Over the weekend, the National Post published a full profile of me and The Damned written by the very skilled Alex Huls. The piece asks if I’m the “next Stephen King,” and while the answer to that is simple – no, there can only be one Stephen King! – it’s a smart piece that’s definitely worth a read if you’re interested in the new book.
Also, definitely click on the video that’s halfway down (and endure the 30-second ad) to see me and fellow thrillerist Nick Cutter do an affectionate takedown of each other’s work.
I’ve chosen your novel “Trade Mission” for my book club’s November 19 th read in 2015. I was hoping to take them out of their comfort zones and selfishly into one of mine. I discovered “Lost Girls” on a table at a garage sale about 5 or 6 years ago. It’s been a love story ever since.
I was hoping you could give me a few insights into your thoughts when writing this book that I could share with the ladies that night. Anything would be much appreciated.
Thank you,
Brenda McGoldrick-Leavitt
Thanks so much,Brenda! And good on you for taking your club out of their comfort zone. (It was part of my intention in writing the novel – the removal of comfort – so we’ll see how the experiment goes!)
As for my intentions in writing the book: It was written during the true explosion of the internet, of virtual reality, of our removal from the “real world” and the retreat into the screen. I was thinking a lot about the implications of all this on the first generation – the one born roughly ten to twenty years before me – that would be brought up in a wholly virtual environment. What happens to the “self,” to “morality,” to “the real”, “the outside” for those cloaked in the ironies of the Internet Age right from the get-go? I decided to test them in the most extreme physical terms, to confront their shields of superficiality. At the same time, I wanted to marry these concerns to a contemporary re-telling of Heart of Darkness and the questions of colonialism in a dawning digital age, where what is being “taken over” isn’t ivory or material goods of any kinds, but the human imagination.
Thanks again, and have a fun gathering!
Andrew