An Interview Done By Wraith: 13 Questions With  "Creaturette"
(09-1998)

1.When writing Final Impact, did you already have the idea for the sequel  or did it just come up unexpectedly?

I had no intention of doing any kind of sequel. The follow-up to Final Impact started picking at me as I neared the end. I thought the characters were interesting and I was pretty sure that other people would think so, too. The ending of the book seemed to ask for one, and even though I was through with Final Impact, there were natural places to pick up the story,
questions that would be asked and that, if I wanted to answer them, would have to be dealt with in another book. Final Impact was already 190,000 words, so continuing it wasn't an option.

2. What can we expect with Red Shadows?

Red Shadows picks up twenty years after Final Impact. All our beloved characters <g> are still there, along  with their children and a few new folks. It's an entirely different world  than before-- everything is based on survival, towns and settlements are  very small and revolve around continuing to find supplies. Modern  medicine doesn't exist, there is no motorized transportation anymore -- no  gasoline and all the roads were destroyed in the Impacts anyway. The  cities are inexplicably deserted and the rumors have been growing that  it's because they're all infected with a deadly plague. Other problems   also still exist, such as brutality and lawlessness, cannibalism, and  murder; one character's son has grown up to be the primitive version of a  serial killer. Another young man wants only to find his mother in the  Darkzone (the area of the Earth that is now in permanent darkness), but  his mother has evolved into something dark and terribly dangerous-- will  he survive his search?

3. When will it be released?

The publication date for Red Shadows is November '98, which should put it in bookstores in October.  It should be released at about the same time or a little before my other book, Babylon 5: The River of Souls, is released.

4. What made you decide on the horror genre as a writer?

When I first started writing, I wrote what I liked to read, so it sort of picked me. I still like to read horror, but I read -- and have written -- other things more in the thriller arena. I almost think every horror writer starts out with something like a vampire book, then a zombie book or some other kind of monster. Then you branch out as you use up ideas. I read other genres as well, and there are several I'd like to try my hand at. I think all the genres are interesting and have something to offer. They touch people in different ways, filling in the "needy" spots, wherever and whatever they might be. Every kind of writing serves a purpose for someone somewhere, and writers of one genre should learn to respect all the others for that reason. This is not to be confused with being unable to laugh at yourself or laugh with others. I'll stop now before I get on a soapbox.  <g>

5. How do you come up with the ideas for your stories?

There's no set answer to this question. Ideas are everywhere. In real life, sometimes you can just take what happened to someone else and fictionalize it-- the newspaper is full of modern day horror stories (most of which are too brutal for me because they're real, so I seldom read the paper or watch the news). The "What If" principal is usually the generator that can spin it into something else. The guy you saw on the evening news who got prosecuted on circumstantial evidence and sentenced to death for killing his wife... what if he didn't do it, he gets executed, and then his wife shows up? Maybe it was a setup by her to get rid of him all along... and then maybe his ghost comes back and haunts her. Lots of times the ideas are just drivel, but sometimes you come up with a gem.

6. You wrote a novel called AfterAge, which is no longer being published. Any thoughts on re-releasing it again with the vampire craze going on?

AfterAge was my first novel, and releasing it again isn't up to me. My solo novel publisher (Bantam) isn't interested and unfortunately, my writing apparently doesn't generally seem to appeal to UK publishers. As long as Bantam is publishing current novels, no other US publisher (except perhaps a specialty publisher) will reprint it. One such publisher is interested, but he wants to package it with a sequel-- a new novel-- which I haven't written yet. I do have one outlined, but writing it is pretty far off; while their hearts are in the right place, a specialty publisher wouldn't be able to pay me enough to live on while I wrote the book. Thus it's a "spare time" project... and right now, there is no spare time. I still work full time and I always seem to be under some kind of deadline or another. Added to that in the background is the Life Plan: sell my house, quit my job and move in with Dad to write for a while, and then (FINALLY!!!) relocate to Phoenix, Arizona. I need heat!

(I want to add that you can get a copy of AfterAge on disk, it's available through Yvonne's web site)

7. You have written a novel from a screenplay (Species & SpeciesII) but have you ever   thought of taking any of your novels to the big screen?

Actually I've written three, if you include Babylon 5: The River of Souls, and I also novelized a series of graphic novels, called Aliens: Music of the Spears. I'd love to see AfterAge or Final Impact on screen, but again, it's not up to me. So far no one's been seriously interested and there's the time factor (there is none) that would have to be dealt with for me to script it on my own. That's too bad-- with its 2000 impact date, Final Impact is especially timely, and I always believed AfterAge would be a really cool vampire movie.

8. You wrote The First Name Reverse Dictionary, a reference book of names and meanings.  What inspired this book? It is so different from your usual work.

When I make a character, I try to choose a name that somehow reflects the character-- what they are, what they do, what they want. I always do this for novels and often for short stories. I'd spend anywhere from one to six hours hunting for just the right name in baby books, and I finally started collecting cool definitions and filing them backwards. Then it occurred to me that if I found this useful, so might other writers, or even parents-to-be. I shopped the idea around and found several publishers interested; the one that picked up the project was McFarland & Company, and the book is still in print and sells a couple of dozen copies a year. It's in all kinds of libraries, too. It's a really nifty book and fun to browse through.

9. Most "horror" writers seem to live a pretty tame life in comparison with what they write, how about you? What do you do to unwind?

Other horror writers have lives???! Where do I buy one?? Seriously, all I do is work, write, and work. In case I don't have enough to do, I have a small web page design business with a handful of active sites (and a few inactive ones). As usual, the publishers don't promote people like me (i.e., not a bestseller -- yet <g>) very much, so I do a lot of that with excerpts and flyers and email, etc. For those who don't know it, everyone should have a house; if you've ever uttered the words "I have nothing to do," that will fix the problem for eternity. I like movies and go when I can and when they've got what I like-- lots of action and fighting (not to be confused with real war flicks) and special effects, science fiction, horror. I have  some (too many) favorite shows on television. I have a growing collection of unread fiction books and magazines that I can't get to. All I need are 36 hour days. Oh, and more heat. :)

10. What can we look forward to in the future from you? Anything else in the works?

Bantam just accepted (8/98) my proposal for a dark psychological thriller called THAT'S NOT MY NAME. It's a book I've wanted to write for nearly ten years, and I actually started it in back in 1990. Of course, all that has to be rewritten (the outline is about as far off from the original idea as Jupiter is from Earth) but I'm looking forward to it. Right now, that's about it, although there are a number of ideas in my notebooks that could be worked into novels. Every now and then I hammer out a short story, although -- again -- I seldom have time for those anymore (but they sure are fun). I wish I had time to draw again, but my last illustration appeared in the program book for the Stamford, CT World Horror Convention and I've hardly picked up a pencil since then. That's something I really miss. My big hope
for the future is to drop the full time job and suddenly have, if not that 36 hour day, at least the time to have a regular life again. This would mean time after work to actually do stuff like draw, read, or macrame (something else I love and witch I haven't done since the early 1990s). Then I take it one step further and head out to Phoenix.

11. What awards have you gotten for your writing?

I was definitely honored when Final Impact got two awards in 1997, one from the Chicago Woman In Publishing for Excellence in Adult Fiction, and also an "Unreal Worlds Award, a "virtual" award from The Rocky Mountain News (Colorado) for best horror paperback of 1997. My first two novels, AfterAge and deadrush, both made it to the final ballots of the Bram Stoker Awards in the years they were published. They didn't win, but it was definitely neat to see them go that far.

12. Do you have any favorite authors that you look up to?

I have a number of favorites. First, I consider Robert McCammon to be my mentor-- his work was the motivating factor that made me want to try writing in the first place. More favorites are F. Paul Wilson, Steven Spruill, Brian Hodge, Dan Simmons, Matthew Woodring Stover, and I'm also fond of a lot of Stephen King's work. I like Poppy Z. Brite, Elizabeth Massie, Nancy Holder, Christopher Golden, Charlie Grant, and a whole host of others-- there are so many talented people out there that I can't list them all here.

13. What advice do you have for any young authors out there that are trying to get published?

I truly believe that the best thing you can do for  yourself as far as your own work is to read it out loud. No, I'm not kidding. Put it aside for a few days or weeks (depending on how big it is and how deep you were into it), then close the door to your room and have at it. Put some emotion in it, pronounce every syllable, and talk like it was really happening in front of you. This is where you'll find grammar errors, things that don't make sense, awkwardly constructed text, and sentences that are so long you suffocate in between periods. I read everything out loud, even 190,000 word novels. Also, I've just discovered a great place on the Internet to recommend for folks just starting out: Writer's World. Look around this site and you can find an answer to almost any question you have.