is a Renaissance palette. There is a smell of Ambrosia on the air. Hertzan Chimera stands before a gold plinth. Engraved upon it the words of God: "no writer who has read him can help being influenced by him, and no general reader who runs across his work can easily forget him." What does it mean? What is this dusty sheet of paper in Chimera's hand?
The statue atop the marble base into which this plinth is set is that of a woman. I say woman, but a woman beyond beauty, a tortured silhouette beyond iconic fandom. She reminds one of the android created in the name of male domination in Fritz Lang's ultimate soul crusher METROPOLIS. Chimera reaches up and indeed, the rings of plasma energy ignite, caressing her super smooth epidermis like lovers' tongues. Her thighs part slightly and Chimera has the maddening urge to return to the womb (the proportions are right, she is truly a tower of a woman). Looking up at her pulsating nether region, he gets a shock he cannot put into words.

JACK KETCHUM: (stood to one side of Chimera) No, they got it all wrong!

HERTZAN CHIMERA: You are?

JACK KETCHUM:
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
That's what it should have said. No disrespect but THAT would have truly meant something.

HERTZAN CHIMERA: (mechanically hands him the subpoena) Jack Ketchum. I have been charged with the otherworldly duty of delivering unto you this subpoena. I put it to you that your art is an affront to the senses and you must not be allowed into God's holy order.

JACK KETCHUM: You talk funny. Did you fuck her?

HERTZAN CHIMERA: (looking around nervously) No, she, it just started shining like that.

JACK KETCHUM: But you thought about fucking her. Takes a lot to light her fire like that. Let me tell you something about what makes her tick....

THE REAL JACK KETCHUM: (infuriated by the slavering melodrama) First of all, what kind of drugs are you on, Chimera, and where can I get them?
This isn't working for me. As a writer I try to be as simple and direct as possible, and this is so ornate as to be almost fucking baroque. I like the same thing in an interview. Simplify, simplify. I like the idea of unusual, unasked questions very much. But I don't like the children of Behemoth Yuggdorth Nit getting in the damn way, if you know what I mean.

HERTZAN CHIMERA: (his arm buried in the brilliant cunt of the fading interview statue) Jack, I fly totally drug free - unless you are talking about the Corn Flakes I am munching for my breakfast.

Recent surveys over at Terror Tales (where my quest to rewrite the interview format with John Turi, Kurt Newton, Amy Grech, Christina Sng and Queenie Tirone first took shape) suggest that this extreme form of trippy one-on-one is what the reader enjoys. The reader is bored with the usual format of interview. He wants to be entertained in a big spectacular way. He wants to get under the skin of his favourite writer and find out what makes him tick by visual exhumation of his writer's works and their reaction upon the writer.

THE REAL JACK KETCHUM: Do you realize what this sounds like? It sounds like some Hollywood studio doing a poll of folks coming out of a theatre and then editing a movie on that basis. I won't say that I don't care what a reader wants, but I write -- and talk -- first and foremost to please myself and hopefully by doing that, please the reader.. If "the reader is bored with the usual format" then I think the interviewer hasn't done his job right, elicited the really interesting responses. If "the reader" hasn't got the patience for that, not my problem. They should read better. And "a big spectacular way?" Gimme a break. Tell them to go see SPIDERMAN.

HERTZAN CHIMERA: (his arm bitten off at the shoulder) You are like the young lad who saw the King's clothes in all their naked glory - tell me, how does the world remember Jack Ketchum, say 20 years from now? What has been his major achievement?

THE REAL JACK KETCHUM: (the surrealistic imagery has frozen to cool blues of silent expectation) My major achievement, I hope, will to have outlived Al Sharpton. Be that as it may, I'd hope to leave behind some thoughtful prose. Something that means something to people. That's plenty.

HERTZAN CHIMERA: There is an almost prevalent 'land lock' in your fiction, namely The Sixties. A time of nostalgia? A time of pain?

THE REAL JACK KETCHUM: The sixties is there a whole lot and yes, there's both nostalgia and pain. For some reason I remember it better and better. It was an innocent period in one way, an angry, scared and destructive era at the same time. I had a brook, but I also had The Bomb. You left your doors unlocked but you also feared the City. But if you've lived as long as I have -- remember, I was born in '46 -- there's a lot of years to draw on. Pick up PEACEABLE KINGDOM when it comes out. There are stories that draw from Maine, New Jersey, New York, Florida, New Hampshire, and which are set in eras from the 60's to just after September 11th, 2001. Every year's a scary year. Every year's a fine one if you survive it and go on and do better.

HERTZAN CHIMERA: 25 years since the death of Elvis Presley, what do you tell him about the Earth he left behind.

THE REAL JACK KETCHUM: Ah, Elvis. Twenty-five years ago I was sitting in an outside taverna in Crete romancing a lovely Italian woman and heard someone at the next table say "Elvis muerte," and I said what? and he said Elvis died yesterday. I hadn't followed him for years, got bored by all the silly movies. I cried. The woman comforted me -- all night long, bless her heart. What Elvis left behind was an Earth that clearly misses him, is hard-pressed for someone young and strong to love or admire from afar or believe in, is settling for the moment for the pale and safe and not the ground-breaking -- yet which yearns for it -- and which he, and all the really fine artists and musicians of all stripes who came before him and after, at home and abroad, have still and will continue to aid and transform us against rough odds forever. Not bad, E. And one of the longest fucking sentences I've ever written.

HERTZAN CHIMERA: Cats, I could never eat a whole one. Are you a student of Ancient Egyptian mythology and the importance they placed upon the cat in their rites of marriage and burial?

THE REAL JACK KETCHUM: Nah. Rites generally bore the shit out of me. Plus a cat has his or her own rites. You gotta obey them. Feed me. Give me a warm flat dry surface to sleep on. Make sure the dogs know their place. Throw me an hallucinogen now and then if you want. Doesn't matter if you forget -- I'm not some fucking addict! Toys work. Just don't go nuts about it. Feed me. Pet and hug and kiss until I purr and when I stop, cut it the hell out for Godsakes -- I have limits. Feed me. Did I mention that? Gimme a place to hide in case of lightning. I hate that shit. You got a problem? let me in. I can probably help. If I get sick, spend however much money on me you can possibly afford and if I get too pricey, I'll either get by or I won't and that's okay -- just so long as you've already done all of the above. As long as you've done your best. All I ask. Oh, and keep the litter clean.

HERTZAN CHIMERA: Sage advice, Jack.