Tom Piccirilli is the four-time Bram Stoker Award winning author of nearly twenty novels.  His immensely diverse work has spanned across such genres as horror, western, mystery and crime, all while consistently proving his ability as a top-notch storyteller.  To learn more about Tom, visit his official website, Epitaphs, at www.tompiccirilli.com.

Your career got off to a relatively quick start with the sale of your first novel, DARK FATHER, shortly after graduating college.  We didn’t hear much from you for a few years after this however.  Was it hard to sell that second novel or were you just unsatisfied with your work during this period?

It was incredibly difficult to sell my second novel, probably because I just hadn't honed my craft well enough back then.  I continued writing novels because I felt more comfortable working in the long form, but after a couple of years of being out of the publishing loop I realized I needed to go back to the beginning and start working on some short fiction.  For more than a year I wrote almost nothing except short stories, and eventually when they started to sell, and I felt I had a firmer grasp on the essence of my own narrative voice, then I went back to those unsold novels and saw a lot of problem areas and things that needed to be changed.  The extra time in the short fiction field trenches sharpened my editing skills and I put them to good use on those books.  Probably not as good as they could've been, but good enough to get the novels published in the mid-late 90s.

How different is your work now compared to those early years?  Any particular elements or techniques that took some time to really master?

The older one gets the clearer the themes and topics that make up the writing become.  You discover the sound of your voice.  You find the deeper substance of your work.  It's not merely saying something, but having something to say.  Not merely telling stories, but the stories that teach the writer something about himself.  What his priorities are, what his values are, what his beliefs might be.  The more you write, the more you learn about yourself.  And the more experiences you have, the more you find to write about. 

Were your family and friends always supportive of you even when you first started in this business?

They were supportive in that "I love you no matter how fucking stupid you are to try to be a writer" sense.  They didn't understand the work, didn't really believe in it, but they were willing to stick by me as much as they could.  Folks who aren't bibliophiles or even readers simply have no perspective or understanding of the burning need a writer feels to put his story down on the empty page.  It's not their fault, it's just the way things are.

Many of your characters are laced with flaws or dark histories even though they face enormously important tasks.  These weaknesses follow them throughout the story; it’s something they can’t seem to shake loose.  The end result is a novel filled with characters that readers seem to connect with on a deeper level.  At what point in your career do you feel you finally gained a firm grasp on this kind of effective character development?

Believe it or not, it was probably when I was writing my westerns GRAVE MEN and COFFIN BLUES.  I think I finally managed to present characters in balance to story and setting and mood and imagination.  I was in my early 30s then and had met the woman who would become my wife and my life had taken a significant leap in a new direction.   For lack of a better word, I hit a level of maturity that allowed me to pass on that maturity to my characters.  They could be flawed but they could learn from mistakes, they could rise to the occasion, they could forgive the pain caused them by others.  The essence of the characters became the story itself, and that led me to something of a different style of writing.

A recurring theme in some of your novels is the use of a sidekick to accompany the protagonist, whether it’s the demonic familiar in A LOWER DEEP or a dead talking dog in MIDNIGHT ROAD.  When did you first discover the value of this as a way to inject humor into the piece and just how often does it appear in your work?

I think fiction is just more meaningful if there's some kind of a chorus/conscience/foil that keeps the protagonist honest in both a dramatic and humorous fashion.  Conflict is the very nature of drama, and having a wiseass partner or sidekick—whether human or not, whether evil or not, whether living or not—allows the conflict to always be on stage, and to be ratcheted up by degrees as needed.  I probably first started toying with the idea of this kind of thing back when I wrote the early "Self" stories which originally appeared in Terminal Frights magazine.  In those you can watch the change in Self as he goes from an almost baby-like demon to a nasty and viciously funny wiseass.  It allowed for a lot of humor and also a deeper understanding of who the protagonist was by watching his reaction to Self.  It also allows for some rich dialogue, which is always fun to read.

Speaking of A LOWER DEEP, at first glance this novel looks like just an average horror paperback, but in reality it’s an amazing, epic-like story that spans across the globe and time itself.  This was not the first “Self” story though.  Was the novel meant to be the culmination of the previous “Self” stories, creating one final massive tale?

I'd done something like twelve Self stories and novellas by then.  The last two pieces began an arc where my nameless Necromancer was going to have some kind of a showdown with his former coven leader.  So I decided to combine the two pieces and then take that finale to a whole different level, and have it occur in the most likely place that a series built on Judeo-Christian religious beliefs would occur: Jerusalem.  I did a lot of research into the old city and its bloodied and complex history and really had a ball setting my Necromancer and Self down in the middle of it all.  I tied up a lot of story threads and sub-plots, and the series does have a significant resolution as is, but the finale of A LOWER DEEP is also open-ended so I can return to Self if I ever decide I want to.

Another thing we often see in your novels is the dominance of history and tradition, either as a driving force or as something that haunts the characters.  This is certainly true in A CHOIR OF ILL CHILDREN and A LOWER DEEP, among others.  How did this theme start creeping into your work?

As mentioned, it creeps in on its own.  As I write I discover the things that matter to me, even if I didn't fully realize it at the time.  So personal identity as framed by one's history and tradition took on a greater and greater role as I learned that it meant more and more to me as a person.  It's important to write about the things that truly matter to me, rather than just telling a story.  I'm not in this game just to entertain the reader, I'm in it because I have the urge to create and to learn more and more about myself through that creation.

You’ve mentioned in the past that you are not a fan of strict writing schedules and you instead prefer to work in shorter stretches to avoid burning out.  Was this always the case though or did you learn the hard way that stricter schedules was not the best process for you?

It's always been the case, really.  I just find it easier to write more in a day if I keep coming back to the computer after being away for a while.  I'll write for a bit, watch a movie, write some more, go walk the dogs, then write a bit more.  I just can't stay focused for any great length of time, my mind tends to wander, and if I sit in the chair for a three hour clip, then it'll just be three wasted hours.

What was the inspiration behind your beginning writers guide, WELCOME TO HELL?  Were you getting a lot of requests to share what had worked for you in this business?

I was getting a lot of email from newer writers asking for advice, and I realized that after a while of discussing various topics, I started repeating the same things to different people.  I started sharing some of those letters with my pal Patrick Swenson, publisher-editor of Talebones Magazine and Fairwood Press, and he suggested that I gather them all together into a small little guide for writers.  A newly printed, redesigned edition is currently available.

Now after seven years since it was published, is there anything new you would have added that you’ve discovered along the way?

Sure, there's plenty.  Like life, writing is an ongoing learning process.  It never gets mastered, it just gets revised. 

You’ve proven to be a master at writing across different genres, all while showing the same deftness at crafting a tale that we’ve come to expect.  Have your fans been supportive of the genre switching?  How often do you hear people ask when they’re going to see another Self/supernatural/etc. novel from you?

On the overall they've been very supportive and followed me from horror to western to suspense to crime and whatever else I happen to be doing.  Usually the only thing holding back a reader from a particular book is the stigma of any particular genre.  I got a lot of emails from folks saying that they'd never read a western before they'd read mine, and once they tumbled to that, they continued reading on in the field.  It's a good feeling to welcome someone into a genre that they might have continued to ignore if they hadn't read one of my books.  And I'm always pleased when someone asks me to return to something I'd done before because it means that what I've done has made an impression on someone.  And I appreciate the fact that they care enough to want more.

The recently released THE FEVER KILL, and the upcoming Spring release of THE COLD SPOT, are your latest offerings that venture into straight crime territory.  Is this where you feel most comfortable writing?  Do you miss the added challenge of mixing in supernatural or fantastical elements into the story?

At this point, it's probably more of a challenge to write a novel that doesn't waver into the fantastical or isn't some kind of dark fantasy hybrid.  I feel comfortable with the crime field because in essence when you purify and distill horror you wind up with crime.  Crime against man, crime against God, or crime against nature.  Whether your monster is a werewolf or a serial killer or a bank robber, it boils down to somebody fucking up someone else's day.

So what else can we look forward to from you in 2008 and beyond?

I'll have a Hellboy novel out in February called EMERALD HELL, and the sequel to THE COLD SPOT entitled THE COLDEST MILE will probably hit towards the end of the year or in early ‘09.  There's a number of other small projects that I'm currently working on, and some other stuff that might or might not be released soon, but at the moment it's a little too early to discuss them.

Tom, thank you so much for sharing your time and thoughts with us.  It’s been an absolute honor.

Thanks greatly!