Exclusive Interview With Author Robert Creekmore

Recently, Robert Creekmore answered our questions via email. His writing mixes science fiction, horror, thriller and more against a backdrop of rural North Carolina locales. He can frequently be found at Moondog Meadery in Durham reading his latest work. Today we take a closer look at his first in a trilogy, The Prophet’s Debt.

Author Biography

Author Robert Creekmore of Rocky Mount, NC is well established in the local horror lit scene with his short stories and longer works. His short story, “Sole Survivor” received an honorable mention in the 2025 Killer Shorts Prize. You can connect with him online here:

Website: https://robertcreekmore.com/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/authorcreekmore

BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/authorcreekmore.bsky.social

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorCreekmore

*CW/TW: Prophet’s Debt does not hold back and is riddled with triggering content, so I’ll give readers a moment here to decide if reading on is in the cards for them. Mental health matters.

An Overview of The Prophet's Debt

Much like his gory treatment of baby pink painted toenails in his critically acclaimed short story, “Sole Survivor," the final chapters of The Prophet’s Debt seared images of Wrightsville Beach’s coastline into my brain. Creekmore is skilled at crafting confident and cunning female lead characters who do not suffer fools. Cross them at your own peril.

Naomi Pace is our heroine in this piece who takes a meandering trip deep into the Appalachian Mountains and Yancey County, where she is brutally mistreated at the hands of religious cult leader Vernon Proffit and his wife Patty. Her parents voluntarily send her to this program after discovering her love interest in her best friend, Tiffany. Devout believers themselves, they hold her sexuality as an abomination before God and think they are acting in everyone’s best interest by sending her to a backcountry conversion camp.

Interview With NC-based Author Robert Creekmore

1. What can you tell us about your inspiration for the character of Naomi and her evolution over the novel?

   
   

   She came about because, several years ago, a therapist suggested that I journal as a way to process my trauma. I had already written a Sci-fi novel, Afiri, which, while a good concept, was executed rather poorly. That’s no surprise; it was my first attempt at writing. 

   
   

   I found the journaling to be boring, so I created a character who embodied my desire for vengeance, then used her as a vehicle for healing. Since the publication of Prophet’s Debt, I’ve had people reach out to tell me that Naomi helped them process their own trauma. When I wrote the first words of the series, I would have never imagined that my attempt at healing would affect and help so many others.

2. I am curious about the decision to include a golem, who also appears in a female form. What was the impetus for this side character who comes to be indispensable to Naomi at critical turns in the plot?

   
   

   What we name the undefinable is our attempt to understand an incomprehensible world. 

   
   

   For example, in the sequel to Prophet’s Debt, one of the characters says the following: “How many of our words are just humans putting a name to something we can’t comprehend, then applying a value judgment?”

   
   

   Al Sillman, Naomi Pace’s surrogate father, called Mara a golem. It was how he could best understand and explain the creature to Naomi. However, Mara’s true origin and definition aren’t revealed in Prophet’s Debt, but we, as literary observers, needed a way to categorize this beast.

   
   

   There are secret worlds and creatures obfuscated in the first novel because Naomi was not ready. However, as she matures, they are revealed. 

   
   

   There are two reasons that I chose to give Mara a female form:

   
   

   1. It’s a reference to the book of Ruth in the Bible. 

   
   

   The verse I’m specifically referencing is Ruth 1:20-21:

   “And she said unto them, Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and the LORD hath brought me home again empty: why then call ye me Naomi, seeing the LORD hath testified against me, and the Almighty hath afflicted me?”

   
   

   The name change that Ruth’s mother-in-law assigned to herself is reflected in my story. Naomi, the happy young woman, will never be the same. Instead, she is rightfully bitter. That feeling manifests itself in the creature, Mara. 

   
   

   b. I made Mara female, despite her lack of secondary sexual characteristics, because it’s a statement about how gender is a psychological construct instead of a physical one. I expound upon this further in the sequel. 

3. Your work is constantly surprising me. “Sole Survivor" was one of the first horror pieces I have ever read. Now after following Naomi I am completely invested in where she’ll go next. I never expected to be drawn into this genre, so I give you mad props for luring me over the threshold, as grim as that set up sounds. What is it about horror, and I’d say you have elements of speculative fiction in your work as well, that speaks to you as a writer? What possibilities are opened to you here that might not be as present were you to write in other genres?

   
   

   The two sequels are even more speculative. So, if that’s your thing, you’re going to love them. 

   
   

   I grew up around violence, so horror wasn’t a conscious choice. Truthfully, I adore Sci-fi and literary fiction far more because those genres were an escape for me as a kid. However, I’m thankful for horror because it has provided me with a way to express how I feel about all the terrible things I've experienced, unjudged by a very accepting literary community.

   
   

   The novel I finished last year was my first attempt at literary fiction. I have let a few people read it, but no publishers have seen it. I have been told that it’s my best work to date. I hope they’re right. That way, I know that I’m not regressing.

4. Prophet’s Debt explores themes of loyalty, love, and friendship, which I somewhat naively didn’t anticipate encountering in horror.

The thing that frightens us the most is what might be taken away: friends, family, health, dignity, agency, and ultimately life itself.  So, in turn, characters in horror must have something, preferably someone, to grasp onto until they either succeed or succumb. In Naomi’s case, it was her girlfriend, Tiffany. 

A story can only be truly terrifying when it allows us to see the characters as analogs for ourselves.

5. In your interview with The Writer’s Triangle, you mention your first book was science fiction and you have wanted to emulate Vonnegut. This book from 2014, you considered a ‘practice book’ like Albert Camus. You wrote that book in four and a half months. That strikes me as super disciplined.  Describe your writing practice. Do you follow a schedule or aim for a certain word count each day or week?

I get asked this a lot. There is no secret method or practice other than sitting down at the keyboard each day to put in hard work and long hours. I don’t set goals. Some days I write fifty words, others I churn out twenty-five-hundred. Most days fall somewhere in between. I don’t use any specialized software or a dedicated word processor; I just use Google Docs. I devote my attention wholly to the task at hand, ignore everything else, and just write, often with a gray cat perched in my lap.

6. What advice would you give to writers at the beginning of their publishing journey? If you had something to do over, what would it be and how would you approach it differently a second time around?

I’m still very green myself. I wrote my first book like a madman years ago, then simply poked and prodded at what would become Prophet’s Debt every few weeks over the course of several years. 

It wasn’t until 2021 that it all clicked, and I began writing in earnest. It might surprise folks, but I never queried Prophet’s Debt. I finished the first draft that year with no intention of it ever leaving my desktop. However, one day on pre-Elon Twitter, I responded to a writer who stated that she didn’t like it when protagonists in revenge-themed novels never realize that vengeance is wrong. 

I replied, “The moral of my new book is, some motherfuckers need killing.” 

That writer had recently been signed to Cinnabar Moth Publishing. The next day, their CEO messaged me stating that they would like to read the first fifty pages and provided me with an email address to send them to. Two days later, I had a contract and an advance. It would be published the following summer. During the editing process, I was offered two more contracts for the yet-to-be-written sequels. 

On the first page of the sequel, Prophet’s Lamentation, Naomi states, “Some motherfuckers need killing,” as an homage to that moment.

Before this, I wasn’t part of a writer’s group, never attended a public reading, and never even met another author. In 2022, all of that changed when I was traditionally published, then read at my first Noir at the Bar at Yonder Bar in Hillsborough two weeks later. That moment propelled my life in a different, better direction. The subsequent books were published in 2023 and 2024, so, as you can see, I haven’t been around long at all. I’ve just gotten very, very lucky. Hell, Sole Survivor was only the second short story I ever wrote.  

My first reading was recorded and subsequently posted to YouTube by my publisher. 

Here’s the link.

7. You mentioned that you have a character with autism in Prophet’s Debt, what can you tell us about the importance of inclusivity to your work?

I’m autistic myself, so I have an idea what it’s like to be a complete outsider. So, yes, representation matters. If one does not see a reflection of themselves in some form of media, they are subconsciously being told that people like them don’t matter. Charles, the character in my novel with autism, mattered greatly to Naomi.

8. Across your work, I pick up themes of revenge and enacting justice that come full circle. How do you pull these endings off? Are you a plotter or a pantser?

I like to think of writing a novel the way we see Indiana Jones traveling on a map. The red dots on my book’s map are the major plot points in the story, which are mostly planned out in advance. How I get the red line from one dot to the next is not. So, I reckon I write in a hybrid model.

9. The inclusion of the Erlkönig from Goethe’s famous poem fascinated me, and I would love to hear more about your decision to work this into your novel.

Other than being a vehicle for processing trauma, the Prophets trilogy is also about the rise of Christian Nationalism. While Vernon Proffit is clearly an evil sonofabitch, he is not seen that way by his flock. To them, he is an enigmatic, brilliant orator who is the singular vessel of ultimate truth. To go against him is to disobey God himself. 

His fervor and teachings are intended to appeal to young people who are ablaze with the immediacy of life and idealism. Like Goethe’s Erlkönig, Vernon draws in children with promises, which inevitably leads to their demise. 

It’s an allegorical reference to the despotic tendencies of Donald Trump, and the misogynistic, podcast-manosphere movement that has drawn in disaffected, ignorant young men in like a siren of stupidity and death.

10. Where can our readers find you in 2026?

    
    

    You can find my Prophets trilogy at any online book retailer, eBay, and as ebooks for most devices, including Kobo. The first in the series, Prophet’s Debt, can also be borrowed digitally through Braswell Memorial Library. It’s on a few library shelves throughout the state. It’s stolen with some regularity because I wrote it for young queer people, and unfortunately, that is often the only way they can access it. Cinnabar Moth Publishing is fantastic about replacing stolen copies and openly encourages their theft by young folks who would have no access otherwise. 

    
    

    The only bookstore I know for sure has it on its shelves is City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, North Carolina. Their manager is a fan of mine, which is also why I was invited to do an in-conversation style interview there a couple of years ago with my buddy J.G. Hetherton. It’s a cute store, and they have a cat!

I have a few short stories on Horror Sleaze Trash (Editor Note: This site contains adult and graphic content only suitable for those 18+), which is an online literary/pornography web magazine. Sole Survivor lives there.

I’ll be at Authorcon in Williamsburg, VA, from February 27th to March 1st. 

I organize the quarterly Noir at the Bar event in Eastern North Carolina, held in Wilson at Larema Coffee House, so I’m always there. 

I am likely to appear at other, yet announced events throughout the year. Wherever I wash up, I hope to see y’all there!