Steve Wedel, who teaches high school English and contributes his editing and writing efforts to Horror World, has six books under his belt including his Werewolf Saga, a collection of short fiction, and a haunted house novel. While he isn't yet a household name or the common response to what-are-you-reading-now based questions, there is little doubt in my mind that it won't be long before Steve gets what's coming to him by way of success and due recognition. He may not leave you scratching your chin at the deeply brilliant flourishes of his prose, but he will engage you with his straightforward style and keep you always coming back for more. I believe that if Stephen King is the "burger and fries" equivalent of literature, which he claims to be, then Steve Wedel is most certainly the literary equivalent of steak done medium-raw with a refreshing, cold beer to wash it all down. Since I've never been one to turn down a good steak - or beer - I was only happy to take advantage of his Oklahoman hospitality and chew the beef with him awhile as we got to discussing his writing craft, the problems with kids today and why it's a good idea to keep your keys close to the door.


Well, to get this ball rolling, let's start at the beginning, Steve, shall we? What inspired you as a youngster to ever fall in love with the darker side of literature in the first place?

I've always been a reader. I blame my mom for that. At first, all I read was animal stories (such as) Where the Red Fern Grows, Old Yeller, The Black Stallion, etc. When I was in junior high I was put in a class for advanced readers and the librarian who taught the class had us read Lloyd Alexander and J.R.R. Tolkien. After that, I read nothing but fantasy for a long time. My favorite parts were the dark things, like the journey through the barrows or through the mines of Moria in Tolkien's THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING

Then, in the early 1980s, me and a couple of friends went to see HALLOWEEN 2. We were too young, but they let us in. Soon after, my composition teacher in high school made us write a short story, so I wrote a piece called Insanity about a picked-on kid who hacks his tormentors to pieces. It was the kind of story that'd get a kid expelled in today's post-Columbine culture.

About the same time, I found a little paperback called 13 Horrors of Halloween, edited by Isaac Asimov. Those stories really sunk the hook and drew me in.

Then I was in the B. Dalton's store of Enid's brand new mall asking a clerk for a collection of horror short stories. The only thing he could suggest was a book called Night Shift by some guy I'd never heard of named Stephen King. I bought that and another book by H.P. Lovecraft.

And when did you first figure that not only would your need to write not be so easily abated, but that you actually had a fair chance of being published just like your favorite authors?

Ha! When did I think I was good enough? Too freakin' soon! It was the mid-1980s, during the boom in horror fiction. There was a lot of crap being churned out and I thought I could do better. So, I started writing and submitting short stories. Looking back, I cringe at the memory of sending in stories on very thin, cheap paper, with handwritten corrections, holes erased in the paper, and all that stuff you can't do. This was before the personal computer revolution, you know. A rewrite, very literally, was just that ... you rewrote the whole damn story on a typewriter.

I'd only been a mediocre student in school, too. I tell my students this story now. I didn't care about grammar and stuff when I was in high school. But a couple of years later, when I decided I wanted to be a writer, suddenly that stuff was important and I had editors telling me I was using the wrong verb tense and whatnot, so I had to go back and actually learn that stuff on my own.

I started writing in 1985 or '86. I didn't have a piece of fiction published until 1992. That bug bit hard. Hard enough that I kept going regardless of the number of rejection slips I was piling up.

I'd imagine you're probably most popular for your four-book -- and counting- - Werewolf Saga. That said, you've also written one of the best ghost stories I've ever read - Seven Days in Benevolence. I also dug the hell out of your collection of short pieces aptly titled Darkscapes, which, correct me if I'm wrong, represented a lot of your initial stabs at the meat of horror. If someone who had just discovered your work was troubling over where to start reading you, would you steer them towards your earlier, perhaps more vulnerable stories, or would your finger be aimed more to the direction of your wolfish saga, or perhaps otherwise?

I have to say that Darkscapes is more for the devoted fans. Both of them. Those stories mean a lot to me, but I've been told most of them are pretty inferior to my later work. It kind of depends on who's asking, too. If it's somebody worried about price, I'll suggest one of the less expensive books. Why spend more than you have to on an author you don't know, right? Typically, though, I recommend people start with Shara. Though it's now labeled as Book 2 of The Werewolf Saga, it came first and, I think, is a pretty good story. It's had the most, and the best reviews of anything I've done, so I like to point people to it first.

So, is it safe to say that werewolves were your first true love of orror?

No. My first focused love was ghosts. I wrote a lot of stories, most of which are in Darkscapes, about the human soul, the value of the soul, what happens after death, what can a disembodied spirit do, that kind of thing. That sort of culminated in my first novel, which is unpublished, where I brought various types of hauntings together. By that I mean the traditional ghost, plus the "psychic battery" idea of discharged energy as well as the mind of the living haunted by the past. Mix it all up with a zombie, a mad scientist and a bunch of hillbillies and you have my first novel.

The werewolves came later. I had this vision of a young woman standing over the corpse of her husband, telling him, "I told you I'm a real bitch during my monthly." That became the story Biological Clock that first appeared in Mausoleum magazine in 1993, I think. Later that year I took a creative writing course at a vo-tech and had to develop a character, so I went back to the childhood of Shara Wellington. Then I had to create a monster, so I made her the monster, with the help of Josef Ulrik, then I had to write a hospital scene, so I had her in the hospital after Ulrik's bite, and pretty soon I had this book idea that has just kept growing from that one snatch of dialogue.

If I can prod you a little further, why don't you tell Fear Zone how the first published full length novel of the Werewolf Saga, Shara, came about, if you would, sir.

I'll just add that, while the first werewolf story was published in 1993, and the idea of the novel Shara was born that year, I was working in machine shops, putting in 60 to 80 hours a week, and didn't have a lot of time for writing. Then I had a shoulder injury that ended that career for me and I went to college 12 years after graduating high school. I finished the first draft of Shara while enrolled as a non-degree seeking student, under the tutelage of mystery author Carolyn Wheat, but the book wasn't revised until after I'd graduated in 1999. Then 3F Publications released the first edition in 2003.

While scribing the first book of the saga, Murdered By Human Wolves, did you have a pretty good idea at all that that one small book would lead to such an epic story that is the saga of Shara and Ulrik?

Oh, well ... Murdered by Human Wolves was an accident. I first heard about Katherine Cross from the photographer at a newspaper I was working for. Shara was in the layout and editing stages with 3F at the time. I was looking for an angle to help promote Shara, and proposed to my publisher that I write a short story about this girl who was murdered in Konawa in 1917 and we'd publish it as a chapbook and give it away to everyone who bought a copy of Shara through Shocklines bookstore. Well, MbHW grew to be a novella, 3F's publisher proved to be incompetent and went out of business, and things changed. There were five copies of MbHW printed with the 3F logo on them. I have one and gave the rest to friends. Then, through the Horror Writers Association, I met Nathan Barker, who had just started Scrybe Press and he was specializing in inexpensive chapbooks. I told him about MbHW, and he bought it, then he took on Shara, publishing a new edition with some new text and a stunning cover, and we were off and running.

Murdered by Human Wolves is my bestselling book, and that has surprised me. It was never really meant to be an official part of the Saga. I meant for it to be kind of a supplement, something extra, but now, with the events of Ulrik, it really is essential to the series.

To stray from the paths of wolves - sort of - being that your energies and thoughts must have been so entwined within the characters of your lycanthropic sub-world, how did it feel churning out such a fine book that had nothing at all to do with wolves?

I take it you're referring to Seven Days in Benevolence. It felt good, really. When I wrote it, though, there was no Werewolf Saga. Shara was still about a year from seeing publication and I hadn't heard of Katherine Cross. Some of the ideas in the book, like the disappearing doors, had been with me for years. Others were inspired by the house where we were living in Ponca City, Okla., and other elements of the story came from the real life of people I know.

Seven Days in Benevolence was first published as an e-book by Double Dragon Publishing. I think three people read it. I was very eager for Scrybe Press to release the paperback version because people were typecasting me as a werewolf writer. I love my shape-shifters, and have devoted a lot of time to them, but there are a lot of other areas I want to explore with my writing.

Unfortunately, sales of Seven Days have been slow and reviews have been scant. I don't know if it's something about the story, or the fact it isn't what people want from me, but the reception has been kind of disappointing.

Were there any additional challenges to being fully involved in a single series before delving further into something more mainstream, such as perhaps, forcing your characters to be as different from those other books as possible or what have you?

Not really. Shara was the seventh novel I completed, so I'd been around the block once or twice, even if those books weren't published. Working with other characters isn't a problem at all, though I sometimes wonder if my characters are different enough. Setting most of my stories in Oklahoma, I have to wonder if people start looking at my books and thinking, "Another Okie-in-trouble story." But, like real people, all the characters are different in various ways.

Could you see yourself branching off into other series, or is that something you'll only do once?

I'll do whatever the story dictates. The Werewolf Saga isn't my first series. I have a sword-and-sorcery fantasy series planned, with one novel written, though still being revised. If I can tell the whole story in one book, fine. If it takes 10, I'm okay with that, too. I just wish I had more time to write.

I'm sure the pros and cons of writing sequelized works, as with your Werewolf Saga, has two distinct sides. What are your thoughts and/or trepidations of writing a series? Any concerns on being pigeon-holed as the wolf guy or otherwise when it comes to marketing and what readers should expect from you?

Sure, there's that. My haunted house novella, Seven Days in Benevolence, for instance. Sales have been bad. Is it because people only want werewolf fiction from me? Or is it because I did a crappy job of promoting it? Or is it a bad book? I don't know. I love werewolves. I love my characters in The Werewolf Saga. But I'm definitely working on other projects that don't involve werewolves. At the same time, though, as a small press author, being associated with a niche isn't a horrible thing. If people know me as "the werewolf guy," at least they know me.

What can we expect from you by means of other wolfish tales?

Ah, well, Scrybe Press should be releasing a new trade paperback edition of Murdered by Human Wolves sometime soon. The most recent message I have says that'll be out by the end of February. There'll be a couple of new chapters in there. I've also adapted the story as a screenplay and would like to see it produced. The big thing though is the pending release of Ulrik, the direct sequel to Shara. My critique partners and some advance readers tell me it's a better story than Shara, so I'm very eager to see what people think of it. The publisher says late March or early April for the release of Ulrik. And, as you know, it ends on a cliffhanger, so there'll be another book. I've written one chapter of that book. It took a while to come back to it because I had to decide if a major character would live or die. I made that decision and am ready to move on, but I'm hoping to publish something outside the Saga between the release of Ulrik and the next book in the series.

As far as other wolfish tales, there are some things on my website devoted to the Saga that you won't find anywhere else. There's a novelette of material that was cut from the first draft of Shara, as well as some history about the Pack.

Every year I do a sampler of my work that I give out at conventions and signings. The past few years I've done CDs instead of chapbooks. This year I'm starting something new on the CD sampler. There'll be an audio story where I'll relay the exploits of Randy Drummond, an Oklahoma redneck who was bitten by a werewolf. There'll be a new story every year. This year, Randy is making a message for a telephone dating service and explaining how he came to be a werewolf. If you mix my Werewolf Saga with the "Noodlers Nab Nekkid Nymphs" story I did for video here at Fear Zone you'll have an idea of what to expect from this one.

There's one other thing - a historical romance novel that involves werewolves. It isn't part of the Saga, really. I've toyed with the idea of putting it on the Web site for free download, or sending it as installments to a mailing list. I'm not sure what to do with it yet, but it's floating around there.

And what about in general?

I just learned that Bad Moon Books has accepted My novelette, Little Graveyard on the Prairie, for publication sometime in 2009. This is a story about a farmer who gambled his land in the oil boom of the 1980s, ended up with a ruined farm and then his wife left him, taking their daughter with her. He's now running a private cemetery while trying to resuscitate his farm, and he's in the early stages of Alzheimer's. To make matters worse, his farm might now be haunted by the souls of those people sent to his cemetery.

There's other stuff, but it hasn't found a home yet. My prize project is called Amara's Prayer, a novel about a minister who has his faith tested due to a prolonged encounter with a strange woman he finds in his church's destroyed Brazilian mission. The novel was my graduate thesis. I think it's some of my best writing, and it has a real theme and symbolism and whatnot. You know, it's real lit'rary.

I also recently finished a brand new novella that doesn't have anything supernatural about it. I wrote it on request from a very respected small press. I'll be turning it over to them soon, and am hoping they'll like it.

I'm wanting to write a novel involving Bigfoot. I've got a set of characters for it, and some conflict among them, but I have to work Bigfoot into it.

Here's a quick one for ya: You're given a million dollars and a reputable crew that was magically put on Earth to do your evil bidding. Which story of yours would you develop into the next big thing in cinematic entertainment?

You realize a million dollars isn't much in terms of a movie budget these days, right? [laughs] I'd do a movie of Shara in a heartbeat. There are so few good werewolf movies out there. I would love to see my novel done right, with good effects that are really just there to help tell a story, not be the story by themselves.

I was thinking in the same vain as Masters Of Horror and I think Shara would be an awesome choice for adaptation. Who would you cast in the leading roles and who would you have direct it if you were granted such powers?

Probably Katie Holmes as Shara. She's about the right age and still has a cute, youthful look to her. Ulrik was kind of based on Orson Wells, but it's a bit late for him. I think Burt Reynolds could pull of the Ulrik role. He had the look in BOOGIE NIGHTS. Owen Wilson could play Tony Weisman, just because his last scene would be so much fun to watch. He doesn't really fit the role at all, but any chance to see him die a nasty death is welcome.

Not only do you get to practice the art of English as it pertains to your written work, but you also get to teach it to students at school. Do you find this set-up to be a benefit or a challenge to your writing craft?

It's hard to say. Teaching is a lot of fun. I love it. But, it is pretty draining. I'm almost always at school at least an hour longer than I have to be, often bring work home to grade, plan lessons, etc. It's hard to find time to write. But then, there is that summers off thing.

Overall, any interaction you have with people is beneficial. In this case, being around kids really lets me stay up on what's hip.

As a teacher, you must see first-hand the echo affect of such horrors and dysfunction of children who may not be coming from very desirable environments. How might this affect you personally and does seeing certain kids suffer from a degenerate home-setting infuse its way into your writing in any way?

Oh yeah. It's just incredibly sad. I've seen kids sent to state custody by their parents or other guardians just because the adult was tired of having a kid around. When I was in high school 20-some years ago, the worst most kids were doing was smoking pot. Kids today are into hardcore drugs, their parents beat them, kick them out of the house, all kinds of stuff I never would have imagined possible growing up in my hometown.

It makes teaching hard. I mean, when a kid is worried about having to sleep on his neighbor's back porch, he just doesn't give a crap about questions like, "What was Jack London saying about social Darwinism in The Call of the Wild."

I'm not sure Fear Zone has the bandwidth for (going into full details) about apathetic kids and their parents. I blame the parents for almost all of the problems in the schools. The kids don't respect the teachers because they don't respect their parents, and in far too many cases it's because the parents aren't worthy of respect. Like they say, you've got to pass tests to get a driver's license, but any moron can breed. Well, parenting is about more than putting Tab A into Slot A.

If you don't mind, I'd like to take advantage of your unique position of writer, father and teacher by asking you this: With so many leisures grappling for the attention of our younger generation - video games, girls, electronic gadgetry, etc., aside from reading to them while they're younger and buying them all the books we can afford, what do you think we as adults can do to not only get them to pick up a book instead of a video game or what-have-you, but to actually enjoy the experience enough to let themselves get hooked on the literary adventures that far too many kids are missing out on today?

Read to your kids when they're young. Read Green Eggs and Ham, The Poky Little Puppy, Where the Wild Things Are, all those books you loved. Read to them before they go to school, encourage and help them as they learn to read on their own, and, by God, read for yourself and let them see you do it. Let them know you enjoy reading for the simple pleasure of it. This is much more important than just book sales. Kids are unable to use their imaginations anymore. They expect the setting, conflict and theme to all be provided in a movie or video game. They can't make up their own and can't look beyond the literal words to find it in a story. These are the teenagers. But I've seen younger kids who don't even have the imagination to pretend a cardboard box is a spaceship. Keep your kids from becoming drones. Read to them now, before it's too late!

Not only do you get to see both sides of the social coin as a teacher, you also get to see both sides of the literary world as both writer and editor for Horror World. In your experience, what's a more challenging gig, writing or editing?

Editing. Although, really, I don't do a lot of editing for Horror World. I summarize and compile message board activity for the newsletter and write interviews and book reviews for the Web site. The trick in editing is fixing mistakes without diluting the author's voice, whether it's capturing the essence of a message board discussion about a new book or a student's essay on her summer vacation.

How might one benefit the either?

As a writer, when you edit you realize you're messing with someone's blood, sweat and tears, so you're careful about what you do. Then, once you've edited, you're just conscious of how somebody with a more objective eye is going to see your work.

Any major editing goals for the future, or are you keeping your primary focus on the actual writing?

No, no editing goals. I want to focus as much time as possible on writing.

Here's a "what if" question for you: Let's say a pack of hounds of questionable origin were suddenly scratching at your door, with nothing but a feast of your flesh in mind. Time is not on your side and you can only grab three inanimate items from the house before escaping with your family. What three things do you salvage?

The laptop, my truck keys and as big an armload of books as I can wrangle.

Describe the perfect setting for you when it's time to get down to some serious writing, be it fantasy or reality.

Very Spartan. Put me in a windowless room, far away from hungry, bored children, with a computer and some Midnight Syndicate or Danny Elfman CDs and I'll tear it up.

What? You expected something about sunny beaches, rolling waves and undulating hula dancers? Seriously, I'd love an office overlooking the Oregon coast, but I'd never get any work done.

When you're working on long fiction or a novel sized project, are there any habits or writing processes that you can't seem to write without whether by choice, nature or other-wise?

Nah. None of that. I've learned to write in little snatches, usually late at night, after everyone else has gone to sleep, but sometimes I'm up and down, getting snacks, picking up or dropping off kids, tending boo-boos, or whatever. There's no time to rub the heads of trolls, arrange pencils in a pyramid or anything like that.

Well, since you don't have any wacky habituals that we can poke a crooked finger at, describe for us instead the unwimzical approach you take from getting an idea down - to outline or not to outline - and the process you go through from initial draft to editing pains on publishable copy and any marketing strategies you might have tucked up your sleeves?

Used to be, I never outlined at all. Now, I do what I call sign posting. Still, I have nothing on paper when I start, but after getting a few chapters down, getting comfortable with the characters, I'll start making notes about important events that are coming up. I don't usually know how I'm going to get from where I am to the next event, or the next one, etc. I just can't do that. I get bored with the story if I outline it in too much detail. Hell, if I even talk too much about it as I'm writing it I'll feel like the tale is told and it's harder to finish it.

Typically, I write a complete draft and don't even proofread it myself at first. I'm lucky, I guess, that I can do a pretty clean first draft. As I write, I turn over segments to a critique group of other authors I respect, and they go over it. Sure, there are typos, repeated words and various other personal quirks, but I've usually already caught gaping plot holes and such. They go through the manuscript, we talk about it, I make changes, then give a new draft to my wife for the really brutal critique. After that, I don't usually do anything until I get the galleys from the publisher, and at that point you're only making vital changes. Now, as I'm writing, I might rewrite a scene, a passage or a whole chapter multiple times to get what I want before the critique group sees it.

My first novel was written on an electric typewriter. Rewriting a chapter usually meant your page count was all messed up. Thank God for the computer!

As far as marketing, I wish I was better at it. I wish I had half the promotional savvy of someone like Brian Keene. You know, I do what I can. I write press releases, gather names of reviewers willing to look at the book and ask the publisher to send copies. I'll do contests online, call the local stores and ask them to stock the new one, and I go to a lot of conventions in Oklahoma and Texas, sometimes elsewhere. So far, though, nothing's really put me over the edge.

What can we expect from your writing desk this year and what expectations might you have for yourself, writing-wise, that may or may not yet be written in blood or stone?

As far as what I hope to finish this year ... there's The Fetch, a novel about astral projection, that I'm revising. I'd planned to do a novel about Bigfoot next, but I wrote the first chapter of the next werewolf book and got kind of excited about it, so I might forge ahead with that instead.

Any final words before I let you get back to writing that next Saga novel?

You've been really thorough. I appreciate your time. Oh yeah, a message for the people - BUY MY BOOKS!