Questions and Answers Plug away - what do you have coming out? Just when you thought it was safe to go to the bookstore... A trade paperback edition of The Organ Donor, from Double Dragon Publishing, is coming in the summer of 2003. This will be a second edition--the first being the September 2002 e-book-- but now you'll be able to smell it and hold it and everything. The publisher is going to ship me all the pre-orders, to be personally inscribed to each reader by name. I'm told that this sort of thing is a dream for book collectors (who make tons more money from books than authors, by the way). All the info will be at my website, www.MatthewWarner.com. I've also been invited to submit to a number of anthologies, but until the stories are officially accepted, I can't say nuthin'. (Damn!) Readers should therefore sign up for my website's free e-mail newsletter, The ForeWarner, so they can stay informed. Is writing your full time occupation, if not what is? My daylight-hour profession (when my kind are supposed to be "sleeping," dontcha know), has had some interesting cross-overs into my life as a horror writer. I'm an administrative assistant at Piper Rudnick LLP, a law firm in Washington, DC. I'm not saying that the law is horrifying--well it is, but keep reading. My primary boss is former Nixon White House counsel Leonard Garment, who incidentally is a legatee for the late Voice of America jazz radio commentator, Willis Conover. This is significant because Conover as a teenager was a correspondent of H.P. Lovecraft, the greatest horror writer of the early 20th century. We didn't know about this until Cooper Square Press a couple years ago approached us and asked, "Do you hold the copyrights to Lovecraft at Last, by H.P. Lovecraft and Willis Conover?" Conover, we learned, had compiled the story of the correspondence into a limited-edition memoir, which was nominated for the 1976 World Fantasy Award. Flash forward to 2002: Cooper Square has re-issued the book with a new introduction by Lovecraft biographer S.T. Joshi, and with a new page in the back by me. Was it a thrill to have my name associated with Lovecraft? You betcha! The latest cross-over between my job and my writing was this fall, when I learned that Dr. Wang Guoqi was seeking alternate legal representation in his quest for political asylum. Dr. Wang, as readers of The Organ Donor know, inspired the novel with his June 2001 Congressional testimony about the sale of organs from executed Chinese prisoners. You can read a more complete version of this bizarre turn of fate in the Halloween 2002 issue of the newsletter at www.MatthewWarner.com. If you could give one piece of advice to a would-be author, what would it be? Well, I can't give just one piece of advice--I have to give two. The first: read a lot and write a lot. Learning the art of fiction is like learning to play a musical instrument--I should know, as I took 16 years of piano lessons. It requires years of practice, study, and patience. It also requires knowing your limits. I wouldn't recommend that a first-year pianist try to learn a Chopin etude; a short Mozart minuet would be easier. By the same token, I advise beginning writers to learn their chops by doing short stories for several years before attempting a novel. Second piece of advice: join two types of writers organizations. The first is a critique group, if you can find one. I fell in with a small circle of people through the Writers Center of Bethesda, Maryland, and we've been tearing apart each other's stuff--um, educating each other, I mean--for years. The second type of organization to join is a professional association, such as the Horror Writers Association, Mystery Writers of America, or Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. This will greatly improve your marketing intelligence and will get your name out there. And go to their conventions! For horror writers, I recommend the World Horror Convention, Horrorfind Weekend, and Bram Stoker Banquet. Are you a member of any writing groups? Besides the critiquing group that I just mentioned, I'm an affiliate member of the Horror Writers Association (www.Horror.org) and an officer in the Mid-Atlantic Horror Professionals (www.MidAtlanticHorror.org). In the HWA, I'm the regional chapter coordinator and at-large troublemaker, and in the MAHP, I'm the secretary-slash-whipping boy. Are you for or against e-books? As The Organ Donor's first edition is an e-book, naturally I'm for 'em! Sure, there's nothing like holding a book in your hands, smelling the paper, and not having your retinas fried by a computer monitor, but e-books are here to stay. I believe the technology will improve until their interface is as user-friendly as a physical book. I also think that eventually publishers will prefer making e-books over print because the production and distribution costs are lower. What gives you nightmares? Sleeping under too many blankets. Really, I don't know what it is, but if I get overheated, I have horrible nightmares about dying. But this isn't to say that I dislike them. Only a horror writer can wake up from one and say, "Cool! I have to write this down!" Case in point: last summer I dreamt that my father and I were exploring the basement of an abandoned building. We came upon a secret doorway that receded deep into the wall when pushed. Dad kept pushing it down a long corridor until he and the door disappeared into a dark cavern. I shined my flashlight after him and saw him walking away from me--in fast motion. A moment later, three children emerged from the passage, approaching me in fast-motion, and the door closed behind them. The children had long hair and beards but were otherwise still kids--and suddenly I knew that they'd been trapped in the hidden cavern for decades, in suspended animation. When I woke up, I turned that into the seed of a short story, "Dark Belly," about an estranged father and son who search an abandoned building for a fabled magic cave. A scene occurs just as I've described. In the story, the three children have been missing and presumed dead for decades. The plot then centers around the protagonist's fight to free his father from the cave--and his struggle with the issue of whether he even wants to. Have you ever used real life horrors for inspiration? The Organ Donor was based heavily on the trade in human body parts presently conducted by the People's Republic of China. This incredible human rights scandal is documented at www.Laogai.org by the Laogai Research Foundation. My first professional sale, of the Stoker Award-recommended story "Middle Passage" to Extremes III: Terror on the High Seas (Lone Wolf Publications (www.LoneWolfPubs.com, 2001), was inspired by true-life accounts of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. This story contains no supernatural elements and didn't need to. The physical and mental abuse suffered by slaves chained to the insides of sailing ships was quite enough. Recently, I completed the short story "The Forgiving Type," for one of those anthology invites that I'm not supposed to talk about yet. This one was inspired by the recent arrest of a Georgian crematory operator--ironically with the Lovecraftian name of Marsh--who for years stacked bodies in his basement, or buried them in the woods or his lake, rather than cremate them as he was supposed to. The crematory operator in my story takes this a step further by answering the question of why: because he was eating them, of course. Do You Always know a Story's Ending When You Begin Writing? No, and I'm not sure which way is better. Peter Straub once told me that he doesn't know how his stories will end when he writes them--likening the process to being Mr. Magoo walking out of a skyscraper's window, and stepping into space to be continually saved by steel girders hoisted by cranes. That's what it was like writing The Organ Donor; I just got my guy into a situation and had faith that God would provide, so to speak. At other times, I have stories pretty well planned before I begin--often changing them on-the-fly, but still following a general outline. What book are you reading at the moment? Bitter Blood, by Karen E. Taylor, part two of The Vampire Legacy series. It's an effective--and sexy--combination of vampire lore and romance. Next up will be The Association, by Bentley Little. Readers can see what I'm reading (and enjoying) by watching the "Recommended Reading" column in my newsletter at www.MatthewWarner.com. Thanks for the interview. Drop by my message board and say hi! Many Thanks, Matthew! Relevant Links Matthew Warner Main Bibliography Matthew Warner's Website Double Dragon Press