I’m beyond excited today to welcome one of my favorite horror authors, Jonathan Maberry, to guest post today. Jonathan is known for many horror novels, but my favorite include the Pine Deep series and Patient Zero, and of course, Rot & Ruin! Today Jonathan is discussing a question that I believe is asked of many horror writers: Why do you write about monsters?
One of the most frequently asked questions I get is: ‘Why do you write about monsters?’
The thing is…I don’t. If I’m writing a book in which there are zombies, vampires, werewolves, genetic mutations or other horrific beings, they are not what the book is about.
People are.
I write books about the people who fight monsters. Who oppose evil. Who take a stand against darkness. That’s always been the case with my fiction—from my first novel, GHOST ROAD BLUES (Pinnacle Books, 2006) all the way to my new one, ROT & RUIN (Simon & Schuster, Sept 14 2010); and now it’s the case with my latest nonfiction book, WANTED UNDEAD OR ALIVE (Citadel Press).
The nonfic book just came out and is co-written by Janice Gable Bashman. It deals with the struggle of good vs evil, and it uses various lenses to study the problem: religious struggles, mythic monsters, historical conflicts, social injustice, politics, psychology, and also pop culture. We talk about vampire slayers, ghost hunters, exorcists, dragon-slayers, heroes on quests—all the way up to FBI serial killer profilers. And we look at good and evil as it’s been portrayed in all the aspects of entertainment, film and literature…from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the exploits of Spider-Man.
One of the many things that made this exploration so fascinating was the interviews we did. We were fortunate enough to have an incredible broad range of creative people share their views about monsters or evil and the struggle against them. Our guests include comic book legend Stan Lee, filmmaker John Carpenter, actor Doug Jones (Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth), actress-author Amber Benson (Tara from Buffy), authors Charlaine Harris (True Blood), Peter Straub (Ghost Story), Jack Ketchum (The Girl Next Door), and dozens of others. We also spoke with professional ghost hunters, cops who hunt killers, and criminal psychologists.
It’s quite a fun book, and it’s the nonfiction book of which I most satisfied and proud.
The other project I have out last month is ROT & RUIN. That’s a good example of what I mean when I say that I don’t write about monsters but rather about the people who fight them. The story is set fourteen years after a plague turned people into zombies and most of the world’s population has died. Only a few thousand are left, living in fenced-in communities in central California.
The protagonist is Benny Imura, a fifteen year old who lost his parents to the plague and who is being raised by his zombie-hunter brother. From a distance the story looks like a video game: bounty hunters vs zombies. But at closer range it isn’t that at all. As Benny accompanies his brother, he comes to realize that the zoms, as dangerous as they are, used to be people. Killing them in self-defense is one thing; putting them to rest with a degree of compassion and dignity is another. That respects human life. But there are characters in the story who indulge in wholesale slaughter in a way that dehumanizes even the memory of who the zoms used to be. These same people prey on humans, too, capturing them for Z-Games (pit-fights that force children to fight zoms so other people can bet on their survival).
Benny’s whole world changes as he learns what it means to be human and alive in a world where everyone –every single person—shares the same post traumatic stress disorders, and where the value of life has been forgotten.
That kind of cultural ignorance is evil in its own way. Anything that strips away the humanity of anyone is a danger to everyone. Benny also learns some tough lessons about human corruption and how people can commit evil acts in ways that allow them to self-justify and rationalize. ROT & RUIN isn’t about monsters. It’s about the people who fight monsters, even when those monsters not zombies or vampires or supernatural beasties.
So…do I write about monsters?
No
Thank you, Jonathan, for stopping by! Jonathan’s writing is proof positive that horror novels aren’t always about gore & monsters, many deal with people and with social issues!
I’m right in the middle of reading Wanted Undead or Alive stay tuned for my review in the next several days!
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