Guest Author Interview - S. J. Hunter

Today's featured author in our final guest author interview of the week is science fiction author S. J. Hunter. This interview was also requested by one of this blog's readers, if you know an andie author that you'd like to see interviewed then let me know and I'll see what I can do.

 

Please introduce yourself, who are you and what do you do?
I write under the name S.J. Hunter. Some of that is real, some of it is a pen name, some of it is a translation of my real name.

Now, I’m a writer. I’m also a veterinarian, and before I was either of those, I was a librarian, and before I was that, before the university (the first one), I was a Midwestern farm girl. As naïve as they come, and determined to rectify that in the best possible way. People who don’t know me are surprised when I mention my career change from libraries to veterinary work, but those are people who don’t realize that I’ve really come full circle. The work is very different, but I’m back to being surrounded by animals and people who love animals and that’s what matters to me. Otherwise the undercurrent has remained the same – books, reading, and writing.

The other strong influences that have shaped who I am are my husband and cultural diversity. In the U.S., we’ve been exposed to some of that by living in Maine, Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, Michigan, Connecticut, Washington D.C. and Florida. Otherwise, we’ve traveled to Egypt, Peru, Mexico, and many times to Europe, where we’ve enjoyed mingling and blending in as well as two blue-eyed Midwestern-born non-polyglots can.

What first inspired you to start writing?
I wanted to express myself, I can’t sing, dance, or draw, and I love words. I need to avoid getting starry-eyed here, but how the heck did we get so lucky? I mean, I have respect, veneration even, for the way animals sense things and communicate, and here we are, with millions of words at our disposal, and behind each one: meaning. Okay, there was no way I was going to be able to express that without sounding starry-eyed, but the question is about inspiration.

I wrote my first book when I was still a librarian. Readers at several publishing houses sent it back but offered encouragement, but that happened shortly before I decided to go veterinary school, and my priorities changed. That book was historical fiction and I’m sure I can find it somewhere in a closet if I ever take the time to look.

And what drew you to science fiction?
I’d like to skip the obvious things, like I’ve always loved reading it, and I have a strong science/social science background, and in what other genre can you explore so many aspects of the human condition so creatively? We have some important breakthrough technologies looming over our heads, and some of them will have the potential to shatter societies. We aren’t hanging together all that well even now, so how are we going to manage when we have all these new capabilities? I like to explore the possibilities, and I admit to having intense interest in how things work out in the new future.

The Longevity process that drives the conflict in my Longevity Law Enforcement series is based on technologies that are developing now. "Technological immortality is the prospect for much longer life spans made possible by scientific advances in a variety of fields: nanotechnology, emergency room procedures, genetics, biological engineering, regenerative medicine, microbiology, and others." - "Immortality" in Wikipedia

You also write humour/suspense stories for animal lovers, do you find it easy to switch between genres?
I’ve only written one of the humor/suspense stories. I find that humor creeps in no matter what I write, so that isn’t in any way a switch. On the other hand, my suspense novel will only be appreciated by animal lovers because much of the humor deals with the natural reactions of dogs and cats and the unnatural reactions of a man who just doesn’t ‘get’ them. That book was only my second novel, and I hope to write more in that obscure genre some day.

Switching to science fiction was no problem. Conceptually they are very different but managing the rest – the characters, the setting, the plot – all followed from that. I suppose that means my work is mainly character-driven, and that in the universe I write about people are still people. So far my science fiction is, after all, near-future science fiction.

Animal lovers can find something special for them in my science fiction as well. In my Longevity Law Enforcement trilogy the main characters have a neurologically-enhanced canine detective-partner. Louie is still very much a normal dog, just an especially smart normal dog. It was important to me that he is right on that edge – he never does anything that a bright, exceptionally well-trained normal dog couldn’t do.

Which author do you most admire and why?
Connie Willis. With Doomsday Book she took me back with her time-traveling heroine to the era of the Bubonic Plague with immediacy that I can’t imagine any other author achieving. Ditto for Blackout and All Clear and the Blitz. Have I mentioned that I love history for the some of the same reasons that I love science fiction? The diversity of human experience. I also loved Willis’ style of humor in To Say Nothing of the Dog. The same sort of humor is evident in Bellwether, and I think the concept of that book is especially brilliant.

You know it’s really hard to pick just one, don’t you? A list would be better.

What is your favourite word?
Enigmatic. My patients… my cat… they all look me in the eye. What is going on in their friendly-alien brains? I think I know the friends I’ve had for decades, but can I really?

All writers love receiving a good review, what has been your favourite so far?
My favorite is Paul Spooner’s review of the third book in my Longevity Law Enforcement trilogy, The Dog on the Moon. It’s hugely rewarding when a reader picks up on everything you tried to do in your writing and lets you know that your efforts were, for at least one reader, successful.

This time I insist on picking a second: Jason Reeser’s review of Longevity, the first book in my trilogy. It’s a pleasure when someone tells you in a review that they had fun reading your book. Asking readers to think is important (science fiction readers seem to like to do that anyway) but Jason understands that reading fiction has to be fun, too.

What are you working on at the moment?
I’m writing Livvy’s prequel to my Longevity Law Enforcement trilogy. This prequel is set in San Francisco, which allows me to show some of the effects of Longevity in a very different environment. Livvy has not yet joined LLE and, in fact, she has some issues with the way they intrude on a case that she’s working.

Tell us about your latest work and how we can find out more.
My most recently completed work is The Third Curse, which explores the early days of Longevity and the difficult first years of Longevity Law Enforcement. Once I finished the trilogy I was reluctant to leave the Longevity universe behind and I’ve grown very fond of the characters, as have my readers. I wanted to tell their ‘backstories’ while at the same time exploring more of the Longevity world. Chris’ prequel and the books of the trilogy: Longevity, The Burning Rivers, The Dog on the Moon, all take place in Washington D.C., although the third book only starts there. Every book is case-based, with a major case that challenges the detectives and, in the trilogy, their canine partner, Louie.

When I finish Livvy’s prequel (Pretty Woman, Floating), I’ll be going much further into the future.

Readers can find out more about my books on Amazon, Goodreads, and sjhunter123.blogspot.com.

Books by S. J. Hunter on Amazon

The Imp's Playground Update

The Imp has had a busy week over on his new blog (although I don't really know what he's boasting about as I've posted more on my blog than he has on his, but he said that he'd widdle in my ear if I didn't and he means it!) and he's asked (told) me to tell all you wonderful people what he's been up to.

On Saturday he posted the latest horrorscopes. apparently I will be struck twice by lightening. It hasn't happened yet so I doubt his credibility. Anyway, they're still an amusing read:

http://meettheimp.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/the-imps-weekly-horrorscopes_14.html

Sunday saw the start of a new feature called Imp Rhymes, in this he basically corrupts innocent children's nursery rhymes, I'm not sure what his evil plan is with these but you can find out here:

http://meettheimp.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/imp-rhymes-baa-baa-yellow-imp.html

His final post of the week was his weekly feature on the Imp's Internet Delights, this week he writes about Maddox's Greatest Page in the Universe which I agree is a very funny site:

http://meettheimp.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/the-imps-internet-delights-best-page-in.html

So I beg you, pay his blog a visit so I don't smell of demon piss for the rest of the day!

Guest Author Interview - Jason Purdy

Continuing on from yesterday's guest author interview with Robert Holt (you can read it here) we meet another author from the 'All Hallows Evil' anthology - Jason Purdy. Jason was also one of the winning story writers from July's short fiction contest, you can read his and the other winning stories here.

 

 

Please introduce yourself, who are you and what do you do?
I’m Jason Purdy, I’m 22 years old from Northern Ireland and I’m a writer, a student, and I’m pretty handy with a camera and an editing suite too. I’ve been writing most of my life, since I was old enough to hold a pencil (the wrong way, apparently) and in the last few years I’ve really made a big push to sit down for a few hours every day and bash a keyboard. It’s worked well for me, I’ve got one published novel, several short stories on the cusp of being published and five full manuscripts that need to be brutally culled and redrafted before they can see the light of the day.

Other than writing, I love reading, playing video games, listening to music, and watching television and films. My favourite TV show at the moment is Breaking Bad (isn’t it everyone’s?) and as well as writing, I enjoy camera work, editing, film making and a little bit of acting. I do bits and bobs of paid freelance work when it comes up. I’m doing Media Studies and Production at university and I am in my final year and I never want to graduate.
What first inspired you to start writing?

I’ve always loved reading. My Dad used to read me Roald Dahl when I was a wee kid and from there I fell in love with books. I got taken to the library every weekend and I’d get three books each time and have them done well before the next weekend. I eventually ploughed just about all the kids’ books and had to get my Dad to start sneaking grown up books for me. He grabbed me some Stephen King. I nearly shit myself, it was great.

Alongside this, I’d always been writing random little stories and comics for fun and to pass the time at School rather than actually paying attention. Reading so many great stories made me want to write a few of my own. I always loved when a creative writing competition came up in School and I always got a lot of praise for my stuff. From there, I thought, why not? I’ll write. Sure, it’s handy enough, right? Once I published Cigarette, I started considering myself a writer in my own head and it’s how I identify myself now. It gets you funny looks sometimes but it’s worth it.

You write horror and crime, do the two go together or do you like keeping them separate?
I like to keep them separate at times, and mesh them together too. My first novel, Cigarette, is predominantly a crime novel, as are its two sequels. Most of my short stories seem to focus more on a horror style bent because I find it easier to sustain horror over a few thousand words rather than over a whole novel. Mostly I’d say that I write humour, with elements of horror and crime meshed in. All of my writing might not be horror or crime, but it’s always funny to some degree. Usually darkly funny, satirical, I suppose. That’s how I like to write. I find it impossible to take anything serious. If I try to write a po-faced story it’ll end up getting silly so I just start funny. In my opinion, all the best horror films make you laugh right before they scare the pants off you. My last two manuscripts (and most of my scripts) have been primarily humour based, but that’s more of an effort not to let myself fall into a certain crime or horror rut.

To get back to the point of the question, I think horror and crime work great together and great separately. Not all horror is crime but most crime is horrible. There’s an element of connection between the two whether you write it or not. It’s fun to try and make the two of them funny, though.

Do you read in the same genre that you write?
I read in all genres (except for erotica, no no no no no no) and I try to cover as many of them as I can in my writing. I’m throwing around a few sci-fi and fantasy ideas for my next project, and right now I’m working on a sort of comedy/romance sort of story. It makes me feel ill to write the word romance and admit to writing it, but there’s an element of it in every genre, whether it’s crime or horror or anything else.

Someone keeps telling me to write an erotica story (you know who you are) but it’d be hard not to write it as a piss take, and if I happened to write the next 50 Shades I think I’d have to take myself out back and shoot myself in the face. Sure the money would be nice,

Which author do you most admire and why?
Has to be Stephen King. He’s just been around for so long and he’s never written anything that I didn’t like. I’ve practically read everything he’s ever done and enjoyed it to some extent. Sure, he’s had some near misses, but a lot of his misses are still better than other people’s hits. My writing style is heavily inspired by his. He has a sort of wonderful every man way of talking to his reader that you feel like you’ve just sat down in the pub with him, and he’s slowly working his way through several pints while he tells you about this really scary story he heard the other day. I love that, I think it’s counterproductive when an author gets too flowery with your language. It doesn’t matter how good your story is if the average person can’t make head or tails of it. A thesaurus does not make you a good writer. I will argue that until I’m blue in the face.

Plus, King’s On Writing memoir is filled with fantastic advice and great anecdotes and it’s pretty much what got me writing all day every day the way I do now. King was my gateway drug and now I’m absolutely hooked on all of it. The withdrawal is fierce but the highs are bloody brilliant.

Other than King, I love Terry Pratchett, Phillip K. Dick, H.P Lovecraft, Chuck Palahniuk, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Tolkien, Huxley, Rowling, Stine, Koontz, the list is fairly endless.

Where is your happy place?
Has to be at the desk in my bedroom at my flat. With a cup of coffee beside me, some good music pumping through my earphones, and my girlfriend snoring in bed behind me. That moment where you forget where you are when you’re writing and just get totally carried away with it all is beautiful and I’ve come to crave it every day now. It doesn’t feel like work and if I can make a living off this, I’ll be over the moon.

Failing that, a rooftop Jacuzzi with an ice cold bottle of Blue Moon, a burger, music blaring, and the sun beating down on me – but I’d imagine that sounds like a pretty happy place to just about everybody.

What is the best piece of writing advice you have received?
“How do you do it? You do it. You write. You finish what you write.” – Neil Gaiman.

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” – Stephen King.

Both of these quotes got me going. There’s a million people out there waiting to write their first novel and waiting for the right idea or the right time or to be at the right place in their life and I think that’s all a load of rubbish. If you want to do something, you don’t find time, you make time. If you don’t have time to read then you don’t have the skills to write and if you don’t have time to write then shut up and go back to watching Eastenders.

The best advice I’d give to anyone is to set aside an hour a day, and sit down, and just start writing. Right anything, write a shopping list, right what you should have said to that prick bus driver yesterday, what you should have said to that girl or that guy that was flirting with you (outrageously so, everyone agrees) but you just couldn’t find the words to say back to her. You’re a writer, you’ve got nothing but words. Go make them!

What are you working on at the moment?
At the moment, I’m working on a strange sort of comedy/existential horror novel which currently has no title. Titles usually come to me when I finish so I’ll wait for that. After that, I’ll be redrafting the sequel to my debut novel, Cigarette. After that, as I’ve said before, I’ll be going the horror or sci-fi route, either with another script or another book. I’ll continue to write short stories because they’re quick and dirty and beautiful. Beyond that, there’s a thousand ideas knocking about and luckily Microsoft Word can’t run out of ink because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to afford this nonsense.

Tell us about your latest work and how we can find out more.
My debut novel Cigarette has just undergone a lovely redraft and is better than ever, with up to 30% more swearing, according to a YouGov poll* and it’s got some nice reviews on Amazon and Goodreads already, so it’s worth checking out purely because other people like it so you should too. Here’s the link on Goodreads:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17827145-cigarette

Here’s the synopsis:

Cigarette follows the misadventures of self-appointed ‘ex- gangster’ Dave Benson as he unsuccessfully attempts to see off his previous shady life in style. When his childhood friend, Jimmy, comes knocking on his door with one last job, Dave finds himself unable to refuse the offer.

In Dave Benson, Jason Purdy has created an unlikely hero; an alcoholic unhinged character with a missing finger and an irrational fear of smoking, working a 9-5 desk job he doesn’t understand, Dave is also a man stuck in limbo. His struggle to leave the past behind leads to a bizarre series of dealings with a gangster called Drum, and his three psychotic partners.

With both chilling moments and fantastic streaks of dry humour, Cigarette is a darkly funny novel that gently pastiches the familiar clichés of gangster fiction. Jason Purdy has developed fascinating and identifiable characters that could easily live beyond the pages of his first novel.

I’ve also recently contributed a short story to Mystery and Horror LLC’s collection, All Hallow’s Evil, which is shaping up to be a great collection, and I’m not just saying that because I’m in it. My story is Bill’s Chair which is a dark horror/mystery about a lone fixer travelling America who comes across a job that’s not quite what he’s used to.

Here’s the link on Goodreads:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18491122-all-hallows-evil?from_search=true

*Poll results may be fabricated.

You can follow me on Twitter: @JasonAPurdy and my Goodreads author page is:

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7055545.Jason_Purdy

Book by Jason Purdy on Amazon:

Film Review - Queen of the Damned

Although it is the sequel to Interview with the Vampire this is a very different beast to the first film. Nobody from the original is in this and it has a much younger, more goth music video feel to it. In a sense that's not necessarily a bad thing as I quite enjoyed the music in the film.

The story centres around Lestat who has woken after a century of slumber and decides to go public with who he really is. This angers the other vampires and makes him a target, meanwhile the queen of vampires has arisen and seeks to make Lestat her king.

It's a fun watch even though it does stray into romanticising vampires, although they do remain monsters. The music video feel keeps the pace quick and punchy. Unlike the first film it lacks quality, the cast do a reasonable job, but no-one really stands out, except for Marius, for some reason I enjoyed his character more than the others.

Overall it's entertaining enough, far from great but a fun watch.

Legendary Vampire Lestat has risen from a decades-long slumber, determined to step out into the light. No longer content with being banished to the shadows, moving among mortals who never truly see him for what he is, Lestat has re-invented himself as the closest thing to a god on Earth: a rock star. The intoxicating lure of his music has snaked its way around the globe, ultimately finding the ear of the slumbering ancient Queen Akasha in her crypt beneath the Arctic ice. Mother of all Vampires, Akasha has been resting for centuries, waiting for the right time to rise again and seize dominion over the world. Lestat's music is the revelation she has been waiting for, and she desires that he rule beside her. But can Akasha be stopped? Her malevolent power may be too great for even the most ancient of the immortal Vampires to combat--she created them, and their survival depends on her own. After all, Akasha is used to getting everything she wants... and all she wants is Hell on Earth.

Queen of the Damned is available from Amazon

Guest Author Interview - Robert Holt

In today's and tomorrow's guest author interviews we have a double bill, both are authors from the new All Hallows' Eve anthology. Today we meet Robert Holt:

Please introduce yourself, who are you and what do you do?
My name is Robert Holt. I write mostly in the horror genre with a style that varies from classical to splatterpunk. I live in St. Louis where I am a grocery store manager when I’m not writing. Writing is kind of a newly rediscovered joy for me. I was writing a ton about five years ago. Then I had a daughter born, and I focused all my attention there. About a year ago, the little angel discovered that not having daddy around could be fun too. So I slinked off back to my computer chair and took out my frustrations on figments of my imagination. She and my wife have both been great though. Both have been very supportive and patient as I make a run at this.

What first inspired you to start writing?
Well, I think while writers are made, storytellers are naturally born. I have always been a storyteller. As a child when the neighborhood kids would all bring out their G.I.Joe and Star Wars toys and we would act out storylines, my storylines were always the most complex and in-depth. And as the other kids began to drift off with new found interest in sports or cars or girls, I stayed sitting on the floor acting out my stories. And those interests of mine were injected into my stories.

At some point during high school, I fell in love with paper writing and would often negotiate my way out of taking tests by writing papers instead. I became a master of bullshitting at a fairly young age. The storytelling seemed to slide right in there. I imagine if I had been asked to make a film before I was asked to write a paper, I would be an aspiring filmmaker today.

And what attracted you to horror?
The fun of it. When I was in high school, I would watch movies with friends like the Evil Dead trilogy and the first few Hellraiser films. While some of my friends would be terrified by the films, I would be rolling on the floor laughing. It was the scary scenes that would humor me the most too. The Shining is the funniest movie I’ve ever seen, partly because I rank it as the scariest also. I have always put myself in the seat of the storyteller (writer or director), and when you see or read a truly scary scene from that perspective, they become funny. You see what they are doing, how they are doing it, the reaction they are going for, and the end result. Let’s face it, scaring people is funny. And if you can do that on a mass scale, then it is hysterical.

What do you bring to the horror genre?
I think that horror is great fun, and that should be reflected to the reader as well. While I believe my stories succeed in scaring people, I also believe that my stories are not the type that leaves scarring imagery in people’s minds. My stories are fun jaunts into a dark world. They may have you looking under the bed at night but they won’t have you feeling sick to your stomach the next time you order the meatloaf, unless you already felt that way about meatloaf.

What was the last book you read?
This might seem odd, but I don’t read a lot of horror. Only about one of every ten books is a genre piece. The last book I read was Brain Bugs: How the Brains Flaws Shape Our Lives by Dean Buonomano. It was a fun book about how evolution has shaped our thought patterns to work in ways that are faulty. Very interesting book. I think before that I read David Sedaris, Kurt Vonnegut, and a biography on Einstein. To get to the last horror book, or horror book that I didn’t have a story included in, you would have to go back to the beginning of the summer when I read a horrible little paperback that I picked up used by an author I had never heard of and will likely never hear again.

If you could spend a day with anyone from history, who would it be and why?
Probably Hitler. An opportunity like this shouldn’t be wasted on hero worship or good times. I would want to come away with a lesson for all humanity. I would want to learn things that could forever shape the world for the better and help to spot pure evil before they have a chance to kill the world. So yeah, it wouldn’t be fun, but I would take that hit.

If it was just for fun, probably Sam Clemens. The guy was just class.

What is your favourite song lyric?
From Rush’s Dreamline

“We are young
Wandering the face of the Earth
Wondering what our dreams might be worth
Learning that we're only immortal
For a limited time”

What are you working on at the moment?
I am actually working on a sci-fi horror right now. The working title is Space Madness. It is a story about a guy that is surgically altered to be able to survive interstellar travel, and his cargo is unaltered and cryogenically frozen people. Let’s just say he goes bonkers there all alone for several years with nobody to talk to but the computers.

Tell us about your latest work and how we can find out more.
The Murderer at the Cabin was included in the anthology All Hallows Evil. This story is true to my nature, and is equal parts funny and terrifying, or maybe only I find it funny, I don’t know. It is a story about a psychotic axe murderer that shows up to a cabin during a murder mystery dinner theater. Yeah, no, I am pretty sure it was funny. At least most of it was…parts of it…maybe.

Books by Robert Holt