E. Robert Orn

Hey everybody. Welcome to my site. Please feel free to look around, and stay as long as you like. But close the door behind you, will ya -- I'm not trying to air condition the entire neighborhood.
I grew up (more or less) not far from the looming peaks of the Shenandoah Mountains where the majority of the action in my first novel takes place. I suppose I’ve been interested in graphic horror and film noir ever since I saw Bette Davis chop off Bruce Dern’s hand with an ax in Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte.
I was probably ten or so at the time. The scene created an indelible image that I could not shake. Sometimes, when it’s dark, and I’m alone with my thoughts, I can still hear Bruce screaming (he deserved it after all -- he was the SOB who shot John Wayne in the back). I had been frightened by things before, but I think the opening five minutes of Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte was the first film that made me shiver. Hell, I had nightmares for weeks!
It wasn’t the last.
I’ve seen more than my fair share of horror films since then; some of them good, some of them not so good: Alien, Psycho, The Night of the Living Dead, The Omen, Burnt Offerings, Scanners, Halloween, Friday the 13th, The Birds, Kingdom of the Spiders, Them!, The People Under the Stairs, Scream, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Exorcist, The Shining, Hellraiser, The Evil Dead, Dead Alive, Carrie, Jaws, Army of Darkness, An American Werewolf in London, Phantasm, Return of the Living Dead, From Dusk Till Dawn, The Lost Boys, In the Mouth of Madness, The Howling, Zombie, The Silence of the Lambs, Cemetery Man, Puppet Master, Seven, Re-animator, Candyman, Near Dark, Cat People, Race with the Devil, Rosemary’s Baby, It’s Alive, The Thing -- I could go on and on -- I’m almost tempted to. This is fun -- sort of a nostalgic stroll down scary lane, but I can see that your eyes are starting to glaze over already, so I’ll just move on.
I enjoy horror fiction in much the same way some people enjoy a good glass of wine. I like to watch horror films with almost the same awe and reverence some people reserve for listening to classical music. It’s a part of me as much as the dark hair or the wide, four-inch scar I have on my arm from a childhood accident.
My novel, Dancing With Ghosts, is an old-fashioned pot-boiler about a young couple who come face to face with the darkest side of human nature in the most pastoral of settings. Visiting relatives in the heart of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, they encounter a group of crazed madmen terrorizing the bucolic town of fictitious Idyllwood through a series of Manson-style murders. The woman is taken hostage and tortured for the macabre thrill of it. The man is hunted across half the county, discovering the grisly remains of butchered bodies as he goes. They both escape, but not until after learning that the killers are but a small part of something much bigger, and that for them, the horror has only just begun. Then the fun really starts.
The book was influenced by many of the works above, especially the ones that explored the psychology of criminal behavior. In order to keep my antagonists from being cardboard caricatures of evil, I dissect some of the quantitative factors that help create human monsters from the hearts of abused children. There are also however, enough explosions, car chases and shoot-outs to pay homage to the action genre that helped provide the creative impetus for this book.
Let me know what you think of the previews, which can be found on my blog pages.