Meghan: Hi, Kenneth. It’s been awhile since we sat down together. What’s been going on since we last spoke?
Kenneth W. Cain: Yes, it has, and thank you so much for having me again. It’s been a busy year, not unlike last year, but different. I’ve taken on more editorial work as of late, working for some new publishers like In Your Face Publishing and Silver Shamrock Publishing. There’s some good opportunities coming for writers out there, so stay tuned.
Meghan: Who are you outside of writing?
Kenneth W. Cain: That’s a difficult question, as I’m not sure I really know anymore. I’ve been doing a bit of soul-searching on that question as of late, actually. I like to think I’m a good listener, in part because I care about most everyone I meet. I’m a bit of a bleeding heart, and I believe in treating people as I would have them treat me, so I strive to respect people, even when that favor isn’t returned. I guess I’m just a bit of an old hippie.
Meghan: How do you feel about friends and close relatives reading your work?
Kenneth W. Cain: Nervous. I’ve made huge strides in my writing career, yet that has never changed. I often feel ashamed of my writing, that it’s lacking too much, that I’m a hack. It’s quite difficult to turn that off, the critic, but that’s likely also part of why I’m making those leaps to begin with.
Meghan: Is being a writer a gift or a curse?
Kenneth W. Cain: Well, it’s both. It takes a lot of talent to write something good, so I have the utmost respect for anyone who does. But it’s not a great paying gig, so in that respect it’s a curse. And people can fling a 1-star review at you in seconds, after months (maybe years) of hard work. Also, it’s hard to turn off. I’m ALWAYS thinking about writing. ALWAYS.
Meghan: How has your environment and upbringing colored your writing?
Kenneth W. Cain: I grew up in more of sports-related family. It was expected I would be playing Major League Baseball by now, but that wasn’t in the cards for one reason or another. I guess I’m lucky I took an interest in writing when I did, or I might not have that to rely on. It’s been the best job I’ve had, though my boss is always nagging me. ☺
Meghan: What’s the strangest thing you have ever had to research for your books?
Kenneth W. Cain: I was actually just thinking about this the other day. Someone asked on Facebook or Twitter and it got me thinking. I’m not really sure. I’ve researched an ungodly amount of harrowing topics, but perhaps my research on Nazi Germany was the most terrifying. I wouldn’t say strange—not at first—but things pop up that shock the hell out of you. Then, next thing you know, you’re diving down a rabbit hole for hours on end, jotting notes about this and that, wondering if there’s a story there.
Meghan: Which do you find the hardest to write: the beginning, the middle, or the end?
Kenneth W. Cain: The beginning. Most stories start in the wrong place, so that’s the first challenge.
Meghan: Do you outline? Do you start with characters or plot? Do you just sit down and start writing? What works best for you?
Kenneth W. Cain: I’m a pantser, so I’m always flying by the seat of my pants. That means I know as much as the reader, and I do think that helps me determine whether a scene is working or not at times.
Meghan: What do you do when characters don’t follow the outline/plan?
Kenneth W. Cain: I celebrate. Tear down the walls. Draw outside of the lines. Be different. It’s a lot like real life, unpredictable at times, as it should be. We should celebrate our differences. Grow from them. Same with our characters.
Meghan: What do you do to motivate yourself to sit down and write?
Kenneth W. Cain: I sit and write. Nothing more to it. Though, without my morning coffee, I might be lost.
Meghan: Are you an avid reader?
Kenneth W. Cain: Slow, but yes. I’m always listening to podcasts that have stories or audiobooks, or reading my Kindle, and I’m typically editing at least one book by another writer, so there’s that too. I wish I was a faster reader though, because I’m ungodly slow, and my TBR pile is through the roof.
Meghan: What kind of books do you absolutely love to read?
Kenneth W. Cain: I like reading in my genre mostly, but I like self-help books and Sci-Fi. Space operas and such.
Meghan: How do you feel about movies based on books?
Kenneth W. Cain: Some work, most don’t. People will crucify me for this, but I thought The Count of Monte Cristo was better than the book. Same with The Postman.
Meghan: Have you ever killed a main character?
Kenneth W. Cain: Too often, I suppose. Sometimes, you don’t have a choice. I’m currently shopping a novel where the main characters all die somewhere in the middle of the story. Don’t worry. It will make sense when you finally read it.
Meghan: Do you enjoy making your characters suffer?
Kenneth W. Cain: Absolutely. Suffering is part of life. It’s part of growth. We learn from our mistakes. Our characters are no different.
Meghan: What’s the weirdest character concept that you’ve ever come up with?
Kenneth W. Cain: I recently wrote a flash piece from the POV of a tree. I guess that’s kind of strange.
Meghan: What’s the best piece of feedback you’ve ever received? What’s the worst?
Kenneth W. Cain: I’ve had a lot of great writers pay me compliments, and that’s been humbling. Very much so. But I try not to focus on those things, as they can distract from growing as a writer. But if I had to pick one, it was being compared to Matheson. I mean, that’s pretty awesome for me. Not so much for him.
The worst was an early rejection that informed me I should never write again. And I almost listened to her, too. Her rejection has a lot to do with how I carry myself in this industry now. It was a highly unprofessional response.
Meghan: What do your fans mean to you?
Kenneth W. Cain: I love to hear from them. Love to get notes, reviews, blog posts. It’s overwhelming. I’m completely honored anyone is taking the time to read my writing.
Meghan: If you could steal one character from another author and make them yours, who would it be and why?
Kenneth W. Cain: Ig from Joe Hill’s Horns. He’s just a well-rounded character. I feel like I really got to know him better than most characters.
Meghan: If you could write the next book in a series, which one would it be, and what would you make the book about?
Kenneth W. Cain: Koontz’s Frankenstein series. First off, I LOVE the original. Shelley was a master. Second, it’s an awesome series with some really cool concepts.
Meghan: If you could write a collaboration with another author, who would it be and what would you write about?
Kenneth W. Cain: I’ve been asked to collab with a few, but haven’t gotten into it so much. It could be fun, and I’d like to try it, but the writing styles would have to gel. And the personalities. My list would be long as to who I’d like to collab with. A better question might be, who wouldn’t I want to collab with?
Meghan: What can we expect from you in the future?
Kenneth W. Cain: If I can sell everything I’m shopping around right now, you’re looking at two new short story collections, a novella, two novels, and several short stories (a couple of which have already been sold). October saw two of those short stories out, though one is a reprint for a charity anthology.
Meghan: Where can we find you?
Kenneth W. Cain: All my social media links are on my website. Check it out. Stay a while.
Meghan: Do you have any closing words for your fans or anything you’d like to say that we didn’t get to cover in this interview or the last?
Kenneth W. Cain: Mostly, thank you for having me… again. And to all my readers, I’d say what I always say: Pleasant nightmares.
Kenneth W. Cain is a prolific author with four novels, four short story collections, four novellas, and several children’s books among his body of work. He is the editor for Crystal Lake Publishing‘s Tales From the Lake Volume 5 and When the Clock Strikes 13. The winner of the 2017 Silver Hammer Award, Cain is an active member of the Horror Writer’s Association, as well as a volunteer for the membership committee and chair of the Pennsylvania chapter. Cain resides in Chester County, Pennsylvania with his wife and two children.
Meghan: Hi, Mark. Welcome to Meghan’s House of Books. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Mark Slade: Not a whole lot to tell. Been writing off and on my entire life. I am the author of A Six Gun & the Queen of Light, Blackout City Confidential, Witch for Hire (An Evelina Giles book), and Mr. Zero (A Barry London Novel). I also write and produce audio dramas Blood Noir and Daniel Dread.
Meghan: What are five things most people don’t know about you?
Mark Slade: Those secrets are buried with anyone who knows them! I don’t know. I think people know a little more than I want them to, but I can’t shut up. Well, my favorite movie isn’t Crime or fantasy or horror related. It’s a British film about WWII called Hope & Glory. John Boorman film. People may not know that. I am controlled by a Chihuahua through his psychic powers. I’m a Brit TV enthusiast. I love British Television programs, especially old ones. I’m a huge Dallas Cowboys fan, but I think the world knows that. I’m also a jazz fan, but I love Rock n Roll. Guitar music, big Waylon Jennings/outlaw country fan… You know, I don’t think many people know I like Sade’s music.
Meghan: What is the first book you remember reading?
Mark Slade: Where the Wild things Are. I saw a guy on PBS reading parts of it. I loved the art. But he left the ending. I think I got it from a school library and read it or maybe thought I read it. I probably made up my own story in my head. Second book, was an issue of Spider-Man. The death of Gwen Stacy, I think. Holy cow, it brought me to tears.
Meghan: What are you reading now?
Mark Slade: Jim Thompson’s After Dark, My Sweet. And a biography of Ross Macdonald. Ross Macdonald was another writer that has cast a HUGE shadow over my life. Everywhere I go, his stories stay with me.
Meghan: What’s a book you really enjoyed that others wouldn’t expect you to have liked?
Mark Slade: Well, when my sister was reading Anne of Green Gables, I read it, too. I really liked it even though I wasn’t a young girl. Just a good story.
Meghan: What made you decide you want to write? When did you begin writing?
Mark Slade: Well, like I said before, I attempted when I was ten after that TZ episode. But at 14 I saw a movie on Elvira, Mistress of the Dark and thought “Yeah, I can do better than that!” So I wrote a story about a father who threw his kids down a well. Naw, I couldn’t do better than that.
Meghan: Do you have a special place you like to write?
Mark Slade: Convenient place is more like it. Dining room, Dining room table.
Meghan: Do you have any quirks or processes that you go through when you write?
Mark Slade: I think about what I’m writing way too much. Takes over my life. I also try to listen to music that might inspire stories and characters.
Meghan: What books have most inspired you? Who are some authors that have inspired your writing style?
Mark Slade: Definitely Richard Matheson, Ed McBain, and Ross Macdonald. Sparse style, lots of dialogue. Get to the story as quick as possible. Writers I see in print now that I am influenced by a lot are Paul D. Brazill, ever since I discovered his story Drunk on the Moon – I’ve always wanted to write a story as good as that – and G. Wayne Miller. Everything he has written, non-fiction, or fiction, especially We Who Are His Followers. Great stuff.
Meghan: What do you think makes a good story?
Mark Slade: Let the characters tell the story. Who cares about literature or styles of putting words on a paper. Lit, that’s a made up marketing tool. Best stories and writers come from the pulps. No lie.
Meghan: What does it take for you to love a character? How do you utilize that when creating your characters?
Mark Slade: Flaws. If they are truly a well-rounded character they can’t be completely a good person all the time, nor a bad person.
Meghan: Which, of all your characters, do you think is the most like you?
Mark Slade: Oh, crap! I hope none of them! They do some awful things. Might be some interests that are the same, other than that, none.
Meghan: Are you turned off by a bad cover? To what degree were you involved in creating your book covers?
Mark Slade: No. Not at all. If the plot on the back interests me, I’ll read it.
Meghan: What has been the hardest scene for you to write so far?
Mark Slade: Ah man. Some sex scenes are hard, or they were. Now its not as big a deal. I think in my new book it’s a scene The Klu Klux Klan chase somebody. And its set in 1956. That was tough.
Meghan: What makes your books different from others out there in this genre?
Mark Slade: That I do not know. We all feed off each other. No ego or lack of can change that. I just want people to like or give my stories a chance.
Meghan: What makes you feel more fulfilled: Writing a novel or writing a short story?
Mark Slade: Short story is definitely an art form. I just started novels. Getting it done and hitting a word count, plus making the story work. I write crime mysteries now. That’s a tough nut to crack.
Meghan: Tell us a little bit about your books, your target audience, and what you would like readers to take away from your stories.
Mark Slade: Not sure if I have a target audience. I’d like to have a general or mass audience, if that’s possible. Maybe people who enjoy Crime, Horror, and fantasy stories. Taking away from my stories, I think good characters. I hope. A story that sticks to your ribs, like good food. A story they’ll never forget.
Meghan: Can you tell us about some of the deleted scenes/stuff that got left out of your work?
Mark Slade: For Blackout city Confidential, two scripts and one story was left out and some artwork by Lissanne Lake. Lots of murders, lots of great art left in the cold. Too bad.
Meghan: What is in your “trunk”?
Mark Slade: A collection of all my short stories would be nice. One huge book. In the audio drama world, I’d like to do two projects: One an adaption of the Lew Archer books or Ed MacBain’s 87th Precinct. That would be really great. Another, Dangerous Duos, would be the title where unlikely fictional/or historical characters get involved in some sort of action story. The other part of the series would to take fictional characters who would go together and have adventures, like Mrs. Peel and Honey West. Or in the case of real people, Bruce Lee and John Holmes break up a white slavery ring. Or Jim Brown and Truman Capote investigate Ted Bundy.
Meghan: What can we expect from you in the future?
Mark Slade: I have a book being edited by Next Chapter called Strange Corridors. Illustrated by Cameron Hampton. Its about a little girl taken by a mysterious Jester into weird lands. And I’m writing a book called Yardbird about a man doing the bidding of an oil tycoon, such as investigate murders, blackmail payoffs, get rid of dead bodies.
Barry London is a Fixer by trade, lent out by his boss to other crime lords. He is sent to his hometown of Geneva, New Jersey to deal with corrupt cops at war with each other over a missing video, dealing with an ex-girlfriend who happens to be a cop, the wife of a good friend who also wants to sleep with him, both looking to tame the wild and rough London. On top of all that, London finds himself looking several murders and Firebug who torched a nightclub. The key to it all is cracking the mystery of Mr. Zero.
Do you need a potion? How about a spell? Maybe… murder someone? Evelina Giles is a witch chosen by magic, just like her father. She operates a shop in a sleepy college town in Virginia. When a businessman approaches Evelina for a spell so he can steal a project from his boss, Evelina’s practical joke turns deadly. Or did it? Now, along with her assistant Mungo and her Journalist-friend Jeanie, Evelina must investigate not one, but multiple murders.
Meghan: Hi, David! Welcome to the new blog… and welcome back to the Halloween Extravaganza. It’s been awhile since we sat down together. What’s been going on since we last spoke?
David A. Riley: Not so much writing, though I have turned to it once more in the last few months. I have concentrated on publishing books by other people through Parallel Universe Publications, and spent a lot of time working on one particular project, which was a large art book for my friend Jim Pitts. The Fantastical Art of Jim Pitts, which is available as a limited-edition hardback and, more recently, as a two-volume soft cover. This was a major project for me, involving an investment in a new, more powerful computer to handle all the graphics and some rather expensive software. It was very time consuming too as each page had to be designed individually. I also branched out into publishing hardcover book collections, including Fishhead: The Darker Tales of Irvin S. Cobb, which was another labour of love, involving a lot of research and copying out a great many stories.
Meghan: Who are you outside of writing?
David A. Riley: Gardener, cook, reader, film and theatre-goer. I now have three grandchildren, which is fantastic.
Meghan: How do you feel about friends and close relatives reading your work?
David A. Riley: I love it, though I don’t go out of my way looking for favourable comments about it, as I know it’s unlikely I’ll get a completely honest appraisal – except from my wife, who is totally honest and whose judgement I know I can rely on.
Meghan: Is being a writer a gift or a curse?
David A. Riley: I don’t regard it as either, except when I am struggling with a particular story – then it’s definitely a curse, especially if I become convinced that whatever skills I might have once had have deserted me! I think that’s a not uncommon feeling, though.
Meghan: How has your environment and upbringing colored your writing?
David A. Riley: Though I don’t write specifically about this in everything I turn my hand to, there are quite a few things I have written that reflect my upbringing in Lancashire, in an industrial town. On the other hand, I have written a number of stories set in the United States, including New York, which I am assured read convincingly even though I have never visited the States. It’s good to have your roots as an influence, but a mistake to be shackled to them all the time. A writer should be able to use their imagination and what they have learned, either through travel, reading, films and TV, to branch out.
Meghan: What’s the strangest thing you have ever had to research for your books?
David A. Riley: Strange for the UK: guns, as handguns are illegal here. I did quite a bit of research into the handguns used by the Mossad, as one of my characters always used one in his role as a gangland enforcer in London. I first learned of them from a friend who had a genuine but deactivated Beretta .22.
Meghan: Which do you find the hardest to write: the beginning, the middle, or the end?
David A. Riley: The beginning. That has to grab me first of all or I find I very quickly lose the incentive to go on. I must have characters from the outset I can believe in and with whom have some empathy. If they’re just cardboard cutouts I can’t go on. They bore me. And if I’m bored, what can I expect from any potential readers?
Meghan: Do you outline? Do you start with characters or plot? Do you just sit down and start writing? What works best for you?
David A. Riley: I don’t outline. I do work from the characters to start with, and I prefer to have some sort of vague plot in mind, but I find the best ideas come while I’m writing, which sometimes veers off quite a lot from what I intended. The characters and their predicaments do have a tendency to take over, which in my view is as it should be.
Meghan: What do you do when characters don’t follow the outline/plan?
David A. Riley: Hope I can maneuver things towards a proper story in the end. That doesn’t always happen – and that story will remain on my computer, unresolved. Sometimes I can take a look at it again some time later and things suddenly start to work out. Sometimes, though, they don’t.
Meghan: What do you do to motivate yourself to sit down and write?
David A. Riley: Feel in the mood to start with. I don’t think I can force myself. That doesn’t work for me. I wish it did. I would probably write a lot more if that happened.
Meghan: Are you an avid reader?
David A. Riley: I read every day, though not as much as I would like. I used to read a lot more when I was younger. On the other hand, we have a holiday home in the country where we have only limited internet and even more limited TV where I spend a lot of time reading. I was there last week and got through three rather hefty novels. And loved them.
Meghan: What kind of books do you absolutely love to read?
David A. Riley: Novels in particular. Though I mainly write short stories, I am not as big a reader of these as I used to be. I have also found that my tastes have altered over the years and I must admit I don’t like a lot of new short stories. I now love crime fiction and historical novels, particularly writers like Ian Rankin, Michael Connelly, and Simon Scarrow. I also like crime novels that veer towards supernatural horror, like John Connolly, who is one of the best writers in horror today. I have also started to reread a lot of books I first came across many years ago, like Ray Bradbury, Agatha Christie, and Robert Bloch.
Meghan: How do you feel about movies based on books?
David A. Riley: I am particularly keen to see more movies based on books, if only because that will take us away from the obsession with remaking old movies with inferior ones. On the other hand, it is saddening to see some great books rendered into poor movies because someone thought that making major changes would improve on the original – something that rarely ever happens. A lot of film makers seem to have a poor idea of storytelling and it’s disheartening to see a great book butchered by someone who wrongly thought they knew better than the original writer.
Meghan: Have you ever killed a main character?
David A. Riley: Frequently. That’s a common fate in my short stories especially. In my novels not so much so, though I did have one main character who at the end commits suicide because that was really the only option left open to him.
Meghan: Do you enjoy making your characters suffer?
David A. Riley: Not particularly, and often I do feel sad about this – which I hope the reader feels too! If they do, I have at least made them feel some empathy towards the character in question, which means I also managed to make that character believable.
Meghan: What’s the weirdest character concept that you’ve ever come up with?
David A. Riley: A heroic but nevertheless barbaric goblin – the main character of my only fantasy novel, Goblin Mire. Mickle Gorestab is old, irascible but unflinchingly courageous – and stoutly convinced of the rightness of his cause: the reestablishment of a Goblin Empire. I really loved this character for all his faults.
Meghan: What’s the best piece of feedback you’ve ever received? What’s the worst?
David A. Riley: The best was from Otto Penzler. When interviewed about his anthology Zombies! Zombies! Zombies, he was asked “If a reader has an opportunity to read only one story from Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!, which one would you recommend?” He would recommend two: “…the stories that jump to mind are Seabrook’s “Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields” because it’s such a comprehensive introduction in the genre, and David A. Riley’s “After Nightfall” because it is, holy moley, so damned scary.”
The worst is a review of my only fantasy novel, Goblin Mire, which simply stated: “Terrible. Everything about this[sic] book is terrible. I’d write more but I’d be wasting both of ours’ time…”
Meghan: If you could steal one character from another author and make them yours, who would it be and why?
David A. Riley: John Connolly’s Charlie Parker. He is such a great character. But he would be wasted on me. I couldn’t use him anything like as well as Connolly.
Meghan: If you could write the next book in a series, which one would it be, and what would you make the book about?
David A. Riley: I am not sure. I have never been keen on retreading the same ground and have only once (after much badgering by a friend) written to sequel to any of my stories, so the idea of doing a series doesn’t necessarily appeal to me. The nearest I have come is in using the same settings, as in Grudge End, where I have set a few of my stories and also my novel The Return. It’s my English version of Arkham or Dunwich.
Meghan: If you could write a collaboration with another author, who would it be and what would you write about?
David A. Riley: I have tried a couple of times to write a collaboration with another writer, but it didn’t work out. I don’t think I would ever be tempted quite honestly.
Meghan: What can we expect from you in the future?
David A. Riley: Hard to say. I hope to get at least one more novel finished. I have several which are part written, one with about 60k words, another with 40k. I would like to get a few more science fiction stories completed. I have always felt I should have written more SF. My first love when I first started writing was SF and I actually did complete a SF novel, now lost completely. I kind of stumbled into writing horror because I found SF more difficult. Then again, I started writing about the same time that the New Wave started in the late sixties under Moorcock and New Worlds, and I didn’t really gel with all that. I was overjoyed when I had a science fiction story published some years ago in Aboriginal Science Fiction.
Meghan: Do you have any closing words for your fans or anything you’d like to say that we didn’t get to cover in this interview or the last?
David A. Riley: The most important thing is to support writing and writers. And to try and give your favourite writers some kind of positive feedback, especially those who have never been fortunate enough to have achieved best selling status, as this is the only kind of thing to give them a boost and encourage them to write more. I am a great believer in the written word and, though there is far more fame and glory these days in TV and films, a well-written book or story still has far, far more to offer. If films and TV disappeared tomorrow, I could live with it. If books did, I couldn’t.
Picture 1: David A. Riley — Picture 2: David A. Riley, with his friend, fantasy artist, Jim Pitts
It was never going to be easy to return for one last look at the streets where he spent his childhood years. Even knowing this, Gary still felt he had to make the effort, just this once, to see if they were really as bad as he remembered. In a few months demolition was due to start on Grudge End… When Gary Morgan travels north to lie low after a gangland shooting in London, a childhood friend is violently maimed within hours of his arrival. Decades after escaping the blight of his hometown, he finds himself ensnared in a place he hates more than any other.Feuding families, bloodthirsty syndicates, and hostile forces older than mankind all play a role in the escalating chaos surrounding Gary Morgan. Now he must unravel the mysteries of Grudge End and his own past or meet his doom in the grip of an ancient, unimaginable evil.
Elm Tree House had a sinister history but few realised the true demonic power that lurked within its forbidding depths till it was taken over by a cult determined to make use of its horrendous secret.
Many years have passed since Elves defeated and killed the last Goblin king. Now the Goblins are growing stronger in their mire, and Mickle Gorestab, one of the few remaining veterans of that war, is determined they will fight once more, this time aided by a renegade Elf who has delved into forbidden sorcery and hates his kind even more than his Goblin allies. Murder, treachery and the darkest of all magics follow in a maelstrom of blood, violence and unexpected alliances. Facing up to the cold cruelty of the Elves, Mickle Gorestab stands out as the epitome of grim, barbaric heroism, determined to see the wrongs of his race avenged and a restoration of the Goblin King.
There’s a serial killer at loose in London. Janice, who has a chronic fear of the dark, stumbles into a relationship with the man who may secretly be the murderer. Neither know that in the North of England, in a place previously owned by his dead mother, activities are taking place that may unleash a horror that could spell the end of civilisation in Britain – an ancient evil that would make the activities of any serial killer look like child’s play by comparison. Could a psychotic killer be the only man capable of ending this? Andrew Jennings is also known as David A. Riley.
David A. Riley began writing horror stories while still at school and had his first professional sale to Pan Books in 1969, which was The Lurkers in the Abyss, published in The Eleventh Pan Book of Horror Stories. This story was chosen for inclusion in The Century’s Best Horror Fiction in 2012. Over the years he has had numerous stories published in Britain and the United States plus translations into German, Spanish, Italian and Russian. His fiction has appeared in World of Horror, Fear, Whispers, Fantasy Tales, Aboriginal Science Fiction, Dark Discoveries and Lovecraft e-Zine. His first collection, His Own Mad Demons was published by Hazardous Press in 2012. The Return, a Lovecraftian horror novel was published by Blood Bound Books in 2013. This second collection brings together under one cover seventeen of the author’s best blood-curdling stories.
Their Cramped Dark World and Other Tales is David A. Riley’s third collection of short fiction, spanning 40 years of publication, from appearances in New Writings in Horror & the Supernatural #1 in 1971, to the Ninth Black Book of Horror in 2012.He has had numerous stories published by Doubleday, DAW, Corgi, Sphere, Roc, Playboy Paperbacks, Robinsons, etc., and in magazines such as Aboriginal Science Fiction, Dark Discoveries, Fear, and Fantasy Tales. His stories have been translated into Italian, German, Spanish and Russian. His Lovecraftian crime noir horror novel, The Return, was published by Blood Bound Books in 2013. His fantasy novel, Goblin Mire, was published by Parallel Universe Publications in 2015.Table of Contents Hoody (first published in When Graveyards Yawn, Crowswing Books, 2006) A Bottle of Spirits (first published in New Writings in Horror & the Supernatural 2, 1972) No Sense in Being Hungry, She Thought (first published in Peeping Tom #20, 1996) Now and Forever More (first published in The Second Black Book of Horror, 2008) Romero’s Children (first published in The Seventh Black Book of Horror, 2010) Swan Song (first published in the Ninth Black Book of Horror, 2012) The Farmhouse (first published in New Writings in Horror & the Supernatural 1, 1971) The Last Coach Trip (first published in The Eighth Black Book of Horror, 2011) The Satyr’s Head (first published in The Satyr’s Head & Other Tales of Terror, 1975) Their Cramped Dark World (first published in The Sixth Black Book of Horror, 2010).
David A. Riley’s first professionally published story was in the 11th Pan Book of Horror in 1970. Since then he has been published in numerous anthologies from ROC Books, DAW Books, Robinson Books, Corgi Books, Doubleday, Playboy Paperbacks, and Sphere. Two recent notable anthologies in which he has appeared are The Century’s Best Horror Fiction from Cemetery Dance, and Otto Pensler’s Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! from Vintage Books.In 1995, David and his wife Linden edited and published Beyond, a fantasy/SF magazine. His stories have been published in magazines such as Aboriginal Science Fiction, Dark Discoveries, Fear, Fantasy Tales and World of Horror.His Own Mad Demons contains his stories “Lock-In”, “The Worst of All Possible Places”, “The Fragile Mask on His Face”, “Their Own Mad Demons”, and “The True Spirit”.
Meghan: Hi, Jeffrey. Welcome to Meghan’s House of Books. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Jeffrey J. Mariotte: I’m a writer, obviously, but I’ve also worked in the book business in many other capacities—as a bookstore manager and bookstore owner, at various publishing companies, as an editor on staff and freelance, etc. I’ve edited novels and art books and lots of comics and graphic novels. Since 1980, I’ve made my living from words and stories and books, one way or another. I also have a family—my wife Marsheila (Marcy) Rockwell, also an author and a poet–and Holly, David, Arthur, Francis, and Max, two cats, and a dog. And a house full of books and movies and music and games.
Meghan: What are five things most people don’t know about you?
Jeffrey J. Mariotte:
1) Desperadoes, one of the comic books I created and wrote was featured on the labels of Jones Soda root beer bottles.
2) Swift, one of the comic characters I co-created (with my daughter Holly and Jim Lee’s art) became a HeroClix toy.
3) I still have a stuffed bunny rabbit that was a gift to me when I was born. There’s a zipper in his back so you can put your pajamas inside him (if you’re, like, just born and your pajamas are tiny).
4) I love bears, giant squids, lemurs, and some types of monkeys. But mostly bears.
5) I once saved a rattlesnake who’d become hopelessly tangled in a fence, which required cutting the fence very close to its mouth. But during the process, it realized I wasn’t trying to hurt it, so it relaxed and didn’t try to bite me when I was within range.
Meghan: What is the first book you remember reading?
Jeffrey J. Mariotte: Happy Birthday to You! by Dr. Seuss. Many years later, as a full-grown human, I managed a bookstore in La Jolla, CA, where Dr. Seuss lived. I only met him once, but I have a thank-you note from him framed and hanging on the wall in my office.
Meghan: What are you reading now?
Jeffrey J. Mariotte: A collection of horror short stories by Paul Tremblay called Growing Things. It’s really good.
Meghan: What’s a book you really enjoyed that others wouldn’t expect you to have liked?
Meghan: What made you decide you want to write? When did you begin writing?
Jeffrey J. Mariotte: I began when I was very young. I’d read Hardy Boys mysteries, then wrote my own very short, very derivative mysteries about brother detectives. I’m sure they were awful; fortunately, they’ve all disappeared. I started more seriously writing in high school, and was first published in college, but didn’t sell any fiction professionally until I was 33. I didn’t have a novel published until I was 44, so I guess I was a late bloomer in that regard. I’ve written more than 70 books since, though.
Meghan: Do you have a special place you like to write?
Jeffrey J. Mariotte: I usually write at the desk in my office, because it’s convenient. But I write on a laptop, so I can take it with me if I need to write elsewhere.
Meghan: Do you have any quirks or processes that you go through when you write?
Jeffrey J. Mariotte: Nothing too unusual. I like to have a solid outline, before I start, so I know where I’m going and don’t write myself into a corner. But sometimes I go without one, so that’s not an absolute requirement.
Meghan: Is there anything about writing you find most challenging?
Jeffrey J. Mariotte: Figuring out what the story is. I have a lot of books that I’ve started, then abandoned, because I realized I had one idea, or maybe a couple of them, but not enough ideas to synthesize into a whole actual book.
Meghan: What’s the most satisfying thing you’ve written so far?
Jeffrey J. Mariotte: Probably my horror novel River Runs Red. I re-read it recently, and I still think there’s a lot of really good stuff in it—interesting characters, compelling situations, satisfying and unexpected twists, etc. I’m proud of all my books, but that one stands out.
Meghan: What books have most inspired you? Who are some authors that have inspired your writing style?
Jeffrey J. Mariotte: Characters I care about who have goals I want them to achieve, and obstacles that seem likely to prevent them from achieving their goals. I like lots of suspense, an element of darkness, a bit of humor, and a fast pace.
Meghan: What does it take for you to love a character? How do you utilize that when creating your characters?
Jeffrey J. Mariotte: I like to become really immersed in a character’s world, and to know a lot about the character. The more detail I get, the more familiar with the character, the more I fall in love. Sometimes it can be done without a lot of detail, but with just the right details—think of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. We don’t know a whole lot about him, but we know just enough. But in other cases, a series character who appears in book after book, so I can learn more and more about him or her, like Parker’s Spenser or Burke’s Dave Robicheaux, can become like an old friend who I want to keep checking in on.
As for how I use that, I try to supply the important details without weighing the reader down with too much (because not everybody likes to read 600-page epics). I try to create characters who are likable but flawed, because we’re all flawed. And I try to give them something that they’re striving for, that the reader can identify with—and then put the outcome in serious doubt.
Meghan: Which, of all your characters, do you think is the most like you?
Jeffrey Mariotte: A lot of them are something like me, but none are exactly like me. I guess in some ways, Richey Krebs from my mystery/thriller Empty Rooms is like me—he’s fascinated by crime and the darkness inside the human heart, and sometimes exploring that gets him in trouble.
Meghan: Are you turned off by a bad cover? To what degree were you involved in creating your book covers?
Jeffrey J. Mariotte: I think it’s more accurate to say that I can be really turned on by a good cover. As one example, the cover by Jeff Jones to the Avon paperback edition of Roger Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber made me have to pick that up and read it, and that turned me into a lifelong fan of Zelazny. Some of Frank Frazetta’s covers have done the same for books by Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs, among others. But if a book looks promising based on the description, or what I know of the author, then a not-that-exciting cover won’t push me away.
As for my own covers, I sometimes have approval, but often I don’t see them until they’re finalized and there’s not much I can say about them at that point. On some occasions I’ve been able to help choose the cover art, but that’s a rarity in traditional publishing. I’ve had some really good luck with covers, though.
Meghan: What have you learned creating your books?
Jeffrey J. Mariotte: Again, that’s an almost impossible question, because I’ve written so many and learned so much in the process. Things I’ve learned in other aspects of life go into the books, of course, and things I learn writing books bleed into my life.
Meghan: What has been the hardest scene for you to write so far?
Jeffrey J. Mariotte: In my teen horror quartet Year of the Wicked, there’s a character who dies (there are several, but one in particular I’m referring to here—and I’m not going to name that character, because that would be a spoiler. When I was outlining the four books initially, I knew this person had to die, and the editor who bought the books bought them from the outline, so she knew it, too. But as that death got closer (I think it’s in book 3—they’re all combined in one volume now, though), the editor asked me if that character really had to go. I tried to find a way around it, but I couldn’t. Writing that death scene was really hard, because I didn’t want to do it, and my editor didn’t want to do it. But it had to be done.
Meghan: What makes your books different from others out there in this genre?
Jeffrey J. Mariotte: I write in a lot of different genres, though most of my books fall into the horror, suspense, or thriller categories. So that’s kind of a broad question, but I guess what I think makes them different is the humanity I try to put into each of my books. My characters feel real and alive, and readers care about them.
Meghan: How important is the book title, how hard is it to choose the best one, and how did you choose yours (of course, with no spoilers)?
Jeffrey J. Mariotte: Titles are very important, of course. They have to have some resonance with what’s inside the book, and ideally, they have to intrigue the casual browser. I’ve chosen titles in many different ways, sometimes spurred by song lyrics or a phrase I read somewhere. Other times they’re harder to come by and I have to dig for inspiration. Occasionally—but not very often—my title is overruled by the publisher, who chooses something better.
Meghan: What makes you feel more fulfilled: Writing a novel or writing a short story?
Jeffrey J. Mariotte: I love writing both (and comics), but writing a novel is more satisfying. As I said earlier, I like long books, in which the reader can get totally immersed in the world of the book. So writing that kind of book is an utterly fulfilling experience.
Meghan: Tell us a little bit about your books, your target audience, and what you would like readers to take away from your stories.
Jeffrey J. Mariotte: All of my books, I think, are suspenseful, compelling reads—the kind you don’t want to put down, even though it’s late and you have to work in the morning. They’re mostly thrillers or horror—or often, a mix of both elements. But I’ve also written Westerns (weird and otherwise—one of my Western short stories was a finalist for both the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America and the Peacemaker Award from the Western Fictioneers this year), fantasy, science fiction, and more. And I’ve written a lot of tie-in books, so I’ve written about Buffy and Angel, CSI, NCIS, Spider-Man, Superman, Conan, Star Trek, Narcos, etc. In fact my Narcos novel just won the prestigious Scribe Award for best original novel from the International Association of Tie-in Writers. What I like readers to take away is the idea that there’s magic in the world. Sometimes it’s hard to find it, but it’s there.
Meghan: Can you tell us about some of the deleted scenes/stuff that got left out of your work?
Jeffrey J. Mariotte: I can’t think of many that are worth mentioning—if they were deleted, there was a reason for it. I was at one time writing a CSI novel in which a member of Congress was shot. Right before my deadline, a real member of Congress—Gabby Giffords, who happened to be my representative and a friend—was shot. I called my editor and said, the book’s going to be a little late, because I’m going to have to rethink and rewrite the entire premise. I couldn’t do the book as originally planned, after that. Fortunately, he was thinking the same thing, so we were in accord.
Meghan: What is in your “trunk”?
Jeffrey J. Mariotte: For a long time, I’ve wanted to write a ghost story set in old Tucson, Arizona. In its early days, Tucson was basically a Victorian city set in the middle of the desert, surrounded by rugged country, not-always-friendly Native Americans, and various outlaws. A lot of classical ghost stories are set in Victorian England, or in East Coast cities, so the twist of this Victorian city in a completely different environment appeals to me. Hopefully, I’ll get around to it one of these days. I did recently write a different, semi-ghost story set in old Colorado, that’s a different take on part of the core idea. It’s coming in October in an anthology called Straight Outta Deadwood, from Baen Books. My wife Marcy has a terrific story in the book as well.
Meghan: What can we expect from you in the future?
Jeffrey J. Mariotte: I’m kind of playing around with a Western novel idea right now. I have a thriller out on submission, and I’m thinking about a historical, WWII-era thriller. So as usual, I’m all over the place.
Meghan: Do you have any closing words for your fans or anything you’d like to say that we didn’t get to cover in this interview?
Jeffrey J. Mariotte: 2019 is my 20th year as a working novelist. During those I’ve written more than 70 books, a couple dozen short stories, a whole mess of comics, and other things (articles, a DVD game, and more). To celebrate that anniversary, a couple of publishers have re-released some of my favorite of my novels, including The Slab, Missing White Girl, River Runs Red, Season of the Wolf, and Cold Black Hearts, all from WordFire Press, and Year of the Wicked (which was originally called Witch Season, then Dark Vengeance), from Simon & Schuster. Those have all been hard to come by, but now they’re available again. The five from WordFire are something I love to do, combining straight thriller elements—cops, spies, etc.—with elements of supernatural horror, and they’re out in hardcover, paperback, and ebook. Year of the Wicked is my teen horror, witchy girl power quartet, all in a single volume for the first time, in paperback and ebook. Getting to write all these books over the years has been a dream come true, and I really appreciate every single reader who forks over hard-earned cash to buy one. I love hearing from readers and meeting them at conventions and book festivals and signings. Writing can be a lonely business, but interacting with readers makes that all worthwhile.
Jeffrey J. Mariotte has written more than seventy books, including original supernatural thrillers River Runs Red, Missing White Girl, and Cold Black Hearts, horror epic The Slab, and the Stoker Award-nominated teen horror quartet Dark Vengeance. Other works include the acclaimed thrillers Empty Rooms and The Devil’s Bait, and—with his wife and writing partner Marsheila (Marcy) Rockwell—the science fiction thriller 7 SYKOS and Mafia III: Plain of Jars, the authorized prequel to the hit video game, as well as numerous shorter works. He has also written novels set in the worlds of Star Trek, CSI, NCIS, Narcos, Deadlands, 30 Days of Night, Spider-Man, Conan, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, and more. Two of his novels have won Scribe Awards for Best Original Novel, presented by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers.
He is also the author of many comic books and graphic novels, including the original Western series Desperadoes, some of which have been nominated for Stoker and International Horror Guild Awards. Other comics work includes the horror series Fade to Black, action-adventure series Garrison, and the original graphic novel Zombie Cop.
A murder investigation brings former police detective Annie O’Brien in contact with the supernatural forces that destroyed the town of New Dominion nearly 100 years earlier.
A bestselling Young Adult author takes an adult turn.
Bram Stoker Award-nominated author Jeffrey Mariotte delivers a novel of heartstopping horror. When a girl is kidnapped and her family murdered, Sheriff’s Lieutenant Buck Shelton is drawn into a bloody supernatural showdown between good and evil-with an innocent girl.
A new novel of gripping terror from the author of Missing White Girl.
Within the caves of a small Texas town lies a pool of strange, luminescent water. Twenty years ago, three teenagers were inhabited by a malevolent force living in the caves. Now, they’ve returned to the site as combatants in a supernatural war that flows through the raging currents of the world’s rivers.
When Alex Converse, heir to a coal company fortune, visits Silver Gap, Colorado to make an environmentally themed documentary film, he’s hoping to change some minds and to soothe his own troubled conscience. But there’s more going on—in his mind, and in Silver Gap—than Alex knows. People are dying and women are disappearing. Some of the killers have fur, fangs, and claws—but some don’t. What is Alex’s connection to the missing women? Will anyone live long enough to find out? And what’s up with those wolves?
Season of the Wolf is a heart-stopping supernatural thriller about climate change, the human capacity for evil, and the epic struggle between a small town’s citizens and impossible creatures from the dawn of history.
Three veterans of different wars, their lives once saved by magic, find themselves brought together in one of the most strange, remote, and cruel parts of the California desert. As serial killers ply their deadly trade, a young woman, abducted and endangered, seeks her own brand of justice for those who threatened her, and an ancient evil sprouts from beneath desert sands, these three war veterans must learn to embrace the terrifying bond they share. Written in powerful prose as dry and dangerous as its desert setting, The Slab, for all its horrors, is ultimately an epic tale of hope and redemption.
In the tradition of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Riverdale, this magical bind-up includes all four novels in the Witch Season series filled with spellbinding romance, revenge, and of course, witches!
A witches’ war is brewing…
And it’s coming straight towards Kerry and her friends at their summertime home. Along with it is Daniel Blessing. Mysterious, charismatic, and handsome Daniel is on the run from a powerful witch named Season.
Kerry and her friends don’t believe in witches and spells, but Kerry can’t help believing in Daniel… and falling for him.
But falling for Daniel pulls Kerry into a feud his family has been waging for generations. A dark feud of passion, magic, and revenge. Suddenly it becomes clear that Season isn’t after just Daniel, she wants Kerry and her friends dead too. Because, though Kerry doesn’t know it yet, she might just be the only one with the power to uncover the truth—and end the witches’ war once and for all.
Meghan: Hi, Richard. Welcome welcome. It’s been awhile since we sat down together. What’s been going on since we last spoke?
Richard Writhen: Not a lot. I released three books in 2017, so it was kind of a purge of my activity up until that point. Then, I spent over two years working on my new book, which was released just this past April.
Meghan: Who are you outside of writing?
Richard Writhen: I am not terribly social. I believe in pretty much keeping to myself and not engaging people for the most part, as they can be difficult. But conversely, if you actually are the kind of person that I get along with, then it’s all good.
Meghan: How do you feel about friends and close relatives reading your work?
Richard Writhen: Most of the few people who have read my work are fellow writers whom I would consider friends. So I am fine with that, I guess. My relatives don’t read any of my work that I know of.
Meghan: Is being a writer a gift or a curse?
Richard Writhen: Both. Being able to express yourself artistically through prose is a joy, almost beyond understanding. But then, when your “baby” goes out into the world, and people start picking on it, that can be disheartening. I am beginning to understand that the more talented you are, the less likely it is that people will “get it.”
Meghan: How has your environment and upbringing colored your writing?
Richard Writhen: I try to incorporate all the real-life cities in which I have lived when writing fictional ones. As for the way I was raised, IDK maybe it helped make me a sort of perfectionist, to a fault.
Meghan: What’s the strangest thing you have ever had to research for your books?
Richard Writhen: I probably do a lot less on-the-spot research than most writers, but maybe that’s because I have spent my whole life teaching myself. I pick up all sorts of stuff online that may not surface in my work until years later… mostly horror stories about people being picked up by serial killers and the like.
Meghan: Which do you find the hardest to write: the beginning, the middle, or the end?
Richard Writhen: This is kind of a non-issue for me, as my first four books were written completely out of sequence, both their location in the overall timeline and the prose that comprises the scenes themselves. I plan to finally get off my a** and outline the next book, The Crack of the Whip. I think it will help, as I got quite confused while writing the last one.
Meghan: Do you outline? Do you start with characters or plot? Do you just sit down and start writing? What works best for you?
Richard Writhen: As I said last question, I haven’t to date. I want to start, however. I used to subscribe to the “nulla dies sine linear” aesthetic and try to at least write a few sentences every day, but I no longer have a desktop setup at this time, and have to write at the library. It’s gonna slow me down for awhile longer, but not forever.
Meghan: What do you do when characters don’t follow the outline/plan?
Richard Writhen: I go with it, absolutely. That’s the best part of the discovery process, when your characters discover their free will.
Meghan: What do you do to motivate yourself to sit down and write?
Richard Writhen: Well, if I have a valid goal, i.e. story idea, plot synopsis for a novel or novella, finding discipline to actually write is actually the easy part; for me, anyways. But, if you have a flimsy premise, the work will not write itself that way, and you find yourself slogging.
Meghan: Are you an avid reader?
Richard Writhen: Absolutely.
Meghan: What kind of books do you absolutely love to read?
Richard Writhen: While I grew up reading traditional SF/ F/ H, my current favorites are more in the vein of noir crime fiction and non-supernatural horror, authors such as Dennis Lehane, Richard Price, Paul Tremblay, Gillian Flynn, Paula Hawkins, Kea Wilson, and Daphne Du Maurier. I like to read works around 300-400 pages, with very dark and shady characters, moral ambiguity, and unhappy endings. I really want to write something like that if I can ever get my dark fantasy stuff finished.
Meghan: How do you feel about movies based on books?
Richard Writhen: I feel that adaptations are always going to be hit-or-miss. If it’s something like Fight Club, it almost transcends the source material. But, if it’s something like Let The Right One In, you can have two films in two countries, and neither is quite as good as the book.
Meghan: Have you ever killed a main character?
Richard Writhen: Are you kidding, lawl…? In my second book, I killed two. In my third, three. Might be a pattern…
Meghan: Do you enjoy making your characters suffer?
Richard Writhen: Enjoy…? Not quite. I enjoy giving them trouble if it furthers the narrative. I espouse the “Don’t Kill The Messenger” adage. I’m just the author, I just tell the story. Do I wish ill upon my characters…? No, never. But, my fantasy world is a very dark and grotesque place, much like Earth. I, like Charles Dickens or Joe Abercrombie, am attempting to satirize reality, and it often comes out cartoonish.
Meghan: What’s the weirdest character concept that you’ve ever come up with?
Richard Writhen: Well, there’s a living dead girl in A Host of Ills. Aside from that, I have a toad-boy hybrid and a hyper-intelligent female sex-bot in separate unwritten works in development.
Meghan: What’s the best piece of feedback you’ve ever received? What’s the worst?
Richard Writhen: Best…? “Words were used to paint worlds, evoke emotions, and sing a story to me.”
Worst…? I was told that my characterization was paper-thin in one book review. Same book as above, lawl.
Meghan: What do your fans mean to you?
Richard Writhen: Oh, all six of them mean the world to me.
Meghan: If you could steal one character from another author and make them yours, who would it be and why?
Richard Writhen: Hmm. This is a hard one. Give me everyone from ASOIAF and LOTR and let me write a crossover.
Meghan: If you could write the next book in a series, which one would it be, and what would you make the book about?
Richard Writhen: I would love to finish A Song of Ice and Fire. It would be about death, of course.
Meghan: If you could write a collaboration with another author, who would it be and what would you write about?
Richard Writhen: I have indeed been discussing a collaboration with another author, who shall remain nameless at this time. The work would be outside both of our respective worlds so as to avoid IP wrangling, and would be more of a take on traditional horror rather than be anything like our respective fantasy and UF undertakings.
Meghan: What can we expect from you in the future?
Richard Writhen: I have six more series books that I have committed to, and they’ll probably all be self-published. Then, I want to do a witchcraft-based series that would continue some of the narrative arcs featured in The Angel of the Grave. I also have been toying with a couple of standalone ideas. One would be about a kind of mafia war in Nehansett City, which is my Manhattan. The other is about a young man who is forced to become a worshipper of the chaos god Golaz at an early age, and then his life spirals completely out of control as he gets older. It would be my first work to be written completely in first person.
Meghan: Do you have any closing words for your fans or anything you’d like to say that we didn’t get to cover in this interview or the last?
Richard Writhen: No, that about covers it. And of course, I would like to thank the fine people who purchased or downloaded one or more of my four books over the past three years. Any and all support is appreciated, as it is very few and far between. I, like many self-published authors, operate in what I like to call a “support vacuum.” Every share on FB, every mention in a post, every review on Goodreads helps, it really makes a difference. Also, thank you, Meghan’s House of Books, for this interview.
Having imbibing a steady diet of fantasy films, horror television and universal monster movies throughout the eighties, Richard Writhen then briefly attended college to study music and video. He began his first online serial six years ago, and has since been e-published on several notable blogs and websites. Richard is also the independently published author of two novellas and two novels on Amazon. He is currently working on several short stories, as well as the second book in The Celestial Ways Saga, The Crack of the Whip.
Meghan's House of Books 