This interview was provided from my last guest, Lee Mather. To find him…
http://www.leemather.org.uk
http://leemather.livejournal.com
http://www.facebook.com/mather.lee
1) What is your working title of your book? 
I am currently working on the third book in the Heretic Series. Its name is so cool I’m keeping it under my hat until I get a nod from my publisher. It is such a secret that not even my wife knows the name.
However, Crossing Mother’s Grave is getting great reviews from a plethora of sources.
2) Where did the idea come from for the book?
Rising from the darkness of my subconscious is as good a guess as any other.
The third book continues Popalia’s quest, she and her band of survivors from Crossing Mother’s Grave are closing on the thief, Thorgen. He is cornered somewhere in the Portown of Magistrey. Meanwhile a Lycanthropic Pirate and his sadist crew are raging up and down the coast. Their paths are inevitably going to cross and when it does, it is going to be ugly.
3) What genre does your book fall under? 
It is categorized as dark fantasy, but wields a fast-paced action adventure feel to it. It is quite sharp.
4) Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
Emma Stone would easily fit the role for Popalia. Because the characters are so young, most of the actors would also need to be newer. Russell Crowe would make an excellent Randel Grenier, who is the central villain.
5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Violent pirates become an acute pain in our heroes’ asses.
6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
My first two books were published through Damnation Books, a small publishing house based in Northern California. I’m hoping the third in series will also find a traditional publisher.
7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? 
I’m still writing this one. My second book, Crossing Mother’s Grave, came out less than three months ago and it took about nine months until I was happy with it.
8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
No one, I write my own books, not someone else’s. JRR Tolkien was very inspirational. Ray Bradbury, Steven King and Robert E. Howard also contributed to my idea, but this story is mine.
9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?
God? The Devil? Maybe it was Sigmund Freud’s Id, I really don’t know.
In all truth, it was an old friend of mine from my college days. Fifteen years ago he had an idea to write twin novels. It would be one story, but told from two different perspectives. It was an awesome idea, but he quit writing his half––I didn’t.
In fact, his idea of multi-dimensional story-telling has become cornerstone in my series.
10) What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
I recommend wearing a helmet and a five point lap-strap when reading my books. They are a rush once they start rolling. Oh, and keep your limbs in the car at all times.
I’m showing free samples over here….yes, free.
I’ve spotlighted a couple other authors for everyone to keep an eye out for—Jeremy Kline, author of Lazarus Cain, Dina Rae (She was my guest a few posts back,) D. Robert Grixti – whose first novella is being published by Damnation Books on Dec. 1st 2012. Last and not least, from the Fading Light anthology, watch for Peter Welmerink and Tim Baker.
Lee Mather lives in Manchester England with his wife and new baby. Similar to Edward M. Erdelac, (my last guest) Lee is in a few anthologies being considered for a Bram Stoker Award in June 2013. Lee is coming out swinging, here is the good stuff.
1) Hi Lee. If you had three words to define yourself, what would they be?
If I could describe myself in three words I’d be a better writer than I am.
I’d only mess it up and throw in an adverb or something…
2) My first ‘Lee Mather’ experience was through the short story Wrath from the anthology Fading Light. Tell us a little about that fine gem?
Wrath is pretty dark, even for me. Primarily, it’s an apocalyptic tale about the wrath of God but it’s also about the concept of whether it’s ever too late for a second chance. It was hard to write. We had our first child this year and I think some of my angst at being a father came out in Wrath.
3) I’ve got an anthology sitting here on my desk named Corrupts Absolutely. It is ready to be cracked open and read. Your contribution is Crooked. What can I expect from Crooked as well as in Corrupts Absolutely?
Corrupts Absolutely is about superheroes that aren’t necessarily heroes, and the notion of whether their powers would corrupt them. I know you enjoy Ed Erdelac’s writing and Ed has another cracker in Corrupts…
As for me, I was excited about the concept of a play on power and that’s why I wrote a story specifically for the anthology. My effort, Crooked, is about Leon, a stroke victim who is also a thief. He’s on the run from an angry mob boss who assumes Leon is helpless. There’s a twist, and not the fact that Leon has a secret power (that’s kind of obvious).
4) Do you have any other writing projects to boast? Or scorn?
I have an urban fantasy novella out from Lyrical Press called First Kiss, Last Breath. It’s about a teenager who believes he has brought a demon into the world from a mural he has painted.
I wanted to write something where the reader can’t quite trust the viewpoint of the protagonist to create an ‘is it really happening vibe’. I hope I’ve managed that with First Kiss, Last Breath and, so far, reviews have been kind.
I also have a dystopian sci-fi short included in No Place Like Home, a forthcoming anthology from Angelic Knight Press. My contribution is Natural Selection and it’s about the response to a pandemic in an alternate Britain where the soul of a person is externalised in the form of a youthful twin.
5) Getting pissed in the US is a bad thing but in England it is fun ––are you a drinker? If so, what is your poison?
It’s a big rite of passage over here to go out drinking when you’re young / underage which means our town centres are full of drunken sixteen year olds. This is not always as fun as it sounds.
I am partial to a drink but not so much this last year due to my wife being pregnant and us subsequently having our first child. These days it isn’t a good idea to be drunk! If I do, it’s usually beer – Weissbeir or something like that…
6) A time machine travels back five years offering you a brief chance to meet yourself, what would you say?
I’d pull up in my Delorean and shout, “Mather, where we’re going, we don’t need roads!”
7) I’d recently read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 for the third time. I love that book. If books were banned in the UK, which book (or books) would you protect at potential danger to your own livelihood? List as many books as you think you could smuggle safely, or would you agree that books are dangerous to the cohesiveness of a working society?
Yes, any art can be dangerous. You only need to look at what happened to the US Embassy staff in Libya following the release of the Innocence of Muslims film earlier this year. The film did not cause the underlying problems between the Arab world and the West, nor did its contents excuse the actions of the protestors. But let’s be honest. It lit the flame on the dynamite.
So I do think an element of censorship of our art is required. That might start with the artist (a la Kubrick and A Clockwork Orange – he withdrew the film from circulation in the UK) or it might be through governing bodies or transparent regulations.
I’m not envisaging the fascist states of Orwell or Bradbury here, either. Who in their right mind would want a government with that level of power? We still need enough freedom to challenge the establishment, as long as it’s in a constructive way…
As for a book I’d risk my life for, well, the pregnancy guide we bought has proven pretty useful…
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Find out more about Lee and his writing at www.leemather.org.uk
Or follow Lee on Twitter, where he moralises about all sorts of things.
“First Kiss, Last Breath” is available now from Lyrical Press.
“Bloody Parchment“, featuring Lee’s story, “Masks”, is available now from Amazon.
“Fading Light“, featuring Lee’s story, “Wrath”, is available now from Angelic Knight Press.
Happy Halloween! Well, almost. Today’s guest is Edward Erdelac, author of the Merkabah Rider series. He is the unchallenged champion in the category of ‘Weird Westerns’ and whose short stories are in three anthologies currently being reviewed for nomination for a 2013 Bram Stoker Award. He is a fantastic author, among the best I’ve read. Here is a link to my review on Goodreads.
JE- Hi Edward, thanks for taking the time for being interviewed.
EE- Thanks inviting me.
1) I just finished the first of the Merkabah Rider books. Would you tell us a little about it?
Merkabah Rider is a weird western series about a Hasidic gunslinger tracking the renegade teacher who betrayed his mystic Jewish order of astral travelers (merkabah riders) to the Great Old Ones of the Lovecraftian Mythos. The Rider is a hero in the spaghetti western vein, though not nearly as invulnerable. Members of his sect assume titles to hide their names from malevolent entities, and the Rider clinks around (because under his clothes he’s covered in dozens of talismans and wards) in Hasidic garb with a pair of blue glass spectacles mystically embossed with the Solomonic seals that allow him to see into the Yenne Velt, or spirit world. He employs a silver and gold chased Volcanic pistol likewise covered in sigils and bodyguards against demons and dybbukim. People I tell the concept to usually think it’s gonna be some smarmy pun-ridden satire, but nope, it’s all played completely straight.
There are three books in the series, Tales Of A High Planes Drifter, The Mensch With No Name, and Have Glyphs Will Travel, with a fourth and final installment, Once Upon A Time In The Weird West, in the works. Although they are novels, they’re presented as collections of novella length episodes, meant to evoke the old Lancer/Zebra paperback collections of Robert E. Howard pulp stories.
While there’s plenty of weirdness, bordellos of succubi, half-demon outlaws, a monstrous animated windmill, I think the best weird westerns don’t let the weirdness outdo the western, so in the course of the series the Rider meets up with real personages from history, like Doc Holliday, Dave Mather, Josephine Marcus, Geronimo, etc. Although the Rider’s personal outlook is Judeo-centric, drawing on a lot of Jewish folklore and Midrashic/Kabbalistic beliefs, I throw in stuff from all over the map. Chinese folklore, Christian, Native American, African, Haitian, Mexican, and other works of fiction I enjoy, all wrapped up with a writhing, nameless Lovecraftian bow. I like to read about culture clashes, the way (especially on the frontier) that people that were worlds apart related to each other (or didn’t), and I try to bring that to Merkabah Rider.
2) What about Star Wars and your part in that galaxy?
If there’s a bright center to the Star Wars universe, my part is the one that it’s furthest from. Back in 2008 StarWars.com ran a spectacular feature called What’s The Story? Every month they would post an image of an obscure character from a frame of one of the Star Wars films. Sometimes these were blink-and-you’ll-miss-‘em characters who literally walked or rolled past the camera for a half a second, sometimes they were crowd scene characters, or characters from spin-off media. The contest was open to absolutely anybody. You basically submitted a backstory, which they then posted and entered into the Lucas archives as canon, in Leland Chee’s ultra-comprehensive internal Holocron database. I wound up writing the winning entries for three months, including the last one, for a drug addicted bounty hunter named Bane Malar (who became a nifty action figure).
This led to me landing my first professional writing job. I did a story for the official website called Fists of Ion. It was about an up and coming alien (a Calian, a race not seen since the Marvel Comics run of Star Wars if you want to know) prizefighter named Lobar Aybock (a tuckerization of Rocky Balboa) who gets recruited by New Republic Intelligence to help bring down a corrupt Imperial governor on a bleak, acid rain washed industrial world. It was basically a chance to write two of my favorite genres – Star Wars and pulpy fight stories. So it’s everything you’d ever want to know about (shock) boxing in a Galaxy Far Far Away. You can actually still read it here, for free -
http://star-wars.suvudu.com/2012/10/star-wars-shorts-fists-of-ion.html
3) Who are your favorite authors and/or books?
Robert E. Howard is my all-time favorite writer, followed by Richard Matheson and Joe R. Lansdale, but funny enough, the first two non-comic books I ever read that convinced me reading (and writing) was amazing was Jack London’s Call Of The Wild (Sister Marie read it to the class – and the ending, which I won’t spoil, just floored me) and Simon Hawke’s adaptation of Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. I read the latter in one sitting and was absolutely mesmerized by its brutality and realness (well, for a novelization about an indestructible hockey mask wearing maniac anyway). I’m not even particularly fond of the movies, and have no idea if it would read as well as it did when I was in seventh grade, but I cannot tell a lie. I was blown away by those books. Since then, I would rate Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, Howard’s Hour Of The Dragon, Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Melville’s Moby Dick, Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, and John Irving’s A Prayer For Owen Meany as my all-time favorites. Outside of the aforementioned, Stephen King, Shakespeare, Mickey Spillane, Patrick O’Brian, Forrest Carter, Alan Moore, H.P Lovecraft, E.R. Burroughs, Ambrose Bierce, J.R.R. Tolkien, and William Blake are the guys whose work I return to again and again.
4) I know what scares me; what scares you?
Well I don’t know what scares you! Tell me!
For me, firstly, it’s my kids. Not that they in themselves terrify me (although being bit in the calf by a toddler when you’re not expecting it is pretty startling), but as they grow older, the thought that anything untoward might happen to them. This ties directly into the other big one, death. The (to me) slight possibility of oblivion, or total non-existence. I never once gave it a thought until I had kids. I was always assured I would continue in some way, and I still mostly am, but every once in awhile I stay up nights thinking about it. Dying before I see my kids grow up, or at least before I know they’ll be OK. Great White Sharks are the only critter on earth that gives me pause, but I haven’t yet had to face that one. Demonic possession movies still creep me out – mainly when they do that weird non-diagetic voice thing. Little girls who sound like Barry White. Maybe tight spaces. I’m not scared of being trapped in an elevator or a closet, but lock me in a trunk where I can’t push the seat down and get out, I start to sweat. And that brings me full circle to death again. Poe’s The Premature Burial terrified me as a kid.
This scares me. It is why my wife and I don’t have kids.
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5) Where is the coolest place (either temperature-wise, or in terms of hipness) you’ve ever been here on Earth? Anyplace off Earth? (You never know unless you ask.)
On earth, I spent two weeks in Bayamon, Puerto Rico. It was heavenly. The ocean was clear and the temperature of bathwater, the women were beautiful, of every type and shade, and friendly, the liquor was blinding (and laced, mysteriously, with tortoise balls), the food was amazing, and I was introduced to a variety of Spanish language bands I never would’ve given a chance otherwise – Plastalina Mosh chief among them. They’re like the Beastie Boys if they came from Monterrey, Mexico. Even experienced a rain shower in a tropical forest. Amazing. Close runner up is StarvedRockState Park in Illinois, where I was married in a blizzard.
Off the earth – If, like the painter in Leaf By Niggle (or the people in Matheson’s Summerland), you get to exist in a place of your own imagining once you shuffle off your mortal coil, I might choose to spend my cosmic retirement in Middle Earth. Probably in Mithlond or maybe The Shire. But I’d vacation all over the place –Barsoom, Tatooine, maybe Narnia and definitely that sexy planet from Star Trek. You know the one. I haven’t yet found a place in my own imagination I’d go to (there’s always horrible stuff going down in those places), so I hope the rent isn’t prohibitive in any of these alternate realms. But all these places are dear to me, and they’re vivid enough to make me feel like I’ve been to them.
6) This is a slippery question, be careful. Tell us one thing about yourself that no one would guess by just meeting you.
My author buddy and sometime editor Tim Marquitz, whom you should call The Exquisite Marquis as I do, has told me it’s that I like classic hip hop and gangsta (I hate spelling it that way, but it’s a two edged sword. You either come off as a jerk or a poser if you do it one way or the other, and I won’t say ‘G-style.’ Ah crap. I just said it.) rap music. He says it’s odd, considering I’m one of the whitest, squarest looking dudes he knows. I wrote, directed, and produced an indie western movie back in 2009, Meaner Than Hell, and I kept one of the character’s saddlebags. So when I go to a convention I usually have those over my shoulder Jack Burton style, to carry my purchases and submission packets and stuff. So yeah, Tim says I look like a dork. But anyway, I came of age when hip hop was actually good (A Tribe Called Quest, GangStarr, Scarface, Eric B. And Rakim, etc), so I’m a fan, though I don’t wear sports caps with the little secret sticker on the underside of the brim, or baggy pants or any of that b-boy stuff. Whew, that IS a slippery slope…
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7) The final Rider book is coming out soon, are there any new ‘Weird Westerns’ planned or is this where the sun sets?
I’ve got a new book out already from JournalStone Publishing, Terovolas, which is about Abraham Van Helsing’s 1891 sojourn in Texas. Right after the events depicted in Bram Stoker’s Dracula the professor suffered a mental breakdown stemming from his encounter with the count’s vampire brides. After his release, he volunteered to bear the remains of Quincey Morris back to the Morris family ranch, and had a series of weird encounters involving wolf worshippers there. I’ve been thinking about maybe knocking out a wuxia western fantasy next, as I love old Chang Cheh kung fu movies, and Chinese folklore, like Journey To The West, stuff like that. Somewhere far down the trail I might revisit the Rider’s early years (his career in the War, his adventure with Misquamacus, and his Texas exploits), but only if people are interested or if I run out of other ideas.
Aside from THAT, yeah I think that part of my career might bid a fond farewell. But it’s OK, there are always other stories to tell.
The following is an excerpt from the second in the Merkabah Rider series, Have Glyphs, Will Travel.
“Dirty Dave is a lout, but he won’t shirk from a fight,” Doc warned. “Looking like you do, and going in there with just your pecker in your hand, you might set that bull to charging.”
“I’ve settled a charging bull or two in my time,” the Rider said. “Besides, we need him alive and talking.”
“Your call,” Doc said.
The Rider pushed through the doors and walked into the cigar smoke and chatter.
The bar was polished wood and there was a big mirror behind it. Gaming tables were full about the place.
The Rider went to the bar and laid his right hand flat on it.
Dirty Dave Rudabaugh was belly to the bar, a few feet to his left, wide gun belt sagging with the weight of his pistol, big calloused pig knuckle hands grasping bottle and glass. He had a bulldog face and double chin papered with rough stubble, a single thick fold in the back of his neck. He sported a luxuriant down-swept mustache below a lumpy pear nose. The graying hair on his head was cropped short and his meaty face seemed to squeeze at the bases of his big red ears. He carried a lot of extra weight, but he was solid as a boar, a bully born.
“This glass looks like you wiped it with your dickhead, Tetchy,” he rumbled, though he was the dirtiest one in the place.
He set it down and with a flick of his thick finger, sent it smashing onto the floor behind the bar.
Tetchy the bartender stooped to clean up the mess.
“Bring me another one.”
“You gonna pay to replace that one, Dirty?” Tetchy muttered.
“What?” said Dirty, his pale blue eyes bright in his mean face.
Tetchy rose, busted glass rattling in a dustpan and paled at Dirty’s look.
“Nothing.”
He dipped slightly and set another glass in front of Dirty, then did the same for the Rider.
“What’ll you have?” he asked.
The Rider closed his fingers around the shot glass.
“I’ll have whatever that fat pig Dave Rudabaugh is having,” the Rider said loud and clear.
The talk in the bar stopped and he heard creaking chairs and leather as bodies turned in their seats.
Dirty turned too, his lips pinched, eyes glaring. There was a confused expression on his face for a half a second as Dirty took in the Rider, then he blinked and straightened, his hand dropping to his side.
The Rider pitched the shot glass at him.
It struck Dirty in the upper lip with such force it exploded, rocking his head back and knocking his hat off, sending blood, glass, and a chip off his eye tooth flying in all directions.
In another minute Doc was there. He smashed Dirty’s groping hand with the barrel of his own .45, then followed up with a knee to his big belly that left the man spluttering and groaning.
Doc looked at the Rider with open admiration.
“I never thought I’d meet a man faster with a whiskey glass than I was.”
