Today we’d like to introduce you to Paul Carro.
Hi Paul, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Growing up, my dreams were bigger than my means. I grew up in a wonderful small town in Maine, but circumstances led to our family falling into poverty. We had only network TV available (with tinfoil wrapped bunny ears for the antenna) but the LA scenery in all the shows I watched made me dream of moving to Los Angeles someday. It was certain people in Maine that ended up helping me along on that path, and many of those roads led back to our biggest local celebrity, Stephen King.
In fifth grade, I wrote a short story for a class. Unknown to me at the time, my teacher, Mrs. Wise, submitted the story to open call submission for an anthology. The story was accepted, and I was published in a book of Maine authors anthology. Being poor, my family could not afford a copy, but my school bought one for the library, so I got to touch and feel it and see that it was real. Stephen King was the only other author I recognized but it was exciting and helped foster my love for the written word. (It would be decades before I was published again.)
Then, in my senior year of high school, Stephen King came to our school auditorium and read from one of his books. Our town finally had gotten cable (though not at my house), and I volunteered at our new town TV station to help film and edit his appearance. Seeing him made the idea of a small-town person succeeding in publishing a reality. I took that dream with me as the first person in my family to attend college.
In college I majored in film and minored in literature. It was an amazing experience, but I still battled through poverty to stay in college, working three jobs while balancing my course load. I still dreamed of making it out to Hollywood but had no idea how to make it there yet. It was my senior thesis film that changed my life. In one last King connection, He was offering “dollar baby” options for his stories to be turned into films. The deal was you paid him one dollar for a story, and he granted rights for a film. I used that same concept to get dollar baby rights from Jon Cohen who wrote Minority Report for Steven Spielberg. The story and film called ‘Preserves’ would change my life.
After college I was working a local job, trying to decide what to do with my life when I received a phone call. They asked my name and then asked if I directed Preserves and if I wanted to come to Los Angeles to run a video production company. I said yes and was on my way to Los Angeles without knowing anyone there at all. I landed in West LA, and except for a short stint in Los Feliz for a couple years, I have been a West LA baby ever since.
That job in commercial video helped me stay in LA where I pursued a screenwriting career alongside the production work. I sold and optioned many projects over the years and eventually started producing in film and reality TV. I spent years on Operation Repo. I am also working on a project with Horror director Rolfe Kanefsky called Hitchcock Nebraska.
The work I did in film and TV was not in the horror genre which left one part of my dream unfulfilled. I solved that by leaping into publishing. In 2018 I published a YA superhero novel, Nolan Walker and the Superiors Squad. With a novel under my belt, it was time to move on to writing in my preferred genre, horror.
My debut horror novel The House garnered some acclaim and was successful enough to gain me entry in the Horror Writers Association. I now work almost exclusively in the horror genre. On top of writing novels, I edit different anthologies and am a columnist for Lisa Vasquez’s magazine Memento Mori Ink.
I love my life here in this wonderful city of dreams. LA for me has never grown old. Living here was as much the dream as the work I do.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Knowing no one in the industry was the toughest part. I had a great friend from college that moved out here as well and that helped but he was in the music industry. I had no connections other than the financier who hired me to run the video production company. The work we did was more commercial in nature and not Hollywood industry related. Then by chance, an individual who acted in my film Preserves, reached out to me about helping edit a charity video that was filled with celebrities. The film was screened at the DGA, and through her I finally started to get a foot in the door of the film world in LA.
Also, LA was a struggle itself. Being from a small town, it was shocking to find a street like Sepulveda stretched on for a longer distance than the entire size of the town I grew up in. The vastness was a culture shock. Because of my knowing no one when I arrived, I now strive to help others. I am a mentor for the HWA, and I am available for all transplants from my home state.
Recently I have helped acclimate the Winchester Brothers. Horror filmmakers from back east, this dynamic duo did not need the support system because they had each other and had already been successfully making films by the time they arrived, but I was there to aid in the cool places to visit and go. Everyone needs Apple Pan in their life. But they are doing great, running a major film festival called Night Frights LA. It is a great launching pad for short films. People should check it out. And we are working together on a fun film project called Kickball Camp Massacre as well as a high concept thriller script.
Financially struggling after arriving in LA goes without saying, but I do think knowing no one upon arrival is the toughest part. I am glad those days are over.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I love anthologies. In the publishing world, novels are king and queen, but I simply have that anthology gene in my heart. I do write novels and am currently writing my new one, but I am immensely proud of my work on anthologies. Besides being published in many, I have taken on the role of editor on them as well. The first series is The Little Coffeeshop of Horrors Anthology (volumes 1-3). This came about at my mother’s funeral in 2019. I reconnected with my nephew Joseph Carro who is a great author in his own right and who graduated from a prestigious writing program. I had an idea for an anthology and decided it was a good project for us to start together.
The concept was that we would visit twelve coffeeshops around the country with no pre-conceived stories in mind. Once at a cafe we would allow the setting of the space, the town, the people there inspire a horror story. This made for an anthology that was un-themed and highly creative. Volumes one and two were joint stories by us, and in volume three we hired author S. Alessandro Martinez to join in, with plans to make volumes four on a more traditional multiple author anthology.
And now I have joined with writer/publisher Candace Nola and Uncomfortably Dark Horror to create a new best of the year anthology series for self-published authors. I am very excited for this new anthology series. Submissions open soon with an expected 2026 release.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
Only that I appreciate readers who support indie authors and indie film. Some of the most creative work comes from the amazing creative minds behind indie work. We cannot do it without your support I appreciate you all very much.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://paulcarrohorror.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paulcarrohorror/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulCarroHorror
