Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
That’s a tall order with no clear answer; going with the (semi) short form, I was deposited in Nevada at an early age, where I spent the majority of my time sulking inside. Things changed a bit around the time I was six, when I discovered my dad’s typewriter in a closet during “spring cleaning.” Ugly thing, baby blue and “portable” (if you were a weightlifter), but it worked. Pecking away at it, I produced a Super Mario Brothers fanfic. Yes, it was just as awful as it sounds. I moved on to a high-fantasy novel, and from there spent ten years picking at the ideas that would eventually become my first book. A very eclectic series of career choices, 16 years, a failed marriage and a visit to a state not perpetually cloaked in blistering heat later, I finally held a published copy in my hands; since then, I haven’t stopped.
At this moment, I have three novels and a novella published through CreateSpace, I’m featured in a fantasy collaboration distributed through Smashwords, and I have an eBook that forms volume 1 of a longer humor series. There’s roughly 5-7 finished or almost finished pieces sitting on my hard drive, waiting for me to dust them off and send them on their way, as well; my projects folder is a bloody mess, I tell ya.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My most recent piece would be Blogs from the Basement: The Fall. I spend a lot of time reading various forums, blogs and social media sites, often glimpsing Tweets or posts from individuals claiming to be religious or literary figures. Then I noticed that I hardly ever saw one claiming to be the devil. Just to amuse myself, I started wondering about that, what he might say if given access to social media – particularly blogs, which often seem to start out with a central point or serious message, but can all-too-easily get sidetracked by arguments going on in the comments section. That spread out to having quite a few other biblical characters, as well as the usual cavalcade of fans, spambots and haters, continually butting in and generally driving my devil up the wall.
When I showed it to a few people, via Facebook and printouts, the fact that they started laughing said “I think I can do more with this.” It almost ended up being an ACTUAL blog, but I decided that trying to maintain enough accounts to fill in the character roster would just be an exercise in insanity. So instead I typed it up, filled it out and sent it off to live at KDP.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Everybody thinks what someone else does is unusual, and I sadly don’t have much contact with other writers, so I honestly have no idea. Typically writing for me involves opening up the word processor, cranking up the television (I have to have background noise, or I go insane), ensuring there is a full pot of coffee and a pack of cigarettes at hand, and then inflict grievous wounds on my keyboard until my hands ache too much to continue or the story stops coming. Then I’ll poke at the internet for a bit, take my coydog out for a walk, have a snack, whatever – a refractory period, if you will – before starting the whole process all over again.
Some folks have told me that my method of deciding WHAT to write is unusual, though I don’t know any other way at this point. The character always comes first. Then I talk to them. I ask them “And then? And then?” until they run out of things to say. Yes, it essentially means I’m talking to myself, but at the same time it feels subtly different… and tends to lead my stories into corners I hadn’t considered previously, which I love.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Before I found that typewriter, I was already a voracious reader. My Catholic school Kindergarten teacher hated me, subjecting me to all kinds of tests to somehow “prove” I wasn’t actually reading. I pretty much skipped the “Dick and Jane” phase, pillaging my dad and sister’s extensive bookshelves, which quickly exposed me to ‘Salem’s Lot. To this day it remains my favorite book, and Stephen King is probably the closest thing I have to a hero, both for who he is and what he writes.
In due course I discovered others – Clive Barker, Dean Koontz, Brian Lumley and eventually Bentley Little – who’ve had their hand in meddling with my mind and style, but other than King the single greatest influence was likely The Amityville Horror. Now, I despise that book – and will gladly discuss with anyone why – but it still left it’s mark, both for being my first “haunted house” story and for giving me an excellent blueprint of “stuff not to do.”
What are you working on now?
I tend to have entirely too many projects running all at once – insomnia and lack of a social life lead down many fascinating roads – but the primary projects I’ve got running at the moment are Blogs from the Basement: Volume 2 (which is going to address the Plagues of Egypt, Job, and Lilith’s fixation with Robert Pattinson), which is about half done, Ioudas (alternate history/modern fantasy with Judas Iscariot and Mary Magdalene as immortal monster hunters) is dragging along and then there’s Rotten Apple, which is getting most of my creative attention lately.
That one started off a weird dream and branched out. Basically a “what if” scenario where things that can loosely be classified as zombies make up a sizable chunk of the population. Unlike most zombie fiction, though, my deaders are really just people. People with odd dietary restrictions and hygiene problems, but still people; they have jobs, they have love and hate, they have their little triumphs and their major setbacks – often in the arena of dealing with the lifeists, folks who propagate a culture of hate against the “metabolically challenged and living impaired.” I probably spend more time tweaking the setting than I do writing stories for it, but I still love it.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Honestly, I’m bad at this part. I’ve always been something of a social recluse, so when it comes time to go out there and show people why they should buy my books, I fall flat on my face. I keep a Facebook relatively up to date, try to participate on Goodreads and Twitter, and I’ve got my blog spewing forth excerpts, random rants and shouts about the madness of the moment, but I’m really kind of at a loss in this department, otherwise.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
It sounds trite and silly, but one word sums it up: Write. (With the addendum: Read.) Don’t write what you think the audience wants to read, write what YOU want to see. I’ve seen a lot of folks chasing their tails, trying to write for whatever the trend-of-the-moment is, and they seem to accomplish nothing other than drive themselves nuts and run themselves ragged, and their work shows it.
Find people to look over your work; NOT friends and family (unless they’re friends and family who hate you and won’t hesitate to tear you a new one.). Find a writer’s group, a like-minded forum or blog online, or a kind book store employee. Invite them to treat it like a midterm suspected of cheating and go over it with a fine tooth comb. Finding people to say “Oh my God, this is great!” is easy, but it’s not going to help you get better or make a splash; people who’ll tear you apart, break you, make you question why you do it at all will. Those are the ones who’ll find every last typo, who will question why your characters aren’t consistent and point out where the flow of time seems to have taken a few skips. Without them, you won’t find them, so you can’t fix them or explain – if only to yourself – why those issues exist.
Develop a thick skin. You’re going to need it. All the cuddle-bunny reviews in the world aren’t going to matter the first time a reviewer eviscerates your baby in public. Sometimes that evisceration is going to be helpful or constructive. Sometimes it’s going to be from someone who just isn’t in tune with your message. Sometimes it’s going to be actively hurtful. But you’re not going to be able to assess that logically and take the lessons learned to your next work (if need be) if you’re feeling wounded, abused and hated. Art’s subjective. Writing is art. Someone, somewhere will hate it. Learning to see their point of view and message without thinking there’s something deeply wrong with you or your work is a necessity.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Going to quote Stephen King, here. “The book is the boss.” If you had this lovely idea for where Little Suzie was going to end up on Page 190, but no matter how you write page 150, Suzie ends up dead, maimed or on a different path entirely, you don’t go back and force it on her so she can get to where you want on that latter page. By the same token, if Little Suzie was going to die a terrible, pathetic death but somehow she seems to want to fight back, by all means LET HER.
Half the things in my books were not at all what I pictured starting out. But as I got rolling, I had less and less editorial control, until I finally stopped trying to impose it and let the story tell itself; let the book be the boss. I have never been sorry for it.
What are you reading now?
I’m a bit obsessive when it comes to my reading, so tend to have anywhere between three and five books going at once. Right now the top of the stack is A Tale of Red Riding: Rise of the Alpha Huntress by Neo Edmund, which is an interesting take on the Little Red Riding Hood story and fairly compelling. Also picking at Dead Until Dark, since I’m trying to work my way through the Sookie Stackhouse books and accidentally started in the middle and American Goddesses by Gary Henry.
I’d really like to be digging into NOS4A2, but there’s no longer any new bookstores within reach, Wally World doesn’t see fit to carry it and I haven’t been able to spring for it on Amazon, yet… but soon, I hope.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Honestly, who knows? I’d like to say “Well, I’m signing a major studio deal for Woken, going to move to the Northwest coast and convince Rebel Wilson to marry me,” but I think that’s just outside the realm of possibility at this point. Essentially it boils down to “I’m going to keep writing. I’m going to keep throwing my work out there as best I can, in the hopes that someone enjoys reading it as much as I enjoy writing it. I’m going to do that until my fingers fall off and my other eye goes blind, and then I’m going to finally invest in Dragon dictates and keep doing it anyway.”
I get shelved as a “horror” writer, but I’m looking at branching out a bit. Blogs from the Basement, of course, is more humor than anything, and I’ve got a couple of high fantasy ideas percolating, as well as a romance or two, so I think that’s probably the next thing. See if anyone else can reconcile evil dream spirits with a sarcastic, likable devil and young couples “in lurrrrrve.” But you never know.
What is your favorite book of all time?
I mentioned it above, and lord knows I’ve taken plenty of flak for it over the years, but it’s ‘Salem’s Lot. Part of it is the indelible mark it made on my fragile little mind when I read it at the age of six or seven, of course, but the characters – including the town itself – all have a certain familiarity-slightly-skewed aspect to them that appeals to me. I see aspects of myself in nearly all of them (yes, Barlow included), and the way the town interacts, amongst themselves and with outsiders, is something that calls to me. Probably because I live in a place that’s not too different in a lot of respects. It’s frightening on levels well beyond the creature out in the dark – Larry Crockett and his manipulations of the town, Charlie Rhodes and his PTSD symptoms, Weasel Craig and the sad and dark place he’s come to courtesy of the bottle; those are just as dangerous and worrisome as Barlow and his burning kiss. Ben, Mark, Matt, Jimmy and Callahan’s fight against the dark, their very human concerns and attitudes – both regarding the supernatural elements and the more mundane, such as Callahan’s crisis of faith or Ben’s relationship with Susan – those flipped all the switches for me.
So let others have their Dickens, their Poe, their Mark Twains. I’ll sit with my ratty paperback full of foul words and vampires and be happy.
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