Being a cross-genre writer

Categorizing my writing style has always been a somewhat difficult thing. Edgar Rice Burroughs, Edgar Allen Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, H.P. Lovecraft, C.S. Lewis, Stephen King—these are all authors that have had a profound impact on my writing.

I also loved reading comic books as a child, everything from Tales from the Crypt and Boris Karloff’s Tales of Mystery to Shazam, The Spirit, Marvel and DC comics and everything in between. I never missed an issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland. If I wasn’t reading, I was either writing or playing music. 

  

I read a lot of classics—To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies, Frankenstein, Animal Farm, A Brave New World, Atlas Shrugged—but I always seemed to have a predilection toward the macabre and the unusual. Working in a bookstore eventually brought me in contact with a lot of newer authors and I began to read different genres. But the ones that really kept me glued to the page were the adventure and thriller novels—Clive Cussler, Nelson DeMille, James Patterson, John Grisham, Brad Thor, Vince Flynn—the high-octane stuff.

Around 2003, when I began writing my first complete novel, I decided that I was going to blend all my favorite genres into my writing. Horror, fantasy, science fiction and adventure would all have a place in my book. I loved the life-like characters Stephen King created in his books, but I wanted more action. Clive Cussler’s adventures were captivating, but I wanted something darker, more ominous and creepy. James Rollins’ creatures were frightening, but I wanted a touch of the supernatural, creatures not bound by the laws of physics.

So I created DIABLERO, and brought a demon-possessed Blackbeard the pirate back to life in modern times. It was a character everyone knew, but he wouldn’t be just a pirate—he would have powers to raise an army of the dead and open a gateway to another dimension. The adventure begins in North Carolina, but ends on an island in the Bahamas. Creepy and dark, with lots of action and great characters. It was the kind of book I always wanted to read.

I continued my foray into action/thriller/sci-fi/horror madness with a book called LILITH, another myth that was familiar to people, yet enough of a mystery that I could add some embellishment and still make it believable. It’s my biggest selling book to date.

I figured that the problem with blending all these genres together would be finding an audience. For some readers, a book that incorporates all those styles can be somewhat confusing. “I thought this was supposed to be a thriller? What’s with the supernatural stuff?” “This horror novel sucks—it’s nothing but action!” People who read thrillers don’t necessarily like horror, and people who read horror don’t necessarily like action/thrillers. Some people don’t like the supernatural aspect, while others are offended by the military/black ops aspect of some of my stories. This has been made evident by some not-so-favorable reviews. But the good reviews far outweigh the bad ones on all my books—so far.

I don’t really target audiences, or take polls, or check out the latest trends—I write what I would like to read. I feel like I’m filling a niche, here, because there aren’t many writers that do what I do. Authors who love horror read and write horror books; authors who love adventure/thrillers do the same. I’m not a purist—I happen to get an equal thrill from reading a good sci-fi book, a creepy horror novel or an engaging military adventure. But bringing it all together on the page and making it work is the biggest thrill of all.

For more info on me and my work, check out my website, or follow me on Facebook or Twitter.

LILITH released into the world!

Military technology meets mythological terror in LILITH!

It’s a great feeling seeing something that I’ve spent the last couple of years laboring on so intensely, finally being set free into the world. It seems that keeping myself sequestered in a small room in front of a computer monitor for hours on end, living on cashews and coffee, actually paid off! In just the first couple of days, LILITH reached # 27 in war fiction and #64 in horror. Not bad.

My love of the fantastic and weird, coupled with my interest in military black ops, was something I always wanted to get in writing. My background in the Navy provided the perfect experience to draw from since I had worked right next door to a SEAL team and watched how they operated. In the Sea Bees we even had an ex-SEAL as a commander who had us exercising our asses off every morning. Talk about tough.

Though the book has been released, my work as an author is just beginning. In just the last week or so, I’ve written several blog posts, sent out tons of emails, Facebook posts and Tweets, written a post for the International Thriller Writer’s roundtable, done an interview with The Big Thrill and worked on edits for my young adult sci-fi thriller, THE GOD PARTICLE. I’ll also be calling bookstores, doing newspaper and podcast interviews, attending book signings and working on writing the sequel to LILITH, which will be even more thrilling!

One thing I know is I could never do all this alone. My wife and daughter have offered more support than I could ever have asked for, and the people at DarkFuse, especially Shane, Greg and Dave, have been amazing to work with. I couldn’t be happier with how well the book turned out, and judging by the reviews, most people agree.

When you get a chance, check out LILITH in ebook and paperback on Amazon or B&N.com.

You can also get more info on my website.

Thanks for reading!

LILITH: A character study of Lisa Singleton

An aircraft carrier is like a floating city—when fully loaded for battle, it can carry over 6,000 people, and with a story setting like that, it’s easy for characters to get lost in the shuffle. That’s why they have to have strong personalities.

Enter Lisa Singleton—wife, police officer, mother to be, and as strong-willed and tough as they come.

In my latest thriller, LILITH, I wanted to bring back two favorite characters from my first novel, Hunter and Lisa. Though they had some marital issues, and in fact were on the verge of divorce because of the emotional stress from Lisa’s miscarriage, they patched things up and are now ready to face the world together.

  

I thought it would be unique to have two main characters who kind of share the spotlight, instead of one guy or one woman. I always liked the couple in the Mummy movie franchise, the O’Donnells, because when one got in trouble, the other one would bail them out. Same principal here.

Lisa, like her husband, is bi-racial—African-American and Chinese. She is short and has frizzy, black hair, which Hunter finds very sexy. She has dark, Asian eyes and pouty lips and likes to work out, so she is muscular, but also very feminine.

Her father is a Chinese immigrant who came to America and became a police officer. He married the daughter of the chief of police, which was frowned on at first by family members on both sides, but was eventually accepted. Lisa was raised in the small town in North Carolina where she met Hunter.

After high school, Lisa’s love of animals and nature coupled with the admiration she had for her father, led her to become a park ranger. She covers the several-thousand-acre Dismal Swamp State Park on the North Carolina side of the border, just miles from where she was raised in River City.

Not only is Lisa a trained law-enforcement officer, she is a third-degree black belt in a type of Kung Fu known as Wing Chun. She also taught Hunter, who managed to earn his own black belt.

Something else Lisa learned as a park ranger was photography. She loves photographing the wild flowers and trees that grow throughout the park, as well as the bears, wildcats, deer and rabbits that inhabit it. Her proficiency with the camera was the reason Hunter was able to convince his editor at the newspaper to send her along, since their regular photographer had come down with the flu.

Hunter and Lisa go through hell in LILITH, literally, as they help the Navy fight a power that is not even supposed to exist. Lisa rides an emotional roller coaster throughout the story and must draw on the strength of her faith in God, in her husband, and in herself. She’s sly, smart and quick-witted, but far from perfect. Her flaws become apparent in LILITH, but I think you’ll find that her humanity outweighs her flaws.

Next time, we’ll take a look at the main protagonist herself: LILITH. Thanks and happy reading!