PopSyndicate.com

Today the authors of Wicked Dead chat it up with Pop Syndicate reviewer Angela Wilson.

Who are Stefan Petrucha and Thomas Pendleton?

Thomas: Well, I’m a writer with a couple of names, living in Austin, Texas.  I dig coffee (a lot), my Xbox 360 and reading.  As Lee Thomas I write supernatural thrillers – short stories, novels.  I’ve won the Bram Stoker Award and just received a brand new Stoker nomination for a short story I wrote last year.  The Lee Thomas work tends to be harder edged and sometimes even controversial so I use the Thomas Pendleton name for my teen fiction.  I’m not trying to hide anything.  It’s just that they are very different kinds of books, and I wouldn’t want someone expecting a young adult story to pick up one of the others.  Some parents would NOT be amused.  Ha.  Not to worry, though.  I have quite a bit of work coming out under both names.  In fact, I’ll have six new teen books out from HarperCollins (in addition to the Wicked Dead titles) over the next couple of years including Mason, Blood Runs Cold and an urban fantasy trilogy titled Exiled.

Stefan:  I just have the one name, or two, if you want to count first and last.  Writing, family and friends occupy much of my time, though I do make the occasional video, and enjoy reading, music and crashing in front of the TV.  I’ve been writing one thing or another for ages – started as a tech writer, gravitated toward comics, then, at first wrote licensed novels, now original stuff, including YA.  My audience is all over the place, from Nancy Drew to Teen, Inc. to Shadow of Frankenstein, but I hope to bring them all together at some point and have coffee with them.

How did you meet?

Thomas: We were both founding members of a terrific writing group in New York, called Who Wants Cake.  Six of us would get together every couple of weeks and critique each other’s stories.  Prior to that we had met and chatted at a couple of the Horror Writers Association’s (New York Chapter) monthly get togethers. I was a fan of Stefan’s work in comics (X-Files, Kolchak: The Night Stalker), so we had plenty to talk about.

Stefan:  I likewise loved Thomas’ writing.  The group was a really rare, lucky experience, with a lot of terrific writers.  We avoided a lot of the typical pitfalls of many of such groups, mostly I think because we liked and respected each other’s work enough to be honest and helpful in our critiques.

How did the idea of the Wicked Dead series develop?

Thomas: It really emerged from the love of the horror genre, particularly those old television series like Twilight Zone and Night Gallery, where each week they told a completely different story with different characters. We had noticed how over the years those old shows had evolved into “Monster-of-the-Week” programs like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Supernatural, which we also loved.  So, I thought it would be cool if we could find a way to mix those two ideas.  An orphanage and four ghost girls later, Wicked Dead was born.

Stefan: The actual conversations about it took place on the drive home from the crit group meetings.  I lived in Westchester, and would drop Thomas off on the way home.  Lockwood, the name of the orphanage, is an Exit on 87 North.

What made you decide to pen the series together?

Stefan:  We came up with it together, so, really, we had no choice!  Ha!  The thing just clicked in a way we both really liked.  Since we designed it as an anthology, there’d be plenty of room for both of us to have our way.

Thomas:  It was pretty much a given we’d write it together.  We’d spent a long time talking about the idea, developing it into something really unique. Though we both admire and respect dark literature and film, we come at them from very different places.  Which is to say, we don’t always agree.  Ha.  What was apparent early on was that our styles complemented each other, and that has made for some very exciting story telling.

You are both authors in your own right. How different is it to work with someone on a project?

Stefan:  I’ve been in a couple of collaborations.  In comics, for instance, you’re always collaborating with someone, so I’ve gotten used to it.  It works best when, as Thomas said, the styles match, or at least meet somewhere.  The difference from working alone is that while you don’t have the advantage of making all the decisions yourself, you do have the advantage of seeing your ideas from a different perspective.  I find it can really flesh things out in a natural way.

Thomas: Absolutely.  When you’re working alone you don’t really get any feedback until an editor sees the work.  This way you have someone watching your back every step of the way. They point out the good, the bad and the What-the-huh? you might have missed. If two writers have respect for each other’s work, collaboration can work really well.

Teens have been horrified by the genre for years. How do you keep your ideas fresh?

Stefan:  It’s been said there are no new ideas, per se, and that may well be true, but when you focus on making the individual moments as alive as you can, readers can’t help but be drawn in.  As Thomas mentioned, we used the classics as our starting point, but just that.  From there we combine them with modern elements in what we hope are interesting ways, dealing with chat rooms, teen tattoos and things like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, for instance.

Thomas: Stefan’s right.  It’s important to know and learn from the amazing history of horror, but to keep things fresh you can’t get mired down in it.  It’s too limiting. We’re in the modern world with modern issues, and horror makes an excellent lens through which to examine these issues.

You have some awesome Wicked Dead trailers on YouTube. How has using the Web changed the business of writing?

Thomas: It’s awesome.  All of these web-based forums – LiveJournal, MySpace, websites, etc. – give our readers a number of ways to communicate with us directly, and that’s a good thing.  Readers’ opinions are the important ones – far more important than critics or editors – so it’s cool that we have these places to exchange ideas.

Stefan: It has certainly made it a lot easier to get in touch both with readers and editors.

Are you afraid of things that go bump in the night?

Stefan:  No, it’s the things that don’t make any noise that worry me…

Thomas: Some people think I’m one of the things that goes bump in the night.  Ha.  Sure, I still get freaked out by the unexplained, and sometimes when I’m working on a story I get so lost in it that the dumbest things, like a knock on the door or one of my cats tipping something over, will make me jump.

What is your ultimate scary thrill?

Thomas: When I was 12 years old I saw Night of the Living Dead at an art house theater in Seattle.  After the movie, I spent the night in a friend’s backyard, in a tent.  I couldn’t sleep at all. Every noise was another zombie coming to eat me. It was great!

Stefan: I really got a kick out of Cloverfield, recently.  There’s also this bible story about women eating their babies that freaks me out whenever I think about it.

Who were your favorite teen horror novelists growing up?

Thomas: There wasn’t really a “teen” classification when I was growing up (or I wasn’t aware of it).  As a marketing category “Teen” fiction is pretty new. So I read whatever was available.  Favorite authors included Peter Straub, Clive Barker, Stephen King, William Peter Blatty, and James Herbert.

Stefan: Blatty’s Exorcist for sure.  Also, Thomas Tryon’s The Other – then Lovecraft, Poe.  As Thomas mentions, these weren’t earmarked as teen.

What is the No. 1 question you get from readers?

Thomas:  What’s the next book about?
Stefan:  What’s it like collaborating?

What are you reading?

Thomas: The Names of the Dead by Stewart O’Nan, The Terror by Dan Simmons and the anthology Inferno, edited by Ellen Datlow. They are all very dark, very literary works. I have a story in that last one, but I didn’t get a chance to read the other stories until it was released.

Stefan: Skullduggery Pleasant, Alan Moore’s The Black Dossier and I’m lucky enough to have an advance copy of Robert V. Reddick’s Red Wolf Conspiracy, a fantasy epic which I’m sure you’ll be hearing more of.

What’s next for Wicked Dead?

Thomas: Three more books!  After that, we’ll see.  Both Stefan and I have a number of projects coming out individually, but we’re hoping to return to Lockwood Orphanage down the road.  It’s a fun place to hang out. 

Stefan: We still have about a year’s worth of Wicked Dead, with Crush, Prey and Skin coming out.  My second YA hardcover book from Walker, The Rule of Won a wry look at books like The Secret will be out in September.

Where can we find you on the Web?
www.leethomasauthor.com
www.petrucha.com
www.wickeddead.com