Interview: CRAIG MCDONALD

For the first day of PulpFest, I’m happy to have a chance to chat with author Craig McDonald.

Craig McDonald is an award-winning journalist, communications specialist, and author of the acclaimed Hector Lassiter series. His debut novel, Head Games, was nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, Gumshoe, and Sélection du prix polar Saint-Maur en Poche in France for best first novel. More recently, Craig launched his Zana O’Savin series of literary thrillers in which classic pulp magazine heroes literally come to life. Craig serves as PulpFest’s assistant director of marketing. His primary responsibility is the PulpFest YouTube Channel. You can learn more about Craig’s Zana O’Savin, Hector Lassiter, and other novels on his website.

Hi Craig! Thanks for taking some time to chat.

Truly my privilege, Anthony. Thank you for the opportunity.

At Pulpfest this week, you’re debuting your fourth Zana O’Savin novel, The Night Shepherd. Tell us about who Zana is and what the series is all about.

Zana is a pastiche version of Doc Savage’s cousin Patricia Savage. The Zana O’Savin series is a kind of pulp magazine version of the Justice League Unlimited cartoon series in which pastiche versions of Pat and Doc, his aides, The Shadow, The Avenger, and public domain characters like the Domino Lady join forces. The distinction between this series and most other pulp pastiches is these classic heroes, in recognizable form, are moving in our time and world, and confronting many of the same challenges and threats we face. In the manner of much of my earlier fiction, there is also often a historical element or event informing each book.

What adventure is Zana embarking on in The Night Shepherd, if you can tell us anything without spoilers?

This novel involves a kind of suicide-murder cult called Nada, first introduced in my Hector Lassiter historical thriller, One True Sentence. That novel was set in 1924, when Paris was preparing to host the Summer Olympics. The new Zana is set in summer, 2024, when Paris is deep in the throes of hosting another series of Summer Games. Zana becomes the target of Nada’s cult-like leader, a sadistic hypnotist of considerable skill, with hidden ties to my pastiche version of The Shadow. There’s actually been considerable overlap of my two series, with Lester Dent and Walter B. Gibson featuring in various Lassiter novels and short stories, and Lassiter as on-page character in the first Zana, The Blood Ogre.

Obviously, you have a love of Doc Savage. What are your first memories of encountering Doc or other Pulp characters or magazines?

My grandfather was an iron worker in New York City during the Great Depression and an avid reader. He had a basement bookcase stuffed with men’s adventure paperbacks, and magazines. He knew Doc from back-when and gave me a paperback reprint of the second Doc Savage pulp, The Land of Terror. I was maybe seven or eight. It hooked me, and I skipped The Hardy Boys and similar fiction, leaping straight to pulp reprints and Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Doc paperback collecting was quickly followed by those featuring The Shadow and The Avenger. That Street & Smith trinity remains my favorite and primary pulp fascinations.

Who are some of your other literary/creative influences?

My master is Ernest Hemingway. Ian Fleming is another profound influence. I’ve also learned much from reading and interviewing a number of more contemporary authors, including James Crumley, James Sallis, James Ellroy, and the recently passed Ken Bruen, who connected me with my first agent and the eventual publisher of many of the Lassiters via Betimes Books, based in Ireland.

I would love to hear about your creative process. Are you a plotter, a pantser, a mix? How many drafts do you go through before bringing a book out?

I don’t think I really fit comfortably in either camp. I’m devoted to characterization and feel story should ideally advance through a kind of double-helix propulsion in which character drives plot and plot simultaneously evokes character. I always have an opening line, a character arc in mind, a closing line, and probably a few set pieces in between. I think what also makes it hard for me to declare an allegiance to either of the 2 “P’s” is that so much of what I write is historical fiction. That means I have certain historical mile markers I’m obligated to navigate toward, whether it be details or events tied to the Black Dahlia murder, or Orson Welles’ so-called “Panic Broadcast.” A certain amount of plotting is baked in, in that sense. I also embrace the Hemingway concept of reading everything previously written before resuming writing, so there is a perpetual revision process underway that ensures the first draft and final draft aren’t very far apart. I also typically use a method Kinky Friedman sold me on in which you write about three quarters of the book in sequence, jump to the end and compose the last chapter or two, then go back and fill in the gap.

You are also known for your Hector Lassiter series. Tell us about how you created Hector and about the series as a whole.

The Lassiter series consists of historical thrillers about a pulp novelist and Black Mask Magazine writer who becomes involved in historical crimes and menaces, while also interacting with notable people—most of them fellow authors or filmmakers—including Ernest Hemingway, Ian Fleming, and Orson Welles, among many others. Hector was created for a Mississippi Review short story contest called “High Pulp,” seeking a mixture of pulp-style writing with a literary undertow, which pretty well describes the dozen-plus novels and short stories about Hector that ensued, all of which have a certain literary and meta-textual edge, which is also true of the Zana O’Savin novels. The first novel was a finalist for The Edgar and Anthony awards and adapted as a graphic novel. The Lassiters have been published in about a dozen languages.

I’m curious about the level of research you did for the Lassiter books, since they are set in a very specific timeframe and include so many real people. What was that research process like, and did you learn anything surprising about the people you researched that affected the way you portrayed them?

All my novels are written to preoccupations with crimes or historical personages I’ve studied deeply and so I don’t really require much research; it’s more a matter of memory checking. With some “characters” who had a very distinctive speaking voice, say Orson Welles, or John Huston, I’d sometimes go back and watch old interviews to kind of pick up their cadence, word choices, etc. My version of Hemingway comes mostly from his letters, where his personality and “voice” were the most unguarded and so illuminating to me in shaping his very complex character.

Will there be further Hector Lassiter books, or is the series over?

Hector has made the odd cameo since the series ended (that first Zana novel, for instance), but it’s probably over. The idea was to have Hector age in real time, coming in with the twentieth century and more or less departing with it, in between making a study of an artist moving through so many stages and phases of fiction, film, and culture. I feel like I accomplished that, and the series stands as something very unusual and cohesive and so would hate to write a book that risks weakening or damaging the larger series in some way.

What do you have coming up after the release of The Night Shepherd? Any projects you can tease or talk about?

There will be at least a fifth Zana, which is coming together very quickly, currently called The Invisible Crusade. I’ve also had some discussions with the publisher of the Hector Lassiter series about another novel that was nearly published by Macmillan about 2009, when it was stalled by a novel covering similar territory by a certain sitcom actress turned author that ended up strangling my publishing deal. I’m prolific, and publishers tend to limit you to a book a year, so as a guy who has sometimes written three novels in a calendar year, I’ve got a lot of novels in dry dock, including a couple of trilogies.

You’re at Pulpfest this week. Will you be attending any other conventions where readers can chat with you in the near future?

I do a few here and there as I can fit them in. I hope to do many more this coming year.

Thanks again Craig!

Thank you, Anthony; it’s been a blast!

Readers, even though PulpFest started today, it is not too late to register and attend THE pulp magazine-focused convention in the Northeast and the other three conventions it hosts: FarmerCon (dedicated to the works of Philip Jose Farmer), ERBFest (dedicated to the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs) and DocCon (dedicated to all things Doc Savage related). Check out the Pulpfest website for registration and hotel information! Join us in Cranberry, PA this weekend, and meet Craig and most of the other folks I’ve interviewed in person.

Interview: FRANK SCHILDINER

Today’s interview is with author Frank Schildiner. Frank’s work has been published by Belanger Books, Black Coat Press, Meteor House Press, and others. He writes in multiple genres, including historical fiction, horror, and adventure.

Hi, Frank! Thanks for taking a few moments to chat with me.

My pleasure, brother, it’s been way too long. I hope you’ve been well!

As well as well can be! Your current Kickstarter project (through the wonderful Belanger Books) is for Let Loose the Falcon. The Kickstarter ends on July 20th, so let’s start there. Tell us a bit about the book.

This is a book that is very important to my heart. I started it when my late wife Gail was in the hospital. I started it as a way of dealing with how rough that time was for me and hiding how bad I felt from her.

The story is one set in 1751 about a Royal Navy Post Captain named Henry Falconer aka the Falcon. He’s an excellent sailor and a very dangerous fighter with weapons and hands. His unwillingness to follow foolish orders has him forced into intelligence work. He picks up a few fellow spies along the way as he tries to uncover a major danger for the king.

What inspired you to write a nautical novel set in the late 1700s, and what influenced the character of Post Captain Henry Falconer?

I love Royal Navy fiction, having become a fan of Patrick O’Brian, Dewey Lambdin, Julian Stockwin, Alexander Kent, and C.S. Forester over the years. I also had an interest in the Georgian era, especially the real Hellfire Club under Sir Francis Dashwood and the 4th Earl of Sandwich. They were an infamous bunch whose stories were both bizarre and exaggerated. It all came together that way and I had fun writing it.

Knowing you, this is intended to be the start of a new series. Have you started on a sequel, and can you tell us anything about it?

The second book is also completed and involves 2 cults of killers whose styles are truly nuts, even for me. I also have an idea for the 3rd one involving a pirate treasure and a few ideas for the 4th and 5th. So yeah, definitely a unique series and maybe one I try and write for many years to come.

Your previous novel for Belanger Books, Caesar Now Be Still was also a historical novel but set in the late 1800s in New York City, an era I know you also have a passion for. Will there be more books featuring Detective Wilson Hargreave?

Yes, I do plan on doing more with him and old New York. I have an idea about a team of burglars who are tormenting the wealthy. There’s also a group of gangsters hoping they can catch them for…well…reasons…

I’d be interested to hear about your writing process. Are you a plotter, a “pantser,” somewhere in between? Do you have a specific daily word-count goal?

I am the living embodiment of a pantser. I sometime start work on something and switch to something else that my evil muse wants written. I have no word count goal but usually do between 1500-2000 a day. I have been known to exceed it when I get going or less when I suddenly go dry. It’s weird.

I’d also be interested in hearing about any literary or filmic influences you haven’t mentioned yet.

Oh my, so many.

 Literary: Jack London, Dennis Wheatley, Frank Herbert, Philip Jose Farmer, Louis Cha, Eiji Yoshikawa, Paul Feval, A.C. Doyle, Donald Westlake, Joe Lansdale…the list could keep going…

Film: Yojimbo, the Zatoichi series, Le Samourai, The One-Armed Swordsman, Brave Archer 1-3, Berserk, Alexander Nevsky, Universal and Hammer Horror films, Memories of Murder, The Dollars Trilogy, a few dozen Shaw Bros. Films with Philip Kwok, Lo Mang, and Lu Feng, The Ringu series, The 3 Mothers Trilogy, Devilman Crybaby…

I watch movies and read books constantly, so the list is nearly endless.

Finally, what’s on the horizon after Let Loose the Falcon?

I finished the 2nd book in the series, and I’m almost finished with a short story in the series called “The Dancing Falcon”. I’m writing the 3rd book in the Atlantis trilogy as well as a samurai era slow building cosmic horror series. After they’re done, I’ll do either a 3rd Falcon, a 2nd Hargreaves, or start a Fantomas novel. There’s also some non-fiction I might do, so I’ll keep busy.

The Kickstarter for Let Loose the Falcon ENDS TODAY (as of when I’m posting this). You can find Frank’s Ceasar Now Be Still and other titles published by Belanger Books on their website. The Atlantis series Frank mentioned, along with his Frankenstein and Napoleon’s Vampire Hunters series can be found on the website for Black Coat Press.

Book Review: IN THE HANDS OF WOMEN

TITLE: In The Hands of Women

AUTHOR: Jane Loeb Rubin

340 pages, Level Best Books, ISBN 9781685123468 (softcover, also e-book)

MY RATING: 5 stars out of 5

Jane Loeb Rubin’s In the Hands of Women is an engrossing historical fiction novel (a genre I readily admit I am not well-read in). Taking place in the early 1900s and set against the backdrop of the pre-WW1 immigration surge and the Women’s Suffrage movement, the book tracks the life and career of Hannah Isaacson as she attends Johns Hopkins Medical School to become one of the first accredited female doctors working in the relatively new field of obstetrics, and then returns to her family in New York City to practice.

Hannah is a multi-faceted narrator. She is a survivor of poverty and trauma (the death of her mother when she was just a toddler from breast cancer, the remarriage of her father, the death of her best childhood friend from consumption) who has been motivated by that trauma, and by the love of the older sister who raised her and the support of a local physician who believed in her, to pursue a career in medicine at a time when women weren’t encouraged to be doctors (leaving many to “settle,” as it were, for nursing or midwifery). Stalwart friends and family surround her both at medical school and when she’s practicing in New York. I enjoyed the depth of character Rubin gives to not just the supporting cast but even the tertiary characters. In addition to Hannah, the book has a lot of strong and complex women characters, from Hannah’s older sister Tillie to her medical school best friend Elspeth to her secretary Ina and including some real-life women at the time: Johns Hopkins trustees Mrs. Garrett and Mrs. Thomson, and controversial Suffragist movement / sex education advocate Margaret Sanger at the beginning of her career. Not every strong woman in the book is on Hannah’s side though. There’s a particularly nasty prison warden who plays a significant role in the second half of the book.

The book’s male characters are equally split between supportive (Dr. Boro, her mentor; Tillie’s husband Abe; Hannah’s stepmother’s second husband) and horrible (several other medical students at Johns Hopkins, among others). The attitude that even accomplished professional women were “second class” in relation to men, that they should be thankful for men’s attention and also clean up men’s mistakes without complaint, permeates the book as it permeated the time, as does the limited options for women in terms of understanding and thoughtful healthcare, including birth control and abortion rights, of the time. I would like to say these issues made the book feel purely historical, but unfortunately, we know very well how much and yet how little has changed in the past 120 years. The novel informs without preaching, the issues of the time a natural part of the narrative and reflective of our current environment.

In addition to women’s rights, the book also puts a laser-focus on immigration, the waves of Irish, Italians, and Eastern European Jews that filled the southern half of Manhattan in the years between the end of the Civil War and the advent of Prohibition. The majority of the main characters are recently immigrated or first-generation Russian Jews but their story is reflective of what immigrants of other nationalities and faiths were experiencing at the time. The squalor so many of them lived in, having fled even worse in Europe, impacted the city’s crime rate and public health. The overlapping issues of poverty, crime, and public health (and even more so, women’s health) become the focus of Hannah’s career.

Hannah also has a personal growth arc that takes her from a naïve medical school student to a woman who can stand up to bullies (both the political and romantic/sexual type). I enjoy novels where characters come into their own, and Rubin accomplishes that subtly and completely.

Highly recommended to fans of historical fiction that centers complex female characters!

SUNDAY SHORTS: Mercedes General

TITLE: Mercedes General

AUTHOR: Jerry L. Wheeler

196 pages, Queer Mojo/Rebel Satori, ISBN 9781608642991 (Paperback, e-book)

MY RATING: 5 stars out of 5

MY THOUGHTS: Nominally a short story collection, Jerry L. Wheeler’s Mercedes General might better be described as a “mosaic novel” – the stories are all linked, presenting in chronological order the events of the lives of two extraordinarily ordinary gay men from 1966 to 2006. But whatever you call it, this is a book everyone needs to read. It is a history of the gay rights movement, the advances and the setbacks, the acceptances and the discrimination, the love and the hate. It is also an intimate story of lifelong love, the kind of love that roots early and permanently and never looks back.

Kent Mortensen meets Spencer Michalek when they are ten years old. Kent is firmly under the control of his bully of a big sister, who sees the “new kid” in town at the bus stop and absolutely must try to torment him. It doesn’t work, and a bond forms between Kent and Spencer that will stand the test of time. Per the back cover copy, “Defying anyone who steps between them, they take on the challenges of growing up a couple – including battles with their families, pedophiles, protestors at their senior prom, and unwanted attention for starting an AIDS hospice during the early part of the epidemic.” And through almost all of it, they have the love and support of Kent’s grandmother, Miss Lee, who owns the big house at the top of the mountain and who is a force to be reckoned with in her own right.

While Kent is the first-person narrator of each story (for reasons that become clear at the end of the book and which I will not spoil), we get to know Spencer, Miss Lee, and the found family they build around themselves as well as we get to know Kent. And what I love about all three is – they are none of them “perfect.” They make mistakes. They make bad decisions that affect their loved ones in ways they don’t anticipate. But they also more often than not make good choices, often tough choices, that echo just as much, if not more, into the lives of those around them. They are all three secure in who they are, even when the world wants them to be different.

Found family is a core tenet of LGBTQIA+ culture, and especially so for men of Kent and Spencer’s generation, dismissed, ignored or downright disowned by their biological families (this is not to say such things don’t happen to today’s LGBTQIA+ youth – of course it does, I’ve seen it; but I’ve also seen a lot more supportive parents than Kent and Spencer’s generation would have, or even my own generation). While we get to watch Kent and Spencer’s romance bloom and deepen, we also get to watch them build a family that fills the voids left by biological parents and siblings who are unwilling or unable to understand and love them, a family that adds new generations to the mix. And these supporting characters are as well-drawn and interesting as the three lead characters.

One of the things I struggle with when it comes to reading historical fiction is the tendency for authors to place their fictional characters at the center of every single major cultural event that happens in that character’s lifetime. Wheeler neatly sidesteps this, and the book is all the better for it. Spencer and Kent have the kinds of experiences that made the news in the decades the book covers (waging a public fight  to go to prom as a couple in the 1970s; taking into their New York brownstone men whose families have disowned them, and whom the hospitals won’t treat, during the early days of the AIDS epidemic), but they are never at any of the cultural hot-spots of those periods (attending drug-filled nights at Studio 54 or encountering Bette Midler performing at the Continental Baths, or somehow making it to NYC at age 13 to be present during the Stonewall Riots). This adds a level of realism to the book, a level of “lived experience,” that a lot of historical novels lack in my opinion.

The book is as much a meditation on grief and loss as it is on love. Another place Wheeler excels is in teasing through the complicated web of emotions that accompany the passing of family members who were at best cold and distant and usually hateful/dismissive. These scenes spoke to me in a way I didn’t know I needed to see laid out on a page and invoked tears I didn’t know I needed to shed (some from sadness, some from anger).

Love, loss, family, friendship, grief, laughter – Mercedes General is a tour through a pair of very real lives, with recognizable moments regardless of your sexual orientation. It’s a book I will be thinking about for a long time. It’s a book I will certainly be rereading in the future and one I suspect will speak to me differently each time I do.

Book Review: THE GIRLS IN NAVY BLUE

TITLE: The Girls in Navy Blue

AUTHOR: Alix Rickloff

416 pages, William Morrow and Company, ISBN 9780063227491 (softcover, e-book, audiobook)

MY RATING:  4 stars out of 5

SHORT REVIEW: While there is a mystery, or more accurately several mysteries, at the core of The Girls in Navy Blue, it is mostly historical fiction, and more accurately early 20th century historical fiction. The book takes place in two distinctly different years: 1918, just after the United States has entered The Great War in Europe, and 1968, during the then-latest of the 20th century’s endless stream of global conflicts. Rickloff spools out and intertwines the mysteries at a near-perfect pace, neither rushing the reveals nor leaving the reader completely in the dark for too long, using each small reveal to build towards the novel’s dual climaxes. Along the way, we become invested in the four women at the center of the narrative. I’ll admit, I teared up a bit at the end.

LONGER REVIEW: I joined the monthly book club at my local bookstore (Sparta Books in Sparta, NJ) partially for socialization and partly to force myself to read outside of my habitual genres (science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mystery). The Girls in Navy Blue definitely fits that description. While there is a mystery, or more accurately several mysteries, at the core of the book, it is mostly historical fiction, a genre I am not very well-read in at all, and it is more accurately early 20th century historical fiction, which I’m even less well read in.

The Girls in Navy Blue actually takes place in two distinctly different years: 1918, just after the United States has entered The Great War in Europe, and 1968, during the then-latest of the 20th century’s endless stream of global conflicts. The action in both eras takes place in the same location: an oceanside cottage in Ocean View (although the 1918 chapters also take place on the grounds of the nearby Naval hospital and a few other places). In 1918, the cabin is inhabited by three women who have joined the Navy Yeomanettes to do their part for the war effort, each of whom carries a secret or burden that motivates them. In 1968, the house is occupied by the grand-niece of one of those women. Mysteries connect the years: why did Blanche leave the house to her estranged niece Peggy? What drove the housemates and friends apart in 1918? What secrets was housemate Viv harboring? And what tragedy is Peggy running from?

Rickloff spools out and intertwines the mysteries at a near-perfect pace, neither rushing the reveals nor leaving the reader completely in the dark for too long, using each small reveal to build towards the novel’s dual climaxes. Along the way, we become invested in the four women at the center of the narrative: Blanche, a strong-willed child of privilege who finds life full of unexpected challenges; Marjory, whose German surname means constantly having to prove her patriotism; mysterious Viv, finding her way free of her past; and Peggy, reeling from unimaginable loss and trying to find her new path. In both eras, the women cope with misogyny, restrictive societal expectations, and judgement by other women. Whether the author intended it or not, this book has a lot to say about how little progress we’ve made in some aspects of society if the reader takes the time to compare not just the 1918 scenes to the 1968 scenes but also both of those to our current year.

I also found the construction of the novel interesting. The 1918 scenes are narrated in first person by Viv, while the 1968 scenes are more of a limited omniscient POV centered on Peggy. I found it an effective way to further differentiate the eras, lend a different type of immediacy to each era, and help keep the reader in tune with when each chapter was occurring (chapter headings with the year and POV character name also helped).

And I’ll readily admit – I teared up a bit at the end of the novel when everything came together.