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Horror Writer Barbara J. Ferrenz Interviewed
01/10/2004 . Source: Mike Driscoll 
What's worse than death? On the one hand, it's the title of a novel by school psychologist and writer Barbara J. Ferrenz of Dunkirk, MD. On the other hand, maybe it's better never to know. Horror Writer Barbara J. Ferrenz
By Mike Driscoll
What's worse than death? On the one hand, it's the title of a novel by school psychologist and writer Barbara J. Ferrenz of Dunkirk, MD. On the other hand, maybe it's better never to know.
Mrs. Ferrenz considers the question in her book `Worse Than Death' from Five Star Press of Waterville, Maine. A whodunit with a touch of horror and a little violence. It's about Edgewater housewife Mary Kate Flaherty, author of novels featuring a sexy vampire named Theodora Zed.
'It's not the first novel I've written,' she said. 'I've been marketing several others but this is the first one to reach the bookstores.'
She chose the Edgewater locale because it's more suburban and closer to the city and, anyway, 'Mary Kate isn't a country girl like me.'
Ms. Ferrenz lives in Calvert County with Brian, her husband of over 30 years. They have a grown son, Brian, a daughter, Becky in high school and two grandchildren. She adds that her family life is nothing like the problems faced by Mary Kate, as her family totally supports her careers.
In the course of the story, Mary Kate juggles professional demands and an unraveling marriage while looking after her two boys. If that's not enough to contend with, she's apparently being followed by a serial killer who leaves his or her battered victims dead from two puncture wounds in the neck. Sound familiar?
Eventually, a close friend of hers is attacked outside her home. To solve the mystery, Mary Kate sets herself up as bait to bring the killer out into the open, during a writer's convention in Cleveland.
Fellow author Brian Keene of Baltimore said Ms. Ferrenz 'is not only a great writer, but she's also a wonderful human being.' She's like the aunt that you always look forward to seeing.' Harriet Klausner of the `Midwest Book Review' calls it a pleasant amateur sleuth tale.
The story's locations include horror conventions in Atlanta and New York City, as well as various Anne Arundel County locales like Edgewater, the South County Police Station, the Annapolis Library and the Barnes and Noble at Annapolis Harbour Centre. After all, buildings stocked with books are among her favourite places.
When not writing, Ms. Ferrenz is a school psychologist and a clinical counsellor with her own practice in Calvert County. She keeps her careers very separate.
'My work in the mental health field is very serious work involving people's lives and I don't like to use that in my fiction,' she said.
Although she has been writing short stories professionally for the past 15 years, she is a lifelong writer.
'I wrote as a girl. It's what I gave people as Christmas presents and birthday presents, I would write them a story,' Ms. Ferrenz said. `Then in my 20s, I started trying to get published and it didn't happen for a really long time.'
She honed her skills writing short stories, mostly horror, over the last 10 years, including `Burb Vamp', an entry in `Horrors! 365 Scary Stories', published by Barnes & Noble Press in 1998. It earned her an Honourable Mention in the 1998 Year's 'Best Fantasy and Horror' annual anthology edited by Ellen Datlow. The anthology won that year's Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association.
Her latest short story, `The Portrait Room' will be published this fall in the anthology `Spooks!' by Twilight Tales Press.
Ferrenz began writing `Worse Than Death' while living in Lothian before moving with her family to her present home near Dunkirk seven years ago. The family loves the house, but there's an interesting aspect to their lives here.
Phantom footsteps, odd knockings and seeing things going around corners there suggest the house may be Haunted, rather handy for a writer of horror fiction. Ferrenz said that she was told by neighbours that the house may have been haunted by a tragedy in days past.
While not a believer in the supernatural, Ferrenz says that she is 'open-minded about the concept of ghosts because of frequent unexplainable events in this house over a long period of time. I'm also open to other explanations if someone could come up with them.'
In any case since the 'ghost', if there really is one, seems to really want to be there and as there are no indications that the Ferrenz family is unwelcome, they've chosen to respect its privacy.
In the meantime, 'we don't do things to contact the spirit and we ask houseguests not to (try to contact it either).'
Mike Driscoll
(c) Mike Driscoll 2004
all rights reserved
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