AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Ryan McSwain

1. When/why did you decide to become a writer?

I’ve always loved writing—I was the weird kid that got excited about school writing assignments. A good thing, too, because my papers usually saved my grades from my test scores. It just took time to figure out how to write fiction that was worth sharing.

2. What authors inspired you when you were younger? What books do you enjoy reading today?

As a young kid, I read non-stop. I loved Baum’s Oz series, the Alice books, Tolkien, and that classic, Ralph Fozbek and the Amazing Black Hole Patrol. And comic books, always comic books. When I got a little older, I was all about Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, J.D. Salinger, Spider Robinson, Philip K. Dick, and H.P. Lovecraft. And comics by folks like Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, and Warren Ellis.
Right now, I’m mostly doing research for my next book. But I’m getting into the works of Haruki Murakami and Gabriel García Márquez, and I just finished The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien (Brian O'Nolan). One of my favorites is the underrated Lucky Wander Boy by D.B. Weiss.

3. What was the inspiration behind your novel Monsters All The Way Down?

The premise bounced around in my head for about ten years, and it was reading too much Philip K. Dick that I finally figured out how to make it work. It started as my take on a PKD paranoia thriller set in modern times, and the Lovecraftian elements crept in on their own. Musically, I found a lot of inspiration in The Mountain Goats’ Heretic Pride album. The road trip element of the book definitely comes from my love of Supernatural.

4. What would you do in Brennan's predicament?

Get killed around chapter four! Seriously, though, Brennan is miles away from being an author surrogate, but much of what he does in his early investigation comes from how I would try and figure things out. A big difference between Brennan and me is that I have a support system of friends and family. I like to think I have people I could call if I really got into trouble.

5. You say you're a stay at home dad and former youth pastor. How have those things effected your work, if they have effected it all?

Being a youth pastor was very fulfilling, but it was emotionally exhausting and left me drained creatively. I thought being a stay-at-home dad would give me time to write, and it did—at first. Once my son stopped napping most of the day, there wasn’t room for anything else. I had plenty of ideas, but no time to write the stories. Monsters All the Way Down was written and revised in about three years of staying up too late. I realized I couldn’t be a good dad without sleep, so now I do most of my writing in marathon stints on Sundays.
I’ve blogged about the challenges of writing and being a stay-at-home parent, if anyone would like to check out my site.

6. Were any of the characters personalities or emotions taken from real life?

Some of the conflict in the book has its roots in the sibling rivalry I used to have with my younger brother. He’s a great guy, and amazingly talented, so it was strange to have him coming up behind me, able to do some of the things I did, only so much better.

7. What other genres would you like to try your hand at?

My next book is going to fall in the superhero novel category, although there’s a lot more to it than capes and punches. There’s a YA murder mystery I’ve been dying to get down on paper. There are quite a few sci-fi and literary fiction ideas to try out..

8. If you could successfully clone a human, who would you clone and why?

I have a couple of friends, Dustin and Jon, who are self-disciplined, intelligent, and focused. If I had an army of either one, I could take over the world in a fortnight. If you cloned me, you’d just have a roomful of folks pondering their existence and identity.

9. Was there any intended symbolism behind the fact that, out of all the clones who acted pretty much the same, Brennan was different?

(I’d rather not have this big a spoiler in the interview, if that’s all right. Could you rephrase the question or leave it out?). There’s some nature versus nurture going on there. It’s scary to think how much our heritage and upbringing are out of our control.

10. Would you like to see Monsters All The Way Down as a film? If yes, who do you want to have play your characters?

I would love to see it as a film—I could cameo as one of the decapitated heads. As for casting, I’d hate for my word of god to steal the opportunity for people to cast it themselves. But the only character I really had cast in my head was Benjamin Rosen, the guy in the ruffled tuxedo. I think a young Rufus Sewel (Dark City; Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) would be perfect for the part.

11. Where do you see yourself and your career in the next ten years?

I’d love to get to the point where I can put out a book a year, preferably one every six months. If getting my work out there leads to paying the bills, all the better.

12. What would you be doing if you weren't writing?

I’ll always have my safe, mature backup plan of becoming a magician.

13. Can you tell KSR what you're working on next?

Definitely! My next book is about comic books, obsession, and the nature of reality. It will be the second book in a very loose trilogy, so it shares themes, settings, and maybe a few characters with Monsters All the Way Down. It’s currently in revisions, and the plan is to launch a kickstarter in the spring to raise money for illustrators.

14 . What authors, dead or alive, would you like to collaborate with?

It kills me that Philip K. Dick never finished The Owl in Daylight, so I’d be happy to bring him coffee so he could give us some closure. And I would do just about anything to be the Royal Historian of Oz—does that count? 

15. Thank you for participating in the interview. Can you please leave the readers with three things that may surprise them about you?

Thank you for the opportunity—this has been great fun! As for three things, (1) I think it’s healthy to be offended at least once a day. (2) I cry at movies. (3) I used to ride a pretty mean unicycle.

Find Mr. McSwain online via 

Author Website: http://www.ryanmcswain.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanmcswain

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ryanmcswainwrites

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4878662.Ryan_McSwain

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Darren Shan

1. You never wrote unless it was for homework until you purchased your first typewriter at fourteen years of age. What changed to make you want to start writing fiction?

I had always wanted to be a writer, and had actually started writing stories in my spare time the year or two preceding my purchase of the typewriter. But having a typewriter spurred me on to work even harder. I found I could write more quickly when typing, and also it felt more “legitimate” – I now had the possibility of submitting my work to publishers, since it was typed, whereas I knew I could not send in handwritten work.

 
2. You completed your first novel when you were seventeen, but it was never published. Do you think that your fans will ever get to see some form of that novel for sale one day?

Possibly. I’ve written lots of unpublished novels, especially early in my career. I plan to return to many, maybe even all of the books, and re-write and edit the, then publish them for readers to read, even if only in an eBook format. But I can’t guarantee that I will return to them all. I will only publish them if I think they are strong enough to justify publication, and I suspect some of them might not be.

 
3. You started writing adult horror (I  myself particularly enjoyed The City Trilogy's Hell's Horizon) but transitioned to children's and young adult novels with your Cirque du Freak series. What made you make that transition?

I liked children’s books, even in my late teens and early twenties. (Indeed, I still do.) I had planned to try writing a book for children at some point, purely because I thought it would be fun. Then I had the idea for Cirque Du Freak. I didn’t see it as a career-changer at the time, but I really enjoyed writing it, and after I’d finished it I had more ideas for books for young adults, and it all just grew from there.

 
4. What made you decide to write a four book spin-off of Cirque; The Saga Of Larten Crepsely?

I hadn’t planned to write about Mr Crepsley’s early life. But after I’d finished the Cirque Du Freak series I kept thinking about him and wondering what his life was like before he met Darren, and what had happened to him over the space of two hundred years. My interest in his story grew, even though I wasn’t actively pursuing it, and eventually I felt compelled to sit down and start writing.

 
5. I must ask, why vampires? While in recent years the monsters have become popular in modern fiction worldwide, you took them on when fewer people were interested, which i give you a lot of credit for!

They’ve always been my favourite monsters, ever since I was five or six years old. I never think about the market when I’m writing. I just go with stories that I feel interested in.

 
6. What made you decide to adapt Cirque du Freak into manga? Are you, personally, a fan of Japanese entertainment?

I love Japan, its movies and manga and anime, but my Japanese publishers were the ones who instigated the manga adaptation. My books were hugely popular out there (they regularly topped the overall bestseller charts) and they thought the story would work well in manga form. I chose the artist, but after that I had nothing to do with it until it was later translated into English for its release in the USA and UK. When that happened, I went through the translation and made some tweaks to the text where I felt it was appropriate.

 
7. What was it like seeing Darren, Larten and everyone else come to life in The Vampire's Assistant movie?

I always like seeing how people interpret my characters and the world I create, whether that’s as fan art, a manda, or a movie. Nobody ever captures all of the characters exactly the way I picture them, but that’s what’s so special about books – every reader creates a unique visual world inside their own head. I enjoyed the movie. It wasn’t very faithful to the books, but on its own terms I thought it was a quircky, fun little film that served as a neat introduction to the world of my books for those who had now read them.

8. Though you often travel to London for inspiration to "get the juices flowing", you normally only write when you're at home in Limerick, Ireland. Why do you choose to do that instead of write on the fly?

I’m a creature of habit, and I prefer to write when I’m “in the zone.” Of course a writer can write anywhere, at virtually any time, but I like to lock myself away at home and do most of my writing there. I find it focuses me – “This iswork time!”

 
9. You're a self-professed film buff. Would you like to see any of your other novels portrayed on the silver screen in the future? If yes, which ones?

I’d love to see ALL of them filmed!  I’m always open to TV or movie adaptations, as it’s a great way to reach new readers and entice more people to give the books a try.

 
10. What made you love horror and things that go bump in the night so much?

It’s just something I’ve always enjoyed, ever since I was a young child. The darkness – not just physical darkness, but the darkness of the human mind and soul – has always fascinated me.

 
11. Each of your YA stories, from Cirque to The Demonata and even Zom-B are so different from each other, yet all are so frighteningly wonderful. Aside from trips to London, where do you get your inspiration?

From all over the place – books, comics, movies, music, travel.

 
12. If you had to choose, would you write children's books or adult horror for the rest of your career?

If I had to choose only one, I would choose children’s books. But thankfully I am able to work in both fields, and I plan to continue juggling them as I go forward, although I will probably start relasing my adult books under a different name from this point forward, as I’ve never felt overly comfortable writing for adults and children under the same name. Expect an announcement about that to be forthcoming on my web site in the very near future...

 
13. What would you be doing if you were not a hugely successful horror writer?

I would be trying to be a hugely successful horror writer!

 
14. Where do you see yourself and your career in the next ten years?

Hopefully I’ll continue chugging along nicely on the children’s front – it will be another couple of years before the last Zom-B book is released, and I have had some ideas for a new series after that. I also want to release more adult books and get things moving on that front – I’ve written lots of books for adults which I never published because I didn’t have the time to go back and work them up into final shape. Now I’m making that time, so I hope to release a lot of those over the next few years, and then continue onwards with new material.

 
15. Thank you again so much for agreeing to do the interview, Mr. Shan! Can you please leave the readers with three things that may surprise them about you?

I love Disney and Pixar movies. I love karaoke, even though I’m a terrible singer. And even though my books have been translated into more than thirty different languages, I only speak English – I was always terrible at languages in school!

Find Darren Shan online via:

Official site (has links to all of his social media and purchase links)

COVER REVEAL: "Ruled By Steel" by SM Reine

I am excited that KSR is revealing the cover for SM Reine's next novel, Ruled By Steel!

The book will be available for purchase on October 30th, just in time for Halloween from Red Iris Books!

Be sure to keep in contact with Ms. Reine online for all the updates!

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Army Of Evil HQ

Official site

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