There is a difference between the horror of the unexpected or unknown and the very real horrors lurking in the shadows of the everyday, the ones we know are there no matter how we try to deny them. “Second Deaths” opens with one such horror and you thrust the reader into that room with Chuck, filth and all. What made you decide to open with this particular scene? Was it to establish the character or make the later horrors all the more gruesome?

I like grimy stuff. Dirty, menacing, quick-witted exchanges between folks. I like crime fiction and horror that refuses to get world-rending, to get huge, that sticks to singular people. I love writing shakedowns, and that’s what happens to Chuck in that first scene. He’s got a need, and that need gets exploited by Peach and Jerome, profoundly so.

Tell us a bit about what inspired this story and the slithering reality of a second death.

So much of my stuff—what’s enjoyable for me to actually sit down and write—sits poised at that nexus of crime and horror. So, a story about a man addicted to a brutal, painful drug, and a shakedown, and a zombie. I could write about these people all day, I love ’em all.

In many ways the second death seems less terrifying than the blissful torture of wire. Why do you suppose that is?

You’re right. The physical aesthetic of wire—rotting and ruining your hands and feet in pursuit of this high, actually sticking wire under your own nails—is as much a part of the horror as Michael is. As a writer, I’m drawn to that space where people will do bad things, to themselves or to others, while operating under the belief that they deserve something. Chuck is hollowed out—he doesn’t want to be, but he is. Chuck’s problems started long before he ever started doing wire, I think. He wants to feel whole again, and he’s going about it the best way he knows how.

Does Krista’s baby turn out okay?

Oh man, I don’t even know if Krista turns out okay. I don’t know if any of them make it. There’s a lot going on around that barn at the end of the story. What do you think?

You are both a talented writer and graphic artist. Are there other artistic projects you would like to pursue? What can fans expect from Keith Rosson in 2024?

My new novel, The Devil by Name, is coming out in September—the second book in the Fever House duology. I’m co-editing a charity crime/horror anthology with the folks at Shotgun Honey called At the Edge of Darkness; that should be published around Halloween. I’m deep in rewrites on a 1970s vampire novel, which should be the next book published after The Devil by Name. And as ever, I want to keep plugging away at more short stories, given how much damn fun they are.