I'm a native of Louisiana, and I recently earned an MFA from Goddard College. In my early years, in the Pleistocene, I worked as a newspaper reporter and covered everything from local crime to entertainment and religion, including Pope John Paul II's visit to New Orleans.
I'm generally harmless. I'm married, my wife, Christine, and I have cats, and we enjoy travel, reading, British mystery programs and gardening.
How long have you been writing and how did you get to this point in your career?
I really became interested in writing early in life. I re-wrote the captions in my coloring books with my mother spelling words for me. It was probably junior high that I became enamored with writing stories, when teachers really encouraged reading and imagination. We had the opportunity to order paperbacks really inexpensively at school, and that introduced me to many authors through short story collections.
I'm an only child, so I also had the indulgence of parents who would buy me books. I read Ray Bradbury and H.P. Lovecraft early on and sampled a lot of different genres, even some Cheever. I became a Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald fan around that time as well, discovering their books because of movie tie-ins to Farewell, My Lovely and The Drowning Pool. I discovered a free issue of Writer's Digest through 1,001 Free Things, also a school book purchase, and used the magazine to figure things out.
I started submitting little things in high school including instructive quatrains for a textbook company, but everything was rejected. While I was an undergraduate, I tailored my educational experience as much as possible toward writing and produced three detective novels while I was in school.
I learned from those, but I didn't feel I had something new to offer the private eye story. I recalled my junior high influences, and in the early days of reporting, began to write stories that blended mystery and horror. That led to my first novel, which led to others including YA titles under the name Michael August. I've written comics and short stories and audio drama. I've always kept busy, though I dropped out of the novel scene for a while.
My books are coming out in e-book editions now, and I'm working on new material as well. I consider the e-books my B-movie-in-print period. They're horror thrillers, as fast paced as I could make them with action, visceral chills and high energy conclusions. I think it was fantasy writer Steven Brust who said once, we're all trying to put as much cool stuff as we can in each book, and that's what I hope is true of these novels. Monsters, chills, ancient secrets and excitement.
Tell me what inspired you to write this particular novel?
Gnelfs, with a silent G, is just out in an e-book edition from Crossroad Press, with a fabulous new cover from Neil Jackson. It's similar to some of the urban fantasy and paranormal suspense that has come along since its original publication. I kind of pushed my original publisher's limits on the constraints of the horror genre. Gnelfs is probably the book in which I rebelled the most against the boundaries, and I got in a lot of dark fantasy elements.
The core idea developed when I saw someone on a talk show claiming that cartoons included elements from real magical rituals. I started to think about what might happen if that were true and someone set out to exploit gateway symbols in children's book illustrations and on TV.
The story focuses on a young mother whose daughter is the target of attacks channeled through magical symbols. She's assisted in her struggles by an occult investigator known only as Danube; he's a holy man with a mysterious past.
Danube started life in my notebooks as a spy, when I was in high school. Danube was his code name, but he grew into the central character he is now, much more mystical and mysterious, though clues about who he really is are laced throughout the narrative. The Gnelfs of the title are cartoon characters, half-gnomes and half-elves, but the spirits behind their attacks are mischievous demons who are hard to control.
I have a keen interest in dark fiction. Tell me how you would classify this book and what’s dark about it?
I'd say in this case, it's dark fantasy or paranormal fantasy. It's filled with dark forces that the forces of light must battle. It's good vs. evil, purity vs. corruption. Without giving too much away, the heroes have to face Hell itself before it's all over. I drew on mythic elements for the plot, the Kabbalah, the Old Testament, Judaeo-Christian tradition, all boiled into sort of the novel's own mythology.
Are you a dark person?
I think I'm generally warm spirited and fun.
Sometimes we have to be ruthless in writing/editing. We cut scenes, eliminate characters or even kill them off. Tell me what was the hardest of these in this book.
I've actually been criticized about this book for the death toll. I read an interview with Stephen King once in which he discussed Ed McBain's brilliant 87th Precinct books about a squad of detectives. King said something to the effect of once in awhile McBain kills a main character just so you know you're still playing hard ball.
In horror, I think it's important that anybody can die. It hurts to kill off a character, but when anyone can go it means everything's unpredictable and everyone's at risk. I hated to see one particular character go in Gnelfs, but it had to happen.
The book was entered in a contest once, judged by a children's book author, who I don't think understood horror. The author in a critique railed against a particular death and the book's overall horrific tone, but Tom Skerritt's character dies in Alien, and Ripley winds up on her own, and it makes for a tremendous ending. Marion Crane and Detective Arbogast go in Psycho. Ditto Gage in King's Pet Sematary. It's a tough world. Live with it. Oh, by the way, spoiler warning on those titles I mentioned.
This blog is called Random Musings, so give me a random quote from the book – something you’re particularly fond of.
Here's a little passage of dialog:
“These blasted things of yours are out of control."What can we expect from you next?
"No,” said Simon. “They are merely gaining strength. All is well.”
"The hell it is.”
More of my early thrillers are coming as e-books including my Louisiana-set vampire thriller Night Brothers, and I'm working on short story collections for Crossroad, which will bring together a lot of magazine and online pieces in one place for the first time. There will be a mixture of old and new. Beyond that, it's hard not to sound pretentious, but I'm working on what I hope are a couple of literary thrillers, true to what I've done before but reflecting where I am more as a reader and a writer. I sought an MFA to expand my ideas and perspective, and I want to work to incorporate that new insight into my work.
Where can we find you on the internet? Blog? Twitter? Web site? Book trailer?
I like Twitter, and what my profile says is true. I like having a community of writerly and readerly types. If there's a good flow of conversation going, you certainly can't be bored. I can be followed on Twitter as @Sidney_Williams. If you're not a Web 2.0 entrepreneur, I'll follow you back. My website is sidisalive.com. It needs to be refitted, I think, but it's a gateway to my social media presences including my blog, and my books can be ordered from there or from the usual places, Amazon, Amazon UK, Barnes and Noble and Smashwords or from the publisher, Crossroad Press, which has a host of great horror and thriller titles.
Any final comments or thoughts?
I'm excited to see what comes next.
Thanks for the interview Sidney!! And good luck with Gnelfs! I love the cover!!!
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