David Wellington is an author of horror, fantasy, and thriller novels. His zombie novels Monster Island, Monster Nation and Monster Planet(Thunder’s Mouth Press) form a complete trilogy. He has also written a series of vampire novels including Thirteen Bullets, Ninety-Nine Coffins, Vampire Zero, Twenty-Three Hours, and 32 Fangs. His werewolf series comprises Frostbite and Overwinter, known in the UK as Cursed and Ravaged. In 2004 he began serializing his horror fiction online, posting short chapters of a novel three times a week on a friend’s blog. Response to the project was so great that in 2004 Thunder’s Mouth Press approached Mr. Wellington about publishing Monster Island as a print book. His novels have been featured in Rue Morgue, Fangoria, and the New York Times.

32 Fangs is the fifth and final installment in the Laura Caxton vampire hunter series. Laura Caxton has been fighting vampires for seven years. It’s cost her everything: her career, her relationship, the lives of her mentor and so many others. But it’s finally paying off. She’ll get one shot, just one, to take down the last surviving vampire, Justinia Malvern. But Malvern’s been around a lot longer, and has had plenty of time to learn some deadly tricks of her own. And she’s never been one to fight fair…

HELLNOTES: 32 Fangs wraps up your Laura Caxton vampire series (13 Bullets, 99 Coffins, Vampire Zero, and 23 Hours). Before we get into the final book, tell us about the origin of the series and if it unfolded the way you originally envisioned it.
WELLINGTON: The series really started as a reaction to what I was reading at the time. This was back in 2003, 2004, and I read all the horror I could get my hands on – including the burgeoning subgenre of Paranormal Romance, which was just a euphemism for Sexy Vampires. Back then it was still in its infancy but I could see what was coming – True Blood and Twilight were right around the corner. I was kind of upset with what one of my favorite monsters, the vampire, was being turned into, so I decided to write a short story about the nastiest, most evil, least romantic vampire I could imagine. The story turned out to be one of the most fun things I’d ever written. It was just a few thousand words about a vampire hunter named Jameson Arkeley who would go to any lengths to kill vampires. When it came time to turn it into a novel I knew I needed a foil for him, someone who thought he went too far. Laura Caxton was the result; a highway patrol trooper who had no business fighting vampires. I thought she was just going to be the “straight man” to Arkeley’s Van Helsing, but it quickly became apparent she was the real star. Her story, the story of a woman slowly losing her humanity because she’s too busy fighting monsters – became the whole point of the series. The other half of the equation was Justinia Malvern, the vampire who couldn’t be killed. I loved the idea of doing a sort of Silence of the Lambs where instead of being in jail, the helpful serial killer would be in a coffin. She had to be smarter than the vampire hunters, and she could make plans that spun out for years, even centuries – that was her big advantage. About a third of the way through 13 Bullets I knew that the series would be about the two of them squaring off, and I knew how it would end.

HELLNOTES: Knowing that 32 Fangs was the final book, was it difficult to write?
WELLINGTON: I had it all outlined in my head for years before I wrote the first sentence, so in some ways it was very easy. The hard part was letting go of these characters. I’ve lived with them for nearly a decade; they feel like old friends. Accepting that their story had an actual, definite ending was tough. But we’ve seen far too many series recently that just go on forever. Series that get so lost in their own subplots that the writers die before they can finish the story, and somebody else has to pick up where they left off – usually to graft on an unsatisfactory conclusion. I always knew I wanted the 13 Bullets series to have a complete arc, an ending that wrapped up everything and left the reader feeling like they’d had a compete experience.

HELLNOTES: What territory does 32 Fangs explore that was new to the series?
WELLINGTON: We get to see a lot of Justinia’s life and undeath, in flashback. We get to see what it was like to be a vampire two hundred years ago, back before the advent of effective firearms. We also get to see Laura at her absolute low point, the moment when she has accepted that she’s not a normal person anymore, that she can’t afford to be. She’s given up so much, and she knows there’s no way back, not without a massive sacrifice. We also get to spend a lot more time with the Witchbillies – before, in the series, we met Urie Polder and his family of witches and wise men living in the backwoods of Pennsylvania. Now we get to see how they actually live, and what they get up to far away from the civilized parts of the state. I really got a chance here to flesh out the 13 Bullets universe, and I think fans will love this aspect of the book.

HELLNOTES: What’s the next project on your plate?
WELLINGTON: Zombies! It’s been a long time away, but I need to get back to my roots. I’ve got a big epic zombie story in me, still, and I finally have a chance to tell it. But of course my fans know I can’t just write one book at a time. I’ve been branching out into other genres, as well. Last year I wrote a trilogy of fantasy novels (under the pen name David Chandler); this year I’m doing a thriller, one that thriller readers will love just as much as my horror fans. It’s going to be an exciting year!

Find out more about what Wellington is up by visiting his website.

After surviving several years spent obsessing over his first novel, a fantasy epic that nearly finished him, Bard Constantine applied himself to learning the craft of writing. In time his work turned into novels, short stories, poetry, and screenplays. His work often dwells in fantasy, science fiction, and the surreal aspects of the human mind. He defies convention, spinning archetypes and creating new perspectives on storytelling and world building.

Currently residing in Birmingham, Alabama, he adds his ever-growing compilations of literary manuscripts while trying keep a somewhat suspect hold on something called ‘reality.’

We cornered him for a short interview.

Since it’s your newest work, tell me about The Aberration.
Bard: The Aberration is my first stab at horror, pun intended. I’m not a big horror fan, so I sort of stumbled into the story. My 9-5 (no, I haven’t quit my day job, lol) involves working at a flour mill. It’s this huge ten story building that’s fully automated, so it takes a much smaller work force to operate than you’d think at first glance. I can literally go an hour or two without seeing a co-worker on my shift. As I walk the plant I often amuse my dark side by imagining all the horrible things that can happen to me while on duty. Those thoughts eventually formed into a plot, then a short story, and eventually into novel form.

The description of the story should tap into the very souls of all those monster-loving readers out there. But that’s not the only dimension to this story. There’s also an important psychological element. Tell me about that if you would.
Bard: Creature horror is fine when done correctly. (The original Alien film comes to mind. Makes me have high hopes for the upcoming Prometheus movie) But fear is a psychological phenomenon. It’s the darkness in our minds that we fear the most, and I wanted to explore that in the novel beyond the invading creatures. When Michael and Fran are confronted by macabre nightmares come to life, the fear becomes much more personal because what they encounter relates directly to them. We all have things lurking in our past, in our subconscious that we try to ignore or gloss over. If those things confronted us in physical form … we’d probably not survive the experience.

You got started late as a writer, didn’t you?
Bard: Yes. I spend my early years thinking I’d be a comic book artist before I allowed circumstances to slay those dreams. Fortunately that love of storytelling continued to nag me until I was forced to respond. When I approached my thirtieth birthday I realized I wanted to do something with my creative talents. I immersed myself into writing and haven’t looked back since.

Why do you write horror?
Bard: I am by no means a horror writer. In fact I thought I might not be able to follow up on The Aberration until just recently when I discovered an older plot idea that would be perfect for a follow up story. Most of what I write is fantasy and sci-fi. The horror writing is just a happy accident.

And your parents named you Bard? Tell us about that. It seems like such a perfect fit for your chosen career.
Bard: Lol. Bard Constantine is a pseudonym I created back when my writing mainly consisted of writing poetry. I wanted to write from the perspective of a wandering immortal – a mournful vampire if you will. Much of the poetry collected in the volume Immortal Musings comes from that mindset. After a while I liked the name so much that I continued to write as Bard. One day I Googled my name and then Bard Constantine. I found that Bard had a much more prevalent presence online, and that clinched it.

Do you have any favorite writers?
Bard: Too many to list. It was Lloyd Alexander that pulled me into fantasy worlds. Later I’d immerse in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, and have recently gotten hooked on Greg RR Martin’s Game of Thrones. Patrick Rothfuss is a fantastic writer as well, along with Gene Wolfe, whose work is impeccable. Robert Cormier’s novels still have impact, even as an adult. Perhaps more so. Mary Shelley wrote the perfect novel in Frankenstein. Susan Kay’s Phantom actually is better than the original novel. I read Lord of the Flies and A Catcher in the Rye annually at least. I can go on and on…

What are you working on now?
Bard: The Troubleshooter is my next finished novel coming out in June, unless something changes. It’s a hard-boiled private eye tale that takes place in a dystopian future. Right now I’m working on Silent Empire, a collaboration with Stefan, a retro-futuristic artist that I had the pleasure of meeting at Deviantart. (The graphic novel details the fate of a man trapped in a world where individuality has been stripped from the populace.

In addition I’m around halfway finished with Youngblood, a paranormal YA novel about a high school freshman whose life changes when he’s pulled into a shadow battle between two powerful ancient races. Additional info on all my current and upcoming projects can be found at my website and my Facebook page.

Kim Newman is a novelist, critic and broadcaster. His fiction includes Anno Dracula, Life’s Lottery and The Man from the Diogenes Club. His non-fiction includes Nightmare Movies, Horror: 100 Best Books and BFI Classics studies of Cat People and Doctor Who. He is a contributing editor to Sight & Sound and Empire. He wrote and directed a short film Missing Girl. And here we’ve had a chance to ask him a few questions as The Bloody Red Baron, the second installment of his Anno Dracula series is released.

1. Before we jump right in, why don’t you tell us a little about the upcoming release of the next installment of your Anno Dracula series, The Bloody Red Baron.

Newman: As with Anno Dracula, I’ve included quite a bit of extra material in the new edition from Titan Books – I think about a third of the book is new stuff. Besides a scattering of footnotes, I’ve added an outline I wrote for a Red Baron-related monster movie for Roger Corman (intended for the SyFy Channel, who weren’t keen) and restored a chapter which was cut in the original edit (which, among other things, features the only onstage appearance of a certain famous Victorian hero in the series so far).

The most substantial new thing in the book is Vampire Romance: Anno Dracula 1923, a novella (about half the length of a novel) which fills in a gap in the series (it’s a 1920s Old Dark House weekend mystery, which draws on the work of Agatha Christie, PG Wodehouse and others) but also gave me a chance to engage critically with recent developments in the field of vampire fiction. In the real 1920s, the word vampire changed meaning and was most used to refer to seductive, debatably immoral women – in my imagined 1920s, I envision a similar pop culture phenomenon analogous to the contemporary rise of sparkly/self-pitying romantic vampires and overlapping with the vision of sexy, predatory, inwardly sensitive dominant males as epitomised by Rudolf Valentino in and as the Sheik. Bela Lugosi’s Dracula arguably rises out of this stereotype anyway, so I’m just making connections that are already there.

2. Is it the mix of history with the vampire mythos that make the Anno Dracula series stand out from all the other vampire fiction out there?

Newman: It’s not for me to say that it does stand out – though obviously I hope it does. My intention was to encompass a whole sub-genre (which may be why it’s turned into a multi-volume work), and to give space for everyone else’s idea of the vampire. I was influenced by Brian Stableford’s The Empire of Fear and John M. Ford’s The Dragon Waiting, which are alternate history stories which include vampires – though I took a different approach by rooting the story in Dracula, the novel, rather than real history.

3. Are you already working on the next installment? And how many books do you foresee in the series?

Newman: I’m currently writing Aquarius: Anno Dracula 1968, a novella which will be in the new edition of Dracula Cha Cha Cha this Autumn; then, I have to polish the fourth book in the series, Johnny Alucard, which takes place mostly in the 1970s and ‘80s (and includes several sequences that have seen print in earlier drafts as novellas, Coppola’s Dracula, Castle in the Desert, Andy Warhol’s Dracula and The Other Side of Midnight). There will be a fifth, perhaps final book – bringing the series into the 21st Century – but that’s in the very early planning stages.

4. You’re an editor, a novelist, a critic and a broadcaster. Is writing fiction your primary passion?

Newman: I don’t tend to separate out the things I do – obviously, the fiction is the most personal work, and the arena where I have the most freedom, but I know that the criticism I do feeds into it often. And I enjoy getting away from the desk to do radio and television too.

5. You wrote The Vampire Genevieve and Orgy of the Blood Parasites as Jack Yeovil. Any reason for the pseudonym?

Newman: The specific reason is that when I started writing for GW Books, who put out the novels collected in The Vampire Genevieve, all the other writers working on the Warhammer line were using pseudonyms so I thought I should too. Later, Ian Watson put out Warhammer books under his own name and in retrospect I wish I’d done that too. Though they were written to fit into worlds other people had created, and (perhaps more important) I don’t control or own the publishing rights to them, the books are pretty much mine and I remain pleased with them. Having built up a parallel career as Jack Yeovil, it’s occasionally been useful to have the name for other things, like Orgy of the Blood Parasites (a gruesome paperback horror novel written in a week). The name comes from the main character in Dreamers, my first published story – there, it was ‘John Yeovil’.

6. Any thoughts on the zombie craze? Has it burned out? And any ideas about what the next big horror craze might be?

Newman: As a critic, I could do with zombies taking a nice long rest – I saw Ozombie this week, which didn’t do anything to dissuade me. I certainly think there have been so many zombie film/books lately that it would take something really amazing to have any impact. I quite liked Pontypool, which was a sort of zombie story. I’m not one for predicting crazes – and I suspect the way to start one is to do something off the wall and original rather than, say, to guess that mummy or werewolf or ghost pirates are going to be big next week and get one of those out.

7. Do you have a writing routine? And if so, what is it?

Newman: I mostly write fiction in the morning and do reviewing in the afternoon, but that’s not hard and fast. I think I get my best work done early in the day.

8. Any advice for new writers?

Newman: If you can do anything else, do so. No one who doesn’t absolutely have to be a writer could put up with what you have to go through to do good work and get it read.

9. What are you currently working on?

Newman: As I said, Anno Dracula 1968. I’ve other novel projects in development – a ghost story, a school story, a Phantom of the Opera story – and I’m also fiddling with some stage, TV and film ideas. There are several non-fiction projects I want to fit in as well.

Ginger Nuts of Horror is curently carrying an interview with Ellen Datlow. Datlow is a Multiple award-winning editor. Ellen has been editing science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction for almost thirty years. She was fiction editor of OMNI Magazine and SCIFICTION and has edited more than fifty anthologies, including the horror half of the long-running The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.

In response to a question about the health of the genre, Datlow says: “I think it’s a golden age for the horror short story — as far as quality. As to markets? They come and go as they always have. There have rarely been more than a handful of horror magazines – ever. So the question is more how many original horror anthologies come out annually? I count about thirty-two that were worth covering in 2011. That doesn’t count the horror stories published in mixed-genre magazines and anthologies – or single author collections (most of the latter reprint, but usually an original of two thrown in).”

You can read the interview in its entirety here: Ellen Datlow

Permuted Press has just released Pavlov’s Dogs by D.L. Snell and Thom Brannan, so we thought we’d ask them a few questions about their new book and all it entails.

H: Let’s start off with the basics … tell us about your new novel, Pavlov’s Dogs.
Pavlov’s Dogs is about two classic but permuted monsters, werewolves and zombies, battling it out over the fate of humanity. On one side you have a team of genetically-enhanced spec-op soldiers, known as the Dogs, attempting to save survivors from a post-apocalyptic wasteland; and on the other you have hordes and hordes of hungry dead. Caught in between are the poor humans: families, friends, and people who’ve lost everything. The Dogs are their only hope. But not everyone wants to use the soldiers for altruistic reasons. Some would hoard their resources and post the Dogs as compound guards.

H: Which do you find more interesting … zombies or werewolves?
TB: Werewolves. In most iterations of the “monster,” it has a human part, which makes it a character, and therefore infinitely more interesting than a plot device, which is how I see zombies and/or the Zombie Apocalypse.

DLS: You know, when you get right down to it, they’re both kind of the same thing. Strip ’em down, and you’re looking at the bestial side of humanity. At least that’s how the monsters are typically portrayed. Biggest difference is, werewolves switch back and forth between monster and man. That’s interesting, how one copes with the dualities of his own nature. There’s a little bit of that in Pavlov’s Dogs.

What I think is really interesting is that, for whatever reason, people in stories seem to find it more difficult killing zombies than they do werewolves. But if you think about that, it’s like Thom says: werewolves are still alive and are usually more human than zombies. So why is shooting a werewolf in the head with a silver bullet easier than braining a zombie? Maybe it’s only a fair question if the werewolf is someone you know and love. But even then, it seems like it would be easier to shoot a loved one who’s a zombie rather than a werewolf. At least with a werewolf, you still have hope. But, ah… that’s where illogical emotion comes in, isn’t it? Hope, no hope. Sometimes our emotions don’t let us see the difference.

TB: When the zombies come at you, it’s all mindless hunger. You know? They’re sad creatures that only know one thing. When a werewolf comes at you, yeah, there’s something mindless about it, but there’s also rage. Maybe some sadistic glee. I suppose that makes them easier to pull the trigger on, because there’s a reasoning creature that wants to slurp down the innards that you are presently using. And, you know… I’m using them. Keeping all the Thom parts in the original packaging is very important to me.

DLS: Anyway, in Pavlov’s, we play with some of these questions. A lot of our werewolves are portrayed as good guys. Some of our zombies started out as good guys too. To me, it’s all interesting. But, and I second Thom here, it’s only interesting because of how the characters deal with the situations, and usually zombies as characters… well, let’s just put it this way: as much as I wanted to like it, Big Daddy in Land of the Dead just seems more comical than I think is intended. Kim Paffenroth is about the only author I know who’s created zombie characters that are actually profound.

H: You ask some interesting questions in the book. For example: what happens when a werewolf gets bitten by an infected human? Does that create an entirely new creature?
TB: Will that be telling? I don’t want to give anything away.

DLS: I’ll answer this tangentially, as Thom’s right, we want to keep some details close to the vest. In my first book, Roses Of Blood, I pitted zombies against vampires. In these types of mash-ups, it’s always a natural question: how does a zombie bite affect other monsters? Well, in Roses, the answer is complicated, as it’s both what you’d expect, and something unexpected altogether. For example, at the beginning of the book, the zombie bite causes what could be compared to anaphylactic shock: the vampire immune system overreacts. However, by the end of the book, things have changed and the bite does something entirely different.

So in Pavlov’s… let’s just say we’ve tried to give people both sides of the coin: something different, something the same.

H: Did you stick close to the traditions for each monster or did you find it necessary (and more interesting) to move beyond some of the traditional limitations of each?
TB: A little of column A, a little of column B. The titular Dogs are werewolves, even though they’re genetically-derived instead of supernatural. The zombies are zombies… until they’re not.

DLS: What Thom said. With werewolves it seems like there are two main types: the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde variety, and the other, where the werewolf is just an exaggeration of who the person is at the core, good or bad (usually bad). In Pavlov’s we’ve got both kinds.

TB: There’s also a little bit of “power corrupts” with the werewolves. You give a good man the inherent power that comes with shape-shifting and muscle and claws, and what will he do with it? There’s where we find out if that good man is a great man, or just a man who was good for fear of consequences.

DLS: The zombies, well… fast or slow, smart or dumb, it always seems they want to eat human flesh. That’s true in our book as well. But at times the way we personify the undead is different: the zombies are occasionally described as sick people in great pain, moaning for help; you can imagine what kind of psychological effect that has on the survivors. But aside from that, I think we really got inventive with the zombie scenarios that the survivors find themselves in. In the scenarios we’ve added some nice new twists to old conventions.

H: Is Pavlov’s Dogs more science fiction or more horror?
TB: More horror. There are definitely sci-fi elements, but the overall feeling is that of a horror story.

DLS: It’s got a bunch of different genres mixed in. In parts, it’s very much a thriller: we’ve got the good guys and the bad guys constantly throwing obstacles at each other, so the pacing is relentless. And we’ve got humor in there, and a bit of romance — just a bit.

TB: Not too much, or they’d take our cards away.

DLS: Overall I’d say the flesh of the book is action and horror, but the sci-fi is definitely the backbone; if you took it out, we wouldn’t have a story. A main element of the plot is control, and the science fiction is at the root of that control.

And that’s all I can say about that…

H: How did the collaboration come about?
TB: I was drafted.

DLS: I actually came up with the basic concept of Pavlov’s Dogs a long time ago while brainstorming with publisher Jacob Kier and fellow author John Sunseri. The project was put on the backburner for ages, as everyone had kind of moved on to do other things. But I always wanted to get the story idea off the ground. I just couldn’t do it by myself, as I needed someone with a military background to lend credence to the Dogs. So eventually Jacob suggested submariner and author Thom Brannan. Thom had recently been selected to finish ZA Recht’s popular Morningstar Saga, and Jacob wanted to line him up with a few more projects anyway. But it wasn’t just that; and it wasn’t just his military background. Thom is also good, and fast. Enviably fast. And he’s easy to get along with.

TB: Over the internet, I’m easy to get along with.

DLS: Heh, he once told me he’s an annoying little shit in person, but I always chalked that up to false modesty: he’s an annoying little shit on paper too. Hah! But so am I, so I guess it’s all part of the synergy of Team Brannan and Snell.

TB: When I was approached with the project, I might have hurt myself in the haste to answer in the affirmative. There was a lot of back-and-forthing about details and the outline, but once that was ironed out, it was all systems go. And Dave’s enthusiasm was inspiring. Overall, it was a great experience, and I’m glad for it.

H: I find the process of writing a book with another writer fascinating. Tell us about some of the pitfalls and some of the benefits.
TB: Usually, when I’m writing my own stuff, I get a little tangential and there’s nobody to rein me in. Working with D.L., he was always asking where something was going and when it was going to pay off, which kind of kept all the loose threads in mind. And since I never had a good answer, I’m sure he pulled some of his hair out. Just a bit.

DLS: If I were to generalize what Thom says above, I’d say the greatest benefit of co-authorship is that each writer brings a unique skill set to the table. Yeah, Thom did go off on a few tangents, but if he hadn’t done that, I never would have asked where those tangents were going. And if I hadn’t asked, then Thom might not have looked for a way to tie things back into the main thrust of the story. But because we both acted according to our nature, we came together to produce a few integral scenes that neither of us intended from the outset. And you know, those are some of my favorite scenes in the book. (To be coy, one of these bits involves the island security chief… and a morphine thief.)

TB: Another Pro was that D.L. thinks about everything. Everything. Character development, pacing, red herrings, cliffhangers, themes? He’s very literary, and I’m not like that at all. I write, more or less, by the seat of my pants. It was very different, writing things for specific effect or to get a point across before a major turn.

DLS: Now, for pitfalls I’d say that the process of writing and promoting takes long enough in solo ventures, but in a co-authorship everything is times two. Want to change something in the book? Something as simple as a single word? Better run that past your co-author first. Because that’s what’s fair, that’s what’s right: both of your names are on that book. So then you’re subject to each other’s schedules and work ethic. Luckily both Thom and I are fairly quick and responsive, but it still takes time. And everything has to be explained and clearly communicated in duplicate, which takes even more time. There are benefits in this; a second set of eyes, checks and balances. But that’s only a passing comfort when all you want is to get your book out there, into readers’ hands, not now but last year, so it can already have garnered awards and 5-star reviews.

TB: That is a thing. My process is to write, write, write, write, and then revise. Working with a collaborator, it was write, write, revise, read, edit, revise, email, email, email. On the whole, the back-and-forth was entirely beneficial to the novel, and probably both of us as storytellers. Seeing things from both sides really shined a light on weak points.

H: Is there another book by the two of you planned for the future?
TB: Yes.

DLS: Heheheh. I think what Thom means to say is, “Si.”

TB: You glib devil.

[Editor's Note: you can purchase Pavolov's Dogs through Amazon here.]