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F. Paul Wilson is a best-selling writer of science fiction, horror, and thrillers. His six-book Adversary cycle began with The Keep and was followed by The Tomb. The latter introduced the world to his most popular character, Repairman Jack. A practicing physician, Wilson continues to weave together his fictional worlds centered around the mythical town of Monroe.
Q: When did you first start getting into writing? What were some of your first efforts?
A: I remember writing even in second grade, writing stories. I would never finish them. They were always horror and science fiction. I even read half of one in class and then starting winging the rest of it. The teacher made me sit down. But I always remember the response of the other kids. It sort of triggered something in me that they wanted to know what happened next. I've had the writing bug all my life.
Q: Do you remember what the first science fiction or horror story or book was you ever read?
A: It was science fiction because there wasn't much horror. I guess I would say I started with E.C. comics. I was born in '46. I was about six or seven when they were at their peak. I wasn't allowed to read the horror titles, but I did. Hid them in a friend's garage. EC had science fiction titles. I remember reading Ray Bradbury's "Sound of Thunder." I didn't know who Ray Bradbury was, but I always remembered the name because they made a big deal that it was a Ray Bradbury story. Later on, when I saw his name on books, I would buy them. Then it was the Tom Swift, Jr., and the Rick Brant books which were for kids and were science fiction. Probably the first adult science fiction I read was a collection called, Space, Space, Space. It was edited by William Sloane. (He wrote The Edge of Running Water, one of his famous books.) It had some really, really great science fiction, old science fiction, all reprints. That really gave me the bug.
Q: You also read Uncle Scrooge, Carl Barks stuff when you were young?
A: Oh, yeah. Uncle Scrooge was a big source of fantasy stories. You learned about a lot of old legends and such from them. The one I remember most, and from a libertarian standpoint it's really a great way of teaching the supply-side economics, is "Tralla La." [Uncle Scrooge, #6, 1954.] That's where Uncle Scrooge drops a bottle cap in this Utopian society based on Shangri La. All of a sudden bottle caps become all the rage and everybody has to have them, collect them. The only way that they defuse the situation is Donald flies away, comes back with a whole plane full of bottle caps, drops them on them [the Tralla Lans], and then the caps become worthless.
Q: Definitely an over-supply then. I remember another Uncle Scrooge story where a tornado takes away all his money and he's left penniless. Everybody thinks they're going to be well off because they've got all his money. But no one is making anything. So Scrooge sets himself up as a farmer and gets all his money back by the end of the story because he's the only one with goods to sell. ["A Financial Fable," in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, #126, March, 1951.]
A: Scrooge earned every penny. Harold Gray did the same thing with Daddy Warbucks in the Depression. Between mobs, the government, and the economy he wound up penniless and gradually worked his way back up to being a multi-zillionaire again.
Q: That seems to be a common theme through a lot of the stories Carl Barks wrote.... You mentioned you wrote in grade school, when did you first start submitting?
A: Submitting professionally? That would be during college.
Q: Did you want to submit when you were younger, during high school? Or did you not know about that?
A: My problem was finishing them. I'd get a great idea, and I'd get a great start to the story, and then I'd lose interest in actually finishing it. I'd finished it in my head. You come to learn that finishing is the work of writing. The great fun of writing is inventing the story and working out the problems. But once you've gone that done in your head, then you have to stay with it and get it all down on paper. For me, the big challenge is getting the story worked out in my head and that's where I have all the fun. That's what I'm doing now with the next novel, for which I don't even have a working title.
Q: Was there something in college, did you just get older, a teacher or class that gave you the impetus to start finishing stories?
A: No, no...oh, well, maybe, you know what it was, it may have been the so-called New Wave, at the time. I was reading a lot of the science fiction magazines, the anthologies, and a lot of the stories were so bad, they were so...I don't know, they just didn't seem to end, they didn't seem to begin, they just sort of seemed to be situations. I said, "God, I know I can do better than that." But it took me years to finally make a sale.
Q: I see from your bibliography that the first one was "The Cleaning Machine." Is that correct?
A: That was, I think, the first one that was published. I think I made the sale of "Ratman" first. "The Cleaning Machine" was sold shortly after the "Ratman" sale but "Cleaning Machine" appeared first.
Q: Did you do anything in particular to celebrate when you got your first check or first acceptance letter?
A: That would be from John Campbell [then-editor of Analog] for "Ratman." A nickel a word and three-hundred some odd dollars. I was in medical school. First year medical student. My wife was pregnant. No money coming in. We danced around the apartment.
Q: I bet. That's quite a bit of money.
A: At that time it was a windfall. We didn't go out and celebrate, though. We had to keep getting food on the table.
Q: Yeah, a little more basic things... Do you have a writing routine now?
A: Pretty much every... I cut my medical practice down to two days a week, Mondays and Tuesdays. I write every other day. Actually, I have some time on Monday morning, so I write Monday mornings, and I write all day Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Q: You mentioned Ray Bradbury, and I see that you've read Robert Heinlein, [Richard] Matheson, and H.P. Lovecraft. In terms of some of the progression in your writing, what were some of the things that led you to switch primarily from writing science fiction and then to horror and then more to contemporary thrillers now? Did you want to try new things or...?
A: It's that. You get to a certain point in the genre where you sense you're going to start repeating yourself. In science fiction, after winning the Prometheus Award [for Wheels Within Wheels, awarded by the Libertarian Futurist Society for best freedom related science fiction], I kept being referred to as the "libertarian science fiction writer" which I didn't really want to be. That may be my worldview, but that's not necessarily who I want to be. Horror and science fiction were always my two favorite things. There was no horror market when I started writing science fiction, so I put a fair amount of horror into my science fiction. Like "Ratman," for instance, the villain at the end winds up being eaten alive by rats. For John Campbell to put that in Analog was unusual. A lot of my stories had horror in them. The Tery, quite a bit of horror in it. So when [Stephen] King opened up the horror market, I finally decided, well, it's time to move away from being a libertarian science fiction writer and try my hand at horror. That's when I wrote The Keep.
Q: Is there anything about one versus the other type of writing you like most? Do you like one type of writing better than others? Do they each have their pluses and minuses? In terms of genres?
A: I like horror, and I like thrillers. I look at myself as, when you come down to it, a thriller writer. I've written science fiction thrillers, I've written horror thrillers, and thriller thrillers. Medical thrillers. Repairman Jack thrillers. Whatever. I tend to prefer the horror end of it more because you can deal with people on a more visceral level. You can sort of melt them down and get to what and who they really are. In science fiction, because the milieu is so important, you spend a lot of time developing the background, and the foreground tends to thin out. I always felt like I was a step back from my science fiction. Though I tried to correct that in Dydeetown World. I tried to use a first-person point of view and really get into the gut of that character. And it was a very noir-ish future, anyway, so it was easier to do that way.
Q: You mentioned you sold your first story when you were in medical school. When did you discover your interest in the medical field?
A: Oh, I'd always been very... Well, I think my science fiction interest either came from my interest in science or it promoted my interest in science. A chicken-egg situation. My father worked for a pharmaceutical firm, so I was exposed to all these monographs on new drugs about the house. So, it just seemed like a natural thing for me to do. I never thought of being a professional writer. I've said it elsewhere, I never thought I could make a living at it. It was too much fun. It was something I wanted to do. You just don't make your living having fun. I'd always seen my father going off to New York every day, and he pretty much hated it. So, I figured that's what work is.
Q: How have you seen the medical field change in terms of, say, your freedom as a doctor since you began your practice?
A: Oh, it's enormous. I'm so glad I'm working part time rather than full time. I'm so glad I don't have to depend upon it for my livelihood, because I would be a very depressed person. The insurance companies are... I always thought the government would be the worst insurance company, but these managed care companies are simply awful.
Q: What are the worst things about them? Dictating to you...?
A: The bureaucracy they have laid on, number one. They are like the government that way. They are so much more intent on form rather than function. They want all your notes in a certain -- and the government's like this, too, with Medicare -- they want all your notes to reflect all these X, Y, and Z points, all these bullets, doing this and that and the other thing. How much of a history have you taken, how much of a review of systems, then what was the physical exam, and nowhere in there does it matter whether you came up with the right diagnosis or not. Nowhere! They don't...when they do a chart review, your efficacy is unimportant. All that matters is what you put down on paper. The patient could be dead, could have mistaken a myocardial infarction for indigestion, but as long as you hit all the damn bullets, okay. It drives me up the wall.
Q: Sort of medicine by the numbers.
A: I spend more time jotting down in the chart and looking up diagnosis codes than I spend with the patient. And it used to be the other way around. I used to write two lines in the chart. I'd spend the rest of the time back and forth with the patient. They need something to judge you by, but it's all to the detriment of medicine, because they're not judging you on outcome. They're judging you on form.
Q: Where do you see the field going?
A: If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would think that it's all a collusion between these managed care companies and the government so that when the politicians start pushing for a single-payer national health plan, the doctors are going to get in line behind it and say, "Yes! Let me answer to one set of guidelines rather than fifty." I'd say in my medical group we participate in about forty or fifty managed care programs, and they all have different idiosyncrasies, different specialists you can refer to. (We're family practice; we're gatekeepers.) Different forms to fill out, different labs that you can send people to. As I say, you get to the point where you say, "Just give me one form to fill out, and it'll make my life so much easier." That's what it's getting down to.
Q: How do you feel the impact of the recent doctors' union, having doctors unionized, how do you feel about that?
A: A doctors' union may work with the newer docs coming out. As for the doctors of my generation and earlier, guys who came out of medical school before '85, I think there are too many mavericks among us. A union would not work. But with the newer breed who've had managed care inculcated into them during their training (this was the basis for The Select), I think it might be easier for them to act as members of a union. More of a teamwork type of thing. With a lot of the doctors, as I said, the older doctors, there's a lot of ego there that will never be overcome.
Q: Sort of following your doctor in Implant, in the last few months, some medical clinics say, you come to us, we're not going to accept any insurance, we're going to cut our fees 50% because we won't have to deal with any paperwork. Are you familiar with those developments at all?
A: No. I'm sure there are. It depends on your community. Now, I'm in a basically blue-collar community. These patients, they either belong to unions, they're white-collar or blue-collar, or they're middle management, or they work for the state. But the thing is, they don't have much in the way of resources. So they have to go where their insurance tells them to go. And let's face it, you've got a couple of kids, and they're getting ear aches and throat infections one after the other, and you're in and out of the doctor's office... I think that's where managed care works, that's where HMO's work. Because you're going to be paying five or ten dollars a visit, you've got a prescription plan... I mean, I used to feel sorry for some of these parents before they had prescription plans or managed care. After a while, I wouldn't charge them when they came in because I knew they were going broke! But you can't go not charging too many people.
Q: Near here is the University of Iowa Hospitals in Iowa City. They and local hospitals have been having constant cutbacks because of cuts in Medicare reimbursement. Does that affect you or are most of your patients younger?
A: We have about fifteen percent Medicare in our practice, but Medicare is probably one of the most arrogant payers. They'll say, "Oh, well, we're going to fix our computers, so you won't get any checks for the next six to eight weeks." Bam!
Q: That is pretty bad. Do you think medical savings accounts, if those were more widespread, would help this, at all? What do you see as the solution to some of these issues?
A: I don't know. I'm not a policy person. Medical savings accounts, I think, are a great idea if people would use them. If you're a guy who's paying your own medical insurance, that's a great idea. And the other thing is, if you take care of yourself and you're apparently healthy, you buy yourself just a major medical policy which will cover hospitalization so a serious illness won't break you, and you put away the difference into a medical savings account. You pay your office visits out of pocket and your prescriptions out of pocket, you're going to come out ahead. But it takes a certain amount of discipline. People are too used to having an employer pay for their medical insurance.
Q: Yeah, third-party payer is pretty widespread... When did you first come to your beliefs regarding freedom or liberty? Was it something you read? Did it just seem natural to you?
A: I don't know. It seems like I've always been that way. I can remember reading Ayn Rand's novels and having that wonderful feeling that I'm not alone. And that I've finally got a vocabulary. She could articulate what I would feel in my gut. But I was never a liberal in any sense of the word. And I was never really a conservative. I remember in college, I made the young Republicans uncomfortable by being against the draft, and certainly the young Democrats were appalled whenever I would say, "What's the matter with laissez faire?" So, when YAF [Young Americans for Freedom] came along, they were better but still a little too much on the conservative side for me. It was hard. You'd be for the free market and that, but then be against the draft and the drug laws. You just didn't fit. Now there's the party and there's organizations. But back then -- I'm talking about late Sixties -- you were a fish out of water, no matter where you went.
Q: Do you remember the first person or people who shared your worldview in that sense?
A: I remember going to a Nathaniel Branden lecture down in Washington, D.C., and, well, sort of sneaking in, because I couldn't afford the ticket... But just to see if there were other people like me [laughs] and just to see what they looked like. But there weren't many students who felt that way. Basically, I was part hippy and part YAFfer. It was weird. Then I found Reason magazine and I got into that immediately. I guess the first time I was really in a room with a whole bunch of people who felt like me was when I won the first Prometheus Award. I met Neil Smith and Neil Schulman and a lot of those people out there in LA. It was great. It was really great.
Q: In terms of the issues of liberty, do you put those in the background of your novels just because that's what you believe or do you sometimes purposefully try to include some of that?
A: The thing is, if I can find an issue to base a story around, something that I'm passionate about, it really brings a lot to the story. But the thing is, I let the story dictate how things go. Deep As the Marrow, I think, is a prime example. That is the one where the president has started to legalize drugs. I'd had this idea of someone trying to kill the president and how they were working it was through this doctor and threatening his child. That's the gut and heart of the story. Now why do they want to kill the president? So I said, here's the perfect chance to raise this issue. It could have been over oil or arms or something else. But that plot gave me a chance to raise the issue. The thing is I didn't sit back and say I want to do a novel about legalizing drugs. So that's how it works for me.
Q: If you had a chance to do something more explicit, would you? Or would you feel too artificial doing it that way?
A: I won't shy away from it. It's my worldview. But I don't write to promote libertarian ideas. I write to tell a story. The story comes first.
Q: That would be what you would see as the purpose of your writing, is to entertain the people first? In terms of what you get out of it?
A: I love to tell a story. I consider myself a storyteller more so than a writer with a capital "W." That's my greatest pleasure, is telling a good story. If as a bonus, I can stick in a plug for certain things that are important to me, then that's great. I do think a writer's worldview seeps into his story. It's very hard to write a hundred-thousand or more words and completely hide who you are. I try. I basically look for a transparent style of writing, where I'm not really present there, where you're seeing everything through the characters. But you can't escape it. Repairman Jack is someone -- a reviewer called him a "libertarian's wet-dream" -- but that's my worldview coming through.
Q: Do you see a part of yourself in Repairman Jack in terms of his personality?
A: Yeah, in a way, his desire to be invisible... Someone just asked me this in an interview recently and it struck me as I was talking that his desire to be invisible in society sort of dovetails or parallels my desire to be invisible as the author of the story. But do I see myself as a crusader? No.
Q: Not so much that. I was just thinking in terms of his personality. I just read the part in The Tomb where he's describing his first episode helping the older gentleman with his garden.
A: I heard... That actually happened in our town. Actually I think it was one of my patients. A little old Italian guy. He used to go out there with scissors on his lawn, on the edges. He had nothing else to do. Then somebody drove all over his lawn, tore it up. When I heard about it, I thought someone ought to put some lolly columns somewhere in some bushes and the next time they try to do that shit, they'll rip out their transmission. Later on, it worked its way into the book.
Q: Did you earlier in your career ever find any resistance from editors or publishers including pro-freedom ideas in your books?
A: No one expressed it. But The Tomb -- which was called Rakoshi when I handed it in to the publisher who did The Keep. They absolutely hated it. I don't know how much Jack's anarchical existence had to do with it. I also think it was too much unlike The Keep, which was sort of cosmic horror in a historical sense where the new one was down to the hardboiled, street-level type of milieu with this anarchist protagonist. It was maybe too much of a mix of genres and maybe too different from The Keep. Or it may have been those ideas! But no one said, "Oh, you've got too much of this libertarian stuff in here."
Q: Liberty friendly audiences have always existed in science fiction, as with Robert Heinlein obviously. But in terms of thinking of contemporary writers out of the science fiction field, I think of you and I think of Dean Koontz with Dark Rivers of the Heart. Have you read that one? What's your assessment of that? Did you like it?
A: Oh, yeah, I liked it. I thought the villain was a little over the top. But I did enjoy it. That's addressing an issue through your fiction.
Q: Do you read much contemporary fiction? Do you have any favorite authors?
A: Off and on. Usually, if I see a Jeffrey Deaver novel, I pick it up. I like Stephen Hunter a lot. I like his Bob the Nailer, and his other work as well. I used to like Robert Parker a lot, but Spencer seems to be doing the same thing he's been doing all along. The first ten books are absolutely wonderful, but after that, I think if you read the first ten you've probably read the rest of them. Koontz... Dean and I trade books. He sends me his, I send him mine. So I always read him. I like to read the shorter [Stephen] King books. I'm reading a British novel now called The Gun Seller. [By Hugh Laurie.]
Q: You know Ed Gorman, correct? [A mystery writer who lives in Cedar Rapids, IA.]
A: Yes.
Q: I notice Dean Koontz has mentioned him, as well. A kind of funny confluence.
A: Everybody sort of knows Ed, though we haven't met him. I don't think he ventures outside of the state there. He's a great guy, so everybody likes him. Plus he's a very good writer.
Q: I have to read some of his... Does he share some of your views or do you not get into that so much?
A: Ed tends to be more... Yes. Ed definitely is more on the conservative end than I am. I don't think he'd go as far as I would in freeing things up. But he's definitely... [laughs] You get into a conversation with him and just mention the word "Clinton," and he's off.
Q: I can appreciate that. Among your own novels, do you have a personal favorite?
A: Hmm. I do think my best novel is Black Wind.
Q: Why do you think that's your best one?
A: I think as far as sweep, as far as characters, as far as really playing with the revisionist/alternate history thing.
Q: Do you think that was easier or harder to write?
A: Oh, that was hard. Took me the longest to research and write. That, I think, basically I achieved everything I wanted to in that, except for sales. No one knew what to do with it. Favorite books are the ones that I think you have the most fun with, in a way.
Q: What book did you have the most fun writing?
A: I'm trying to think... I definitely had a ball writing Sibs when I finally figured the final twist. And I like the Repairman Jack books.
Q: Do you think he's the most popular character among your readers?
A: Oh, definitely. He's the only one... The only other one people mention, not more often, not even close is Glaeken from The Keep and the Adversary cycle. They want me to continue that cycle. I keep telling them, look, I just ended the world as we know it -- Nightworld -- so I can't really go beyond that.
Q: Do they mention any particular Repairman Jack book or story as their favorite?
A: Basically, until '98, there was only the novel and a few short stories which most people didn't see because they were published in very small editions. Everybody loves The Tomb. That was the one.
Q: Is there going to be a collection of Repairman stories?
A: No. Not enough words, number one. Number two, one of them I integrated into Conspiracies. And one of them is integrated into the next one called All the Rage. [Paul takes another call.] That was my agent. We're just extending the option on The Tomb for the movie people.
Q: What's the current status on that movie?
A: They've just hired... Universal and Beacon have finally agreed -- took three months to do this -- have finally agreed on a writer to do the rewrite.
Q: Have you seen the script?
A: Yes. I don't know what he's going to rewrite. I really liked the final script. That's the one Universal saw, and that's the one that decided them to sign on as distributors. Movies are now divided up where you have the production house and you have the distributing house. Beacon Films will be producing and then Universal will be doing the distribution.
Q: Do they have any kind of a timetable on that? Or whenever?
A: Glaciers look like the roadrunner compared to how this goes. I would assume that there's going to be a time limit on the writer. When they hire a guy like this, they hire him for one month, two months, or something. [Laughs.] They've come a long way, though. It's getting to the point...they're getting more and more pregnant with the project. Sooner or later they'll have to deliver.
Q: Do you have any other TV or film projects you're working on?
A: A number of things are optioned, but the last real TV work was the Sci-Fi Channels FTL NewsFeed. I mean, there are things that people are sort of interested, blah-blah-blah, but there's no money on the table. Until then, I don't mention it.
Q: I don't blame you... John Varley used to work in Hollywood, and he's mentioned his disillusionment with working there.
A: He did a lot of work on... As a matter of fact, he put his whole writing career on hold for that movie, was it, "Millennium"?
Q: Right. It didn't do too well, if I remember right.
A: No.
Q: Do you have any favorite films, in general, or pro-freedom films?
A: Hmm. I tend not to judge films ideologically... I see an awful lot. I use a different criteria for judging films than I do books. I believe a story in a visual medium should be visual. That's why I love "The Matrix." I thought that visually it was a fabulous piece of work. And pretty audacious. Right now, here, in bits and pieces on my treadmill, I'm seeing "The Thirteenth Floor," which so far I like. I haven't seen the end yet. I really had a ball watching "Galaxy Quest" recently.
Q: I notice that recently you've done a number of collaborations. How or why did that come about? What are the pluses or minuses for you of doing them?
A: Matt Costello and I worked for four-and-a-half years doing FTL Newsfeed, collaborating on that. We just got used to collaborating. It's a long, long convoluted tale, but we... Matt wrote "The 7th Guest," the CD-Rom game, and so we proposed a game-novel package to a bunch of publishers, including Microsoft and Time-Warner Interactive and so on. And Time-Warner won the bidding. So Masque and Mirage were supposed to be interactive games and novels. Time-Warner Interactive imploded, but our contract with Warner books remained. And so we wrote the two novels together. It worked out pretty much like our television collaboration. We had an outline, and we took turns writing. I did the final polish on both just to sort of smooth out the differences in style. As for Nightkill, Steve Spruill and I are old friends, and we batted around this idea for years...and it took us, I guess, two years, maybe, to actually get it written because we were both working on other projects. But we broke off at places where the narrative broke, and so the seams are pretty well hidden. But I tend to be a fairly anal writer. I do like...I like to have my hand in everything. That doesn't always work out when you're collaborating on a novel. I prefer to write on my own, but collaboration can be fun.
Q: Do you play videogames or CD games yourself or do you just like to work on them?
A: Matt and I designed a fair number of them. Only one of them made it to the market. That was "Mathquest with Aladdin." We worked with Disney Interactive on that one. But we designed quite a few others... We still have an interactive game playing on the Sci-Fi Channel. I believe it's still up, called "Derelict" in their Seeing Ear Theater. We did adapt Stephen King's The Dark Half. We did the entire design document and script and game play for Orion Pictures, for Orion Interactive. We finished that up, and then Orion was bought by MGM, and the project was orphaned. So it's now vaporware. I'm not a real videogame freak, but I do play now and again. My son-in-law is really very good at the action and role-playing games. So we'll often do "Tomb Raider" or games like that together.
Q: You've done short stories and novels and screenplays and CD games and edited anthologies. Did I see on your website [http://www.repairmanjack.com/] that one of your stories was made into a stage play?
A: "Screamplay" was supposed to be a stage anthology. It probably would have made it if the market hadn't crashed in '87. Pulled out a lot of the capital. I adapted "Pelts" for it. But Matt and I have written a play called, "Syzygy," which is going to have a production in St. Augustine [Florida] in March. So I'll be going down there to see how that looks. It's sort of a black comedy, locked-room science-fiction murder mystery. Mixing genres again.
Q: I understand your wife, Mary's, published, as well. Is that correct?
A: Well, we wrote a book called Virgin together. But I published it under her name because it was too off-the-wall different from the other things I had just written or were in the pipeline, and I thought it would throw the readers too much of a curve if it had my name on it.
Q: Do you think you'll be doing any more writing with your wife?
A: Ah, no. Probably not. She's not that interested in it. She's very taken with being a grandmother now.
Q: How many children do you have?
A: Two daughters. Both married and one grandchild.
Q: While you were establishing your career both in the medical field and in writing did you have trouble integrating that with a family?
A: I don't think I ever missed a function. My younger daughter was on her high school basketball team. I don't think I ever missed a home game. It's how I prioritized things. But in the house, I would do my three pages a day. That was something I always did. The kids would come in, and they would be in my study. They'd pull some books off the shelf and lie on the floor and read them while I was typing. The dog would be there. My oldest daughter would have her gerbil in one of those little round plastic balls. And that thing would be rolling around the place. It was like family time. Their daddy types. And don't all daddies do that? They didn't have anything to compare it to. That was the way it was.
Q: I noticed many of your books in the Adversary cycle are out of print. Are they going to be reprinted? Are there plans for reprinting some of those?
A: Yeah, The Keep is coming out in May. I think probably Tor will be doing one a year. It really hasn't been decided, but that seems to be the way they're doing it. I'd like to sort of put off Nightworld because that's sort of the end of the world as we know it, and that's where the Repairman Jack series must end as well.
Q: On your website, someone mentioned you had made cultural revisions in The Tomb to update it.
A: I "undated" it. It was set in the Eighties. There were a lot of references...well, the Times Square I described was pre-Disney, and people mention the Carson show and such.
Q: Will you be making other changes in the books like that?
A: Well, The Keep is bound to the war. The Touch is next. I'd have to go through that and see. But basically it's just trying to keep it from sounding like they were written in a particular period.
Q: You mentioned a project, a book you were working on now?
A: I just started outlining. I haven't even done a whole page.
Q: Will this be another thriller or a Repairman Jack?
A: It'll be another Repairman Jack. I figure I'm going to do a few more or those. Basically, I'm looping them out from The Tomb. The larger story arc will eventually intersect with Nightworld.
Q: I saw the graphic you had on your website showing the interconnections. So you'll be continuing that then.
A: I'm going to be adding to that as things go along.
Q: I saw that a lot of your books have been published overseas. Is there a particular place where you're most popular?
A: England and Japan.
Q: Do you think there are any cultural problems trying to translate some of these ideas?
A: I was most pleased when I found out Black Wind ...first of all that they wanted to publish it, and secondly that when it was translated, the translator had just three or four minor things he had to change. My research on their culture paid off... Oh, I sell a lot in Eastern Europe.
Q: Former communist block countries?
A: Yeah, Czechoslovakia...whatever's left...Poland. You can sell to one publisher who'll translate the book into multiple languages. Well, you know what? I should say my medical thrillers were really big. Actually, they were bigger in Germany than they were here, as far as percentage of penetration into population.
Q: Did you get any feedback from people there in terms of fans?
A: Actually, I got some email from... they don't have the same kind of grade breakdown in Germany like we do, but I think maybe it was a middle school. The kids were doing a book report on The Select (Die Prufung over there). They emailed me with some questions. It was kind of fun.
Q: Do you like to travel? Have you been over to visit some of these places?
A: Yeah, I do. I've been to, business and pleasure, at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Italy, London. I've got a passion for scuba diving now, so we go to the Caribbean and places like that.
Q: Sort of like Arthur Clarke...
A: Well... [laughs]
Q: On a smaller scale?
A: Well, not on such an academic scale. I just do it because I like to.
Q: Joe Haldeman has talked in his autobiography about the disappearance of the backlist [older books an author has written]. Has this created any problems for you or do your old books stay in print?
A: Joe's written an autobiography? Interesting. My science fiction backlist has disappeared. I'm in the process of getting those rights reverted. And maybe I'll look for either an electronic, an online type of publisher and/or place it with one of these to-order presses. Just so they're available to people who want them.
Q: Do you think print-on-demand will actually make a good penetration in the market?
A: I don't know, I don't know. The Internet has certainly changed the landscape for the small press. You now have... You can buy limited editions, and small press is on Amazon, and so with the same click of the button, you can buy something from Random House or Cemetery Dance. Sort of levels the playing field a little. I'm starting to see a lot of small presses become a lot more active in the number of titles they're putting out per year. I think that's a good sign. The print-on-demand, I think...it's great if you don't have a big following, but you have a steady following for your work. My science fiction has a limited following, but they are out there. People would be able to get the books if they want them.
Q: A lot of your stories have musical motifs. Do you have a background in music?
A: Yeah. I had a garage band in the Sixties. We did actually move out of the garage. We were auditioning around New York City for club dates and such, about the same time as the Doors, I guess, were doing "Light My Fire." I remember, we were playing in a club, and I had forgotten to bring one of my -- I was a drummer -- forgotten to bring one of my drums. The Doors equipment was stacked up in the back of the club, and I went and borrowed a snare and a bass pedal from their equipment. I put it back later! [laughs]
Q: Have you ever seen the band with Stephen King and Dave Barry?
A: I only heard of them. I never heard them or saw them. We don't run in the same circles.
Q: The last question, anything else you'd like to comment on in terms of your readers, anything you're working on, looking towards the future?
A: Actually, I'm just...I think right now I'm looking forward to doing more Repairman Jack books. I have an arc, a larger arc that I will plug novels into as I go along. There is a gap in the Adversary cycle, between Reborn and Reprisal, and I think, well, things weren't completely quiet during that time. I can fill in the gap through Jack's stories. I'm going to try different structures for these books, so they don't always follow the same lines. But two things I'd like to include in each of them is a weird/supernatural problem and sometimes, whether it's related or unrelated, a mundane plain criminal type of problem. So that he never gets too far from the real world.
Q: Do you have an average for how long it takes you to write a novel?
A: Six months for a first draft seems to be about it. I'm not a terribly fast writer, but I am very dogged and very systematic. I keep at it. But I don't go at a very fast pace. I'm usually doing two things at once. Right now, I've promised Richard Chizmar of Cemetery Dance a series of novellas with an on-going storyline which he will publish as I write them. So I'm not on a real schedule of them. But those... I'm usually doing multiple things. Last year, I spent a lot of time working on a musical comedy that will probably never be produced. A songwriter and I, we got the music together and had musicians and singers record a soundtrack. Maybe we'll have a small production. It's just one of those things that's just fun.
Q: What's the name of it?
A: It's called "Wordplay." It's about...it's strictly mundane. It takes place backstage at a game show, a kind of quiz show. This was completed long before "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" appeared.
Q: Quite a phenomenon. Do your children read your books?
A: Very much. My younger daughter's husband was an editor in Manhattan for awhile, first Avon and then at Arcade. Then he got an offer from America Online that he couldn't refuse. He's one of my first-draft readers. My wife is a reader. Steve Spruill reads my stuff. Tom Monteleone's wife, Elizabeth, is one of my readers. They go through the first draft, and they're allowed to say anything, as caustic and nasty as they want. I've found that after spending six months with your nose in the manuscript, you need to have other people...you need a fresh perspective, have people tell you what...where they think you're missing the boat. Because a lot of times something seems perfectly fine to you, and then you learn that three out of the four people didn't get it. That means you didn't do your job. You didn't describe it the right way or didn't put it the right way. That's invaluable.
Q: Is Conspiracies coming out in a limited edition?
A: It's been out in a limited edition since last April (1999). All the Rage will have a limited edition this spring.
Q: Is that another Repairman Jack?
A: Yeah. That's scheduled...the trade edition is scheduled for the Fall [2000].
Q: I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me.
A: My pleasure.
