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Lurking Musings

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Tag Archives: Aaron Smith

[Guest Post] Why Spy by Aaron Smith

22 Thursday Aug 2013

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Guest posts

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Aaron Smith, Edward Snowdon, Espionage, Game of Thrones, Ian Fleming, James Bond, John Lecarre, JRR Tolkien, Liam Neeson, Nobody Dies For Free, Spy, Spy Genre, Star Trek, The Walking Dead, Tom Clancy, True Blood


The last time I did a guest post here at Lurking Musings, the subject was horror and some of the ways in which I find it to be a rewarding genre to write within. I’m still writing horror stories, with a few new ones coming out this year, but I’ve never been one to stick to the same thing all the time, so today I’m here to talk about a different genre and how I became interested in it and how all the pieces recently came together for me to participate in it.DSC00358

There are certain things that I suppose it was inevitable that I would eventually do once I took my first steps on the road of being a writer. Looking back on my life and the interests I’ve always had, the sort of books and movies I’ve enjoyed, I had to eventually write something in the espionage genre. On one hand, I’m surprised it took this long, but on the other, I’m glad it did. I didn’t rush into it. I waited (though not consciously) until the pieces came together and the time was right, and I’m quite happy with the result.

Looking back on my life, I can pinpoint the exact event that made me a lifelong fan of the spy genre. It was a flood.

The year was 1984, I was seven years old, and we lived in Paterson, New Jersey, just across the park from the banks of the Passaic River. It was April and it rained constantly. That grimy old river could only take so much and it overflowed, vomiting dirty water up into the park, drenching the baseball field, submerging Totowa Road, intruding on our street, and filling our basement to within an inch of coming onto the main floor. In fact, it was so bad that the mayor of the city had to come in a rowboat and coax the old lady next door out of her house! We had to get out of there.

So we packed our suitcases and escaped. It was me, my parents, my four-year-old sister and my toddler brother. We ended up spending a week at my grandparents’ house. Grandma and Grandpa had something we didn’t. At the time, they were still pretty new and quite expensive: the amazing technological wonder known as the VCR!

My father, happy to be in the presence of one of the marvels of the modern age, wasted no time running out to the local lawnmower shop/ video rental place (I’m not making that up. Somebody actually ran that very odd combination of businesses, as there weren’t too many places yet that concentrated solely on renting out movies) to get his hands on something he’d been wanting to see but had missed when it ran in theatres a year earlier.

So, despite the protests of my violence-hating mother, that night I encountered a character who would become one of my favorite fictional heroes: Bond. James Bond. The film was Never Say Never Again, the “unofficial” Bond movie, which was a remake of Thunderball and not part of the Eon Productions series, but it featured Sean Connery, making his return to the role after more than a decade away, so it certainly counts as a real Bond movie in my book.

That was it. I was a lifelong Bond fan, not just of the movies but of the original Ian Fleming novels and some, though not all, of the continuations written by later novelists.

Bond was my gateway drug into the world of spy fiction and I discovered many other such characters over the years, in books, in movies, and on television. There were the books of Tom Clancy and John LeCarre, the Jason Bourne movies, and Taken, starring Liam Neeson.

Eventually, I started writing seriously and began to have work published. I wrote in genres including mystery, horror, fantasy, science fiction, and even did some war and western stories. Occasionally, one of my stories would include elements of the spy genre, but it took a long time before I finally set my sights on penning a true espionage novel.

It was a convergence of three events that I think—now that I look back on it—finally got me to try writing in the spy genre. I found a big bargain and managed to acquire the first twenty James Bond movies on DVD for under a hundred dollars, so I was able, for the first time in my life, to watch them all in order and relive many of my favorite 007 moments. I discovered a wonderful British series called Spooks, which ran for 86 thrilling episodes and turned out to be one of the most addicting and also heartbreaking TV series I’ve ever watched. And I said—and I have no idea where this particular combination of words came from—“Nobody dies for free,” which I immediately knew was going to eventually be the title of a spy novel. So the ball started rolling and it didn’t stop until I’d written the book.

But, strangely, for all the years that I loved the spy genre and all through the time it took me to write Nobody Dies For Free and then go through the process of editing it and eventually seeing it published, it never occurred to me to really sit back and ponder the question of just why stories of secret agents and clandestine missions have been so popular for so long. In writing this blog entry, that’s the very question I’ve decided to attack, and I’ve come up with four answers that I suspect are quite valid. I know they apply to me and I’d be curious to hear what others have to say about it once they’ve read this little essay.

Secrets and Scandals

When it comes to most aspects of life, but especially when the government is involved, many of us understand the need for some degree of secrecy. Certain things must remain classified, for the more we in the public sector know, the more those who are currently considered our enemies also know. But despite this, many of us wish we could personally know everything. The recent Edward Snowden business is evidence of this. We want to know exactly what our government (and all the other governments in the world) are doing, especially the dirtier business. Realistically, we can’t have access to this information. But in the world of the spy novel or movie, we can. For the time it takes to watch a film or read a book, we are insiders, seeing the world in all its intricate ugliness and backstabbing brutality as we share an adventure with the protagonist. Human beings are curious creatures who can’t resist an opportunity to inspect the president’s dirty laundry or sneak a peek at the sins of the king. Spy fiction satisfies our need to be part of the shadow realm.      

Patriotism

The world is a mess. It always has been and it probably always will. Most people seem to have mixed feelings about the countries in which they live. I’m glad to have been born American, I respect what the ideals behind the nation’s founding stand for, but that doesn’t mean I have to like everything my government does. For example, I’m currently quite irritated by the fact that the president’s new health care system is going to cost me several thousand dollars in wages this year. If I polled a thousand other Americans, I’m sure I’d get hundreds of different complaints about the way the country is run and how it interacts with both its allies and its enemies. And I’m sure my friends in Europe and Japan and Canada and various other places have conflicted feelings about their own countries. But I think most of us want our nations to be the best they can be. Spy stories, with their heroic government operatives, give us this courageous, honorable (and sometimes ruthless in that honor) side of the nation’s activities. Regardless of party affiliations or political opinions, we can all root for a James Bond or a Jack Ryan to do the right thing and act in the best interests of his fellow citizens, rising above the political mess to save the nation and maybe even the world.

A Socially Acceptable Mythology

Fans of certain genres of fiction are lucky to now live in a time when Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, and True Blood are among the most popular series on television, when superhero movies are hugely successful, and when some of the world’s most popular authors are writing about vampires and teenaged wizards. But this wasn’t always the case. It wasn’t so long ago that people of certain ages might be laughed at if they publicly admitted enjoying Star Trek or comic books or the works of JRR Tolkein. So I’ve come to suspect that one of the reasons for the success of the spy genre for most of the twentieth century may have had something to do with the way it contains the very same elements as classic adventure fiction and mythology but puts it in a setting that seems to be a bit more adult-oriented, thus making it all right for a grown man in the 1950s and 60s (including President Kennedy) to be seen reading Casino Royale or From Russia With Love. As for those elements I just mentioned, let’s look at some of the basic ingredients of some of the most popular science-fiction and fantasy stories and compare them to what you might find in a secret agent movie.

Someone is chosen to go off on a quest to stop a great evil from causing harm to the world. They’re sent by an older, wiser person, usually an intermediary between them and a king or other such ruler. They are given some sort of special weapon which will aid them in their mission. They travel through many exotic locations, encountering strange beings, until they finally come face to face with the great evil and its frightening minions.

So was I just talking about Frodo Baggins being guided by Gandalf to put an end to Sauron’s plans, with a ring in his possession as he travels from the Shire to Rivendell and eventually to Mordor, meeting Aragorn and others along the way? Or did I mean James Bond being handed a mission by M, given a gadget-enhanced car by Q, and sent across the globe from London to Istanbul to the Caribbean to the Swiss Alps to face various henchmen with the help of a few beautiful women and Felix Leiter, until he finally confronts Blofeld in a final showdown? Or I could have meant the plot of Star Wars, or an episode of Spooks. The façade shifts, but the classic storytelling elements remain the same.

The Hero in his Prime

If you really want to narrow the types of heroes in fiction down to the least number of possible types, I’d say there are three. On one hand, you have the young hero being thrust toward destiny and fumbling his way along the path while struggling to make sense of the new point of view that’s been forced upon him. Luke Skywalker, Frodo Baggins, Harry Potter, Neo from The Matrix.

On the other hand, you have the old wizard/ guide, an older character, maybe worn out from decades of trying to keep evil in check, but possessing great experience and wisdom. Obi-wan Kenobi, Merlin, Gandalf, Van Helsing.

And then, smack in the middle of the two extremes, you have a balance between age and youth, action and experience. These are characters old enough to know how to handle a dangerous situation, but still young enough to do the fighting themselves rather than sending in a young apprentice. Captain James T. Kirk, Han Solo, Indiana Jones, and Batman, to name a few examples. This might be the sort of hero who readers and viewers most often dream of being. In the spy genre, particularly the more action-oriented espionage stories, this is the category into which many of the primary protagonists fall: James Bond, Jason Bourne, the Saint, the Mission Impossible characters, and the various lead field agents throughout the 10 year run of Spooks.

So there we have four big ideas about what might be responsible for the ongoing popularity of the spy fiction genre. As I said earlier, I hadn’t really thought about those things until I started to write this essay, but I now realize that I included all those elements in my own spy novel, the recently released Nobody Dies For Free. I hope readers of my book will enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed some of the other spy stories I’ve mentioned here today.  

Nobody Dies FCHere’s a look at the cover of Nobody Dies For Free, along with the back cover blurb.

After years of loyally serving his country in the CIA, Richard Monroe wants nothing more than early retirement and a peaceful life in Paris with the only woman he’s ever truly loved. But when an assassin’s bullet takes his happiness away, Monroe embarks on a quest to find the man responsible for the tragedy. Monroe is soon recruited back into the clandestine services, but with a difference. Now he’s a lone agent reporting to a supervisor so mysterious that the official agencies don’t even know he exists. In his new position, Monroe will deal with situations too delicate and too dangerous for the CIA or FBI to handle. On his first assignment, he discovers a connection between the mission and the criminal mastermind behind his wife’s killing. Business becomes personal again and Richard Monroe sets out to teach his enemies a brutal lesson: NOBODY DIES FOR FREE!

Nobody Dies For Free is available in print or for Kindle or Nook.

At Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Nobody-Dies-Free-Aaron-Smith/dp/1490367586/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374860949&sr=1-7

Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nobody-Dies-Free-Aaron-Smith/dp/1490367586/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374861049&sr=8-1&keywords=nobody+dies+for+free

Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/nobody-dies-for-free-aaron-smith/1115568615?ean=9781490367583

For further information on Nobody Dies For Free and all my other books, visit my Amazon author page at http://www.amazon.com/Aaron-Smith/e/B0037IL0IS/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1374366653&sr=1-2-ent

Or visit my blog at http://godsandgalaxies.blogspot.com/

 

[Vampire Month] The Rewards of Horror by Aaron Smith

06 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Vampire Month

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100000 Midnights, Aaron Smith, books, dark literature, entertainment, guest blogging, guest posts, horror, Horror writers, Musa Pubkishing, Vampires, Why write horror?


I’ve written stories in quite a lot of different genres. Mentioning any particular type of fiction gets a certain reaction, especially if the person you’re talking to is not specifically a fan of that genre. They might smile politely, they might ask if your work is comparable to a well-known book, character, or franchise in the same genre (usually Star Wars or Star Trek if you mention science fiction, Harry Potter if you talk about fantasy), or they might ask a silly question. But one genre is likely to get the strongest and strangest reactions of all. That would be horror. (To be fair, I’ve heard that erotica gets some weird reactions too, but since I haven’t written anything in that category, I can’t speak from experience, but horror has to be at least a close second.) DSC00358

Some people get excited by the revelation that I sometimes write horror. You find fans of dark literature in the most unexpected places sometimes. That’s always a pleasant surprise. But you get the opposite a lot too. Some people tilt their heads and give you a look like you just started speaking in tongues or confessed to a five-year-long murder spree that stretched across seventeen states. The most common reaction that comes from those who find it surprising that I write horror is a simple question: Why?

Most people who know me, whether they happen to be relatives, friends, coworkers, or just casual acquaintances, seem to think I’m a nice person. I try to be nice. I’m polite, have never intentionally hurt another person, and try not to offend anyone unless it happens in the process of some sort of debate (in which case I will state my opinion and speak honestly about any topic). So I can understand why some people, especially those who don’t often read horror and might have some erroneous notions about the genre, would wonder how I could want to put myself through the process of taking the darkest and most gruesome thoughts in my mind and putting them into words and eventually casting them out into the world where others can read them. Why would I go down that road?

The answer is that writing horror, and reading it too, can be a very rewarding experience. Here are some of the reasons why.

Horror brings out the best of its characters. At the core of all fiction is the responsibility of the writer to put their characters 320_7303743through hell. It’s essential in telling a story to make your characters go through tough experiences. Otherwise, what’s the point? Without struggles or difficulty or high stakes, a story is boring. In horror, the stakes are highest, lives are at risk, and the danger is turned up to maximum volume. I find that the events at the heart of my horror stories tend to break the chains of the characters’ lives, setting them free from the mundane or dull elements of life and throwing them headfirst into the unknown, which is not necessarily a bad thing to have happen to someone.

In my novel, 100,000 Midnights, the lead character, Eric, leads as boring a life as you can imagine, never really fitting in, until he gets pulled into a world he never knew existed, a world populated by vampires and other creatures of the night. He goes through a month of gruesome, dangerous, life-threatening experiences but it makes him stronger, gives him a fuller life to live, and even shows him what love truly feels like. Without the horror, where’s the story?

In my other horror novel, Chicago Fell First, which is due out around Halloween of this year, a group of strangers are brought together by a series of very horrific events and tested as hard as anyone ever is, but those who survive are, perhaps, better for having been through it.

If I’m going to bring characters to life, I might as well have them face the worst of things. If they make it to the end of the story, what they’ve learned on the way there can be looked at as having truly been earned.

A second reason that makes horror worth writing is purely selfish on the part of the writer. It provides a release, gives us a 179269709method by which to take all our darkest thoughts and most disgusting ideas and put them to good use. As we write horror, that blank page on the screen and the keyboard at our fingertips dare us to go there, dare us to not hold back, to push all our darkness out into words and lay it out there for the world to see. I’ve written scenes that have made me nauseous, and I see that as a success! I can wake up in a cold sweat after a terrible nightmare…and make something out if for which people will send me money. I think that’s a pretty good reason to write horror.

And third, and maybe this is the most important driving force behind horror writing: I hope it sometimes serves as medicine for the reader.

What I mean is that life can be pretty frightening sometimes. Turn on the news and you’ll see war, disease, crime, debates over gun control, incompetent politicians, religious fanatics, and an assortment of other awful things either happening or on the verge of happening. And that’s just the worldwide, publicized stuff. I have no idea what’s going on in the personal lives of anyone reading my books. They might be facing illnesses, worrying about money, going through a hard ending to a relationship, or struggling through any of a number of types of hardships. Just as hearing a happy song can make a broken heart ache even more, but a sad one can make you feel like somebody somewhere understands just how you feel, I hope getting lost, even for a short time, in a world filled with monsters can dull the pain of real life just a bit. Scared of life’s terrors? Maybe the best medicine can be reading about somebody else having a worse time. Maybe the exaggerated, dramatic experiences of the teenagers fleeing the homicidal maniac or the victim about to be bled dry by the vampire or the citizens of Chicago on the run from hordes of zombies can do for the frightened reader what the deepest blues music does for the brokenhearted lover. I hope that’s the case.

So for anyone who’s mystified about why a seemingly nice guy would want to write about some of the worst things imaginable, there are a few good reasons. I hope that answers the question.

***

Aaron Smith can’t stand to go a day without writing. He’s the author of more than twenty-five published stories in genres including mystery, horror, science fiction, and fantasy. He has written stories featuring well-known characters such as Sherlock Holmes and Allan Quatermain. His novels include Gods and Galaxies, Season of Madness, and, most recently, 100,000 Midnights.

Information about his work can be found on his blog, Gods and Galaxies,  or his Amazon page.

 

[Vampire Month] Aaron Smith Interview

04 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Vampire Month

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000 Midnights, 100, Aaron Smith, Arthur Conan Doyle, Batman, Blood Oath, Bram Stoker, Chicago, Christopher Farnsworth, Dracula, Gene Colan, Jeremy Brett, Kim Newman, New Jersey, New York, Roger Zelazny, Sherlock Holmes, The President's Vampire, Thundarr the Barbarian, Vampire, Vampires


The first Vampire month victim for this year is Aaron Smith

Aaron Smith can’t stand to go a day without writing. He’s the author of more than twenty-five published stories in genres including mystery, horror, science fiction, and fantasy. He has written stories featuring well-known characters such as Sherlock Holmes and Allan Quatermain. His novels include Gods and Galaxies, Season of Madness, and, most recently, 100,000 Midnights.DSC00358

Information about his work can be found on his blog or his Amazon page.

1) What is the earliest memory you have of writing? What did you write about?

I seem to have always had this habit of wanting to participate in whatever fictional world I was enjoying at any particular time. When I was a kid, even a very small boy of 5 or 6, and I discovered characters that I liked, I wasn’t satisfied that a book or movie or series of stories was all there was. I had to continue the story, so I started to write my own versions of those characters. I remember being in the second grade and not paying attention to what the teacher was saying and sitting there trying to write an Indiana Jones novel. I made my own comic books, writing Batman or Spider-Man stories and drawing them. I spent hours and hours of my childhood writing fan fiction (although at the time I didn’t know it was called that) about Star Wars and Sherlock Holmes and James Bond. When I was in the Cub Scouts, which would have made me about 8 or 9 at the time, we had to do a skit in front of all the parents and I wrote a Star Trek episode for the project. Of course, I cast myself as Captain Kirk!

2) When did you decide to become a professional writer? Why did you take this step?

Looking back on it now, it seems ridiculous that it took me until about five years ago to decide to really push myself to pursue writing as a career. I started writing for my own satisfaction very early in life, but kept leaning toward other creative endeavours through my teenage years and my twenties. I tried visual art, music, acting, and had fun with all those things but none of them were quite right for me. In my late twenties, I rediscovered comics, which is a medium that I loved as a child. I tried to get work writing them and while I enjoyed it I found that it’s an industry that’s very, very difficult to break into. My getting back to prose writing was an offshoot of that, and the main reason I ended up sticking with writing and taking it more seriously is that I had a wonderful early success that encouraged me. I discovered a company called Airship 27 Productions {http://robmdavis.com/Airship27Hangar/airship27hangar.html} that published new stories (in novels and anthologies) featuring classic characters from old pulp fiction. I sent them a writing sample and they liked it and wanted me to write for them. I had just started my first story for them, about an old pulp vigilante called the Black Bat, when the editor contacted me and asked if I’d want to put the Black Bat on hold and do something for a Sherlock Holmes anthology instead. I was stunned, in the best possible way, and I said yes. Sherlock Holmes is my all-time favourite fictional character and to have a Holmes story as my first published work really was a dream come true. That book came out and had some nice reviews and sold well. After an amazing experience like that, I knew I could never turn back. Writing was what I would do for the rest of my life. That was about five years ago and I’m happy I stuck with it. Of course, it hasn’t all been as easy as that first step. Writing, for anybody, has its ups and downs. I’ve had my share of rejections, every review hasn’t been great, and some books sell better than others. Writing can have you high and happy one minute and drop you into a pit of despair the next, but it’s what I do now and I’m glad I took that step when I did.

3) What would you consider to be your greatest strength as a writer? What about your greatest weakness? How do you overcome this weakness?

I’d have to say that my greatest strength as a writer is my versatility. I love all forms of storytelling and I refuse to stick to just one genre. This has allowed me to try writing about many different things and I’m equally comfortable with most of them. I’ve written Victorian-era mysteries and modern police procedurals, science fiction, fantasy, superheroes, spy stories, World War I aviation stories, a western. And even within a genre, I like to try different styles. For example, my vampire novel 100,000 Midnights, while containing some pretty gruesome scenes, is also, I hope, a fun experience for the reader with some humour and romance in the story to balance all the blood and fear; but I’ve also written some horror that’s made me a little queasy while writing it, some brutally nasty splatterpunk-level stuff. I don’t think there’s any genre I wouldn’t be willing to try writing in if given the opportunity.

As for a weakness in my writing, a very bad habit I used to have (and hopefully have conquered) was being too verbose, going on for too long while explaining the way a character felt, or inserting too much background information all at once. I had a brutally honest editor help me with this and I’ll always be grateful for that. What I had to do to fix this habit was learn to trust my ability to get the point across efficiently, and learn to trust the intelligence of the reader and their ability to get the point without having to be hit over the head with it a dozen times! Once I let go of the insecurity of not fully trusting my skills, I could see the difference by watching the word count drop as I trimmed away excess clutter in a story. It was amazing to see how much fat could be cut away and still leave a good story in place.

4) Tell us about the place where you live. Have you ever derived any inspiration from your home or from anywhere you have visited?

I live in Ringwood, New Jersey, which is a beautiful quiet area with mountains and woods but still close enough to the major highways to not be too out of the way. It’s a perfect place for a writer to live because it’s so peaceful. I’ve lived my whole life in Passaic County, which has amazing variety. I grew up in the city of Paterson, which is very urban with both good sections and bad areas, so I learned what city life is like. Then I lived a few years in the town of Wayne, which is more suburban, then went back to the city and life in a small apartment when I got married, and then finally bought the house I live in now where it’s more a country environment. That’s the great thing about New Jersey: so many different kinds of areas so close together. Any kind of inspiration is only a short drive away. As far as being inspired by other places I’ve visited, sure. I’m close to New York City, but I dislike going there as it’s too crowded and expensive to get in and out of. As far as major U.S. cities go, I really prefer Chicago, which is big but not so congested. I’ve been inspired, in one way or another, by almost any place I’ve visited. There are always things to see and people to observe. The changes are the best thing. When I was growing up or later living in that small apartment, there was rarely a moment when I couldn’t hear people outside or car horns honking. Now it’s quiet here in the mountains and if I look out the back door there’s a good chance I’ll see a deer walking by.

5) Which book, if any, would you consider to be your greatest influence and inspiration?

51hKI8Sq6DL._SS500_I’m going to cheat on this question and name three books because each one means something different to me in a very important way and each has had an influence on my writing. The first would be The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I first found Holmes via the wonderful Jeremy Brett TV adaptations. When my grandfather heard I’d developed an interest in the great detective, he dug out his personal copy of the complete Holmes and gave it to me for Christmas. It’s a beautiful edition printed in 1938 and it’s still the copy I reach for when I want to reread those stories or do some research. Since Holmes is my favourite character of all and I’ve done some published work about him, that book obviously had an impact.

Second would be Roger Zelazny’s Creatures of Light and Darkness. That book just blew me away. I don’t think any other book has been written in quite that style. It really showed me that an author doesn’t necessarily have to follow the rules to successfully tell a great story. It was inspirational in that way, though I could never write anything similar to that since my style is too straightforward and I prefer to just tell the story rather than try literary acrobatics or mind-bending tricks.

And third, since this interview focuses quite a bit on vampires, would have to be the one great vampire classic, Dracula by Bram Stoker. None of the vampire novels since would probably have been written without Stoker’s work and the novel is still chilling today. One thing that annoys me is that there still hasn’t been a completely faithful film adaptation of the book. Don’t get me wrong; I like many of the screen Draculas, including the movies starring Christopher Lee and Bela Lugosi, but they’ve never done a proper version. The closest, I think, was the 1977 BBC version with Louis Jourdan as the count, but even that one made some major changes to the story and its characters. To anyone who hasn’t read the novel, I’d advise them to put aside what they think they know about Dracula, forget the movies, and allow Stoker’s words to carry them deeper and deeper into one of the best nightmares ever put on paper.

6) What drove you to write about Vampires?

It was inevitable that I’d eventually write something about vampires, as they’ve been present in my imagination since I was very young. My grandmother told me bedtime stories about Dracula when I was four or five years old! That may have given me nightmares, but it did give a nice little spark to my imagination too, for which I’ll always be grateful. She also told me about Jack the Ripper at about the same time, gory details and all, though she left out the fact that his victims were prostitutes (it’s that old “violence is all right, but we can’t discuss sex” attitude!).

And after I understood what a vampire is, they seemed to show up all over the place when I was a kid. One of my first comic books was a Batman story, drawn by the incredible Gene Colan, which ended on a cliffhanger with Batman having been bitten by a vampire. Then there was the space vampires episode of the old Buck Rodgers TV show and I have vague memories of vampires being mentioned on an old cartoon called Thundarr the Barbarian. It always thrilled and frightened me to see or hear of vampires in any sort of fiction in those early years.

Later, as I got older, I always sought out vampire fiction. I read Dracula for the first time, tried some Anne Rice but wasn’t crazy about it, read the works of Kim Newman and other vampire writers, and discovered the Marvel Comics series Tomb of Dracula by the aforementioned Gene Colan. Eventually, I wrote two vampire stories for a magazine and those were later re-edited into the first few chapters of 100,000 Midnights.

7) What do you think is the attraction for Vampire fiction? Why is it such a popular topic?

I think vampire fiction works on two different levels. On one hand, vampires are, obviously, scary. They drink blood, violating the body by piercing the flesh with fangs. If you really think about that, it’s quite disturbing, although the trend toward heroic and sexy and nice vampires seems to have made some people forget about that.

On the other hand, I think we all sometimes fantasize about being a monster of some sort. There is a certain appeal to mythological creatures or monsters and we can’t help but dream of what it might be like to possess that power and live in that strange world of shadow and mystery. The vampire, of all the classic horror creatures, is probably the most appealing in that sense. Zombies are rotting and mindless, being a werewolf requires a dramatic change in appearance, Frankenstein’s monster is a collection of sewn-together pieces…but the vampire is still, more or less, humanoid in shape and possesses powers that could be, under the right circumstances, a lot of fun to have! So I think vampires can be either something we fear or something we’d like to be, or maybe both at the same time.

8) In a fight between all the greatest Vampires of fiction, who do you think would come out on top?

Recently, I read the first two books in an excellent new series by Christopher Farnsworth, Blood Oath and The President’s Vampire. These books feature a character named Nathaniel Cade who works as a secret agent for the United States government. The story behind how Farnsworth got the idea for the series is based on a real historical incident and is quite fascinating. President Andrew Johnson, in 1867, commuted the death sentence of a man accused of being a vampire! Farnsworth bases his novels on the idea that maybe the accused really was a vampire and he was put to work for the government. The series takes place in the modern age and Cade’s been working for the US presidents, one after another, for over 100 years, battling supernatural threats. I’d give Cade a good chance in a fight because in addition to having the strength, speed, and toughness of a vampire, he’s driven by an oath to protect his country, which makes him self-sacrificing enough that he’d have an edge over someone like Dracula who would tend to be more driven by the lust for power and self-preservation. Imagine the powers of the vampire, combine with the experience and skills of a warrior who’s been fighting for his country for over a century, and you have a pretty impressive combination.

9) What about in some other contest such as sexiness or dress sense? Who would win that one?

As far as dress sense goes, I’ve always thought it made more sense for a vampire to dress in clothing typical to whatever time period the story takes place in. Even if a vampire is, say, 500 years old, I think he or she, if intelligent, would adapt to changing styles in order to better blend in and survive, so I’m not a big fan of vampires who refuse to change with the times. On the topic of sexiness, some very attractive vampires that come to mind would be Deborah Ann Woll as Jessica on True Blood and Kate Beckinsale in the Underworld films.

10) How well do you think one of your characters would fare against the winner(s) of the above?

Well Siobhan, the main female vampire in 100,000 Midnights is just as sexy as the two characters I mentioned, at least as I see her when I write about her.

As far as a fight goes, Siobhan is tough, but she’s small and not as strong as some bigger, older vampires, so she’d have a hard time fighting Dracula or Nathaniel Cade. If any of my vampires would have a good chance in a fight against them, it would have to be Siobhan’s friend Phillip. He’s bigger, stronger, a little older, and has a serious mean streak when he needs it. He’s also had a very tough179269709 past, which will be revealed in the next book in the series.

11) Tell us the basic premise behind your latest novel.

100,000 Midnights focuses on a young man named Eric. He’s only in his early twenties, but he’s eccentric and fascinated by the past. He’s a loner, a bit of a hermit, working a dull job and not really going anywhere interesting in life. Then he meets Siobhan, a female vampire who looks about 18 but is really almost 300 years old. Siobhan is about to go through a coming of age called the Eldering, at which point a vampire matures and gains enhanced powers. The problem is, when a vampire reaches this point in their afterlife, they tend to be attacked by a strange race of artificial angels, created at some point in the past, designed to seek out and destroy young vampires. But these angels are, so the legend says, forbidden from harming humans. Siobhan finds Eric and asks him to help her survive the Eldering. That’s the beginning of the story and the rest follows the two of them through a month of events during which they face a number of supernatural threats. It’s a story of change, as Eric discovers that there are many things out there in the shadows, dangerous things of which most humans in the modern world know nothing. Eric has to learn, very quickly, to adapt in order to face some pretty horrible events. It’s also a story about two beings from very different worlds encountering each other and trying to figure out how their lives fit together.

Writing 100,000 Midnights was an exercise in putting together a lot of different influences and ideas that have been with me for a long time. Eric was based, at least at first, on my personality, but he grew into someone else the further I went into the story. And there are little tributes in the book too, elements that have similarities to some of the stories I’ve enjoyed reading over the years while still being different because they’re filtered through my particular style of writing. In many ways, the novel is my love letter to things like the Universal horror movies, some of the works of HG Wells, elements of the works of Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley, and even old Archie comics!

And I’m very happy to be able to report that there will be a sequel. The contract is signed, the book is written, and the editing process is about to begin any day now. So the second book in the series is tentatively scheduled for release in late summer of 2013.

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