WITCHES, WEREWOLVES AND VAMPIRES - OH MY!
An Interview With Bram Stoker & World Fantasy Award Winner P.D. Cacek
by Michael McCarty

On the cusp of the release of her hardcover novel from Tor Books, P.D. Cacek is having a terrific year. Not even a month ago, she edited the Horror Writer's Association anthology BELL, BOOK & BEYOND (published by Design Image). Tor Books is releasing her werewolf novel CANYONS. Cacek has won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. She is also the author of NIGHT PRAYERS (Design Image) and LEAVINGS (StarsEnd Creations).

Trish, as she is known to her friends, is regarded as one of the wittiest, most sophisticated and sexiest stars in the business. Her new website can be found at: http://www.pdcacek.com.

JOBS IN HELL: What sort of reaction do you get from people when you tell them what you do for a living?

PD CACEK: Generally, the initial response is always the same: "Oh, wow! You're a writer? Really? What do you write?" Of course, then I tell them the sorts of things I write and, after their faces prune up like something has just crawled inside their mouths to die, I get the standard: "Oh. I don't read horror."

"What?" ask I, already knowing what the answer will be. "You mean you don't read Stephen King?"

"Of course I do . . . I just don't read horror."

Now, by this time it's all I can do to not grab the latest of Mr. King's novels and beat the person into a runny red spot on the carpet. But I'd never do that . . . to a book.

I've also gotten "Oh, but you look so normal" response. Right. Like we look any different for Science Fiction or Fantasy or Romance writers. But I do think it's the implied social "stigma" of being a horror writer that almost destroyed the genre. I mean, what other category of fiction has gone through so many name changes?

Remember the "Horror Is Dead" issue? Well, it wasn't dead, not even sick, but think back to the time when the word HORROR was replaced by FICTION on book spines and the HORROR section of your local bookstores all but disappeared. We no longer wrote HORROR, we wrote DARK FANTASY or SPECULATIVE FICTION or whatever other term seemed more palatable to the buying public.

Personally, I've always liked Harlan Ellison's suggestion of what "we" should be called: "Boys and Girls Who Write Scary Shit." I, however, am, was, and always will be a HORROR WRITER.

JIH: What was the first horror or science fiction book you read as a child, that really had an impact on you?

PDC: Fortunately, and probably to keep me out of her hair, my mother would give me quarter each week for the sole purpose of buying comic books. Now, she didn't care which comics I bought, just as long as I promised to read them and be quiet for as long as possible. Naturally, being the sweet little girl I was, I bought Tales From the Crypt and anything that looked dark and spooky. Among those early purchases was one of the COMIC CLASSICS entitled Dracula. I literally devoured it and couldn't sleep for a week afterwards.

Imagine my shock when, on a visit to the library, I saw my beloved Dracula title on a real book and written by some guy named Bram Stoker ... and not William Gaines. My mother only noticed it was a book, a THICK book, so she was overjoyed. Of course, when I got home and settled down into my favorite reading spot (under my bed), I was a little disappointed that there weren't any pictures in it . . . until I started reading and discovered there were pictures - inside my head. I think it took me almost three months of hard work, some of the words and meanings were a bit beyond me, but I finally finished the book . . . and then spent twice as many months of sleepless nights with a knee-sock wrapped around my neck.

I was seven years old.

And it wasn't until I was eleven that my mother finally let me see the movie Dracula. That didn't scare me at all, Bela Lugosi sounded just like my grandfather. Go figure.

JIH: What are you views on electronic publishing? On print-on-demand and the internet?

PDC: Confession: Once upon a time I read Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream" and have had this love/hate/FEAR of computers ever since. Now, this doesn't mean I haven't published on-line (NIGHT PRAYERS was posted to Bookface.com) or will stop that practice . . . it just means that I'm still a little timid about electronic publishing. I like books, the kind you can collect and have signed and don't have to sit in front of your computer to read. That is my only real problem with electronic publishing - if I'm sitting in front of the computer I feel as though I should be WRITING, not reading. I know a lot of writers and fans who LOVE this medium . . . I'm rare in this respect (and yes, you may groan at that horrible pun).

Print-on-demand is a fantastic idea! It opens the field up tremendously and gives writers who may not even be considered "mid-list" by New York publishing standards, or who have written what might be considered "too unconventional," a chance they might not otherwise get. I've seen a few print-on-demand books and they were absolutely beautiful. I applaud these publishers.

The Internet: A plot, created by intelligent mushrooms, to keep man busy and thus curtail his efforts to destroy the planet. Actually, a very useful tool that I have just recently begun using instead of my old set of The Illustrated Colombian Encyclopedia, circa 1964. Amazing some of the things that have happened since then!

JIH: How many publishers saw CANYONS and NIGHT PRAYERS before they got published? Did they take a long time to get published?

PDC: Well, CANYONS was at TOR for six years with Melissa Singer protecting it like a mama wolf guarding her cub. Now, don't think I recommend this to anyone, but I was content to leave my manuscript on TOR's doorstep and hope it would be adopted. In fact, I never send it out as a simultaneous submission. I wanted the book to be a TOR novel and - Lawdy, Lawdy - it is.

Sometimes we actually do get what we want.

Now . . . about NIGHT PRAYERS. Ready for another side-track story? Good, because unless you skip to the next question, you're stuck with it.

I wrote NIGHT PRAYERS in just under a month - to win a bet. While at a convention a dozen years ago, a friend and fellow writer began waxing dramatic about "the skill, the talent, nay, the spiritual fortitude" needed to write a book about vampires. Well, after the rest of us stopped laughing into our drinks, he challenged us to write a vampire novel, knowing full well (he said) that none of us would be able to. He'd give us a full year (even though he only took six months to regularly crank out his 400+ page opuses), until the next convention, and if, mind you, if we managed to actually come up with anything that looked like a novel w/vampire, he'd buy that person . . . or persons (he laughed here) dinner at the convention city's most expensive restaurant.

Well, as I said, we'd all been drinking, so naturally those of us challenged took the bait and promptly forgot all about it in the morning. At least I did, until I got a phone call from my friend a month before that year's convention, reminding me (and snickering when I asked him what he was talking about). I don't take challenges (or snickering) well - so that night I sat down and began writing the novel - LONGHAND. I told you I didn't like computers. The first draft took two weeks, the second (typewritten) took another two weeks . . . and you should have seen the look on my friend's face when I dropped the manuscript in his lap the first night of the convention. I got my dinner - at a local McDonalds (his career had taken a slight nosedive that year).

End of story, I thought, and put the novel into my desk where it sat for almost two years. I mean, who would want a humorous vampire novel that pokes fun at all the old legends? The novel would probably still be sitting there if I hadn't gotten an e-mail (I'd upgraded by then) from a friend who told me about this wonderful new publishing house, The Design Image Group, which was (1) looking for new authors (which I was)and (2) liked vampire novels (bingo!). I sent them SOLO ACT (which was the original title) and got a call back from Tom Strauch, the Publisher himself. He loved the book, hated the title (oh well) and the rest is history.

JIH: Let's talk about BELL, BOOK & BEYOND - how was it to be in the editor seat? Is this something you'll do again? And what things make BB&B different from most anthologies?

PDC: It was without a doubt the most fun I've had in a long time. Writing is my passion and profession, and I go nuts if I'm away from it for more than a few hours . . . but it's WORK. Pure and simply the hardest, most demanding addiction I can think of. I've always felt that editing was sort of like taking a Busman's Holiday - I'm still working, still reading, but I ain't the one doing all the writing.

Although BELL, BOOK & BEYOND was my first gig at editing a real anthology, I was one of the "ghost editors" for Dark Regions and . . . many, MANY years ago was one of the first editors for both Midnight Zoo (Oh, I hear the groans) and Aberatrions (It only had one "r" back then). Even then, with the number of manuscripts numbering between 100 and 300 per week, I liked being an editor. One of my joys is reading, short fiction especially, so what better job to have?

And then there is always the chance of finding that one perfect story . . . the one every writer hopes to write and mourns the loss when they discover someone else has beaten them to it. I did some mourning while I read for BELL, BOOK & BEYOND - maybe not so much for the story concepts, but for the flashes of brilliance and unexpected turns that I probably wouldn't have thought of.

Would I do this type of anthology again? In a heartbeat.

Now, what makes BELL, BOOK & BEYOND different from most of the other anthologies that are on the book store shelves? That's easy - there won't be a story by Stephen King or Clive Barker or William Peter Blatty or even a P.D. Cacek, that's the most obvious difference. Readers who pick up this book won't be buying Names and hope that the stories within live up to their publicized reputations. What they'll be getting are first-rate stories that succeed on their own merit.

But, being the editor, of course I'm a bit prejudice.

JIH: Is your character Ed in CANYONS based on horror writer Ed Bryant?

PDC: No! Good heaven! How can you think . . . something like . . . that? Well, yeah. Kind of. You see, CANYONS takes place in Denver, Colorado (my current hunting ground) and Ed Bryant - beloved writer, bon-vivant, and man about town - is the Alpha Male of the writing community here. It just seemed natural, when I started writing, that "Ed" should appear somewhere in the novel.

In the first draft, "Ed" was simply a photographer for my fictional, Enquirer-like tabloid news-magazine, Quest, who gets killed rather early on by the "bad" werewolves. It worked . . . but then I remembered that S. P. Somtow killed Ed off in his TOR werewolf novel, Moon Dance, and not wanting to look like I was copying the master, I . . . changed things. A bit. Instead of a minor character who dies horribly, "Ed" became a major character . . . who dies horribly.

But no - only the name, and possibly the Hawaiian shirts, has been used in the creation of this novel. Any similarity to Edward Bryant, living or dead, is purely coincidental and does not reflect anything but the author's warped and sometimes shameless sense of humor and lack of good judgement.

(He reads JIH. Think he bought it?)

JIH: Last question. Any works in progress?

PDC: Besides beginning to get some pre-research done for the sequel to NIGHT PRAYERS, I'm currently finishing the second draft of the novel I wrote last summer in Pennsylvania. Named for the town in which it's set, NEW HOPE is a ghost story that does take a few chances in content and form. There's also a lot more of "me" in it than in any of my other stories, so I'm hesitant to talk about it too much.

I can say that the idea came fully formed, plot, character, and twists, the first time I went to New Hope (strictly as a tourist) and wouldn't leave me alone until I found a way to get back there and write it. It's still holding me pretty much hostage . . . demanding its completion before the end of the year, which I think I'll be able to do. This is the hardest, and at the same time, most rewarding piece I've ever worked on.