Since the Oct. 3 release of TREASURE HUNTER: CACHES, CURSES, AND DEADLY CONFRONTATIONS, a number of media outlets have requested interviews. Normally reclusive and not inclined to answer such requests, noted treasure hunter and author W.C. Jameson has agreed to use this space to respond to selected questions.

BOOKGASM: TREASURE HUNTER is an adventure memoir of some of your most memorable expeditions. Why did you write it?

JAMESON: At first, I did not want to write TREASURE HUNTER. The principal reason is related to the fact that one of the best advantages a professional treasure hunter can have is anonymity. The truth is, most of what I do as a professional treasure hunter is illegal; therefore, the less that is known about me and what I am involved with, the better.

My wife has encouraged me for years to write about my adventures as a treasure hunter. I resisted, but finally gave in a few years ago for a couple of reasons. Because of age and increasing obligations relative to writing, speaking and other things, I am no longer as active as I once was. The partners I worked with for years are either dead or have moved on to other things. Most of my recovery expeditions required the cooperation of several men — since they are no longer active, I have cut back on my own my involvement.

While I still have a couple of treasure recovery projects on the burner, neither is likely to be affected by the release of this book.

BOOKGASM: You mentioned most of what you do is illegal. How so?

JAMESON: Because so much land is private or government-owned property, I am often involved in trespassing. Furthermore, national and state salvage and recovery laws, which cover removing lost treasure, are often restrictive and, in some cases, don’t allow the finder to keep anything. If one finds and removes a historic treasure cache from private or government-owned property without permission, it is technically stealing. If one locates treasure in a foreign country and returns with it to the United States, it becomes smuggling.

BOOKGASM: Do you plan a sequel?

JAMESON: There has been talk of a sequel, but at this point, I am not certain whether I want to write one or not. As a result of the successes of my other books, I have been offered contracts for several more. These will keep me busy for quite a while. If the right offer comes along, I may consider it.

BOOKGASM: Do you still hunt for lost mines and buried treasures?

JAMESON: Yes. I have a couple of ongoing projects I won’t discuss. In addition, there are still a number of caches of Spanish gold and silver we had to abandon in Mexico for a variety of reasons. I am tempted to try to go back and retrieve some of those, but recovering and transporting such things in Mexico is very difficult these days.

JAMESON: One of my current projects is located in Arizona, another in Texas. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

BOOKGASM: Are you still conducting research on lost mines and buried treasures?

JAMESON: Yes. I have been doing so for over 50 years and can’t seem to stop. I have file cabinets filled with information on these subjects, and I receive more information and insight from other professional treasure hunters almost on a weekly basis. I continue to be challenged by the possibility of going in search of some of these mines or caches.

BOOKGASM: What is your next book?

JAMESON: At this writing. I am awaiting the release of three books: LOST MINES AND BURIED TREASURES OF ARKANSAS, LOST MINES AND BURIED TREASURES OF MISSOURI and BILLY THE KID: THE LOST INTERVIEWS.

BILLY THE KID: THE LOST INTERVIEWS can be considered a sequel to my best-selling BILLY THE KID: BEYOND THE GRAVE. Searching for lost or missing people is very similar to researching about and searching for a lost treasure cache. In this case, the man we searched for was the outlaw Billy the Kid who, in truth, was never killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett, but went on to live in hiding for another 69 years.

The evidence for this is found in BILLY THE KID: BEYOND THE GRAVE. A few so-called experts on historical American outlaws have gotten upset at my findings. They have been challenged to debate me for years, but none have responded.

BOOKGASM: You are regarded as the best-selling treasure author in the world. How many books about the subject have you written?

JAMESON: Of my 70 books, at least 22 have dealt with lost mines and buried treasures. The first was published in 1988. All but two are still in print. During the next few years, at least 12 more will be released.

I have had the good fortune of publishers contacting me about writing books for them. These books sell well and make the publishers money. With a renewed interest in this country about searching for lost mines and buried treasures, the books are in demand.

BOOKGASM: Has anyone ever found treasure by using one of your books?

JAMESON: Yes, on several occasions.

There are a number of professional treasure hunters in this country and elsewhere who employ my books as a starting point for their own searches for certain lost mines and buried treasures. They know that I do a considerable amount of research, including site visits and analyses, that saves them a lot of time and trouble.

Treasure hunters have gone into places where I have searched for years and have managed to locate caches that eluded me. Everyone looks at a site differently, and sometimes it just takes another person’s perspective to solve a mystery relative to where something might be buried.

A recent discovery wherein the finder used information in one of my books may eventually yield as much as $200 million in gold and silver.

BOOKGASM: Does it bother you that someone may locate a treasure that you have sought for years?

JAMESON: Not at all. There’s plenty of treasure out there. We know this because, in addition to finding some of it myself, I know others who have had successes. Several of us exchange information relative to treasure sites.

For the most part, we professional treasure hunters have the notion that we are all in this together, and that we sometimes succeed as a result of assistance or contributions from others. I have provided information on several occasions that led to discoveries of lost caches. In just about every case, I was paid a finder’s fee.

BOOKGASM: What is the largest treasure you have ever found?

Hard to tell. Over the years I, along with my partners, have found caches of Spanish gold and silver that amounted to several millions of dollars each. What the average person does not realize, however, is that finding something is often a lot easier than returning home with it.

We have found valuable caches in places so remote one cannot get a vehicle into them, and sometimes not even a horse or mule. Some of these locations are far from sources of food and water. What we carry out sometimes is a function of how much we can tote in a backpack. When you consider that an ingot of gold can weight 25 to 40 pounds or more, by the time you load two of them, you have a full pack. You are often forced to trade precious food and water for gold. Then, you are faced with walking miles to wherever you parked your vehicle. We have done this on numerous occasions, but it limits how much you can remove.

We have removed bars of gold in this manner from a cache that contained over 500 of them. To the best of my recollection, there are still 465 ingots left. In another case, we found 880 bars of silver in a cave in Mexico. Over two trips, we carried out a total of 60 ingots on foot and via horseback. The rest are still there.

BOOKGASM: What have you done with the treasure you have found?

That’s personal and private. I can tell you that in some cases, I have converted it to cash that I used to pay off houses, vehicles and send my children to college. One almost needs to find a lost treasure cache to fund a college or university education these days. In many cases, the profits from one expedition went to fund the next.

BOOKGASM: Because of your fame and notoriety as a treasure hunter, you have served as a consultant for television and film. Any plans for more?

Most of those gigs have come about by accident. I don’t seek them, don’t even particularly enjoy them. Between September 2010 and June 2011, I turned down four offers to be involved with television shows about lost mines and buried treasures. I didn’t like any of their ideas, and the programs seemed silly. I am in dialogue right now with producers for the National Geographic Channel about a series based on one of my books, but don’t know where that will go, if anywhere.

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Author photo by K. Horner.

In his book, GLUED TO GAMES: HOW VIDEO GAMES DRAW US IN AND HOLD US SPELLBOUND, psychology consultant Scott Rigby and clinical psychologist Richard M. Ryan offer a balanced research-based analysis of games and gamers, addressing both the positive and negative aspects of habitual playing, by drawing on significant recent studies and established motivational theory.

BOOKGASM: In your book, you say that modern games pull users in more than we were by the arcade games of decades past. How is that?

RIGBY: As gaming has evolved, both game developers and gamers themselves have gotten more sophisticated. Of course technology has allowed for much more “fantastic” graphics and complexity, but more importantly this technological capacity has enabled games — when well designed — to satisfy multiple needs simultaneously, thus creating even greater value for the player and motivational pull.

So for example: First-person shooter games used to be largely about competence satisfaction. They didn’t offer a lot of choices about where to go, nor did they let you play with others. You just picked up a gun and started firing away. Today’s FPS games provide more open environments with more meaningful choices, thus adding autonomy satisfactions, and also allow for complex team play with other players in which team members really rely on each other — which also simultaneously satisfies relatedness needs. When games can hit this kind of “trifecta,” they can be particularly compelling.

BOOKGASM: Ever since video games exploded into our daily culture, there’s been the argument that video games are addictive. According to your research, are they?

RIGBY: Addiction has a very specific clinical definition, and so at the level of whether games addiction is a true clinical disorder — such as alcohol or drug addiction — is still being debated and examined. And I think it is important for this issue to be explored thoroughly.

However, on a day-to-day level, there is no doubt that many people are overinvolved with games, with gaming crowding out relationships, work, and other important life experiences. So in this sense, we need to acknowledge that — as with any deeply compelling and satisfying experience — there is a legitimate issue to be addressed here with a subset of gamers who become overinvolved.

In our research, we are interested in identifying the core motivational and emotional “draws” of games so that there is a foundation for both greater empathy for this issue, as well as a stronger basis for intervening in ways that are both compassionate and effective.

BOOKGASM: And then there’s the other ongoing debate: whether real-world violence is caused by playing such violent video games as CALL OF DUTY.

RIGBY: Well, first, let me say that as psychologists, we are not trying to either grind an ax, so to speak, against violence in games, nor do we dismiss the concerns about violence in games which we feel are legitimate to raise and to research. Our research was really to get at something more basic: Do players really value the blood and gore itself? This has always been the assumption, but it didn’t really make sense to us because many people who are kind, gentle folk love blowing people’s heads off in video games.

Our hypothesis was that the value of the violence wasn’t the blood and gore per se, but that gore was just an effective way in which the game provided competence/mastery feedback. In other words, if I shoot you in the shoulder, I can see the impact immediately — I get immediate informational feedback on my effectiveness — and that is satisfying of my basic need for competence. If I blow your head off, I get even more powerful feedback on my competence. So if it’s really the competence feedback that matters, then if you can provide that in other ways besides blood and gore, the game should be just as enjoyable.

That’s the kind of experiments we did — and that’s exactly what we found. In one study, for example, we designed two versions of basically the same game, only one had lots of blood and gore, and the other didn’t. Because we included competence feedback in both, players enjoyed the less bloody version just as much as the bloody version. And what was really interesting was this was true even for young, adolescent male players of violent games who scored high on trait aggression, i.e. those who stated that the loved violent games!

So even for those players who are the “core audience” for violent games, the enjoyment of a less bloody version was the same as long as basic need satisfactions were met. For us, it shows the value of how you can apply a basic understanding and model of game engagement to answer a lot of interesting questions with greater precision.

BOOKGASM: Who’s most likely to fall into this trap?

RIGBY: Our research suggests that when people are not getting their basic needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness satisfied in life, this is more often related to becoming over-involved in video game play. So while more research is needed to really understand the causal links and risk factors, we emphasize that overuse of games is quite possibly a symptom of a life that isn’t finding basic need satisfactions elsewhere. This perspective allows for an approach that begins by addressing the core issue of basic need satisfaction, rather than simply criticizing, attacking or shaming too much game play.

BOOKGASM: What about kids overusing them? Should parents be concerned or is it just no big deal?

RIGBY: First, I think it is important to understand why kids are so compelled to spend time in games, and this is part of why Rich and I wrote the GLUED TO GAMES book: to make the motivations for games less of a mystery so that parents and kids could engage the topic more honestly and clearly.

This connects to healthy gaming because parents can better talk to their kids about what kids are experiencing and “getting out of” games, and this can lead to healthier choices and less of a rift between parents and kids about gaming. Then, I think when games start to “crowd out” other meaningful relationships and activities that this should be considered a danger sign and a red flag that there is a problem, one that perhaps is rooted in basic needs not being satisfied in the kid’s life, thus leading to them to turn to games too frequently.

BOOKGASM: And speaking of play, why is it that more men play video games than women?

RIGBY: More and more woman play games every year, and I think that it is just a matter of time before this difference, which is shrinking, goes away entirely. Some data shows we’re almost there already, perhaps at a 60/40 male-to-female split.

Remember that video games started in computer labs that in the ’60s and ’70s were predominantly male, and many early games revolved around themes of war, violence, and power — which is still true today in many areas of gaming. So it follows — and I’m speculating here — that this would draw a male audience that is socialized more in that direction to start.

But what’s amazing is how quickly gaming is becoming a mainstream activity for men and woman alike, and what a strong and growing force woman have in gaming today.

BOOKGASM: Do you play games yourself?

RIGBY: I am a gamer — have been ever since I played SPACE INVADERS back in the ’70s at a big arcade in Penn Station in New York City. I still play games regularly both because I enjoy them, but also because I think it’s important to play them if we are going to try to understand them and their psychological dynamics.

My favorite game of all time — hands down — is CIVILIZATION, by Sid Meier. It’s the only video game I still play after 20 years. For me, it is definitely the incredible autonomy the game provides in making meaningful decisions and responding to a very dynamic play field, moment to moment.

Or maybe I just like the idea of world domination. Yeah … unfortunately, that is probably the real reason.

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Luke Williams’ debut novel, THE ECHO CHAMBER, streets Aug. 8.

BOOKGASM: I understand you started writing THE ECHO CHAMBER while you were attending University of East Anglia. How helpful was the creative writing course?

WILLIAMS: The course was hugely helpful. It gave me confidence — the right kind, in the end; I think I began with entirely the wrong kind and soon had this knocked out of me — as well as the space and time in which to think and research and write intensively. All invaluable to a novice writer and one reason to recommend that aspiring novelists consider developing their projects on such a course.

It also threw me into the path of other writers who’ve since become good pals, trusted colleagues and, in one particular case, my first reader and on/off collaborator. But I’d say the course’s most significant impact on me was the term I spent studying with W.G. Sebald, our workshop tutor. I was already a huge fan and drew much inspiration from his books, but his teaching also shaped my work and my approach to it.

BOOKGASM: Your book is the result of both research and imagination. How easy was it to merge the two into a singular story?

WILLIAMS: I wouldn’t say it was easy, but since it was my objective from the outset to do just that, in a way, I had no choice. This approach — the fusing of historical research and my creative response to this — defined the project at every stage. For me the imaginative process is essential in our consideration of the historical record, which can only ever be a partial account of events. Imagination allows us to question and challenge what the historical record presents.

BOOKGASM: Lagos is an odd setting to choose. With all the other spots the story takes place in, why that one?

WILLIAMS: The idea for the novel emerged as a result of my undergraduate studies in history — a course I took in African Imperial History, specifically the British colonial legacy in West Africa. I originally wanted to pursue postgraduate studies in history in order to interrogate more closely the records relating to this period, in particular, the interstices or gaps existing within these.

And then I realised that, for me at least, writing fiction was a more fruitful — and fun — way in which to explore this. It’s very much a fictional Lagos which I present in the book — I’ve not been there, and I didn’t want to go while writing THE ECHO CHAMBER since I couldn’t visit the Lagos I wanted to write about.

Calvino’s Invisible Cities, and the notion that the idea of a city can in many ways be more compelling than the actuality, was influential here. I thought the Lagos in THE ECHO CHAMBER should be more faithful to Evie’s childhood memory of it than the actual Lagos, whether in the ’50s or now.

BOOKGASM: Sound and hearing are ever-present themes in your novel. From where did that idea emerge?

WILLIAMS: This boils down to my beginnings as a large-eared child! I’ve always had a difficult relationship with my ears. For a long time, I thought of them as appendages that really didn’t belong to me or weren’t really part of me, kind of like a snake’s skin or a hermit crab’s shell. I guess I hoped that one day I might shed them. At the same time, I had a strange pride in my outsize ears and there were private moments when I convinced myself that I could hear things that no one else could.

Another reason, more related to the book, is that I wanted my narrator to be a kind of History’s child, like Oskar from THE TIN DRUM or Saleem from MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN or Azaro from THE FAMISHED ROAD. History’s children are freaks. They have — or think they have — special powers. And so Evie has — or thinks she has — amazing powers of hearing.

BOOKGASM: You’ve also written the novel from the female POV. So, being a man, was that tough?

WILLIAMS: My first attempt at a novel featured a protagonist not unlike myself at the time of writing: a neurotic, self-absorbed, 20-something bloke. With literary ambitions. I didn’t get far into the book before I got sick of him and myself, and realised that if I wanted to explore the themes which interested me, and to remain engaged throughout a long-term novel-length project, I’d have to make the protagonist considerably different to me. Hence the 50-something woman.

BOOKGASM: You have some strange, almost unreal elements in the book, like Evie being able to hear inside her mother’s womb, but they feel grounded. How did you achieve that, again, blending of the factual and fictional?

WILLIAMS: Part of Evie’s project is to question narratives of power, and by extension, the role of narrative in enforcing power. Given Evie’s self-appointed status as freakish outsider, it was crucial that her story transgress the boundaries of “reality,” which, after all, in fiction, is never really “reality,” but just one account of it.

BOOKGASM: What other writers do you admire or have influenced you in some way?

WILLIAMS: I’m far more a reader than I am a writer, and this is a list I’m constantly adding to: W.G. Sebald, Gunter Grass, Georges Perec, Sei Shonagon, Susan Sontag, Beckett, Bellow, Bruno Schulz, Lawrence Sterne, Bulgakov, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Lydia Davis, Arundhati Roy, Ken Saro Wiwa, Dambudzo Marechera, Hannah Arendt, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Francis Ponge, Thomas Bernhard, James Kelman. And Natasha Soobramanien, writer of the Damaris Diary section of my novel, who’s just written a stunningly beautiful novel called GENIE AND PAUL.

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Author Joshua Jabcuga delves into horror, where every Friday is Friday the 13th!

Bob Fingerman’s novel PARIAH was given the prestigious honor of being named “Zombie Book of the Year” in the 2010 ’Cuga’s Cuts year-end awards. I have no doubt that that was the highlight of his year. PARIAH also received quite a bit of buzz from other places as diverse as ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY (an A- review), to FANGORIA (“Book of the Month”), as well as blurbs from Robert Kirkman, Brian Keene, Jonathan Lethem, Trey Parker and Augusten Burroughs.

BOOKGASM: The success of PARIAH clearly demonstrates the crossover appeal of your writing. You couldn’t ask for a better response from critics and your peers. Now that the dust has settled, do you think the book has found its audience?

FINGERMAN: After that wonderful buildup, I hate to sound negative, but no. The praise it’s gotten is wonderful, but I feel PARIAH could and should reach a much larger audience than it has, thus far. I’m sure every author feels that way about his or her work, but publishing is such a weird state of affairs at the moment, it’s hard to figure out how to find your audience or, more to the point, have them find you.

That said, it’s not doing badly. I don’t expect to sell Stephen King numbers, but I would like a more robust readership. I think that opportunity is coming, though, as the mass-market paperback is coming out on June 28, so that will put it in a lot more outlets at a cheaper price. Hopefully, that will encourage more people to pick it up and read it. I need bigger numbers so I can do the sequels, which I’m dying to do.

BOOKGASM: Time is definitely on your side, Bob. Not to sound cliché, but zombies are hotter than ever. I believe much of this has to do with AMC airing THE WALKING DEAD. It’s as if the mainstream finally “gets” it. If I had to pinpoint when this “new wave” started, at least in terms of publishing, I’d have to give credit to one of the relatively newer masters of horror, Brian Keene, and the essential THE RISING. In my opinion, that’s basically the launching pad.

FINGERMAN: It’s always hard to pinpoint that kind of thing. I read and thoroughly enjoyed Keene’s zombie offerings, as well as Dave Wellington’s. Theirs are more magicky takes on the subject matter. More metaphysical and paranormal. Ancient spirits guiding the undead. I thought that was interesting as it’s completely at odds with what I do.

One of the reasons I’ve always responded favorably to David Cronenberg’s work was he always went for a more scientific-type approach. That’s not to say the “science” wasn’t totally sketchy, but it made the horror easier to swallow for me. That’s why as much as I admire Stephen King’s work, the presence of the divine always ruins it a bit. God can always come to the rescue and the devil or his evil lackeys are almost always to blame. Cronenberg really nailed the “disease of the cell” approach in modern horror.

I got there a little before the curve, but zombies in the late ’90s weren’t hot. PARIAH is actually a sequel, pretty much, to the zombie graphic novel I wrote in 1997 for Dark Horse Comics, WINTER’S DREGS, for their abortive ZOMBIE WORLD series. PARIAH was pitched first, but the editor wanted a prequel, and by the time I was ready to do PARIAH, the series was cancelled.

Just was well. It worked better as a novel. Much better.

BOOKGASM: You worked for Harvey Kurtzman on NUTS!, Al Goldstein’s SCREW, HEAVY METAL, NATIONAL LAMPOON and HIGH TIMES, just to name a few. I’d imagine that provided some invaluable lessons for you as a young writer in the trenches. And it is an amazing portfolio and a snapshot at a different era, really. Do you look back at those experiences fondly?

FINGERMAN: I’m actually planning on writing a straight literary novel based on my experiences at SCREW. That was quite an office. I’ll tell you, in retrospect, I’m glad that I worked for all those places, especially the seedier ones. They had color. At the time, I wasn’t so happy about it. I mean, I liked the people I worked with, but those weren’t exactly tony employers to add to your CV or portfolio.

Some classier clientele would have been sweet, but you can’t put a price on the outsized characters I met over the years at those joints. But those places paid my bills. I wish I’d had my skill set where it is now to work for LAMPOON. I revere that magazine, but only did one job for it and it wasn’t really up to snuff. Still, I tried.

BOOKGASM: I was at a Joe Hill reading — actually, it was his first Comic-Con “panel” ever — and someone was looking for advice on writing. If I remember correctly, I believe Joe said he wrote about a million words before he felt he found his voice. He certainly paid his dues, though from what I understand, writing runs in that family — wink. At what point do you think you found your voice, and who were some of your influences?

FINGERMAN: I think I’ve always had a voice, for better or worse. I have what you might call a “strong personality.” I’ve always had a thing for words, since way back. But as to my voice, I think there’s a through line in all my work. Like there’s “that Barton Fink feeling,” I think there’s a Bob Fingerman feeling, too. Maybe it’s the initials.

That said, sure I’ve got influences: Terry Southern, Bruce Jay Friedman, Donald Westlake, Phil Dick, to go back a ways. Chuck Palahniuk is a contemporary influence. But my innate narcissism calls the shots and dictates how I put it down on paper. I don’t want to imitate anyone. For better or worse, I want it to sound like me.

There are writers out there who tell a brisk story — really propulsive plotters, that kind of thing — but they don’t have much style. They are all about telling the story and not into creating crafty prose. I like tasty sentences. Though I’ve kind of moved on from Martin Amis, he crafted some beautiful prose. That seeped in.

BOOKGASM: I mentioned Brian Keene earlier. Last Thursday, he launched a campaign for writers, retailers and readers to boycott Dorchester/Leisure. Unfortunately, I have friends affected by this whole situation, and maybe you do, too. It’s a raw deal and really shows the underbelly of publishing. Would you care to comment or offer some words of encouragement to those writers?

FINGERMAN: It sounds feeble, but of course, I totally feel for those writers. It’s a lousy predicament they’re in. And it looks, at least from an outsider’s point of view, like Dorchester is being less than forthright when it comes to how they’re handling their situation.

My friend Laura, also a writer, pointed out some of the language Dorchester’s used — “In bankruptcy, but not actually filing for bankruptcy” — and decoded that as meaning reorganizing debt with no protection for creditors. So, yeah, my sympathies, big time. It’s a precarious time to be doing anything creative and expecting to make a living at it.

BOOKGASM: Last but not least: Recommend a good book to me.

FINGERMAN: Just read a couple by R. Scott Bakker that I really enjoyed: DISCIPLE OF THE DOG and NEUROPATH. Also Walter Greatshell’s latest, MAD SKILLS, which was really fun. Currently reading I KNOW I AM, BUT WHAT ARE YOU? by Samantha Bee. Very funny stuff.

Oops, that’s not genre. Is that a no-no? And that was more than one. Fuck it, I’m a rebel.

Coming up in ’Cuga’s Cuts: SHOCK TOTEM! —Joshua Jabcuga

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With the film version of Michael Connelly’s THE LINCOLN LAWYER hitting theaters today, we asked the best-selling author how he feels about the finished product. Oh, and we asked him about his novels, too.

BOOKGASM: How does the film adaptation of THE LINCOLN LAWYER compare to the one Clint Eastwood did for BLOOD WORK? Is one truer to your vision than the other?

CONNELLY: There is no doubt that THE LINCOLN LAWYER adaptation is a truer take on the book. BLOOD WORK had a different villain and different ending from the book. THE LINCOLN LAWYER is very loyal to the book, though as with all adaptations, there are changes, things added and lost.

BOOKGASM: If Harry Bosch were to make the leap to film, who would be your dream actor to fill the role, and your dream director to make it happen?

CONNELLY: I can’t answer the question about the actor because I’ve lived with Harry for 20-plus years and the image I created is really rock-solid. I think he kind of looks like Billy Burke, however. As far as directors go, after seeing THE LINCOLN LAWYER so wonderfully done, Brad Furman would be my choice. He’s got a feel for gritty, realistic L.A.

BOOKGASM: The Harry Bosch stories often use recent policies of the Los Angeles Police Department as their sort of inspiration. Do you intend to continue this? And does this approach put your novels in danger of being dated in the near or distant future?

CONNELLY: Yes and yes. I always want the books reflecting what is going on in all political and social levels. The books are of the moment. I can’t really worry about whether they are relevant or dated years down the line. I just assume they will be at some point.

BOOKGASM: You love to unite characters from your separate novels, most recently Mickey Haller with Harry Bosch. What is the appeal for you vs. the appeal for your readers?

CONNELLY: For readers, it is an ah-ha moment every time they make a connection to a prior book or a character or place. From the writing standpoint, it is fulfilling to me to unite the books, make them all part of one big mosaic or one story.

BOOKGASM: You’ve written in/for newspapers, television, film, short stories, novels and as an anthology editor. Which is your favorite? Which holds the most challenges?

CONNELLY: Definitely writing a crime novel is my favorite and it’s where I get the most challenge and the most fulfillment. Everything else I kind of moonlight at. —Rod Lott and Alan Cranis

Author photo by Terrill Lee Lankford

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Author Joshua Jabcuga delves into horror, where every Friday is Friday the 13th!

Nate Southard is the author of RED SKY, now available for pre-order from Thunderstorm Books. It’s the best novel I’ve read this year.

BOOKGASM: Elements of your soon-to-be-released debut novel, RED SKY, reminded me of early Jack Ketchum, visceral and gritty. It’s also very cinematic. If I had to describe it, I might say it’s THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE if Ketchum had directed it, and not just because of the setting. It’s also got a dash of Sam Peckinpah tossed in for good measure. How much of your writing is influenced by where you live?

SOUTHARD: Quite a bit, actually. I think it’s pretty normal for a writer to be influenced by their location. For me, it comes down to small-town Indiana, where I was born, and this romanticized idea of Texas that keeps lingering in my head.

Not romanticized in a “cowboys on the open range” sort of way, but just the landscape and the roads that go on forever. There’s some amazing depth to the Texas landscape. The place is big enough to be a country, and it’s just as dynamic. I can travel 20 minutes outside Austin’s sprawl and find these tiny little one-stop towns that time forgot, right on the edge-of-the-hill country. It’s scenery that’s really ripe for storytelling.

BOOKGASM: Do you ever feel like releasing limited editions is a double-edged sword, in the sense that it creates buzz, but that it also limits the amount of eyeballs who may be exposed to the work for the time being. Hopefull, there are plans for a second printing.?

SOUTHARD: I don’t mind limited editions nearly as much as I mind the “print enough to cover pre-orders and no more” trend I’ve seen here and there. It can be frustrating for a writer who’s trying to grow an audience, but it’s not like a sold-out book can’t be released in a new edition, either. With any luck, we’ll see RED SKY released in a more affordable edition somewhere down the line. There are no plans currently, though.

BOOKGASM: I know you’re a student of the game, and have listed influences ranging from Norman Partridge to comics writer Warren Ellis. But as I mentioned before, your style is very cinematic, and could lend itself to Hollywood adaptations very easily. Are there certain filmmakers who have influenced your approach to storytelling?

SOUTHARD: I have a degree in radio, television and film with an emphasis in screenwriting, and I was interested in comics scripting for a long time, so I’ve kind of trained myself to think visually. I can’t really think of any filmmakers that I would call an influence, though.

There have certainly been movies that influenced me, especially some of your more horrific flicks that aren’t promoted as horror movies. I always use THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY? as an example, because it’s just a movie about a dance contest, but it’s one of the most horrifying things I’ve ever seen.

BOOKGASM: You like crime and gangster movies, don’t you?

SOUTHARD: I do dig me some crime movies, but I’m not an overt gangster fan. A lot of Mafia films play like political thrillers with extra guns. I much prefer flicks about novices in over their heads, where the panic can be overwhelming. I guess you could say I’m less “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse,” and a lot more, “Dude, we’re robbing the bank!”

BOOKGASM: What are your thoughts on e-publishing and the future of the industry? Do you use an e-reading device like a Kindle or an iPad, or are you someone that prefers the tactile experience of holding a book?

SOUTHARD: No e-reader for me. I don’t really have anything against them, but they’re not at the level where I can justify dropping that much cash on one. I like that electronic editions are making such headway, though. It’s good that there’s any positive sign coming out of the publishing industry today. Here’s hoping the momentum continues. Still, I like having a shelf full of books to look at and admire. I can’t say the same thing about a portable hard drive.

BOOKGASM: You’ve been busting your ass for years, honing your craft, and things are really taking off, with RED SKY; a re-release of HE STEPPED THROUGH; inclusion in Ellen Datlow’s SUPERNATURAL NOIR anthology and Cemetery Dance’s SHIVERS VI; the novella THIS LITTLE LIGHT OF MINE coming out soon from Burning Effigy Press; another novella, FOCUS, co-written with Lee Thomas; and a piece in an upcoming issue of BLACK STATIC. I get the impression you’re going to keep hustling, full-throttle, no cruise control. What motivates and drives you?

SOUTHARD: I’m just hungry. I want to tell stories, and I want them to be read by lots of people. At this point, I’ve sort of made peace with the idea that making a living as a full-time writer could be nothing more than a pipe dream. That just doesn’t happen so much for folks who write what I write. What I really love is just getting stories out there where they can be read by as many people as possible. The last year has been very exciting for that, especially with SHIVERS VI and SUPERNATURAL NOIR, which look like they’ve got the potential to gain a lot of readers. Exciting time, man!

BOOKGASM: We mentioned FOCUS, co-written with Lee Thomas. If you could collaborate with any writer, living or dead, who would be at the top of your list, and why?

SOUTHARD: Peter Straub. I don’t really long to collaborate with anybody, because if I love a writer I want to read their work without another writer in the mix. That’s just my preference. When I think about the sheer volume of things I could learn by working with Straub, however, I get a little slack-jawed. I can’t imagine our styles working together at all, because I’m a foul-mouthed hooligan, and he’s Peter Straub, but I’d do anything for that learning experience.

BOOKGASM: What advice can you give to aspiring writers?

SOUTHARD: Write every day and read every day. Read as much of every genre as you can. If you love something, try to switch it up and read things that aren’t just paying lip service to your tastes. Challenge yourself. You don’t have to write everything thinking about world domination, but you need to keep yourself interested. —Joshua Jabcuga

Buy it at Thunderstorm Books.

People always seemed to be surprised when they hear that an actor has written a novel, as if a talent in one field precludes having one in another. Personally, I’m far more surprised that more actors don’t try their hand at fiction, considering how the nature of their craft allows them to get into the heads of characters whose behavior and attitudes are often anathema to their own.

That and they often have a lot of free time on their hands.

Still, despite this there is an annoying tendency to treat novels written by actors as amusing novelties rather than as serious works of genuine merit. Hopefully the efforts of celebrated cult movie actress Adrienne Barbeau will go some way toward changing that.

Getting her literary start with her entertaining memoir, THERE ARE WORSE THINGS I COULD DO, Barbeau found herself encouraged to try her hand at fiction and the two resulting novels, VAMPYRES OF HOLLYWOOD and LOVE BITES, aren’t merely good for having been written by a celebrity, they’re as good as anything else you’ll find on bookshelves written by some homely author who never guest-starred on THE LOVE BOAT or made sweet cinematic love to a SWAMP THING.

Ms. Barbeau was kind enough to (patiently) answer some questions I sent to her via e-mail. I had the option of talking to her on the phone, but feared that such an interaction might devolve into a very pathetic recreation of THE CHRIS FARLEY SHOW sketch. Turns out, with one question at least, this pretty much happened anyway.

BOOKGASM: Your first novel, VAMPYRES OF HOLLYWOOD, was a collaboration between yourself and Irish writer Michael Scott (THE SORCERESS). How did the two of you end up working together and what made you decide to tackle the sequel, LOVE BITES, as a solo project?

BARBEAU: Michael approached me after WORSE THINGS made the L.A. Times bestseller list. He has a background in sales and he told me he thought I’d written the wrong book, that I should write a horror novel for all the fans of the many horror films I’ve done. I’d never thought about it before and I expressed some hesitation about writing a novel. I knew I could write the dialogue and the characters, but I wasn’t so sure about plot. He said he’d do it with me, and VAMPRYES OF HOLLYWOOD was born. When time came to write the second book in the series, Michael was busy with other commitments, so I took it on by myself.

BOOKGASM: Both of your novels “star” Ovsanna Moore, the 500-year-old “Chatelaine” of Los Angeles, who moonlights as a cinematic “scream queen” and CEO of Anticipation Studios. Which do you think makes her more fantastic: her ability to turn into a dragon or her ability (as an actress of a “certain age”) to develop her own film projects?

BARBEAU: Lot harder to get a movie made than morph into a dragon. You haven’t seen VAMPYRES OF HOLLYWOOD onscreen yet, have you?

BOOKGASM: The title of your first novel refers to a group of Hollywood legends who were all forced to fake their own deaths to avoid revealing their true blood-sucking nature. What made you choose those specific icons and why do you think you found yourself drawing more from the 1920s and ’30s than other eras?

BARBEAU: I did as much research as I could to select film icons whose lives (and deaths) could satisfy the logic of the vampire existence as we had created it. I don’t remember now if Michael chose some of them, but I do remember sitting at my computer in some hotel when I was working on location and scouring the Internet for celebrities who met my criteria. And most of them had to have been successful in the ’20s and ’30s because they are all the elders of the clan.

BOOKGASM: With her dark curly hair, Armenian heritage, preference for calf-length boots and natural curves it’s hard not to notice a distinct physical resemblance between Ovsanna and the sexy star of such films as CANNIBAL WOMEN IN THE AVOCADO JUNGLE OF DEATH and BURIAL OF THE RATS. Coincidence? Seriously, though, as wildly different as you and your protagonist are in real life, is it difficult not to picture yourself when you’re writing about her?

BARBEAU: Well, they say write what you know. There’s definitely a lot of me in Ovsanna. And actually, I’d like to think Ovsanna and I aren’t that wildly different. I’d love to think that I have half her fearlessness and at least some of her strength. If only I had her skin.

BOOKGASM: One of the major plot threads of LOVE BITES is whether or not Ovsanna will ever be able to physically consummate her nascent relationship with Beverly Hills police detective Peter King, so when it does finally happen, it really happens. Did you look forward to writing this sequence or dread it? Did you have to push yourself to go farther or hold yourself back from going too far?

BARBEAU: You know, I honestly don’t remember. I think I worried a bit about it before I got to it, and I remember being much more aware of how other authors I read handled those kinds of “culmination” scenes. I knew what I didn’t want on the page, that’s for sure. And once I got into it, it just sort of came naturally, if you’ll pardon the pun.

BOOKGASM: Both of your novels are filled with references to your friends and family. Did you choose to surprise them or warn them ahead time? Have you heard any feedback from them? I’m especially curious to know how a certain music composer living in Tokyo feels about his mom using her protagonist to shamelessly brag about his talent or how the star of NIGHT OF THE CREEPS feels about his unexpected (but delightful) cameo in LOVE BITES.

BARBEAU: I did call Tom (Atkins) to tell him I wanted to use him as himself in LOVE BITES. And when I’d written his scenes, I sent them to him to make sure he didn’t mind. I hope he got a kick out of it; I can’t wait to hear what his fans say to him when they read it. And as for Cody (Carpenter), well, he read the first draft for me and he never objected, so I guess he wasn’t too embarrassed. But hey, that’s what I learned about writing fiction: You can tell any tales you want, and boy, is that fun.

BOOKGASM: How much do you know what is going to happen in your novels when you begin them? Do you map out every plot twist or do you allow yourself to be surprised?

BARBEAU: I’m still surprised. I go back and read what I’ve written and there’s a lot of it that I would swear didn’t come from my fingers on the keys; I don’t have any recollection of writing it. With LOVE BITES, I knew how I wanted to begin and I knew the relationships I wanted to explore and I knew where I needed to end up. I plotted sections of it at a time and then my outline kept changing as the logic of my characters demanded following. Logic is very important to me.

BOOKGASM: Both of the novels are written as a “he said/she said,” alternating between Ovsanna and Peter King. Do you find writing in Peter’s male voice to be more unnatural than writing in Ovsanna’s, or do you even notice a difference at all?

BARBEAU: I think once I had a strong sense of who I wanted Peter to be, his voice came pretty easily. That’s probably where my acting chops come in handy; I’ve spent most of my life dealing with dialogue.

BOOKGASM: Despite the conventional horror trappings of your novels, they seem to have much more in common with the thriller/crime novels both of your protagonists enjoy reading. Which authors would you name as your most direct literary influences?

BARBEAU: When I started on VAMPYRES OF HOLLYWOOD, I’d only read one vampire novel in my life: FEVRE DREAM by George R.R. Martin. I am a series thriller/crime novel junkie. I don’t know if the authors I mention in LOVE BITES are my literary influences, but they are my idols.

If I could write like John Sandford or Lee Child or Randy Wayne White, or Robert B. Parker, Robert Crais, Alex Berenson … well, the list goes on and on, and if I could write one iota as well as one of them, I’d never act another day in my life. Uh … maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but I’d damn well be writing a lot more!

BOOKGASM: LOVE BITES features a moment where we see Orson Welles disguised as a chauffeur singing the theme song to STAR WARS. That isn’t a question, but it was awesome and I wanted to point it out.

BARBEAU: Well, thank you! I honestly don’t know how or why that came out of me, but there was no question in my mind that that’s what he’d be singing in that situation. It wasn’t a case of thinking “Oh, what song would work here?” I just heard him singing that theme as I saw him driving up the road.

BOOKGASM: The general consensus at BOOKGASM is that your memoir has what can be considered one of the greatest covers in publishing history. So much so that I briefly questioned purchasing the book because I feared the attractive young woman behind the register might assume I was doing so for decidedly unwholesome reasons. Yet that same book features a chapter where you question your status as a sex symbol. Seriously?

BARBEAU: Yep. Well, I explain it all in the book. I mean, come on, until CARNIVALE in 2005, the only love scene I’d ever done on film was with a huge, green monster in the middle of a swamp. I guess it all comes down to your definition of a sex symbol.—Allan Mott

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Photo by Pamela Springsteen

Author Joshua Jabcuga delves into horror, where every Friday is Friday the 13th!

After selling his first novel in 1991, World Fantasy Award winner Graham Joyce has pursued writing full-time. He teaches creative writing to grad students at Nottingham Trent University, and his current novel is HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH DEMONS, published by Night Shade Books.

BOOKGASM: I’ve described HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH DEMONS as Frank Capra’s IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE if it had been filmed by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, and I mean that in all the best possible ways. The prose is so eloquent. And it’s a deceptive tale because it has whimsical moments, while also revealing a real darkness. As a writer, how did you maintain this gravitas with some of the light-heartedness, keeping the tone and the plot from wilting?
 
GRAHAM JOYCE: Well, I’ve long maintained that the experience of life is an eerie balance between horror and humor. Or maybe humor is a coping mechanism we have developed. Either way, however dark the subject matter of my books, I do like to trigger levity and I can’t abide humorless books. I suppose I was saying this — or my Arab character was — when he was talking about the endless war between gravity and levity. You know: trying to maintain a sense of humor in a grim situation.
 
BOOKGASM: Speaking of deception, your main character, William Heaney, has been living since college with a lot of personal deception of his own. He’s bright enough to know he has issues, but has carried this frustration and guilt around for far too long. Some might say he’s sabotaging himself. It’s as if these setbacks and mistakes needed to be made in order for his life to truly blossom, though. Some of your work seems to be about escaping the past; here, ultimately, it’s about embracing the past. Are you of the belief that everything in life happens for a reason? A hopeless romantic or romantically hopeful?
 
JOYCE: Most certainly the latter. We have to have optimism for carrying on, and it is the responsibility of every writer to find that. Often the evidence is against us, and even in our best efforts, the Raptors amongst us drive us back to war and conflict and misery, just so long as they can profit from the world’s resources. But for every example of that, you can find an example of the contrary power in some humanizing, compassionate or illuminating force. The human race is a bad lot, but we do carry the wonderful spark of light.

BOOKGASM: In HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH DEMONS, you thank the Pixies for the song “Monkey Gone to Heaven.” Lyrics in the song read: “If man is five / Then the devil is six / Then God is seven / This monkey’s gone to heaven.” Do you think people need some sense of cosmic order or religion in their life, or do they get weighed down by the sum of the numbers, so to speak? Like in William’s case, the 1,567 “demons” he needed to come to terms with.

JOYCE: I’m an atheist, but one who sometimes can’t entirely escape from magical thinking. What’s more, I know that although rationality is a fantastic tool, it will never explain the darkness or the sheer energy of creation. But it’s that irrational way of knowing that sparks art, music, literature. Sometimes I think there is enough religion inside that. I don’t think we have to have cosmic order. We can’t possible “know” and that’s all right. The mystery is enough.

BOOKGASM: Your work seems to blend genres and erase lines, from fantasy to horror. Were publishers initially hesitant to look at your work because of this cross-pollination style of writing, maybe because they didn’t know how to quote-unquote label or market your books? If so, how did you deal with rejection? Do you give any advice to your students or aspiring writers for dealing with rejection?
 
JOYCE: I was lucky not to get much rejection from publishers. The sort of rejection I might have experienced is when people won’t touch your books because either they hate fantasy or, more often, they think my stuff isn’t fantasy enough. I tend to say to my students, “Look, you’re on this road, and you’d better make sure that it’s your road and not someone else’s road. That way, you’ll always remember what it is you set out to do, and that way, any rejection can be reduced in its significance.”

BOOKGASM: Your work has been compared to the likes of Nick Hornby to Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Algernon Blackwood. I won’t ask you to describe your style, but I’d be curious to know who some of your influences are, and if there might be any current fiction that you are enjoying?
 
JOYCE: I read very widely both inside and outside of the genres. I’m just reading LITTLE DORRIT by Dickens, and it’s magnificent. Again, it’s just so funny in a grim context of universal imprisonment. He has me laughing my head off, but he offers compassion, which is the thing no novel should be without, though too many are.

BOOKGASM: Are writers just wanna-be musicians — guitar players who can’t play a lick, or rock ‘n’ roll front men who can’t carry a tune?
 
JOYCE: That sounds like me. —Joshua Jabcuga

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Comics scribe Joshua Jabcuga delves into horror, where every Friday is Friday the 13th!

Author/filmmaker Mick Garris chatted with us to promote RIDING THE BULLET: THE DELUXE SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE from LonelyRoad Books, which includes Garris’ screenplay for the movie with Stephen King’s original novella.

BOOKGASM: Was your ultimate goal to be a filmmaker, did you just fall into it in large part to your break on Steven Spielberg’s AMAZING STORIES, or did you just want to be a storyteller, regardless of the medium?

GARRIS: I actually started writing fiction when I was about 12, after having been all about drawing. My father had gone to art school, and was a pretty good artist who was never able to make a living at it. Once I started writing, I quit drawing; I originally wanted to be a cartoonist and animator.  

But at 18, I joined my first and only band, Horsefeathers, and that completely changed my priorities. I started writing songs and performing, as well as doing music journalism and interviewing people like Hendrix, Janis Joplin and lots of other dead rock stars. But I always loved movies, and thought that if the band made it big, it would allow me to write and eventually direct movies. I studied film in college, but from a distance. AMAZING STORIES came after years of unsold spec scripts.

BOOKGASM: Stephen King’s RIDING THE BULLET was a very personal project for you, due to the passing of loved ones around the time the novella was released. After reading it, how soon did the wheels start spinning where you said to yourself, “I can do something with this.” Did you feel an urge to do it out of tribute to these people, was it meant to be a cathartic experience, or did it develop into those things only in hindsight?

GARRIS: It hit me immediately as I read the story with a big emotional wallop; I thought it could be a movie, but with a lot more added to the story, which is really only 30 pages long. I had my late brother, Craig, and father very much in mind when I wrote the script, which came out in a rush of about three weeks when I wrote it.

The more I worked on it, the more it turned into something about my family, my experiences, and death in general. It wasn’t intended to be cathartic, so much, but it surely turned out to be. Watching the movie for the very first time, when the print had just come from the lab the day before, with an audience of 700 people, with my mother and sister in the audience, was nerve-wracking and emotional, much more so than anything I’d made before or since.

BOOKGASM: With all due respect to Mr. King, you made “Riding the Bullet” into something uniquely your own. The novella stands on its own, but your writing and directing make this an entirely new experience. Although in some ways, it feels like a direct collaboration between you and King, as if he started the sentence, and you finished it.  

Do you think part of that came from being so well-versed in his works, with the many adaptations you’ve done — up to that point, THE STAND, THE SHINING, SLEEPWALKERS and QUICKSILVER HIGHWAY? In other words, and putting life experience aside, would the Mick Garris of, say, 15 or 20 years ago, have been able to make this film?

GARRIS: Well, it certainly would have been very different a couple decades ago, and probably a lot more superficial. Death deepens you when it’s close to you. I mean, it’s not really meant to be an arthouse film or anything; it’s meant to be an entertainment that hopefully has a bit more of an emotional connection than most “horror” movies, and emo horror movies, if you will.

But it resonated with me when I read Steve’s story; we seem to have very similar backgrounds, though on different coasts. That’s what attracted me to it in the first place. There was plenty of room to add to it, and I thought I had a lot to add. I’m so glad it works for you. The film was a complete flop when it was released.

BOOKGASM: Here at BOOKGASM, we’re big fans of your literary works such as DEVELOPMENT HELL and A LIFE IN THE CINEMA. I feel like it’s this great mix of writers Charles Beaumont and  Budd Schulberg. Who, in fact, are some of your influences?

GARRIS: Well, I’m a huge fan of both of those authors; they played a big part in my growing up. Bradbury was probably my biggest enthusiasm and influence, as well as Richard Matheson; the great noirists, Chandler and Cain; later, the early Ellroy books; and of course, King. I’d tend to get on a kick for one author, and read everything he’d ever written back-to-back. That certainly was my Shulberg experience.

BOOKGASM: Can you shed some light on what fans can expect next from you? King’s FROM A BUICK 8 or BAG OF BONES? 

GARRIS: BUICK 8 seems to have hit a roadblock. It’s a bit too different from the teen horror sequels and remakes that have littered our cineplexes for a while, so it will be a while before we’re able to get that off the ground. But when we do, Tobe Hooper is attached to direct.  

But BAG OF BONES looks like it’s finally going to happen, as a four-hour miniseries for television. It’s got a great script by Matt Venne; it’s Matt’s favorite book, and it shows. Again, a very emotional, passionate ghost story, which these days, would not get made as a feature. We tried for three years.  

There’s some other stuff I’m working on that we can’t really talk about yet, but I just started writing a piece of fiction this week. I’m not sure where it’s going yet, but it might actually grow into a short novel. It’s not a horror story, but more a Hollywood desert noir, if that makes sense.

Coming soon: interviews with Graham Joyce and Nate Southard, a review of SHOCK TOTEM #2 and more! —Joshua Jabcuga

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Photo of Garris by Damon D’Amato

Formerly a Pulitzer Prize-nominated reporter for THE TAMPA TRIBUNE, Ace Atkins is now a full-time novelist, and a true rising star in crime fiction. (No less than Michael Connelly calls him “one of the best.”) With eight books under his belt, his latest is INFAMOUS, a novelized version of Machine Gun Kelly’s 1933 kidnapping of an Oklahoma City oilman. Prior to finishing his book tour in OKC, Atkins talked to us about the novel’s genesis, his intensive research process, and how his current job compares to his old one.

BOOKGASM: Why this novel?

ATKINS: I was actually researching another story. This is the fourth true-crime book I’ve been working on. And I was in Memphis two summers ago, pulling records from another case. And the clerk in the Shelby County Clerk’s office, we were just shooting the bull and I had said, “How far do your records go back?” And he said, “Man, I got records going back to Machine Gun Kelly.”

I said, “No kidding,” and he said, “Sometimes I’ll just read that stuff while I’m filing. I found it a few months ago, and man, it’s incredible. He was from Memphis, but he kidnapped this guy from Oklahoma City, and there was this big manhunt and they ended up cornering him in Memphis, like something out of the movies.” I said, “Well, could you get a me a copy of that file?” He said, “Sure, let me dig it out,” because they have to go to another building to the archives and pull it.

About a week later, he called and said, “I’ve got your Machine Gun Kelly file,” so I drove to Memphis, which is about an hour for me, and I was just hooked.

BOOKGASM: Why do you think Machine Gun Kelly still has this hold on America?

ATKINS: It’s funny: He’s like one of those guys, you grew up your entire life knowing that name. You know Machine Gun Kelly. And I think it’s just the image — it’s the Great Depression-era gangster, it’s larger than life. Through pop culture over all these years, he still resonates today.

BOOKGASM: In INFAMOUS, how much of the fiction is fact?

ATKINS: Out of the four books I’ve written that are heavily based on research and actual events, this is the most true story that I’ve even written. Mainly because the Machine Gun Kelly story — from the kidnapping of Charlie Urschel in Oklahoma City and all the way up to the point where he was arrested in Memphis — it was a compelling beginning, a middle and an end. There were not as many holes as I had to fill in as a novelist.

My previous book, DEVIL’S GARDEN, was about the Fatty Arbuckle case in San Francisco, and there really was never that clean of a resolution. It was more muddled. There were certainly a lot more holes to fill.

BOOKGASM: Ooh, bad pun.

ATKINS: Yeah! Huge holes to fill! But for this particular story, it was so well-documented. I got these FBI records which were just a godsend, these 8,000 pages that I got. Not all of it is helpful. You have to look at every page, because on that one page, I found Machine Gun Kelly’s confession. It wasn’t something that was marked in an index somewhere, it was like pulling a needle out of a haystack.

BOOKGASM: Was this book harder than the others to research?

ATKINS: It was harder, because there was so much. I get very obsessive with the research. Someone like E.L. Doctorow had it right; he always said that when he’s working on something, they asked him how much he researches, and he said, “Just enough.” And I wish I was to that point, but no. I really over-research.

If it wasn’t Kelly’s personal file, it was the file of one of the FBI agents who tracked him down. That’s what made it harder: There was really not a point where I said, “Okay, I have found everything I can on this case.” I found a hell of a lot, but there were still doors opening, even as I was finishing up the project.

BOOKGASM: What kinds of people and events attract you to write about them?

ATKINS: I think the one critieria I have to have when working on the project — because it is so labor-intensive — is I have to be really obsessed with that subject matter. It has to be something I really want to learn about and want to be doing for a year and a half to two years. It can’t be something the ground has been really well-covered. It has to be something that’s really exciting for me to research.

BOOKGASM: What are you working on next?

ATKINS: I haven’t necessarily found another project that is as exciting to me as the last four ones that I’ve worked on. I don’t want to get into a rut where I’m just going to take on another story.

BOOKGASM: What about Nick Travers? Is that series over?

ATKINS: I’m actually working on a new series right now, and it’s much, much different, tone-wise and scope-wise and everything than the series Busted Flush is reissuing right now. But it’s really fun and very freeing to be working on a contemporary novel now and not worry about dress and the music and the cars, all that kind of stuff. I feel like I’m writing with a much lighter load now.

BOOKGASM: Do you miss journalism?

ATKINS: Yeah, yeah, I do. Very much. I think maybe that’s what led me into writing these true crime books, because the first couple books I had written, they involved a lot of research, so it wasn’t so archive-heavy — it was something where I was getting out and talking to guys who had been detectives and newspapermen and lived these stories. I think that’s why led me into this, realizing that I missed being a reporter.

BOOKGASM: What’s it like out there for a full-time novelist these days, with all this change?

ATKINS: It’s a lot better than it is for a journalist! No complaints from me at all. When I got out to become full-time in 2001, I had a lot of confidence that I was going to be able to do this as a career, but I also had a lot of apprehension. I had a lot of people saying, “What are you, nuts?” I was able to get a deal for a couple of book with my earlier series that Busted Flush is doing now, and I thought, “I’m going to be writing this character for, you know, 20 years.”

I really thought I was going to have that opportunity, that that’s where I was headed. But little did I know — or did anyone know in the industry — that this was the end of that time. Had I not made that leap, I would’ve lost my job as a reporter. I don’t know what I would’ve done. i was very fortunate to make that jump when I did, because it was definitely a sink-or-swim scenario.

BOOKGASM: So that novel you were researching when you stumbled onto Machine Gun Kelly instead: Is that something you’ll ever revisit?

ATKINS: That book, it’s hard to explain, but it’s about organized crime in Memphis. There are several components that to really work as a book. there are some people in jail right now who are going to have to talk to me. A couple of the ones I really thought would open up and explain some things to me have not.

I want to write things that, you know, were not reported in the newspaper. Getting the confidence of those people to talk about it has proven harder than I expected. So, I still keep that on the back burner and I still keep that story stoked, so hopefully in three or four years, somebody will come forward and I can make it work as a novel. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with NEW BRIGHTON ARCHEOLOGICAL SOCIETY’s Mark Andrew Smith
• Q&A with THE SCORPION TRAIL’s Larry D. Sweazy
• Q&A with Vertical Inc.’s Ed Chavez

Photo by Jay E. Nolan

In the world of Japanese imports, Vertical Inc. is tops, book-wise. From manga and puzzles to horror fiction and fantasy, the New York-based publisher doesn’t flood the market with dozens of titles a week, but instead opts for quality over quantity. Here, Vertical’s marketing director, Ed Chavez, fills us in on the house’s mission to bring the fun of the Far East to your hands.

BOOKGASM: For the uninitiated, what’s Vertical’s mission in publishing?

CHAVEZ: Our objective is to publish the best in contemporary Japanese popular culture to give a global audience a proper sample of what is currently being consumed, relevant and highly regarded in Japan.

BOOKGASM: Obviously, you can’t reprint everything from Japan, so what makes a title special enough to attract your interest?

CHAVEZ: Cultural impact is something that resonates true with all of our books. Whether you have a cookbook from Japan’s hottest celebrity chef, Kentaro Kobayashi; or a manga that has touched a generation of readers, like TWIN SPICA; or an international sensation like Koji Suzuki’s RING series, Vertical titles must make their mark on the Japanese populous before we can consider it.

BOOKGASM: Vertical has become a reliable name brand in manga. How difficult is it to find good manga among today’s offerings to import?

CHAVEZ: Manga is becoming an increasingly difficult business in the U.S. While I will always say there is plenty of grade-A material to license from Japan available, access to those properties has become quite limited over the last three to four years. I find it curious that this lack of competition has occurred during the recent decline of the U.S. manga market. While there might not be a clear direct correlation, I feel there are many titles that are better served by other publishers and even more properties that have been ignored because of what are essentially embargos.

That said, there are plenty of other options available outside of Japan’s “big three” publishers. Knowing that since I started at Vertical one year ago, it was my objective to scour the rest of the manga world for properties that are Vertical quality. And so far, I believe we have been successful at that.

BOOKGASM: How have the Osamu Tezuka reprints done for Vertical? I’m especially curious about the ongoing BLACK JACK series. While it would seem such a project would attract a loyal fan base, I’m assuming the law of diminishing returns comes into play?

CHAVEZ: Since Vertical’s launch, Tezuka’s comics have been one of the main pillars of our success as a company. Tezuka’s sales easily make up a full third of our overall sales, and when you consider how we had an 18-percent increase in revenue last year, those sales were very significant.

BLACK JACK has been a fascinating case in the manga world. You are right about diminishing returns. Those laws affect every title, but BLACK JACK has now twice bucked that trend over the last 12 months. Last summer, BLACK JACK, already six volumes into its run, began to gain readers, with orders surpassing the two previous volumes. We are seeing the same trend for VOLUME 10, where orders are as high as they were around this time last year.

There is no doubt Tezuka created a masterpiece in BLACK JACK, and the content itself is what is really bringing in new readers, but there is one point that I think people overlook that might also be in play here: BLACK JACK being a collection of shorts can allow for sampling at any point in the series. It does not need the same level of commitment as other titles with the same length, nor does it seem as daunting to come into the series midway. BLACK JACK by design can cure readers of almost any manga anxiety.

BOOKGASM: Are you considering bringing other Tezuka works to these shores? I, for one, would love the opportunity to see his VAMPIRES.

CHAVEZ: We are always considering more Tezuka. This fall, we will release a new omnibus, this time collecting Dr. Tezuka’s post-WWII drama, AYAKO. The title will be translated by Mari Morimoto, the woman responsible for adapting some of manga’s biggest names — INUYASHA, NARUTO, DRAGONBALL and NEON GENESIS EVANGELIION — into English. Peter Mendelsund will once again take the design reigns.

I would like to take on another Tezuka title once BLACK JACK wraps up next summer. We haven’t decided which way to go, but we already have a short list ready.

BOOKGASM: Are the puzzle books Vertical’s bread and butter, or has that trend died down a little?

CHAVEZ: I mentioned earlier that Tezuka was one of Vertical’s pillars. Our puzzles by Japan’s puzzlemaster supreme, Tetsuya Nishio, are another. They actually make up a little more than a third of our sales. We plan to release a new O’EKAKI title later this month, with two new puzzle collections later this year.

BOOKGASM: You also publish horror novels, perhaps most notably the works of Koji Suzuki. Now that Hollywood has all but finished with its J-horror remakes, has interest in those books decreased as well?

CHAVEZ: Not really. The Suzuki books still resonate with readers who have a thing for the paranormal. That has interest has carried on to the success of Natsuhiko Kyogoku’s horror-mystery SUMMER OF THE UBUME. Even though J-horror as a brand no longer has the same influence on popular media in the West, I think great titles like RING, SPIRAL, DARK WATER and UBUME will continue to be sought out by fans looking for new perspectives on a popular form of genre fiction.

BOOKGASM: For Vertical specifically, how has the explosion of e-books affected the way you do business?

CHAVEZ: Has it been an explosion? I am uncertain if e-books themselves have grown as a market, or if the industry, which includes hardware and technology, has expanded. Vertical is not alone in that belief, either. Our distributor, Random House, is also waiting patiently reading trends and sales data to see just when that tipping point will be reached. We don’t think we are there yet, and we might not be there for a few years.

In the meantime, we will continue to speak with our industry partners to look at the best options for our eventual digital manifest destiny. Systems like the iPad really intrigue me personally, as the iPad in particular could become a great tool for serialized manga distribution. However, I feel we are still a technological generation away from having the ideal combination of delivery platform, hardware and revenue optimization to make licensing translated content plausible for digital distribution. —Rod Lott

Buy them at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with DEATH TO EVERYONE’s Tyler Shelburn
• Q&A with NEW BRIGHTON ARCHEOLOGICAL SOCIETY’s Mark Andrew Smith
• Q&A with THE SCORPION TRAIL’s Larry D. Sweazy

It’s not difficult to forget a name like Larry D. Sweazy. Sure, it sounds “funny,” but it’s memorable also because he’s one of the top new writers working in Westerns, having just published his debut novel, THE RATTLESNAKE SEASON, last fall. He followed it up last month with THE SCORPION TRAIL, also featuring the lead character of Texas Ranger Josiah Wolfe. Sweazy found some time to leave the dusty trail for a few minutes to talk with us about — what else? — Westerns.

BOOKGASM: What do you see as the state of the Western fiction genre as it stands today?

SWEAZY: Western fiction is most definitely on the uptick. Although it is doubtful that the genre will ever regain the popularity of its heyday, there are plenty of signs that are promising. My first novel, THE RATTLESNAKE SEASON, went into its third printing in three months, and other Western writers are experiencing the same kind of success.

Librarians constantly tell me that they have a healthy, almost rabid, Western readership, and they wished more Westerns by new writers would be published. With limited slots from large publishers, I think those writing in the Western genre today are at the top of their level. They have to be because the competition is fierce, which is good for the genre.

BOOKGASM: What do you attribute the uptick to? It seems strange, given that Westerns occupy the tiniest shelves in bookstores, if at all.

SWEAZY: I’m a baby boomer, born in 1960, which means I got to the enjoy the tail end of the golden age of Westerns on television and in print. We had three TV channels, so watching Westerns was a staple of my viewing habits. I got to see first-run episodes of THE RIFLEMAN, BONANZA, GUNSMOKE, among others, and Elmore Leonard and Louis L’Amour had new books on the paperback racks at the local drugstore.

There was no talk of genre in those days — just what was good. I think the audience is there for people wanting to revisit those days, who enjoyed the storytelling of those days, as well as new audiences who never experienced the golden age of Westerns like I did.

My local Barnes & Noble used to shelve Western novels in among general fiction, but a couple of years ago, they created a Western section because the demand was so high at that store. I keep hearing this more and more. I also think there are some very, very good writers working in the genre today, and good writing always pulls in readers.

BOOKGASM: How do you think an increasingly technological world will treat a genre so associated with, well, zero electricity?

SWEAZY: I’m excited about all of the possibilities that are on the horizon. Considering men like gadgets, and the perceived readership of Westerns is primarily men, I think the outlook for the Western genre is really good at the moment. The new ebook systems — Kindle, iPad, etc. — are delivery systems just like paperbacks are delivery systems.

In the big scheme of things, the advent of paperbacks turned the publishing business upside-down in the 1950s and 1960s by making literature available and affordable to the masses. What were seeing now is just a continuation of that trend: making information and good storytelling even more accessible. In the end, I think readers are always going to be looking for a great story — one that moves them, changes them, entertains them and takes them away from their daily lives for a few hours or more.

How that happens may change by the delivery system, but I don’t think ebooks are not going to be the end of storytelling, or a writer’s ability to make a living, or Westerns as a viable genre. Just the opposite.

BOOKGASM: Was your first novel a conscious decision to kick-start a series? Or did it just turn out that way when it came time to write another?

SWEAZY: I absolutely made a decision to write a series from the very beginning. As a reader, I am a great fan of series, and I always enjoy looking forward to spending time with a trusted friend when a new book in a series hits the shelves. As a writer, I wanted to create what I enjoy reading.

BOOKGASM: Do you think it’s better for Western authors to pursue a series, or try a few stand-alones to see what sticks?  

SWEAZY: If a writer is trying to break into the Western genre, I think writing a series is a good way to start. You have the opportunity to build a readership and prove to a publisher that you can handle the demands of being a professional writer.

It would probably be difficult in today’s environment to have the luxury of writing a few stand-alones to see what sticks. It’s entirely possible that it could work, but as I said, for me, writing a series was always the way to go from the start because I like to read them. Writing what you love to read is always the best strategy, as far as I’m concerned. If you try to write toward the market, you’re probably trying to herd cats.

BOOKGASM: What are some of your favorite Westerns, in any medium?

SWEAZY: From my early days, I always really liked THE WILD WILD WEST. It was campy and fun. I still catch a GUNSMOKE every now and then. It’s on every day at 6 p.m. on a local channel, and Dodge City is a nice place to visit for a bit of nostalgia and some darn good storytelling. I loved the early Elmore Leonard Westerns. VALDEZ IS COMING. HOMBRE. I read THE BIG SKY by A.B. Guthrie in high school and was hooked.

Movies were a big influence, too. I saw JEREMIAH JOHNSON at the drive-in when I was in my early teens, and it had an impact. The Clint Eastwood Westerns were a staple, too: HANG ‘EM HIGH, PALE RIDER, all the spaghetti Westerns. I could go on and on about the Westerns I love, old and new.

When I got older, Stephen King came along with THE GUNSLINGER series. He’s contributing to a comic book series, AMERICAN VAMPIRE, and is writing the origin story, a vampire gunslinger. Looks like fun. And then there are modern Western writers like Loren D. Estleman, Elmer Kelton, James Reasoner, Johnny D. Boggs, Dusty Richards and a slew of others, keeping the genre alive and healthy, that I always find hard to put down when I read them.

BOOKGASM: What’s next for you? Will you continue the Josiah Wolfe series or try something else?

SWEAZY: I just turned in the third Josiah Wolfe, THE BADGER’S REVENGE. It should be out early next year, and I’ve just started writing the fourth Josiah Wolfe, THE COUGAR’S PREY, which I imagine will be out in late 2011 or early 2012.

Beyond that, I have some more Josiah Wolfe ideas, if the series continues, and my agent is shopping a couple of modern-day mystery series that I have also written. I have a few more Western series ideas roiling around in my head, too. I hope to always write Westerns, and I’m trying my hand at a few other things, as well. We’ll see what happens next. —Rod Lott

Buy them at Amazon.

Author photo by Gary Whiting

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with DEATH TO EVERYONE’s Tyler Shelburn
• Q&A with SHADES OF GREY’s Jasper Fforde
• Q&A with NEW BRIGHTON ARCHEOLOGICAL SOCIETY’s Mark Andrew Smith

Comics fans, if you haven’t yet read the award-winning graphic novel THE NEW BRIGHTON ARCHEOLOGICAL SOCIETY, I urge you to. It’s an (accidentally) all-ages fantasy adventure that has major multimedia potential. It gets my highest recommendation. (Download a 16-page introduction and see for yourself!) We talked with writer Mark Andrew Smith about the project’s inception and his and artist Matthew Weldon’s plans on where to take it next.

BOOKGASM: How did the project come about and what inspired you in its creation?

SMITH: THE NEW BRIGHTON ARCHEOLOGICAL SOCIETY originated from a desire to do a graphic novel with a mysterious feel to it and in the haunted-house genre. I jotted down the initial idea and then waited on it, and then when I went back to it, the idea really changed and grew.

I was pitching THE AMAZING JOY BUZZARDS for animation — my other graphic novel series, which is a rock-and-roll adventure band book — and I would get notes from the executives like, “Can you make them younger and take away the music?” I felt what they asked that, it would no longer be the same book and that I should just create something entirely different and altogether new.

Around the same time, a publisher approached me about working on kids’ chapter books. Both of these fueled my motivation to push forward with the story idea for the THE NEW BRIGHTON ARCHEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. It’s the equivalent of kids’ chapter books for an all-ages audience. It’s about a group of children from two different families whose parents are close friends and colleagues. After their parents are lost on an archeological expedition, the children find themselves picking up their parents’ work and setting out to defeat their parents’ nemesis. They soon find themselves in a race against time to collect a series of books that are part of a great library of magic that has kept two kingdoms at war for centuries. The children unlock the secrets of their parents’ mysterious lives, discovering a hidden world of mystical artifacts, mythical creatures, and arcane knowledge.

From the onset, the tone of the book was very important to me and one that I would describe as the energy and characterization of CALVIN AND HOBBES, meets the warmth and comfort one feels when looking at a Norman Rockwell painting. There’s an INDIANA JONES element to the story where they go through temples, but what was more interesting to me would be that as they traveled through the temples and locations to find the lost books, these locations would be filled with creatures and magic which were real and walking alongside the characters in the story. 

BOOKGASM: Have you always been a fan of children’s fantasy?

SMITH: When I was a young, I was in terms of film like THE DARK CRYSTAL, THE LAST UNICORN, LABYRINTH, TIME BANDITS and PRINCESS BRIDE. I think we had stronger fantasy movies when I was younger. As I grew older, I actually became more and more interested in children’s fantasy as literature to learn craft and teach myself the rules of it. Now I’m officially hooked.

BOOKGASM: What impressed me most was how well it plays to both kids and adults, without being condescending to either. Intentional or accidental?

SMITH: It was accidental. I had two motivations in mind when setting out to write the story. The first motivation was selfish and the second was selfless. The first motivation was to write a book that was entertaining to myself, where I could make myself laugh and have a good time as I worked on it, and that’s the selfish motivation at work. The second was that I wanted a book that younger members of my family could read, as well as the older members, like my grandfather. I wanted something that my parents could hand to the neighbor kids when they asked about what I did and they could do it with a good conscience, because it’s all-ages and for a wide audience. That was the selfless motivation.

BOOKGASM: As a writer, how much input do you put into your script regarding visuals, such as panel angels and even character design?

SMITH: I think a common misconception to most people — and some who are just reading graphic novels for the first time — is that I only write the dialogue in the word balloons. Around 90 percent of the writing I do is replaced and covered with art by Matthew. I’d rather look at his beautiful art than my words on the paper, and it’s so great when I see the script transformed to the drawn pages.

I’m writing something that is the closest to a shooting script for a film. To the uninitiated, it’s an easy mistake to make, and I understand how people make it very often. It seems really seamless and fluid when you read it in the final form and the only text that you read is in the balloons. I think it’s the same as a movie, where you just sit back and enjoy it as you watch it, and if the audience can do that, then you’ve done your job. I shouldn’t expect them to go to film school or understand everything or how everything is done.

BOOKGASM: Obviously, with BOOK ONE as part of the subtitle, NEW BRIGHTON has a sequel. But how many? Is it planned as a trilogy or something else? Does you have a definite end in mind that you’re diligently working toward?

SMITH: I’d like to do THE NEW BRIGHTON ARCHEOLOGICAL SOCIETY as four 180-page graphic novels and release a new one every year on schedule. There’s a definite end in mind where we’ll be done for good and the story will wrap up in its entirety. We’re working on the second in the series right now for a release for this time next year. It’s nice, because we’ve established everything and we can really pick up where we left off and throw ourselves into the story. We’ve had a really strong reception for the first book, and I think we can build on it with the second. I have a feeling we’re going to get some wings and really take off with the next one.

BOOKGASM: NEW BRIGHTON seems readymade for the movies. What director would you entrust to bring your baby to the screen?

SMITH: Yes, I really hope that NEW BRIGHTON ARCHEOLOGICAL SOCIETY gets made as a series of films. I personally have a shortlist of directors whose style I like. I would love Alfonso Cuarón from HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN. Peter Jackson or Guillermo del Toro would be great as well. Jean-Pierre Jeunet from CITY OF LOST CHILDREN would be wonderful. I’m a huge fan of Sam Raimi and it would be great to see him do a fantasy film.

BOOKGASM: You’ve had several other titles published, too, including THE AMAZING JOY BUZZARDS and the POPGUN series. Do you have a favorite?

SMITH: THE AMAZING JOY BUZZARDS is my favorite other than NEW BRIGHTON, because I really respect and enjoy working with Dan Hipp. It came out at the same time as SCOTT PILGRIM and it’s in a similar vein. Now that PILGRIM is out and has a film and all this momentum behind it, I’m kicking the dirt like, “Dang it, it should have been us!”

THE AMAZING JOY BUZZARDS was my first book and it has a special place for me. We’re nearly done with the next one in the series, titled MONSTER LOVE, and then we have one more that’s the final installment of the series. After that, we’re done forever with the book and the characters.

With POPGUN, it was a massive beast of an anthology with a lot of contributors. I won the Harvey Award for editing it and it was good for my career to get award recognition. THE NEW BRIGHTON ARCHEOLOGICAL SOCIETY actually started in the pages of POPGUN. With three almost-500-page volumes, I edited around 1,500 pages altogether for POPGUN over three years. Being an editor became exhausting, and I decided to pass it on to capable people that I trusted and return to focusing creating my own original material, instead of promoting other people and pushing their work.

BOOKGASM: Given that anthologies are supposedly such a hard sell, to what do you attribute POPGUN‘s success?

SMITH: When I went into POPGUN, I was making a book that I really wanted to read, and I knew what I liked in terms of art and tastes. There were so many artists that I knew about, but no one else did. Now these artists are very popular, and comic book editors have POPGUN in their offices and use it like a catalog to hire artists when they’re looking for an artist for a new project. POPGUN has a wide range of energy and diversity. It’s such a large book with so many contributors that it’s hard not to sell or be a success, because there are so many talents involved with it.

BOOKGASM: What’s next for you?

SMITH: I’m working on the second volume of THE NEW BRIGHTON ARCHEOLOGICAL SOCIETY and then focusing on a slate of all-ages projects for next year. I want to get a lot of material in hand and ready for release in 2011.

This year, I have just one graphic novel coming out, titled SULLIVAN’S SLUGGERS. It is a baseball horror graphic novel about a team of baseball players who get an invitation to play a game in a Texas town. Unfortunately for them, the town has a curse on it and the people in the town turn into monsters after the sun goes down. The dysfunctional baseball team has to use all of their baseball skills and work together to survive the night. It’s a big jump from NEW BRIGHTON ARCHEOLOGICAL SOCIETY, but a lot of fun. —Rod Lott

Buy them at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with DEATH TO EVERYONE’s Tyler Shelburn
• Q&A with SHADES OF GREY’s Jasper Fforde
• Q&A with ZOMBOCALYPSE NOW’s Matt Youngmark

Lumbering in for the latest installment of BOOKGASM’s “WTF Q&A,” in which we hurl at an author random questions having nothing to do with his/her book, is Alaska scribe J. Kevin Burchfield, whose debut, THE GREAT ALASKAN ADVENTURE … WITH ZOMBIES!, is a great Alaskan adventure … with zombies! We hear he’s from Alaska.

BOOKGASM: Who are three dead celebrities you’d like to see come back as the undead? Now, secondly, what gives you the right to tamper in God’s domain?

BURCHFIELD: Jack Palance — now that would be one ass kickin’ zombie! Elvis — the fat old Elvis, that is, noshin’ on a deep-fried brain and banana sandwich! Michael Jackson — just to see if the makeup artists got it right on THRILLER! And who are you to question my authority!!!



BOOKGASM: Scientific inquiry is rooted in the desire to discover, but there is no discovery so important that in its pursuit a threat to human life can be tolerated. Write 250 words on that topic, or just tell us three breakfast cereals whose names sound pornographic.

BURCHFIELD: Donkey Kong Crunch, Frosted Mini Spooners and Grins & Smiles & Giggles & Laughs.



BOOKGASM: Sarah and Ben go to the candy store. Sarah has $5 to spend, while Ben has $7.25. Sarah likes Werther’s Originals, which are 5 cents apiece. Ben likes Blow Pops, which are 25 cents apiece. How many Blow Pops can Ben buy? More importantly, what the hell is up with Sarah?

BURCHFIELD: Of course Ben likes Blow Pops — we all like having our Pops blown! If he’s really found someone to do it for 25 cents apiece I have one word for Ben: condom! As for Sarah … well, she just has not been the same since the election! 



BOOKGASM: Isaac Newton crafted three laws of motion, including “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” How is that one relevant to Cheez-It baked snack crackers?

BURCHFIELD: Cheez-it’s an Alaskan Amber — that’s what I’m talkin’ about!



BOOKGASM: What you gon’ do with all that junk? All that junk inside your trunk?

BURCHFIELD: Mix your milk with my Alaskan cocoa moose puff, milky, milky right. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT INSTALLMENTS OF THE WTF Q&A:
• WTF Q&A with GUTSHOT STRAIGHT’s Lou Berney
• WTF Q&A with MARVELLOUS HAIRY’s Mark Rayner
• WTF Q&A with SORROW’s John Lawson

With the upcoming publication of his first book, DEATH TO EVERYONE, and a deal for two more with St. Martin’s Press, 17-year-old Tyler Shelburn is on the fast track to become the horror genre’s next big name. BOOKGASM talks to Shelburn about his influences and what we can expect from this rising young star in the future.

BOOKGASM: You began writing DEATH TO EVERYONE when you were only 15. What got you started writing at an age when most teenagers seem concerned mostly with video games and the like?

SHELBURN: I used to be the typical type of kid you’re talking about, wasting time on video games and basketball and aggravated assault. Then, while serving a six-month stint in juvie, I came across a beaten-up copy of a Stephen King book and ended up getting bitten big-time by the writing bug.

BOOKGASM: Which King book was it?

SHELBURN: I don’t really remember. And if I’m going to be totally honest about it, I don’t think I ever even finished it. But the part I did read had a good amount of gore in it and really inspired me to try my own hand at it. That was when I decided to dedicate myself to something bigger, something where I could get out my feelings of hostility and not have to worry about paying for it later.

BOOKGASM: Can you give us some details about DEATH TO EVERYONE? What can readers expect besides blood and gore?

SHELBURN: The plot centers on a serial killer who vows to kill every single person in his hometown of 6,000. He doesn’t take the easy way out, though, by using a bomb or something. No, he stalks and kills each person individually. The entire novel is told from the killer’s point of view, so I was careful to keep him a sympathetic character — in fact, something of a hero — despite his lust for blood. I think I achieved that.

BOOKGASM: You’ve just signed a two-book deal in the low six figures. Anything you can tell us about those?

SHELBURN: They’ll be parts two and three of a planned trilogy. The second book will ratchet things up quite a bit with the killer’s scope turning national. After that, I’m not sure, but it may turn worldwide, maybe even interplanetary.

BOOKGASM: What about after that? What are the long-term career goals for Tyler Shelburn?

SHELBURN: I’d like to continue doing what I’m doing for as long as I can. I probably won’t be completing the DEATH trilogy for at least a year. After that I think I’ll try my hand at writing a screenplay or maybe a children’s book.

BOOKGASM: Is there any advice you can give to other young writers out there?

SHELBURN: Yes. Lots of professional authors will tell you that you have to read a lot and practice writing every single day, but don’t listen to that. I write when I feel like it and I don’t think I’ve read more than a dozen books in my life. Most of them are pretty boring, if we’re being honest. The important thing is to just let your imagination take you wherever it wants to go and have an author’s photo on the back of your book that makes you look really cool. —Ralph Gamelli

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with RIFFTRAX’s Mike Nelson
• Q&A with SHADES OF GREY’s Jasper Fforde
• Q&A with ZOMBOCALYPSE NOW’s Matt Youngmark

For the third installment of BOOKGASM’s “WTF Q&A,” in which we hurl at an author random questions having nothing to do with his/her book, we put Lou Berney in our sights. He’s just made his full-length debut with GUTSHOT STRAIGHT, a crime novel cut from the cloth of Elmore Leonard. Er, if Leonard made cloth …

BOOKGASM: Ratio time! Radio Shack : banana = Lou Berney : ______.

BERNEY: Radio Shack.

BOOKGASM: If I had 10 apples and I gave you four apples, what good could possibly come of that?

BERNEY: A Democratic socialist welfare state where doctors are required to pull the plug on Grandma.

BOOKGASM: Write the punchline to this joke I just totally made up: A priest, a rabbi and a man in a bunny suit walk into a bar. The bartender looks at the man in a bunny suit and says, “Sorry, we don’t serve your kind here,” so the man in a bunny suit removes the head from his costume and says, “Look here, you, I’m not really a rabbit. Now will you serve me?” The bartender says, “Oh, my, what a visual trick you have pulled. Why, yes, I certainly will serve you. What’ll you have?” The man in the bunny suit says, “I’ll have what he’s having,” motioning to the priest. The bartender says, “Okay, Father, what are you having” and the priest replies …

BERNEY: “Do you have Sierra Nevada on tap?”

BOOKGASM: Who let the dogs out? (And how the hell do you know?)

BERNEY: The dogs aren’t out. We’re all just in.

BOOKGASM: Do you think Carlisle did the right thing changing Edward into a vampire, or was it selfish? Does Edward show any signs of resentment toward Carlisle for what he did? Explain.

BERNEY: Wait, I thought Dumbledore was gay. —Rod Lott

Rather read a more conventional interview with Berney? Okay, fine.

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT INSTALLMENTS OF THE WTF Q&A:
• WTF Q&A with MARVELLOUS HAIRY’s Mark Rayner
• WTF Q&A with SORROW’s John Lawson

Although Jasper Fforde is perhaps best known for his series of fantasy novels featuring literary detective Thursday Next, he also writes the Nursery Crimes mysteries and now, SHADES OF GREY, the start of a new trilogy. In the satirical thriller, social order is dictated by the colors one sees. But that’s not the only thing that’s strange …

BOOKGASM: SHADES OF GREY imagines a world with institutionalized mercy killings. Was that element included simply to shock your readers?

FFORDE: Not really. Aspects that we consider normal today could very well be repugnant in the future — eating animals, for one thing, or abundant choice or invasive surgery. I was simply trying to demonstrate that what is acceptable today may not be acceptable forever, and vice versa. Social mores change with time, like fashion: Who knows where it might all end up? I especially like the idea that waste, impoliteness and overpopulation become “abominations,” although I’m not sure recycling one’s aunt will ever truly catch on.

BOOKGASM: Did you have any worries about creating and writing about such a bizarre world?

FFORDE: Of course. But I’ve never been averse to a little risk. After all, writing without risk is not really writing at all. Sometimes one has to just let fly with a high-concept piece and see where the pieces fall. As it generally turns out, the central story is familiar, but just with different rules of engagement. My approach to writing has always been that of telling a conventional story, but in a wholly unconventional setting.

BOOKGASM: Lots of authors tend to gravitate toward one particular character. Is there one you feel most attached to?

FFORDE: Eddie. He’s a reluctant hero — someone who wants to lead a normal life, but is called to step up and be counted. Without Jane, he would have simply returned to his home village and Constance. But Jane changes all that. I think it is that sense of unrealized potential in all of us that I find most interesting. Ordinary people do exceptional things in exceptional circumstances.

BOOKGASM: What influenced this work, in terms of other works of literature?

FFORDE: 1984 and BRAVE NEW WORLD, to go back to primary sources. In both the aforementioned books, there are large cities with a centralized government that is very much the dominating force. In SHADES, I wanted the forces of oppression to be much subtler and internal, so everything is more localized, but no less oppressive. The citizenry are dispersed, with communication and transport limited, and idle and seditious thoughts banished from the head by a cocktail of the compulsory staging of musicals, tea dances and the minimum of one hobby. There is the fear of the dark to keep people bound to home village, and the ever-present possibility of Riffraff, lightning and swan attacks. Keep them amused with ballroom dancing and entertainment, but keep them in line with fear.

BOOKGASM: What novels are you working on now?

BOOKGASM: The sixth in my Thursday Next series, which will be titled ONE OF OUR THURSDAYS IS MISSING. In the first book of the series, I had a real person attempting to find their way around the fictional world, but here, I will have a fictional person attempt to find their way around the real world — potentially a much harder proposition. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with RIFFTRAX’s Mike Nelson
• Q&A with 7TH SON: DESCENT’s J.C. Hutchins
• Q&A with ZOMBOCALYPSE NOW’s Matt Youngmark

With the bunny-vs.-zombies ZOMBOCALYPSE NOW, Matt Youngmark has launched Chooseomatic Books, at once a revival and a parody of the old CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE series. One difference: These tricks aren’t for kids. Here, Youngmark discusses the idea’s genesis, the unique process of penning such a title, and Chooseomatic’s future.

BOOKGASM: How did you get the idea to do a CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE type book? Now, how did you get the idea to do one with a bunny?

YOUNGMARK: I was reading a webcomic where a dinosaur decided to write a CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE book because he wanted to tell his readers directly what they were supposed to feel instead of, like, setting a mood and stuff. I just thought that sounded like the best idea ever. The whole thing with the bunny came about after I settled on zombies for the subject matter, and needed something to set the book apart.

Also, I thought that using a stuffed animal as the main character would allow me to maintain gender neutrality in the illustrations. Although, apparently, I’m as bad at drawing androgynous rabbits as I am at writing from a non-male perspective, because everybody just assumes it’s a dude.

BOOKGASM: What challenges does writing a book structured like this present? What’s the process behind it?

YOUNGMARK: The process included a constantly updated spreadsheet and a shitload of flowcharts! It turns out that every time you split the story along two paths, you double the number of pages, so I had to get the math worked out early on, or the whole thing would have spiraled out of control. Because I knew my rough page count in advance and kept meticulous progress notes, every time somebody asked me how far along my book was, I could answer with an exact percentage.

The flip side of this is that it was really like writing a whole bunch of short stories which all start out the same way, so I could use every bizarre plot idea I came up with. It was so much fun to write.

BOOKGASM: Obviously, it’s a good gimmick, but the book is more than just a gimmick. Your words wear your sense of humor on their sleeves. Were you attempting to ape the spirit of any humorists — or authors with at least a tangible sense of humor — while writing?

YOUNGMARK: I just try to make myself laugh when I’m writing, so I suppose I’m aping everyone that I find funny. As far as the style, though, I think it’s more influenced by my favorite bloggers and internet personalities — folks like Jerry Holkins and Lore Sjoberg — than any particular authors.

BOOKGASM: Now that you’ve got one of these under your belt, does it make doing the second and third one harder or easier? Anything you plan on doing differently, now that you’ve learned from experience?

YOUNGMARK: Definitely much easier! Although, I’ll tell you what, the biggest thing that’s slowing the sequel down is that I moved closer to work, and no longer have an hour-long train ride to sit through twice a day. A huge chunk of ZOMBOCALYPSE NOW was written on that commuter train.

The next book, THRUSTS OF JUSTICE, is a lot more tightly structured than ZOMBOCALYPSE NOW. I wanted to do something more ambitious with the plot, so your first choice sends you down the path to become one of three different superheroes — depending on, like, how appealing you find the idea of lurking ominously in shadows or fighting big cosmic space battles or whatever — and then they weave together into an overarching über-plot. But I also loved the looseness of ZOMBOCALYPSE NOW, so I’m dabbling with the third book concurrently. TIME TRAVEL DINOSAUR, at least so far, is completely stream-of-consciousness.

BOOKGASM: How far can you take the Chooseomatic brand? Any plans to do anything beyond just this kind of book?

YOUNGMARK: I intend to ride this horse as long and as far as it will take me. DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS parody? Radioactive mutants vs. robot gladiators? Vampire romance? Check, check and check. My original list of ideas also includes something titled “Muppet superspies,” but I’m no longer sure where I was going with that one. In a perfect world, I’ll be able to keep doing the Chooseomatic Books series perpetually, and just slow down the release schedule a bit whenever I have something else I want to devote energy to. But, yeah, there’s plenty of non-Chooseomatic stuff rattling around as well. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with Asylum Press’ Frank Forte
• Q&A with RIFFTRAX’s Mike Nelson
• Q&A with 7TH SON: DESCENT’s J.C. Hutchins

Recently, while interviewing Mike Nelson about RIFFTRAX for another publication, the conversation turned to books, and what couldn’t be used there can be used here. After serving as head writer and host of TV’s long-running MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000, Nelson wrote a few books, including MIKE NELSON’S MOVIE MEGACHEESE, MIKE NELSON’S MIND OVER MATTERS and the novel DEATH RAT! And then …

BOOKGASM: I love your books, by the way. Are you going to write any more?

NELSON: Well, thanks. I didn’t have a great experience writing them, just from the nature of the publishing business, but it’s changed enough now that …

BOOKGASM: Have you thought about self-publishing?

NELSON: Well, I’ve considered self-publishing because, in the end, what the publishers take and what they give you are … there’s sort of a wide gulf there, so, yeah, I’ve considered it. I just haven’t had a moment since starting RIFFTRAX.

BOOKGASM: I’d like to think you have enough of a built-in fan base to make it work for you.

NELSON: It’s probably true, even though obviously, it seems like books go, you’re either a blockbuster or you’re just lost in a huge pile of other stuff. If you can sort of carve out your own niche, why not? —Rod Lott

Buy them at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with ARCHENEMY’s Frank Beddor
• Q&A with Asylum Press’ Frank Forte
• Q&A with 7TH SON: DESCENT’s J.C. Hutchins

For the second installment of BOOKGASM’s “WTF Q&A,” in which we hurl at an author random questions having nothing to do with his/her book, we recruited Mark Rayner. He’s the author of MARVELLOUS HAIRY, which purports to be a slapstick comedy about a surrealistic artist with an addiction to Freudian mythology and guilt-free sex who turns into a monkey. Yes, a monkey.

BOOKGASM: OMG, I found $4! I can go antiquing! What should I buy?

RAYNER: That’s incredibly good luck. I just heard about an ancient reliquary holding the mummified naughty bits of St. Piltwacker, the Poxy’s helper monkey. Or, $4 just happens to cover the costs of the eBook edition of MARVELLOUS HAIRY.

BOOKGASM: What is the best recipe out there using Velveeta as an ingredient? But it can’t also use RO*TEL, so don’t even try.

RAYNER: I would never rely on RO*TEL. What a crutch! Here is a very tasty recipe for my popular Mark’s Meat Lasagna — sorry I don’t have a vegetarian version yet — and it employs Velveeta:

Ingredients:
• 1 lb. ground beef
• one spicy Italian sausage, uncooked, though well-masticated and spit into mixing bowl
• 12 tomatoes, mashed into sausage/beef mixture
• 1 pint motor oil (I prefer Pennzoil, though any single-grade viscosity will work, just for God’s sake, don’t get synthetic!)
• 12 lasagna noodles, lightly spanked
• 1 plasma grenade (pin in)
• “lashings” of Velveeta

BOOKGASM: Calculate the mole fraction of water in a mixture consisting of 9 grams of water, 120 grams of acetic acid and 115 grams of ethyl alcohol. Come on, tough guy, do it.

RAYNER: I’ve consulted my pet mole, Thaddeus, and he says that he believes this to be a trick question. Actually, he’s been quite worried about this growth on his face, and getting him to concentrate was difficult. Not to mention that he doesn’t have a calculator, a periodic table or opposable thumbs.

Nevertheless, he believes the answer to be 0.099, though he says you’ll need waaaaay more chocolate and chili pepper to make that sauce palatable. Some Pennzoil might help, too.

BOOKGASM: Why can’t we be friends? Why can’t we be friends? Why can’t we be friends? Why can’t we be friends?

RAYNER: Perhaps you’ve had my lasagna?

BOOKGASM: In NIGHTS IN RODANTHE, some scenes take place in the beach. What is the significance of the beach? How does it relate to the novel’s theme? There is also a storm. What is the significance of the storm? How does it relate to the novel’s theme?

RAYNER: I haven’t read the book for some time, but if I remember correctly, the beach represent the sacrifices that Paul and Adrienne make for their children, while the storm represents the brutality of the external world, as it crashes all around them in the guise of bloodthirsty, flesh-eating Vikings and hordes of cybertronic entities armed with flechette weapons and an insatiable hunger for human ennui. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

With PERSONAL EFFECTS: DARK ART and now 7TH SON: DESCENT, J.C. Hutchins is pushing the boundaries of the conventional novel. In this interview, he discusses how he got there against initial odds, and how the Internet will change — but not kill — the traditional publishing model.

BOOKGASM: While the transition of Internet serial to published book is no longer an aberration, it’s also not yet the norm. How did you make that leap, and do you expect more to do so in the near future?

HUTCHINS: You’re absolutely right; we’re seeing more and more storytellers serializing their fiction online — though by my observation, the quantity picked up by major publishers is still pretty small. Indie publishers are wisely watching the online fiction space and making far more offers to authors. This model, regardless of publisher size, is win-win: Authors bring an existing platform to publishers, and publishers benefit via sales from those dedicated fans.

To my knowledge, my experience serializing my 7TH SON cloning thriller trilogy as a podcast is unique in that I seemed to do everything wrong — and eventually, a great deal right — in getting its first book, 7TH SON: DESCENT, into print. Industry veterans, stifle your snickers: I’m about to recount the literary equivalent of WHAT NOT TO WEAR.

I spent about three years writing and editing what my fans now know as the 7TH SON trilogy … but it didn’t start out as a trilogy. Inspired by the epic scope and narrative stakes seen in my favorite novel, Stephen King’s THE STAND, I set out to write a story with cool pseudo-technologies, big ideas, big conspiracies and big action — widescreen, fate-of-the-world stuff. By the time I was done, I hadn’t written a book. I’d written a phone book. My manuscript was 1,200 pages long.

In addition to its monstrous length, the story didn’t play nice with genre classifications. It was a present-day thriller. It had sci-fi elements — human cloning and recorded human memories. There were dashes of cop procedural, a hint of horror, political thriller and zero romance. It also had seven human clone protagonists, all with similar names!

You and your readers shouldn’t be surprised to learn that when I pitched the book to around 60 agents in 2005, the thing was universally — and deservedly — rejected. I’d unwittingly sabotaged the salability of 7TH SON at every creative turn. I was horrified at my rookie mistakes. And yet, I believed the story was a good one, a fun and exciting one, and worthy of an audience.

During that year, I was introduced to podcasting — think downloadable internet radio — and discovered that a few authors were releasing their unpublished manuscripts as self-produced serialized audiobooks. I smelled an emerging trend and an opportunity to conduct an experiment. I was convinced I could never sell 7TH SON, but I could certainly share it, to ultimately see if the story had worth. I wanted to know. I wanted to know if I was nuts for writing this book.

Since there were no guarantee that folks would dig the book, I didn’t want to commit to recording the full, 1,200-page manuscript. I chopped the monstrous manuscript into thirds: Act I become 7TH SON: DESCENT, Act II became “book two,” etc. I bought a $50 microphone, got to work narrating “book one,” and posted the first episodes in early 2006.

Here’s where things got interesting: The story that was universally rejected found an audience tens of thousands strong. I certainly promoted the work, mostly by networking in the podcasting and blogging community, but the true heavy lifting hailed from my fans. They loved this book. They told their friends about it. More folks came. A community formed around the work, its characters and its author. Even now, two years after the original 7TH SON podcast novel trilogy concluded, the series generates around 100,000 episodic downloads each month.

In early 2007, I had an agent. By mid-2007, I was approached by St. Martin’s to help plot and write a “for-hire” supernatural thriller novel, PERSONAL EFFECTS: DARK ART. By fall 2007, the publisher chose to release 7TH SON: DESCENT in print. In 2008, the trilogy was optioned by Warner Bros. for film development. This year, PERSONAL EFFECTS was released in June; 7TH SON: DESCENT debuted on bookshelves a few weeks ago.

I’m convinced 7TH SON: DESCENT would not be in print now if I hadn’t told the story I wanted to tell — as genre-blurring as it is, and as long as that original manuscript was — failed miserably in 2005, and then took to the web and released it as a free audio podcast. Everything went wrong … and then I did every thing I do to make it right.

Since 7TH SON’s release, I have written and released a novella and a short story anthology in serialized audio format. I love the medium and distribution model, and my fans love me for giving them more free content. This is content that can be monetized down the road, if I wish. Well-fed fans are happy and evangelical fans.

BOOKGASM: In taking 7TH SON from podcast to page, did you have to alter any of its content? Do you think it works better in one medium over the other?

HUTCHINS: Since 7TH SON was originally written with print publication in mind, I didn’t alter much of its content for the podcast version. For instance, I removed some attribution from the recording when it was clear who was speaking, thanks to my performance. When I was editing and rewriting the novel for the print release, I took advantage of the opportunity to polish the story a bit, and add scenes and information that improved the story. The print version is a slightly different — but better — book. I’m grateful for the editorial guidance from St. Martin’s. Best of all, my fans are digging the changes, and the official “reboot” of the series.

I don’t prefer one medium over another, and believe that “porting” content written for print to audio can be an elegant, easy affair. Same goes for content written originally for audio distribution, to print format. These media play nice with each other.

I believe the truly — and positively — disruptive element is freely distributing the content online, regardless of medium. Giving away excerpts — or full novels, as I do — benefits authors, publishers, consumers and retailers. Authors using savvy promotion and free, “loss-leader” content attract consumers, which builds platforms and fans for life. Publishers benefit from having authors with these platforms, as their work already has a built-in base of buyers. It’s good business.

Consumers win because they can — much like sitting down in a comfy chair at a Barnes & Noble and reading any book there for free — experience the story at zero cost and risk. Via podcast or direct download, the bookstore conveniently comes to them, and they are empowered to make an informed purchasing decision. Finally, retailers benefit because these informed fans are striding into bookstores with purpose: to buy that specific novel. Once these shoppers are inside, they’re inclined to browse and — God willing — buy more great fiction from other authors.

I’ve received skeptical pushback on my belief in this model. I can live with that. All I know is that we wouldn’t be having this conversation had I not released my stories online for free.

Further, aside from years of anecdotal evidence from peers, I’ve seen a tangible relationship between book sales and my online promotions and free content. I reckon I’m moving more books than newcomer authors who have not embraced these strategies. This keeps my publisher happy.

BOOKGASM: Are there stories that should be told only online, rather than in print, or is the medium insignificant?

HUTCHINS: That’s a bit like asking if a novel should be presented only in print form, and not on a Kindle e-reader. The core content can be absolutely identical, yet presented in different media or distributed in different ways. Its effectiveness as a story doesn’t hinge on its presentation as much as how consumers react to that presentation. Those reactions can be as unique as the consumers themselves.

Will all of these consumers of the free content purchase a book? No. But this distribution ensures exposure to consumers who wouldn’t have otherwise heard of it, or its author. Some of these readers will purchase a book. Those are more sales than would have otherwise been generated. It’s found money.

However, there are absolutely ways to tell stories that leverage the strengths of these disparate media. A story that is written specifically for online consumption can use hyperlinks, and other Web-based technologies to create emotionally resonant narrative experiences. Porting these online-exclusive tales to other media, such as print, is probably a challenging, messy affair.

I look forward to diving deeper into this emerging form of online-only fiction. The current problem with it seems to be monetization. However, building fiction that can be experienced on an iPhone — combining not only the strengths of text, images, phone, online access … and even the device’s accelerometer — is easily monetizable. I have big ideas for that. All I need is capital.

BOOKGASM: In your opinion, will tomorrow’s publishing world be entirely digital, or will a happy balance be struck between the virtual and the physical?

HUTCHINS: The impending doom of the printed book is a myth embraced by pie-in-the-sky futurists and hand-wringing, overprotective traditionalists. Those guys need to take a chill pill, and understand that while digital formats will increase in market share in years to come, printed books will always be a part of our culture.

Do I believe e-readers will become nigh-ubiquitous? Sure, in about 50 years, maybe more. Even I — as a Kool-Aid-guzzling Kindle fanboy — love the tangibility of printed books, and more important, understand that most readers currently prefer that format. Much like browsing in a bookstore, printed books are a part our cultural experience. That will never, ever go away.

But much like the music industry in the 1990s, we’ll soon face a tidal shift in how generations prefer to experience their content. Children will come up in an era where e-readers are a normal part of the book-reading experience. This familiarity will dictate how they purchase their books. Meanwhile, folks who came up in the “print-only” era will — I hate to be morbid here — literally die, or alter their consumption habits.

Where does this leave authors? In theory, fat and happy. The need for novels — or other text-based entertainment — and literacy will not change. What will change is how the content is obtained and in what format it’s consumed. Where does this leave publishers? Again, in theory, fat and happy: the e-book market represents a new, robust revenue stream. As long as there are authors to publish and money to be made, publishers will survive if they embrace the emerging models.

But there are two links in the publishing chain that will feel the pinch.

Brick-and-mortar retailers — especially the big chains with their large stores — will be forced to evolve. Perhaps they’ll release branded e-book revenue streams, as B&N is doing with the Nook, to compensate for lower print book sales. Perhaps not. Regardless, I suspect stores will shrink in size. There will be fewer books in-store. Fewer employees. Less overhead. I envision progressive chains eventually embracing a more intimate shopping experience, in which in-store, print-on-demand machines can compensate for any “not-on-the-shelf” issues. These corporate-owned or franchised smaller stores can emulate the indie store experience, embrace hyperlocal or specialized indie sensibilities, and run off unstocked books when someone asks for one.

But it’s publishing’s complex distribution machine that I fear will suffer the most. This is the behind-the-curtain stuff that readers and many authors never think about. It’s why I empathize with publishers, and why I suspect so many of them fear committing to the notion that e-readers will eventually have deep market penetration. These publishers have decades-long relationships with a great many business, each representing an important and costly cog in a mammoth machine that begins with the chopping of trees and the acquisition of paper and ink, and eventually ends with the truck-based delivery of books to stores. Nearly every aspect of this complex system is eliminated when you wirelessly download a book to a portable device.

I’ve been thinking long and hard about these relationships, and how both publishers and brick-and-mortar retailers are beholden to them, both ethically and contractually. Those relationships must change, and the businesses that support the complex distribution system must change, too. It will likely be very painful.

Will people be reading, loving and collecting print books 50 years from now? Certainly. But far more consumers will be reading their books on electronic devices. I believe that writing’s on the wall. Companies that ignore that do so at their peril.

BOOKGASM: More books these days also seem to play around with multimedia aspects, such as your PERSONAL EFFECTS: DARK ART. Is this strictly a gimmick to attract new young readers who are Internet-savvy, or do you believe such methods can be used to fortify a story?

HUTCHINS: I can’t speak for the creators of other “transmedia” novels, and I can’t speak authoritatively about their content — I haven’t read them. I can share the philosophical intent behind PERSONAL EFFECTS: DARK ART.

While it’s reasonable to judge the “out-of-book” experience that accompanies PERSONAL EFFECTS — from tangible, authentic-looking items that come with the book to narrative-enhancing websites and other media — as a gimmick, it’s not an entirely fair judgment. Series creator Jordan Weisman and I were resolute in our commitment that these beyond-the-book experiences served the story, and whenever possible, delivered content that was as emotionally resonant as the fiction on the pages. The plot of the book was built with this in mind, and we quested to make those transmedia appearances within the novel as organic as possible.

While traditionalists may see this form of storytelling to be a gimmick — and trust me, it’s totally cool to be a traditionalist when it comes to how you experience your fiction; a reader’s comfort is paramount to me — I believe we’re often inclined to associate “different” with “gimmick.” It’s simply another way to tell stories. The fact that most of the narrative is sandwiched between a book cover causes the incongruity.

This is why I was so careful when I wrote PERSONAL EFFECTS: Dark Art. I made sure the audience could read the story from cover to cover, never touch the additional items or fire up Internet Explorer, and experience a complete — and hopefully satisfying — narrative. Unlike other transmedia novels that I’ve read about, PERSONAL EFFECTS’ reading experience was never held hostage by the extra stuff. Readers are empowered to opt-in to the “out-of-book” experience, and go as deeply as they wish to go. Alternately, they could ignore it outright, which I know some of them did.

I do believe we’ll see more of this media-blurring fiction in the upcoming years. The most successful projects will be the ones that respect a reader’s comfort level, and provide a satisfying story within the pages of the printed book. It’s a groundbreaking way to tell stories, and another emerging trend.

BOOKGASM: What’s in the pipeline for you?

HUTCHINS: Next month, I’ll wrap up the podcast “print edition” release of 7TH SON: DESCENT, and will begin recording the free serialized podcast edition of PERSONAL EFFECTS: DARK ART As that novel is being released in 2010, I’ll work on a free podcast audio series called THE 33, polish several movie treatments for my film agent, and then get cooking on two novels.

Here’s also hoping 7TH SON: DESCENT will be a sales success, and St. Martin’s will pick up its sequels for publication. I hope to be doing some editing and rewriting next year, as well. Cross your fingers for me! —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with ARCHENEMY’s Frank Beddor
• Q&A with Asylum Press’ Frank Forte
• Q&A with TIME OF THE RANGERS’ Mike Cox

Photo credit: J.R. Blackwell

For the inaugural installment of BOOKGASM’s “WTF Q&A,” in which we hurl at an author random questions having nothing to do with his/her book, we recruited John Lawson, writer of SORROW, a dark fantasy about a mysterious and evil assassin.

BOOKGASM: What’s your favorite flavor of Hostess Zinger Iced Snack Cake? Don’t say raspberry. Defend your answer.

LAWSON: I’ve never had a Zinger. Ever. Eating a Zinger is a wasted opportunity to eat a Twinkie.

BOOKGASM: Barbra Streisand sang, “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.” But what about leprechauns?

LAWSON: Relatives of the clurichuan, leprechauns are renown for being solitary creatures. If two got together, their greed and mutual distrust would ultimately cause conflict and violence as the two attempted to steal the treasure of the other. A leprechaun that needs another leprechaun would be a very unhappy creature indeed.

BOOKGASM: Disprove the Pythagorean theorem. Go on, I dare you.

LAWSON: A triangle drawn onto the surface of a globe violates this theorem, as the surface is a non-Euclidean object and the angles of said triangle add up to more than 180 degrees.

BOOKGASM: Tell me how am I supposed to live without you? Now that I’ve been lovin’ you so long, how am I supposed to live without you? How am I supposed to carry on when all that I’ve been livin’ for is gone?

LAWSON: Buy my books. Unlike me, they’ll never disappoint you.

BOOKGASM: In your opinion, what is the main lesson of THE FRIDAY NIGHT KNITTING CLUB?

LAWSON: If I really wanted to be a successful author, I should have written overly sentimental, chick-flick glurge instead of shockingly realistic novels set an intricate, living, breathing, dark-fantasy world.

Or porn. I should have written porn. —Rod Lott

Buy it at John Lawson or Amazon.

Writer/artist Frank Forte started Asylum Press 10 years ago, and since has published not your ordinary comic books, from Robert Steven Rhine’s SATAN’S 3-RING CIRCUS OF HELL to Steve Mannion’s THE BOMB, all at a level of professionalism, design and talent that puts fellow indies to shame. Here, Forte talks to BOOKGASM about the advantages and challenges of running his own publishing company, and what we can expect to be unleashed from the Asylum in the near future.

BOOKGASM: Why establish Asylum Press? What were the benefits in creating your own comic book company rather than letting someone else “do the hard part” by playing publisher?

FORTE: I was publishing under the banner Studio Insidio since 1999. I wanted to re-establish myself under another brand.  I wanted to continue doing mainly horror books, so the name Asylum fit. It also put us alphabetically at the beginning of the distributor catalogs. Before I formed Asylum Press, I had sent out numerous pitches to other companies, but I was shot down by all of them. No one wanted to publish our books.

I knew there was a fan base out there, because they had sold well through CFD Comics. I wasn’t going to let anyone tell me that my books couldn’t be put out there, and I already know how to publish, so I went out on my own again. The benefits are that you get to put out what you want and create a catalog of similar titles that makes a mark on the industry. I get to call the shots, and the rewards are great when you have a success.

BOOKGASM: What would you say has been the greatest success in Asylum’s short history?

FORTE: THE VAMPIRE VERSES was our best-selling book. We’re going to get back to that and finish the series soon. It was planned as 12 issues, but we’re going to finish it as a trade. Steve Mannion’s FEARLESS DAWN is our best seller now.

BOOKGASM: And, on the opposite end, has there been any project that didn’t take off like you had hoped?

FORTE: I wished WARLASH had gotten better orders. We have some really cool one-shots planned for the next few years, so I hope fans and retailers get behind the book.

BOOKGASM: I was really impressed with WARLASH, and I didn’t expect to be. Why do you think that hasn’t connected as well?

FORTE: I’m not sure. It could be that we weren’t monthly. It came out quarterly. It was also an anthology of tales. So to do a three-issue miniseries and make it an anthology — it’s not a format that readers are used to. We’re going to collect the tales from WARLASH: DARK NOIR, add an origin tale and add a few more tales. There will be an additional 50 pages of all-new stories. We’ll also have a rogue’s gallery that explains the world and the characters. We’ll call this WARLASH: YEAR ONE or WARLASH: ORIGINS.  Future WARLASH books will be one-shots or original graphic novels.

BOOKGASM: Publishing as a whole is facing interesting changes now. What particular challenges are inherent to an indie comic company like yours?

FORTE: The challenges are to keep the printed books profitable in an economic downturn, as well as dealing with distributor minimums. It’s easy for a small-press publisher to be put under if a large distributor doesn’t carry them. Twenty years ago, there were 20 comics distributors; now, there’s one big one and a few small ones. That’s it. We’re breaking into the bookstore market with our trades, so that’s a good step to branch out. We’re also targeting the indie bookstores through our books distributor and trying to get them to realize the popularity of comics and graphic novels. 

The other thing is dealing with digital distribution for phones, the Kindle and the Nook. We don’t want to alienate brick-and-mortar stores, but at the same time, we have to be at the front of the digital market. If fans want digital comics, we have to be there. Our hope is that they come back and buy the graphic novel for their coffee table.

BOOKGASM: Horror anthologies are supposedly a tough sell, although I love them. But you print quite a bit of them. Do you see that at all, or is there enough of a dedicated fan base to keep yours healthy?

FORTE: Yeah, horror anthologies are tough, but there is a fan base. The numbers aren’t high enough to be profitable. We did about 2,500 orders for ASYLUM OF HORRORS #1 and printed 5,000. We’re selling through the website, at cons and through bookstores. The numbers for ASYLUM OF HORRORS #2 dropped because we took a year to come out. It was supposed to be a quarterly book, but with low numbers, we had to rethink our release schedule. 

I’d like to put out three per year or something like that. We really need to hit 10,000 in orders to make money. If the 64-page format doesn’t work, we’ll switch to an annual format. We’re already doing that with the ZOMBIE TERRORS anthology and the VAMPIRE MACABRE anthology. Those are scheduled to be 128- to 150-page annuals.

BOOKGASM: Without the benefit of a huge advertising budget, how do you rely on getting word out about your books?

FORTE: We rely on word of mouth, doing conventions, our fan base and e-mail base. We also send posters and postcards through Diamond.  These tend to hang around longer and get better exposure for the books. We sometimes run ads in Diamond, but they’re expensive. I spend time calling comic and bookstores to establish a relationship with them. It’s a one-by-one, guerilla-style attack plan for a small publisher.

BOOKGASM: Another Asylum book I really liked was DTOX, which there was only one issue for. I’m happy to see that it’s continuing at all, in HEAVY METAL magazine, but is that end for it at Asylum? For instance, can we hope for an eventual D-TOX trade?

FORTE: Thanks. Yeah, HEAVY METAL liked part two, so they published it. If reader response is good, then they’ll order another. So we’re really hoping people write in and post on the HEAVY METAL message boards. Nenad and I would love to do eight-page segments and then collect into a trade. We’ll do the trade whether or not HEAVY METAL publishes the chapters.

BOOKGASM: What new books do you have coming out?

FORTE: FEARLESS DAWN is a four-issue miniseries that hits this month. It’s Steve Mannion’s full-color, creator-owned book. Fans of Wally Wood or Eric Powell will really dig this title. Issue #2 is going to the printer now.

FARMHOUSE is an original graphic novel coming out spring 2010. Written by playwright Elizabeth J. Musgrave and illustrated by Szymon Kudranski, the story is a dark character drama set in a mental institution in the town of Paintsville in the mountains of eastern Kentucky. In this tale, Sam Corneile, a drifter, returns home to take a job at a local mental institution where he discovers a group of patients being exploited under an art therapy regimen. While there, he falls for Helen, a feisty but troubled female who dares him to confront his past.

BLACK POWDER, written and illustrated by Dwayne Harris, is the story of Robert Young, a former captain in the Revolutionary War, and his river journey on America’s first steamboat to rescue the woman he loves from a gang of river pirates led by his cutthroat nemesis and former commander, Samuel Mason. On the way he encounters hostile Indians, swashbuckling battles, and several historical figures, all set against the backdrop of an earthquake that sinks islands, reverses the flow of the Mississippi river and wrenchingly exposes the fractures of a new nation itself. 

EEEK! is a giant, 176-page trade paperback by Jason Paulos. It’s a black-and-white horror anthology that pays tribute to the old Warren mags EERIE and CREEPY. And to the Skywald books. It’s old-school horror at its best.

ASYLUM OF HORRORS #3 is almost done and features all-new horror tales from a melting pot of international creators. Fans of Tim Vigil will like his new “Survival Extinction Z” serial. Billy George’s apocalyptic “Ruined Earth” is another great story that runs issue to issue. —Rod Lott

Buy them at Asylum Press.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF ASYLUM PRESS:
• THE ASYLUM OF HORRORS #1
• THE BOMB by Steve Mannion
• DTOX #0 by Frank Forte and Nenad Gucunja
• FEARLESS DAWN #1 by Steve Mannion
• SATAN’S 3-RING CIRCUS OF HELL by Robert Steven Rhine
• UNDEAD EVIL #0 by Frank Forte and Nenad Gucunja
• WARLASH: DARK NOIR #1 / #2 by Frank Forte

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with ARCHENEMY’s Frank Beddor
• Q&A with THE LOST THRONE’s Chris Kuzneski
• Q&A with TIME OF THE RANGERS’ Mike Cox

Since THE LOOKING GLASS WARS debuted in 2006, author Frank Beddor has gone down the rabbit hole several times since for his ALICE IN WONDERLAND-inspired fantasy series. The LGW trilogy recently concluded with ARCHENEMY, but the franchise lives on in spin-off graphic novels, such as the new HATTER M: MAD WITH WONDER — VOLUME TWO. The ever-busy Beddor (also a filmmaker; he produced THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY) talked with us about his series’ genesis and future plans.

BOOKGASM: With ARCHENEMY wrapping up the trilogy, are you committed to keeping things at that, or can another set of adventures spring forth at some point?

BEDDOR: The HATTER M series continues with MAD WITH WONDER — VOLUME TWO, available now. I plan to complete a total of five HATTER M geo-graphic novels to document his 13 years searching our world for Alyss. I’m not sure if you are familiar with the Hatter M Institute for Paranormal Travel, but even as we speak, this group of radical cartographers and astral historians are working nonstop to piece together the arc of Hatter’s travels.

Through the Institute’s work and communiqués from readers around the world, new evidence of Wonderland’s existence and effect on our world continues to mount, so you never really know where the portals will take you. Since the beginning of this journey, I have repeatedly uncovered lost and hidden evidence of Wonderland. It seems the more I write, the more I discover, which naturally leads to additional material to be written.

Through a series of fortunate discoveries, I released PRINCESS ALYSS OF WONDERLAND, which features the lost art and journals of Princess Alyss Heart while she was exiled here in our world. In turn, the information uncovered in these journals opened several fascinating pathways, which lead me to deduce Alyss was not the only princess to have been exiled; in fact, evidence suggests that there is actually a league of exiled princesses spread across our world right now.

BOOKGASM: To what do you attribute THE LOOKING GLASS WARS’ success? There are too many fantasy series for young adults out there, so it’s not all that easy to break through.

BEDDOR: Obviously, having ALICE IN WONDERLAND as the springboard into my series helped immeasurably in attracting curious readers. But that was really only applicable to the first book in the series. A lot of projects try to tag to something established, but don’t enhance or enlarge the mythos — so there is a finite capacity and the projects eventually reach stasis.

With THE LOOKING GLASS WARS, I continually add to the mythos, so there is an ever-expanding universe to explore. Fans of ALICE IN WONDERLAND who first came to me looking for another take on Alice have stayed and championed the LGW and HATTER M for the enrichment it brought to their childhood notions of Wonderland.

BOOKGASM: Why tell more stories of HATTER M through graphic novels? What makes them better suited in the illustrated format?

BEDDOR: As readers know from THE LOOKING GLASS WARS, Lewis Carroll took it upon himself to change everything Alyss had told him about Wonderland, including the identity of Royal Bodyguard Hatter Madigan. In fact, Hatter Madigan was an expert blades man, a ranking High Cut of the Wonderland Millinery and not the tea-guzzling madman of Lewis Carroll lit.

Coming from Wonderland, Hatter must learn to navigate our world. But while he begins his search intent upon the single purpose of finding the lost princess, he gradually comes to discover that his travels have a purpose above and beyond this initial motivation, and that purpose is to protect and serve Imagination. As revealed in THE LOOKING GLASS WARS, Wonderland’s great gift to our world is Imagination.

As a traveler from the source of all wonder, Hatter will continually find himself facing off against those who wish to either suppress Wonderland’s gift or channel the flipside of Dark Imagination for their own diabolical use. This discovery and service to humanity will act upon Hatter and his own humanity as he continues to develop throughout the series.

HATTER M as a graphic novel just seemed like a necessary, organic progression from all of the work I did with artists on THE LOOKING GLASS WARS. In LGW book 1, Hatter M was introduced, but his story was only explored for about four chapters. There was so much more to tell about his mad search for Alyss that I realized he needed his own forum, and graphic novels would allow this dark, compelling, more mature story to be told best.

BOOKGASM: When you first set out to tell these stories, why did you choose to go for younger audiences rather than adults?

BEDDOR: I was following the trajectory of Lewis Carroll’s ALICE IN WONDERLAND. I saw the LGW series being written for children, but able to capture the imaginations of adults as well. Additionally, since I was finally writing the story that Alyss Heart had told Lewis Carroll and begged him to write, I knew it should be for YA readers since it was “Alyss’ book.”

BOOKGASM: I know you’ve been trying to launch a LOOKING GLASS WARS movie for quite some time. Does Tim Burton’s upcoming ALICE IN WONDERLAND film put a crimp in those plans?

BEDDOR: Tim Burton’s movie is coming out in the next few months, but the LGW movie won’t be in theaters for three years, so I don’t see it as a crimp in my plans. If anything, I should buy Tim a roller coaster for keeping Lewis Carroll’s myth of Wonderland front and center in the pop consciousness. The film can remind everyone just what Alyss had to put up with!

BOOKGASM: What’s next for you, writing-wise?

BEDDOR: Well, as I mentioned, I do have three more volumes of HATTER M to write to complete the series. Additionally, I am working on the LOOKING GLASS WARS screenplay, as well as new information that has recently come to me with regard to Redd possibly having an heir and Hatter’s school records from his boyhood days as a cadet at Wonderland’s Millinery. —Rod Lott

Buy them at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with I HOPE THEY SERVE BEER IN HELL’s Tucker Max
• Q&A with THE LOST THRONE’s Chris Kuzneski
• Q&A with TIME OF THE RANGERS’ Mike Cox

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• ARCHENEMY by Frank Beddor
• HATTER M: THE LOOKING GLASS WARS – VOL. 1 by Frank Beddor and Ben Templesmith
• HATTER M: MAD WITH WONDER — VOLUME TWO by Frank Beddor and Liz Cavalier
• THE LOOKING GLASS WARS by Frank Beddor
• SEEING REDD by Frank Beddor

In two acclaimed books, THE TEXAS RANGERS: WEARING THE CINCO PESO, 1821-1900 and TIME OF THE RANGERS: TEXAS RANGERS: FROM 1900 TO THE PRESENT, Mike Cox has chronicled the complete history of the horse-riding lawmen that came to be known as one of the world’s premier investigative agencies. Here, Cox talks to BOOKGASM about that momentous task.

BOOKGASM: Some would say you’ve written the definitive history of the Texas Rangers. You’ve been writing about them for what seems like a lifetime. Why are you considered such an insider?

COX: Well, to invoke a fitting metaphor, writing a definitive Ranger history is sure what I was shooting at when I started my research for the book. My aim may not have been dead-center, but I think I won the figurative gunfight! I’ve written more than a quarter-million words covering almost 1,000 printed pages, and the reviews have been pretty favorable.

In this second volume, which covers the Rangers from 1900 to the present, I did get a great head start in that I worked for the DPS as their spokesman for 15 years. That was from 1985 to 2000, and I dealt with the Rangers on some level nearly every day. I still have a lot of friends who are Rangers or retired Rangers. Even before my DPS time, I got to know quite a few Rangers when I worked as a newspaper reporter. Finally, I’ve been interested in the Rangers since I was a youngster. My late grandfather, L.A. Wilke, knew a lot of the real old-timers, and listening to his stories is what first got me hooked on Ranger history.

BOOKGASM: How was researching and writing this second volume different from the first? How is modern Ranger history different from their earlier history?

COX: I’ll start with the easy part. That was having the luxury of being able to pick up the telephone or to email a former or current Ranger and ask questions about something they had been involved with. You can’t do that when you writing about things that happened in the 19th century, as I did in WEARING THE CINCO PESO, the first volume. The hard part was that in the teens, 20s and 30s, and even into the 40s, the Rangers were not prone to be particularly expansive in their official paperwork. But from letters, memoirs, newspaper coverage, annual reports and magazine articles, I was able to get a pretty good feel for this era of Ranger history as well.

As for how modern Ranger history is different from the early days, the biggest factor is how their role has changed. By the last quarter of the 19th century, they had evolved from a paramilitary force primarily concerned with corralling hostile Indians and raiders from Mexico to peace officers. Their story in the 20th century was one of continuing transformation from the old ways to the new, from horses to helicopters.

BOOKGASM: Did the material really take 10 years to write?

COX: Yes, I signed the contract to do the book in 1999. Happily, my publisher was patient and gave me a lot more time to finish the book than the contract called for. Of course, I wrote a couple of other books while working on the Ranger project, so that delayed me a bit. But I just kept finding new information I wanted to include, and I kept rewriting and polishing. Shoot, I was still writing new material as late as last March, only five months prior to publication.

I actually finished the manuscript in 2005, but a few months after I sent it to New York, my editor called and said it was pretty long. I thought, “Well, here it comes — he wants me to cut it,” but he said he liked it so much, he wanted to break it into two separate books. That was great, because I was able to add a whole lot more material to this second volume, since suddenly I had more time.

BOOKGASM: In TIME OF THE RANGERS, you reveal that David Koresh offered to turn himself in to the Rangers in 1993 and that the refusal of this offer arguably led to the deaths of 80 people in Waco, Texas. Who actually refused the offer?

COX: Koresh told his lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, that he was willing to surrender, but only to the Texas Rangers. DeGuerin passed that information on to the Rangers, who in turn told the FBI. The FBI said “no,” and the rest is history. How high up their chain of command that “no” came from, I don’t know. But I was able to document Koresh’s surrender offer with three different sources.

I was the DPS’ chief spokesman during the Waco incident, but I had no knowledge of the surrender offer at the time. Obviously, it was kept very quiet. In fact, I didn’t find out about it until September 2008, when I was wrapping up the writing — actually, rewriting volume two. Realizing how significant that was, I made sure it got into the book.

BOOKGASM: In your estimation, what was the Rangers’ best decade in the modern era?

COX: Because of better education, better training and better technology, I think each new decade is the modern Rangers’ most effective decade. Today, Rangers can get things done on their laptops or Blackberries that would have taken days or weeks to do before, like the preparation of a photo lineup to get a suspect identified.

I think the modern Rangers were at their most powerful in the 1950s, when Col. Homer Garrison still ran the DPS and Rangers. They kept organized crime out of Texas and ran roughshod over most criminals. I wouldn’t want today’s Rangers after me, but because of various Supreme Court cases and other social factors, they aren’t what they were in the 1950s in terms of raw power.

BOOKGASM: What are your favorite books about Texas and Southwestern history?

COX: Like most writers, I’ve always loved to read. At any given time, I’ll be reading one nonfiction book and one novel. Right now, for example, I’m reading Larry McMurtry’s memoir of his life as a rare bookseller and a murder mystery set in Big Bend.

I think the one book on Texas that affected me the most was J. Frank Dobie’s CORONADO’S CHILDREN, which I read when I was in the seventh grade and should have been paying attention in math class. Close runners-up would be James B. Gillette’s SIX AND ONE-HALF YEARS IN THE TEXAS RANGERS and John Graves’ GOODBYE TO A RIVER.

Like most everyone else, my favorite piece of Ranger fiction is LONESOME DOVE, which McMurtry in the book I’m reading right now modesty says is the GONE WITH THE WIND of the American West. I couldn’t disagree with that. 

BOOKGASM: Do you remember a time when Texans didn’t care nearly as much about the OU/Texas game as they did about playing Frank Broyles’ Razorbacks?

COX: Hmmm … the OU/Texas game has always been a biggie. I first started seriously following the Longhorns in the early 1960s, and of course, in 1963, they won their first national championship. However, those Texas/Arkansas games, especially the classic 1969 game in Little Rock that won Texas it’s second national title, were great, too. I do sort of miss the old Southwest Conference. I try to write or work on some project every day, holidays included, but I never miss listening to or watching a Texas game if I can help it.

BOOKGASM: What’s next for you?

COX: My next book, co-written with journalist Rene Roderick, will be TEXAS UFO TALES, a collection of stories about UFO sightings in Texas from the 1870s to the 2008 wave of UFO reports around Stephenville. Let me hasten to say I don’t believe in little green men — or women — but I do know great folklore when I see it. These are fun stories, and I think readers will enjoy them.

Frankly, it was refreshing to write something different after spending so many years on a history project. I’m also working with retired cowboy stuntman Dean Smith, who was in 10 John Wayne movies and hundreds of other TV shows and films, on a book about his colorful career. Texas Tech University Press will be publishing that one. —Rod Lott

Buy them at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with I HOPE THEY SERVE BEER IN HELL’s Tucker Max
• Q&A with THE LOST THRONE’s Chris Kuzneski
• Q&A with VALLEY OF THE DEAD’s Kim Paffenroth

With this summer’s THE LOST THRONE, Chris Kuzneski continued his commercial and critical success as a thriller author. Here, he talks about where he’s headed and how he got there, starting from where many never progress: the self-published novel.

BOOKGASM: Your route to becoming an author has been an unusual one, from self-publishing THE PLANTATION to becoming famous overseas and now hitting the U.S. How did that all work out?

KUZNESKI: Obviously, my career has taken some unexpected detours along the way. I taught middle school and high school English for five years before I had saved enough money to take a year off and write a novel. I wasn’t sure if my effort would pay off or not, but I know I would have hated myself if I hadn’t tried. Unfortunately, at the end of the year, I had a manuscript, THE PLANTATION, but no agent to represent it.

After being turned down by every agency under the sun, I decided to take a different approach. I figured if anyone could identify with my predicament, it would be other writers who had gone through the same process at the beginning of their careers. Hoping they would be supportive, I wrote personal letters to several of my favorite authors, asking them to read a print-on-demand version of THE PLANTATION. Amazingly, most of them agreed to do it, and before I knew it, the endorsements started rolling in. And I’m talking big-name authors like James Patterson, Nelson DeMille, Lee Child, Douglas Preston, James Rollins and many more. Needless to say, I was stunned and overjoyed.

After that, I got an incredible agent and started working on my next novel, SIGN OF THE CROSS. Just about the same time I finished it, Dan Brown released THE DA VINCI CODE. Thanks to him, publishers around the world were desperate for the next big religious thriller, and my book fit their needs. In less than a year, I went from being self-published to being translated into over 20 languages.

BOOKGASM: In THE LOST THRONE, you jump between two very different mysteries throughout the book. Was that tough to do, in pacing and plotting?

KUZNESKI: Believe it or not, I think it was easier to write two separate storylines than one cohesive plot, especially for a novel of this scale. In my mind, dual plots gave me a lot more flexibility as a writer. If my three characters had been in the same city, following the same clues at the same time, their movement would have been a juggling act, a constant battle to keep them out of each other’s way. Personally, I think that would have become claustrophobic — not only for me, but also for my audience.

By writing two plotlines, I had the freedom to alter the tempo any time I wanted. For instance, if Nick Dial had an introspective chapter, I could follow it with an action scene for Payne and Jones. Or vice versa. Of course, the biggest problem was bringing the two storylines together at the end of the book. Once I figured out how to do that, the rest was easy.

BOOKGASM: How did real-life archeologist Heinrich Schliemann inspire the novel?

KUZNESKI: I was a student at the University of Pittsburgh, taking a course on the Greek classics. One of the lectures focused on Heinrich Schliemann’s life, particularly how he used THE ILIAD to discover the lost city of Troy. Or, how he didn’t. That was the incredible thing about Schliemann: No one knows what to believe, because he was such a brilliant con man. Half the time he was taking credit for things that he didn’t do; the other half, he was denying things that he actually did. As an author, that gave me a lot of fodder to work with.

Anytime Schliemann would invent a new fact about himself — for instance, he claimed he had dinner with the President — he would actually change his diary to cover his tracks. Sometimes, he even glued in additional pages if he didn’t have enough room for all the fictional details. Keep in mind, I’m talking about his personal diary, something only he got to read during his lifetime. How bizarre is that? I’m not sure if he did it to help keep all of his tales straight, or he did it because he knew scholars would read his diary after he had died. Whatever the reason, it spoke volumes about the man and his ego.

BOOKGASM: With the foreign locations, how did you handle research?

KUZNESKI: In order to make my setting realistic, I had to do a lot of research. One of the coolest parts of the book — at least from what I’ve been told — is an extended chase scene through the streets of Saint Petersburg. To make it accurate, I printed dozens of pictures of the buildings and landmarks, and attached them to a street map of the city.

Therefore, when my characters ran down a street, I knew exactly what they would be looking at. By the time I was done, I felt like I could drive a taxi in that city. Who knows? If this book doesn’t sell, I might learn Russian and go over there for work.

Thankfully, my books are fiction. So if I screw something up, I get to claim that I did it on purpose. I mean, talk about no pressure!

That being said, I was trained as a journalist, so I always strive to get things right. Back when I was in college, that meant dozens of trips to the library, digging through the stacks, trying to find multiple sources to support your conclusions. Nowadays, I can do the same thing with the touch of a button. Without the Internet, I couldn’t have written a book like THE LOST THRONE — at least not in a year’s time. A decade ago, it would’ve taken me a minimum of three years to do all the research.

BOOKGASM: Most thrillers feature an alpha-male protagonist. You have three. Did that create any problems while you were writing?

KUZNESKI: Since I’m an alpha male, it wasn’t tough at all. I pretty much just described myself in every scene. Kidding, just kidding!

Actually, in all seriousness, I try not to think of my characters in black-and-white roles, like “alpha-male” or “heroine.” Writers who do that tend to write stereotypical characters, and that’s something I want to avoid. So in my mind, I wasn’t creating three alpha males, I was simply creating three different characters.

BOOKGASM: Are your books going to continue as a single series, or do you see spin-offs in the works?

KUZNESKI: From the moment I created Nick Dial in SIGN OF THE CROSS, I realized he had spin-off potential, whether I wrote it myself or had someone co-write it. I might have to give Clive Cussler a call and ask him how he launched his NUMA FILES series.

Out of curiosity, do you have Clive’s number? Seriously. Do you have it?

BOOKGASM: No, sorry. So what’s next for you?

KUZNESKI:I’m close to finishing the next Payne/Jones thriller. It’s called THE PROPHECY, and it focuses on the lost work of Nostradamus. Putnam will be releasing in summer 2010. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with IDW Publishing’s Chris Ryall
• Q&A with Q&A with VALLEY OF THE DEAD’s Kim Paffenroth
• Q&A with I HOPE THEY SERVE BEER IN HELL’s Tucker Max

To Gawker, he’s a “horrible piece of garbage.” To TIME magazine, he’s one of the year’s 100 most influential people. Whatever you think of Tucker Max — and he’s got plenty on both sides — he’s laughing all the way to the bank. I HOPE THEY SERVE BEER IN HELL — a collection of his true-life tales of drunken debauchery — remains a bestseller since its 2006 release. Today, the film adaptation — scripted by Max himself — hits theaters. In the midst of promoting the movie, Max talked to BOOKGASM about turning BEER into a box-office contender.

BOOKGASM: Since your book is a collection of stories, how did you approach adapting them into a movie?

MAX: I wrote it with my buddy Nils Parker, and a lot of the credit goes to him. He’s brilliant and a fantastic writer. At first, we took the stories and put them together in a screenplay, and it sucked. It was 240 pages, had no plot, kind of meandered and wandered. There was a lot of funny in there, but it was boring in a lot of places.

We eventually whittled it down and got it to the point where it was kind of a movie, but … I don’t know. I showed it to my buddy David Zuckerman, who is the co-creator of FAMILY GUY. He won Emmys writing for KING OF THE HILL. He’s one of the most respected comedy writers in Hollywood, for a reason.

I showed him the script, and of course, I thought it was genius — you know, I’m the greatest writer ever — and he said, “Look, this is very funny. You have great characters. But the script sucks. You have no story. The plot goes nowhere. It’s tenuous at best. It’s not really a movie. It’s just a bunch of jokes put together. If you want to make SUPER TROOPERS or BEER LEAGUE, that’s fine, but if you want to make a great movie, this is not it.”

And, of course, that sucks to hear one of your heroes say that, but when David Zuckerman tells you something about writing, you listen to him. So we swallowed our pride, and David spent the next two months teaching us screenplay structure and story structure within the context of narrative. So we went back to the drawing board.

Once we had all the building blocks in, then we put in the funny. Writing funny for characters, for Nils and I, is easy. But it took us a while to learn the correct format and structure for a screenplay, but once we did, I felt like we nailed it.

BOOKGASM: Did you feel like you were too close to it?

MAX: That’s one of the reasons I brought Nils on board, because that’s exactly what the problem was. I was so close to the events and so emotionally attached to the reality of the situation, I had a hard time divorcing myself. Now, the movie is not supposed to be a documentary — it’s based on a true story, but it’s not a true story — but Nils wasn’t there for the “Awesome Road Trip” story. To him, it’s what’s funny, not what happened in real life.

BOOKGASM: What do you think of the final result? Anything you would’ve done differently?

MAX: Shit! Are you kidding me? So much I’d do differently! But this is our first movie, dude. If we did it perfect on our first movie, that’d actually kind of suck because we’d have no way to grow. At the end of the day, I am extremely proud of this movie. I feel like we made a genuinely hilarious movie that is not just funny, but also has a real, meaningful story behind it, which is something you almost never find in a comedy. You know, OFFICE SPACE does that, and BIG LEBOWSKI does that, and I think we do something similar. In our own way, we do sort of the same thing.

BOOKGASM: With so many books dying their first week on the shelves, why do you think yours has had such longevity?

MAX: Because of word of mouth, man. There’s no other explanation. I’ve never spent any money on ads for it. I’ve never really promoted in any way. I’ve never been on a fucking TV show for my book. No one wrote book reviews. No one gave a fuck about my book when it came out, except for the people who read it, and loved it, and they told all their friends, and they told their friends. And that’s why a year and a half after it came out, it went back on the bestseller list. I mean, backlisted books don’t go back on the bestseller list without some sort of triggering event. There was no triggering event for me. My book just went on, because so many people loved it, and so many people told their friends. The best marketing there is is word of mouth, and if you make something great, people will tell other people about it.

BOOKGASM: When’s the second book coming out?

MAX: That’s a good question. I don’t know, dude. Probably, it’s scheduled to come out in February 2010 and I’m doing my best to hit that mark.

BOOKGASM: So you’re not done with it yet?

MAX: Oh, yeah. I mean, it’s kinda done, sorta, not really, I don’t know, man. The movie is No. 1, 2 and 3 in my life since this project, so the book’s been pushed to the back. If I get it knocked out in time, it’ll come out; if not, it’ll get pushed back.

BOOKGASM: Can people expect more of the same from it?

MAX: Yeah, it’s very much like BEER IN HELL, just new stuff. Man, I’m just hoping for it to be as good as BEER IN HELL.

BOOKGASM: On a scale of “the whole truth, and nothing but” and James Frey, where do your stories fall?

MAX: First off, I’m very far away from James Frey, and no one’s at “the whole truth, and nothing but.” You know, there’s my truth, your truth and the real truth? No one has the real truth, and I’m no different. But I feel like P.J. O’Rourke said it best when he said, “Comedy by its nature is more truthful than factual.” So my stories are all true — now, they’re not supposed to be perfect, forensically accurate accounts of the events.

I mean, of course I leave a ton of shit out! I focus on the fun parts — it’s a short story, it’s supposed to be entertaining. I don’t make up events that didn’t happen, and the things that did happen are all true. I might leave something out if it’s boring, like who wants to hear about this girl I talked to, and we had a nice conversation and I went home? No one gives a shit about that. I don’t give a shit about that! So they’re definitely truthful; they’re not supposed to be police reports.

BOOKGASM: How long do you see yourself doing this? At what age does your style outgrow its audience, or vice versa?

MAX: Look, everything comes to an end. I have no intention or desire to do this forever, but I have no idea what the timeframe on it is. It is what it will be, and I am neither smart enough nor wise enough to know when it is. It’s probably sooner rather than later. I mean, I’m 33; I don’t even like doing a lot of the stuff I did when I was 27. I was a fucking idiot at 27, and I don’t want to go back to being that stupid. That’s one of the few good things about getting older. I don’t know, man. We’ll see.

BOOKGASM: Do you give much credence to your critics? I think you and President Obama may be the most hated people on the Internet.

MAX: Well, if you want to put me in the same category as President Obama, I’ll be happy with that, man. I’ll take that! Okay, I’m gonna pull this one out, and it’s kinda cheesy, but I don’t give a shit. … I don’t know if I should — ah, well, fuck it. So Jonathan Swift said it best. He said, “You will know a genius when you see him because a confederacy of dunces will align against him.” Dude, I don’t know if I’m a genius, but I have yet to see a critic of mine who I wasn’t kinda happy to be on the other side of the fence from. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with IDW Publishing’s Chris Ryall
• Q&A with Q&A with VALLEY OF THE DEAD’s Kim Paffenroth
• Q&A with WORST NIGHTMARES’ Shane Briant

After tackling zombies in both fiction and nonfiction, Kim Paffenroth now turns to the real for an unreal story in VALLEY OF THE DEAD. Available exclusively from Cargo Cult Press, the novel finds medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri working on THE DIVINE COMEDY when he stumbles upon a zombie infestation. Here, Paffenroth talks to BOOKGASM about its inception, as well as zombie fiction in general.

BOOKGASM: How did you stumble upon the idea of making Dante the focus of your new novel?

PAFFENROTH: When I was working on my nonfiction analysis of the Romero films, GOSPEL OF THE LIVING DEAD, I remembered that at the beginning of INFERNO, when Dante and his guide, the Roman poet Virgil, first enter hell and see a bunch of souls, Dante asks who they are. Virgil replies that they are those who have lost the good of intellect, and have made reason slave to appetite. People without reason or intellect, who are just driven by appetite? Sounded like zombies to me.

Then I considered more how Romero, especially in the original DAWN OF THE DEAD, has his zombies endlessly repeat what they did in life. And again, that’s exactly how Dante thinks of sin and punishment: not that the damned have the objects of their sinful desires withheld, but that they indulge in them endlessly, like zombies in a mall.

So I saw that Dante and Romero were thinking along a lot of the same lines. Then it was a matter of how best to express that link. I’d done so in my analysis of Romero, but slowly, as I got more confident about my fiction writing, it seemed like another way to present the common vision: Dantean zombies, or a Romeroesque INFERNO.

BOOKGASM: Zombies are hot right now, but how long do you see the trend lasting? And what will you do once readers are tired of it?

PAFFENROTH: I think TWILIGHT shows us — whatever we think of the quality of the books — that a monster is never out for good. Vampires were gone for a long time, now they’re back in a particular instantiation that some find unappealing; zombies were big, then they were gone, then they came back with some new tweaks — e.g. fast zombies and smart zombies — that some “traditionalists” find unacceptable.

So the lesson, I think, is that monsters keep coming back, and they keep changing. I don’t see zombies being the alpha dog monster forever, but I don’t think they’ll disappear completely, and then they’re reconfigured by some author or artist in the future, they’ll be different again.

As for what I’ll do when readers are tired of zombies, I’m having more trouble now with what to do with the non-zombie stuff I write, because everyone wants more zombies! I’ll be glad when they ask “So, what’ve you written lately, besides zombies?”

BOOKGASM: You’ve written both genre-centered fiction and nonfiction. Do you find it difficult jumping between the two? Does one present more challenges over the other?

PAFFENROTH: I was trained to write nonfiction, so that was my “comfort zone” for a long time. But I’d always read fiction, and analyzed it, so maybe it was almost inevitable I’d give it a try. And now that I have, some days it seems to come more naturally than the nonfiction.

I think for both, there’s the lead-up to the actual writing that’s very daunting and can keep you from proceeding. With nonfiction, that’s the long period of research, when you’re reading other people’s work, and that’s fun, but sometimes it seems like there’s so much out there, why do people need another book or essay on this topic, and you despair of saying anything new. With fiction, there’s the outlining and thinking about characters and scenarios, and it’s hard to finally stop thinking about them, and start the ball rolling on their story.

BOOKGASM: Beyond this, what other projects do you have in the pipeline?
 
PAFFENROTH: I’m shopping a contemporary ghost story. I’ve just started the third installment in the DYING TO LIVE saga with Permuted Press, and I have another anthology out with them later this year. Then hopefully some more zombies, and some more non-zombie stories!  —Rod Lott

Buy it at Horror Mall.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• DYING TO LIVE by Kim Paffenroth
• GOSPEL OF THE LIVING DEAD: GEORGE ROMERO’S VISIONS OF HELL ON EARTH by Kim Paffenroth
• THIN THEM OUT by Kim Paffenroth, R.J. Sevin and Julia Sevin

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with IDW Publishing’s Chris Ryall
• Q&A with SHADOWS IN THE MIST’s Brian Moreland
• Q&A with WORST NIGHTMARES’ Shane Briant

In his now-annual San Diego Comic-Con International recap for BOOKGASM, comic-book writer Joshua Jabcuga got IDW Publishing editor in chief and publisher Chris Ryall to reflect on his company’s announcements at the 40th convention.

BOOKGASM: Let’s start with your, ahem, pet project. There was a surprising amount of floor buzz for the announcement of your partnership with WEEKLY WORLD NEWS to bring Bat Boy and other denizens of the paper, like Ed Anger and Manigator to the world of comics. I know you’ve been a fan of these characters for a long time, but at what point did you sit down and say to yourself, “I can do something with these characters. Let’s go after the license and have some fun”?

RYALL: It really is something I’ve wanted to do for years, so the fact that it not only came together, but seemed to be met with initial enthusiasm when we announced it, is great. I think it took people by surprise, simply because the idea doesn’t come from movies, TV, books, or video games — all the usual places that lead to licensed comics.

But at the same time, the characters are so comic-ready, I’m surprised it never happened before. In point of fact, it sort of did happen before, in the pages of the paper itself, with great guys like Peter Bagge doing Bat Boy comic strips. Artists like Sergio Aragonés and John Byrne, and comic writers like Paul Kupperberg and Bob Greenberger also wrote for the paper, so comics and WWN has been linked for a while. But I’m still happy as can be that we were able to pull together an actual comic-book miniseries. The first of many, I hope.

So, yeah, for years, I’d been looking for a way to make this happen. It was really only when Neil McGinnis, the current WEEKLY WORLD NEWS CEO, was so open to us using not only Bat Boy, but also many other good WWN characters, that it started to go from just an idea to something that could actually work. Once I was granted the use of right-right-right-wing columnist Ed Anger, Manigator, Ph.D. Ape, UFO Alien, Lemmie the Lake Erie Serpent, Freeze-Dried Baby — all of these things — that the idea for sort of the polar opposite of Alan Moore’s erudite, literate LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN started to come together in my head.

And so far, writing this series has been the most fun I’ve ever had in comics. So hopefully that all translates when people actually see the comic in 2010.

BOOKGASM: At Comic-Con 2008, you and I briefly chatted before NEW YORK TIMES best-selling author Joe Hill’s panel for LOCKE & KEY. It was a nice turnout, and I got the sense that Joe was on the radar of some of the fans, but his popularity was mostly positive word of mouth, with room to grow. At the time, he still seemed like comics’ best-kept secret, but that the appreciation for his work — in particular, the hype — was about to explode off the charts. Judging by the autograph lines and panel attendance this year, there’s no doubt that comics readers have really embraced Joe’s — and artist Gabe Rodriguez’s — work. What a difference a year makes, huh?

RYALL: Joe might’ve been comics’ best-kept secret, but the passionate fan base for his books seem to have already been there for years. And this year was a nice extension of that, while also more of a coming-out party for comics readers. The Eisner nominations hopefully got some more people paying attention to the work he and Gabe are doing. The fervor for the book has sustained and grown because LOCKE & KEY has only gotten better and better, I think. So word of mouth seems to be attracting more readers, and the pretty much unanimously positive press the book’s gotten also makes a big difference.

At the same time, it’s still seen as a horror title from a smaller publisher — read: no superheroes — so there’s still quite a bit more audience we can reach. I think the February launch of Joe’s second novel, HORNS, will get even more people paying attention. But ultimately, what’s helped the book build and keep an audience is the fact that it’s just so damned good. And he really drew a nice crowd at the booth this year, as he did last year. So his fans are loyal and growing to legion.

BOOKGASM: On the topic of NEW YORK TIMES best-selling and critically acclaimed authors, I was thrilled to hear that Charlie Houston would be working on DEATHLOK for Marvel Comics. You’ve also got Max Brooks, who wrote the fantastic WORLD WAR Z, on tap to work on a G.I. JOE miniseries for you and IDW. Why does it seem that more “mainstream” authors are looking to dip their toes into the business of comics? Or would it be more appropriate to say that nothing has changed — it’s just the mainstream press and news outlets are more willing to provide coverage?

RYALL: You know, I’d actually love to see Charlie Huston write DEATHKLOK comics … but comics have always had a literary pedigree and guys who were more known for prose than comics writing them: Ray Bradbury for EC in the 1950s, Harlan Ellison writing AVENGERS and DAREDEVILin the ‘70s and ‘80s, and, hell, even Stephen King writing a bit for the HEROES FOR HOPE comic back in the 1980s, just to name a few. But I think we’re seeing much more of that now than before.

Whether it’s comics gaining mainstream acceptance like never before, or just the idea that comics provide a more immediate outlet for writers who typically release novels once a year at most, or just the fact that many of the big writers nowadays are our age and grew up reading the same comics and loving the same characters as us, I don’t know. It’s probably a combination of all those things. Whatever it is, I’m just happy to have guys who are such good storytellers wanting to tell comic-book stories.

BOOKGASM: There’s been a lot of rather amusing bickering among fans that Hollywood is co-opting “the Comic-Con experience,” especially this year with hordes of “Twi-hards” camping overnight for the TWILIGHT movie sequel panel. I agree with some of it, but then again, one could make a very strong case that all of this started with STAR WARS. As publisher and editor-in-chief of the third-largest comic-book company, what’s your take? Have you noticed any percentage of the “Twi-hards” looking to sample actual comic books, or are they destined to be comic-book virgins for life, there to catch a glimpse of movie stars, and that’s it? Until the TWILIGHT graphic novel is released, that is.

RYALL: It really was a noticeable thing this year. The crowd at the con on the day before and day of the TWILIGHT panel was so much more heavily skewed toward female fans than ever before. Which is great — I love anything that brings in a wider audience, and ideally, at a show like this, that audience who might only be drawn there by TWILIGHT will then see something else that catches their eye and gets them into comics. I don’t know if that happened this year to any big degree, but the exposure can’t hurt. I certainly see it as a good thing.

BOOKGASM: With all that said, it was refreshing that Darwyn Cooke’s brilliant THE HUNTER — based on Richard Stark’s novel — garnered much well-deserved praise at Comic-Con and from the mainstream press, sweetened by it debuting at No. 3 on the NEW YORK TIMES best seller list. Where do things go from here for Cooke and PARKER? How much of his beautiful work was Donald E. Westlake, aka Richard Stark, able to see before his passing last year?

RYALL: Westlake saw Darwyn’s initial artwork and plans for the book, and signed off on it based on that. So he did know what shape and form the book would take. But at the point Cooke had a big chunk of pages ready to show, Westlake headed out for a vacation over New Year’s, which is when he passed away, so he was, unfortunately, never able to see the pages themselves. That really struck Darwn hard, but I think the sheer adulation the book has received from Westlake’s family, his peers, critics and fans alike all demonstrate that Westlake would have loved what Cooke did with the book. As to where they go from here? They go to THE OUTFIT, Cooke’s second Parker graphic novel, due in late 2010. With more to follow.

BOOKGASM: So I hear some guy named Scott Tipton and you have co-written a book called COMIC BOOKS 101, which you promoted at the show. In the interest of full disclosure, I’m partial to the book, so why don’t I let you take over here? Tell us about the book.

RYALL: We launched the book a month before the con, and it was really gratifying to get it done and out there. We’d been shopping it for about five years or more, and working toward that point for a period prior to that. So by the time it finally released, it’d been maybe six to seven years of work. And well worth it, when all was said and done.

It’s essentially an overview and history of comics — the publishers, characters, creators and events that gave it life over the past 70-plus years. We were able to use 100-plus color images, and get contributions from folks like Stan Lee, Harlan Ellison, Joe Hill, Clive Barker, Mark Waid, Gene Simmons and many others, too. So it hopefully offers something for everyone, from new fans to longtime collectors. Which should tide people over until COMIC BOOKS 201, he said even more hopefully … —Joshua Jabcuga

Jabcuga is the author of SCARFACE: DEVIL IN DISGUISE and THE MUMMY: THE RISE & FALL OF XANGO’S AX. He writes a weekly column for Comics101.com.

Buy them at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with CAPITOL REFLECTIONS’ Jonathan Javitt
• Q&A with SHADOWS IN THE MIST’s Brian Moreland
• Q&A with WORST NIGHTMARES’ Shane Briant

After starring in such beloved fright films as CAPTAIN KRONOS — VAMPIRE HUNTER and FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL, British actor has made the leap to horror novels as well. That effort is WORST NIGHTMARES, one of the best of its genre in many years. Here, Briant talks to BOOKGASM about its genesis.

BOOKGASM: What precipitated your move into fiction, especially since you’re still a working actor?

BRIANT: My father was a novelist, so maybe it was always in my genes. I always wanted to write. Even when I was 5 years old and couldn’t read, I scribbled in a blank exercise book until I had covered every page. Then I told my mother I had finished my first book!

BOOKGASM: And why this dark, bleak story? Where did it come from?

BRIANT: Well, I don’t see it as bleak. Dark, sure. But dark is often interesting. And remember, it’s a thriller, so most thrillers have very dark characters. SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and SEVEN are both dark, but fascinated me. I wanted to go even further. I hope I’ve achieved this.

BOOKGASM: Were there any nightmare scenarios that you thought up but perhaps found too gruesome to include?

BRIANT: The only thing that would hold me back is bad taste. So, for instance, I wouldn’t go to any nightmare scenarios that Jewish people had about concentration camps.

BOOKGASM: Creatively, what do you get out of writing that you don’t get from acting? And vice versa?

BRIANT: Acting is purely interpretive. Writing is creative and an original art form. That’s why I love it. As an actor, one has to take direction, so one’s choice is limited. The same happens with a screenplay: A director/producer tells you what to do. With a novel, when you have a publisher like Roger Cooper at Vanguard, and a guide such as Georgina Levitt — the associate publisher who looks after me — I can let myself literally fly. It’s great!

BOOKGASM: As one who’s worked with so many onscreen talents, to whom would you entrust to bring WORST NIGHTMARES to the screen, in terms of a director and actors?

BRIANT: Martin Scorsese would be a dream. Also Sam Mendes. Or the Coen brothers! Wow! As key actors, I’d love James Spader and Robert Downey Jr. Also Alex O’Loughlin from the MOONLIGHT TV series.

BOOKGASM: What do you have planned for your next novel?

BRIANT: The sequel! It’s proving to be the best project to date, which is unusual. Anyone who enjoyed and was drawn to WORST NIGHTMARES will want to know what happened next. So I’m writing it now. I am in Paris for the central section of the book. Again, it’s very dark and scary, but will surprise everyone. That’s my hope. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with CAPITOL REFLECTIONS’ Jonathan Javitt
• Q&A with SKELETON CREEK’s Patrick Carman
• Q&A with SHADOWS IN THE MIST’s Brian Moreland

Most self-published books are self-published for a reason: Because no one else wants them. Brian Moreland’s SHADOWS IN THE MIST is an exception. After a successful run on its own in 2006, the occult horror thriller got a second chance last fall when Berkley issued it as a paperback original. Moreland tells BOOKGASM how the book that sits on the shelves today got there, and the changes it encountered along the way.

BOOKGASM: Not a ton of novels get a second chance at being published by the majors after being published by the minors. What is it about SHADOWS IN THE MIST that made it worthy?


MORELAND: I think it was a combination of hard work, persistence and luck. I had written a World War II thriller about the Nazis and the occult that I was passionate about getting published. After years of rejections from literary agents, I decided to put the destiny of my writing career into my own hands.

So I originally self-published my novel. I put a lot of effort into producing a book that would compete in the marketplace. I hired a quality editor to help polish my writing and work out any issues with the plot. I hired a top-notch book cover designer and an award-winning illustrator, Les Edwards, to paint the cover. Together, we produced a book that bookstores would stock.

My next challenge was that I was an unknown author. So I was very persistent about getting the book out to reviewers to expand my audience. I did a small book tour and hired a publicist to get me into newspapers. Shortly after I launched the book, SHADOWS IN THE MIST hit #1 on Amazon.com’s “Bestselling Thrillers” list. At that time, THE DA VINCI CODE was #4. I believe that was due to heavy marketing and an eye-catching cover. I entered the book in the 2007 Independent Publisher Book Awards. It won a gold medal for Best Horror Novel.

Since the novel is set in WWII Europe, I decided to see if I could sell the book to foreign publishers. I put it on display at the International Book Fair in Frankfurt, Germany. A Czech publisher from Prague showed some interest, so I contacted a foreign rights agent in New York. She agreed to represent my book. Within a few months, my agent told me that an editor at Berkley/Penguin was looking for a fresh horror novel and happened to love WWII novels. Mine combines both war and supernatural suspense, much like F. Paul Wilson’s THE KEEP.

Within less than a year of self-publishing, I was offered a book deal from a major house. I had finally achieved a goal that I had set when I first decided to write a novel. I never gave up on my dream. When you’re an unknown author, there’s a lot of work that goes into positioning your book in front of the right people, but I believe with enough persistence, you’re eventually bound to meet up with Lady Luck.

BOOKGASM: Why did you go the independent route at first? Why not go directly to Berkley

MORELAND: Large publishers like Berkley will only look at manuscripts submitted by literary agents. I spent years trying to get agents to represent me. I submitted query letters and then played the waiting game, often waiting four months before I finally got a rejection letter. I could wallpaper a bathroom with the number of rejection letters I received. Most of these agents never even read a page of my manuscript. They just read my query letter and said, “We’re going to have to pass on this book. Best of luck.” Without an agent, I couldn’t even get my novel in the door of a major house. I got so frustrated with the publishing system that I began to seek out other avenues.

I’ve always been an entrepreneur and a bit stubborn, so when someone won’t help me accomplish my goals, I look for ways to do it myself. I began to research self-publishing. I learned that bestselling author Christopher Paolini self-published ERAGON, and it built up a huge following, as did James Redfield, who wrote THE CELESTINE PROPHECY. John Grisham, before he became a mega-seller, sold his first novel, A TIME TO KILL, out of the trunk of his car.

In Dallas, where I live, author Will Clarke sold his self-published novel LORD VISHNU’S LOVE HANDLES to a major publisher and got a movie deal to boot. Clarke told me how easy it was to set up my book as a print-on-demand. I did this through Lightning Source, a book printer who is owned by Ingram, the wholesaler for all bookstores. When I finally developed a good model for self-publishing, I decided to try the independent route. I knew if I could get the book successful on my own that eventually a major house like Berkley would offer me a deal. The gamble paid off.

BOOKGASM: You said the new paperback is not the same as the earlier version. What precipitated the edits?



MORELAND: One of the benefits of self-publishing is that an author can test the market and get feedback from reviewers and readers. Most everyone loved the occult mystery, all the characters in Lt. Jack Chambers’ platoon, and praised the second half of the novel. But the book still had some sticking points. When you reviewed my book here at BOOKGASM, you were spot-on in your critique that some of the setup of the WWII scenes caused the plot to lag in places. When I signed on with Berkley, I was assigned an editor to take the novel through another stage of editing. She pointed out the same scenes that you had. When enough people point out the same issues with your plot, you see clearly that those scenes need to go.

BOOKGASM: Without getting into specifics of plot detail, what’s different? 



MORELAND: The new version is much tighter. My editor and I trimmed quite a bit of the setup so that the plot is constantly moving. Lt. Jack Chambers and his platoon get their mission, enter the foggy German forest, and then all hell starts breaking loose. We actually made very few changes on the back half of the book.

BOOKGASM: How hard was it for you to make those edits? 



MORELAND: It was easy. My editor mailed me a printed copy that she had line-edited. A paragraph here, a page there. All I had to do was approve the edit or write a note to keep it. I respected her opinion, and I was looking for ways to make this novel even tighter.

BOOKGASM: More importantly, do you think the book is now better for it?



MORELAND: Absolutely. The hardest part of editing is for a writer to let go of scenes that he loves. I did have an emotional attachment to a few passages. We cut a heavy dialogue scene between the platoon that I thought offered some comic relief and gave more background about each of the supporting characters. But when I pulled back and looked at the book as a whole, I agreed that certain scenes and passages slowed down the plot. My ultimate goal was to keep readers on the edge of their seat, gripping the book with white knuckles. With this updated book, reviewers and fans have been writing rave reviews.

BOOKGASM: What’s next for you?

MORELAND: I’m currently writing my next novel, DEAD OF WINTER. This one is another cross-genre novel that mixes history, horror, romance and the detective novel. The story takes place in the late 1800s in Montreal and the wilderness of Ontario. Something in the woods is stalking an isolated fur-trading fort and spreading a vicious disease. It’s based on a Native Canadian legend and a horrifying mystery that mortified the Jesuit missionaries. At this moment, I don’t have a publishing date yet, because I’m still writing the second half of the book. I can’t wait to find out how this novel is going to end.

In the meantime, I’m busy promoting my first novel. I have a group on Facebook called “Horror SHADOWS IN THE MIST” that is growing daily, and I enjoy interacting with readers and writers. I write a blog, ADVENTURES IN WRITING, where I share my experiences. I’ve also expanded my career to coaching writers to be successful. And my most exciting venture is I’m developing writer’s retreats that I will lead in Costa Rica and Hawaii.

This is an exciting time to be a writer. With so many ways to reach readers, now more than ever, a writer can steer the destiny of his career. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with CAPITOL REFLECTIONS’ Jonathan Javitt
• Q&A with SKELETON CREEK’s Patrick Carman
• Q&A with Underland Press’ Victoria Blake

Dr. Jonathan Javitt is a physician who was appointed by President George W. Bush to a presidential technology advisory committee in 2003. And now, he’s also a novelist, debuting with the thriller CAPITOL REFLECTIONS, which takes a look at the potential dangers that arise with genetically modified food, and may affect how you view your next trip to the grocery store or coffee shop!

BOOKGASM: You don’t see many doctors and scientists taking time to write novels, so what prompted you?

JAVITT: The project began on New Year’s morning, 2004, as I was making myself a cup of cappuccino. I have always been a thriller addict, and ideas for great thrillers have popped into my head from time to time. This one grabbed me by the throat and compelled me to write it.

BOOKGASM: How much of your book is based in fact?

JAVITT: As the afterword of the book says, it’s entirely a work of fiction. The names of some of the good guys are appropriated from friends of mine. The scientists who uncover the conspiracy and the methods they use are definitely based on people I have known and worked with much of my career. In fact, the inspiration for Gwen is, in part, based on the FDA scientist who singlehandedly stopped Thalidomide from entering the U.S., at grave peril to her career. The bad guys, however, are not based on any living person. That said, I believe that with sufficient greed and lack of morality, someone could perpetrate a conspiracy along the lines of CAPITOL REFLECTIONS.

BOOKGASM: What is your personal take on bio-engineered foods? Dangerous or not?

JAVITT: In general, bio-engineered foods have led the way to better crop yields, tastier and more nutritious fruits and vegetables, produce with longer shelf life, and other benefits to producers and consumers of America’s harvest. At the same time, Congress never imagined the potential for genetic modification when our food safety laws were originally enacted. Therefore, submitting genetically modified foods to FDA for safety review is driven more by voluntary agreement between producers and FDA than it is by regulatory law.

BOOKGASM: Is it really possible for food to be engineered in such a way as to make it more addictive and to make us unwittingly more hungry for it?

JAVITT: There’s no question than an addictive substance could be engineered into a food. I have long suspected the world’s chocolate manufacturers of doing just that — only kidding. The question is not whether it could be done. The question, as in all thrillers, is whether someone will be sufficiently motivated by greed and avarice to do it. Probably the most addicting food additive today is sugar. Over the last 40 years, it has found its way into numerous foods — from bread to French fries — that never contained sugar before the advent of fast-food chains.

BOOKGASM: CAPITOL REFLECTIONS implies that food corporations have perhaps an undue amount of influence in our government, or even use underhanded or illegal methods to consolidate their positions. Is that story element based on your experience in Washington?

JAVITT: Absolutely not. The element inherent in many good thrillers is the notion that a perfectly ordinary, upstanding enterprise — John Grisham made his fame with a law firm and Robin Cook with a hospital — that people use and trust every day is actually a front for a nefarious conspiracy. The people whom I have met in America’s food industry are as honest and ethical as those in any other major industry. That said, any industry that forgets to put its long-term interests and reputation ahead of its short-term desire for profits is ripe for malfeasance of one sort or another.

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with THE NEW ANNOTATED DRACULA’s Leslie S. Klinger
• Q&A with SKELETON CREEK’s Patrick Carman
• Q&A with Underland Press’ Victoria Blake

I knew Patrick Carman was on to a good thing with SKELETON CREEK — a YA horror novel with an online component — when my own 11-year-old son who doesn’t like to read was reading it. Here, Carman talks to BOOKGASM about the book’s interactivity, as well as the future of the medium and the town of Skeleton Creek.

BOOKGASM: At what point in writing SKELETON CREEK did you think, “Wait, this needs a web element as well,” or was it the other way around, where you had to find a story to fit into an idea of a multimedia experience?

CARMAN: SKELETON CREEK is a case of two ideas coalescing unexpectedly. Having different ideas come together is not an uncommon event in the development of my stories. With ATHERTON, it was climate change and Frankenstein — two ideas I’d been exploring separately that became the story of a mad scientist creating a new planet in a dystopian future. For SKELETON CREEK, the format had been on my mind for quite a while. At the same time, I had long wanted to write a mystery/ghost story, but couldn’t settle on a location or a thread that would hold things together.

When I visited the dredge in Oregon, everything merged together pretty much overnight. Sometimes a location or a character will do that for me. When I walked into the dredge and saw the massive gears and conveyer belts, then heard about a legendary ghost story, well, that was it for me. The idea of shooting video inside this place at night was very appealing. The story of two teens — one who wrote and one who filmed — felt right for the setting. After that, things started to really move.



BOOKGASM: Given that you were writing for a jaded young adult audience, did you find yourself in the difficult position of having to make it scary without having to make it too scary?

CARMAN: I knew going in that if I was going to write something scary, it would be in the Gothic tradition. The nice thing about this kind of story is that it’s the feeling of the story that scares you more than anything gory or over-the-top. The feeling of dread or fear in SKELETON CREEK comes more from how the words and images make you feel emotionally than they do from any scare tactic I might have used.

If you read a skillfully crafted Gothic story — Mary Shelley, Henry James, Edgar Allan Poe — it’s not in the monsters or the ghosts that you’re left feeling shaken; it’s in the emotional punch of the story, the trepidation the characters and the setting make you feel. That’s where I’m coming from. When a reader is done with SKELETON CREEK, they should feel something for days afterward — a sense that they’ve experienced something that shakes them awake.



BOOKGASM: The obvious reference point I kept thinking of while reading and watching was THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. Was that an actual influence for you? What else shaped your thinking in this undertaking?

CARMAN: Well, you and I are both showing our age, because most young teenagers have never seen that movie. I was mildly influenced by BLAIR WITCH, far more influenced by the YouTube generation, serialized web content like Lonelygirl, and classic Gothic writers like the ones mentioned above.

I wanted to create something a younger generation would see as fitting into their worldview, so the webcam in Sarah’s room was important, as were the length of each segment, how they felt, and what the shots on the dredge looked like. I’d say it’s more a coincidence how the project feels like THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, although I suppose you could call SKELETON CREEK a BLAIR WITCH for the YouTube generation … hmmmmm … not bad.



BOOKGASM: Do you think this kind of multimedia read is the wave of the future, or just a novelty that can only work for so many kinds of books and stories?

CARMAN: I absolutely believe this is an important new method of storytelling. Storytelling, in my view, is ever-changing. We began with someone standing up and telling a story. We’ve traveled a long way from there to here. Books, radio, television, movies, the web – what’s left, in my view, is what I would loosely describe as a media mashup.

Creative people who understand how to maneuver in the digital world will be incredibly interesting storytellers in the next five years. I’m particularly interested in merging film with books, because I think they complement one another beautifully. I also think it’s one of the best ways to keep people reading, by tethering the story to compelling video content. 



BOOKGASM: Where do you go from here? Is the idea to retain the same protagonists for future novels, or will the site of SKELETON CREEK be the constant for other characters to explore?

CARMAN: I’m exploring a lot of different story ideas right now, but two things I can say for sure. There is at least one more SKELETON CREEK project. It’s already written, filmed and edited, and slated for release in early September. And I’ve signed on with Scholastic to do another series: a thriller with more cameras and characters. We’re going to cast for the new project at bookstore events around the country, so stay tuned for a chance to try out. Bottom line: Bigger projects in this format are on the way. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with THE NEW ANNOTATED DRACULA’s Leslie S. Klinger
• Q&A with NIGHT OF THE FURIES’ David Angsten
• Q&A with Underland Press’ Victoria Blake

Books may be the last medium where the logo on the spine can mean something. While it cannot convey the book’s content, it can instantly communicate how the title feels, and in which genre it belongs. Underland Press aims to be the next great indie brand, in which its logo will be a sign of taking chances in fiction of the fantastic. Victoria Blake, the woman behind this new publishing startup, talked with BOOKGASM about her exciting venture.

BOOKGASM: With publishing facing a highly uncertain future, why enter the fray now? Do you think the small press is better positioned to survive?

BLAKE: I have absolutely no doubt that fiction will continue to be read, and it will continue to be written. The delivery mechanism for the fiction might change, and the content will certainly change and develop, but I don’t think fiction will ever go away. I hold this belief so strongly, I can’t even imagine a world without fiction.

It’s like trying to imagine my face without my nose. We need fiction. As humans. We need it to make sense of the world. So even though publishing is facing an uncertain future, fiction is not. I think it’s a perfect time to be entering the fray. Transition means opportunity. Maybe. With a little bit of luck.

BOOKGASM: What can one expect from the Underland Press brand?

BLAKE: Ah! You’re the first person to call it a brand! Excellent. That’s one of my goals. I want the Underland website to become a place where people who like a certain type of fiction, who have a certain sensibility, will come, and will come back.

What can you expect? You can expect weird, strange, odd and unsettling stories. That’s anything from psychotic clowns to self-mutilators to islands made of mold. It includes serial killers, but it also includes children with heads that turn around on their neck. You won’t see violence for violence’s sake, but rather you’ll see the weird stuff employed for a larger narrative purpose.

BOOKGASM: What can you tell us about the first two books you’ve selected to kick off this new effort? Why did you choose them as your out-of-the-gate releases, so to speak?

BLAKE: The first book we’re publishing is the book that made me want to start Underland. It’s Brian Evenson’s LAST DAYS and it blew my mind when I read it, back when I was working at Dark Horse.

I met Brian at BEA, and he and I got to talking. He agreed to write an ALIENS book for Dark Horse — it’s called NO EXIT — and it was released last month, and he sent me a chapbook of BROTHERHOOD OF MUTILATION, a novella published by Earthling. It gave me chills. A year or so later, he told me that he had completed a follow-up novella, and that he was considering printing both as one work.

I waited to quit Dark Horse until I’d heard that Brian would be able to sell me the rights to LAST DAYS. Actually, it happened in an e-mail. I saw his name pop up in my inbox, and I told my boyfriend, “It’s either a go, or it’s not.” And it was.

The second book is THE PILO FAMILY CIRCUS by Will Elliott, and won all sorts of awards in Australia, where it was first published. The story is about a trio of clowns that kidnap the protagonist, Jamie, and bring him to an otherworldly circus. All sorts of crazy things happen there — including a war between the acrobats and the clowns. I’m amazed that this is Will’s first published book. I’m very, very jealous of what a strong writer he is. Somehow, he manages to make this very odd world live on the page.

BOOKGASM: How many releases are you planning for your first year? Any other titles you can announce at this point?

BLAKE: I’m incredibly lucky to be able to publish Jeff VanderMeer’s third Ambergris book, FINCH. I met Jeff through Brian Evenson, when I was at Dark Horse. Jeff wrote a PREDATOR novel for Dark Horse, called SOUTH CHINA SEA.

Jeff’s a great guy — really generous with his time and his input. Lately, though, our e-mail exchanges have fallen off a bit. He’s finishing the manuscript for FINCH now, and he’s gone into a creative hole. Hurry up, Jeff! I can’t wait to read the book!

The fourth book this year is Escober’s CHAOS, a thriller I had translated from Dutch. That sounds weird, I know, but everybody who read this book in the original loved it, and I went with that one faith. I was nervous to receive the translation, but I shouldn’t have been. It knocked me off my feet. I read the proof in two days, and I’m really hoping it sells well enough to justify bringing Escober’s other books into English. They have three more that I really, really want to publish.

BOOKGASM: Before this, you were an editor at Dark Horse. What projects did you most enjoy working on there, and what did you learn in your time there to prepare you to launch Underland?

BLAKE: I loved the ALIENS and PREDATOR books. I love the idea of licensed fiction — that the same central concept can be treated differently by many different minds. Plus, the Predators are just cool. I’d take them over the Aliens any day.

I also really loved Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar books. Leiber had an incredible prose style and an incredible imagination. I will always remember Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser looking down into that wobbling pillar of air that extends down from the top of the ocean. At the bottom of the ocean, they find a cavern of air. Fafhrd lights a torch, and the cavern fills with smoke. It’s perfect — both the classic swords-and-sorcery setting, and the way that the two characters interact with the setting.

What did I learn? I learned what my boss, Rob Simpson, told me on my first day: “Publishing isn’t rocket science. It’s just a lot of fun.” He was right on both counts. —Rod Lott

Buy them at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with MY BRAIN IS HANGING UPSIDE DOWN’s David Heatley
• Q&A with THE NEW ANNOTATED DRACULA’s Leslie S. Klinger
• Q&A with NIGHT OF THE FURIES’ David Angsten

No doubt hardcore readers will be getting gift cards in a few weeks for the holidays. May we suggest putting them to good use? Namely, toward the purchase of Leslie S. Klinger’s exhaustive, exhilarating THE NEW ANNOTATED DRACULA. The editor talks with BOOKGASM about this mammoth undertaking.

BOOKGASM: I’m curious as to the process of putting together a book like this. How long did it take to research and write? How many times did you have to re-read Stoker’s text? Did you keep track of your total hours? I assume it’s a ton of work, but is it work that is fun for you?

KLINGER: Of course it’s great fun. The book took about two years to write, another six months to edit. I re-read the text many times, going line by line. I don’t keep track of my time, but it was many, many weekends and four trips, a week in London, 10 days in Transylvania, two days in Seattle, and one day in Philadelphia, as well as a lot of time at my local library.

BOOKGASM: Was there anything particularly revelatory that you found when working on the book?

KLINGER: Many things: the definitive answer to whether Dracula was based on Vlad the Impaler (he wasn’t — the Stoker notes revealed this); the alternate ending (the manuscript); the site of Dracula’s London base (on Piccadilly); the possible sites for Lucy’s tomb (London); the mismatched geography of Transylvania.

BOOKGASM: Why do you think DRACULA enjoys such resonance today when it was not the first vampire novel, nor all that successful in its time?

KLINGER: It was surely the best vampire novel of the 19th century, and because of the stage and screen adaptations, it’s had a tremendous influence. The story is really scary: “Modern” English folks meet 400-year-old monster. Today, we want to yell at them, “You dummies! It’s a vampire!,” but of course, they hadn’t seen the movies and had no clue what they were up against.

BOOKGASM: Of all the vampire novels DRACULA influenced that you discuss in the appendices, what is your favorite? And of the movies?

KLINGER: I love Kim Newman’s ANNO DRACULA and its sequels. For films, I love the BBC production in the 1970s, as well as the Dan Curtis/Richard Matheson/Jack Palance film of the 1970s.

BOOKGASM: You’ve done Sherlock Holmes and now the Count. What literary icon is next?

KLINGER: No certainty on this, but it may well be Frankenstein and his monster.

BOOKGASM: For those of us who don’t live anywhere near your book tour stops, will you be offering autographed bookplates via mail as you did with the Holmes project?

KLINGER: I haven’t “built” them yet, but I think that’s a good idea! —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE NEW ANNOTATED DRACULA edited by Leslie S. Klinger

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with HALLOWEEN AND OTHER SEASONS’ Al Sarrantonio
• Q&A with MY BRAIN IS HANGING UPSIDE DOWN’s David Heatley
• Q&A with NIGHT OF THE FURIES’ David Angsten

One of the newest names in adventure thrillers is David Angsten, but we at BOOKGASM think his profile is too low for such a high talent. In DARK GOLD and now the new NIGHT OF THE FURIES, he’s already carved a noticeable chunk into the pop-lit landscape. Here, he discusses the genesis and inspiration of his mythic tales of travel and terror.

BOOKGASM: Legends figure heavily into your work, from urban to mythological. What is it about these that you find so alluring as a writer?

ANGSTEN: These myths are strange and mysterious, but also feel somehow familiar and true. There’s something at the core of them you recognize intuitively, but can’t quite put your finger on. The story circles this hidden center, mesmerizing you, but the essence, the truth, remains transcendent and invisible. You could give it a name, but it would only be a word, like the story, like the finger pointing at the moon. Looking for the inner truth of a myth is like looking for the inner essence of a diamond: You only catch it in flashes of insight.

BOOKGASM: Your plots are high-concept, yet your skill level in writing sits on a much higher plane of intelligence. Who do you consider your audience to be? Someone looking for a cheap thrill? A smart adventure? A little of both?

ANGSTEN: If a thrill is cheap, it’s usually too skimpy to be genuinely thrilling. And if an adventure isn’t smart, it’s dumb. I never understood why there had to be this choice between “literary” vs. “genre.” It’s a dichotomy foisted on a gullible public by snooty academics and newspaper critics, many of them frustrated writers. Too many authors of “literary” fiction cannot tell a story, and too many genre writers lack any artistic sense. The literary writer says she can’t be bothered with something as mundane as a plot, and the genre writer insists nothing matters but his story. There’s good reason for each to make excuses: It’s difficult to construct a proper story, and it’s equally difficult to write it well. I think you have to try to do both.

Look at the original “novel”: Homer’s ODYSSEY. Great action-adventure story, thrillingly plotted, and all told with beautifully poetic imagery and language. Shakespeare, same thing. He loved the cries for blood from the crowd, and the hearty guffaws from the groundlings, but he also liked the soft gasp of pleasure from the queen.

BOOKGASM: With novels set in Mexico and now Greece, I have to ask if you an adventurer/traveler yourself?

ANGSTEN: When I was a kid, every spring my father used to drive us up to go fishing in the wilderness of Canada. We’d travel as far north as the roads would take us. Then the mosquitoes would pick us up and carry us even farther. In college, I climbed the peak of the Grand Teton, and I hitchhiked back roads through France and Spain. I’ve scuba dived in the Caribbean and off the Pacific Coast, and for a while, I shot documentaries in various parts of the world. But in no way would I consider myself in the league of adventurers like Jack and Dan Duran. Jack is my alter ego, and Dan is my wandering shadow. They go places and take risks I would never dare myself.

So I’m no bullfighting Ernest Hemingway, but I’m not a housebound Emily Dickinson, either — though she certainly wrote incredible poetry. James Michener — no slouch when it came to traveling — said the really great writers were the ones like Emily Brontë who sit in a room and write “out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination.” The work of the two Emilys proves that talent trumps travel. 



BOOKGASM: Any particular authors or thrillers that inform or inspire your work?


ANGSTEN: The authors that inspire me are the ones I read as a kid: Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, H.G. Wells, Ambrose Bierce. I think the thing they all have in common is a fascination with consciousness and the nature of “reality.” Nabokov — my favorite writer as an adult — said “reality” is one of the few words that mean nothing without quotes.

BOOKGASM: What can we expect from the third book of the trilogy? And beyond that?

ANGSTEN: Jack is heading east into Asia. His brother has disappeared again — searching for soma, the psychoactive plant that inspired the Sanskrit Vedas of ancient India, the oldest sacred texts in the world. It leads the brothers — and a character from their past — to the source of the legend of Shambhala, the utopian kingdom of Tibetan Buddhism.

In NIGHT OF THE FURIES, Jack confronts the extreme of the Dionysian — the chaos of absolute freedom. In the final part of the trilogy, SHADOWS OF SHAMBHALA, he faces the opposite end of the spectrum — the Apollonian impulse toward conformity and order — in the form of Islamofascists. Struggling between these two opposites, Jack will reach for some sort of synthesis, and hopefully bring the trilogy to a thrilling and elegant end.

What’s beyond that lies off the map for the moment. I’ll have to head out there on my next fishing trip. As the boat captain warned in DARK GOLD, “There be dragons.” —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with HALLOWEEN AND OTHER SEASONS’ Al Sarrantonio
• Q&A with MY BRAIN IS HANGING UPSIDE DOWN’s David Heatley
• Q&A with VAMPIRE ZERO’s David Wellington

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• DARK GOLD by David Angsten
• NIGHT OF THE FURIES by David Angsten

You can learn a lot about writer/artist David Heatley by reading his acclaimed graphic memoir MY BRAIN IS HANGING UPSIDE DOWN. And you can learn a little more about him by reading his chat with BOOKGASM, on why he didn’t censor himself, what his family thinks of the work, and what he plans to do next.

BOOKGASM: I’m assuming you’ve been drawing all your life. But when did the switch flip that you looked around and thought, “Geez, I need to turn my own life into comics!”

HEATLEY: Reading other autobiographical cartoonists, especially Julie Doucet, is what set me on this path. And studying personal diaristic filmmakers in college like Scott Stark, Joe Gibbons, Stan Brakhage and Marjorie Keller. After honing in on my favorite artists — Spiegelman, Ware, Panter, Clowes, Burns, etc. — I could see that what made for great comics was great writing. I experimented with fiction early on, and the results were embarassing. I had no chops as a writer and only marginally more as a draftsman.

Then it dawned on me that I’d been keeping a journal for over 10 years. I had a backlog of material that was already written. I started by drawing my own dreams. When they were published, I could see that they’d be much more interesting in the context of reading about my waking life. That led to doing more strictly autobiographical comics, which led to MY BRAIN.


BOOKGASM: Other than that it’s imminently readable, the thing that most sticks out about your work — and that I really admire — is its honesty. It appears you haven’t censored any details about your life, even though most of us would be ashamed to admit such things in public, much less on paper for total strangers to see. Why?


HEATLEY: I’m something of an exhibitionist by nature and always have been. Beyond that, I feel a detachment from my story these days. I don’t need to conceal or protect it from anyone. I’ve lived that part. It’s over. If it can be helpful or entertaining to my readers, I feel I’ve done my job.
 

BOOKGASM: In completing this memoir, did you learn anything going over the events of your life that you hadn’t realized already?


HEATLEY: The “Portrait of My Mom” strip was the most transforming to work on. The memories I focused on were mostly ones that still had an emotional charge or some kind of resentment attached to them. I found that once I shrunk my mom down to less than an inch and controlled her movements and the things she said, her power begin to shrink in my own mind. And once she became the protagonist in these stories, I found her sympathetic. Suddenly it was clear that no one had done anything wrong in these anecdotes. They were perfect as is.

In “Black History,” I began the strip with a clear framework, but no clear ending in mind. I was working on these memories about summer camp, doing some terrible hazing to some of the campers in my care, some of whom were black. And also remembering being bullied and beat up by black friends growing up. In the midst of all that, I got slapped in the face by a black woman on the train. I kind of knew that had to be my ending. It was a total shock.



BOOKGASM: How have the members of your family reacted to your comics? Ever had one of them or a friend be unhappy about their inclusion?


HEATLEY: Anybody I’m still friends with is happy to be included. I haven’t heard from any exes and don’t really plan to. All of that happened over 10 years ago and I think it’s water under the bridge. My dad doesn’t love everything about him in the book for obvious reasons, but it doesn’t stop him from bringing the book everywhere he goes and bragging about me. It’s incredibly sweet.

I’ve mostly kept my brothers out of the narrative. I feel like I’m stuck with my parents and they shaped me and my story, so including them is fair game. But I respect my brothers’ privacy and wouldn’t want to embarrass them. They didn’t ask for this.



BOOKGASM: Do you already have a speech worked up for when your kids eventually read the book and start asking questions?

HEATLEY: I doubt they’ll even be interested until they’re in their late 20s. I could be wrong. But I think it’s my job to be interested in them and to nurture their own growth and artistic expression. I had a lot of backwards parenting growing up, where I was asked to inappropriately love and nurture my parents. I don’t want them to have to pay undue attention to me, so I try not to grab the spotlight too much. I know if one of my parents wrote a book like this, I’d be excited to read it. But it wasn’t until fairly recently that I’ve begun to see them as human beings. And it wasn’t until I had my own kids that I could fully sympathize with them. 



BOOKGASM: Do you have any interest or plans in pursuing a fictional project? I guess the dreams you depict could be considered that, but then again, they actually happened to you. What about something entirely removed from your real life?

HEATLEY: My next book for Pantheon is called OVERPECK, and it’s more or less a traditional graphic novel. The characters all came to me in my dreams, so there’s some link to autobiography. And the town is based heavily on the neighborhood I lived in between kindergarten and second grade. Some of the things in the book really happened, but there’s also elements of fantasy and magic.

For now, I feel pretty done telling my real story. The idea was to create an exhaustive account of these years leading up to adulthood so I wouldn’t have to retell any of it. We’ll see if that sticks.



BOOKGASM: What do you get out of doing your own comics that you don’t in your freelance illustration jobs? And what do you get out of making music that you don’t get from drawing altogether?

HEATLEY: Freelance jobs are a chance to hone my craft and experiment with new techniques, since the content is usually the most uninteresting part for me. I wind up using all the tricks I learn on those jobs later in my own comics. Music is very satisfying and immediate to create. There’s a physical release that happens when I sing and play guitar that never happens in comics.

Drawing is much more contemplative and meditative, like working on a long scroll up in a monastery somewhere. The discipline involved in making a book is enormous, and the change that takes place when you finish is profound. I like having all three in my life and bouncing to one or the other, based on what I’m needing on a given day.



BOOKGASM: When we expect another book out of you?

HEATLEY: OVERPECK should be out by 2010, fingers crossed. I don’t think it’ll be five years per book now that I’ve got the formal elements of my process down. But I could be wrong. I want to continue with music projects and I’m working on a film treatment for MY BRAIN, so that could slow everything else down. I’m not in control of any of this. I’m along for the ride. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with HALLOWEEN AND OTHER SEASONS’ Al Sarrantonio
• Q&A with LONDON HORROR COMIC’s John-Paul Kamath
• Q&A with VAMPIRE ZERO’s David Wellington

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• MY BRAIN IS HANGING UPSIDE DOWN by David Heatley

Some names are just synonymous with the holiday of Halloween: Michael Myers. Jason Voorhees. Freddy Krueger. Al Sarrantonio. Wait, what? Yes, Al Sarrantonio, author of a slew of short stories and novels set in the fictional town of the Halloween-friendly unfriendly town of Orangefield, including the new Cemetery Dance collection HALLOWEEN AND OTHER SEASONS. Here, the author talks with BOOKGASM about that world, his work in non-horror genres, and what to expect next.

BOOKGASM: What is it about Halloween and your fictional town of Orangefield that compels you to keep revisiting it?
 
SARRANTONIO: What’s not to like about Halloween? It contrasts the innocence of a children’s holiday with the grimmest subject matter of all: death. An incredibly rich and vast palette for any writer to work with.

BOOKGASM: How many more visits to Orangefield do you have in you?
 
SARRANTONIO: I’ll probably be writing about Orangefield for the rest of my writing career, though perhaps not another novel for a bit. HORRORWEEN, HALLOWS EVE and HALLOWEENLAND made up a trilogy of a sort, and I’m letting that rest for now. But I’ve already published a short story based there this year, and there’s another one on the way. The wonderful thing about creating a town is that in a sense, you own it. You are the mayor, police chief and town historian, and can do anything you want with it.

BOOKGASM: Although you’re primarily known for horror, you also write sci-fi and other genres. Do you find one to be more of a comfortable fit for you? Do they require different approaches in your work process?
 
SARRANTONIO: I’ve been very comfortable wearing all the hats I’ve worn, but my first love is and always will be horror fiction. Which is quite odd, because my first love as a reader was science fiction. But after basically flunking out of engineering school 35 years ago — I was asked, “Shall we push you, or would you like to jump?” — I discovered that the hard sciences did not come easily to me. My science fiction — I’ve written two trilogies in the genre, FIVE WORLDS and MASTERS OF MARS — has consequently been more science-fantasy oriented, influenced by Bradbury and Burroughs.

BOOKGASM: You’ve also distinguished yourself as an excellent editor, behind some of my all-time favorite anthologies, including 999 and FLIGHTS: EXTREME VISIONS OF FANTASY. Any plans for more?
 
SARRANTONIO: Oh, yes. The wonderful Neil Gaiman and I are co-editing a big genre-as-literature anthology at the moment. That will be published by Morrow. And I’ve just finished up the first of what I hope will be a continuing series of horror anthologies titled PORTENTS, which will attempt to follow in the quiet horror footsteps of Charlies L. Grant’s SHADOWS. Out in 2009, and the lineup includes Joyce Carol Oates, Gene Wolfe, Joe Lansdale, Ramsey Campbell — 19 in all.

BOOKGASM: What else can we expect from you in the immediate future?
 
SARRANTONIO: Working in the short realm at the moment, with stories due out all over the place. And there’s an original Halloween poetry anthology which I’ve edited due soon, as well as a signed limited edition, with beautiful interior artwork, of my 1989 horror/SF werewolf novel, MOONBANE.  —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with LONDON HORROR COMIC’s John-Paul Kamath
• Q&A with SLY MONGOOSE’s Tobias Buckell
• Q&A with VAMPIRE ZERO’s David Wellington

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• FLIGHTS: EXTREME VISIONS OF FANTASY edited by Al Sarrantonio
• HALLOWEENLAND by Al Sarrantonio
• HALLOWS EVE by Al Sarrantonio
• HORRORWEEN by Al Sarrantonio
• 999: TWENTY-NINE ORIGINAL TALES OF HORROR AND SUPSENSE edited by Al Sarrantonio

It’s been more than two years since we last chatted with David Wellington, and with Halloween right around the corner and — coincidence! — a new book hitting stores in the form of VAMPIRE ZERO, there was no time like the present to see what’s up in his world.

BOOKGASM: When we last spoke, you were on the start of one trilogy and now you’re on the end of a second. Sick of trilogies yet, David?

WELLINGTON: Ha! No, I actually love trilogies — and continuing series. You can only take a character so far in one book, and I love the idea of Laura Caxton — the heroine of 13 BULLETS, 99 COFFINS and VAMPIRE ZERO — changing and developing over time, even though her arc has been kind of tough on me.

Every time she kills a vampire, she gets less human, more obsessed, and the series is going to some pretty dark places. There’ll be a fourth vampire novel, at least, and in that one, maybe she gets a little chance of redemption. Some stories just need that much room to grow. Of course, other stories I want to tell will work great as standalone volumes, but for now, I’m having fun with the big, sprawling epics.

BOOKGASM: Is the trilogy something that the market now dictates, or is it a desire on the part of the author? Or a little of both?

WELLINGTON: The market all but demands it, yeah. It seems like you can’t sell one book anymore — but it’s understandable. Publishers want to know you’re committed to the books you write, and one good way to prove that is to develop a continuing story. Readers who really enjoy a certain book will always want to know what happens next. So far I’ve been lucky in that the stories I’ve wanted to tell matched what the market was asking for — I want to know what happens next, too! I have a pretty good idea for a fourth zombie book, if I ever get a chance to write it.

BOOKGASM: You’ve done vampires, you’ve done zombies. What’s next?

WELLINGTON: Werewolves! I wrote a werewolf book a while back, called FROSTBITE, and serialized it on my website. It’s one of the best things I ever wrote and I’m actually revising it heavily now, expanding it — and working on a sequel.

BOOKGASM: Have any serious desire to do something outside the horror genre?

WELLINGTON: Absolutely. I want to write every book I have in my head, which includes mysteries, heroic fantasies, a heist story, books about superheroes … It’s tough, sometimes, when you’re known for one thing to break out into a whole other market. The fans want more of what they know and love. The industry doesn’t like to take a lot of risks. But I think any writer who loves stories will eventually move outside of that comfort zone. I have a young-adult book ready to go now that I think my core fans would enjoy, but it’s written for a completely different audience — very little blood, no monsters at all, but one hell of a story. We’ll see what happens.

BOOKGASM: You were one of the very first fiction authors to break out from the web — and because of the web — to print. In the past two years, we’ve been seeing even more of it, like Scott Sigler’s success. How much of online fiction, in your opinion, is any good? And do you think mining the web for new talent is a passing fad or something that’s only going to increase?

WELLINGTON: What makes a book good or bad is so subjective. Online fiction is always interesting, though, if only because there are no rules. Anybody can put a book online. You don’t have to write to a specific market, so you can take chances, do things that publishers would never touch. So I applaud anybody who does it, whether they make any money or not, whether they ever get into print.

As for mining talent from the web, it’s the best showcase the publishing world has ever had. It’s all out there; you can see what people are reacting to instantly. I think every publisher who’s looking for something new and exciting is looking at the web, even the ones who haven’t glanced at their slush piles in years. So, yeah, I think it’s going to increase.

People need to be aware, though, that the good things about the Internet — the instant feedback, the cheap distribution — can also turn around and bite you. When I serialized MONSTER ISLAND online, I was one of the first people to do it and so I got a lot of press just because I was doing something new. That’s over now. If you’re going to put your book on the web and get people to read it, you’re going to need to be creative. You’re going to need to market it just as fiercely as if you were sending unsolicited manuscripts to publishers.

BOOKGASM: Do you find that you have different audiences for your web work and the published fiction, or are they basically the same?

WELLINGTON: One is a subset of the other. The vast majority of my readers have no idea what I do online. They like to read books, not web pages, and they’re always surprised to find out I have so much stuff online for free. The web fans have been my biggest supporters — they do buy the books, most of them, and they talk about them to anyone who will listen.

BOOKGASM: Internet marketing seems absolutely essential nowadays to authors, particularly all of those who don’t score million-dollar advances. What outlets and tricks have you found most effective in spreading the word? And what did you waste your time on?

WELLINGTON: You know, I asked a similar question at a panel on marketing at a convention last year. I got a lot of interesting answers, but one panelist had the best insight: When I asked her what she’d wasted money or time on, and what she wouldn’t do again, she said nothing, just smiled. Then she said she didn’t regret a thing she’d tried and she would do it all over again.

Marketing is a weird thing: There is no magic bullet, as much as you want there to be one. It’s not like buying ads online on a certain website automatically makes you a bestseller, or that if you do a book trailer, you’ll reach every single person on YouTube. That’ll never happen. Most of the things you do will only reach a handful of people and a very small fraction of that number will actually buy a book. That’s a major problem when you’re buying ad space — it’s the main reason that advertisements for books have only recently started appearing in magazines, on buses, wherever, because the return on investment is very small and very hard to measure.

On the Internet, though, it makes sense. You can spread your nets very wide for very little money — all it takes is time and energy. You hear all the time about how the Internet is hurting books, how it’s going to mean the death of literature. Bah! Not a chance. The Internet is the best resource any writer ever had if it’s used properly. It rewards creativity, humor and enterprise. I love it! —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• MONSTER ISLAND by David Wellington

OTHER BOOKGASM INTERVIEWS WITH THIS AUTHOR:
• Q&A with MONSTER ISLAND’s David Wellington

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with THE MAX’s Jason Starr
• Q&A with LONDON HORROR COMIC’s John-Paul Kamath
• Q&A with SLY MONGOOSE’s Tobias Buckell

John-Paul Kamath is editor of LONDON HORROR COMIC, which has now jumped ship from the webcomics arena to its full-fledged, old-fashioned, printed-on-paper first issue. Here, BOOKGASM talks with Kamath about what the comic has to offer today’s horror fan and how much of it is informed by yesteryear efforts.

BOOKGASM: First of all, I’m curious about the name LONDON HORROR COMIC. It’s very generic, almost like a descriptor, and yet it tells you exactly what it’s about. Why did you choose that title over the more sinister-sounding names as others usually lean toward? Did you consider any others?

KAMATH: You’re the first one to pick up on the choice of name. Yes, it was indeed a conscious choice to have something that explicitly signaled what the book was about. LONDON HORROR COMIC lets people make a quick decision about whether it’s a comic for them. There are walls of comics vying for the attention of readers. Having a name which makes it clear to people what they are getting before they even pick it up was essential for letting horror fans know that this was a book for them.

The choice of title owes a lot to the way old black-and-white horror films were titled. A name like FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN does the audience a service. If seeing Frankenstein fight a wolf man is not what you want to see, move on. Otherwise, stay and get your fill.

BOOKGASM: What does LONDON HORROR COMIC offer today’s reader?

KAMATH: It offers readers the widest mix of horror genres in one 32-page book. You’ve got comedy-horror, psychological horror, traditional ghost stories, gore — all wrapped up in self-contained stories. No other book offers that range. It’s like picking up four comics in one.

The other interesting thing about the book is that although it is an anthology, we have the same creators working on all stories. In other anthologies, you have different teams working on different stories, so the challenge for us as writer and artist is adapting our own styles to make each story work. That’s tough. It’s a bit like performing a rapid costume change backstage as we move from story to story.

For example, if I have a gift for graceful narration, then I can’t fall back on it if I’m writing a fast-paced action story about vampire hunters. It won’t fit. So I have to push myself as a writer. The appeal for the reader lies in seeing how we pull off each story, just as much as reading the stories themselves. You don’t get that with many comics.

BOOKGASM: What were your influences in creating it, and at the same time, how do you differentiate yourself from those?

KAMATH: The main influences were comics like CREEPY and EERIE much more so than TALES FROM THE CRYPT. EERIE and CREEPY were horror comics made for horror fans, rather than comics that happened to be about horror. The editorial teams at these magazines were conscious that their readers were going out and watching the latest horror films and reflected that in the selection and tone of their stories.

With CREEPY and EERIE, you didn’t only get stories about zombies coming back from the dead for revenge, or stories where somebody “really turns out to be a vampire” on the last page. Readers were given stories that framed horror in a different light in each issue. That’s something I wanted to do with the LONDON HORROR COMIC.

I think what sets this book apart, though, is that while the look of the book and artwork is very American with clean line work, the stories are quiet European. You don’t get straightforward morality plays where good wins and evil is punished, even if the look of the art suggests you will. It’s like a nightmare drawn beautifully, and I think that makes it more scary than if the art had been intentionally dark.

BOOKGASM: If horror anthologies are considered a tough sell, why start a new one? Do you think there’s a built-in audience for them?

KAMATH: If you look at the success of books like THE WALKING DEAD, 30 DAYS OF NIGHT and MARVEL ZOMBIES, then there is clearly an appetite for horror comics. At the moment, I don’t think that horror as a genre is as well-represented as, say, the superhero or crime genres are in comics. So launching a new title that tells only self-contained stories and focuses only on horror seemed something of a necessity in the market place.

One of the reasons I started the LONDON HORROR COMIC was because I liked horror, but couldn’t find a comic like it on shelves. A piece of work is good if it springs from necessity. In the nature of a comic’s origin lies its judgment.

BOOKGASM: Do you think generating scares through the graphic medium is easy or difficult to do? Why?

KAMATH: Making people feel scared in comics is difficult, but it can be done. To scare people using comics, you have to spend time building up the world and characters within the mind of the reader — to make it seem more real than watching a film. You don’t, for example, have the luxury of turning down a soundtrack and then blaring it right up when someone jumps out in the dark, like you do in film.

You also don’t have physical actors experiencing pain; you have drawings of people. But if you build the world of your horror story and characters in just the right way inside your reader’s mind, then that’s something that stays with them long after they put down the comic. That’s how you go about getting the biggest scares.

BOOKGASM: What are your immediate plans for the title, in terms of a publishing schedule and wider distribution?

KAMATH: We publish each issue quarterly and have worldwide distribution through Diamond. We have no plans at the moment for any trade paperbacks, but issue 2 will be out in March 2009. —Rod Lott

Preview it online.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with THE MAX’s Jason Starr
• Q&A with SEVERANCE PACKAGE’s Duane Swierczynski
• Q&A with SLY MONGOOSE’s Tobias Buckell

Tobias Buckell is one of science fiction’s rising stars, with three BOOKGASM-approved novels already under his belt: CRYSTAL RAIN, RAGAMUFFIN and the new SLY MONGOOSE. Here, the Ohio-based novelist talks to us about building a fan base, his first venture into tie-in territory and why Borders isn’t carrying his hardcovers, frustratingly enough.

BOOKGASM: What’s your reaction to Borders not ordering one copy of SLY MONGOOSE? Do you think it’s because the big chains are using more shelf space for licensed science fiction with proven brands?

BUCKELL: I think they ordered a very small amount, but for all intents and purposes, I’ve gotten a lot of e-mail that runs along the line of, “I went out to buy your book but couldn’t. Where the hell is it?”

A lot of writers have order-to-net experiences, where chains use a computer to order the next book of an author. So someone who gets their first novel sold has, let’s pretend, 10,000 copies in a chain across the country. If it sells through at 50 percent, the chain next orders 5,000 — the logic being, that’s what it sold last. It sounds reasonable, but what happens is that authors usually hew to their sell-through percentages.

So instead of that 5,000 selling, what usually happens is that 2,500-3,000 sell, right? So what do the chains order for the third book? About 2,500-3,000. And it becomes a cycle of diminishing returns until something breaks: Either the author gets dropped by the publisher or the chain, or they manage to break out. But it’s why a first novel is easier to sell than a fourth or fifth.

An author can also break out of this as word of mouth spreads. If the computers are set up to reorder books that move out quickly, you can still break out of this “death spiral.” From what I can tell, though, Borders is not just ordering to net, but sort of pre-killing books.

So, for example, in Toledo at their Borders, where a number of my family and friends live and buy books, my first novel had three or four copies initially stocked on shelves, sold 40 to 50 copies — due in part to a signing and some placement in store — and was reordered when copies ran out. But in Borders across the U.S., it didn’t do as well as Borders had hoped. So when the second novel came out, they only ordered two. Not surprising.

But here is where it gets wonky for me: When those two came out, they were purchased right away by friends in Toledo — who gleefully had me sign them right away — and the store never restocked, despite those copies selling within a couple hours of going on sale.

Why was that? I didn’t know until I was told a “do not reorder” hold had been placed RAGAMUFFIN, my second book. So no matter how they sold, individual Borders didn’t trigger a reorder. An artificial cap on the number of hardcovers I could sell had been placed, stunningly enough. And now with SLY MONGOOSE, not a single copy appeared in Toledo, though I’m told a handful of Borders around the country have seen copies. A few booksellers at Borders who are fans of my books have actually purchased SLY MONGOOSE at other stores, and have told me they are not allowed to order them in, even if they would like to hand-sell them. Even more strangely, some Borders employees, confused about the “do not reorder” tag, have turned away my readers who have asked to special-order SLY MONGOOSE.

I should be frustrated. I know of other authors who’ve seen the same thing happen, but I’m more puzzled. I have to wonder, though, if this is part of the reason why Barnes & Noble made $15.4 million last quarter and Borders lost $9.2 million over the same quarter. When I talk to Barnes & Noble stores, each one has the ability to decide to order books that are selling in store as they see fit. They don’t seem managed from corporate in every little detail as their competition.

And yet, I’m reading in the latest LOCUS that Ursula K. LeGuin’s latest book was turned down by Barnes & Noble — the opposite of my experience. I know of writers who do great by Borders, and not Barnes & Noble. I think writers, including me, can get frustrated by all this, but there is no “right” to being on the shelves. We feel like if we can just sell a book, that the hardest work is over.

But the truth is, these companies don’t owe us anything. They’re businesses, and whether they’re making their decisions for right, or wrong, profitable or unprofitable reasons, they still have the right to do whatever. My job is to gain an audience and following for my works that gets them to have to not ignore me. And as such, one can feel like Sisyphus shoving a rock up a hill, but it’s a rock and a hill I chose, so I can’t upbraid myself for doing this.

And lastly, I feel rather compelled to point this out as it’s a fact that people who’ve e-mailed me to rail against Borders keep forgetting, Borders has been more than happy to carry my paperbacks, indicating that it’s a format question for them. So I’m not exactly out on the street begging for spare change, mind you. I’m just wishing that the hardcover of the latest book was getting more play.

BOOKGASM: Knowing that licensed science fiction is taking shelf space from orignal stuff, why write HALO: THE COLE PROTOCOL, a licensed tie-in book?

BUCKELL: Does it take away shelf space? I don’t have access to a lot of bookstores, but in the local mall store, the SF/F shelf stayed the same. I think they dug in non-fiction to expand the licensed SF division; it’s in a separate area. The license vs. original debate is a near-religious one, and I hate to get involved in arguments when no one has any data, studies, polls of readers and habits, and some hard data on how book shelves may or may not have been reconfigured. Until all that happens, it’s anecdotes and assertions.

I have gotten some rather sharp e-mails about writing a licensed novel, which I should have expected, but the long and short of this is that I enjoy the game — enough so that when I told my wife I’d been asked about the possibility of writing a HALO novel, she laughed and wondered when I’d start, as I played the game several times a week with friends on Xbox Live.

I’ve turned down tie-in work before, due the property not being interesting enough or something I loved. For me, this was something I thought I would have a lot of fun writing, and that was what got me on board. There really isn’t enough money in writing in general for me to do it for solely financial reasons; the non-fiction work and consulting I do pays way more for far less effort. All my fiction involves projects I’m passionate about, or think will be fun. It has to be, if I’m going to dedicate months on sleepless months to it.

BOOKGASM: Do you feel trapped by the “raised in the Caribbean” angle on your bio? I’m sure it made it a tad easier to get your foot in the door, but how does you feel about it now?

BUCKELL: It’s a fundamental part of my self and my bio that I keep because it’s important to me. I don’t know if it was easier to get in the door, actually. I still remember one rejection on my first novel that explained that it was confusing to have a novel with minority main characters written by someone who didn’t look obviously like a minority, but was mixed-race and kept asserting it. They said they didn’t know how to market it or explain it.

Now while my Caribbean background is strongly evident in my current books, when I deviate out and write something that is about one of my other passions, I imagine there might be more confusion as some people think they have me pigeonholed.

BOOKGASM: How in the heck do you get books out so quickly?

BUCKELL: It doesn’t feel quick on this end! I seem to be taking about a year per book, although each book takes a little bit less time as I figure out my habits.

BOOKGASM: Have you noticed your audience build with each successive novel? How much of a writer’s success is now due to a writer’s own marketing efforts?

BUCKELL: My audience is certainly increasing. I keep track of my website traffic and searches on my name, and they all trend up over time. Besides that quantifiable data, I also seem to be getting more fan mail, particularly in the last quarter or so, and I’m really starting to get more and more people I don’t recognize stopped me at conventions and so forth to talk to me about my books. I’ve heard that somewhere around books four or five, authors really start to notice an audience spike, so I’ll be curious to see what happens over the next year or two!

As to marketing efforts, those are so hard to quantify. I think marketing efforts that are natural for the author have a positive impact. I’m fairly social, so I love going to conventions and readings and book fairs — anywhere that’ll take me. Talking to readers, doing panels — all that I think has helped me. Keeping the blog since 1998 means that I still get readers who have followed me since they first read a short story of mine and started following my career.

But I think it’s important to be genuine. I like all that stuff, signings and readings. I run into some authors who think they have to do all that and who are miserable, and I think people sense the vibe they give off. If you’re happier staying inside writing, that’s what’s most important. Again, most of us are not making millions; why kill yourself doing something you hate? For me, getting to meet readers is just fun, so I try to get out there as much as possible. —Ryun Patterson and Rod Lott

Buy them at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with THE ALCHEMY OF STONE’s Ekaterina Sedia
• Q&A with THE MAX’s Jason Starr
• Q&A with SEVERANCE PACKAGE’s Duane Swierczynski

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• CRYSTAL RAIN by Tobias Buckell
• RAGAMUFFIN by Tobias Buckell
• SLY MONGOOSE by Tobias Buckell

Something you already know about Duane Swierczynski, author of SEVERANCE PACKAGE: His name is hard to spell. Something you didn’t: how to spell it. Ha ha! But I kid. Read on and learn about his recent panic attack, how actress Michelle Monaghan has changed his life and his role in a nationwide baked good conspiracy …

BOOKGASM: SEVERANCE PACKAGE’s talk of vanilla muffins and Tastykake brings up a most important question: Are you trying to make me fat?

SWIERCZYNSKI: You didn’t see the memo? At the last meeting of the Protocol of Elders of the American Book Association, editors and writers nationwide agreed to include gratuitous references to savory, calorie-laden snack foods whenever possible in an attempt to fatten us up so that our Alien Overlords (long may they rule us, long may they use your bones to pick the tough bits from their teeth) have something good to eat upon their arrival. You call yourself a book blogger? How did you miss this?

BOOKGASM: Whatevs. Your novels are known for their high concepts. Do you purposely look for that and have to work toward that when constructing a plot, or is that just how you roll?

SWIERCZYNSKI: I guess that’s just how I roll. When I’m cooking up a new book, I think about situations that would be interesting to explore for 200, 300 pages — situations that won’t bore me to death. My filing cabinet is full of partial novels that didn’t make the cut.

BOOKGASM: Your novels also read so fast. I’m curious, however, about your writing process. Do they flow right out of you like a stream of urine, or is their creation an exercise of hair-tugging that leaves your scalp exposed to the elements?

SWIERCZYNSKI: Actually, I don’t allow myself to urinate unless a finish a chapter. This is why … um, my chapters are very, very short.

It all goes back to my golden rule: If I’m bored with something, then any potential readers will certainly have taken the express train to snoozeville. So I try to keep things moving as much as possible.

BOOKGASM: And now you’re cranking out the comics for Marvel, too. How has that experience been and how do you find that writing for that medium differs?

SWIERCZYNSKI: It’s just fun to play in someone else’s sandbox. And you have to admit: Marvel has the coolest damn sandbox going. Working in comics gives me that “team” feeling that I used to get while editing a newspaper. I usually head up to the Marvel office in New York once a month to meet with my editors, bat around story ideas … and that pretty much satisfies my need for social interaction for the next 30 days. It’s the perfect setup.

BOOKGASM: What characters would you love to play around with, but haven’t yet had the chance?

SWIERCZYNSKI: I would kill to have a shot at a Marvel horror character, such as Werewolf by Night — the first comic I ever read. I think I’ll always be a frustrated horror novelist.

And okay, Spider-Man, too. Just so I could go back in time and tell my 10-year-old self, “Do you believe this shit! You’re writing a fucking Spider-Man story!”

BOOKGASM: You recently quit your day job to focus on writing full-time. How tough of a transition was that? And in all this talk of an economic downturn, do you ever ask yourself, “Duane, Duane, what the hell were you thinking?”

SWIERCZYNSKI: The day I quit my job, I went home and had the first serious panic attack of my adult life. I mean, a sitting-on-the-floor, breathing-slowly, trying-not-to-puke kind of panic attack. But I’m happy to report that Marvel’s been keeping me very busy, and I’ve gotten myself involved in other projects — none of which I can talk about right now — that have cushioned the blow.

I have no right to complain about work … like, ever. I’m living the dream I had when I was 15 years old: writing novels and comics for a living. If I ever complain, you have the right to put a bullet in my head.

BOOKGASM: Duly noted. As a fan of KISS KISS BANG BANG, it’s hard not to be a little jealous hearing that you’ve hung out with Michelle Monaghan, who wants to turn THE BLONDE into a movie. Tell me some flaw she has that’ll make me not so green with envy.

SWIERCZYNSKI: I wish I could tell you about Ms. Monaghan’s flaws, but ever since I talked to her on the phone, life has been bathed in this peaceful, soothing golden glow, and it’s hard to see the ugly in anything.

BOOKGASM: You don’t have to rub it in. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with STEAMPUNK’s Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
• Q&A with THE ALCHEMY OF STONE’s Ekaterina Sedia
• Q&A with THE MAX’s Jason Starr

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE BLONDE by Duane Swierczynski
• SEVERANCE PACKAGE by Duane Swierczynski
• THE WHEELMAN by Duane Swierczynski

Any discussion of modern crime fiction isn’t complete without the name Jason Starr, author of HARD FEELINGS, TOUGH LUCK and a Hard Case Crime trilogy co-written with Ken Bruen that includes BUST, SLIDE and the upcoming THE MAX. In the meantime, BOOKGASM talked to Starr about what’s ahead, the joys of collaboration and the future of the crime genre.

BOOKGASM: What are you working on now? What solo things?

STARR: Well, I just turned in a new thriller to St. Martin’s Press, which will be published in spring 2009. I think it’s my best book but, hey, I’m biased. I’ve also written a full-length graphic novel for DC/Vertigo which should be ready to roll in spring ’09 or so. This coming December, St. Martin’s is publishing a mass market edition of THE FOLLOWER, and in September, I have a new book coming out co-written with Ken Bruen in what we’re now calling “The BUST Trilogy.” This one’s called THE MAX.
 

BOOKGASM: What were some of the plays you wrote for theater a long time ago about? Any crime standouts? Where can we find these?
 
STARR: My plays weren’t crime, or even noir, which was really the problem in retrospect — I needed to kill off my characters. I didn’t really know how to tell a story yet back then, either, so the plays kind of rambled on. I was into “theater of the absurd,” so I tried to do my spin on Beckett, Pirandello, Ionesco, etc. I’ll probably keep them in the drawer, though I’d love to write a play with crime in it someday. It’s hard to describe the thrill of hearing actors reading your words on stage. There’s nothing else like it.
 
BOOKGASM: Have you ever acted yourself? And what are the prospects of your works coming to the big screen?
 
STARR: No, I’m an awful actor. I once auditioned for a play in a theater group I belonged to in Manhattan and I was horiffic. My line was, “Hey, dude, don’t cry,” and I totally botched it. Ken has acted in movies, though, and has some great stories to tell about it. Right now, I have four film projects in development: COLD CALLER, TWISTED CITY, BUST and THE FOLLOWER. They’re in various stages of development, but hopefully they’ll all get made. I wrote the screenplay for COLD CALLER.
 
BOOKGASM: How have you he enjoyed the partnership with Ken Bruen on the three novels together? How did you guys wind up collaborating?
 
STARR: It’s been a total blast and I think that’s apparent in the books. It was just a great break from solo writing to write with Ken. We laughed till it hurt and now we’re planning another book. Pretty much since the day we met we were talking about writing together, then thank God Hard Case gave us the chance to do it. It just took off from there.
 
BOOKGASM: Does it force you to change your writing style or work process any?
 
STARR: I don’t change it, but I alter it. So does Ken. If we wrote like we normally wrote, readers would be able to tell who wrote what. So I write like him and he writes like me. Still, we’re always amazed when people tell us that they assume that we alternate chapters, or that Ken writes the Irish stuff and I do the Americans. We’re always working on the same chapters at the same time and I wish I could take credit for all of the American stuff in the books.



BOOKGASM: Hard Case Crime will publish your “lost” novel FAKE I.D. next year. Why has it taken so long to reach these shores? Can you give us a teaser?
 
STARR: My “lost” novel, I love that. I always wanted to have a lost novel. When I switched agents back around 2000, 2001, my new agent wanted to go out with my new book at the time, HARD FEELINGS, so somehow FAKE I.D. got put on the back burner. I’ve always thought it was my best pure, straight-ahead noir/crime novel — a Gold Medal-style book, but set in the present day. If Hard Case Crime had existed when I wrote it, I would’ve immediately sent it to them, so I was thrilled when Charles Ardai told me he read the book and wanted to publish it. It’s about a bouncer/struggling actor who is offered a chance to join a horse-owning syndicate and, naturally, things don’t go as planned.



BOOKGASM: How do you feel about the viability of the crime genre in literature for the future? Who/what does you think will help keep it alive? Who/what does you think is holding it back?
 
STARR: I think as long as people want to read crime fiction, the genre will be healthy. There is more competion for eyeballs now, what with portable visual media, iPhones, etc., so the challenge for crime writers is to grab people’s attention and not let go. If you can’t grip a reader on the first page, they’ll watch a movie instead. I also think we’re about to see a surge in the popularity of graphic novels. —Matt Adder

Buy them at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with SCARFACE’s Joshua Jabcuga
• Q&A with STEAMPUNK’s Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
• Q&A with THE ALCHEMY OF STONE’s Ekaterina Sedia

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• BUST by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr
• SLIDE by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr

Hailing from Russia, Ekaterina Sedia is an urban fantasy writer who first appeared on this site as editor of the recent anthology PAPER CITIES. But she’s an author in her own right, of such acclaimed novels as last year’s THE SECRET HISTORY OF MOSCOW and the new THE ALCHEMY OF STONE. BOOKGASM talked to her about how her writing benefits from her upbringing and relationship with an indie publisher.

BOOKGASM: What draws you to write urban fantasy?

SEDIA: A combination of real concerns of real people and crazy and fantastical stuff. I like the juxtaposition of the real and the myth, the mixing of the two. Urban fantasy is almost forced to be relevant — that is, it takes modern-day people and makes them interact with their cultural baggage, be it mythological or paranormal. As a result, I think it is important for urban fantasy to stick to the specific rather than generic, since myth and culture are so place-dependent.

BOOKGASM: As technology gets more and more sophisticated, do you think that harms or improves the relevance of the fantasy genre?

SEDIA: I do not think there’s much of a relationship between the two. Human condition can be affected by technology in real life, but in fiction, this effect can be easily modeled with magic or even crazier technology. All in all, I suspect that relevance of fantasy lies in how well it addresses human questions, regardless of anything else.

Personally, I read fantasy not because I’m particularly irrational or trying to avoid the soul-crushing technology in my real life, but because it, like any good book, can offer me some insight into how people work — and this is the sort of relevance that does not change with technology. Then again, one needs to consider purposes of the reading: escapism, for example.

BOOKGASM: How does your upbringing in Moscow inform your fiction (if at all)?

SEDIA: Well, apart from the obvious — when I am writing about Moscow, for example — I think it is helpful to have exposure to multiple cultures. One becomes more inclined to notice similarities rather than emphasize otherness and exoticise it; also I think it encourages portrayal of individuals rather than broad-stroke cultural types.

At the same time, I think there is also a degree of political awareness and concerns that is somewhat different from most American writers — and as such, I might start out with different defaults. I’m not too keen on books that focus on restoring the status quo, for example.

BOOKGASM: What advantages do you find to having your novels housed at a smaller publisher rather than one of the big few?

SEDIA: I really like working with Prime Books because they have been extermely responsive to my concerns and very hands-on with all aspects of book making and marketing. I was encouraged to give input on all stages — interior layout, cover design, what text should go on the cover, etc. etc. It is also very nice that both the publisher/editor, Sean Wallace, and the designer, Stephen Segal, are just an AIM ping away, and are very helpful and patient. And Stephen is just such an amazing designer — I love both of the book covers he has done.

BOOKGASM: What’s the most egregious misspelling of your name you’ve come across thus far?

SEDIA: Actually, there haven’t been anything particularly bad. Either it doesn’t show on ego-Googling, or people just copy and paste my name rather than attempt typing it. But Erina Seda might’ve been it. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with SCARFACE’s Joshua Jabcuga
• Q&A with SKINTASTIC VIDEO GUIDE’s Mr. Skin
• Q&A with STEAMPUNK’s Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• PAPER CITIES: AN ANTHOLOGY OF URBAN FANTASY edited by Ekaterina Sedia

Once you’ve polished off THE NEW WEIRD, editors Ann and Jeff VanderMeer have another genre-defining anthology for you in STEAMPUNK. With such talents as Michael Chabon, Joe R. Lansdale and Michael Moorcock, the collection aims to present a snapshot of a speculative-fiction movement that marries the Victorian era with modern technology.

The merry, married VanderMeers talked to BOOKGASM about what steampunk – and STEAMPUNK, the book – is and is not (one thing it is: nicely discounted and autographed, if you preorder by May 15), and their very busy future.

BOOKGASM: While “steampunk” certainly is an easier genre to describe than “the new weird,” it seems like there are so many subgenres and splinters from it that it’s not as simple as a sentence would allow. But assuming you were limited to one sentence …

JEFF VANDERMEER: Yeah, that is tough because there have been many different “waves” of steampunk, and it seems to me now to be more of a subculture – take a look at things like the Steampunk Workshop, Brass Goggles, SteamPunk Magazine and a ton more – than an actual literary movement. I’d say steampunk has a more idealistic view of science, too.

ANN VANDERMEER: On the other hand, you could just call it fun fiction with airships and clockwork pseudo-Victorian devices in it.

BOOKGASM: Steampunk has been around for a while now, so what made the time ripe for an anthology? Is this the first anthology of its kind?

ANN VANDERMEER: Given the popularity of the steampunk culture, it’s the perfect time for an anthology like this. The fiction is just one aspect of the culture, and one some “steampunks” are only discovering now.

JEFF VANDERMEER: It is the first anthology collecting the classic stories of the steampunk genre, I believe. Honestly, most of the anthology could’ve been put together a few years ago, but what would’ve always been an interesting project from a creative standpoint also now has a commercial viability to publishers.

BOOKGASM: If its roots were found in the likes of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, how much of the steampunk being produced today really wears those influences on its sleeve?

JEFF VANDERMEER: Most of it! Except for something subversive like Joe R. Lansdale’s story in our anthology, which takes all of that and turns it on its ear and makes it dangerous. I don’t think there’s any harm in the somewhat escapist nature of steampunk today, though.

ANN VANDERMEER: Some wonderful stories are being written using what’s basically archaic science or abandoned paths of technology from our past. There’s a kind of playfulness and fun to the stuff that’s addictive. But a story like Paul Di Filippo’s “Victoria,” with its rampant sexual humor, goes well beyond anything Wells or Verne would have thought acceptable for civilized society.

BOOKGASM: Some members of the public may be unfamiliar with the term “steampunk,” but no doubt have been exposed to it in one form or another without knowing it. Are there any mainstream vehicles – whether in books, movies or TV – that could be classified as such?

JEFF VANDERMEER: We have a series of essays on that very subject, using experts like Bill Baker, Jess Nevins and Rick Klaw.

ANN VANDERMEER: You see a huge steampunk influence in comics – in particular, Alan Moore’s LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, which includes characters like Captain Nemo. A lot of Miyazaki’s anime work, like CASTLE IN THE SKY, have a steampunk influence. Even THE MUMMY movies with Brendan Frasier have a kind of steampunk sensibility, in a commercial way. It’s also expanded to fashion and an entire DIY culture, so …

BOOKGASM: For those who might be weary of dipping their toe into the steampunk waters, what pieces from this collection do you recommend as starting points? And what about any works not included in your book?

ANN VANDERMEER: Depends on how you like your steampunk, in terms of our anthology: Do you want it gentle or do you want to dropped right in? If gentle, then Molly Brown’s “The Selene Gardening Society,” with its comedy of manners, is perfect. But if you want a completely whacked-out approach, Jay Lake’s “The God-Clown Is Near” would be more your style.

JEFF VANDERMEER: Novels we couldn’t include, of course, so I’d recommend K.W. Jeter’s INFERNAL DEVICES, Tim Powers’ THE ANUBIS GATES and Gibson/Sterling’s THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE.

BOOKGASM: Neal Stephenson is among the contributors. How in the hell were you able to include him and still keep your page count below four digits?

ANN VANDERMEER: Amazingly enough, he had a kind of proto-steampunk story that’s under 6,000 words in an anthology called FULL SPECTRUM awhile back. It’s pretty fascinating because it reads like the missing link between steampunk and cyberpunk.

BOOKGASM: With this, THE NEW WEIRD and the upcoming LEVIATHAN, the two of you are keeping busy with anthologies. Is this hat trick on purpose or just luck in timing? Any further collections or other works on the horizon?

JEFF VANDERMEER: I’ve got a new Ambergris novel, a PREDATOR tie-in novel and a story collection out in the next year.

ANN VANDERMEER: I’m editing Weird Tales and co-editing our anthologies, which include FAST SHIPS/BLACK SAILS (pirates), LAST DRINK BIRD HEAD and THE LEONARDO VARIATIONS. When we’re ever going to get to sleep again, I don’t know.

BOOKGASM: Dispel the myth that an anthologist doesn’t do any actual work. What challenges are inherent in putting together books like these?

JEFF VANDERMEER: NEW WEIRD is a good example of what careful editing can accomplish. We wanted to produce an anthology that could be read by both general readers and those who wanted to study NW in universities. We also wanted to provide all of the context about the NW and include some nonfiction disagreeing with our own definition of the term, so that the book would be a discussion of the term and its validity or non-validity. We accomplished all of those things by having four sections after the introduction: “Stimuli” (stories that roughly correspond to the types of influences that New Weird writers, we believe, would’ve been exposed to), “Evidence” (actual NW stories), “Symposium” (discussion of NW from various perspectives) and “Laboratory” (where non-NW writers “create” their idea of a NW story). This kind of structure takes a lot of thought.

ANN VANDERMEER: But selecting the stories also takes a lot of thought. We always spend many dozens and dozens of hours making sure we have the right mix of stories and that they’re in the right order, whether it’s New Weird or steampunk. You don’t want three really long stories back-to-back or three really depressing stories. At the same time, you can’t have a laugh-out-loud story right next to something that’s deadly serious – the reader who does read the antho right through will have a problem with the severe shift in tone. So we do a lot of rearranging and testing.

JEFF VANDERMEER: Not to mention then copy editing, research, correspondence, etc. It’s a weird mix of creative and administrative work.

ANN VANDERMEER: Although you can make money on anthologies, we only do anthologies we think have some creative angle that appeals to our sense of adventure or our sense of art. That’s the only way it’s worthwhile in such an uncertain marketplace, and it’s also, we believe, the only way to do a truly outstanding anthology. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with SCARFACE’s Joshua Jabcuga
• Q&A with SKINTASTIC VIDEO GUIDE’s Mr. Skin
• Q&A with THE WHEEL OF DARKNESS’ Douglas Preston

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THESE AUTHORS:
• THE NEW WEIRD edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

That Netflix queue pretty flaccid? In that case, we recommend consulting MR. SKIN’S SKINTASTIC VIDEO GUIDE: THE 501 GREATEST MOVIES FOR SEX AND NUDITY ON DVD. And there’s plenty more where that came from, as Mr. Skin – aka Jim McBride – dishes in this interview.

BOOKGASM: What kind of process was it with this book? Was this a case of having to narrow a list down to 501, or building up?

MR. SKIN: We have about 20,000 movies at mrskin.com. I’ve been running this website since 1999 and I always thought, you know, Roger Ebert has a video guide and Leonard Maltin has a video guide – I have to put out what I think is the best movies for sex and nudity on DVD. It took a while to narrow it down to, say, 1,000, then we had to go through all 1,000 movies, take a look at all the actresses who were naked – I don’t know if you noticed, but we added up the breasts, butts and everything – and that was a ton of work.

Once all that work was done, I had to narrow that list of 1,000 down to a manageable 501, and that’s how we came up with it. I could’ve made it 1,000, but I thought that was too many. The only real thing that I said had to be was the movies had to be available on DVD. I didn’t want people to excited about a movie I was talking about, and the only way they could get it was to pay $200 on eBay for a videotape. All these movies are movies you can get at Blockbuster, Netflix or Amazon, and play on a Region 1 DVD player.

BOOKGASM: Has anything come out on DVD since you finished that you wish would have been included?

MR. SKIN: Well, it’s more that once it goes to press, there’s nothing you can do. Like the movie MALICIOUS, where Molly Ringwald is naked, came out on DVD. They have a CALIGULA four-disc set coming out on DVD. KNOCKED UP is now on DVD. I got CALIGULA in because an original version was out on DVD. I wasn’t able to get the special edition into the book, but you know what? You gotta cut it off at some point, and in future editions, those will all be in.

BOOKGASM: I noticed whereas the SKINCYCLOPEDIA came out from St. Martin’s, this one is done under your own company, SK Books. Why the change?

MR. SKIN: Well, I realized as a businessman, you can make more money publishing the books yourself than going through a publisher, especially someone like me that has the platform to go on and promote the book on Howard Stern and the 150 to 200 other radio shows across the country, not to mention to our six-and-a-half million visitors a month to mrskin.com.

All I really needed was a distributor to get the book into Borders and all those stores, and when I found a company – IPG out of Chicago – to represent me, we paid for everything. We paid for the designers, the printing, the whole thing – and instead of getting about 7 percent of each book sold, we get about 75 percent of each book sold.

BOOKGASM: I assume you have ideas for future books, then.

MR. SKIN: Oh, yeah. We have a book coming out next year on the greatest lesbian scenes of all time. I’ll be doing the best nude scenes in horror movies after that. We’ll be the doing the best teen sex comedies. Lots of fun books planned for the future.

BOOKGASM: So this could go on forever. You’re not worried about running out of material.

MR. SKIN: No, no, no, no. And even in a few years, I’m gonna update the SKINCYCLOPEDIA and redo the format. I like this format of the video guide, because I realized for my audience, quite frankly, the SKINCYCLOPEDIA – you know, that’s a lot of reading. I learned from that and decided with this book to make sure it was more statistics, more visual, less length of reviews and bios, and I think the formula is better. It’s more the Maxim style than the Vanity Fair style.

BOOKGASM: When I was in college, the big thing was THE BARE FACTS VIDEO GUIDE. You kind of took that guy’s concept and really ran with it.

MR. SKIN: I was a huge fan of THE BARE FACTS VIDEO GUIDE. I had all the issues. I’d read that book like people read novels. I respect the book. His book hasn’t been updated since, I think, 2000; mine is an Internet experience and a whole other thing. As great as that book was for its time – you know, the Internet and radio and all the other things changed, and I’m lucky to have had the combination of the media all wrapped into one for celebrity nudity.

His was a book, but it wasn’t personality-driven. It would be difficult to compete with me because I’m already an expert on this on all these radio shows across the country. It’s like a double-edged sword: You can’t be an expert on this stuff unless you have a great website and books to be called an expert, and at the same time, and it’s hard to go on radio shows and say you’re an expert if you don’t have something to back it up. I’m not saying someone couldn’t do what we do, but it would be kind of difficult at this stage.

BOOKGASM: Have you heard of any bad blood there?

MR. SKIN: I’ve heard through the grapevine through the early, early days that he bad-rapped us a little bit, but I didn’t really care. I’ve always been a fan, so it didn’t really bother me. And he literally hasn’t done a new edition since 2000. Periodically, I check his website to see what’s going on. He inspired me and I always have that respect for THE BARE FACTS VIDEO GUIDE, for what I do for a living. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with SCARFACE’s Joshua Jabcuga
• Q&A with SKIN’s Ted Dekker
• Q&A with THE WHEEL OF DARKNESS’ Douglas Preston

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• MR. SKIN’S SKINCYCLOPEDIA: THE A-TO-Z GUIDE FOR FINDING YOUR FAVORITE ACTRESSES NAKED by Mr. Skin
• MR. SKIN’S SKINTASTIC VIDEO GUIDE: THE 501 GREATEST MOVIES FOR SEX AND NUDITY ON DVD by Mr. Skin

Say hello to Joshua Jabcuga, the writer behind IDW Publishing’s four-issue SCARFACE: DEVIL IN DISGUISE miniseries, now available in trade paperback. Here, Jabcuga talks with BOOKGASM about adapting such an iconic character for the comics.

BOOKGASM: So how you begin tackle such a beloved property? Were you hesitant to even try?

JABCUGA: Hesitant? No. Nervous? Definitely. SCARFACE is a huge property, and I don’t have the luxury that, say, a film may have. If someone goes to see a movie, they pay their 10 bucks and typically sit through the entire film before forming an opinion.

With a comic book miniseries, someone might read the first or second issues and decide not to see the story the whole way through. That’d be like watching the first hour of a film and grading the entire thing on that alone. I always intended this series to be read in its entirety, back to back, all four issues, and I’d like readers to give me the benefit of the doubt. Everything comes together full-circle.

I remember walking into a comic book shop after IDW announced the prequel, and the owner asked me who my influences were. I think he was shocked when I didn’t rattle off the standard answer of “Kirby, Moore, Frank Miller.” I love comics just as much as the next writer in the medium, but my influences, as far as writing, are a bit left-field, and they’re not just limited to writers, per se.

My work takes a lot of inspiration from various places. I’m just as likely to name Tony Iommi or Michael Mann or Charles Beaumont as I am to name a Will Eisner or a Garth Ennis or a Marv Wolfman.

BOOKGASM: Any other uncharacteristic influences come into play?

JABCUGA: When I set out to work on this project – besides the research I did on Cuba, Castro, Che – I made myself a few mix CDs: unofficial soundtracks for this imaginary movie that was playing out in my head, that I wanted to convey onto the page. I listened a lot to this band called The Twilight Singers, because they have this gritty, gutter-glam mentality that I wanted to capture. A little bit of Rage Against the Machine, Sabbath, Pink Floyd’s ANIMALS, The Clahs, Mark Langean, but mainly The Twilight Singers.

It’s funny, but in a lot of ways, I think I set out to make a rock album here, in the form of a comic book. In hindsight, I look at an album like Pearl Jam’S VS., and it’s like, “Oh, my God, that album could be the perfect companion to SCARFACE: DEVIL IN DISGUISE.” From start to finish, you’ve got angry, volatile songs that just want to thrash their way through the enemy lines, like an out-of-control wrecking ball. That was young Tony Montana. He had a hunger for power, but politics told him to get to the back of the line and stand straight.

As you said, SCARFACE is a beloved property. This character is iconic, like
Elvis. Take away the drugs and violence, though, and you have a man with some attributes that I think we could all stand to have more of: a strong will to overcome the odds, an unwillingness to conform, and the balls to just go after what you want in this world. It’s a bit rock ‘n’ roll.

BOOKGASM: What does DEVIL IN DISGUISE have to offer the hardcore SCARFACE fan? And what about those who may have never seen the movie?

JABCUGA: The hardcore SCARFACE fan will get a glimpse into a story that even Hollywood is afraid to tell. Right now, this is as close to a true SCARFACE follow-up that fans will ever get, because you know if Hollywood ever did produce another SCARFACE movie, I’m sure they’d find a way to screw it up somehow.

For those who have never seen the movie, hopefully they’ll see a tale that is equal parts ghetto opera and heavy-metal Western. Plus, IDW paired me up with Alberto Dose, who has a style that really seems tailor-made for this type of story. I’m honored to be working with him.

Tony Montana, the main character and my antihero, is a loathsome animal anyway you slice it. Glorified or not, people need to see this. While I didn’t want to glorify the seedier elements of society, there’s shit that goes down in the real world that would make even the most violent action film or comic book or rap album tame in comparison.

When I began to tackle this project, I wanted to put a mirror to the underbelly of the beast. Keep in mind that my portrayal will depict the beauty of this beast, not just the warts. The main message of the Brian DePalma/Oliver Stone film was quite simply, “The world is yours.” For Tony Montana, that world came with a lethal price tag. My job was to show Tony working his way up from the gutter to be able to afford to pay that price.

Maybe if Tony Montana was born and raised in the U.S., or during different times, he would have turned into a self-made wealthy businessman, or a doctor, or maybe not. Maybe his evil ways were in his blood, and the climate of the culture worked as an enabler. I wanted to be a bit more ambiguous. How much of the world is ours?

BOOKGASM: Was it always the intention to make this a miniseries? Isn’t there potential to merit it continuing further?

b>JABCUGA: IDW Publishing and Universal Studios call the shots. IDW did publish a miniseries sequel to the movie, but it accentuated the cartoonish violence of the film, and the ’80s style and decadence, which was certainly one angle to take. People seemed to dig it, but since that route had already been taken, I chose to play the prequel straight as a razor, which I preferred anyway. I wanted the book to feel a bit like a Peckinpah film. I also mentioned the film CITY OF GOD.

I could easily think of storylines to fill another hundred issues, without even blinking, but that would probably rest on the shoulders of the fans. If the demand was there, I don’t think IDW would have a problem doing more SCARFACE storylines. They have such a diversified line-up of projects though, that sometimes it’s best not to get too comfortable in one spot for too long.

Part of that company’s appeal to me is that they always seem to be pushing the envelope, with their Clive Barker projects, or anything Ash Wood gets his hands on, while still respecting comics’ heritage, by releasing spectacular collections of old school classics like DICK TRACY, which still hold up to this day. But I will admit, I’d kill to see a SCARFACE vs. PUNISHER one-shot.

BOOKGASM: What kind of movie do you think makes for a good adaptation to comics? And what doesn’t?

JABCUGA: I don’t think you can count anything out. If they can make a fun movie like PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, which was based on an amusement park ride, I think they can make a decent comic out of any movie. The medium of comics, though, is like a blood brother to film. One of the first comic books I ever read was a Marvel Comics’ adaptation of RETURN OF THE JEDI. That was a play-it-by-the-numbers adaptation.

Over the last five years or so, Hollywood has finally seen the value of comics as a legitimate artform. More and more, you’re seeing film or television properties being transported into comics, and not just strict adaptations. Take my quote-unquote SCARFACE adaptation. I’m dealing with elements that were never explored in the film. In capable hands, these comic book adaptations can only enhance the experience for the fans of the film.

For example, I get to show how Scarface got his infamous scar. Unlike a character such as Spider-Man, there is so much of the Scarface character that hasn’t been done to death. People are taking these adaptations, prequels, sequels, what have you, as legitimate pieces of their favorite character’s mythology, and it’s hard not to when the original creators are so hands-on or give the comics adaptations their full blessings. IDW has been really successful in this area.

The movies that don’t translate into good comics are probably just those that somehow manage to ruin the fans’ love for the original. On the flipside, I can’t imagine a comic book ruining a movie for me. Although I have seen numerous movies that have been lost in translation and have managed to do their best to ruin a comic book for me, this is more often than not a case of Hollywood not sticking close to the source material.

Ninety-nine percent of the comics out there could be lifted right onto the screen with minimal changes, but you know that’s not always the case. I bet somewhere at this very moment, Alan Moore is lobbing hand-grenades into a landfill of DVDs of LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN and FROM HELL. Golden hand-grenades, but pissed off, nonetheless.

BOOKGASM: What’s on tap for you next?

JABCUGA: I just want to keep pushing myself as a writer. It’s like martial arts or training at the gym: Every time I sit down to write something, I hope to walk away better than when I first sat down.

With regard to upcoming projects, I have something that is just waiting on a greenlight from the powers that be, which I can’t mention just yet. It looks like a really fun story, though, and it’ll give me a chance to lighten up a little and show a different side to my writing.

I just want to keep getting my ideas out there. I’m lost when I’m not writing. I love the challenge of writing for comic books, and the unlimited possibilities that the medium offers. I’d like to see some of my short fiction get out into the world, too.

Ultimately, I’d like to be a cross between Cameron Crowe and Rod Serling. I want to look back in 40 years and say I did something cool. A little bit rock ‘n’ roll, a little bit country. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• SCARFACE: DEVIL IN DISGUISE by Joshua Jabcuga and Alberto Dose

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with 9TAIL FOX’s Jon Courtenay Grimwood
• Q&A with SKIN’s Ted Dekker
• Q&A with THE WHEEL OF DARKNESS’ Douglas Preston

Honestly, Douglas Preston could not have picked a nicer day to come to Oklahoma City. In any other year, a mid-September morning here would be unbearably thick by breakfast, but blessed weather instead made it a cool, crisp, unnatural 66 degrees – granting us a perfect excuse to take a short walk from his hotel room to the Borders across the street for a friendly interview. On the way over, he admitted seeing his work on bookstore shelves doesn’t do anything for him anymore; though he’s still grateful, it’s become “old hat.”

Yes, BOOKGASM interviewed Preston before – just last summer, in fact – but with a new book in THE WHEEL OF DARKNESS comes a whole new set of questions, including ones on future projects. Get settled, folks – this one’s lengthy.

BOOKGASM: With the new book, personally where it does it fit in for you, in terms of how you feel about it? Are you satisfied with the way it turned out?

PRESTON: Yeah, I’m very satisfied with it. The idea, Lincoln and I had been knocking around for some time. The way the book opens, Special Agent Pendergast goes off to a monastery in Tibet, and he learns from the monks that a very valuable object they’ve been keeping has been stolen. But the monks don’t even know what it is, because it was impressed to them a thousand years ago for safekeeping.

So Pendergast traces this thing across Europe, and ends up on the maiden voyage of a giant cruise ship: the Britannia, actually the world’s largest and most luxuriant ocean liner.

But Lincoln and I have always been interested in Tibet and mysticism and meditative practices. I mean, we’re not Buddhists, but we’ve always been fascinated by that. And I’ve spent a lot of time with Tibetians in Santa Fe – there’s a Tibetian community there – and I spent a week with the Dalai Lama once. That was a very extraordinary experience. I mean, it’s really beyond words what kind of experience that was. I always wanted to work it into a book in some way.

BOOKGASM: After doing three in a row comprising an unofficial trilogy, was it nice to getting back to doing one that stands on its own?

PRESTON: Yeah, it was very nice. Actually, it was a little intimidating. Writing the trilogy was such an intense experience. That was one story that went over three books. And we also felt that it was the most successful thing we’ve ever written: a big, huge, complex story. And we thought, “How are going to beat this one? How are going to do something beyond what we’ve just done?” So we really wanted to write a book that would have a big impact, and I think we’ve achieved it.

Actually, it’s kind of a funny story. Originally, this novel was set in a fictitious town called Wellesport. I grew up in Wellesley, Mass., and Linc grew up in Westport, Conn., and we decided to merge the two towns. I don’t know, we were like three or four months into writing this book and Lincoln turned to me and said, “Doug, I hate to tell you this, but this is boring. I mean, this is a boring setting. What were we thinking? You know, the towns we grew up in were boring suburban towns.” And I said, “Yeah, Linc, you’re right.”

I hated to admit it. Our original conception was murder and mayhem in a boring suburban town, but unfortunately, it turned to be a really boring town, and all the characters were sort of boring. So we decided to throw all that out and start all over again, which is something we don’t normally do. Usually, we’re very clear about where we’re going.

And we were really in a state – our deadline was six months away, we had all these chapters that we were gonna have to throw out, and we were looking for a new setting. And we were going over every possible setting and then one day, Linc was driving back from Long Island and he was taking the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. And as he was driving along, a shadow fell across his car. And he looked over and it was the Queen Mary II heading out to sea. He looked and he said, “That’s it. That’s the setting.” He called me up and I said, “Linc, it’s brilliant.”

And then we had a huge argument: either the real Queen Mary II or should we make up our own cruise ship. We finally decided to make up our own cruise ship, because we didn’t want to get sued.

But we had a lot of fun writing that book. We had a lot of fun researching the setting. That was really interesting.

BOOKGASM: Did you actually go on a cruise?

PRESTON: Well, Lincoln did. I’m not a cruise person myself, but I’m a seafaring person. I know a lot about boats and a lot about the sea and I have my own fishing boat. I knew a lot about the kind of electronics a boat has, the navigation, the chart plotters and all that stuff, the lingo.

BOOKGASM: Even though it’s a standalone and doesn’t end with a cliffhanger, it has sort of a door that can be opened for the future. Was it your intent to plant this so, “next book we will continue this” or “we’ll pick this up in the future sometime” or “we won’t touch it again”? It really could just stand as at is.

PRESTON: It could. And you’re very clever to see it that way. We did leave it open in a way that we might do something with it and we might not, and we’re not saying. Lincoln and I have learned that we better not talk about anything in the future, because we’ve gotten ourselves into trouble. Like last year, we told everyone, “Oh, we’re writing this novel set in Wellesport,” and it comes out, and all these people are e-mailing us, saying, “Where’s Wellesport? It didn’t appear in the book.” And it’s never going to appear! So we’re very cagey about future plans.

BOOKGASM: But I’ve noticed is the first jacket in a while where it doesn’t say, “They are at work on their next novel, titled…”

PRESTON: Well, we are at work on our next novel, and it’s titled THE REVENANT. That’s an old, archaic word referring to a particular type of spectre or ghost – a phantom. And I’ll say about it is it’s set in New York City and it harkens back to the world of THE CABINET OF CURIOSITIES. We’ve long wanted to get back to that.

BOOKGASM: Oh, cool. That is still my favorite one.

PRESTON: Is it? Yeah, I’d say it’s one of our best. It really worked out. It’s one of our favorites, too. I hate to pick favorites, but I’d have to say that’s definitely up there. And I know it’s Lincoln’s favorite.

The book deals with obeah. It’s a type of religion that came to the United States from West Africa, brought to the new world by slaves, and it’s still practiced in very obscure, very small communities. Very interesting religion.

BOOKGASM: Do you have non-favorites? Are there ones where you think, “ugh”?

PRESTON: Yeah, there is one that I really dislike, but I normally don’t tell people which one it is. But I’ll tell you anyway: RELIQUARY.

BOOKGASM: Why is that? The pressure to follow up?

PRESTON: We hadn’t intended on writing a sequel to RELIC, and our publisher really wanted a sequel, and we did see a nice way to write a sequel where it didn’t look like it was just because our publisher told us to. But I think writing a sequel is very difficult. And I also feel very strongly that a sequel has to be as good as the original. I mean, it’s such a truism – in movies and in books – that sequels just stink. And Lincoln and I never want to write a book that stinks. We have a mortal fear of it – it’s almost like a phobia, going downhill as so many writers do. And I felt with RELIQUARY, we maybe went downhill a bit.

BOOKGASM: But yet, by returning to the same characters as you do, you’re kind of writing sequels all the time.

PRESTON: Yeah, yeah. But they aren’t really sequels; they’re really standalone books. And they’re also books we feel passionate about. It may seem like BRIMSTONE, DANCE OF DEATH and THE BOOK OF THE DEAD were sequels, but in fact, we plotted all three of those books together. And we actually intended to write one book, and then as we got into it, we realized, “Wow, we’ve really bit off far more than we can chew here,” so we broke it up into three books.

BOOKGASM: Which probably made your publisher happy anyway.

PRESTON: It did. They liked that. Although sometimes our fans would say, “Oh, you’re just trying to sell more books by leaving us hanging,” but we didn’t intend that at all. We just had more than we could say in one book.

BOOKGASM: Didn’t the numbers go up as far as debuting on the best-seller list? Didn’t they rise with each one?

PRESTON: They did. Each one rose dramatically. BRIMSTONE was No. 11. DANCE OF DEATH … I’ve forgotten what that was, but THE BOOK OF THE DEAD was No. 4, and this one is debuting at No. 2.

BOOKGASM: Congratulations.

PRESTON: Oh, well, thank you. No. 2 on the Times list, but No. 1 on Publishers Weekly.

BOOKGASM: And how much does that matter to you?

PRESTON: Well, I’d like to say it doesn’t matter at all and I could care less, but no, it matters. It’s a measure of how many people you’re reaching. The money doesn’t matter to me, but the testament that it is – what it means for the size of our audience – matters. Every writer wants to be read by somebody other than his mother, so No. 2 is pretty good.

BOOKGASM: What about reviews? Do you pay much attention to them?

PRESTON: Generally, we do. Curiously enough, we’ve been very fortunate that we’ve almost always had very good reviews. Once in a while we get a bad review, and we have a section on our website called “Rogue’s Gallery,” where we gather all of them, and we really have a hard time finding fresh reviews for that. I wish I could say there were lots of them, but they’re not.

BOOKGASM: Well, when they do hit, do they sting?

PRESTON: They don’t generally sting because they’re off-base. However, once in a while, a reviewer will say something negative and it will sting and I’ll think, “You’ll know: point taken. It’s a good point.” It stings if I feel there’s some truth in it. But if I feel it’s just some cranky reviewer or some critic – there are certain people who just like being nasty – then I think, “That’s cool.” They’re doing their thing; it doesn’t bother me.

BOOKGASM: You guys throw a lot of different genres in your book – there’s the horror element, the mystery, the adventure, the thriller. Do you have a preferred spot for them? Do you go into thinking, “This book is a …”?

PRESTON: It’s funny, I don’t ever think what genre a book is. In a sense, I don’t like the idea that a book has to be in a genre. And I think the categorization of genres is more a marketing thing than a reality. I mean, what is Shakespeare? Is he a thriller writer? In his plays, he has murder, he has torture, he has ghosts, he has obscenities – so where does he fall? Is he a thriller writer, a horror writer? And I’m not comparing us to Shakespeare, but I just think we live in an age where everyone wants to put a label on something, and Linc and I just don’t like to pay attention to that.

BOOKGASM: So you just want to have fun and whatever it is, it is.

PRESTON: Exactly. We just want to write the book and have fun. Some booksellers will put it in thrillers, some in horror, some put it in literature and some in science fiction! You know, I don’t know what to make of that.

BOOKGASM: Do you find that your fan base comes from one area or another?

PRESTON: It seems to come from two areas. One are the younger readers who are very technologically sophisticated and many of them come from science fiction and horror – those are two genres they really like. And then the other section of our readers are older people – generally retired or in their middle age – who just really love mystery books, thrillers. And those readers don’t come from a highly sophisticated technological background – they just like a good story. So we seem to get two different types of readers. We just write the books and hope we satisfy them. If you think too much about who you’re going to satisfy or who you’re writing for, you start choking up.

BOOKGASM: When I interviewed you last year, we talked about the writing process that you guys go through, but what I didn’t ask was what strengths do you think you bring to the partnership?

PRESTON: I think I’m very good with characters, creating characters. I think that I’m good with settings as well, and I’m also really good with finding the overall MacGuffin of the plot and where it’s headed. And the twist – there’s always a twist in our books toward the end, and I’m really big on twists. I really hate it when readers guess where we’re going. I love to surprise them.

It’s hard to say, because it’s very hard to separate what Lincoln does from what I do. But, our minds work in very similar, devious, twisted ways.

BOOKGASM: Do you guys work just one book ahead, or do you talk about ideas several books ahead?

PRESTON: We talk about many, many books ahead. In fact, we have ideas we’ve been mulling over for 10 or 15 years sometimes. I think THE CABINET OF CURIOSITIES was something we had the idea for right at the beginning of our partnership, and it took us, what? Six books before we figured that one out.

BOOKGASM: Do you intend to continue the partnership indefinitely?

PRESTON: We do, we do, yeah. We really enjoy it. It’s a great thing. We also intend to continue writing solo novels. It’s different when you write a book with a writing partner – it’s a lot more fun, less stressful, easier. Writing is generally a very lonely business. With a writing partner, it’s not so lonely. And with Lincoln – when I write a chapter, Lincoln can call me up and say, “Doug, this really stinks.” And while it stings and I don’t like it … believe me, in the end, it saves so much trouble. In the end, when I’m writing solo novels, I could write five or six chapters that all stink before I realize I’m going in the wrong direction and have to throw it all out. And it’s great to have someone who can say, “Hey, Doug, this is not working. You’ve gotta do something else.”

BOOKGASM: Do you critique each other’s solo novels during the process or after the fact?

PRESTON: During, after and even before! Right now, Lincoln is working on his next solo novel, just dreaming up what it’s going to be about. And I’ve been throwing a lot of ideas at him. He sends me chapter outlines and I say, “Hey, Linc, what about this? What about that?”

My last book, TYRANNOSAUR CANYON by Douglas Preston – the opening chapter, which I’m very proud of, that was Linc’s idea. I opened the book with the second chapter. And Linc read the whole manuscript and he said, “You know, Doug, why don’t you open the book 30 years before, on the moon?” And I said, “Wow! What an idea!” And it was a brilliant idea. And then with his book DEEP STORM – I don’t want to give away the ending, but what they find out at the end, what they discover, is partially my idea.

We’ve long ago lost the prickly idea that we are artistes. I mean, we do care a lot about what we’re doing, but we also recognize that we can each add something.

BOOKGASM: Going back to things in the future, do you ever intend to step away from your established cast of characters and maybe start another?

PRESTON: Yes, we have thought of that, and we’d like to do that, to create a completely fresh character. The trouble is, almost all of our books take place in a single world, so it’s very hard to keep our old characters away. They always want to walk on. As we’re writing, these characters show up uninvited and unwanted, and they say, “Here I am!” and we have to put them in the book somehow.

BOOKGASM: That brings up another point: In this book, you pick up some threads that were planted a long ago. Is it hard to keep track where you’ve left off with people – what you have introduced and what you haven’t?

PRESTON: It’s very hard to keep track of. And once in a while, a very clever reader will point out an inconsistency. Luckily these inconsistencies are extremely minor, but Lincoln and I do have to keep track. Sometimes it means going back and reading our earlier books, because we wrote RELIC 15 years ago, and I really can’t remember what’s in that book. I have to read it again – Lincoln just re-read it, and now it’s my turn to re-read it – so that we can remember what we said.

BOOKGASM: How often do you have to do that?

PRESTON: As little as possible. The thing is, you read it and think, “Ah, why did I do that?” or “What a terrible sentence! How could I have written that sentence?” So it’s always a painful process to read an old book.

BOOKGASM: Since we talked last year, has there been any new movement on the movie front?

PRESTON: Yes, as a matter of fact, there has. Long ago, 20th Century Fox optioned RIPTIDE, and we saw a script years ago. It was terrible – the worst script I’ve ever read. And we thought that was the end of it. But then they hired a script doctor named Paul Attanasio, who makes $200,000 a week to work on scripts, to work on it. I haven’t seen what he did, but that was a good sign that they were still interested in it. And every year for 10 years, they were renewing the option on it, which was like getting free money – it was unbelievable. But last year, they came and they said, “We’re making this movie,” and they exercised their option and bought out the rights. In fact, that was the money that I used to buy my fishing boat.

And then we’ve got other books that have been optioned, like STILL LIFE WITH CROWS, THE CABINET OF CURIOSITIES. The producers who optioned them are trying to work out a deal with Paramount to get the rights back to Pendergast (who was a character in RELIC, which Paramount made). They’ve already talked to Paramount, and Paramount seems willing to negotiate. It may cost a little money, but I have high hopes for Pendergast eventually reaching the silver screen.

BOOKGASM: But who could play him, really?

PRESTON: With Pendergast, he’s so vividly real to me. I mean, he’s more real to me than many real people I know. So I have a very hard time thinking how I could cast him. I don’t really see a good … maybe Johnny Depp. He’s such a good actor. He’s pretty cool. I think he has the range to create Pendergast. I think he could pull it off.

BOOKGASM: Your next solo novel, BLASPHEMY: Has the plot changed at all since you last told us about it last summer?

PRESTON: No, it hasn’t. The ending is a big surprise. It appears to be a techno-thriller about a particle accelerator where some really strange scientific things go awry in a really bizarre and dangerous way. But it turns out to be something completely different.

BOOKGASM: Do you know what you’re going to write next on your own?

PRESTON: I do. I’m working on a novel called THE MOBIUS CRATER. It starts off with an astronomy student who observes a meteorite fall, and she decides to go find it.

BOOKGASM: Are you now at the rate of doing two books a year?

PRESTON: No, it’s been about a book and a quarter a year. That’s been very tough to keep up doing one book a year (with Child) and keep doing solo novels on the side. I guess the pressure comes from us. We realize that our readers do expect a novel in the summertime, and we do like to deliver that, and our publisher is very happy that we see that a novel a year is a good idea.

We had a lot of fun writing WHEEL OF DARKNESS, but we intend to write a number of standalone novels now. The idea of doing a novel that leaves you with a cliffhanger and then leads to another is very difficult to sustain. At least our intention is that all our novels with Pendergast in the future will be standalone books. Here and there, threads will come through, though.

BOOKGASM: My problem is that in 12 months between books, I’ve read 100 others, so I don’t remember everything that happened.

PRESTON: In like a series on television, you only have a week in between, but with a novel, it’s a whole year. I’m like you: I read millions of books, so I know exactly what you’re talking about.

Our publisher is working on an Agent Pendergast website, as written by Corrie. It was meant to come out in time for this book, but it’s a lot of work. These things take time. Sometimes we have to consult a very astute female reader of ours who knows Pendergast better than we do and ask questions like, “Does he like opera or does he not like opera?” And she’ll write back, “No, he doesn’t like opera, but he does like symphonic music.” So that’s in the near future. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THESE AUTHORS:
• THE BOOK OF THE DEAD by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
• DANCE OF DEATH by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
• DEEP STORM by Lincoln Child
• TYRANNOSAUR CANYON by Douglas Preston
• THE WHEEL OF DARKNESS by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with FISH OF SOULS’ Gary Williams
• Q&A with 9TAIL FOX’s Jon Courtenay Grimwood
• Q&A with SKIN’s Ted Dekker

In mid-April, Ted Dekker spent a day in Oklahoma City meeting area booksellers and pushing his latest thriller, SKIN – his first to land on the New York Times bestseller list. I met Dekker over lunch at OKC’s ever-popular Iron Starr Urban BBQ – he had ribs, I had a burger topped with chili and smoked sausage – and we talked about his rising career as a full-time novelist, particularly SKIN’s switch in bookstore placement from the Christian fiction shelf to the one for all mainstream thrillers. The following represents just a few choice passages from more than an hour of conversation.

BOOKGASM: The first thing I wanted to ask you is if SKIN’s move away from the evangelical was deliberate. Because I noticed it.

DEKKER: The only difference between SKIN and some of my other novels is that the subject matter is more general: truth and beauty. SKIN is more of a straightforward thriller. It has no Christianity in it at all, but neither do some of my other novels. That’s kind of how my novels are and that’s how they’ll be stocked from now on. All will be sold and marketed in Christian bookstores, as well as at Barnes & Noble and Borders.

BOOKGASM: Did you find that being labeled as a “Christian author” limits your audience, brings you an audience you otherwise might not have, or a little of both?

DEKKER: I’m grateful to the Christian market … but it definitely limits your audience. But, like any genre does, it helps define you for that audience.
With my stories, some of them are more romantic, others are thrillers, and then I do fantasy as well – so part of my brand is you never know what you’re going to get. That’s part of the appeal.

My stories are kinda like mirrors: You look in them and you’re going to see yourself. But depending on who you are, you’re going to see something different. What you do beyond that is essentially your concern, not mine.

BOOKGASM: And now you’re writing for kids as well.

DEKKER: I’m writing fantasy through a young adult brand. I have two coming out in Feb. 2008. One’s called CHOSEN, the other’s called INFIDEL.

BOOKGASM: Among all these genres, do you have a preference?

DEKKER: I like writing stories that keep me engaged. Writing is a love-hate relationship. It’s very difficult, it takes a lot of discipline, but the exploration, I love.

My next one is called ADAM. It explores near-death. It’s another story about a psychopathic killer who kills a behavior psychologist who’s interested in him. I want to know what happens when you die and then are brought back to life?

In my stories, you hear based upon what you hear – not what I’ve shoved into the novel. I’m not cramming anything down anyone’s throat. I’m putting a story out there that can be interpreted different ways. It will be a honest examination of human nature and the struggles we face every day: good and evil.

BOOKGASM: Meanwhile, you’re also venturing into graphic novels, based on your book BLACK. Do you think that’s a viable medium for your writing?

DEKKER: Absolutely. I don’t know how popular it will be, but it’s definitely cool. It’s kinda like doing a movie: It’s amazing to see your characters actually come to life.

BOOKGASM: And speaking of movies, your books are starting to adapted for the big screen, first with THR3E and now HOUSE comes out this October. Are you happy with the way they’ve turned out so far?

DEKKER: Movies: It’s a whole different art form, so for me, it’s all about telling this story. I wasn’t actively involved in THR3E, so I watched that from a distance, but HOUSE I’m more involved.

My objective is to get better with every movie. It’s like starting over; it’s a journey. Am I satisfied? Are you satisfied with the way you raised your first child? You may have made mistakes, but that doesn’t mean you’re not satisfied. You don’t want to throw them back. You can’t say, “I hate that.” At least that’s not the way I approach it.

BOOKGASM: I’m looking forward to HOUSE. I really enjoyed the book.

DEKKER: I lost a lot of older readers with that one. I lost of a lot of older readers when I went from my older style that was more intensely spiritual to more parables. When Jesus told parables, he didn’t even explain them so much or mention God.

BOOKGASM: Whereas kids are more likely to respond to the more parable format.

DEKKER: Have you read George Barna’s book REVOLUTION?

BOOKGASM: No.

DEKKER: In that book, Barna writes that within the next 10 years, 60 percent of those currently going to church will stop going, because the church is becoming or already has become irrelevant in our culture.

They’re not speaking the language of the emerging culture. Most youths sit in church services and are cynical in the way it’s presented to them, even if they believe in the truth itself.

BOOKGASM: Lastly, to switch gears completely, you’re also going to be co-authoring mysteries with a female author. How will these compare to your solo works?

DEKKER: It’s not Ted-light, but it’s not Ted-heavy. It’s kinda like mild salsa: It’s not going to burn you, but you’re definitely going to taste it. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• HOUSE by Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker
• SAINT by Ted Dekker
• SKIN by Ted Dekker

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with FISH OF SOULS’ Gary Williams
• Q&A with GHOST RIDER’s Greg Cox
• Q&A with 9TAIL FOX’s Jon Courtenay Grimwood

Jon Courtenay Grimwood burst onto the science fiction scene 10 years ago with NEOADDIX and has defined the leading edge of speculative fiction since then, with books including REMIX, REDROBE, the ARABESK trilogy and STAMPING BUTTERFLIES. His latest U.S. release, 9TAIL FOX, is a noir tale about a San Francisco policeman who must solve his own murder.

BOOKGASM: Anyone can read a summary for 9TAIL FOX on the back of the book or on Amazon. But what kind of book did you set out to write, and was that what you ended up with?

GRIMWOOD: 9TAIL FOX was my sanity book. After nine strands across three timelines in STAMPING BUTTERFLIES, I wanted to write a fast-moving novel, told from one person’s POV, with a beginning, middle and end, all action taking place over a short time. I wanted to do it with almost no flashbacks, while framing the lot within the structure of a crime novel. 9TAIL FOX was the result.

All my books begin with an image, and the image for 9TAIL was Bobby Zha struggling awake in New York after being shot in San Francisco. I knew he’d messed up his life and that he was getting one last chance to redeem himself as a father, a law enforcement officer and as a human being. As soon as I had those two points, everything else followed.

BOOKGASM: What allure does San Francisco – and Chinatown in particular – hold for writers? Is there somewhere you’d love to set a story that you haven’t already?

GRIMWOOD: It’s that old saying: Someone tilted the U.S. on its side and a lot of the really interesting people rolled down the slope into San Francisco. It’s an amazing city. Not that big, of course, but it has a cast-iron identity in the way New York or Tokyo has. And I spent my teens reading and re-reading Raymond Chandler! So, 9TAIL is a homage to that.
 
The Chinatown thing is more complex. I grew up in the Far East, and many of my strongest memories are of Chinatowns in other cities: huge paper dragons at New Year, fireworks and crackers, even opium dens. There is something inherently fascinating about a city within a city. It suggests secrets and worlds that cross and yet remain separate. This is mirrored in 9TAIL in the tales Bobby Zha’s grandfather told him about the overlapping worlds of the gods, humans and spirits. 
 
Of course, the city within a city exists everywhere. There’s a city for teenagers, another for adults, and children, for men, for women, across race and class. All offer overlapping rings that contain a mix of different worlds. The whole planet is science fiction if you look closely enough.

BOOKGASM: How do you think 9TAIL FOX and Bobby Zha stack up against your other novels and characters?

GRIMWOOD: I love Bobby as a character. It’s been suggested I bring him back, but I think that Bobby fulfils his destiny in the book and I’m not sure it’s possible – or that I’d want to do it. At the moment, my two favorite books are 9TAIL FOX and END OF THE WORLD BLUES, with a soft spot for PASHAZADE because it was the first of the Ashraf Bey mysteries.
 
9TAIL FOX was my attempt to write the extraordinary as normal and the normal as extraordinary. In a way, I think my characters get more layered and the books simpler as time goes on.

BOOKGASM: So much of 9TAIL FOX is a slow reveal, moving the plot along with a snippet of the past here, a fragment of truth there. Was the pacing something you had to consciously keep in check?

GRIMWOOD: Yes, and not really, if that makes sense. After REDROBE, I taught myself not to chew up and spit out a whole novel’s worth of ideas on a single page. So all my books have slow reveals these days. It comes from the way my mind mostly works: It doesn’t embrace everything at once; it chews at facts or problems and eventually solutions fall into place. Most people I know work like that – but that might just be the people I know.
 
I think writing and reading a novel is like exploring a fresh city: You arrive, you take a look round, you get a sense of the people, and then you think you know the place. A little bit later, you realize you know almost nothing, and begin the process all over again. Most of the books I write these days work like that: You think you know something and then realize you don’t … until the end, when everything comes clear in one final reveal.

BOOKGASM: As an American sci-fi fan, one of my favorite parts of an international vacation are the bookstores, and all the great books that I can’t easily get in the States, from the UK publisher Gollancz. Are we ever going to see a day when one of your books gets near-simultaneous publication in the U.S. and the UK?

GRIMWOOD: Interesting question. REMIX and REDROBE were released in the U.S. in a distribution deal I don’t even remember agreeing with my then-agent. The Ashraf Bey books were published in the U.S. a couple of years after Britain, in slightly changed versions. There is a difference between U.S. and European audiences in what is acceptable for POV switches within novels, chapters and scenes.

Now, 9TAIL is being released by Night Shade and END OF THE WORLD BLUES by Bantam Spectra, and the gap is closing. Will the next round of books get simultaneous publication? I don’t know; it’s up to the publishers on both sides of the Atlantic, and my agent.

BOOKGASM: END OF THE WORLD BLUES – which just won the 2006 British Science Fiction Association award for Best Novel – is due out in the U.S. in September, but what are you working on right now?

GRIMWOOD: A crime novel based in Heaven, Hell and Mexico City, featuring a several-hundred-year-old hero and Joan of Arc as his lover. It’s based around a back history of John Milton’s PARADISE LOST and Joan of Arc’s campaign to free France from the English. But it opens in New York and takes in Japan as well.
 
It’s probably going to be three books, although I won’t know for certain until I get to the end of book one and work out how much space I need to wrap up the plot. I’m taking the skills I learnt from writing 9TAIL FOX and END OF THE WORLD BLUES and applying them to “Thrones and Powers.” So expect a beginning, middle and end; a single main character, plus Joan; and assorted angels and demons.

BOOKGASM: Last summer saw your Arabesk trilogy and George Alec Effinger’s Budayeen trilogy released simultaneously in the U.S. What do you think these books say about Arab culture in relation to the state of the world today? About the role of science fiction?

GRIMWOOD: I haven’t read the Effinger trilogy. Although, since being told about it, I’ve bought old paperback copies that sit and stare at me from my unread shelves. All science fiction is about the time in which it is written – all fiction is. Science fiction just takes a sideways look at today.
 
In the Ashraf Bey books, I’m dealing with an alternate Ottoman empire that survives into our time, so it’s Turkish, although the books take place in Egypt and Tunis. It’s a liberal Islamic empire, trying to negotiate its way between a dominant German Empire, a French empire, a slightly isolationist U.S., and the Brits.
 
Our understanding of Middle Eastern and North African culture is limited. It’s as varied, in its way, as the culture across Europe. So religion, politics and everyday life in Saudi Arabia bears little likeness to life in Morocco, which is the whole width of Africa away. So in the books, I’m dealing with Ottoman and North African culture rather than Arab.

BOOKGASM: What books are you most looking forward to reading right now? Are there any up-and-coming writers we should look out for?

GRIMWOOD: At the moment, I’m sitting on a British Airways flight which is four hours late taking off. There are engineers crawling over the wing, and my section of cabin seems peopled almost exclusively with bit parts from a hideous mix of THE OFFICE meets a rerun of WALL STREET. Plus, I’m going to be late into New York, if this plane gets there at all. The only thing keeping me sane – apart from doing this interview obviously – is the fact I have a bound proof of the new Haruki Murakami novel, AFTER DARK.
 
One of the other books I’m looking forward to reading is China Mieville’s new novel for children, UN LUN DUN, which has had rave reviews at this end. There’s a whole stack of stuff back at the house but I can’t remember what it is at the moment, although I could describe the covers…

BOOKGASM: Anything else you’d like to add?

GRIMWOOD: Writing is an obsession, but being able to make living from it is a privilege. I get to set my own days and work my own hours. They might be absurd, but I get to set them myself! –Ryun Patterson

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• 9TAIL FOX by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with FISH OF SOULS’ Gary Williams
• Q&A with GHOST RIDER’s Greg Cox
• Q&A with SECRETS OF THE MODEL DORM’s Amanda Kerlin