A Conversation with Ben Percy Peter Straub is the author of such classics as Ghost Story, The Talisman (with Stephen King), and most recently A Dark Matter. His daughter Emma Straub is author of Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures. Peter: Ben, Red Moon exists on the borderlands--beyond genre, but clearly playing in the world of horror and thrillers. Was this your intention when you started to write the novel? Ben: I grew up on genre. Reading westerns, sci-fi, fantasy, spy thrillers. Reading horror especially. Your novels had a profound impact on me. So did the work of Stephen King and Robert R. McCammon and Anne Rice and Dan Simmons. When I took my first creative writing workshop as an undergrad, I felt so confused and affronted when the instructor said genre would be forbidden. I threw up my hand and very earnestly asked, "But what else is there?" That semester, I fell in love with "literary" writers