Andy Graham Author

Author of dark fiction and fantasy, dystopia, horror.

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One Book Interview #19 – Jason Parent (Author)

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Hot on the heels of last week’s 18th birthday celebration, the One Book Interview is back to business as usual. Today, I’m very happy to be taking part in a book tour for an exciting author by the name of Jason Parent. His new book  A Life Removed is out now. I had the pleasure of reading an advance copy not so long ago. You can find out what I thought of it tomorrow, but for now, here is a taste of what Jason likes to read when he’s not writing. (Interestingly, three of his choices made the top twelve list in last week’s 18th birthday book summary.)

Good people of the Internet – Jason Parent.

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

The Stand, by Stephen King – It is a genre-defining tale of good versus evil that should be required reading.

2 – you would take with you if you were going to be marooned on Mars

The Martian, by Andy Weir – I’d need some chance of being able to grow potatoes. Of course, I’d probably also need potatoes.

3 – you took a chance on and were pleasantly surprised by

Robert McCammon’s Matthew Corbett series. Historical fiction, not quite horror or my usual cup of tea, but altogether perfect.

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite

My books vary so much in genre and tone that my answer to this question changes daily. But so as not to cop out, I think Wrathbone and Other Stories is one of my best works.

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

Tucker Max’s I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. The book never answers the question whether beer is, in fact, served in Hell, so I have made it a life-long ambition to drink as much beer as possible before I get there. I’m guessing it’s all mimosas and umbrella drinks down under the earth.

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

Not Tucker Max’s books. Stephen King’s On Writing has made me re-examine my craft.

7 – of yours that prospective readers should start with if they want to get to know your work and where they can get it.

That depends on how dark they want to go. I have a couple of novellas priced at $0.99 to allow potential readers to give me a try. But my novels are all stand-alones, so my latest, A Life Removed is as good a start as any (and happens to be set earliest chronologically).

You can find Jason at: www.authorjasonparent.com

In his head, Jason Parent lives in many places, but in the real world, he calls New England his home. The region offers an abundance of settings for his writing and many wonderful places in which to write them. He currently resides in Southeastern Massachusetts with his cuddly corgi named Calypso.

In a prior life, Jason spent most of his time in front of a judge . . . as a civil litigator. When he finally tired of Latin phrases no one knew how to pronounce and explaining to people that real lawsuits are not started, tried and finalized within the 60-minute timeframe they see on TV (it’s harassing the witness; no one throws vicious woodland creatures at them), he traded in his cheap suits for flip flops and designer stubble. The flops got repossessed the next day, and he’s back in the legal field . . . sorta. But that’s another story.

When he’s not working, Jason likes to kayak, catch a movie, travel any place that will let him enter, and play just about any sport (except that ball tied to the pole thing where you basically just whack the ball until it twists in a knot or takes somebody’s head off – he misses the appeal). And read and write, of course. He does that too sometimes.

One Book Interview #17 – Kenneth Cain (Author)

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I’m very happy to present another horror and dark fiction author this week. There are a few more in the pipeline and I’m slightly disturbed by how ‘nice’ they all seem to be. (I’m not sure the authors will thank me for ‘outing’ them like this. It also makes me wonder what Romance writers are like when they’re not writing…)

This is a great interview – understated, concise, and refreshingly humble. I’m not going to spin out the intro any further, other than to say I’ve bought a copy of one of the author’s books and crowbarred it into the top of my to-be-read list.

Good people of the Internet – Kenneth Cain.

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

I’m a bit biased on this question because it’s one of my favorite books. I think everyone should read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Not only has it stood the test of time, but the book also seems rather relevant to present day, where we are growing ears on the backs of mice and cloning. For me, the likelihood of reanimating a human corpse, either a whole person or chop-shopped, is high. How might those creations react upon breathing their first breath?

2 – you would take with you if you were going to be marooned on Mars

Soon, we may have colonies on Mars, so marooned is becoming more and more unlikely. That being the case, colonization could take a couple of lifetimes, and those first settlers might find themselves with a lot of down time. A spacey theme feels like a good choice, and since I loved the book as a teenager, I think The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy is a good fit.

3 – you took a chance on and were pleasantly surprised by

Before I knew Joe Hill’s lineage, my wife picked up Heart-Shaped Box as a gift for me. Currently, that book is still one of my favorites. I know some may disagree, but there’s nothing quite like a good ghost story, and that one hit a lot of really good notes for me.

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite

I’d like to go with my latest, Embers. With each new story, I’m growing as a writer, and that’s a path with which I’d really like to stay on track. This collection of short stories was a big leap for me craft wise. But my favorite work is currently unsold. It’s a novelette entitled “A Season In Hell” about a woman playing baseball in the minor leagues in the early nineties and her struggles. It’s more literary, but there’s a certain darkness to it. If you’re looking for a book that’s already out there, I got really attached with the characters in my first book, These Trespasses, from The Saga of I trilogy. Someday, I may revisit that series and try to make more of it now that I’ve honed my skills some.

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

There are many writers who’ve personally influenced me via direct contact, but book wise, I’d have to say Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Mosses from an Old Manse. It’s where I first read “Young Goodman Brown” and fell in love with telling darker stories. Something about that story stuck with me all these years, and so I’ve often found myself reflecting on the unknown, and speculating what’s out there.

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

For me, it’s a short story actually; Ken Liu’s entitled “The Paper Menagerie.” I forget where it originally appeared, but it’s been reprinted several times. There’s even audio out there (linked on his website I believe). For me, that story reached heights I’ve often dreamed of. To have everything come together so well, that’s the sort of writing I strive for. Reading that story made me take a second look at my short career, and that’s when I decided I needed to really kick things up a notch. It unlocked something for me, a better sense of what I needed to achieve in a story.

7 – of yours that prospective readers should start with if they want to get to know your work and where they can get it.

Definitely Embers. It’s by far my strongest work; the cleanest and best storytelling I’ve achieved thus far. It’s a big step up for me, and I think a lot of readers will get a good sense of where I’m going with my writing by taking a chance on this collection of short fiction.

You can find Kenneth at: www.kennethwcain.com

Kenneth W. Cain is the author of the Saga of I trilogy, United States of the Dead, the short story collections These Old Tales and Fresh Cut Tales, and his latest Embers: A Collection of Dark Fiction. Early on, shows like The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and One Step Beyond created a sense of wonder for the unknown that continues to fuel his writing.  Cain resides in Chester County, Pennsylvania with his wife and two children.

 

One Book Interview #16 – Ken Preston (Author)

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This is great – funny, informative, quirky, and honest. A huge thanks to this week’s author for one of my favourite interviews so far.

Good people of the Internet – Ken Preston.

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

Oh man, you could have started off with an easy question, couldn’t you?

I would have to say To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. It’s a wonderful book, full of love and compassion and tolerance as well as being a first rate read. This is a book I reread from time to time, but I try not to read it too often. I don’t ever want to become too familiar with it.

2 – you would take with you if you were going to be marooned on Mars

Well, I suppose the easy answer to that one would be The Martian by Andy Weir, as I would then have an instruction manual on how to survive on Mars!

Or, the other answer would be: Can I take my Kindle, because then I can have lots of books, which would be my ideal choice. I’m guessing a Kindle doesn’t count as a book though, does it?

Then again, maybe I should take the longest book ever written so I would be kept busy reading that for a good long while.

As you can see, I don’t have a sensible answer for you. If really pushed into answering this question I would look to a book that I have already read more than once and still enjoyed. So that would be To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. Or maybe Misery, by Stephen King.

Both of these books are rich and layered and, even if I don’t get marooned on Mars, I will probably read both of them at least one more time.

3 – you took a chance on and were pleasantly surprised by

To be honest I tend to be disappointed more than pleasantly surprised by books these days, which is a shame. I think the last book I enjoyed which I hadn’t thought I would (it was pressed fervently onto me by a book loving friend) was The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce. Not particularly my kind of read, but I was drawn in and moved by its descriptions of ordinary, everyday love, and one man’s determination to do something with his life, even if it was just to deliver a letter.

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite

To be honest, I love all my books, even the ones I never finished writing, and the ones I did finish writing but will never be published because I can’t face inflicting them upon the world at large.

But if I had to pick ONE, I guess it would be Joe Coffin Season One. I published Season Three earlier this year and I will be starting work on Season Four soon, but I think number one will always be my favourite as it now feels like the start of a great adventure.

Season One also feels like the point where I got serious about writing and publishing. I had self-published a few books before this, and had a couple traditionally published too. But Joe Coffin Season One feels like the starting point.

A mashup of crime and vampire horror, I wrote Joe Coffin in ‘Seasons’ to resemble a TV series. It’s fast paced, violent, gruesome, funny and filled with cliff hangers. Just like the TV shows I like to watch.

When I started work on the first of the Joe Coffin books I was writing it for myself really. But that big, ugly, mob enforcer turned vampire hunter seems to have caught the imagination of lots of people, and women in particular have fallen for him big time, which came as a surprise to me.

Joe Coffin sprang from a very dark place in my life, working as a sort of therapy for a while. There’s a lot to be said for writing as therapy!

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

Now this is going to sound weird, but a book I have owned for years and have looked through many times and, yes, has probably influenced me more than any other (even the Bible which had a powerful grip on me during the years I called myself a Christian and regularly attended church) is this one: Walker Evans: Photographs for the Farm Security Administration 1935-1938.

Basically it’s a collection of photographs taken by American photographer Walker Evans who was hired by the government to document the lives of share croppers in Alabama. And that’s it.

But it is stunning in its stark, black and white simplicity, and more than thirty years after I bought it I still find myself returning from time to time to gaze at the photographs of poor dirt farmers who will now be long dead but have lived on in my imagination.

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

This book could also be filed under personal, but I will answer it here as it is probably the one that finally enabled me to pick myself up off the floor and get on with the business of carving a career out of my love of writing. For many years I resisted reading Susan Jeffers’ book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, but after a spell of crippling depression I gave in and picked it up.

And it’s a revelation.

If you have long harboured a dream but are too scared to follow it, I strongly recommend this book. I don’t agree with every word, but then I don’t have to. It’s the message that counts. And the message at its most simple is this: Go ahead and live your life.

7 – of yours that prospective readers should start with if they want to get to know your work and where they can get it.

Joe Coffin Season One! Definitely. And you don’t have to take my word for it, as you can try it for free on Amazon.

You can find Ken at: www.kenpreston.co.uk

Ken Preston is the author of the Joe Coffin series of books, YA adventure series Planet of the Dinosaurs, and the Romance and Adventure line.

He writes in his cellar, on the street where Jack the Ripper was born, and lives with his wife, two boys, and two cats. The cats often contribute to his books by walking across his keyboard.

Join his growing list of VIP readers and get two free books within your first week of membership. That’s right, you will get JOE COFFIN SEASON ONE, all of it, with your first email. that’s over 400 pages of British noir and vampire mayhem for free, and then Population:DEAD!, a collection of bizarre and twisted stories including How to Eat a Car, and The Man Who Murdered Himself.