You’ve read our review of HERETIC: THE TEMPLAR CHRONICLES. Next week, you can read the book. In the meantime, read this interview!

BOOKGASM: It’s no secret we’re in love with this book’s concept. How did you come up with it? Were the Templar Knights something you’ve been interested in for a while?

NASSISE: The Templars have always fascinated me. Think about it: You’ve got this small militant order founded to protect the road from the Holy Land back to Europe. Originally they had about a dozen members. How on earth do 12 knights guard hundreds of miles of territory? There had to be more going on there that history does not tell us. Very shortly thereafter, the group has tremendous power and tremendous wealth – again, where did it all come from? How did they achieve it? Why did they grow the way they did? Then comes Black Friday and the imprisonment, capture and subsequent
torture of the Order’s members, supposedly due to heretical actions. All of these unanswered questions and startling events are simply fodder for the hungry mind of a fiction writer like me.

I envisioned a modern version of the Knights, resurrected and forgiven by the Vatican in the midst of the evils of WWII. A private army, if you will, but one used to protect mankind from the things that exist around us, unnoticed and unseen except by a select few. Cade’s lead character grew out of the idea that not every Knight is there for the same reason.

BOOKGASM: Was it difficult to work within so many genres in one book? And was that intentional or something that just came out of the writing process?

NASSISE: I wanted to write a military-styled thriller that contained elements of the supernatural. The rest just naturally flowed together from that starting point. I’m not one to stick simple labels on a novel – that’s for marketing to do, in my view. I just sat down to write the novel that I wanted to write, to tell the story as I saw it in my mind’s eye. If that incorporated religious themes such as the mission of the Templars or facets of dark fantasy such as the existence of the Beyond, then so be it. Sometimes, the best label for a story is simply fiction.

BOOKGASM: Why do you think “genre” is such a dirty word in the fiction world, like it’s automatically of less substance?

NASSISE: Genre has become a dirty word because it presupposes a certain style or the inclusion of certain elements. I think this has particularly hurt horror,since so many people have come to equate horror novels with the slasher horror films of the ’80s and ’90s. Horror is so much wider than that. As president of the Horror Writers Association for the last several years, I’ve worked hard to get people to think of horror as any fiction that generates a feeling of fear or dread. That gets to the emotion at the core of horror fiction and also widens the typical idea of what horror is about by miles. More and more you see major publishers putting out stories with horrific elements and simply labeling them fiction, which, as I noted above, I consider a good thing.

BOOKGASM: What do you have planned for further TEMPLAR CHRONICLES? When can we expect the next one? How many books do you envision in the series?

NASSISE: I’ve got four books scripted out for the beginning of the series. After that, who knows? As for when you can expect the next one, that all depends on how well this one does (like so much else in publishing). So, if you like it, tell a friend. Buy a copy as a gift. Spread the word far and wide so that we can bring THE SCREAM OF ANGELS: BOOK TWO OF THE TEMPLAR CHRONICLES out as soon as possible.

As for what SCREAM will be about, Cade and his Echo Team are sent to northern Italy to investigate the strange occurences at a secret Vatican research facility, a facility known only as Eden.

BOOKGASM: So what have you read lately that’s worth reading?

NASSISE: There are some truly tremendous writers working in the field today that I couldn’t even begin to list them. Some of my recent favorites have been the Charlie Parker novels by John Connolly (EVERY DEAD THING, DARK HOLLOW, etc.), DEEP BLUE by David Niall Wilson, THE TALES OF THE MENAGERIE by Christopher Golden, two novellas by Tim Lebbon entitled DEAD MAN’S HAND and PIECES OF HATE, David Morrell’s CREEPERS – the list goes on.