 Award-winning author HP Newquist is a writer with more than two dozen books to his credit, including This Will Kill You (St. Martin’s Press), The Book Of Blood (Houghton Mifflin), and Here There Be Monsters (Houghton Mifflin). They explore the science behind scary subjects: how we die, the mythology of blood, the reality of unseen creatures, and how we replace body parts. He explores themes of the unknown and the unseen in his new novel, BEHEMOTH. WEBSITE LINKS http://www.newquistbooks.com/behemoth.html INSTAGRAM @hpnewquistbooks TWITTER: @hpnewquist FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/hpnewquistbooks AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/HP-Newquist/e/B003XLMPWY As a species, humans love to categorize things—regardless of whether those things need categories or not. “Horror” is a great word, but it has such a variety of interpretations that it gets overwhelmed by individual perspectives. Too many people think of horror as slash and gore, or zombie fiction. Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself? I’ve authored over two dozen books, which are apparently popular enough that they’ve won several awards. The subjects range from artificial intelligence and mythical creatures on to weird science and music. BEHEMOTH, my new book, is my first horror novel. The reception to it has been overwhelmingly positive, and I’m very grateful for that. Outside of writing, I created The National GUITAR Museum, live in New York with my family, and travel as much as time permits. To get the ball rolling and get everyone relaxed, here is a hopefully lighthearted question to break the ice, which one of your characters would you least like to meet in real life and have them complain at you about they way you treated them in your work. That’s a great intro question—kind of like being nudged unwillingly out onto a skyscraper ledge. There is a woman in BEHEMOTH named Mrs. Loretta Bower. Early in the novel, she is charged with keeping an eye on a sick neighbor, and she tries to straddle the line between doing what she’s told by her boss, and attending to the welfare of her neighbor. It’s an unwinnable situation. I purposely pushed her to the breaking point, so much so that she became shrill, irrational, and homicidal—a thoroughly unlikable human being. Not her fault, completely mine. I can’t say as I blame her, but I would hate to have her come at me in a knife fight. Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing? Good writers are distillations of everything they’ve ever read, so it’s hard to narrow down specific influences. I would say that, for me, science fiction is a close second to horror. I appreciate that sci-fi often incorporates well-thought out histories that help support the plot. In sci-fi you can’t just throw up a few interesting words and themes and hope they stick. You’ve got to really address the suspension of disbelief to make it work. Bradbury was a master of that. Mysteries have been important to me in the same way, whether it’s the entire Sherlock Holmes canon or tales like Capote’s In Cold Blood. I want a story that keeps me turning pages long after I know I should have been asleep. The term horror, especially when applied to fiction always carries such heavy connotations. What’s your feeling on the term “horror” and what do you think we can do to break past these assumptions? As a species, humans love to categorize things—regardless of whether those things need categories or not. “Horror” is a great word, but it has such a variety of interpretations that it gets overwhelmed by individual perspectives. Too many people think of horror as slash and gore, or zombie fiction. I can’t even begin to count the number of friends I have that say “I can’t read horror” or “I don’t like scary books.” So I find that calling horror pieces “suspense” or “thrillers” or “dark mysteries” often makes people much more comfortable with the content. Think of how much more palatable the term becomes by positing Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery as horror, or Poe’s The Raven, and then adding new work like Jordan Peele’s Us. Suddenly, horror is the obviously cool stuff (but only when you don’t call it horror). If the reading public was able to view horror as an emotion—or a reaction—derived from a written work, rather than thinking of it as a blood-soaked genre populated by rictus grin corpses, we might get more “popular” acclaim. A lot of good horror movements have arisen as a direct result of the socio/political climate, considering the current state of the world where do you see horror going in the next few years? We’ve been told since the 1940s that the popularity of horror and sci-fi is regularly pegged to specific global events or crises. World War II, the Cold War, the Space Race, September 11. Whether that’s always true is a matter of ongoing debate. I think that notion ascribes motives and perspicacity to horror writers that we only wish we had. That said, themes for the next “movement” are hammering down on us as I write this. Pandemics, income inequality, healthcare breakdown, and widespread homelessness are their own horror stories. You need horror inspiration? Watch the nightly news. Given the dark, violent and at times grotesque nature of the horror genre why do you think so many people enjoy reading it? I am a firm believer that the two greatest and most evocative forms of writing are horror and humor. They are built on the two extreme emotions that can be conjured up instantaneously: laughter and fear. Intriguingly, they are also polar opposites of each other. Everyone likes to laugh and feel joy, which is experienced in our advanced human brain, while most people don’t want to be afraid or feel fear, but the visceral response to it is encoded deep in our reptilian brain. Reading good horror shocks that part of our brain into reacting, which puts our primitive selves on high alert. It’s comparable to an adrenaline rush, but at a more primal, subconscious level. I also think horror and humor are the two most difficult forms of story telling to write well. When you write biography, say, or a western, you’re not asking the reader to have an emotional reaction to the story. You want the reader engaged, but horror and humor ask for—indeed, demand—more than that. Horror sets the bar quite high for reader engagement. What, if anything, is currently missing from the horror genre? Originality. Seriously. New monsters, new villains, new creepy crawlies, new worlds are all desperately needed. There are some tremendous zombie stories out there, but how about if we give the post-apocalyptic undead a temporary rest? They could really use it. So could the rest of us. In the past authors were able to write about almost anything with a far lesser degree of the fear of backlash, but this has all changed in recent years. These days authors must be more aware of representation an the depiction of things such as race and gender in their works, how aware are you of these things and what steps have you taken to ensure that your writing can’t be viewed as being offensive to a minority group? I have two kids—daughters—and after they were born I became aware of how things in life were not balanced in their favor. Scholastic recognition, sports resources, career expectations—as recently as a decade ago these still seemed to be automatically geared towards males, and that doesn’t even factor ethnicity into it. Writers who are true to their characters can avoid giving offense in their writing. That happens by creating characters upon whom readers can imprint their own formats, beliefs, and imagery. Look at Poe, Mary Shelley, or M.R. James: their characters transcend or circumscribe ethnicity. There are other great horror writers who failed miserably at this—we are all aware these days of who they are—by delineating unfair differences between people. Shakespeare might be the finest example of how to transcend this. Almost any of his characters can be played by any gender, ethnicity, or disability. The best King Lear I ever saw was played by a woman. That’s what we should be shooting for—characters that allow us to see how they deal with the human condition, regardless of gender or race. Not only is it inclusive, but it has the value of making the writing more attractive to more people. And we all want to get our work in the hands of more people, don’t we? Does horror fiction perpetuate it’s own ghettoization? No. Believe it or not, every genre is its own ghetto. The best-selling books in the world are romance novels, but you’d have a hard time convincing the general public or any literary reviewers that those books represent of what society wants to read above all else. Same with horror, sci-fi, westerns, historical fiction, or any other labelled form. Each genre has its own adherents, and each gets its turn on the popularity pedestal in due time. Taken out of the ghetto, as it were. This typically happens when Hollywood goes all in on a particular script trend. Horror’s had it for a good chunk of the last few years (thanks to Jordan Peele, Karyn Kusama, Guillermo del Toro, and others), with deep space disasters prevailing just before that, and westerns in vogue prior to that. The trend lasts until something else is determined to be better fodder for making movies. It’s generally about a decade and a half, on average, for each genre to cycle back to the fore. What new and upcoming authors do you think we should take notice off? I am guilty—over the last five years—of committing myself to reading horror classics to the exclusion of all else. I decided that I wanted to find the crucial elements that initially drew me into the horror genre and unravel why they worked—and why they continue to work today. Specifically: What is it they have that makes them stand the test of time? So I’ve been reading the obvious, the not-so-obvious, and perhaps the not-as-well-known: M.R. James, Arthur Machen, Nikolai Gogol, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. Reading their collectively brilliant work from the last two hundred years has helped me dissect my own work and attempt to make it better. I do, however, look forward to emerging from the depths to begin searching for new writers who are picking up the gauntlet. What are the books and films that helped to define you as an author? The books I read as a kid were mostly short story collections by classic horror writers. Edgar Allan Poe, HP Lovecraft, August Derleth, Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, amongst many others. As far as films, the Universal movie monsters started me off--The Wolf-Man, the Creature From The Black Lagoon, et al. Then movies like War Of The Worlds, Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark, The Omen, Hellraiser, and Alien cemented my love of the genre. Equally important were The Twilight Zone episodes written by Richard Matheson that left me in shock (which Black Mirror does today). Anything that leaves you with your mouth wide open and your mind grinding into overdrive is worth spending the time with. Are there any reviews of your work, positive or negative that have stayed with you? When you start getting published, every review matters, positive or negative. They fill you with pride, or they slice your ego to the sidewalk. They become like little scars on various parts of your skin that you eventually wonder where they came from. You can’t even remember them after a while. Over time, you realize that all that matters is if your work has connected with people. If it hasn’t, there’s nothing you can do. But if people get something out of your writing—a moment of escape, release, emotional overload, entertainment, anything—theirs are the only reviews that matter. What aspects of writing to do you find the most difficult? I’ve enjoyed writing since I was in grade school, so I’ve never found anything about it difficult. Never had writer’s block, never had a moment where I wanted to give it up. That said, the element of time might be the most inherently difficult thing to deal with as a writer: finding the time to write out everything that is in your head, taking the time to make it work on paper, and the time it takes waiting for it all to get published. Is there one subject you would never write about as an author? If you’re asking about subjects in horror, the answer is no. Everything is on the table, because horror comes in more flavors than a Baskin Robbins ice cream cone. And you’ve got to be ready to sample them all. How important are names to you in your books? Do you choose the names based on liking the way it sounds or the meaning? Names are extraordinarily important. I change them often during the course of writing, even up to publication. The names have to sound natural coming out of other character’s mouths, and yet look good on the page. They also have to give the reader a comfortable attachment to the character, because the name is the one thing that marches through every page of the book. I’ve read excellent books that were nearly ruined for me by the introduction of characters with outlandishly silly or cartoonish names. My one tip: avoid alliterative names. It’s a kiss of death. Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years? I have been writing for more years than I’d like to admit. The one thing I’ve learned, and still try to apply every day, is that you constantly need to slice away any fleshiness in your wordsmithing. Do it until your writing is made up solely of strong, shiny bone . . . with a sheen of blood. Cut, cut, cut. Cut some more. Till it stops bleeding. What is the best piece of advice you ever received with regards to your writing? Never release any of your work to the world without having first put it aside. Give it a rest, even if it’s just overnight. Then take a fresh look at it. Resist the impulse to get it out of your system and make it available to everyone. Edit it first, because once it’s out in the world, you can never truly get it back. And, trust me, you will most assuredly regret that. Read what you’ve written. Read it again. And again. If you’ve given it an honest assessment, it just might be ready for public consumption. To many writers, the characters they write become like children, who is your favorite child, and who is your least favorite to write for and why? I think of them more as old girlfriends instead of children. You have kaleidoscopic memories of all of them—some great, some not so good—but they’re a part of your past so you can now view them a bit more objectively. And you can—in your own mind—give them some sort of preferential and prioritized treatment. That said, I look forward to writing despicable characters because there are no constraints. You can get as twisted, loathsome, and evil as you want. In BEHEMOTH, Leonard Smeak fits that profile. I savored every moment of slithering into Leonard’s psyche. For those who haven’t read any of your books, which of your books do you think best represents your work and why? As far as horror fiction, BEHEMOTH is my first effort. It certainly represents my interest in clawing at the margins of the unseen world. Outside of that, my nonfiction book, “This Will Kill You,” mixes horror and humor with real science to describe how humans actually die. It’s a blend of the two extremes I talked about earlier, because reading about death can actually be engaging. Readers learn about the lethality of everything from shark attacks and lightning strikes to drowning and being burned at the stake. These methods of human departure are then ranked on a horror-meter of why you don’t want to die that way. Do you have a favorite line or passage from your work, and would you like to share it with us? I won’t go quite so far as to say this is my favorite line in BEHEMOTH, but it’s one that encapsulates the sinister underpinnings of the story. One character views the results of a night gone horrifically wrong, and tells his adversary: “I’m guessing that even God won’t forgive you.” We always expect redemption. Maybe sometimes there isn’t any. Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next? BEHEMOTH is my most recent horror work, which is a story about the hidden evil in a small town. I’ve been asked to do a sequel (and even a prequel), which I’ve already plotted out. I also have a short story collection waiting in the wings, as well as a history of crime and forensics that will be published by Viking next year. If you could erase one horror cliché what would be your choice? Zombies. Zombies. Zombies. And then, for good measure, zombies. What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you? The last great book I read was Bill Bryson’s A Short History Of Everything, which will corkscrew the inside of your head for days—no matter what genre you’re a fan of. There is so much incredible and bizarre information about our world in those pages that it’s almost impossible to believe. As for disappointment, I learned long ago to never go near writers that I know will be overhyped, yet fail to deliver. I do my homework before I pick up any book. Once you set your level of expectations, you won’t be disappointed. What's the one question you wish you would get asked but never do? And what would be the answer? One question I think should be asked of every horror writer and fan is “What is the definitive horror moment in popular culture?” I have two answers, and they’re mine alone. In movies, the definitive horror moment is when the xenomorph bursts out of John Hurt’s chest in the first Alien film. No matter how steely you imagine yourself to be, the first time you saw that on a screen, it kicked your skull back against the chair. Hard. As far as a literary moment, it’s this from the ending of The Lottery: “Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones.” That’s the moment the story about a group of neighbors doing their civic duty transforms into a story about children and adults preparing to kill their friend—and their mother. She flicks that horror switch in one sentence and all of a sudden you know that things are going to turn wicked.  A DEADLY ACCIDENT After losing three local boys to a devastating car crash in the upstate village of Morris, the neighboring town of Ashford suffers even more tragedy over the next couple of weeks when several townspeople mysteriously vanish in the middle of the night. Sensing that there’s a rational explanation, however strange it may be, local reporter Robert Garrahan decides to get to the bottom of the matter. A DESPERATE FATHER THE HEART AND SOUL OF HORROR REVIEW WEBSITESComments are closed.
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