Questions and Answers
What are you currently working on?
The Vampire Earth series (Roc) and my agent, John Silbersack, has the first volume of a High Fantasy series that he’s shopping around.
Are you a member of any writing groups?
Yes. Five writers. I’m the first one to "break out" into publication. We meet twice a month, at every meeting we spend a full hour going over two participants’s work. It gives us enough time to really chew it over. Do organizations count? SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) and I keep meaning to update my HWA (Horror Writers of America) membership.
Who or what has been a major influence on your writing and why?
H.P. Lovecraft--I love, and used, the idea of an ancient horror returning. Richard Matheson--he taught me vampires don’t have to run around in evening attire. Stephen King, of course. Robert E. Howard--pulse pounding action that sweated and breathed and bled. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Adams’s Watership Down, they both put me in a world so real that I felt I was living inside it. C.S. Forrester’s Hornblower series and Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, military fiction in another age at its best. I love all the old "two fisted" sf writers. The first sf I ever read was E.E. "Doc" Smith. My dad loved him too, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I got my initials from him. Alan Dean Foster, he’s a hero of mine, I devoured his books as a teen and checked my local B. Dalton constantly in the hope that something new of his was out. There are other great storytellers filling my shelves, H. Beam Piper and Alistar MacLean and Wilbur Smith and Ian Fleming. I’d have to say the greatest of them all was Louis L’Amour. He would weave plot and character and setting so expertly, but he never got the accolades he deserved.
Art plays a part in inspiring me to. Hieronymus Bosch’s chaotic works seethe evil and Luis Royo does these vivid apocalyptic cityscapes that inspire me. I collect the Spectrum fantastic art books.
Movies too, but you don’t want me filling pages with that, do you?
Who (Fact or Fiction) would you most like to meet, and what would you ask them?
The Founding Fathers: Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Jay, Franklin, Paine… I’d ask them how to fix Washington DC so our government starts paying attention to the Constitution of the United States again.
Is there a book or story you wish you had written?
George Orwell’s 1984. It’s the ultimate dystopia.
As a reader do you prefer Science Fiction, Fantasy or Horror?
"Yes, please." Or is that too Austin Powers?
What was your first professional sale? How did it feel when you received the acceptance?
Way of the Wolf was the first sale worth mentioning. It was a rush. Writers don’t need heroin; we have highs and lows and burnouts and fixes…and the pay is about what a junkie picks up scavenging aluminum. No dirty needles though.
Who is you favourite author?
That’s like asking Sophie Zawistowska which child she wants to keep. I could say it, but I’d start screaming and crying at the betrayal of the others.
If you could give one piece of advice to a would-be author, what would it be?
I’ll give the advice Alan Dean Foster gave me: “Write every day. Submit when you’re done.”
When did you first decide that you wanted to be an author?
I was about ten and I saw Creature from the Black Lagoon. Afterwards I wrote a story about a girl in a white swimsuit and a giant prehistoric underwater spider. Dinosaurs and insects were a big part of my youth, so naturally I combined the two. It was so godawful that even my mother threw it away...and can you imagine how bad something has to be for that to happen? But the storytelling bug was planted.
When did you first feel that you were an author?
When I got my first piece of praise from someone who had read my book that wasn’t a friend or relative.
Are you for or against e-books?
For. Time Warner’s experiment with e-books is what got me my start.
Are you a music fan? If so, what?
Classical. I’m into the Russians. I’m a huge Kate Bush fan. Though once you get into her listening to anything else just sucks. High school and college for me was the 80s so I have the usual assortment of Police and U2 Cds. I like movie soundtracks, especially if Jerry Goldsmith or John Williams or Basil Poledouris is doing the scoring. I work out to Enigma. I can listen to music when I conceptualize or edit but not when I write.
Do you have a favourite place to write?
Have iBook will travel.
Do you enjoy book signings/conventions?
They’re great. Writing is a lonely business; conventions are a chance to talk to people who speak the same language and go through the same BS. I’ve done World Fantasy for the past two years and will go again this fall. This year is my first WorldCon. Chicago (where I live now) and Madison do some good cons every year--at the smaller ones you get a chance to actually know people.
Why do you like SF/F/H?
Anything can happen. You can wreck the world, or build a new one. The monster under the bed might really be there. I’ll quote Rod Serling: "It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination."
What is the scariest story you have read?
H.P. Lovecraft’s Whisperer in Darkness. Scared the oatmeal out of me when I was a kid. I sat up late, turning the pages, terrified that the Yuggoth aliens were prowling around my backyard. The trees scratching on the house in the Minnesota woods sounded an awful lot like claws...
As an adult I’d have to say Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon. When Dolarhyde grabbed that blind gal he worked with and brought her back to gramma’s, after what he’d done to Lounds I was really freaking out. It’s the only time I can remember checking the back of the book to make sure it turned out okay.
Have you ever used real life horrors for inspiration?
Constantly. Nazi horrors, Soviet horrors, Pol Pot’s anka horrors. Dreadful little incidents from the French Revolution. The Greek revolt against the Ottomans. Our American Civil War. Your English Civil War. Read Suetonius’s Twelve Caesars. Some of them make the James Bond villains look like milquetoasts.
Combat is horror. I’d argue that most war novels are horror novels. What are Marlon Brano’s last words in Apocalypse Now (taken, of course, from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness) again?
I also love true crime books...Capote’s In Cold Blood, Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter. That’ll feed the beast within.
Given the high quality of horror fiction available, why do you think there are so few great horror movies?
You can scare yourself in your imagination better than any director or effects man. That’s why Alien is brilliant until the last two minutes and Jaws works until thirty feet of rubber flops out of the ocean.
Is there anything more that can be done with vampires, demons and zombies?
There better be or I’m sunk. Look at it this way: these archetypes have been scaring people since forever. It’s the story, not the beastie. I’m one of those boors who thinks there are only two plots. You get some interesting, sympathetic characters in a palpable situation, and James Arness can show up in his carrot-suit and you’ll still win your audience over.
Short story, single novel or novel series - which do you think is the best medium for horror?
Short story. Horror is best in small doses. The great horror novels are collections of little unsettling or horrific scenes and longer sections of plot to calm you down then build you up for the next scare. National Lampoon in their fake letters section once did one from Stephen King where he gave the outline to his next book: "Plot, Plot, Boo! Plot, Sex, Boo! Plot, Plot, Boo! Plot, Boo! Boo! Plot." That’s not too far off the mark. Read Rosemary’s Baby and turn down the page-corners at the chilling parts. You’ll find they’re pretty far apart, until the third quarter of the book. Even after she gives birth you're given a little breather, a little room to wonder if Rosemary got her scrabble pieces wrong.
What book are you reading at the moment?
Let’s see...Dobyn’s Church of the Dead Girls. Dead Center, a nonfiction about a Marine Sniper in Viet Nam. A big old hardcover collection of Stephen King’s "Richard Bachman" books that I picked up at a used book store. Redshift, an sf anthology. James Hetley’s The Summer Country, a great Celtic fantasy debut. Some papers on chemical weapons and nerve agents, but that’s research. That covers what’s on the desk, the coffee table, the bedside, the kitchen, and the reading basket by the toilet--also used for the tub. I won’t say which is where.
Do You Always know a Story's Ending When You Begin Writing?
Mickey Spillane used to write his last chapter then work backwards. I’ve never had the guts to try that. I have a vague idea of the ending. Though sometimes, as J.R.R. Tolkien used to say, "the tale grew in the telling." I had to divide a single story into Vampire Earth Book Three and Book Four because it was just taking to damn long to tell the story arc I originally conceived.
What's the most memorable thing said in a review of your work?
A reader’s comment on Amazon for the old ebook version of Way of the Wolf:
If you like sci-fi, or just plain action, then this is the book that will make you get fired because you are late for work the third time this week...I would trade my brass ring for the next book in the series. I can say without reservation that this is the best book I have read in the last 5 years and one of my all time favourites. Bravo E.E. Knight. More, More, More!!"
His name is Mike and he’s from Lexington Oklahoma, though he uses the Brit spelling for “favorites,” oddly enough. Maybe he’s transplanted. I love him. I thought it was clever the way he worked in a little bit of my mythos.
From a professional reviewer I’d have to say Angela McErlain, who ran a spec fic book website in the UK.
"I have no doubt that E.E. Knight is going to be a household name in the genre before he's done."
By the Continental Congress and Great Jehovah, I hope that prediction comes true.
Is there something you are particularly proud of?
The faith of my family and friends in my work. I wouldn’t be here without their belief and support. That and getting a check from Laura Anne Gilman at NAL/Roc.
Plug away - what do you have coming out?
Way of the Wolf, Book One of the Vampire Earth, coming from Roc in September. Book Two is going to follow probably in early summer of 2004, and book three after that. I’m not sure of the intervals.
And a website mention would be appropriate (see below)
Many Thanks, Eric
Relevant LinksE.E. Knight Main Bibliography
E.E. Knight's Vampire Earth Website
