WILLIAM MEIKLE interview

It's William Meikle Day at The Man Eating Bookworm! 

I believe this is the first Canadian stop on Willi's blog crawl and I'm certainly pleased to have him. Meikle is one of the most exciting authors writing pulp fiction these days. 

One of Meikle's main goals when he's telling a story is to make it exciting and entertaining for the reader and that has come across in everything I've read of his so far. It certainly did while reading his adventure thriller THE VALLEY. 

Below, Meikle discusses his inspiration for the novel and more.

QUESTION:  You said of your novel The Valley that it was your tribute to Conan Doyle. Where you referring to its 19th century setting or the theme of this adventure narrative? 

WILLIAM MEIKLE: The origins of "The Valley" are pretty simple to trace. In Fortean circles there have been attempts to find a picture that many claim to have seen, yet no-one has been able to find. This fabled photograph is said to show a group of Civil-War era men standing in a row wearing big grins. Spreadeagled on the ground in front of them is the body of a huge bird, a being that could only come from pre-history. In some accounts this bird is a giant eagle, in others it is even stranger, a leathery, paper thin Pterosaur. Whatever the case, that image was the thing in my mind, and I had a "What if..." moment, wondering what would happen if cowboys came across a Lost World. From that single thought, the initial concept of The Valley was born. 

Big beasties fascinate me. 

Some of that fascination stems from early film viewing. I remember being taken to the cinema to see The Blob. I couldn't have been more than seven or eight, and it scared the crap out of me. The original incarnation of Kong has been with me since around the same time. Similarly, I remember the BBC showing re-runs of classic creature features late on Friday nights, and THEM! in particular left a mark on my psyche. I've also got a Biological Sciences degree, and even while watching said movies, I'm usually trying to figure out how the creature would actually work in nature -- what would it eat? How would it procreate? What effect would it have on the environment around it?

On top of that, I have an interest in cryptozoology, of creatures that live just out of sight of humankind, and of the myriad possibilities that nature, and man's dabbling with it, can throw up.

Then there's the long tradition of Lost World tales, both in movies and fiction. Over the years I've devoured as many as I can find, from Conan Doyle through Haggard, from Tarzan in Pellucidar to Doug McLure in the Land that Time Forgot. Many of these tales involve dinosaurs, but I wanted something different. For a while I didn't know exactly what "creatures" I needed, but that all changed as soon as the setting clicked. Back in 2005 I had the good fortune to holiday in the Rockies. It was while scanning through photographs of that trip that the thought of the high mountain valley came to me, and when Neil Jackson told me about Montana and the Big Hole Valley, I knew I'd found my spot. And the pictures of the ice and snow from my trip also gave me the era from which I would draw my creatures -- the last Ice Age. I now knew that my protagonists would be heading into a Lost Valley where relic animals lived, and that these creatures would be hairy and large. I had an image of a herd of mammoths by a partially-frozen lake, and that was the image that drove me on in the early concepts.

But, to wind back to the question, yes, Doyle is the grandaddy of the genre, and his works were among the first things I remember reading. If the Lost World is a tribute to anyone, it is to him.

QUESTION:  Most of your novels are set in Scotland. How important is Scottish folklore and mythology to you as a writer? 

WM: Most of my work, long and short form, has been set in Scotland, and a lot of it uses the history and folklore. There's just something about the misty landscapes and old buildings that speaks straight to my soul. (Bloody Celts... we get all sentimental at the least wee thing).

But I think it's the people that influence me most. Everybody in Scotland's got stories to tell, and once you get them going, you can't stop them. I love chatting to people, (usually in pubs) and finding out the -weird- shit they've experienced. My Glasgow PI, Derek Adams is mainly based on a bloke I met years ago in a bar in Partick, and quite a few of the characters that turn up and talk too much in my books can be found in real life in bars in Glasgow, Edinburgh and St Andrews.

I grew up in the West Coast of Scotland in an environment where the supernatural was almost commonplace. My grannie certainly had a touch of “the sight”, always knowing when someone in the family was in trouble. There are numerous stories told of family members meeting other, long dead, family in their dreams, and I myself have had more than a few encounters, with dead family, plus meetings with what I can only class as residents of faerie. I have had several precognitive dreams, one of which saved me from a potentially fatal car crash. 

I have a deep love of old places, in particular menhirs and stone circles, and I’ve spent quite a lot of time travelling the UK and Europe just to visit archaeological remains. I also love what is widely known as “weird shit”. I’ve spent far too much time surfing and reading fortean, paranormal and cryptozoological websites. The cryptozoological stuff especially fascinates me, and provides a direct stimulus for a lot of my fiction.

So, there’s that, and the fact that I was grew up with the sixties explosion of popular culture embracing the supernatural and the weird. Hammer horror movies got me young, and led me back to the Universal originals. My early reading somehow all tended to gravitate in similar directions, with DC comics leading me into pulp and to finding Tarzan.

Tarzan is the second novel I remember reading. (The first was Treasure Island, so I was already well on the way to the land of adventure even then.) I quickly read everything of Burroughs I could find. Then I devoured Wells, Verne and Haggard. I moved on to Conan Doyle before I was twelve, and Professor Challenger’s adventures in spiritualism led me, almost directly, to Dennis Wheatley, Algernon Blackwood, and then on to Lovecraft. Then Stephen King came along.

There’s a separate but related thread of a deep love of detective novels running parallel to this, as Conan Doyle also gave me Holmes, then I moved on to Christie, Chandler, Hammett, Ross MacDonald and Ed McBain, reading everything by them I could find. 

Mix all that lot together, add a dash of ZULU, a hefty slug of heroic fantasy from Howard, Leiber and Moorcock, a sprinkle of fast moving Scottish thrillers from John Buchan and Alistair MacLean, and a final pinch of piratical swashbuckling. Leave to marinate for fifty years and what do you get? 

A psyche with a deep love of the weird in its most basic forms, and the urge to beat the shit out of monsters.

QUESTION:  A writer with a shared interest in fantasy and horror fiction is Stephen King. After many experiments in various genres he seems to have most fun where his imagination finds the least number of formal restrictions. Is that the genre's appeal for you, too? 

WM: It's pulp fiction that interests me, and I find that it crosses many genres almost seamlessly. I rarely think about "genre" anyway. I write what I want to write and leave marketing labels to the publishers. That said, there -is- indeed a freedom in writing about the supernatural where, instead of having a man come in with a gun to get the scene moving, you can have any manner of things going on as long as you can explain them away to the reader's satisfaction. The verisimilitude matters though -- the reader has to -believe-, and that can be difficult to pull off.

QUESTION: Some biographical information?

WM: I'm a fifty-something Scotsman, now living in Newfoundland. 

I didn't chose writing, it chose me. The urge to write is more of a need, a similar addiction to the one I used to have for cigarettes and still have for beer.

I -nearly- became a scientist. I have a degree in Botany, specialising in the archaeological history that can be gleaned from studying peat bogs. But I couldn't get a grant for a PhD, then I followed a woman to London and ended up by accident more than design in a career in IT. I actually took it seriously for a while, but the need to write slowly welled up and subsumed it a few years back.

That, and the fact that I like to move around and not be tied to one place for any length of time has limited career opportunities a bit. According to my family I'm "away with the fairies" too often for anything else to hold my attention for long.

When I was at school my books and my guitar were all that kept me sane in a town that was going downhill fast. The steelworks shut and employment got worse. I -could- have started writing about that, but why bother? All I had to do was walk outside and I'd get it slapped in my face. That horror was all too real.

So I took up my pen and wrote. At first it was song lyrics, designed (mostly unsuccessfully) to get me closer to girls.   

I tried my hand at a few short stories but had no confidence in them and hid them away. And that was that for many years. 

I didn't get the urge again until I was past thirty and trapped in a very boring job. My home town had continued to stagnate and, unless I wanted to spend my whole life drinking (something I was actively considering at the time), returning there wasn't an option.

Back in the very early '90s I had an idea for a story... I hadn't written much of anything since the mid-70s at school, but this idea wouldn't leave me alone. I had an image in my mind of an old man watching a young woman's ghost.

That image grew into a story, that story grew into other stories, and before I knew it I had an obsession in charge of my life.

So it all started with a little ghost story, "Dancers"; one that ended up getting published in All Hallows, getting turned into a short movie, getting read on several radio stations, getting published in Greek, Spanish, Italian and Hebrew, and getting reprinted in The Weekly News in Scotland. 

Years on I've written other ghost stories, but have increasingly moved away from that first love towards more pulpy concerns, of men and monsters, beer and ciggies, big guns and loose women, swords and sorcery, aliens and mass carnage.

But just this past year, the cycle has turned again, and I find my interest in the spectre renewed. I've written several straight ghost stories for GWP chapbooks, had an ebook of CARNACKI: GHOSTFINDER tales published, and sold a handful of stories to professional anthologies featuring old-school haunts and spectres. 

Part of this renewed interest has to do with me starting to feel my age in my second half-century, where my aches and pains are growing and my youth seems ever further away, so that I find myself looking forward to what might lie ahead. 

But mostly I think it's love... a love for the old stories, for the strange and the weird, for the supernatural in its more obscure forms.

I write to escape. 

I haven't managed it yet, but I'm working on it.

QUESTION:  What's next for you and your audience? 

WM: I have numerous work in the pipeline.

There's the already placed work 

- the 3rd Midnight Eye Book is due in print and ebook this spring, with Derek fighting a werewolf cult in Glasgow and Newfoundland

- several more novels and ebooks are coming from Generation Next Publishing

- there are three film scripts in various stages of production, including a film version of the 1st Midnight Eye File: The Amulet looking for funding.

- and I've got stories coming in numerous anthologies including Gaslight Arcanum, EVOLVE 2, Dead But Dreaming 2, Historical Lovecraft and Cthulhu 2012

And I'm working on the 4th Midnight Eye File novel, which involves something evil lurking under the Merchant City.

And there's the submissions. I've got stories out at seven other anthologies, four magazines, two podcasts and a newspaper, and a novel waiting for publisher edits that'll knock people's socks off.

All details at my website at http://www.williammeikle.com/

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There you have it, Wormies! I would like to take this space to thank William Meikle for dropping in.

Don't forget to leave a comment below to be entered into a contest to win a Kindle with a full library of William Meikle e-books! The winner will be selected from the various blog stops along William's blog crawl. So don't miss out!!!

WANT MORE MEIKLE?

On Monday, January 31st The Man Eating Bookworm will have a special guest in the house.

As part of his blog crawl, author William Meikle will be dropping by to give insight into his influences and inspiration behind The Valley, as well as sharing some of his experiences that set him on the path to becoming one of e-publishing's hottest authors.

Don't miss out, Wormies!

On Monday, leave a comment at the end of Meikle's Question and Answer and be entered in a draw to win a Kindle!

But that's not all.

If you are chosen as the winner, not only will you win a free Kindle but it will come with a full library of Willaim Meikle e-books!

You really can't beat that, Wormies.

See you back here on Monday and don't forget to leave a comment!!!

THE VALLEY by William Meikle

Reading William Meikle's The Valley will bring to mind many things, not the least of which are the creature features you probably watched on television as a kid. Think of THE LOST WORLD and THEM! Think of giant, man eating scorpions and sabretooth tigers. Think of ferocious tribes of savages!

This is pure pulp fiction goodness. Pop some popcorn, pop the tab on a brewski and power up THE VALLEY on your Kindle. Now you're all set for a night of thrill reading.

When a group of prospectors return to their settlement in the mountains they discover their huts and cabins destroyed.

Jake finds a note left behind by his brother directing the group towards the mine for some answers, but before they can get organized something crawls out of the river and attacks them. It's something ancient and evil that none of them have ever seen before.

This monstrosity is another clue to what happened to the others and just the beginning of what they will find the next day. Eager for some answers, not to mention the mother lode, half the group explores the mine only to discover a place that time forgot.

It isn't long before they find themselves in deep trouble and praying for the others to come and rescue them.

THE VALLEY is a fast paced adventure that will keep you turning the pages until it's explosive climax.

If you haven't experienced a Meikle adventure, you're missing out. Pick up THE VALLEY today!

THE PAINTED DARKNESS by Brian James Freeman

There is a monster in Henry's cellar. A creature that's been stalking Henry since he was a child and became lost in the woods. Now, all these years later, the beast is back and coming for Henry and his family.

I'm not the biggest fan of comparing writers to Stephen King. However, after finishing The Painted Darkness it wasn't surprising to learn that Brian James Freeman is the publisher of Lonely Road Books and has worked with Stephen King (they published a beautiful deluxe edition of King's RIDING THE BULLET). Freeman is also the Managing Editor of Cemetery Dance magazine, a terrific periodical that specializes in, among other things, all that is Stephen King.

The reason I mention all that is that THE PAINTED DARKNESS reads just like a classic Stephen King story. Think THE SHINING and you'll be on the right track. The tone and writing are so close that if I hadn't known better, or if the author's name had been left off the cover, I would have said it was written by the master himself.

A fast read, THE PAINTED DARKNESS is an exploration on the power of the imagination. This a beautiful ode to those of us that played alone as children, making up adventures and games with our wild imaginations.

I will certainly be seeking out other titles by Freeman.

Available via Kindle are Seven Stories, The Punishment Room, What They Left Behind and The Silent Attic.

JULIUS KATZ MYSTERIES by Dave Zeltserman

Dave Zeltserman said this of his JULIUS KATZ stories, "These are the polar opposite of PARIAH. Lighthearted, charming, very fun. The first one won the Shamus Award, the second one just won 1st place in Ellery Queen's Readers Choice Awards."

I've yet to read Pariah.

My only exposure to Zeltserman's writing is The Caretaker of Lorne Field: A Novel and Blood Crimes: Book One. Both are intense, somewhat serious reads. Both are also vastly different from one another but are executed wonderfully. One was my favorite novel of 2010 and should be studied in school. The other is just good bloody fun.

But Julius Katz Mysteries is something else entirely. These two stories (a novelette and short story) are indeed lighthearted, charming and very fun. I think they are also the best thing I've read from Zeltserman to this point. I enjoyed these two tales so much that I find it a bloody shame there aren't more for me to hunt down and read.

Our narrator, Archie, is an AI computer or as he describes himself, "a two inch rectangular-shaped piece of space-aged computer technology that's twenty years more advanced than what's currently considered theoretically possible - at least aside from whatever lab created me.".

The one thing Archie wants more than anything in the world is to solve a crime before his boss can, which isn't easy, even with all the sci-fi advancements Archie has built into his system.

Archie, who really is practically human, is charming and very likable to the reader and steals the show from PI extraordinaire Julius Katz.

Sometimes you read a story and it's the tale itself that propels you along, keeps you turning the pages until the end. Here, it's not only the stories but the writing. The writing is excellent. It's no wonder both are award winning. JULIUS KATZ won both the Shamus Award for best story given out by the Private Eye Writers of America and the Derringer Award for Best Novelette given out by the Short Mystery Fiction Society. ARCHIE'S BEEN FRAMED won 1st place in Ellery Queen's Reader's Choice Awards.

Don't miss out on Julius Katz Mysteries. It can be had for less money than a small cup of coffee. That's right! It's only $0.99. You just can't beat that price.

Coming in the not to distant future are reviews of Small Crimes, Killer, Pariah and Outsourced.

BLOOD CRIMES by Dave Zeltserman

If you don't know by now that Dave Zeltserman is one of my new favorite writers...welcome to the blog!

I'm glad to have you.

Near the end of last year a friend recommended Zeltserman's The Caretaker of Lorne Field: A Novel and it easily topped my "Best of" list for 2010.

Flash forward a couple of weeks and another friend, and fellow blogger, Jim Mcleod of GINGER NUTS OF HORROR, asked if I would like to tag along for an interview with Zeltserman. Lets just say the Scotsman didn't have to ask twice! You can read that interview here and here.

Today I look at Zeltserman's Blood Crimes: Book One.

BLOOD CRIMES is centered around four main characters, three whom have been infected with a virus that has given them the characteristics and urges of the legendary vampire. Metcalf is a sociopath trying to understand the infection, and find a cure for it, however his means are anything but humane. Think Josef Mengele but worse.

At the same time Metcalf feels obligated to reign in the vivacious Serena, whom if left unchecked might expose them to the world. Serena is a lover spurned, an oversexed vixen, desperate to find an estranged member of her vampire family who threatens to kill them all.

Jim is on the run, while also searching for answers about the origin of his infection. Serena infected all the vampires he knows, but who infected Serena? If he's going to wipe them all out, he needs to find the source.

Hayes is a PI hired by Serena to find Jim. Like the rest of the world Hayes is in the dark about vampires. All he knows is that his client will pay him big bucks to find Jim. But as Hayes gets closer he begins to put the pieces of the puzzle together and the picture is anything but what he expected.

While in Cleveland Jim gets tangled up with a vicious biker gang called the Blood Dragons.

From here on in Zeltserman's vamp/crime thriller takes off at a breakneck speed. The action that follows is intense and blood drenched. There are also unexpected twists that will take you by surprise and leave you gaping at your Kindle in shock.

The writing is solid and the story telling top notch.

My only warning for potential readers is that BLOOD CRIMES is the beginning of a 5 book series. This is very much a set up novel and leaves off with many questions unanswered. Some folks hate loose ends, even in a series, but in this case I was simply left wanting more. This truly promises to be an epic tale.

I look forward to the second book in the series and seeing what's in store for the survivors.     

FOUR LIVE ROUNDS by Blake Crouch

Late last year I got the new Kindle and immediately discovered the hardest working e-book author in the world, J.A. Konrath. He is a writer that seems to be single-handedly tearing down the walls of the publishing world and championing independent e-publishing (I'm sure there are others, but hey, I don't get out much).

Konrath also does a lot of collaborations with different writers, from Jeff Strand to Henry Perez, from Tom Schreck to F. Paul Wilson. Some of these I have read, while other are on my radar. But the ones that really kicked me in the pants were his stories with Blake Crouch. Particularly good is their novella SERIAL UNCUT (Extended Edition). Check my review of that nasty bit of work here.

After reading SERIAL buying everything with Crouch's name on it became a forgone conclusion.

That brings us to today's review of FOUR LIVE ROUNDS. This collection of four short stories is amazing!

 *69 is an interesting tale about a couple whose number is called inadvertently by a killer's cell phone, unbeknown to him, when it is jostled during one of his ghastly crimes. Now the couple have to figure out who's cell phone called before the killer comes looking for them!

I really liked *69 and it was, in my opinion, the weakest of the four tales.

REMAKING packs the greatest emotional punch of the four stories. If you are a parent this one will bring tears to your eyes by it's bitter sweet conclusion. It resonated with me long after I was finished.

ON THE GOOD, RED ROAD is about four men trying to reach a mountain mining town before getting trapped in a terrible snow storm. This is a western-ish story that gets more suspenseful with each sentence. ON THE GOOD, RED ROAD is a companion piece to Crouch's novel Abandon.

SHINING ROCK is the last story in the collection, and as with the previous story, is as suspenseful as anything I've read by the author. This one plays on one of my own biggest fears. A couple goes camping in a secluded mountain glade, believing they are the only ones around for miles and miles. Yeah, right!

It's because of Richard Laymon and stories like these I don't go on camping trips. I have this fear that in the middle of the night some muscle bound, slobbering, machete swinging, psychopath is going to wander into my camp.

Each story in FOUR LIVE ROUNDS comes with a brief introduction by the author on his inspiration for the story to follow plus excerpts from each of Crouch's published novels, DESERT PLACES: A Novel of Terror, LOCKED DOORS: A Novel of Terror, Abandon and Snowbound.

The whole thing ends off with a short story by J.A. Konrath (I didn't read it. It's part of another collection I will be reading in the not to distant future).

All in all, FOUR LIVE ROUNDS is a terrific little collection, a perfect introduction to a thriller writer with some serious chops.

Look back here for reviews of Blake Crouch's novels in the future.

NOTE: I just noticed this one little thing before putting this post live. When I purchased the collection it was only $2.99. It is now $3.99. Still cheap, for the quality of the writing is high, but in my opinion a bit steep when considering quantity.

I usually fall in the middle ground for these kinds of things. I think the currant price is too stiff for what you get, and that's unfortunate because it is quite a good collection of work.

As I love my Kindle, I love real books. I still have a tough time warranting paying over five bucks for anything on my Kindle. For $3.99 I pretty much expect to get a full novel. I hate saying this Wormies, especially after telling you how great the collection is.

I'm sure some of you won't care about the extra dollar but for those of you that might...

The better deal is to purchase Crouch's FULLY LOADED: The Complete and Collected Stories of Blake Crouch. It's $4.99 but comes with all the stories in FOUR LIVE ROUNDS, plus SERIAL (worth the five bucks on it's own), PERFECT LITTLE TOWN (see my review here), and others. Therefore I'm not including a link to FOUR LIVE ROUNDS. Your better deal is FULLY LOADED. 

DAVE ZELTSERMAN interview

Wormies, here it is. Dave Zeltserman was kind enough to answer a few questions for myself and Jim Mcleod of GINGER NUTS OF HORROR. This interview is being hosted on both sites, so I highly recommend you take the time when you are finished reading to breeze on over and check out his digs.
 

Hi Dave, how are things with you?

Hi Jim and Peter, thanks for inviting me for this interview. I'm doing well, and am in the midst of working on a book I'm very excited about.

Can you give us background on your previous works?

Okay, here's a complete rundown in the order they were published.

Fast Lane is part psycho noir, part deconstruction of the hardboiled PI genre. It was the first book I attempted to write. I originally self-published it as IN HIS SHADOW, later sold the Italian right to Meridiano Zero-a very good press in Italy, and then had it published as FAST LANE by Point Blank Press, who also published first books from Allan Guthrie, Ray Banks, and Duane Swiercynski.

Bad Thoughts is a mix of crime and horror. I wrote it in '96, saw it published in 2007. There's a supernatural element that scares the hell out of some readers - I had readers tell me that the book gave them nightmares, others told me that the book scared them too much to finish, and then again, some readers find this element cheesy. It all depends how it hits you. This was the second book I wrote and some of the writing makes me groan now, but there's other writing in it that's very high energy and kind of inspired. Much different than my others.

Small Crimes is pure noir and at it's heart is a failed man's search for redemption. This was my first Serpent's Tail book, and NPR ended up picking it as one of the five best crime and mystery novels of 2008.

Bad Karma (Five Star Mystery Series) is  kind of a new agey hardboiled PI novel. It's a pretty solid one featuring my hero from BAD THOUGHTS. Hardboiled readers are happy with it, readers more familiar with my harder hitting noir tend to be disappointed, but it's a pretty good hardboiled novel with a fast-paced plot and lots of twists.

Pariah is about as fierce and subversive a crime novel as you're going to find. No US publisher ever would've had the balls to publish it, but fortunately my UK publisher, Serpent's Tail, was only too happy to put it out there. My protagonist in this one is a force of nature, someone who leaves death and destruction wherever he goes. Not a nice guy to say the least. On one level this is a brutal crime novel, on another it's a satire on the publishing industry and our celebrity-driven society. Washington Post called me a "sick puppy" for this one, but they also named it one of the best books of 2009.

Killer is probably my best crime novel-although fans of PARIAH might argue that point (and have!). It's a much quieter book than PARIAH or SMALL CRIMES, sort of a meditation on the mind of a killer. It's an interesting book too in that while SMALL CRIMES and PARIAH appeal more to noir and literary readers, this one seems to have a very wide appeal to crime, literary and also mystery readers (mystery readers are genuinely appalled by PARIAH).

The Caretaker of Lorne Field: A Novel is next. I knew readers would take it as a horror novel, but I was really writing it more as an allegorical fable. Along with KILLER, it's probably my favorite of my published books. Although I'll always have a soft spot for PARIAH, bless it's wicked heart.

I just released Blood Crimes: Book One as an e-book original. This is a very high octane mix of noir and horror. Think Pulp Fiction with vampires. It's the first a planned 5-book series, and it's a good one.

Outsourced is being released now by Serpent's Tail. This was actually the 4th book I wrote, but it took 7 years to see it in print. A bunch of desperate software engineers who've been made obsolete due to outsourcing and other industry changes come up with what they think is a brilliant plan to rob a bank. Not with computers (as the cover suggests) but with guns. This is a very fast-paced, twisty fun book. And it's now in film development.

I'll also add in my Julius Katz stories. These are the polar opposite of PARIAH. Lighthearted, charming, very fun. The first one won the Shamus Award, the second one just won 1st place in Ellery Queen's Readers Choice Awards.

What inspired you to become a writer?

I always read a lot, but I was also very strong in math and always interested in computers, so I never gave any thought into being a writer, and instead majored in Applied Math and Computer Science, and worked as a software engineer after college. But I seem to be drawn to writing and at times would work on short stories. When I discovered Jim Thompson around 1990 it was like a religious experience, and I started seeing a way to rework one of my short ideas, and this became FAST LANE, and I knew it was a book noir readers would dig. While I was working on this I wrote my first short story to try to sell, and I sold it to the first magazine I sent it to. Then I wore Gary Lovisi down with submissions until he bought my second story for Hardboiled Magazine. After that it was all down hill until selling SMALL CRIMES in 2006.

You self published your first novel. What lessons did you learn from that?

This was back in 2002 - a different world back then! So I don't know how applicable these lessons would be in the current e-book world where it's much easier for new writers to sell their books.

Back then I self-published IN HIS SHADOW with iUniverse because it wasn't costing me anything due to a program they had with MWA, and my goal was to collect enough blurbs to help sell BAD THOUGHTS. I did get a good reaction to it, getting very generous writers like Vicki Hendericks, Bill Crider and others to read it, and because of noir fans discussing it on their noir reading group Rara Avis, Meridiano Zero bought the Italian rights, and Jeff Gelb invited me to submit to HOT BLOOD # 12. Overall it was frustrating - I'd have newspaper reviewers who wanted to review it but couldn't because of their paper's policies regarding self-published books. And what I really learned from this was that I did NOT want to be a self-published writer. But again, it's a different world now.

When I was trying to sell IN HIS SHADOW/FAST LANE back around 1992, I had a bunch of editors and agents tell me that I needed to write a more formulaic novel for my first, and that dark anti-heroes don't sell. In my heart I knew FAST LANE would appeal strongly to noir fans, and I was right. The writing is a bit rough in FAST LANE, but really works well as a noir novel, and I've heard from a number of noir readers telling me it's one of their favorites. But these agents and editors were also right. You're not going to make a living writing noir, although I keep stubbornly trying.


With the publication of THE CARETAKER OF LORNE FIELD, and BLOOD CRIMES you've made the transition from crime to horror. Was there any reason for the change?

There can be a fine line between horror and crime, and you look at my protagonist's psychic meltdown in FAST LANE as horror. BAD THOUGHTS might look like a police procedural at first, but it's really horror. And then there's PARIAH, where my noir hero, Kyle Nevin, can be downright terrifying. I've always written books and short stories that can just as easily be looked at as horror as crime. 

Do you approach the two genres in a different way when you write?


Simple answer, nope. I'm just trying to tell a story, and whether it's horror or crime or a mix of the two, it doesn't much matter to me. 

I first encountered your work in Needle Magazine. Man, that was some piece of storytelling, one of the highlights of the issue. Do you enjoy writing such savory characters?

My character in that story is a cub scout compared to some of my others, although I'll never top Kyle Nevin from PARIAH. Short answer, yep. I love getting into the psychology of my characters, and it's so much more interesting when they're a fucked up piece of work like Kyle.

You're the founding father, so to speak, of TOP SUSPENSE GROUP. What instigated you to form the group? And what drew you to the authors currently in the line up?

It really started from conversations Ed Gorman, Harry Shannon and I were having. The reason we formed it is very simple - as much as all of us might love print books there's no denying that e-books are the future. And while most professional writers, other than Joe Konrath, spent the last year focused on print books and supporting bookstores, the newer indie writers and Joe focused on the e-book space and building the infrastructure to sell directly to Kindle owners. That ended up leaving most midlist pro writers out in the cold. Now while there are going to be some very good self-published e-books put out there, there are also going be some not so good ones. The whole idea of TOP SUSPENSE GROUP is simple - band together with talented writers we know who are putting out high quality books, and as the e-book market matures, develop a branding as a safe place for readers to find excellent genre books. I think this will work, the other authors believe so too, but it's going to take time for readers to learn about us.

Your next book, OUTSOURCED, has already been optioned for film and is in production. When you're working do you consciously try to write a cinematic story?

I'm always consciously aware of writing exciting, fast-paced books. If I'm going to write something I want it to be something my readers are going to enjoy! So my writing tends towards being very visual and vivid, and seems to lend itself well for film. SMALL CRIMES would make a terrific film. So would BLOOD CRIMES - before Hollywood got swamped with vampire projects I had someone at Dimension films really love the book, and one of the producers on OUTSOURCED want to do something with it. But then vampires became hot and every imaginable permutation involving vampires started hitting the studios, and it's near impossible now to get a vampire project started. Even one as different as BLOOD CRIMES.

The CARETAKER OF LORNE FIELD was a wonderful tale of paranoia and suspense which would make an excellent film. I'm thinking M. Night Shyamalan directing and maybe Gary Oldman or Christian Bale as Jack Durkin. Any bites from Hollywood?

My thoughts exactly about M. Night Shyamalan. I'm a big fan of Six Sense and Unbreakable, and he could make a terrific film with this. Imagine fields of Aukowies, blinking on and off between being wees and seeing their little Aukowie faces! And Gary Oldman would be a perfect choice for the Caretaker. I have a very good film agent working on this, but nothing happens quickly in Hollywood, and The Ruins is making things more difficult. But with all the good press CARETAKER  has been getting, including being short listed by ALA for best horror book of 2010, I think it will eventually happen.

In an interview you did with Roger Smith you discussed your inspiration for THE CARETAKER OF LORNE FIELD, which I found very interesting. Why don't you tell our readers a little about that and how the experience lead to writing the book.

First, a comment about Roger - he's one the BEST thriller writers working today. Mixed Blood: A Thriller and Wake Up Dead: A Cape Town Thriller are just outstanding. Very violent, but in a real way, not cartoonish like a lot of violent books, and with all this visceral energy and power. Roger and I both dig each others books, and have since become friends, and I've had a chance to read his 3rd, DUST DEVILS, and it is amazing.

Okay, the reason I wrote CARETAKER. My wife and I moved to a new house where we had this weird root system growing weeds throughout our front and side yard. These weeds were nasty - they'd grow fast, and if you didn't pull them out within a few days they'd develop thorns, and if they were left alone you'd have a forest of them. I think they're black locusts. Anyway, each day I'm walking up and down the yard pulling out hundreds of these suckers and after a couple of months of this I told my wife I was going to write a book about it. She scoffed at me, so I had no choice!

There is a backlash within the horror genre lately aimed towards the watered down vampires of Twilight and The Vampire Diaries. Your vampire/noir thriller BLOOD CRIMES has been described as Sin City meets the horror of Stephen King. Was there a conscious desire on your part to write a vampire book with some bite? And what was your inspiration to write the book?

I had BLOOD CRIMES in my mind since '96. Back then I was working with this agent who gave me a horrifically bad vampire script to novelize. I didn't want to work on that, but it gave me an idea for a hardcore vampire series and I wrote a film script based on it. My agent then got insulted and we split. But I had BLOOD CRIMES thought out since then, and finally in 2006 wrote the first book of what will be a 5-book series. My agent at the time had her hands filled trying to sell PARIAH and CARETAKER, and she didn't want to take on anything else. In 2009 I had a new agent , he read BLOOD CRIMES, loved it, and tried selling it. We had a few young editors fall in love with it, but at that point the vampire genre had been co-opted into soft porn for teens, and these editors all got shot down by their bosses for the book being too noir and too much horror. It really is a kick-ass, high octane book, on that any fan of noir, crime or horror will dig.

You've written a Gothic horror novel based around Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Where did the idea come from to write such a book and what can readers expect?

MONSTER is my retelling of the Frankenstein story, this one from the point of view of the monster. Here the monster is a heroic but tragic character, with Victor Frankenstein a fiend who is in league with the Marquis De Sade to bring hell to earth, and the book is layered very carefully over Shelley's. It's by far the best book I've written. Not just my opinion but other people who've read it. My agent sent this out in the Fall of 2009 when the Jane Austen zombie mash up books were dominating , and we had editors tell us that they couldn't buy anything that wasn't a mash up book. We did have an editor at TOR spend 6 months trying to buy it, but eventually it was decided it was too much horror (imagine, a Frankenstein book being too much horror!). My editor at Overlook loved this book and was in the process of acquiring it when he quit. My new editor feels the same but they're publishing another book of mine in the fall, so the publisher is in no rush to buy it. It will probably kill me if this book doesn't get published. Seriously.

You're primarily a Boston writer. What was it like writing a book which takes place across Europe?

I spent 6 months studying 18th century Europe so I could write this book. I have a good imagination and can make my books feel like they're written any place I put them. My Fall book, THE ESSENCE OF MONSTERS, takes place in Brooklyn. I've never been there, my agent lives there, and he was convinced after reading the book that I must have lived there at one point.

 
I would like to take this space to thank Dave Zeltserman for taking the time out of his busy writing schedule for such an informative and interesting interview. I would also like to thank Jim Mcleod of GINGER NUTS OF HORROR for our first interview collaboration. Here's to more ventures in the days to come, mate!

I hope you enjoyed the interview, Wormies. Look for a review of Dave Zeltserman's BLOOD CRIMES before the end of the month!