Ask the Author: Robert E. Wronski Jr.
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Robert E. Wronski Jr.
There’s a short answer and a long answer to why I’m writing a book about horror. The short answer is that a few years ago, when I was playing with the idea of writing a more genre specific guide to fictional crossovers, I posted a poll in the Facebook Crossovers Forum, listing several genres and asking which they would like me to tackle first. The most votes went to horror.
But of course I wouldn’t have listed the genre had I not an interest in the subject.
When I was little, my parents didn’t let me watch R rated movies. But I was allowed to watch anything that was on any of the six channels our television received. So I got to see older films and edited for television films. I fondly remember on Saturdays watching the Creature Double Feature, which showed old Universal, Hammer, Godzilla and B-1950s sci-fi monster films, I was very interested in scary stories, particularly with a supernatural element. Of all the monsters, vampires were my favorite, and I even admired Dracula’s character.
Another avenue for exploring horror strangely came from my local barber shop. The barber always kept comic books in the seating area, but strangely they were all DC horror books, such as House of Mystery, The Witching Hour, and Weird War Tales. These were great stories, just light enough for all ages, back in an era where comics were still written with kids in mind.
Eventually, due to my friends having cable, and my family eventually getting cable as well, I was finally exposed to the awesomeness of 80s slasher flicks. Jason and Micheal of course were scary and fun. Something about an expressionless slow moving killer brings me back to the man from my nightmares. But Freddy was something else. Freddy was a fantastical being with amazing powers and a twisted humor. And he came with an origin which kept getting expanded with each film. Freddy was a personality who made the audience root for the villain.
Meanwhile, around that time, I had discovered movies based on Stephen King, and then the books they came from. The first horror book I ever read with the Night Shift anthology. I also tried my hand at reading Poe, but at age 11, I’ll admit it was a little more advanced than I could handle.
In high school, my obsession with vampires continued and I discovered Ann Rice. I also became obsessed with stories of hauntings, (having lived in a haunted house myself) and read and watched anything fiction or non-fiction related to hauntings. Also, my rebellion against my Catholic upbringing led me to seek out anything regarding the occult, fiction or non-fiction.
Into adulthood, my horror fandom continued to grow, and of course, I no longer had a mother to restrict my viewing habits. Despite my strong love of horror, it wasn’t until I was nearly 30 years old before I discovered one of the greatest and most influential horror writers of all.
Thanks to some discussion groups I had joined, I discovered H.P. Lovecraft, and the influence his works have had on so much horror that has come since. I began reading Lovecraft as much as I could. The first story I read was probably my favorite. That was the Shadow Over Innsmouth.
So why horror? Write what you love, they say. I love horror. I love it in all its forms. I love the serious and the silly. I love the hardcore and the watered down. I love slashers and monsters. I love the supernatural and the men in masks. I love monsters who are scary or heroic. I just love horror.
But of course I wouldn’t have listed the genre had I not an interest in the subject.
When I was little, my parents didn’t let me watch R rated movies. But I was allowed to watch anything that was on any of the six channels our television received. So I got to see older films and edited for television films. I fondly remember on Saturdays watching the Creature Double Feature, which showed old Universal, Hammer, Godzilla and B-1950s sci-fi monster films, I was very interested in scary stories, particularly with a supernatural element. Of all the monsters, vampires were my favorite, and I even admired Dracula’s character.
Another avenue for exploring horror strangely came from my local barber shop. The barber always kept comic books in the seating area, but strangely they were all DC horror books, such as House of Mystery, The Witching Hour, and Weird War Tales. These were great stories, just light enough for all ages, back in an era where comics were still written with kids in mind.
Eventually, due to my friends having cable, and my family eventually getting cable as well, I was finally exposed to the awesomeness of 80s slasher flicks. Jason and Micheal of course were scary and fun. Something about an expressionless slow moving killer brings me back to the man from my nightmares. But Freddy was something else. Freddy was a fantastical being with amazing powers and a twisted humor. And he came with an origin which kept getting expanded with each film. Freddy was a personality who made the audience root for the villain.
Meanwhile, around that time, I had discovered movies based on Stephen King, and then the books they came from. The first horror book I ever read with the Night Shift anthology. I also tried my hand at reading Poe, but at age 11, I’ll admit it was a little more advanced than I could handle.
In high school, my obsession with vampires continued and I discovered Ann Rice. I also became obsessed with stories of hauntings, (having lived in a haunted house myself) and read and watched anything fiction or non-fiction related to hauntings. Also, my rebellion against my Catholic upbringing led me to seek out anything regarding the occult, fiction or non-fiction.
Into adulthood, my horror fandom continued to grow, and of course, I no longer had a mother to restrict my viewing habits. Despite my strong love of horror, it wasn’t until I was nearly 30 years old before I discovered one of the greatest and most influential horror writers of all.
Thanks to some discussion groups I had joined, I discovered H.P. Lovecraft, and the influence his works have had on so much horror that has come since. I began reading Lovecraft as much as I could. The first story I read was probably my favorite. That was the Shadow Over Innsmouth.
So why horror? Write what you love, they say. I love horror. I love it in all its forms. I love the serious and the silly. I love the hardcore and the watered down. I love slashers and monsters. I love the supernatural and the men in masks. I love monsters who are scary or heroic. I just love horror.
Robert E. Wronski Jr.
I first became aware of the fictional crossover/shared reality concept when I was five years old. As my family was about to embark on a drive from Massachusetts to California, my father gave me my first comic book to keep me occupied, and it was an issue of the Marvel Comics adaptation of Scooby’s All-Star Laff-A-Lympics. This is the first time I was able to comprehend what was going on here, on a significant level. All these characters from their own cartoons were appearing together, as part of the same reality, thus placing all their previous cartoons in the same reality.
From that point on, I started becoming more aware. As I started reading more comics, I noticed how all the DC characters lived in one world while the Marvel characters lived on another, and I mostly only bought team and team-up books. Of course, once Superman met Spider-Man, my mind was blown again.
I also started to notice cartoon events like the annual networks previews shows that would combine all their cartoons in the same universe. And I would also notice the live action shows. Facts of Life characters appeared on Diff’rent Strokes. Mork had met the Happy Days gang and Laverne & Shirley. Trapper John M.D. had been on MASH. Maude was related to Edith Bunker and George Jefferson used to be Archie’s neighbor.
Around the age of eight, I started keeping track of these various shared realities, particularly focusing on live action and animated television. I started lumping them into groups based on their crossover connections. When I was 12, I bought my first book about the history of television. It was an encyclopedia style with entries on every television series, and one of the appendixes was a list of crossovers and spin-offs. I was both excited to see crossovers I had previously not known of, but also to find some crossovers I had found were not listed. Inspired by the DC Multiverse, I started to coin the groups together as the Television Crossover Multiverse and started to label them individually as TVCU-1, TVCU-2, etc.
When I grew up and left for the army, I left my notebooks behind, and they were destroyed in a flood. However, I continued to keep track of crossovers and recreated my groupings in a word document.
In 2001, as I was exploring the internet, I came across a few websites that perhaps changed my life. They were all crossover related sites, and for the first time, I discovered that there were other people like me who also kept track of such things. I had thought I was the only one.
Thanks to social networking, I eventually got to be friends with some of these other people who share my hobby, and the sharing of ideas eventually led to the creation of our own discussion group, the Crossovers Forum, on Facebook.
The forum became more popular than I expected, with lots of active discussions, and I was inspired to finally turn my notes into something tangible and public, the Television Crossover Universe blog. I didn’t really expect anyone to read it, and was just trying to get my ideas out there, but to my pleasant surprise, people did read it, and others began contributing to the blog.
Since I was little, I’ve always wanted to be a writer, but fiction was not my strength. Finding that I do have a strength in researching and discussing crossovers, I decided to try my hand as writing a book about fictional crossovers, and should it be successful, continue with a series of books.
So why crossovers? I can’t really explain why. It seems to be something that you either get or you don’t. For me, it became an obsession from an early age, and one that only grew stronger over time. I hope when you read this blog, you will feel my love for the subject.
From that point on, I started becoming more aware. As I started reading more comics, I noticed how all the DC characters lived in one world while the Marvel characters lived on another, and I mostly only bought team and team-up books. Of course, once Superman met Spider-Man, my mind was blown again.
I also started to notice cartoon events like the annual networks previews shows that would combine all their cartoons in the same universe. And I would also notice the live action shows. Facts of Life characters appeared on Diff’rent Strokes. Mork had met the Happy Days gang and Laverne & Shirley. Trapper John M.D. had been on MASH. Maude was related to Edith Bunker and George Jefferson used to be Archie’s neighbor.
Around the age of eight, I started keeping track of these various shared realities, particularly focusing on live action and animated television. I started lumping them into groups based on their crossover connections. When I was 12, I bought my first book about the history of television. It was an encyclopedia style with entries on every television series, and one of the appendixes was a list of crossovers and spin-offs. I was both excited to see crossovers I had previously not known of, but also to find some crossovers I had found were not listed. Inspired by the DC Multiverse, I started to coin the groups together as the Television Crossover Multiverse and started to label them individually as TVCU-1, TVCU-2, etc.
When I grew up and left for the army, I left my notebooks behind, and they were destroyed in a flood. However, I continued to keep track of crossovers and recreated my groupings in a word document.
In 2001, as I was exploring the internet, I came across a few websites that perhaps changed my life. They were all crossover related sites, and for the first time, I discovered that there were other people like me who also kept track of such things. I had thought I was the only one.
Thanks to social networking, I eventually got to be friends with some of these other people who share my hobby, and the sharing of ideas eventually led to the creation of our own discussion group, the Crossovers Forum, on Facebook.
The forum became more popular than I expected, with lots of active discussions, and I was inspired to finally turn my notes into something tangible and public, the Television Crossover Universe blog. I didn’t really expect anyone to read it, and was just trying to get my ideas out there, but to my pleasant surprise, people did read it, and others began contributing to the blog.
Since I was little, I’ve always wanted to be a writer, but fiction was not my strength. Finding that I do have a strength in researching and discussing crossovers, I decided to try my hand as writing a book about fictional crossovers, and should it be successful, continue with a series of books.
So why crossovers? I can’t really explain why. It seems to be something that you either get or you don’t. For me, it became an obsession from an early age, and one that only grew stronger over time. I hope when you read this blog, you will feel my love for the subject.
Robert E. Wronski Jr.
My current project is much like my last book, except this time, instead of horror, I am covering cartoons. I'm also putting together another book that reprints some of my past blog posts, expanded and updated, along with original material.
Robert E. Wronski Jr.
Write. Every day. Even the smallest progress each day still gets you closer to finishing.
Robert E. Wronski Jr.
The best thing about being a writer of my type of work is that I am writing about subjects I love, so work is fun.
Robert E. Wronski Jr.
My writing is research based, and more observational than creative, so writer's block isn't too much of an issue for me. I chose choose a subject I wish to write about, and then use a mapped out strategy for researching that topic and then reporting my research findings following a prepared format.
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