David Wellington Interview
If you’re a fan of zombies or vampires, then there’s a very good chance that you’ve heard of David Wellington. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania–home of the Romero zombies–Wellington made a splash in the world of horror by posting a serialized version of his unpublished novel, Monster Island, online. Two more zombie novels would follow before he switched to the world of the nosferatu, introducing vampire hunter Laura Caxton in the pages of Thirteen Bullets. He’s since received a book deal from Three Rivers Press, and his latest Caxton work, 23 Hours, is set to hit shelves on June 23rd, 2009. He was recently kind enough to sit down with Eerie Books, and here’s what the talented author had to say.
Eerie Books: You once said that the secret to writing a good novel was to write ten bad ones. What’s the worst novel you’ve ever written?
David Wellington: Oh, man, that’s an embarrassing one. Maybe it was the one about the zen buddha in a New Jersey suburb? That just did not work. Or the one about the satellite repairmen. For some reason I thought it would be really interesting to write about guys who go into space so they can fix glorified toasters. When I hear an idea like that, I think, it could be good, if it was about a bunch of working class astronauts and what they get up to in their off-work hours. But no, it wasn’t like that. It was about making sure you had the right kind of socket wrench before you went up to fix the Hubble telescope. It was fascinating stuff to me at the time but no one else, ever, is going to want to read it. That’s the point, though. You have to learn from your mistakes, and learn what other people want to read.
EB: 23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale will be out on June 23rd of 2009, and it’s the fourth book in the series which started with 13 Bullets. What’s in store this time around for everyone’s favorite vampire hunter, Laura Caxton?
DW: Well, anyone who read Vampire Zero, the third book, will know Laura’s in trouble. Spoiler alert–she got arrested at the end of that book. And because her life can never be good, it seems, she gets sent to jail. So it’s Laura Caxton in women’s prison. Which would be enough for a pretty good book right there–but then the vampires show up, and everything goes to hell.
EB: You started writing at the age of six, and you were first published almost 30 years later. Would you say patience is one of your virtues?
DW: Ha! It’s easy to be patient when you have nothing else to do. No, I was very impatient for most of that time, fuming away in obscurity, writing all the time because I had something to prove. I would show them, I vowed, I would show them all! "Them" in that sentence referring to all the very nice, very patient editors who had taken the time to send me hand-written rejection slips. No, it wasn’t patience that got me through those thirty years. It was mostly stubbornness. People constantly told me to give up writing, or to treat it like a hobby. I knew there was nothing else I wanted to do, so I kept plugging away at it.
EB: When you first started publishing Monster Island online, what was the experience like? Did you find yourself checking online every hour to see if readers had left feedback, and how did you react to the blunt criticism any writer is bound to face on the internet?
DW: I didn’t know what to expect, and in fact I didn’t think anyone would read it. When the hit counter broke the double digits, I was excited, because I didn’t know some of the people who were dropping by to read the book. Then it just started snowballing. For about two years there wasn’t five contiguous minutes when I didn’t check to see if there were new comments, new hits, new feedback. I got a lot of nasty flames and hate mail, but that just confused me, when so many other people were raving about the book. My emotional state was tied directly to numbers on a screen, and every waking thought was about how I responded to the opinion of someone I had never met, someone whose real name I didn’t even know. It’s no way to live–but it is an incredible learning experience. I learned more in those two years about writing than I had in the twenty-eight years before.
EB: In a previous interview, you mentioned that your mother was a voracious reader of horror novels back in the ’70s. Has she read your novels, and, if so, has she given you any advice or feedback?
DW: Oh, she loves them. She tried to give me in-depth critiques of the books at first, which is what she used to do for my stuff that didn’t get published–she was my first proofreader, actually. Now, though, when she starts telling me that one of my characters feels two dimensional or that a given plot point isn’t working I say, "Mom, relax, I have people who are paid to do that." Which doesn’t stop her, of course. It just makes me feel guilty that I talked back to my Mom.
EB: With the recent mass appeal of the Twilight movie and the True Blood television series, do you think aspiring writers might have an easier time breaking into the business with a vampire manuscript?
DW: Actually, I think it just makes it harder. The stakes are that much higher and when that happens the editors, the showrunners, the comic book publishers all panic. When a given property is making zero money, there’s no risk involved, so they’re pretty low key and open to new ideas. Right now, though, anyone trying to sell a vampire story that is new or fresh is going to hear one sentence over and over again: "This needs to be more like Twilight." If you’re honest with yourself and you have any talent at all, that sentence will crush your heart right inside your chest. I guess one reason zombies are so popular with beginning writers is because there isn’t one gigantic mega-hit in the zombie world. You can still do something different, something interesting with zombies, and have a chance of getting published.
EB: What advice do you have for someone who wants to be a writer?
DW: Stop. Go do something else for a living. There’s no money in it, and a lot of discouragement. There. Now, if you’re reading this and thinking to yourself, up yours, Wellington, I’m going to do it anyway… then you are probably a writer. You need that willingness to do it no matter what anyone says. You need to be willing to head-butt a lot of brick walls before one of them falls down. In the meantime, write. Write a lot. Every word you write makes you a better writer. Every sentence is better than the one before it. When you’re ready, try to get published. Expect to be rejected. Expect to try again, and again, and again…
EB: Do you keep up much with the horror genre in general? If so, are there any particular horror movies, horror books or horror comics which have captured your imagination in recent times?
DW: I’m actually doing a column on AMC’s Horror Hacker blog where I run down upcoming horror movies (at http://blogs.amctv.com/horror-hacker/horror-power-ra-1/), which I kind of inherited–I like horror movies, but I hardly consider myself an expert. Now I have to keep up with them, it’s my job. As for capturing my imagination… there’s a property called I, Frankenstein that’s a comic book they’re making into a movie. It looks awesome. Of course, if you put Frankenstein’s monster into just about anything, it makes it more awesome (as long as you don’t take it all too seriously). I’m also looking forward to the Nightmare on Elm Street remake, for pure nostalgia reasons. That was the slasher franchise my friends and I got behind when we were kids. The new version looks like they’re stripping out all of Freddy’s campy, goofy one-liners and making it all about a guy with a horribly deformed face and knives for fingers. That sounds pretty scary, if you ask me.
EB: You’ve listed Frankenstein’s Monster as the horror character you’d most like to write. Is there something about this tragic character which most appeals to you?
DW: He’s alone. He has nobody to tell him what’s right or wrong, no one to tell him what he’s for or what he’s worth. He has to figure those things out for himself. I often feel like my generation had the same problem. We knew not to trust the government, but the counterculture was pretty suspect as well. Our parents were busy making money in Reagan’s America and had very little time to teach us what actually mattered in life. So I feel like we’re a generation that raised itself, that taught ourselves everything. That’s a very painful place to be, so, yeah, I get his tragedy.
EB: Frostbite: A Werewolf Tale will hit stores in October of 2009. Can you give our readers an idea of what they should expect?
DW: A whole lot of awesome. This book was serialized online, but it’s been heavily updated and expanded from that version. It’s one of my favorite stories, and it has some of my best writing in it. My fans will not be disappointed.
EB: When you’re writing, do you have any particular music to get you in the mood for horror and keep you there?
DW: I can’t have music. I need silence–I need to be entirely inside my own head.
EB: You’ve described your books as "action horror novels." When it comes to writing action scenes, do you have any major sources of inspiration?
DW: I grew up reading a lot of pulp novels. Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber. The stories were thin in what some people think matters in writing–theme, character development, "depth"–but they were so much fun. Utter fun to read, and they must have been fun to write, too. Because Monster Island wasn’t supposed to be a "serious" work, it was just something I was writing about zombies, I didn’t worry about writing a great novel. I just had fun with it. It turns out that’s the best way to write something entertaining for others, as well. I’m inspired by a lot by movies, as well. My action scenes play out in my head, I just imagine a really cool scene from an (imaginary) movie and then I describe it on the page.
EB: Since you’ve written extensively on the subject, do you think you’re adequately prepared for the coming zombie apocalypse?
DW: Not at all. Nobody can really be prepared–something always goes wrong at the last minute, or we make emotional decisions that leave us in the wrong place at the wrong time. Have zombie movies taught you nothing? Seriously, I hear from people all the time who tell me they’ll get by just fine when the zombies rise. All I can think is, wow, it almost sounds like you want that to happen. If it happened for real I think I would just shut down in total terror.
EB: In your vampire novels, the bloodsuckers aren’t really the fanged romantics depicted in so many other works of horror fiction. What made you decide to take them in a more savage direction?
DW: I read too many paranormal romance novels. That was the direction horror was headed, it was very clear, so I forced myself to read a bunch of books about vampires that don’t bite people, that want to take them on dates. You know what happens when I force myself to read bad books? It makes me itch. It makes me tap my foot on the floor in impatience. It makes me want to write a good book. So that’s what I did.
EB: What’s next for David Wellington?
DW: Lunch. Of course, I have to write two chapters before I can eat.
EB: Thanks so much for taking time to answer my questions. Any last words of wisdom for our readers?
DW: Thanks for your patience! I know I got long-winded up there. If you’re interested in reading some of my books for free, to see if you might like them, please drop by my website, www.davidwellington.net.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at 1:03 pm and is filed under Horror Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Great post it wasn’t what I were originally searching for but found it a great read.
[...] Thirteen Bullets by David Wellington – Justinia Malvern is the only vampire left alive in the world, and she’s confined to a sanitarium. But when the undead horror begins to stir, it’s up to legendary monster hunter, Special Deputy Jameson Arkeley, and Pennsylvania State Trooper Laura Caxton to stop her fiendish plot. Caxton is the lead character, and horror readers looking for a strong female will be delighted. There a several other books in the series, and you can read an interview with author David Wellington by visiting the Eerie Books website. [...]