Q: Welcome to my blog. In one sentence, tell me something that describes you as a person?
A: Can it be a run-on? Just kidding. I’m an optimist posing as a pessimist and an extrovert posing as an introvert.
Q: How many books have you written? How many of those are published?
A: I’ve written two; Life After: The Arising and Life After: The Void. I’m waiting until I find a cover artist for a wide release on The Void, and I might tinker with content as well. It should be out in early 2016.
Q: Do you have an upcoming release? If yes, tell me the title and impending release date.
A: Life After: The Void will see a limited publishing run of 100 print copies that I will sell and sign personally at Viva Video in Ardmore, Pennsylvania on October 23rd. You, Amy, are one of the only people to receive an advanced Kindle copy in return for reviewing all of my work on Amazon and Goodreads! Never underestimate the power of leaving reviews!
Q: If you could “create” your own genre of what you write, what would you call your books?
A: Interesting! I’d like to think the tie that binds my work is a strong sense of realism paired with a single, prevalent supernatural premise. So, ‘Supernatural Realism’?
Q: Without quoting your back cover synopsis, tell me about the last book you published.
A: The last full book I published was Life After: The Arising. As he heads home from college for the weekend, sophomore Jeff Grey wants nothing more than to take in a marching band festival and spend some time with his high school sweetheart Julia, but his homecoming is sullied when the bodies of the recently dead spill out of a nearby cemetery and turn the prosaic reunion into a gruesome slaughter. Despite this shocking development, Jeff is curiously prepared; he’s obsessed with zombie lore, and his grasp of the undead helps him save Julia and rally a few discordant survivors. But Jeff is no hero, and he’s about to confront the harsh reality of a military quarantine, the moral ambiguity of an apocalypse, and the aftermath of zombies defying both science and religion, so this nascent adult needs to grow up fast if he wants to see a life after the arising. It’s tense, thoughtful, and often funny.
Q: In all of the books that you’ve written, do you have a favorite character?
A: I’d have to say Melody from the Life After novels, because I had no idea who she was when I first wrote her. When Jeff made it to the roof of the high school in the opening chapter of The Arising, I was as new to the people he met as he was. I didn’t sympathize with her at first, and that’s a dangerous way to write; it’s one thing to have a simple character, but if that character is just there to antagonize, you run the risk of turning them into a cartoon. Throughout years of re-writing and researching, I stumbled across Melody’s core, and suddenly I understood her arc. She subtly changes throughout The Arising, and really takes charge in The Void. I also find her blunt assessments rather humorous.
Q: Personally, my favorite of your work is “The Basement”, but do you have a favorite story of your “Life After” series?
A: That’s a good favorite to have! The Basement is high up there for me as well, but I’m hard pressed to nail down a favorite. Usually the newer something is, the more I like it, but the inspiration for The Basement reveals a lot about my creative process. I have a tendency to be long-winded, so I resolved to make something short and sweet. I wanted twists, and I wanted it to elicit a strong reaction. I also wanted to examine some of the things that irritate me about fanatics. All of these bits and pieces got yanked together by an incident where I was writing in my suburban home at about 3:00am with my window open, when this stinging, smoky scent invaded my nostrils. I called the fire department and wandered outside with them for about twenty minutes; we could all smell it, but couldn’t pinpoint the point of origin. So they left and told me to call them back if I saw any smoke or flames. It really enforced a notion that there might be something sinister going on in my neighborhood.
Q: Tell me something about yourself that is separate from writing.
A: Well, I went to college at Temple University where I took the world’s only accredited course on UFOs, so I’m a qualified researcher on the subject!
Q: I read your books and reviewed them, posting the review on my Bookshelf Review blog. It was reading your work that got me into reading other books about the “Undead”. Is there any author that inspired you in your writing?
A: Wow, that’s about the best compliment I could get, thank you! My zombie fixation started with Resident Evil 2 and Dawn of the Dead, so books were a decidedly tertiary influence. As a result of the Resident Evil connection, I consumed an entire volume of S.D. Perry’s books in that realm, followed by her and her father’s work on the Aliens novel series. Max Brooks is an obvious influence too, but I also read a lot of short fiction on Homepageofthedead.com, and I particularly loved Lon Miller’s Alomal-137 case study. The biggest guiding force for Life After came from George R. Stewart. His novel The Earth Abides is one of the greatest post-apocalyptic novels ever written.
Q: Who is your favorite Author?
A: That’s a tough one. One of my dark secrets as a writer is that I don’t read much. As a child I found that I was more drawn to creating my own world than living in someone else’s, so I ended up writing a lot more than I read. I did adore Kurt Vonnegut as a young man, though, and while Stewart is certainly an influence, I positively inhaled Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War.
Q: What is the last book that you read?
A: I find myself re-reading Nicholas Meyer’s The View from the Bridge often. I see a lot of myself in him.
Q: When writing, do you have a system or something you plan, or do you just write?
A: Excellent question! A quote I’m fond of paraphrasing comes from George R.R. Martin, who feels that authors are either architects or gardeners, and never 100% of either. The architect makes a plan, constructs an edifice, and adheres to his structure. The gardener plants a seed, nurtures it, and sees what happens. I’m 80% gardener and 20% architect. I come up with ideas and develop some vague course of action that might take me there, but when I enter a state of flow, there’s no telling what’ll come out. Case in point: in Life After: The Arising, the survivors go to a hospital to scrounge up supplies. When they went inside, I had no idea what was going to happen until Jeff turned a corner. The proceeding event sent shockwaves through the series.
Q: Is there something that you always do when you write? (I.e. Listen to music, have complete quiet, drink?)
A: It varies. When writing certain sequences, I keep one song on loop quietly in the background. I listened to Hands Away by Interpol endlessly while I was editing Life After: The Arising. One evening, I had my schedule completely cleared for writing, and found I couldn’t do it, which was a rare case of writer’s block for me. I decided to watch some TV and have some alcohol, and it set me on fire. Having a drink or two of whiskey tends to loosen me up; too much more than that and I lose focus. I wrote one sequence of Life After: The Void under the influence of Ambien, but I don’t recommend writing that way, unless you’re aiming for Naked Lunch.
Q: Tell me why you write.
A: I think I would explode if I didn’t. Since a very young age, I was hard-wired to create, and words were always the tools I used best. As a result of nurturing my process, I get new, good ideas constantly. I don’t use all of them, and not all of them are terrific, but I’m never hard up for inspiration. If I didn’t write those ideas down and act on them, I’d feel enormously unfulfilled. A positive side effect is that I don’t get writer’s block in the conventional sense. If I get stumped or frustrated by something, I simply work on another project, and since I have dozens requiring my attention at any given time, I always have something to do. Very few problems get solved by banging your head on a wall, so it makes sense to cultivate alternatives.
Q: Here you can list your website as well as link to any other sites, such as Facebook, amazon author page, twitter account… etc.
A: I’m generally terrible at social media, but you’re welcome to follow me on Twitter at @TheBryanWay and @LifeAfterNovel. Both accounts are synced to Facebook pages with the same addresses. Other than Facebook, the one I pay the strictest attention to is Goodreads, where I’m reachable at www.goodreads.com/BryanWay. I could also use some followers on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Bryan-Way/e/B00E2PNMT0 !
Q: Any thing that you want to add that wasn’t addressed?
A: You were thorough, so there’s nothing I can think of!
Q: Any final thoughts that you would want your fans or future authors to know?
A: As for the fans, I adore you. Receiving feedback, positive or negative, compels me to keep going. Future authors? Never stop working. Doesn’t matter if it’s books, screenplays, articles, essays, or journal entries, and whatever roadblocks you encounter on your way to publication, overcome them. I wouldn’t be published if I didn’t do it by myself. Believe me, it wasn’t easy, but once you pull it off, it just gets easier.
Links to my reviews of each of your books:
Life After: Hosts:
Life After: The Basement:
Life After: The Cemetery Plot:
Life After: The Phoenix:
Life After: The Arising: