FEAR ZONE INTERVIEW WITH TOM PICCIRILLI Conducted By Gabrielle S. Faust

The recipient of four Bram Stoker Awards, including the first Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Poetry, and a final nominee for both the World Fantasy Award and International Thriller Writer Award, author Tom Piccirilli is easily said to be one of the current defining voices in dark fiction. With over twenty novels, including THE MIDNIGHT ROAD, A CHOIR OF ILL CHILDREN, and HEADSTONE CITY, 150 short stories and a variety of collections under his belt, Piccirilli has consistently kept his readers enthralled over the years with his ability to cross from genre to the next with the same superb literary skill and flawless execution no matter whether it is horror, westerns or crime thrillers. I recently had the honor of interviewing the legendary dark fiction/crime noir novelist about his current and upcoming releases, as well as his thoughts on writing, the horror industry and his gravitation from horror to hardboiled crime thrillers, his true literary passion.

This is what he had to say...

Having had several new novels come out this year including THE MIDNIGHT ROAD and THE FEVER KILL, with THE COLD SPOT and HELLBOY: EMERALD HEL due out in early '08, are you planning on a book tour? If so, where?

I'd certainly like to do more signings, and try to hit as many stores within a couple of states, but being out in Colorado makes it damn hard to do an official tour. When I lived in New York, I could hit 50 bookstores within a couple hundred miles round trip. Now it takes me forty-five minutes just to get down the side of the mountain. But I am hoping to do more readings and signings and expand my usual area of promotion to reach more bookstores and fans. Nothing is officially planned yet, but keep watching my website for any changes that might be on the horizon where a tour might be concerned.

And, speaking of signings and appearances are you planning on making the convention route in 2008? Which conventions/conferences do you prefer and why?

I'll most likely be at the World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City, and possibly NoirCon in Philly and BoucherCon in Baltimore. It's been a while since I've thrown myself into the convention circuit, but now that I'm working more and more steadily in the suspense and crime genres, I need to get back out there and promote myself among the folks of those particular fields. When you shift genres it's like starting all over again and being the new kid on the block, so it'll be nice meeting my literary heroes from those fields and finding myself among a new readership.

How has it been, as you said above, "starting all over again"? As a vetted pro in horror and dark fiction, as well as the crime noir vein, what has been the response of your new readership and the established authors in the pure crime thriller genre? How has it differed from that of the horror world?

I've been very proud and thankful that so many folks have rallied behind my crime and suspense work. The readers seem to dig it, and I've been honored that so many professionals and literary heroes of mine have taken the time out to lend an encouraging word and help promote the fiction. So far as how that differs from the horror industry, there really hasn't been anything too different. The horror field is filled with incredible folks, both readers and professional writers, and I've been lucky to meet and deal with a great many of them.

How would you say your new novels THE MIDNIGHT ROAD and THE COLD SPOT differ from your previous work? Would you consider them an evolution in your gravitation towards more hardboiled crime noir?

I do think it's a natural extension of what I've been doing right from the beginning of my career. Three early novels were "soft-boiled" mysteries, but as I worked my way deeper into the horror and dark fantasy field, the more hardboiled elements I threw into those particular novels. Over the past several years with Bantam you could say I've been doing suspense novels with touches of the supernatural. Now I've simply dropped the supernatural elements and focused in on the crime. It's something I've wanted to tackle for a while, and as a big fan of the crime field, it only makes sense that an author follows the work that he loves to read. If a writer is doing anything he's busily trying to impress himself upon the form and style of fiction that he cares about.

One of the novels due out next year is HELLBOY: EMERALD HELL (Dark Horse). How did you come to be involved in this project? What was it like working with Mike Mignola and Dark Horse? What was it like reinterpreting a comic book character into a novel format with your own style?

Mike and the good folks at Dark Horse were all a pleasure to work with, very generous with their time and their suggestions, and really willing to give me all the benefits of all the doubts. I'm a huge fan of the Hellboy comics, especially the standalone short stories where HB is, more or less, off on his own in some strange land and has to puzzle out some mythic sort of mystery (as he does in the short stories comprising THE CHAINED COFFIN graphic novel). I decided I wanted to focus in on that aspect of HB and direct all my energies into showing him as a kind of stranger in a strange land. So for EMERALD HELL he finds himself lost down in the deep swampy south battling evil mystical preachers, rednecks, witchy women, and a gathering of lost mutant children out in the bayou.

Would you be open to working on future projects with comic book houses such as Dark Horse in addition to the Hellboy novel? Have you considered teaming up with illustrators to bring some of your work to life in a graphic novel format?

I'm open to working on other media tie-in stuff, so long as the project is right for me. I've been offered others that I felt were just wrong for one reason or another. In this biz if you think you're the wrong person for the job, or believe that the job isn't worth doing in the first place, then you're probably right to say no and let somebody else take it on. As for your latter question, I haven't simply considered approaching an illustrator to put out my own POD graphic novel, if that's what you're asking. However, I will have a piece out in an upcoming issue of Cemetery Dance's GRAVE TALES, illustrated by the great Glenn Chadbourne.

What do you consider your defining novel, or collection, as a writer and why? Which one would you most like to be remembered for in literary history?

It might sound like I'm skirting the question, but there really is no answer to that. Not for me, at least. If anyone is so generous as to remember me for anything I've written, then I'm more than happy that some of my work, any of my work, has made that great an impression upon a readership. I don't think there is any one defining novel because the so-called "definition" of myself is always changing, always in motion, as I go along. My life shifts, my experiences grow vaster, and who I am now isn't who I was twenty years ago when I started, and isn't who I will be twenty years from now (provided I'm privileged to live so long). I just hope that something of mine survives in the overwhelming grandness of the annals of literature.

Do you feel that authors, especially new authors, often place too much emphasis on creating that single piece that defines their "legacy" instead of writing for the pure joy of writing?

I don't think anybody writes for the "pure joy" of it. In the moment it's a painful, frustrating, gut-wrenching process. I'm not sure if newer writers are out there trying to define their legacies, but if they are, who gives a shit? All that matters is what they produce and how the readership takes to it. The audience defines what is classic, what is memorable, what is first-rate, not the author. Nobody cares about what an author considers his greatest single piece, his opinion holds no more sway than anyone else's, and probably less. History will define your legacy, assuming you'll even have one. In the great annals of literature, most of us don't.

I have read recently that, as your career progresses, you are finding yourself more and more at ease primarily within the world of crime thrillers/noir than any of the other genres you have explored over the years. Why do you think this is and do you feel that you will again return to pure horror?

I think when you break the world of "dark fiction" down into its purest essence, you wind up with crime. Whatever that crime is. If it's a crime against a person, against nature, against God, whatever. All of horror fits into this format-monsters, ghosts, serial killers-it's all about a criminal act against someone. Murder, mutilation, brutality. Blackness. Noir. As a fan of dark fiction, I think I've simply been distilling my tastes and my literary interests over the years. Breaking them down into that purity. Crime. In any case, the older I've become the more I've come to care about our more common fears-the troubles we have in the real world. Our fears of losing a loved one, fears about commitments, responsibilities, about facing the troubling aspects of living in a society with others we might hate or who might hate us for virtually no reason. When I was younger, and had lived less life, I was more taken with flights of imagination. Now, I'm more taken with what is rooted in reality. It might completely shift again one of these days, maybe soon, maybe later, but for the moment this seems to be the course I'm on, so I'm just riding it out.

As the nature of the crimes committed in today's society become increasingly more twisted and, at the same time, commonplace, would you perhaps say that the supernatural is no longer entirely necessary to evoke pure fear? Is the inherent brutality of modern humanity terrifying enough?

I'm doubt that today's crimes are any more twisted than they have been throughout world history. There's always been war, dictatorship, genocide, psychopaths, pedophiles, and vicious brutality. We've never needed the supernatural to evoke fear, not even before we crawled out of caves. It's just another aspect of human nature-to guess at what might lie out there in the deep darkness, in the great unknown. Maybe it's a guy with a butcher knife, maybe it's winged demon out of hell, maybe it's your dead cousin Ernie coming to get you, Barbara. We fear what we don't understand or can't accept, and there's always been plenty of that.

You have consistently straddled genres with ease no matter whether through short stories or novels, yet you have in the past mentioned that you feel science fiction is the most challenging. Why do you find this one particular vein of writing harder than the others?

It's simply not the direction my imagination works. I've written a handful of SF short stories, but even those are a bit wonky and kind of noirish or leaning toward the supernatural in their own right. I really hope to one day sit down and write a massive SF tome, but I'm not sure if it'll ever happen. Even so, I'm a big fan of the genre. It was my first genre love as a kid and I still dive in every so often. I'm always stunned by the breadth of the imagination some of these authors have, the style and creativity with which they weave their tales. I have nothing but enormous respect for them.

Like many horror authors I have had the pleasure of knowing, you have a great love of B movies and yet your writing is always of the award winning literary style. Why do you think horror authors, including yourself, tend to embrace such polar opposites in the artistic realm comfortably?

I think there's a certain liveliness and something just outright "fun" that's built into the process. That's not to say writing is easy. Quite the opposite, it's incredibly difficult. And I think that watching B-movies and enjoying horror on an almost childish level is what helps to make all that pain of facing down the empty page worth it. Exorcizing our demons and dealing with incredibly heavy issues and scenes of blood and high emotion need something to balance them out. B-movies do nicely for me. I can pop in some piece of shit and enjoy it on a different kind of level. It's goofy, it's dopey, it's freaky, it's hammy. I can laugh and shake my head, and it helps me to go back to the office and sit in front of the screen and make the effort to raise my own work above the laughable.

As a writer, what is your creative process when first developing a concept for a new novel? Do you dive right in and allow the novel to "write its self" or do you outline every detail?

I try to start off with a gripping scene that is already in motion, and then backtrack to find out who these characters are and figure out how they came to be caught up in the circumstances that they are. I don't outline whatsoever. I think it steals too much of the flavor of what I'm doing and is too confining on the parameters of the story. The difficulties of writing in this fashion is that you have to be very aware of what's already occurred in the story, and you need to keep track of all your loose ends and make sure they're tied. But everyone has to do that anyway. Writing a novel is a very organic process for me. I am surprised by what I find in the work and I discover things I didn't know were there when I began. I really have no idea how somebody can sit down and outline a whole book without actually writing it, without actually breathing it, and living with it for months, and watching it grow and change and become its own presence. Folks who can play that game are beyond me.

Your work often deals with, in traditional noir fashion, the emotional horror elicited from the dark paths your characters travel rather than mere senseless gore. With that in mind, what do think of the new splatter punk and torture porn works that have gained such popularity over the past few years?

I haven't read too much so-called torture porn fiction or splatter-punk in recent years, so I'm not sure what's out there. In the film industry, where this sort of thing seems to be rather prevalent over the past couple of years, I take it on a film by film basis. Hostel didn't do much for me, but I'm a big fan of the Saw films, mostly for the way they bop and weave and drop in a few surprising twists along the way. The graphic violence is more playful in its own fashion, more tongue in cheek with an almost wink at the camera. It's the non-stop brutality filmed in a more realistic fashion a la WOLF CREEK and BROKEN that really bothers me. It's not fun, it's unpleasant. Horror films that take our minds off real-life horrors is one thing. Horror films that focus our attention on real life horrors are another. For me, anyway.

Do you think that society's gravitation towards the more brutal, merciless fringes of horror are a reflection of its overall desensitization or is it merely the artistic evolution of the genre as a whole?

Horror is meant to press at the envelope in order to see how far it can go. Is it connected with the fall of western civilization? Maybe. Maybe it's a parallel or a reflection, or maybe it's just the way the industry is heading. Unfortunately, there's only so much blood you can pour across the screen, only so many co-eds you can kill off. It's much more difficult to establish an emotional rapport with an audience.

How have you seen the horror industry change since you first began your career as a writer? What are the pros? The cons?

It really hasn't changed all that much since I began in the early 90s with one exception which I'll get to. Horror was on the wane then and since that time it's gone through its cycles. Sometimes they put "horror" on the spine and most of the time they don't. Sometimes the emphasis is on the supernatural and sometimes it's on serial killers. Sometimes it's vampires (usually it's vampires), and sometimes it's zombies. If you're around long enough you see the patterns emerge. The real exception is the rise of paranormal romances, the merging of horror tropes with romance and erotica. With the exception of maybe Anne Rice and Diana Gabaldon and a handful of others back in the early 90s, the sub-genre just didn't exist. Now I think it's one of the largest driving forces in the publishing field of today. That's been a major change.

Based on your observations of the industry, do you have a prediction of what might be in store for the dark fiction world?

I've learned not to make predictions about anything in the publishing world. There's no point. Nobody owns the future, even if most of us act like we do.

There is generally a dark, sardonic humor present in your work. What do you feel this brings to the story?

There are two reasons for it, besides the fact that I just like it and it's part of my personality and will always find its way into the work, no matter how dark or funky it is. Humor is one of the commonalities between us. Putting humor in a story binds the reader to the fiction more tightly. You're not just drawing them in with characters or with theme, but with laughter and understanding and truth. We laugh at something blackly comic because it strikes us as deeply honest. Also, humor-a moment of light-serves to underscore the darkness that much more.

What was your first attempt at publication, as a young struggling writer, like? What was the most bizarre thing an editor or publishing house has ever told you regarding your work?

Like most struggling young writers, my first attempts at publication were fucking painful. It hurts to be disregarded, rejected, misunderstood, and to take your lumps every day. But it's what you do if you want to make it through the fire and become published. At least it's what we did before POD and Lulu and Publish America. Now, it seems to me, a lot of folks aren't willing to face that kind of rejection and insecurity. I got hundreds of rejections before I ever made a sale. Nowadays, I've heard some newbie writers tell how they had two stories rejected and decided to publish a collection of twenty-five stories. They cut to the chase and go right to publication, which might make them feel grand in the short run, but doesn't give them any kind of career at all. What it does give them is the glory of handing their mothers a copy of their work, and a basement full of boxes of unsold books. As for the most bizarre thing an editor ever told me regarding my work-one of the readers at Simon & Schuster decried me as an anti-Semite because he or she read all kinds of freakyass symbolism into my novel Dark Father. I had six prostitutes in the book, which he took to mean I was bashing the Star of David and calling all Jews whores. The prostitutes drive around town in a van, which he took to mean was me making reference to "the wandering Jew." It was very surreal and kind of scary because I'd never before realized how easy it is for somebody to find something so totally off base in the work. They can read their own fears and pain and whatever right in the lines that reflect something else entirely.

And, speaking of bizarre: With such a large and diverse fan base you must have a story or two of strange things people have either done or said to you in their fandom?

I've been lucky and don't have too many stories about oddball fans. There've been a few, but those folks were mostly harmless. One thing recently happened that bothered me a bit. A kid on MySpace wanted me to "mentor" him. He promised he'd be a first-rate student and wouldn't let me down, and when he was a bestselling author he'd owe it all to me. He envisioned me as someone capable of turning him into a world-renowned writer (as if I could do that I would do it for myself first). I wrote him to tell him that he shouldn't worry about being a bestseller at this stage of the game, but should focus on his craftsmanship and to keep writing every day and learning the ropes. That he should read a lot and write a lot, and keep submitting his work. Afterward, he responded with a lot of vitriol-said he'd never read my work anyway and who the fuck was I to turn down mentoring him. And I could drop dead and wouldn't I be sorry when he became a bestseller and owned a house in Beverly Hills. I'm always a little surprised at how vicious some new writers can be to folks who have some credits under their belts. Back in the day, when I was writing fan letters to my favorite authors, I was happy as hell to get a postcard or a note back from any of them. Now, maybe because email and websites make access so easy, there seems to be a real loss of respect and gratitude for anyone willing to take the time and effort to respond and wish you well and offer advice.

What can we expect to see from you in 2008? 2009?

Well, The Cold Spot and Hellboy will be out in early '08, and the follow-up to The Cold Spot--featuring my criminal characters Chase and his grandfather Jonah-will be out in late '08 or early '09 entitled The Last Kind Words. There's a few more collections and other projects in the works, but it's a bit too early to discuss them.

And, lastly, do you have any final thoughts for the Fear Zone audience before we close?

I just hope fans out there will continue to give a chance to new fiction, new films, different sorts and styles, and if they have any urges toward doing something creative whatsoever, that they follow their dreams through any fire they have to in order to make them real.

Tom Piccirilli is the author of more than 20 novels including THE COLD SPOT, THE MIDNIGHT ROAD, THE DEAD LETTERS, and A CHOIR OF ILL CHILDREN. He's a four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, and has been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and the International Thriller Writers Award. Learn more about him at his official website: www.tompiccirilli.com