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 Hunter Singleton

Since most of the advance word about my new supernatural thriller, LILITH, is kind of a general overview of the book’s storyline, I thought it would be cool to talk about some of the characters in the story. There are actually a number of important people in there, but the main protagonist is a guy named Hunter Singleton.

Hunter is half Cherokee Indian, half white, and was adopted as a baby near a Cherokee reservation by two very special people in a small town called Tahlequah, Oklahoma. They raised him as their own and taught him the ways of the Cherokee so that he could stay in touch with his own heritage, his own roots.

Hunter grew up and joined the Navy to get away from the small town life (much as I did) and hopefully have some adventures. After that, he went back to school and got his degree in journalism, then interned at some small newspapers before getting on as a reporter in River City, North Carolina (yeah, that’s me, too!)

Hunter met his wife, Lisa, while interviewing her for a story. Hunter forgot to tape the interview, which Lisa found quite funny, and they decided to start dating and eventually ended up getting married. What happened between then and LILITH can be found in my first novel, (shameless promotion alert) DIABLERO. I can assure you, it’s quite terrifying and not for the faint of heart. But they made it through reasonably unscathed.

Hunter is thirty-ish and in good physical shape, but not very tall. However, due to his Native American heritage, he is dark-skinned, dark-haired and dark-eyed, which most women seem to find attractive. He also has a dry, acerbic wit, which gets him into trouble.

He is not musically inclined, though he loves good rock and roll and some classical music, and generally likes doing outdoorsy stuff like hiking and camping. Hunter is a black belt in Wing Chun Kung Fu, which he learned from his wife. He believes in self-sufficiency and dislikes taking handouts from anyone. He loves his wife and will probably make a great father when their new baby is delivered.

Hunter and Lisa did have some marriage problems due to a miscarriage by Lisa, which you can read about in DIABLERO, but things have been patched up and they are going full-throttle in dealing with this new danger in LILITH.

There are some introspective moments in LILITH where you will discover more about Hunter and his past, about his shortcomings and failures, what makes him tick, and also about why Lisa finds him so irresistible. He gets into quite a jam in LILITH – one which, at first, seems impossible to overcome. Does he make it out, or not? Find out when LILITH is released in January!

Next time, I’ll talk about Hunter’s cohort in all of this, his wife, Lisa, who I think you will find a very interesting character in her own right. Ciao!

Writing the supernatural action-thriller

I have always loved reading horror—Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Bentley Little, Edward Lee—I can’t explain it. It just appeals to me. I guess the thought of flawed humans overcoming insurmountable odds and saving the world from some inhuman beast or life-threatening super-organism is just, well…cool. Sure, sometimes the good guy or woman dies at the end, but that’s life. Heroes are willing to pay the ultimate price so that others may live.

One of my other loves in fiction is the thriller, whether it’s politics, crime, military, whatever. Brad Thor, Vince Flynn, Nelson DeMille, Lee Child, James Patterson, Clive Cussler—I love ‘em all.

But for a long time, there seemed to be a lack of novels that really mixed action/adventure and supernatural horror into one story. I wanted something that was creepy, but that also moved along at a good clip and had memorable characters. There were very few novelists that were doing that kind of thing—Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, John Saul, William Meikle and Jeremy Robinson are some names that come to mind.

So I decided that I would try to create stories I would like to read, something that incorporated both supernatural horror and action/adventure. I had written some short stories, but I wanted something that would keep readers enthralled for a few days. My first undertaking was DIABLERO, a story about modern-day voodoo and the resurrection of a three-hundred year old pirate, Blackbeard. 

 

I got some good reviews for that book, sold a few hundred copies with Nightbird Publishing and Crossroad Press. But for my next story, I wanted something even bigger involving the CIA, the military, the supernatural, and some human drama. So I took characters from my first novel, Hunter and Lisa Singleton, and put them into my new book.

LILITH is a supernatural creature who takes possession of the crew of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, and is then set free in the streets of Manhattan after it gets demolished by a huge storm. It was a very fun book to write.

My next novel, tentatively titled PRIMORDIAL, will be on an even bigger scale, believe it or not. Did I tell you I want my stakes to be high? Even the young adult sci-fi novel I’m working on is high-octane. Can I help it if I like things to move along at a good clip? And guns? And explosions? And…and…oh, sorry. I get carried away. But you get the picture.

I tried writing “literary” horror. Yeah, that didn’t work out. I kept falling asleep and drooling on the keyboard. Shorted out a lot of PCs. Don’t get me wrong, I love the classics—Frankenstein, Dracula, The Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow—and I owe my career to them. But modern times demand that we stretch our writing chops to mix genres that may not have been previously incorporated, e.g., the vampire western, the zombie literary classic, the sci-fi detective, and so on.

So now, I present to you the supernatural action-thriller. I hope you like it.