Hellbent For Cooking collects over a hundred recipes from thirty countries, whether they be England’s Yorkshire pudding, Germany’s beer crust pizza, Italy’s spaghetti barracuda, Norway’s fårikål, Greece’s country lamb exohiko, or Brazil’s churrasko, and so on. Bands which contributed include Thin Lizzy, Mayhem, Anthrax, Kreator, Sepultura, Destruction, Possessed, Obituary, Accept, Doro, GWAR, Toxic Holocaust, Saint Vitus, Amebix, Uriah Heep, and Budgie, to name a few. To discuss Hellbent For Cooking, Annick Giroux was interviewed via email.

Roughly five to six years ago, you bought a thousand recipe cookbook at a garage sale. In what ways did that book improve your cooking skills, and inspire you to experiment with certain dishes and flavours?

Yes, that’s right. I think I bought that book for a dollar or something, I told myself I would pretty much never get tired of it. It had tons of genuine recipes from all over the world, and taught me how to create sauces, mix spices, do curries, etc… the basics, really. I would make recipes from it pretty much everyday for a long period of time. This definitely enabled me to experiment and create my own dishes using the ingredients I loved most. Just tonight I made a killer spicy tofu and lentil Ethiopian-ish stew. It was so good. But back to your question – the big cookbook was not the one responsible for sparking my passion for cooking; it was mostly my love for good food that did it… although that book did amplify my cooking passion.

You said that you opted to write a cookbook in 2007, though why did you actually opt to write a cookbook (Hellbent For Cooking: The Heavy Metal Cookbook)?

I wrote Hellbent For Cooking because I love cooking, metal and food and thought that asking musicians for their favourite recipe was a great concept for a cookbook. I didn’t really decide whether to do it or not, I just really had to do it. It sounded like so much fun… yet at the same time it was such a challenging and ambitious project. I learned a lot while doing it, like how to lay out a book, contact labels and industry people, how to do self-promotion, food photography, coordination, research etc. It was great.

You’ve admitted that you weren’t professionally trained and are self-taught, so what gave you the courage to actually bite the bullet and complete a cookbook? Given the amount of cookbooks already published, is it daunting to think of your book being on bookshelves with the usual suspects from the world of television?

Good question. It is a combination of things. First of all, I love projects – they keep me going at a fast adrenaline-fuelled pace, as well as making me learn new things. As a graphic designer who loves cooking and eating, I thought it was a really good challenge to undertake this huge task. Ian Christe, my editor, pushed me a lot to accomplish it – on top of giving me total creative liberty (which really helped unleash my creative juices). As for sharing bookshelves with mainstream “suspects”, the cookbook was designed and created by myself – a metalhead, for like-minded metalheads who happen to also love cooking. If it happens to interest other groups of people, then great. If it turns on new people to good metal and good food – then that’s even better.

After purchasing issue six of your fanzine Morbid Tales, issued in January 2009, Ian Christe from Bazillion Points approached you and asked if you’d like to issue a cookbook through his publishing company. How did things develop from there, and why did you feel Bazillion Points would be an appropriate outlet for publishing Hellbent For Cooking?

Yeah, that was quite funny because in late 2007, I wanted to contact Ian Christe to see if he was interested in releasing Hellbent For Cooking. I remember he had only the Swedish Death Metal book (written by Daniel Ekeroth) in his book roster back then. I was kind of shy to contact him (even though I knew him because he had ordered past issues of my ‘zine) and eventually lost a bit of interest in the cookbook so I never ended up contacting him. Of course, I did not hesitate one second when he sent me his offer in 2009. Bazillion Points is hands down the best publishing company out there in my humble, biased opinion. Ian is totally honest in what he does, and puts all of his energy into publishing the best books possible. What makes him so different from bigger publishers is that he spends hours and hours on each individual book to make sure they are as high quality as possible. He also has similar musical tastes as me, so we totally agreed on a bunch of things.

Late 2004 is when you launched your fanzine Morbid Tales. Could you provide an overview of its history thus far, and a personal description of the type of topics Morbid Tales might cover?

Morbid Tales was meant to be a local fanzine, promoting upcoming shows, giving addresses to local record shops as well as reviewing metal albums and interviewing underground metal bands. Back then, I thought it would be cool to have them at every record shop around, and to distribute them at shows, etc… Instead, once I posted a small ad in a forum and created small flyers that I sent out, I started getting interest from metalheads all over the globe. I soon plunged head first into the world of international underground metal and fanzines, and as I released new issues – I got in contact with many individuals that shared the same passions. I tried my best to cover what I thought was interesting in a fanzine: album / single / demo reviews, show reports, record shopping guides, news (although this quickly became obsolete) interviews with bands both underground and legendary as well as interviews with other people involved in the metal scene. I also worked hard to do interesting layouts that gave a certain “atmosphere” to the articles…

You’ve been nicknamed “The Morbid Chef”, which likely stems from the name of your fanzine. How did you come to be christened “The Morbid Chef”, and what are your thoughts on that nickname?

This is actually a name I gave to myself – like you said, because it had to do with the fanzine. I was looking for something cool and a bit more original than “The Metal Chef”, so I came up with this one… I like it a lot, because it suggests many different things. Haha.

Could you talk me through the selection process you underwent in deciding which groups to approach and request recipes from? Given the fact you were relatively unknown at the time, was it difficult to be taken seriously when requesting recipes from groups through email, MySpace or post?

The group selection was very important to me, as it was one of my ultimate goals to introduce people to good metal – which is not necessarily always featured in mainstream magazines. At the very beginning, I looked into my collection and wrote down the names of my favourite bands. That yielded a good amount, but I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss on any, so I actually went country by country on the online metal encyclopaedia (metal-archives.com) and wrote down my favourite bands’ names, websites and contract info in an Excel spread sheet. That alone took about three weeks – but it made me discover tons of new and obscure metal bands. I contacted and sent out four hundred individually written letters (by e-mail, MySpace or snail mail) and ended up with more than a hundred recipes. Of course, it was very very hard to be taken seriously at the beginning, but when I got Ian to back me up, it went much smoother as he and his publishing company was already well known in the metal scene.

Given the fact that over a hundred recipes from thirty countries were collected for Hellbent For Cooking, were there certain recipes which particularly inspired you to delve further into the culinary habits of certain cultures?

Oh yes for sure. The book is a great introduction to typical recipes from more exotic cultures. I had never made true Mexican food, and Xibalba’s recipe for the gigantic funeral tamale pie (mucbi pollo) really interested me in making Central and South American stuffed corn breads – like pupusas, tamales, arepas… I can’t wait to visit these places one of these days and taste them first hand.

Hellbent For Cooking’s cover says that the hundred and one recipes contained within the book are “basic”. For you personally, was that an important element? That irrespective of their cooking skills, any given reader can purchase the book, and still be able to cook any of the recipes contained within?

Indeed, that was very important – as sometimes you get cookbooks that have totally impossible recipes and end up doing only one of them. I wanted the book to be a handy tool in the kitchen, and for cooks of every level to enjoy as much as the next one. This is also one of the reasons why I wrote substitutes for unusual ingredients (rook pie or spaghetti barracuda anyone?) and put conversions for all measures…

Photographs of the recipes obviously appear inside Hellbent For Cooking, so with that in mind, how important do you feel presentation is? It’s something that’s stressed in restaurants, though is it as important as is generally stressed?

I think presentation is tremendously important, as you generally eat your meal first with the eyes. If it looks good, you start salivating and the food tastes even better. It is also important to show how something should look like if the cooking reader is inexperienced and / or don’t know how the finished meal looks.

In an interview with AOL’s Noisecreep, you said that metalheads are “not culinary degenerates by any means”. Do you feel that’s a perception the general, non-metal loving public hold, and that your book goes to some lengths to combat that perception?

Oh yeah, a lot of the general public see metalheads as pizza eatin’ and beer gurgling subhumans. Although they got the beer (and sometimes subhuman) parts right, we are mostly a well-educated crowd who enjoys the finer things in life like good metal, good food, and nice artwork. The book clearly reflects this lifestyle, and I think it achieved it. At least, some people have told me that the book broke all the stereotypes they had for metal. Cool.

You’ve professed that you love listening to seventies era Judas Priest, something that spawned the cookbook’s name. What do you love about Judas Priest’s seventies material, something that is perhaps missing in eighties, nineties and noughties Judas Priest material?

Judas Priest is one of my favourite bands ever, and although I love eighties and nineties Priest (my first album was Painkiller (1990) back in high school), I feel that seventies Priest had much more soul and sounded fresher – on top of having better lyrics. My favourite albums are Sad Wings of Destiny (1976) and Stained Class (1978). They were so ahead of their time back then, I mean – the song “Exciter” pretty much invented speed metal. And the riffs my friend, the riffs are just superb. Sadly, too many people nowadays forget that real metal should be based on riffs.

Now that you’re slowly gaining a reputation as “The Morbid Chef”, is that a reputation you aim to build upon? In the form of future cookbooks, and other culinary ventures?

I have been approached for some very interesting projects, which I am currently looking into. I can’t go much in details, but if it happens, it will happen in the summer. I am letting my imagination go wild once again, hahahah. On the other hand, I have just recorded an EP for my band Cauchemar – which is doomy heavy metal (I sing and play bass) and I’m about to release a new fanzine called Les Templiers, the first French-language doom metal fanzine ever written. Haha. A commercial suicide.

In any case, thank you very much for this fun interview. Long live Omega’s Apple.

Signing a publishing contract with Leisure Books, Pinborough has released the following novels through that very company; The Hidden (November 2004), The Reckoning (October 2005), Breeding Ground (August 2006), The Taken (March 2007), Tower Hill (July 2008), and Feeding Ground (September 2009). Through PS Publishing, The Language of Dying arrived in August 2009. A month later, Pocket Books published Hellbound Hearts, an anthology of stories based on Clive Barker’s The Hellbound Heart mythos which included Pinborough’s contribution in “The Confessor’s Tale”.

In March 2010, Gollancz Books issued A Matter of Blood, the first in the Dog-Faced Gods trilogy. The first installment of the young adult Nowhere Chronicles trilogy, meanwhile, called The Double Edged Sword, will undergo publication in September 2010. To discuss A Matter of Blood, Sarah Pinborough was interviewed via email.

A Matter of Blood, due to be published in March 2010 through Gollancz books, will be the first in a trilogy of books. Could you provide an outline of the story itself?

It’s primarily a serial killer novel following DI Cass Jones as he tries to catch a killer who refers to himself as “The Man of Flies”. There are several other crimes though and as the book goes on Cass finds himself embroiled in a supernatural conspiracy. It’s very much a crime thriller though, and the supernatural doesn’t interfere with any of the police procedural stuff. I’m very proud of it – it’s quite a complex book.

Part of A Matter of Blood’s blurb says the following; “Financial institutions across the world have collapsed, and most governments are now in debt to The Bank, a company created by the world’s wealthiest men”. How much did the world’s current economic climate play a part in the story coming to fruition, and also, is “The Bank” based on the mythical Illuminati to a certain extent?

The current economic climate definitely played a part. When I started planning the trilogy the newspapers were filled with doom and gloom and banks needing government hand outs to stay afloat. I couldn’t help but wonder – like everyone else, I imagine – where it would end. After the US sub-prime calamity, I realized for the first time I was how our economy was global rather than national and that fascinated me. Despite the fact that I come from Milton Keynes, which apparently was designed by the Illuminati, they didn’t factor in the creation of The Bank. I think Dan Brown’s cornered their market, hasn’t he?

Given the series of personal issues which Detective Inspector Cass Jones faces, how unhinged does he become? Or does he have a stronger resolve than most? After all, different people react to personal problems in different ways.

Cass Jones is quite a mix of good and bad so I think he deals with some things better than others. I don’t think it’s resolve as such, I think he’s just used to not thinking of himself as a “good” person, and doesn’t expect good things to happen to him. He doesn’t become unhinged. Perhaps damaged would be a better word.

A Matter of Blood is part of the Dog-Faced Gods trilogy. What can you reveal regarding future installments in the trilogy in terms of plot, themes, tones, and working titles, and what exactly are the Dog-Faced Gods?

I won’t tell you what the Dog-Faced Gods are, but I did steal the name from a heavy metal band. I saw it and loved it. The second book, The Shadow of the Soul, that I’ve just delivered to my editor, is still a crime novel, but has the pace of a thriller – and the supernatural sub-plot comes much more to the fore. I’m pleased with it. As for book three? Well, I have a rough idea what will happen in it, but I’ve got a young adult book to deliver before starting that one, so who knows?

A Matter of Blood marks your initial foray into penning thriller fiction, having penned mostly horror in the past. How would you describe the switch from writing horror to writing thriller fiction, and what challenges has that presented?

I’ve really enjoyed changing, or at least blending, genres with A Matter of Blood. Because this is a crime novel with all the twists and turns that entails, I found the brain work quite challenging. Also all the technical police procedural stuff. It’s been great to do something different, and at some point I’d quite like to try a straight crime series, but we’ll see. As with most authors, I hate the labelling and placing into genres – I just like writing stories. Most of them tend to be dark. That’s about it.

Hellbound Hearts was released in late September 2009 through Pocket Books, an anthology of stories based on Clive Barker’s The Hellbound Heart mythos. In writing your contribution, “The Confessor’s Tale”, how much of your personal writing flavour did you inject into the mythos, and what aspects of Barker’s writing style did you particularly enjoy experimenting with?

I didn’t really experiment with Barker’s style. I did try and incorporate an image or two from The Hellbound Heart into the story though – primarily the bell. The idea of the book, I think, was that each author brought their own style to a story inspired by that original tale – although not the films. I wanted to write something that wasn’t overtly gory but chilling in a slightly different way. I wanted to make the Cenobites the sympathetic characters rather than the objects of terror, so decided to make my story a sort of fairy tale about how a person became a Cenobite.

Much of your work is released through Leisure Books in North America, which unfortunately aren’t sold in the United Kingdom. Has this been a great disadvantage to you given the fact you’re based in the United Kingdom, and are you making efforts to make these novels available in the United Kingdom market?

I haven’t found it to be much of a disadvantage other than to my ego – it would of course be nice to see those books on the UK bookshelves. Borders used to stock Leisure books though and some Waterstones have them. I have no plans to try and make them available in the UK – it would be difficult to sell the UK rights given that some book shops are stocking them in the import sections, and also I feel that I’ve moved on from them. They’ve done me proud but I think I did my “growing up” writing those books but now I’ve found my voice. I was very lucky to sell my first novels to a mass-market publisher, but I would very much like to go back to them with a red pen.

You’re currently working on a movie script for 2004’s The Hidden with a London based writer and director. How far is that along, and what are your aims in translating that book to the silver screen? Are you worried, given the fact the film adaptations of some horror books fare better than others?

I’ve finished the script and handed it over to the director to go away and do what he has to do with it, which I presume is rounding up money and actors etc. He’s a professional – my part is done for now. It was an interesting learning curve about how differently stories unfold on screen than in books. I don’t tend to worry about things I can’t control – I’d be happy to get to the stage that it’s actually getting made before worrying about how it will do. I also trust people to do their jobs. I’m a novelist, not a producer or director. I have to trust that those people know how to translate something better than I do.

The Double Edged Sword is due for publication in September through Gollancz Books, a young adult novel and the first in the Nowhere Chronicles trilogy. What is the plot outline of this trilogy, and how did the plot itself come to fruition?

I can’t tell you the outline for the trilogy – primarily because I’m only just plotting out the second book and these things tend to change, and even if I had a full outline, I tend to keep these things close to my chest. The one thing I can say is that although the trilogy will draw this ARC to a close, I am hoping to perhaps write other books set between the Somewhere and the Nowhere, with some different characters taking the leading roles. I like it in those worlds. The plot came about – or at least the elements of it – while I was on one of the London walks for my friend Adrienne’s birthday. It was called “The Secret Village of Clerkenwell” and was a really interesting insight into lots of hidden treasures in that part of the city. Each of the locations on that walk features in some way in the book.

As the Nowhere Chronicles is aimed towards young adults, how much does the target audience dictate the way you approach writing these particular stories? Isn’t there the danger of insulting their intelligence, and treating them as less grown up than they actually are?

I think in the first few pages of a young adult novel you adapt your writing a bit and then as you go on, you just write the story and don’t take into account the age of the reader. As the protagonists are younger I think you adapt naturally. I tend to go the opposite way and treat them as if they are more grown up. When I was a teenager I was reading Wilbur Smith, Sidney Sheldon, James Herbert, Stephen King, Daphne Du Maurier, etc. etc. as well as the traditional books for younger people. I wanted to re-instill some magic and the “belief in the world in the back of the wardrobe” feeling that we all love to teenagers, but I haven’t dumbed down at all.

Since you spent ten years in a boarding school, has the experiences and feelings you had back then proved extremely valuable thus far in writing material young adults can possibly relate to?

I often joke about boarding school inspiring my writing, but it didn’t really. I guess it gave me time to write when I was little because we weren’t allowed to do much else. I think my six years as a secondary school English teacher have probably proved more valuable – my own childhood is too far back to draw on. I like teenagers – I think that is key. My favourite years to teach were years ten / eleven / twelve, so between fourteen and seventeen, simply because they are at their most extreme then. They can be extremely thoughtful, or funny or angry. They’re on the cusp of the world and everything is possible for them. They’re adults without the cynicism.

The Nowhere Chronicles books are to be published under the pseudonym Sarah Silverwood. What’s the reason behind the pseudonym, and how did you come to choose the name “Silverwood”? And what are your thoughts on having a pseudonym?

Because Gollancz are publishing both I think they wanted separate branding. Also, Cass Jones is quite a character and they may not have wanted kids to recognise the same author in a book shop and pick up A Matter of Blood – which is a very different kind of book. I quite liked the idea of having a separate identity for the young adult stuff but I wanted to keep my first name. I gave my editor a list of about five surnames I’d found on the internet (as you do) and Silverwood was the one she picked. We both agreed Sarah Silverwood “sounded” like a fantasy writer.

The MUSE project between you, Sarah Langan, Alex Sokoloff, Deborah LeBlanc and Rhodi Hawk has been in the works quite awhile, but details regarding the project have been quite vague. What does the project entail exactly, and how would you compare the project to your usual works?

It has slowed a bit because Rhodi has replaced Deb LeBlanc due to work commitments and we’ve all had pretty manic years. Hopefully, once Rhodi has caught up we will have something for our agents to send out. I’ve never collaborated on anything before so it’s been an experience, but I love Alex and Sarah – we three bonded the first time we met – and it’s been brilliant to be involved in working with them. I’m looking forward to seeing Alex and Rhodi at the World Horror Convention in Brighton later this month.

Inking a publishing contract with Gollancz Books, Reynolds debut novel Revelation Space was published in 2000, garnering nominations for the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Award as well as the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Other tomes were written which used that book’s universe, namely; BSFA Award winner Chasm City (2001), Redemption Ark (2002), Absolution Gap (2003), and The Prefect (2007). Other novels penned by Reynolds are; Century Rain (2004), Pushing Ice (2005), and House of Suns (2008). The 2003 Gollancz release Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days collects the novellas Diamond Dogs and Turquoise Days, whereas 2006’s Zima Blue and Other Stories (Night Shade Books) collects nearly all of the Welshman’s short stories that didn’t exist in the Revelation Space universe up until that time. An expanded version of that collection was issued in the United Kingdom in April 2009. Released in 2006 as well, but through Gollancz, Galactic North collects all of Reynolds’ novellas and short stories that exist in the Revelation Space universe up until that time, albeit with the exception of Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days.

In June 2009, Reynolds signed a new publishing contract with Gollancz Books worth one million pounds, the deal being for him to pen ten books to be published over a ten-year period. Ninth novel Terminal World was issued in March 2010, with a trilogy of books dubbed the 11K sequence due to transpire in 2011 and beyond. To discuss Terminal World, Alastair Reynolds was interviewed via email.

You described Terminal World as “a far future, steampunk-influenced planetary romance about the adventures of an exiled pathologist, and a city in need of medicine”. Could you elaborate on that description and provide an outline of its plot, and also, in what ways was the story influenced by steampunk?

Without giving away too much of the story, it’s about Quillon, a fallen angel – a genetically engineered creature, only part human – who has to leave his city, a vast vertical structure organized into different, technologically-distinct precincts. Quillon escapes out into the wilderness beyond the city, and almost immediately runs into trouble. He’s a doctor by profession, so as well as trying to survive, there’s a part of him that wants to help, even when it’s not in his best interests. By and by he – and a loose affiliation of allies – fall in with Swarm, a kind of mobile nation composed of hundreds of airships. In the meantime a catastrophic event befalls the city and Quillon has to wrestle with his conscience – does he return and face his enemies, or abandon the city in its hour of need?

It’s steampunk only in the sense that it shares some of the trappings; the technology, the gaslit ambience in places. It’s also an argument with the form, a way of me reconciling some of the problems I have with it, with my underlying desire to write something that’s still essentially science fiction as opposed to fantasy or alternate history.

Twelve thousand extra words were written for Terminal World at the last minute, but were eventually unused. What did those words mostly consist of, and why was the decision taken not to use those twelve thousand words?

I wrote three chapters that served as flashbacks into the earlier life and times of Quillon, explaining exactly how he had come to live in the part of the city where he was in exile. It was felt that this was a good idea at the time but the flashbacks upset the structure of the book, which until then had been very linear, with the action beginning on page one and moving forward. My editor and I couldn’t find a way to incorporate them into the book in a way that felt elegant, so they were ditched. It’s not too unusual, though – I routinely cut a lot of excess material; it’s just that this stuff was written and rejected very late in the day.

The city featured in Terminal World, Spearpoint, consists of “a series of semi-autonomous city-states, each of which enjoys a different – and rigidly enforced – level of technology”. This likely has a social impact upon the residents of each city-state, affecting who they are and how they act as people. What opportunities did that present in terms of characters from different city-states interacting with one another? Culture clashes?

That’s one of the main themes of the book, how these zones and their inhabitants interact. Early on it was clear to me that the people in one part of the city would be well aware of what goes on in another part, but they wouldn’t necessarily be able to travel out of their own zone. Even the exchange of material goods and utilities is difficult. I could see ways to have fun with that, especially in the early chapters where Quillon has to make his escape by descending through different zones, through progressively more primitive technological levels.

Terminal World’s central character Quillon, lives incognito and works as a pathologist in the district morgue “following an infiltration mission that went tragically wrong”. Who or what exactly is Quillon hiding from, and while living incognito as well as working with a pathologist, what is he like on a mental and an emotional level? Living with the fact that the infiltration mission “went tragically wrong”? And as well, does the fallout from that play an indrect or direct role on anything later on in the book?

Quillon is hiding from his former employees – the people (or angels) who sent him on an infiltration operation. Beyond that, I wouldn’t want to give any more away.

You wrote a story called “Pandora’s Box”, which was translated into Finnish by Toni Jerrman. At July 2009’s Finncon in Helsinki, you both then destroyed the last English language copy of the story. What spawned the idea to do that? Was it difficult to resist the temptation to secretly keep an English language copy?

Toni and I cooked up the idea during a drinking session a few years earlier. It seemed fun – and I was interested in the idea of reading a piece of mine translated from a foreign language, with no reference to the original. At some point I’ll pay someone to translate it back from the Finnish. There was no temptation to keep a backup copy – in fact, my only worry was that I might inadvertantly do so, by forgetting about a copy stored on a memory stick or something. But I’m pretty sure we got them all.

How do you look back on your twelve years (1992-2004) as a scientist within the European Space Agency in the Netherlands? Has your time working for the European Space Agency influenced your work somewhat?

It was a good time, a very priveleged working environment. I got to work with a lot of clever people, tackle a lot of interesting science, and do a lot of travelling, which I enjoyed tremendously. But it didn’t directly feed into my writing. My concerns as a writer are more or less those I’ve been working through since I first started taking it seriously, thirty odd years ago. The science is just the icing on that. It’s been useful for selling me as someone who understands space and the universe, of course.

Ten years has passed since the publication of Revelation Space in 2000. As a writer in 2010, and with ten years experience in writing novels, how do you feel your novel writing has evolved and developed over the last decade?

Hopefully I’ve learned a few things, especially at novel length. I can go back and look at short fiction I wrote in the nineties and not be horrified by it, but I can see the flaws in my first few novels all too painfully. At the same time I’m still happy with the stuff I got right, and I accept that a lot of this stuff is not at all apparent to the disinterested reader. I’d like to think I’m better at dialogue, better at character, better at integrating action and description – but I could be wrong about all those things. All I know is that it doesn’t get any easier…

After having spent sixteen years living in the Netherlands, you returned to Wales in 2008. How would you compare and contrast Wales in 1992 against Wales in 2010, as well as your life in general in 1992 against your life in general in 2010?

I hadn’t really lived in Wales since 1985, so it’s a tough one for me to call. I also came back so often that the changes happened gradually without me noticing at the time. Wales certainly seems a more optimistic place than it did back in the eighties – there’s a sense that you can have a career in the arts, for instance, without having to leave the country. The fact that Doctor Who is shot in and around Cardiff – that’s great, as far as I’m concerned. I’d never have dreamed of that as a kid.

In April 2010, Shine: An Anthology of Optimistic Science-Fiction will be issued through Solaris, and will include your short story “At Budokan”, which provides “a glimpse into the future of the global rock promotion business”. Given the ongoing debate about the impact of the digital age on rock music with illegal downloading and so on, combined with the economic climate, do you feel rock music has a healthy future or a bleak future?

I’m sure it’s got a great future. Whether that will mean bands making a living from touring, as opposed to releasing music, I don’t know. I hope it’s the latter, but when you look at global acts like the Stones, it’s not so clear cut. My story’s a pretty flippant take on it: it’s in no way intended as a piece of serious speculation about the pros and cons of digital downloading, or anything sensible like that. It has a giant robot version of Metallica in it, for a start. Personally I’ll keep buying rock music until they nail me into a coffin, and I’m sure I’m not alone.

In June 2009, it was announced you had a signed a ten-year, ten-book deal with Gollancz Books worth a million pounds. For you, what are the positives and negatives of such a long-term commitment? On one hand, this provides you with security, but on the other hand, much can happen over one decade in terms of a business relationship – it can grow into something even better, or unfortunately deteriorate.

It’s only a good thing as far as I’m concerned. The only thing I’ve ever found it hard to cope with as a writer is uncertainty, and this removes a big chunk of that. It also gives me the freedom to think about things like trilogies and so on. In terms of the business relationship, I’ve already been working with my editor, agent and publisher for eleven years, so it’s not too scary. I think we all know each other pretty well by now, and there’s a good basis of trust in that relationship.

In a June 2009 Guardian feature, you said “I’ve made the mistake sometimes of visualising one of my characters as black, and not stating it” in saying you intend to present a more balanced treatment of race. So with that being said, how would you describe science fiction’s treatment of non-whites to date? Is it a problem which needs to be addressed?

The track record isn’t very good, but it’s good to see science fiction examining itself, being critical and taking stock of where it is and what it needs to do better. I thought Racefail (the massive internet storm over science fiction’s handling of race) was very helpful in that regard. It certainly gave me a lot to think about, and I’m surprised how much it’s still resonating. For instance, I’ll find myself watching a TV commercial and seeing it through different eyes, wondering where the black people have all gone to. Or I’ll find myself examining the way non-white characters are presented in drama, in a way that I probably wouldn’t have done, at least to the same degree, before Racefail. Because I’m also using non-white characters in the new book, I’m also thinking about it on a creative level every time I sit down and write.

Your next novel will arrive in 2011, the first in the 11K trilogy of books, a trilogy which will deal with the expansion of the human species into the solar system and beyond over the next eleven thousand years. What about humans’ possible future expansion into the solar system particularly fascinates you, and so much so that you’ve been inspired to devote a trilogy of fictional books towards that very topic? And at the time of writing, what else can you reveal about this trilogy of books?

I’m wary of giving too much away, but it’s a sequence of books that deals with one clan, the Akinya household, who – at the start of things – are a powerful family based near the Kenya / Tanzania border in a fairly utopian Africa of the mid-twenty-second century. The Akinyas control the rights to several key pieces of technology vital to the expansion and settlement of the solar system. But the book focuses on two adult siblings, Geoffrey and Sunday, who are not typical family members: they’re far less interested in money making and power consolidation than the rest. Geoffrey is a scientist working on elephant cognition studies; Sunday is an artist living on the Moon. They get dragged into a kind of internal mystery surrounding a dead family member, and from then on the book takes us to various venues across the solar system. That’s book one of the sequence; the second one will leap forward another thousand years and pick up the thread of the Akinya family from a different perspective, focusing on extrasolar exploration and colonisation. The third one will go even further out. There are themes running right through the whole thing, and a kind of single viewpoint character to act as a unifying element – although I’ll say no more than that. As to what fascinates me, I couldn’t begin to explain it. I’m still completely enthralled by the idea of space exploration – now more than ever, when there appears to be a collective mood of pessimism about the whole thing. I think this is exactly the right time to do something big and bold and fundamentally optimistic.

Through Poolbeg Press Ltd., Carroll issued her inaugural book in January 2004, namely Executive Affair. In later years she has admitted the book was semi-autobiographical, but insists she didn’t have an affair with the vice-president of a company as the book’s character did. Poolbeg Press Ltd. would subsequently publish Just Business in January 2005, and High Potential in January 2007. The Better Woman was released in North America in July 2009 via Pan Macmillan, experiencing United Kingdom publication in March 2010 through the same publishing company. To discuss The Better Woman, Ber Carroll was interviewed via email.

Being your fourth novel, could you provide an outline of The Better Woman’s plot, and what new territory you feel you personally explored on this outing as an author?

The Better Woman is about two women, one Irish and one Australian, whose lives are largely lived on opposite sides of the world but who have more in common than what they will ever realize. The book goes back in time, to the eighties, and it follows Sarah and Jodi through all the milestones of their lives: first love, first heartbreak, first day at university, at fulltime work, all of the highs and lows, the moments of heady success and complete disaster… Sarah and Jodi make their way up in the world completely unaware that their lives are running in parallel. It is only when they both want the same thing – the same job, in fact – that their paths will finally cross.

This book is a departure for me in that it isn’t a plot based book. It’s more of an epic, a story of two lives lived separately until such time as they intersect. As a writer, I found it very fulfilling to be able to write an epic-style book like this, to be able to write through all the major life events that mould a character and to chart the rise of two somewhat lost and vulnerable teenagers to the accomplished, confident women that they eventually become, egging them on every step of the way. In this respect, I was freed from the “baggage” I had with my other novels, the back-stories that needed to be explained. Both the reader and I are with the characters at every significant point of their lives…

In the end, The Better Woman is not just about two women wanting the same job, the job was mainly a mechanism I used to draw the characters to the same place at the end of the book. The book is about two quite remarkable women, survivors in their own way, who they really are behind their work façade, the friends and family close to them, the sacrifices they’ve had to make and those they’ve loved and lost on the journey of life.

The stories of the two main characters, Sarah Ryan and Jodi Tyler, are separate but connect in the sense that they aim for the same job. What challenges did sufficiently telling each of the two character’s background stories, and subsequently segueing the two stories together, present?

The main challenge I had was maintaining sufficient differentiation between the characters. Sarah and Jodi are of the same age and share the same ambitions, and as a result they have many common characteristics. I had to be very mindful that they looked and sounded different and that the reader would not become confused at any stage. The parallels in their lives presented the biggest challenge in terms of differentiation. I had to find similarities that were sufficiently different.

Sarah Ryan, one of two main characters in The Better Woman, was orphaned at a young age. However, you yourself are the middle child of six. With that being said, in what ways did you make sure that you accurately captured how being orphaned shaped Sarah Ryan in later life?

Sarah isn’t just an orphan, she’s an only child. I had to look at my own family and attempt to take away the influence of all the various members in order to imagine what it might be like for her. Parents and siblings provide a balance, a leveling influence. Siblings pull you into line, they can be maddeningly annoying and hateful as well as comforting and deeply loving. They can boost or deplete your confidence, depending on their mood. They have the unique ability to make you laugh as easily as they can make you cry. Parents scold and love, fuss and teach, pamper and mould. In addition to trying to imagine myself without my siblings and parents, I sought people who were only children or who had only one parent (orphans were hard to find). At the end of all my searching, it seemed to me that the characteristic that Sarah would lack the most from her unusual upbringing was confidence. Confidence is like a rite of passage. If you survive the daily dramas of family life, the squabbling and jostling, you should come out the other end with some degree of inner strength. Sarah lacks that basic confidence which is why she is always trying too hard to prove herself.

Contrastingly, the other main character Jodi Tyler comes from a loving family. Of the two main characters, would you say Jodi Tyler is the one you feel you share the most common ground with? Or perhaps there are certain aspects of her family life which starkly contrast with your own?

I had more common ground with Sarah. In fact, Sarah’s early life came from my own experience. I worked in a small shop in a tiny village outside Cork (Ireland). I was very young at the time but extremely competent with numbers and I loved the interaction with the customers, who were amazing characters in themselves. There was a boy across the road who played the piano, a boy from a very well-cut family. Even though I was very young, I knew that I was not in the same league as this boy…

Jodi’s character is not even slightly based on me, but some of the issues with her stepfather, particularly the letters, did happen to someone I know very well.

Jodi Tyler and Sarah Ryan’s common link is that they both set their sights on the same job. Have there been instances where you’ve set your sights on a specific goal, but at the expense of those around you? To perhaps triumph over something from your past?

When I was younger, I did go after my goals, often job promotions, with great zeal but hopefully not at the expense of anyone but my own health and wellbeing.

In fact, the idea for The Better Woman came to me when I was going through the interview process for what I thought was a dream job. After a number of grueling interviews, the recruitment consultant informed me that I was one of two candidates shortlisted. Instead of focusing on the job and what I needed to do to be the chosen one, I began to think about the other candidate. Who was she? Where had she come from and how had she got to this point? We were competing for the same job, did we have anything else in common, any other parallels in our lives?

I did get the job in the end – and I absolutely hated it. I thought about her often: the other candidate. Where was she now? Would she have liked the job more than I did? Would she have been the Better Woman for the job?

I can look back now and see that whilst I wasn’t trying to triumph over anything specific in my past, I was always trying to prove myself, jostling in the workplace in a similar manner to how I jostled for my place within my family.

The biography on your official website mentions as how a young child, you’d borrow a dozen or so books from a mobile library bus that used to pull up outside your family’s house in Blarney. Which books particularly made an impression on you during that time, and possibly influenced your writing style when you took to penning fiction?

I started reading from a young age, stealing my mother’s romance novels, and two of the first adult books I remember reading were The Thorn Birds (1977) by Colleen McCullough and A Woman of Substance (1979) by Barbara Taylor Bradford. I learned a lot from those books – the facts of life for one thing – I was only ten when I read The Thorn Birds and you can only imagine how shocked I was. I don’t know, maybe The Thorn Birds put the notion of migrating to Australia in my head. It certainly had a lasting impression in other ways.

I also read A Woman of Substance when I was very young and impressionable. I loved how Emma Harte rose from lowly, disadvantaged beginnings to head up her own business empire. Perhaps that book whetted my appetite for writing about ambition, which is an underlying theme in all my books.

What prompted you to move to Sydney, Australia in 1995 with your then partner (now husband), and how has life there contrasted with your time living in Ireland?

I must admit that my initial reasons for moving to Australia were very shallow. I wish I could say the move was motivated by career or something substantial like that but it was driven more by a longing for sunshine than anything else. It was with some glee that I handed over my winter woolies to my three sisters and set off Down Under with two suitcases of summer clothes (along with Rob, my partner). But pride comes before a fall and I’ll never forget my first week in Sydney, shivering in my shorts and T-shirt while it rained and rained and rained. Luckily, the sun came out eventually and it turned out to be a great move for us both. The biggest contrast has been the lifestyle. I was a bit of a couch potato in Ireland, would not stick my nose outside the door if it was rainy or cold, which meant I didn’t go outside much at all. Here, I can’t seem to stay inside. The blue sky and sun has made me change my ways.

Given the fact you and your family visit Ireland almost every year on holiday, how would you say the country has changed since you last lived there, and would you consider permanently moving back to Ireland in your later life?

Ireland has changed hugely and as a writer I wish I could have been on the ground witnessing that change. The main change I see is the other cultures and nationalities which have integrated into Irish society while I have been away. The different ways of life, the back-stories of the migrants, the integration issues they’ve had to deal with all provide fascinating material for someone like me who likes to write about relationships and finding one’s foothold in a foreign country.

I can see myself acquiring a holiday home in Ireland (one day) and spending a few months of “summer” there. It’s very important to me to keep up the strong ties to my family and heritage, and to foster those same ties with my children, which at the very least means continuing holidays to Ireland. I can’t see myself moving back permanently, though. Sydney is home now, it’s my niche in the world, I chose it rather than it choosing me. I just wish it was a bit closer to Ireland…

Being your first novel, how much autobiographical elements did Executive Affair contain looking back?

Though I absolutely denied it at the time, there was a lot of me in Executive Affair. It was written on the back of my observations at the job I had then and my own first impressions of Sydney (I usually take this opportunity to put on record that I did not have an affair with the vice-president of the company where I worked at the time, as did the character in the book, though if you saw this particular man you would understand perfectly where I got my inspiration from).

Your subsequent two books, High Potential and Just Business, both feature women with successful careers, women who both experience love related problems, albeit different ones. What would you say the challenges are in trying to juggle a successful career and personal relationships? From your personal experience and what you’ve learnt from writing about the topic, of course?

Some careers are not very relationship friendly, particularly if they involve long hours, travel and social commitments outside your partner and children. As we all know, balance is the aim but achieving it is easier said than done. It can be very difficult to set boundaries in your job, particularly if you’re committed and ambitious to get ahead.

Just as Executive Affair was being accepted for publication, I had a career-personal crisis of my own. I had worked my way up to a very demanding job and I was juggling this job along with a small baby at home. During the working week I was lucky to see my baby for an hour a day. That hour was the dinner-bath-bed hour when neither of us were at our best. That hour was, rather tragically, less time than a lot of my meetings at work. I ended up resigning from my job which was a good option for me at the time (I had just signed a three-book deal) but many women have no option but to continue on and try to do their best.

I believe that ambition and family life are destined to clash, which makes great writing material for me, and how one handles those clashes is a measure of one’s character, experience and inner strength.

In High Potential, Katie Horgan is sent to Ireland as part of her training, whereas you travelled away from Ireland. What situations did placing an Australian in an Irish setting provide you with to explore? Given the possible cultural differences between Australians and Irish people?

In many ways, Australians are quite similar to the Irish. They don’t take themselves too seriously, they have a good work ethic and society here hinges on families as much as it does back there. But whilst the people are similar, the settings are deliciously different. Take Ireland with its castles, village squares, over-supply of pubs and cities drenched with history and line it up next to Australia with the beaches, the sunshine, the outdoor life and everything relatively new and shiny. The contrast is irresistible. The Irish coming to Australia are captivated and the Australians landing in Ireland equally so. And whilst they revel in the different setting, there is comfort in how similar the people are. It’s a win-win.

Putting Katie Horgan in the middle of Dublin was lots of fun, having her grapple with the accents and odd sayings, immersing her in the very enthusiastic social life, subjecting her to the nosiness of the locals and giving her a taste of the history, religion and politics that underpin the Irish way of life was a treat for me. Because I have been away from Ireland for a long time now, I had to think hard to recover those quirky little beats that make Ireland what it is and I enjoyed this aspect of writing High Potential immensely.

In future material, will you continue to explore the lives of career minded women who travel between Ireland and Australia, or is that something you feel you’ve explored enough?

Wellllll… I’m quite far progressed in the next book, which has a working title of Less Than Perfect, and it is about Ireland and Australia, and a career minded woman too, but all I will say is that it is a completely different slant.

After four books, I continue to be fascinated with the strong links and contrasts between the Northern and Southern hemispheres, what spurs people to move from one side to the other, what they are seeking with the move and what they want to leave behind, the new relationships and friendships they build and, by the same token, the family and friends sacrificed by the move, what keeps them there or draws them back, and the notion that distance can solve most problems and heal most wounds, because after writing four books on this subject, I don’t believe it can.

As soon as this fascination runs dry, I know that I will have no hesitation moving in a new direction… I have many ways I can move as my books, despite the common themes in terms of location and career, are distinctly different. My publisher often comments (a little worriedly) that when she picks up a new manuscript from me she really has no idea what to expect.

Released through Simon & Schuster UK during August 2009 and March 2010 in hardback and paperback format respectively, The Crucifix Killer was written while Chris Carter was in full time employment with a computer software company. On the recommendation of his agent Darley Anderson, Carter revised the novel’s ending so that its protagonist, Detective Robert Hunter, could become a series character. Hunter will feature in the author’s second novel, The Executioner, scheduled for hardback issue in July 2010, as well as his third novel, currently being written under the working title Stitched. To discuss The Crucifix Killer’s paperback issue, Chris Carter was interviewed via email.

In an interview, you said The Crucifix Killer’s plot was inspired by the fact that the girlfriend of a friend of yours was kidnapped when you were younger and still living in Brazil. Could you elaborate on that story and how it affected you as a young man, and also whether any other life experiences helped you in forming the book’s plot?

Brazil is a developing country, but still a very poor country. Unfortunately that contributes to its high level of crime. When I lived in Brazil, what we called “flash kidnapping” was a constant problem for the police. Flash kidnapping was when the perpetrators would wait for you to get to your car, open the door and disarm the alarm before putting a gun to your head, forcing you into the backseat or into the trunk and taking you along for a long ride. They’d stop at ATM machines and force you to withdraw as much money as possible. Sometimes they’d go on a mugging spree and drag you along. If a woman was the victim, chances were she’d be raped as well. Some victims got released, some got shot – it was a lottery, but it was the reality of Brazil.

Sadly the girlfriend of a friend of mine became a flash kidnapping victim. She was put in the trunk of her car and kept there for three hours before, by some bizarre chance, a police unit caught up with them and found her in the trunk. She was terribly shaken up, bruised and scratched, but thankfully that had been the worst of it. One of her scratches was a deep, cross looking gash to the back of her hand. I remember thinking: “What if that was actually done on purpose by the kidnappers as a way of marking their victims?”

Obviously I was distressed by what had happened to my friend’s girlfriend. She could’ve died for no reason at all, but unfortunately, things like that just happened in Brazil. Most people I knew back then had been threatened in one way or another at least once. I myself had been at the end of a gun barrel twice, had a knife put to my throat a few times, been mugged by a gang carrying weapons three times and was shot at once. And all that by the age of sixteen.

That was the only real life experience I can say I drew something of for The Crucifix Killer. The rest of the plot just came out of my head.

The Crucifix Killer’s March 2010 paperback issue launch will be supported in the United Kingdom by Tesco and Asda, two of the country’s biggest supermarket chains. In light of the decline of dedicated bookstores, do you feel the support of supermarkets is becoming more and more important for authors like yourself? If you’re lucky enough to have that support, obviously?

Support of any nature is always very welcome, and I’m very grateful for the incredible support so many people have been giving The Crucifix Killer. In light of everything that’s been happening in the country – the downturn, the economical struggle and more, life has been made very difficult for a lot of people, authors included. I am very lucky and thankful that the fantastic team behind me at Simon & Schuster UK has managed to enlist such phenomenal support from giants like Tesco, Asda, WH Smith, Waterstones and Amazon.

Anyone in the book publishing business knows that big supermarket chains now control a huge piece of the book seller’s market. I’d say that today, their support is paramount.

Without revealing too much of the novel’s plot, what is the significance of the crucifix as a symbol in the novel to the characters involved? And also, do you feel the symbol being used might’ve possibly been a factor in Simon & Schuster’s North American arm opting not to publish The Crucifix Killer?

The main significance of the symbol used in The Crucifix Killer is directly related to the killer in the story. I guess that’s all I can reveal without giving it away.

I can’t really comment on why Simon & Schuster USA opted for not taking the novel to America, I don’t know the real reasons. The only comment I heard was that the American editor who read it first deemed it too violent for the American market.

Having interviewed and studied serial and multiple homicide offenders with life imprisonment convictions, in what ways has this helped you lend authenticity to your characters in general?

All the characters in The Crucifix Killer are one hundred percent fictitious, but my experience with criminal behavior psychology helped me lend authenticity to the killer’s thought process. I found out that in real life, no matter how many interviews you do, no matter how much you study, there are certain criminal minds you’ll never understand. The reasons behind their actions are too complex and buried underneath too many traumas for anyone, even themselves to fully comprehend them. In crime fiction, on the other hand, everything has to make sense at the end. Readers hate loose ends. I did my best to create believable characters with believable motives.

Having spent ten years as a guitarist for numerous bands, what prompted you to leave this behind in favour of writing stories full time?

Probably age. I was getting way too old to be a struggling rock ‘n’ roll guitarist. The truth is that I never planned to write a book. I wasn’t planning on a career in writing and I wasn’t thinking of stories I wanted to write down. The idea to write a novel came out of the blue. I always loved reading, so I thought that writing could probably be just as much fun. It’s actually more.

Being a Brazilian born writer whose native tongue is Portuguese, what difficulties and challenges does this present you as a writer?

I’ve been speaking English from a very young age. Though I was born in Brasilia and lived there through the first third of my life, I only studied in American schools. I’ve also lived outside Brazil for too many years now, and I’d say that my English is without doubt my strongest language. I’m sure I’d struggle much more if I had to write anything in Portuguese.

You’ve been particularly complimentary of Frederick Forsyth’s writing in interviews. What about his writing do you particularly admire, and are there any elements you’ve perhaps incorporated into your own writing?

I think that certain writers just have the gift, while others have to work hard at it. To me, Frederick Forsyth is one of those who simply have it. He could write about something as mundane as shopping for groceries and make it sound so interesting you couldn’t put the book down. You’d have to turn the page to find out if the character had decided to buy apples or pears. Just like Mr. Forsyth, one of the things I really try to do is keep the reader entertained and hold their interest from the first to the last page.

As you’ve said, you base your stories in Los Angeles. Have you ruled out Robert Hunter possibly assisting foreign police forces in future stories, or do you feel the benefits of basing stories in Los Angeles are too great?

I use LA for several reasons. One – I know the city. Two – I’m much more familiar with American police procedures, laws and law enforcement agencies than I am with the procedures, laws and agencies of any other country. Three – LA is a great city than can offer you a fantastic scope of scenarios for crime thriller stories. There are neighborhoods ruled by gangs, poverty on a scale that you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d crossed the border to some of the most underprivileged countries in Africa, and riches like you can only see in Hollywood blockbusters. It’s a marvelous and ostentatious city and yet poor and very violent.

I never rule out anything when it comes to writing novels. Yes, Hunter could very well lend his expertise to other law enforcement agencies in the USA and probably abroad – watch this space.

In July 2010, Simon & Schuster will issue your second novel, entitled The Executioner. By further developing Detective Robert Hunter as a character and gaining experience as well as perhaps learning valuable lessons in writing your first novel, in what new territories does The Executioner venture in for you as a writer?

As any writer will tell you, an author’s second novel is considered his toughest novel to write. There are several reasons for this. When you’re writing your first novel, there’s no real pressure on you or on your writing. Without a deadline, you can take as long as you like. It’s not uncommon for you to hear stories of first novels that have been five, seven, even ten years in the making. Well, all that disappears once you’ve signed a publishing deal. For the first time you’re given a deadline, and coming to terms with that can be quite daunting at times. The other thought that plays a big part in an author’s mind is that everyone has taken a gamble on you – your agent, your editor and your publisher. They gamble on the fact that your first novel wasn’t a fluke. So all eyes are on you to produce a second novel that will prove them write. That’s the main reason people call any author’s second novel his or hers big white elephant.

The Executioner took me less time to write than The Crucifix Killer, but it was a lot more laborious. Though I did learn very valuable lessons from my first novel, I still made a hell of a lot of mistakes when writing the second one. But I’m learning. I wrote nothing less than twenty different first chapters for The Executioner. I just couldn’t get a beginning that I thought was powerful enough. In the end, it all came together very nicely. So I’d say The Executioner has pushed me in the new territory of being a full time, professional writer. And trust me, it’s a whole new ball game then being a weekend writer.

Its original title was Brutal. What was the reason behind the name change?

My agent, Darley Anderson, and Simon & Schuster’s publishing director, Suzanne Baboneau, did like the initial title – Brutal, but they were never one hundred percent sure. When Darley read the manuscript, he didn’t feel that the title was as strong as the story. He suggested The Executioner. It was an instant hit with everyone.

A priest is murdered at the beginning of the novel, whose body is later discovered to have the symbol “3” scrawled in blood on its chest, the “3” arguably being a symbol in the vein of the crucifix in The Crucifix Killer. What about symbols fascinates you as a writer, and can you see this fascination continuing in future works?

I wouldn’t say I really have a fascination with symbols. Let me try to explain without getting too technical and boring everyone to sleep. Every sadistic serial killer has a signature. Sometimes that signature is part of the offender’s MO, but not always. It could be something alien to it. It could be a symbol left on the victim or drawn on the wall, a note, a riddle, an object – it could be a number of things. As a criminal psychologist, encountering a signature intentionally left at the crime scene by the perpetrator with the sole purpose of claiming ownership of a brutal murder would automatically send alarm bells ringing. It makes the crime seem more evil, it tells us that the unsub (unknown subject of an investigation) is arrogant enough to purposely tease the detectives, and whether we like it or not, in a somber kind of way, makes the investigation more interesting. The killer in The Crucifix Killer is very different from the one in The Executioner, but they are both sadistic and use the alien type signature I mentioned above. It makes them more interesting, even fascinating if you will, and obviously that makes for a more intriguing and compelling story. For that reason, there’s always a very good chance that I might create another killer who uses the alien signature in future novels.

The Crucifix Killer was written while you were in full time employment with a computer software company, but now you write full time. In terms of your writing skills, has that yielded any benefits? Being able to fully concentrate on writing a given story?

Yes, of course it has. Being able to completely immerse myself in the creative and writing process without having to worry about a day job is fantastic. Basically I have a lot more time to correct all the mistakes I make.

An early February 2010 update on your official website mentioned the fact you were ten thousand words into a third Detective Robert Hunter novel. What can you reveal regarding this third Robert Hunter novel in terms of its plot, and overall tone? Does it have a working title?

The working title of the third novel is Stitched, and that’s exactly what happens to the victims. There isn’t much I can reveal about the story, mainly because I don’t know it yet. I don’t outline my novels, I simply sit down and write them. One chapter leads me to think about the next and so on. I don’t plan much in advance. In The Crucifix Killer, the whole ending of the novel got changed after the manuscript was finished. In The Executioner, I didn’t know who the killer would be until I was eighty thousand words into the novel. It’s just the way it works for me.

Why do you feel that Robert Hunter has enough depth and mileage as a character to be featured in several novels, and thus far, have you seriously contemplated pursuing a story idea that doesn’t feature Hunter?

The Crucifix Killer was originally a one off story. Hunter didn’t come out on top in the end. When I had my first meeting with my agent, Darley Anderson and Camilla Bolton at Darley’s London agency, he told me that they thought Robert Hunter was strong enough to become a series character. They asked me if I had considered that possibility. I was a little dubious at first, but their argument was really strong and made total sense. Darley is without a doubt the most market-wise literary agent in this country, if not in Europe. He simply gets commercial crime fiction, it’s like a gift. It would’ve been very silly of me not to have listened to his advice.

I had to go back and strengthen Hunter throughout the story. I also had to totally rewrite the ending, but Darley was right. When he was finally happy with the manuscript and decided to send it out to publishers, it took only three days for the first offer to come in, and from there it developed into a bidding war.

Written by Lawrence Paterson, Blaze Bayley: At the End of the Day was issued in September 2009. Chronicling the history of the Blaze Bayley band, it particularly focuses on vocalist “Blaze” Bayley Cook, and detailing his career as a frontman. Bayley initially came to attention as a part of Wolfsbane, going on to join Iron Maiden in 1994 following the departure of Bruce Dickinson. With Dickinson’s 1999 return to Iron Maiden, Bayley would form BLAZE, and then the Blaze Bayley band. To date, the Blaze Bayley band has issued two full length studio albums; July 2008’s The Man Who Would Not Die, and February 2010’s Promise and Terror. While telling Bayley’s story, the biography also shares the tales of each and every other member of the Blaze Bayley band.

All members of the Blaze Bayley band fully contributed to At the End of the Day, the book also featuring new interviews with BLAZE and exclusive interviews with Steve Harris and Janick Gers of Iron Maiden. Also, tour dates, discographies, and extensive black and white and full colour photographs are included. To discuss At the End of the Day, Lawrence Paterson was interviewed via email.

How did you come to write At the End of the Day? Why did you feel “Blaze” Bayley Cook’s story would be a compelling one?

It was strange really. I’d toyed with the idea of writing my own book about the stupid things that have happened to this particular struggling drummer over the years, but wasn’t sure if anybody would find it interesting or funny. Spinal Tap would look like a serious work of art compared to the reality. But after joining Blaze Bayley, the idea just kind of fell into place on its own. I’d followed Blaze’s career since he left Maiden and was both surprised and dismayed by the apparent lack of recognition of what I felt were top grade metal albums. Ironically, this mirrored the feeling that I would get when I looked at Bruce Dickinson’s solo metal albums. After joining the band I saw that the history was such a tangle that some things actually started to make sense. And the things that have happened to this band – and all of its members – are so ridiculous that you couldn’t make it up. So it seemed like a good idea to write the story. I also feel that there are many misconceptions about Blaze’s time in Maiden and now, ten years on, that it’s time to start putting the record straight… or at least straighter than it has been.

Blaze Bayley’s career began with Wolfsbane. At that stage in his career, where do you feel his vocals were at? What early promise do you feel they showed?

In my opinion they were pretty raw, and very “hard-rock” as opposed to “metal”… but that is just my opinion. To be honest I was never a huge Wolfsbane fan. I saw them several times and could see what people saw in them, but I was generally into much heavier metal at the time. But their musicianship was great and Blaze was a world-class frontman. I hasten to add – or maybe repeat – this is just my opinion as a metal fan, nothing else. I’m not a professional critic or anything. They gave it their all and deserve respect for that.

Despite Wolfsbane being critically acclaimed, the group never achieved commercial success. In your opinion, what are the reasons behind that?

Well, like I say, it wasn’t really my kind of metal to be honest. But I do know that there were many bands that withered and died on the pub or club circuit – and even above that – particularly after signing label deals. For example Xentrix were a world class thrash band that simply died after getting signed to a major label. The problem is that talent doesn’t necessarily have much to do with success. Wolfsbane were in the strange position of having so much media support in the UK that some kind of success would almost seem inevitable. That, coupled with some amazing opportunities from various support slots etc… but it still wasn’t to be. The music business is a bloody strange one and totally merciless too. I believe that the first Wolfsbane album was also badly handled as far as the production goes and did nothing to represent the band as they were. They were very much a “live” band, which is the feeling you needed to capture to make it work. How can you do that with a drum machine? And thin sounding guitars and bass? It’s not the performance, but the sound that doesn’t work which is something that Blaze experienced again on The X Factor (1995) in my opinion.

As a part of Iron Maiden, how do you feel Bayley’s vocal ability possibly matured?

Well, how could you join a band of Maiden’s stature and not improve as a musician? Blaze was totally immersed in the professional world of a top touring metal band doing more time on the road than he had ever had to deal with before. He was also following in the footsteps of one of metal’s finest vocalists who sang in a different range to that to which Blaze was accustomed. I’m sure that he learned fresh nuances of what his voice was – and wasn’t – capable of, and how to care for it after months on tour. He also worked alongside renowned composers and so would have been exposed to fresh ideas about song structure, as related to the vocals and to the song as a whole. It would have been a steep learning curve, but I don’t see Blaze as the kind of person to shy away from a heavy work load.

Personally, how would you critique Iron Maiden’s Blaze Bayley era (1994-1999)? His time with the band is somewhat overlooked in favour of Bruce Dickinson’s and Paul Di’Anno’s tenures with Iron Maiden, though do you feel the material Bayley cut with Maiden is underrated?

I think that Blaze has taken a great deal of unfair criticism for his period in Maiden. I feel that there are several factors for this. First of all, Di’Anno features on the two albums that began it all. Iron Maiden (1980) and Killers (1981) are iconic and really ignited the flames that would follow and see Maiden justifiably head on a meteoric trajectory upwards. Then, of course, you have what is to me an unbroken run of excellence that culminated in Live After Death (1985). The first three albums with Dickinson were to me at the time – and still are – genre-defining slabs of metal. They’ll always be among my favourites and I believe that there are thousands of other people that feel the same. They were the glory days of metal and every band were releasing blockbusters: Maiden, Priest, AC/DC, Motörhead etc. etc… every album was brilliant to me at the time and they still are. However, by the time that Blaze joined Maiden they had lost a certain something in my eyes. I never really liked the two preceding albums and felt that the “crunch” and “bite” that Maiden had had, had largely disappeared. Ironically, The X Factor actually was a return to a darker feel than either of the two albums before it. But, I believe that one of the fundamental flaws with it is the production. The guitars are very weak and the drums lack the depth and solidity that fans of Nicko (like myself) loved. It wasn’t the first album to lack that “heaviness” but it was possibly the most obvious. When you consider that the band was releasing an album with a new vocalist you would think that there would be more appreciation of the need to blow people’s heads off with the sound. But it just isn’t there.

However, there are better songs on that album than the preceding two in my opinion. There are also some very “lukewarm” ones too, but if you listen to “Blood On The World’s Hands” for example and picture it with the guitar and drum sound from Piece Of Mind (1983) you can see that the ingredients are there for some class-A metal. Plus, I believe that Adrian Smith is the secret weapon in Maiden’s arsenal and he was missing from the two albums that Blaze is on. Virtual XI (1998) sounds hurried. There are actually some performances on there that surprise people for their apparent lack of precision, especially from a band like Maiden. Epics like “The Clansman” would have benefited from good production, as is apparent on the Rio DVD (2002). But Blaze’s vocals are excellent. Then the infamous “Angel And The Gambler” would have benefited from rehearsal when the band would have discovered (like they did on tour) that even they get bored and lost trying to play the whole thing. How would the people listening to the CD feel? And those keyboards should have been lost in a mysterious accident in the studio.

So I think Blaze has carried the can for a lot of bad decisions made by an excellent band that was going through a hard time when metal was out of vogue. Blaze has been blamed for the cancellation of American dates, which may or may not have been the case, but it certainly didn’t help his acceptance by the more dubious fans.

All just my opinion as a hardcore Maiden fan and metalhead.

The BLAZE band issued three albums between 2000 and 2004. What lessons do you feel Blaze Bayley took from his Iron Maiden tenure, and how does that reflect in the music on those records?

I think it fully illustrates the progress Blaze had made with his voice. If you compare the voice on “Ghost In the Machine” (from 2000’s Silicon Messiah) to virtually anything he had done before, then you can hear a more mature musician. Maiden also have a strong “live work” ethic. But then so did Wolfsbane. They were a hard working band too. Blaze’s ideas to capitalize on his work with Maiden were sound, but for many reasons they were wasted. The first BLAZE line-up were also bloody good musicians, so that had an enormous impact on what became three solid albums and a great live one.

Your journey with the Blaze Bayley band began in November 2007. How did that come to fruition?

The usual route of answering an advertisement and auditioning. I, like most musicians, hate auditions, but it’s just a part of the game. They are nerve wracking experiences and this was one of the worst as you had to play tracks from memory with no band or tapes to play along to, and with noise from other rehearsing bands leaking into the less-than-soundproof room. It was bloody horrible. But after that were two gigs and then the offer to join full time.

For those unfamiliar with your musical career, could you provide an overview? Previous bands you’ve been a part of include Arbitrater, Shadowkeep and Chokehold.

I’ve been playing since I was fifteen or so. Not always drums, but I ended up on them playing in a few bands in New Zealand and then I moved to the UK to try further afield – and to see Iron Maiden. I joined a whole bunch of bands before I joined Arbitrater, which was a bloody good thrash band from Warwick. It was a similar story to many others though… ignored by the press and no longer in vogue (that funk-type drivel was the “in” thing) and so it just disappeared. It was a good band though. I can remember that whole period being dominated by big fish in little ponds in many ways. We played a show in Birmingham once that was to be reviewed for some magazine or other and the reviewer turned out to be from Napalm Death. The review he gave us was shit and yet he hadn’t even arrived until after we had played. But then since when did reviews matter that much anyway? Well, unfortunately, some of the magazines do have more power in the UK than they warrant… but that’s another story for me to shout my opinions over. :)

How would you say the Blaze Bayley band differs to BLAZE? Would you say that the songwriting process is more collaborative in the band, as opposed to BLAZE? Different chemistry maybe?

I don’t really know because I wasn’t in BLAZE. From what I gather, that was a very collaborative band with some truly exceptional musicians. All I can say is that this one differs perhaps because we come from such diverse musical backgrounds and tastes. I love the metal bands that I love, while other guys love theirs… and never the twain shall meet. But it really doesn’t matter. I don’t care if people like the bands I do, all that matters is we agree on what we produce. Everybody will have different parts of the music that they do or don’t enjoy, but that is what makes band chemistry… when it works.

You’ve worked with Blaze Bayley for almost two years now. How would you summarize Blaze Bayley the man in terms of personality, and work ethic?

Hard working… lots of gigs… full on… no compromise… take it or leave it… I’ll do what the fuck I want. But then that’s pretty much like all of us – including our manager Anna.

You were a member of the Royal Navy Submarine Museum’s Archive Group, specialising in U-Boat and Kriegsmarine research, and you’ve written several books related to U-boats. How and why did you initially become attracted to the topic, and what prompted you to write about the topic?

I’ve always been interested in warfare, particularly the Second World War and particularly the German forces. Specializing in the Kriegsmarine came about when I worked as a Scuba instructor in France and was diving on the German wrecks off the coast. Both my grandfathers served in the wars; one in the Australian infantry in WW1 at Gallipoli, The Somme and Paschendale, the other in the Royal Navy during WW2. They always impressed on me that there was no “black hat, white hat” bullshit in the reality of warfare so when I was a kid I always fought against the vilification of the Germans, Italians and Japanese troops… and still do. There are many levels involved in warfare. Two of the main ones are the political level and the level of the man on the ground fighting. And the two are seldom closely related. The same is as true now as it was in 1939. I am interested first and foremost in the human side, the stories of the people involved, and then how that relates to the big strategic story of the war.

The RNSM had nobody looking after their U-boat records which were in disarray because the Director was very anti-German. So I helped sort them out. It was very interesting and the lady that ran the Archive was great. I don’t actually do that anymore though.

What do you feel the future holds for your writing career, and the Blaze Bayley band? Would you say Promise and Terror is a darker album in light of Blaze’s recent struggles?

Yes Promise and Terror a darker album, not only because of the terrible nature or recent events for Blaze. There are a number of reasons for us to make slightly darker music, and I hope that that vibe comes across. I like that kind of thing… nice to write a song that makes people check under the bed before going to sleep. The other thing is that, for me, darkness equates to “heavy”. Heavy metal – proper heavy metal – to me is very dark. Doesn’t have to be fast, slow, long, short… just heavy. Not all the tracks are like that, but the album texture builds to that kind of climax.

Writing? Well, I have a book to write about the Kriegsmarine’s Schnellboot service. I have written ten books on U-boats, so it’s time for one on S-boats. Also would like to write a biography, maybe of Motörhead, Cozy Powell, Saxon… not sure yet. We’ll see…

The main obstacle to the writing career is the fact that we should be on the road from now until eternity… with luck. We’re already on the UK tour and after that is Europe, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Russia, Scandinavia… maybe the USA, Australia and New Zealand… who knows? We’ve just put the album out and it’s going well, so the more we play the better as far as I’m concerned.

Published in North America via Atria Books during October 2009, How To Rule the World From Your Couch’s United Kingdom publication date arrived in January 2010. The tome consists of a program of tools and exercises collected in the form of “chapters” designed to accelerate the utilization of intuitive skills. These exercises can be reportedly learnt by any interested individuals, and without much effort. To discuss How To Rule the World From Your Couch, Laura Day was interviewed via email.

How To Rule the World From Your Couch was written “to inspire people to be fully aware, active, dynamic, and in charge – every minute of their lives”. In writing such a book, how did you make sure the words on each page had that power, the power “to inspire people to be fully aware, active, dynamic, and in charge – every minute of their lives”?

How To Rule the World From Your Couch is a set of tools. When readers experience them, they shock themselves at their own power. It is not an inspirational book so much as a users manual for your brain. I really try to keep myself out of the training as much as possible. There are too many “inspirational” books that motivate people without giving them the tools to create what they want and need.

For those unfamiliar, could you explain what you mean when you refer to “intuition”, and what potential effects gaining said “intuition” can have on our lives?

Intuition is an umbrella that covers many skills. What these skills have in common is the ability to send and receive information that the normal use of our senses and actions would not be able to do. So much of science is proving that we live in an interconnected field of energy and information that does not follow linear time. So, for example, if you want to know what the stock market is going to do on February 26^th 2010 you can look at the history, you can ask experts or you can use intuition, create a target or question, and allow your attention to give you information. When you document this information you will find that you are very accurate, never perfect (anyone who tells you they are, run away from), but far, far better than chance or “experts” and heaven knows better than basing the future on the past.

You can also send information. One of the things I teach people to do both in “couch” and in workshops is to reprogram the messages they are sending to the “field” so that they get the desired response, in business, love and life. These are really simple skills but they need to be focused with some discipline to be useful, just like everything else.

You also teach on the power of “intuition” through workshops. For you personally, how does teaching people face to face differ to teaching people through your books?

I am able to use my intuition to guide, inform and correct one on one in a workshop. I am also able to push people past their beliefs and blind spots. They of course, push right back so I learn so much for myself in my own workshops. I also always train people with the hope that they go on to train others. An intuitively driven world, company, community, family is one that works. This is the world I want to leave my son.

You said that “you don’t have to be full of “get up and go” to have success”. With that in mind, where lack of drive and motivation is a barrier, how do you go about achieving success? Aren’t drive and motivation important, or are they not as important as society makes out?

Both drive and motivation are, what I call, non words. What is drive? What is motivation? It really means something different to everyone. A high energy person wants to use their intuition in the world to go out and, knuckle to knuckle create success. An introvert, like myself, protects their space and pace first and foremost. I bring the world, selectively, to me. We all want different things and have different skills and ways to create them happily, comfortably. There is not a cookie cutter successful person. I love intuition because of this. It will find your path and your motor and you will create your life, your way. I do a lot of press, most of it from my couch. I have a photo shoot tomorrow where everyone, even the other people in the article, are coming to my apartment to do it. I serve food, have company, do my thing but the job gets done, my way and.. it ends up working for everyone. Now discipline is important. We have patterns and it does take discipline to create better, more functional ones. However, when discipline brings pleasure and results it is not so hard.

Each chapter contains exercises which will help people accelerate the utilization of their “intuitive skills”. For the average person, or even the quite busier person with little time to themselves due to hefty work and family commitments, how difficult are these exercises to implement?

The exercises are meant to be done “on the job” and to make “the job” successful in a way that would have taken a lot of hard work pre-couch. If I had to sit and learn something for fifteen minutes a day I would have to give up personal hygiene. I write books, run a family, am part of a huge group of students with whom I communicate, one on one, personally through email, I have siblings, a father who has discovered how to Skype (“Is that lipstick you’re wearing? “Dad.. I’m fifty!”) and so many other things that I don’t want to give up. Shaving my legs would have to go. Couch will make everything, from business, to family, easier. It is a learn as you do kind of book.

The book also talks about “using healing to resolve conflict in relationships”. In resolving conflict in relationships, how much power and control do we actually have to do that? Can’t some partners be simply uncooperative, and not see eye to eye with their loved one?

Absolutely. Part of intuition is learning when and how to cut bait and run or find a compromise that works for all. Intuition helps you make good choices in a way that you grow instead of being injured. There is no greater injury than what happens in a bad relationship and if all of your energy is going to heal another person, someone who likes being where they are, it is not useful for anyone. However, barring this extreme, intuition allows you to “walk in another person’s moccasins” and you often can find a win / win solution.

And as well, the book talks about using “remote viewing”. Could you explain what “remote viewing” is for those who don’t know, and what benefits using “remote viewing” can yield?

Remote viewing is the ability to physically perceive another location and what is going on there. You can also play with it in time. View in the future or in the past. There are so many uses for this it would be impossible to cover them all but, for example, you can “view” a product in a market in the future or check out a sense that someone is in a bad situation with real detail or evaluate a piece of physical property, like a home, and find the bugs. It allows you to perceive not only your target but the environment it is in. Most of the skills in Couch you will combine, organically, to get the most accurate, detailed, and actionable information on a question.

Your global clientele include celebrities, scientists, business executives, and other professionals. In helping these individuals achieve their goals, does your approach and eventual advice differ from person to person according to their professional and personal circumstances?

Intuition responds to the needs of the client. The approach however, is more or less the same. What is wrong, what do they need to right it, who / what is helping / obstructing, is what they are doing now, creating a strong future for them or taking them in the wrong direction and so on.

Given the global economical climate in 2010, many have either suffered redundancy or are facing redundancy. Can skills like “mediumship” and “healing” actually combat this effectively? What about the book will significantly help those suffering from financial hardship?

I send copies to libraries every month because How To Rule the World From Your Couch and The Circle really help people focus on what is possible, which is usually pretty incredible and take the energy away from what is not possible. I think that both positive and negative thinking are risky. If a bullet is coming your way, pretending it is not doesn’t keep it from hitting you.. however, focusing on the problems fills your awareness so that solutions don’t have space. It is important to be realistic and keep moving forward in an intuitive, constructive way. Intuition shows you how powerful you are, you alone, as an individual, and how much information and help you have access to. This empowers you to open your eyes to the bullet, get out of the way and move on to something better. I love my Twitter / Facebook / email groups because I see people at rock bottom who quickly ( I did not say easily) build dreams they couldn’t have even imagined before hitting bottom.

The global climate has always been bad for someone. I feel that it is important to be aware that these are hard times for some but many have only known hard times. Human beings are full of invention. When you use intuition you automatically work as a community and a million organized people can build a bridge in a day.

And of course, such hardship causes some to turn to addictions, whether it be food, alcohol, drugs, tobacco or whatever. Some people have much less confidence than others and are more prone to addictions. How do you ensure your suggested exercises in the book are effective for both the stronger willed and those who are more prone, so that they can overcome or even avoid such addictions?

Will and confidence is a plus and a minus. Will is what keeps some tolerating terrible limitations for their entire life. Intuition proves to you that you are connected to an entire field of power, opportunity, support and community. This is a real experience, not a “belief”. It is hard to stay sick when there are so many opportunities for pleasure in having a healthy life. Intuition does not allow you to ignore your areas of vulnerability but it also gives you the support, information and strength to experience and be something better in the moment. Also, I do not believe in throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Addictions are often real efforts to self medicate. Sometimes intuition will lead you to the right group, doctor, program or drug to help your body and brain do what it needs to do. The answer is always rich and complex and no one thing is ever “the answer”.

Though you’ve experienced success advising others, is it sometimes difficult to use your own advice in your everyday life?

My kid, as kids do, when I am beating myself up or acting other than in my best interest says “go read your own book”. I am as neurotic as the next person and I have my blind spots. I do however know where to find my solutions. That does not guarantee that I always follow them. I developed intuition because of trauma and I work with my Achilles heel (s) every day. However, intuition does allow me always to land on my feet.

I had a student this summer, when I was in Italy, scan me a few chapters of my own book because she was sick of my being stuck. Within days I was back on track. I am fortunate to live in a community of intuitives. I try to create this kind of community among my readers and students. Sometimes it takes someone else’s intuition, or boot in the seat of your pants, to get you on track, myself included.

Having spent over two decades helping others use their own “intuition”, how would you like to build upon that over the next decade or two? Also, what future books do you have in the pipeline?

I am training people to take over my work, my clients and so on. I really want to devote myself to teaching. I am trying not to pressure my seventeen year old for grandchildren….. he is off to college in the fall so I may have to get off my couch for his sanity and mine.

I love my life (most days) and working with people. I think my next book is going to continue training people to be teachers and leaders. Because it is so easy for me to see into other peoples lives I have trouble writing fiction.. I think I am almost devoid of imagination, so a little memoir / fiction may be a hobby.

Daniels’ inaugural book, The Story Of Judas Priest: Defenders Of The Faith, was published in September 2007 via Omnibus Press. The scribe’s bibliography includes Robert Plant: Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page & The Solo Years (January 2008, Independent Music Press) and Bon Jovi Encyclopaedia (May 2009, Chrome Dreams). Through self-publishing service Authors Online Ltd., Daniels has released All Pens Blazing – A Heavy Metal Writer’s Handbook (August 2009) and Rock ‘N’ Roll Mercenaries – Interviews with Rock Stars Volume 1 (December 2009). Dawn of the Metal Gods: My Life in Judas Priest and Heavy Metal (June 2009, IP Verlag), the autobiography of original Judas Priest vocalist Al Atkins, was co-authored by Daniels.

Linkin Park – An Operator’s Manual was issued in October 2009 through Chrome Dreams. The reference guide is split into five sections, and begins with a biography. Following a biography of Linkin Park, a section covers the group’s music, videos, tours, films and DVDs. In addition, the book is illustrated by more than two hundred photographs. To discuss Linkin Park – An Operator’s Manual, Neil Daniels was interviewed via email.

In 2004, you obtained a B. A. Honours degree in Film Studies from Middlesex University in North London. However, the bulk of your work lies in music journalism. What caused most of your journalistic work to be in music, as opposed to film?

Simply because after Uni I needed to take a break from film. Uni can really drain you of your passion whether it be film, literature, art or whatever. I just wanted to view films for fun and so I started to write about music. It was at Uni that I got into bands like Sabbath and Priest et al. Before that I was (still am) a fan of more mainstream rock artists like Queen and Meat Loaf. Plus, the internet makes it possible for anybody to write about their interests. There’s a lot of good stuff on the net but an awful lot of crap too.

After graduating from Middlesex University, how did your journalistic career develop?

Well, I started to write for websites like musicOMH and Unbarred and one or two others. I had some reviews published at Planet Sound on Channel Four teletext. But I really wanted to get into printed work. The net is great but there’s nothing like a printed magazine. I didn’t realize how little money there is in music journalism, not that I wanted to be a “music writer” for the cash. I just like listening to music and writing about it. I contacted Bruce Mee at Fireworks and he liked what I had previously written. Fireworks is a bi-monthly fanzine dedicated to melodic rock and metal and AOR. It brings the spirit of eighties Kerrang! into the noughties. I have stayed with the mag ever since. I have also written for Powerplay for a similar amount of years; it’s another great mag but with more extreme tastes than Fireworks. I have also written bits for Rock Sound, Big Cheese, Record Collector and The Guardian. The only website I write for now is Get Ready To Rock.

Your first book was 2007’s The Story Of Judas Priest: Defenders Of The Faith, and that led to you helping original Judas Priest frontman Al Atkins write his 2009 autobiography, Dawn Of The Metal Gods: My Life In Judas Priest & Heavy Metal. In what ways did this richen your understanding of Judas Priest’s earlier years?

I’m not sure if “richen” is the right word but working on the two books certainly showed me how wrong a lot of people have been about the early years of the band. The fact that Priest existed for a few years before Halford joined is not common knowledge. The band’s history dates back to 1969 and it’s funny / coincidental that Rob Halford recently said the band are celebrating their fortieth anniversary. I mean, they had never really appreciated the fact that the band’s name dates back so long. I guess they want to keep the Halford era as a separate and single entity.

How did you come to write Linkin Park – An Operator’s Manual, and for those who might be curious, can you please explain what “an operator’s manual” entails?

It’s basically like those Rough Guide books you see everywhere but obviously we couldn’t name it that for legal reasons. It’s not a straight biography or an A-Z book but made up of separate chapters dealing with different aspects of the band, so a potted bio, info on their solo projects, associated personnel, discographies, and tour dates, etc. It’s not a book you’d read from cover to cover but you’d dip in and out of for reference. I was asked to write it by Chrome Dreams after I did the Bon Jovi book for them.

Inevitably, the book begins with a group biography. What methods of research did you undertake in writing the biographical section, and how did you go about unearthing previously unknown information about Linkin Park?

It has become a cliché but it is the main source of info for all writers these days: the internet. I have a load of rock and metal mags so I used those but I used the internet for this book more than any others. What’s the difference between reading through shelves of books and magazines than searching through a similar amount of websites? I hate the term “cut and paste”. I’m not prejudiced and use a variety of different sources for research material as most rock writers do.

The book contains more than two hundred photographs. How did you go about compiling such an amount of photographs for the book, and also, did seeking permission to use photographs provide you with any initial stumbling blocks?

I didn’t… and most authors don’t. Publishers have photo journalists / researchers for that job. With the Priest and Atkins ones I did provide some photos but it was mostly down to the publishers. They have the final say so. Iron Pages did a great job with the Atkins one, which included lots from Al’s own archive. I think there are some great pics in there. With Linkin Park it was entirely down to Chrome Dreams ditto Bon Jovi. With the Plant one IMP gave me access to some agency photos and we worked together on choosing the right ones for the book. Basically, it depends on which publisher you work with.

Of course, the book discusses each Linkin Park album in detail. With that in mind, I’d like to gain your thoughts and feelings on each Linkin Park studio album. Let’s begin with 2000’s Hybrid Theory, the group’s diamond-certified (by the US’ RIAA) debut. In your opinion, what made Hybrid Theory the best-selling debut of the twenty-first century?

I still think it’s their best album. It was totally unlike anything at the time and still sounds fresh and energetic to this day. There is even a metal sound to interest metal fans and the rapping brought in the rap fans. I don’t really care for rap / hip-hop myself but it works well in Linkin Park’s stuff.

Second studio album Meteora arrived in 2003. In what ways do you feel this built upon Hybrid Theory? Or perhaps you feel it was merely an attempt to replicate the success of the debut?

It has its own merits but it was the band’s attempt at replicating the first album and for that reason it didn’t do to well with critics though it sold a shed load of units. I enjoyed it and still have a listen to it every now and then.

Late 2004 saw the release of Collision Course, a collaborative EP that mashes up the group’s songs with material by Jay-Z. Was this an inspired move, or a great mistake?

In terms of creativity it provided an outlet for the band to experiment more with hip-hop and rap. But it did alienate the metal side of their fan base and the critics were not too keen. I really don’t like it and would never listen to it out of enjoyment.

2007’s Minutes To Midnight was arguably an attempt to change the group’s musical style somewhat. Do you feel a successful transition was made, or that Linkin Park was confused about its identity?

I actually really like Minutes To Midnight. It has a classic rock sound which Rick Rubin obviously brought to the table. It’s got some fantastic melodies and catchy choruses. OK, it may not sound like Hybrid Theory but so what? When they do sound like that they get annihilated for it (i.e. Meteora). You can’t win. It’s good for bands to explore new musical ventures. Those songs on Minutes sound great live too.

All Pen’s Blazing – A Heavy Metal Writer’s Handbook collects sixty-five interviews with prominent metal journalists, and is your first self-published book. Of course, this originated with your official website, which has a section that features interviews with writers. What sparked your interest in the tales of various metal journalists, and subsequently caused you to issue All Pen’s Blazing?

I got the idea from Clive James’ website and thought it would be a nifty idea to do a similar thing but with music writers for my own site. The book was never my intention. I just got the idea from a few writers I’d interviewed. There are only some interviews that appear in the book which were initially included at neildaniels.com so the book is mostly fresh material. There were so many ex Kerrang! and Metal Hammer writers that I wanted to include that the list went on and on. People like Dave Reynolds, Paul Suter, Derek Oliver and Dante Bonutto are legends in the field. It meant the size of the book would be far too big so I had to reduce the size of the text. It’s not that small but some (older) readers have complained. The next one – dubbed All Pens Blazing: A Rock & Heavy Metal Writer’s Handbook Vol II – will have around fifty interviews and normal sized text and with a broader scope of subjects. It’s been getting some great feedback and all the reviews have been positive.

Rock ‘N’ Roll Mercenaries – Interviews With Rock Stars Volume 1 is your second self-published book, and collects some of the rock interviews you’ve done in your career. What prompted you to collect some of the interviews you’ve done in book form, and in this book, who can we expect interviews with?

I suppose they have the tiniest bit of historical significance. I mean, the artists / writers’ have stories to tell and now the internet is taking over the printed word, and books like All Pen’s Blazing and Rock ‘N’ Roll Mercenaries are like historical documents. Well, any excuse is good to produce books in my opinion. OK, this one includes interviews with members of Thunder, Saxon, Annihilator, Journey, Foreigner and Stone Gods et. al., so it’s pretty broad. Forty interviews in total. Plus I’m really getting into print on demand. It’s a great way of getting your books out and they pay for themselves because the costs are relatively small.

And finally, how would you personally summarize Linkin Park’s musical achievements in the music world throughout the noughties? In what ways have they possibly shaped the musical landscape? A press release written to coincide with the book claims Linkin Park are “spoken of in the same breath as Bon Jovi, U2 or Nirvana”.

Well, I didn’t write that press release. They certainly deserve more credit than they’ve been given. I think they have their own distinct sound that was totally different from any of their peers and they’ve shown a thirst for exploring new ideas and changing their own “soundscape”. It baffles me why they’re not as critically applauded. Sure, not everything they have done is great but they deserve more applause and their live shows are truly exhilarating. They’re certainly not a corporate band contrary to popular belief. They’ve had help from record company personnel but they were not created by any label. Lots of bands are derided during the first decade (or two) of their career and then they become hugely popular… take a look at AC/DC. It’s swings and roundabouts.

Late October 2009 saw the paperback release of John Everson’s third novel, namely The 13th. A summer 2009 limited hardcover edition occurred through Necro Publications, its cover featuring an illustration by Travis Anthony Soumis, who had previously illustrated Needles & Sins. Chicago filmmaker John Borowski, director of H. H. Holmes, America’s First Serial Killer (2004) and Albert Fish (2007), cut a trailer for the book. Fourth novel Siren has already been penned, and so the Chicago horror writer has begun work on his fifth tome, titled The Pumpkin Man and tentatively slated for publication through Leisure Books in the first quarter of 2011. Also, a three story e-chapbook provisionally named Creeptych is due to see the light of day through Delirium Books.

To discuss The 13th as well as his forthcoming projects, John Everson was interviewed via email.

What is your third novel The 13th about, and how did the story come to fruition?

The 13th follows David Shale, a biker trying to make the Olympic cycling team, who decamps to his aunt’s for the summer to train on the hilly terrain around her house. When Castle House Lodge, an abandoned resort hotel outside of town re-opens as a private asylum for pregnant women… the summer takes a decidedly dark turn for David. First his girlfriend turns up missing just hours after their first kiss, and then he finds himself investigating the strange goings-on at the new asylum alongside a hot rookie cop. “What lies beyond the door with the red X on it that leads to the basement” is the simplest clue I can give for the core of the story.

Ultimately, I suppose the book was inspired a lot by the Euro-horror and grindhouse films of the seventies. I tend to focus largely on demonic horror devices in my work, and I watched a huge glut of seventies foreign and exploitation films in the year or two leading up to writing The 13th, which has a lot of the tropes of those films interwoven – the dark foreboding abandoned hotel, the mysterious girlfriend, the sinister (?) doctor, the crumbling basement where forbidden rituals have taken place – along with a healthy dose of sex and horror.

A trailer for The 13th was made by Chicago filmmaker John Borowski. How did Borowski’s involvement come about, and what information did he have at hand to ensure the resultant trailer accurately gave a flavour of The 13th?

John and I met when we were guests at the 2009 Chicago Horror Film Festival. The trailers for his documentaries about the serial killers H. H. Holmes and Albert Fish ran at the fest and he got onstage to introduce them… we were talking afterwards and he offered to do a trailer for The 13th… how could I refuse? A few weeks later, while he was reading Covenant, he started filming the trailer. He didn’t read the full text of the book ahead of time, but he had the thirteen-page plot synopsis that I’d sold the book to my publisher with. Rather than try to film a plot-specific trailer, he used some of the images suggested by the plot to create a creepy feeling visual and aural teaser. I think it works really well, and I actually got to get up onstage myself this past weekend at the B-Movie Madness 2 Film Festival in Chicago to introduce the trailer. It played on the big screen right before the midnight movie.

Travis Anthony Soumis illustrated the cover for The 13th’s summer 2009 limited hardcover edition through Necro Publications. Personally, how would you describe Soumis’ cover illustration for the book, and the limited hardcover edition itself?

I’ve said a few times that Travis gave me the “porny” cover and Leisure gave me the “slasher” cover for The 13th. People seem to either like one or the other, but rarely both, which is funny since they’re representing different aspects of the same book. I love Travis’ work; he did the cover art to my short story collection for Necro a couple of years ago, Needles & Sins. I ultimately adopted that artwork (with his permission) to serve as the visual center of my website. With The 13th, he definitely captured the “erotic” part of the book’s “erotic horror” tag. I’m really hoping that he gets to do a small press cover for my next novel, Siren.

You also design book covers yourself, having done designs for Delirium Books in particular. What type of artistic style do you favour, and what do you aim to achieve in handling a design?

I never intended to become a cover artist. My “style”, if you can call it that, is to use photos that (mostly) I have taken, and chop them up in Photoshop and utilize various effects while merging them into hopefully evocative collages. While most bookcovers focus on a singular element, I’ve always gone for more of a kaleidoscope of imagery that hopefully sets a mood in the viewer’s eye, rather than focusing on a specific literal scene of a book.

This design thing all began for me in the early noughties, when Twilight Tales, a Chicago press, issued a “preview” edition of the anthology Freaks, Geeks & Sideshow Floozies, with a cover graphic by a friend of mine, GAK. I had a trilogy of stories in the volume, and when I saw the preview edition, I offered to “tweak” the cover a bit to give it a little more professional treatment – my dayjob at the time was in desktop publishing, and I immediately saw ways where GAK’s art could be framed more appealingly and the back cover layout upgraded. It was obviously a self-serving offer, because I wanted my stories presented in the best possible light, but they said “Sure – here are the files”. It led to me producing a handful of book covers and internal book design layouts for Twilight Tales over the following few years. I later formed my own press, Dark Arts Books, both for more editorial control but also in large part to continue my work on book design – because I found I really enjoyed that aspect. So after a half dozen covers for Twilight Tales and a couple for my own press, Delirium asked me if I wanted to do the cover for my own mini-chapbook for them, Failure. I ended up doing the covers for the entire six-book Delirium chapbook series, and I think a couple of them turned out to be the best covers I’ve done. And at this point, including a cover I did for Bad Moon Books, I’ve had eighteen of my book cover designs published by four different presses. Most of those are online.

You’re also a composer. Could you detail where that has taken you thus far, and what type of outlet does composition provide you with?

With apologies to my wife, music is the love of my life. Whether I’m passively listening or composing, music takes me to a place of true private bliss and always has. I was playing a small organ at four years old and taking formal lessons at five… so you could say I was communicating with music before I could read and write. I wrote pop songs in grade school and played in garage bands in college and afterwards. And I was a newspaper music critic for a Chicago suburban paper for almost twenty years. As a musician, I enjoyed writing and recording songs much more than the pressure of performing live in clubs, so there are a couple of Chicago-area bands that have performed my songs, but mostly I have tons of home studio demos, very few of which have ever been heard by more than a few people.

In the noughties, my music did find a way to interface with my other creative outlet, horror fiction, which was cool. When Michael Laimo asked me to be part of a CD-ROM anthology called Bloodtype, authors were asked to contribute multimedia elements along with their stories. So I wrote and recorded a techno / instrumental “Theme to Bloodtype” that appeared on the disc. I recorded a few instrumental tracks for the publisher’s next CD-ROM release as well, Carnival / Circus, which I didn’t even have a story in. And around the same time, Martin Mundt, a friend of mine, was having a comic “serial killers in love” play produced at a small theater in Chicago, and asked me for some scene music. I ended up scoring several short pieces for that play, which was great fun, and probably drew out of me my best technical composition in the “Jackie Sexknife Theme”, which I’ve used on my MySpace page for the past couple of years. I’m hoping to find the time in the next few weeks to write a theme song for my next novel, Siren, since the text deals so heavily with music.

The August 2009 collection Infernally Yours, a tribute to Edward Lee’s Infernal world, includes your contribution “Then Shall The Reign of Lucifer End”. Could you provide an overview of the story? Also, in what ways did writing a tribute story challenge you as an author, and in what directions did you venture in that you don’t usually venture into?

Writing in Edward Lee’s Infernal world was daunting, because I’m a huge fan – I read his first entry in the series cover to cover in a hammock on the 4^th of July a few years back. So in my mind, nothing that I could do would ever be “worthy”. Nevertheless, I wanted to try, and I am happy with how the story turned out. I think working in the world actually plays to my strengths because I’ve written several stories that take place in hellish afterlife places. In this one, a woman is abused to the point of death… in order to be pushed through a “soft” spot between our world and the Mephistopolis (Lee’s Hell). It’s a ritual designed to impregnate her in hell, because a human conceived in hell will ultimately become the heir to the dark throne.

Debut novel Covenant was originally released in November 2004, and won the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel. How well do you feel the book has aged, and what do you feel it says about where you were at as a writer at that time?

There are probably some elements to the newspaper Joe Kieran works for that don’t ring true any longer, since they were based on my experiences as a reporter twenty years ago – before the dawn of the Internet. But those aren’t really the focus of the story; I think in general it still holds up as a somewhat timeless small town horror yarn of demonic influence and possession. I’m very proud of the book, as it was my first, and took an enormous amount of work and rewriting to get it to see the dark of ink. I haven’t looked at the text myself in a couple of years, but I would hope that my writing style has grown a little more confident and natural in the years since I proved to myself that I could finish a novel. Because the hardest thing about that first book was simply having the confidence to believe that I could finish it.

In writing April 2009’s Sacrifice, your second novel, what new ingredients did you introduce that Covenant didn’t possibly have? And how much did the gap between writing the two books play a part?

Covenant was begun in 1995 and the first draft finished in 2000 (there were months and even years between the periods of active writing). Sacrifice was begun at the end of 2002 and after a two-year break, finished in early 2005. So I think just the fact that there were seven years between the initial plotting of each book had a big impact on their substance, because I was a different person when I began Sacrifice than the kid in his twenties who started Covenant. Likewise, my third novel, The 13th was begun (and finished) in 2008 – so there were six years between the vision of that book and the initial vision of Sacrifice. Most people don’t realize how far apart those novels all are from each other on my personal writing road, because while they encompass a fourteen-year period of writing, they were all released from Leisure within an eighteen-month period. I hope that with each I’ve grown as a writer and gotten better at crafting language and characters. But I have fans that rank each of those novels as their favorite out of my three currently available. So who knows – maybe I’m not getting better, just doing different things?

Since you wrote Covenant, how do you feel your writing has matured and evolved overall?

The biggest change is simply that I trust myself more. In the beginning I was a hobby writer, who wrote when I felt like it, and really didn’t know if I could complete a novel-length project that would hold up. After I did it once, and then twice and found that some people seemed to enjoy what I was doing, I got a little more confident and was able to trust my inner story teller a little more to just… go with it. I also have gotten more structured about setting aside specific time each week to write in order to meet deadlines… because it’s no longer simply a Sunday hobby, but a business with contractual deadlines to meet.

You tour to support your books quite often, though increasingly, more and more bookstores are being earmarked for closure. How much of an impact does the closure of bookstores affect an author like yourself, and independent publishers like Dark Arts?

The book business is tough all over. The closure of independent bookstores has hurt the distribution of my press, Dark Arts, because we are self-distributed, which means every handful of books we sell is important. And over the past two years stores have been buying fewer copies and three stores we used to distribute through closed, which amounted to thirty to forty fewer copies of our titles getting out there. When your initial print runs are in the two hundred to two hundred and fifty neighborhood, forty books is significant. That same thing plays out on the larger level as well. The large chain stores are stocking fewer of each midlist title than they did two years ago when Covenant came out. Which means as a relatively unknown writer, it’s more difficult to stand out on the shelf in Borders or Barnes & Noble to attract impulse buy readers and gain new fans. Because in the end, people buy what they see, and if they don’t see you…. well… only the die-hard horror fanatics seek out authors. But to sell tens of thousands of books, you have to expand your reach to a much broader audience. That’s why I’ve done so many bookstore appearances over the past two years – basically a couple dozen per title. Every time I sit in a bookstore for three hours, I entice anywhere from a handful to a couple dozen bookstore browsers to try my novels. Hopefully, some of them will become fans and recruit others to look for my work as well. It’s all about making introductions…

You began writing your fourth novel Siren on February 2^nd 2009, finishing it on August 3^rd, and it chronicles the story of Evan, a man extremely afraid of water. In terms of the book’s plot, what else can you reveal?

The horrible center of Siren is that Evan couldn’t save his own son from drowning because of his aquaphobia. That accidental death has left him and his wife living a steadily descending existence… Every night Evan walks the beach on the edge of the ocean, a veritable treading of the line between life and death for him. And when he hears the song of a beautiful nude woman on the rocks near the beach, he soon finds all of his fears and everything he holds dear challenged.

You remarked that Siren is your “most personal novel to date”. In what ways is that so?

The story was inspired in part by my fears as a new father – of losing my son to some horrible, uncontrollable accident. I couldn’t have written the book when I wrote Covenant or Sacrifice, because I didn’t have any experience with those heart-crushing fears. The irony is that in terms of trying to draw similarities between the characters and my own life, I actually love to swim and it’s my son who has turned out over the past year to be really afraid of the water. But I didn’t really know that about him when I began the book.

You’re currently finishing a three story e-chapbook for Delirium Books. What can you reveal about these three stories, as well as other future projects in the works?

The chapbook is tentatively titled Creeptych, and involves three stories that are connected only in the sense that bugs are at their core. Two of them were stories previously accepted by venues which folded. “Bad Day” was written for a zombie anthology called Aim for the Head which never happened, and “Eardrum Buzz” is a music-related horror tale that had sold to Red Scream Magazine, which subsequently folded without publishing the story. I’ve just written “Violet Lagoon”, a novelette, to complete the collection. That piece is based on the prologue for a novel I’m hoping to write in the future called Violet Eyes. The novelette has a Blue Lagoon motif going on with two lascivious co-ed couples and bugs – legions of strange spiders and flies – lots of bugs.

As far as other projects, I just finished a story for Necro Publications’ Into the Darkness anthology, and I contracted in January with Leisure Books for my fifth novel, The Pumpkin Man, which will likely be out in the first quarter of 2011. I started work on the novel in January and my “free” time will be focused largely on completing that book over the next four to five months. It draws its inspiration in part from a story of the same name that I published in Doorways Magazine a couple of years ago, and weaves in elements of urban legend, ouija boards, witchery and, of course, the oil that fuels so much of my horror: sex and blood.

Books which feature Galbraith’s photos include Sabbath Bloody Sabbath: The Battle for Black Sabbath (August 2006, Zonda Books) and Thrash Metal (October 2007, Zonda Books), both by Garry-Sharpe Young, Judas Priest: Heavy Metal Painkillers – An Illustrated History (December 2007, ECW Press), Blue Öyster Cult: Secrets Revealed! (revised edition) and the Ye Olde Metal book series (Power Chord Press), all by Martin Popoff, and Touched By Magic: The Tommy Bolin Story (self-published, Lulu.com) by Greg Prato.

The man’s first book, Richard Galbraith Photography Presents KISS was self-published in October 2009 through Lulu.com. A photography book as the name implies, the tome features photos from almost every major concert KISS performed in Oklahoma from 1976 to 1986. Each set of concert photographs include an introduction, and each introduction is based on information given to Greg Prato. Roughly seventeen of Galbraith’s KISS photos were included in Kiss Army Worldwide: The Ultimate Fanzine Phenomenon, written by Ken Sharp and bassist Gene Simmons, and also published in October 2009, but through Phoenix Books. To discuss Richard Galbraith Photography Presents KISS, Richard Galbraith was interviewed via email.

Your father worked in the air force, and sent you a 35mm fixed lens camera. What are your memories of that initial camera, and the initial gigs that you photographed?

While my father was overseas he had sent a Nikon fixed mount lens camera which had a 50mm lens, which was really a decent camera. I just had no clue as to what the settings meant, and had I known that 125^th or 1 / 60 were needed to stop the action I may have had better results. I guess I was around thirteen when I saw Bloodrock and Grand Funk Railroad in Oklahoma City, but I ended up with some far away blurs… The show did blow me away since it was my first major concert – the airbase here took an old school bus down to Oklahoma City which is around a hundred miles away. My next concert was Alice Cooper around 1972 I think; I was closer but still did not have great results. Later on I shot some of the early Queen and Bad Company concerts around 1974 I guess but really could have used a telephoto lens. So I did trade that camera in for a Minolta SRT 101 and a Vivitar 70-210 zoom lens. My first concert with that lens was in Kansas City, 1974 with Manfred Mann and Uriah Heep, and the following day a three day outdoor concert in Sedalia Mo. where Aerosmith played.

Richard Galbraith Photography Presents KISS was self-published through Lulu.com in October 2009. How did the project come to fruition, and what motivated you to go ahead with the project itself?

I always thought it would be cool to have a book with some of my photos but never really could see it happening. Besides, after seeing all the pros’ books I felt I could not really compete with all the other books out there. But after lending out a few photos for a few of Greg Prato’s books, Greg mentioned trying to do a KISS book of my photos, which I kind of put off at first until I sent enough samples his way to see if I had enough decent shots to pull it off. There were several tours I really didn’t have much on so I was not sure if it would be worthwhile.

Having now taken the plunge into self-publishing, and having first hand experience with it, can you share your feelings on the self-publishing route, and your experiences of it?

Self-publishing costs much more to do, or in the case of Lulu is printed on demand as each book is sold, so I was really worried about the cost and what each book would have to sell for so I knew the sales would be much more limited considering the economy. But it would have been nice to print off several hundred to get the price down.

Each set of concert photographs include an introduction, and each introduction is based on material you gave to journalist Greg Prato. How did Greg become involved, and how did you come to contribute photographs to his December 2008 book Touched By Magic: The Tommy Bolin Story?

After we figured out the concert dates Greg asked me to tell a little about each show that I had shot. Some shows were a bit more interesting and then some of the others I didn’t have passes for and just shot from wherever I could so there was not really much of a story.

But for The Tommy Bolin Story my name was passed down by a few hardcore Tommy Bolin collectors. I think but I also had known Johnnie Bolin since ʻ81 when I went to see him in the band DVC in Oklahoma City to give him a picture of Tommy and Glenn. We had lost touch over the years and by a twist of fate a woman in New York saw one of my Tommy Bolin pictures on MySpace and she happened to have his cell phone number so we were back in touch and soon after Johnnie was back in Enid with Black Oak – they had played the same club twenty years ago.

Sorry for getting off track, but I guess my name came up and I was put in touch with Greg. Martin Popoff had also emailed that same week and needed some pictures for his Deep Purple book (Gettin´ Tighter – Deep Purple 1968-1976). Also in the works was a CD reissue with the Deep Purple Appreciation Society in the UK for a Deep Purple CD, so it was a busy time for Deep Purple photos.

You attended your first KISS concert on March 4^th, 1976 at the Oklahoma Civic in Oklahoma City, photographing the band four days later on March 8th at the Tulsa Assembly Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Given KISS’ stellar live reputation, did they live up to your live expectations? That day, you apparently met members of the band without realising…

KISS blew me away – it was a great show. I always loved the bigger than life shows like with Alice Cooper. I think the March 4^th show was a last moment fill in date, but we went down and were standing by the back door hoping to meet the band. We met a woman that was with the lighting or sound guy and she needed a ride to the mall. We didn’t want to leave but then she offered a few backstage passes. When we got back we were told the band was not there yet, but as I mentioned in the book this guy in stacks and a shirt that says Simmons came up and talked with us so we told him how we got our passes, and then there was a guy surrounded by road cases playing the guitar. This is also the same show that had a bluegrass band open, Mountain Smoke – years later I found out that was the band that Vince Gill was in. But it was after the Tulsa show where we went out back afterwards and saw those same guys getting in the limo, and some were dressed up in suits from what I remember. We figured they had the roadies trying to throw everyone off, but part way home it hit us… guess we were a bit slow back then. But yes KISS lived up to everything you read about them or saw on TV… Killer shows…

On January 6^th, 1977, you were finally able to shoot KISS from the photopit, but Peter Criss was struck with a toilet roll while singing “Beth” (from 1976’s Destroyer). How different was it being able to shoot KISS from the photopit, and did the toilet roll incident spoil the occasion for you a little?

On this show I actually had front row tickets so I was able to shoot the whole show. I still had to shoot around people in the pit and the monitors but it makes a lot of difference when you can pace yourself and shoot the whole show. Back then I shot Ektachrome slide film and black and white so I was limited to how much film I could afford. But the show was going great and then someone nailed Peter Criss with a full roll of toilet paper. From what I remember he stood up and said “Fuck you assholes, fuck you”. Gene walked over and they talked and that was the end of the show, so I lost out on perhaps another three or four encore songs which really sucked since it was one of the few times I had a great seat for KISS.

At the October 17^th, 1979 show at the Lloyd Noble Center in Norman, Oklahoma, unfortunately, a local photographer gave you a false backstage pass after the show. When you found out, how did you feel? And looking back, do you have a laugh about that in hindsight?

One of the shows where I didn’t have a pass. I saw a friend giving out passes after the show and you know it’s mainly for the women to get backstage, but he had some others and the one I got had poser on it which is really an insult, but at the time didn’t really know what the different passes meant. Guess it was like walking around with a sign that said loser on it… But after having been backstage or having passes for other shows it was a letdown or insult I guess.

And on October 29^th, 1979 at the Tulsa Assembly Center, you photographed KISS from the photopit, and actually met bassist Gene Simmons and rhythm guitarist / vocalist Paul Stanley backstage. What memories do you have of that backstage meeting?

I guess this was the show where I got to shoot a few songs from the pit then you have to go out front. I was backstage before the show sitting on a road case and Gene came over and talked with me for around ten minutes. He had his blood mixture warming up nearby so we talked about that as well, but I did ask if he could help me get a better pass to shoot the whole show. Gene kind of mentioned he was just the bass player and that there was a staff that took care of that end of the business, but it was worth a try. I think this was the show where I gave Gene a photograph from 1976 of him blowing fire, a mirror image shot I created in the darkroom… which would crop up many years later… 2009.

In the eighties, you photographed KISS on March 21^st, 1983 at the Lloyd Noble Center, and on February 22^nd, 1986 at the Expo Square Pavillion in Tulsa, Oklahoma. However, original members Peter Criss (drums) and Ace Frehley (guitars) weren’t a part of the fold on these occasions. In what ways did the live energy differ as a result?

I thought it was a still a great show in ʻ83 although a lot of fans had left and the crowds were not there like they once were. Wendy O Williams / Plasmatics had opened the show and I felt it went well but I guess we always feel more loyal to the originals. KISS always puts on a great show or at least the times I got to see them and you do wish everyone would stay this one big happy family and play on forever so I try not to hold it against new members that have a tough job stepping in…

Also, KISS didn’t wear any makeup for the 1986 show. Do you feel that KISS’ decision not to wear makeup during live shows for over a decade was a great decision, or do you feel that it was a poor decision?

Looking back it’s hard to say. Perhaps with fans not being what they used to it was an effort to bring in a new fanbase perhaps and get the KISS buzz going again or perhaps there was pressure to prove themselves as players without the makeup I guess to fit in more with the eighties glam rock scene. In 1986 I had gone to visit a friend in LA that happened to know Mark St John, so we got to talk some during my time there. My last night in LA he came over to the apartment so I got to hear more about his time in KISS which was interesting…

Other journalists who’ve used your photographs in their books are Martin Popoff and Garry Sharpe-Young, your photographs particularly appearing in Popoff’s Ye Olde Metal series. How did those contributions come to fruition, and what are your thoughts on the final products?

I just bought a film scanner a little over three years ago and had been trying to learn how the thing worked, and after buying a used Gary Moore CD I saw Bob Daisley’s name on it which brought back some memories. I met Bob back in ʻ78 while in Rainbow but had seen him the year before in Widowmaker – we met up again when he was with Ozzy Osbourne in the eighties. I decided to look up Bob and heard back the next day. I ended up scanning in some more images of Bob to send to his website at bobdaisley.com and not long after I had an email from Garry Sharpe-Young about a photo credit for a book on Black Sabbath. Anyways, I emailed back since it was the first I had heard about the project. This was a week before the book was going to press, and I mentioned I had a lot more Black Sabbath related images. So I had a crash course on learning my scanner and getting the correct sizes for the book, but ended up with over thirty images in the Sabbath book. The original version I thought looked really nice, but with the second version I felt the photographs did not print off as well – it was a print on demand…

Later on I met Rob Dwyer who is a huge Black Sabbath collector and fan, and at some point he mentioned Martin Popoff. I had emailed back asking who he was, and I think six months later I heard back, so I went to Martin’s site and ended up emailing saying too bad that I had not met him sooner. Well this led to a possible Judas Priest book project he had in the works (2007’s Judas Priest: Heavy Metal Painkillers – An Illustrated History), and Martin also mentioned his Ye Olde Metal idea, so I started scanning images in for those and ended up making the cover shots along with a lot of the inside photos. Those are self-published books which are meant more for reading, so the photos are more of an added bonus I guess. Besides Martin’s Ye Olde Metal series I had pictures in the Judas Priest, Deep Purple (2008’s Gettin’ Tighter: Deep Purple ʻ68-76), and revised Blue Öyster Cult: Secrets Revealed! books. I thought all the projects were cool, but of course the major publishers with a larger budget would perhaps have better results on the photo side of things.

Several of your KISS photographs appeared in the official KISS book KISS Army Worldwide!: The Ultimate Fanzine Phenomenon, published in October 2009, and written by Ken Sharp and Gene Simmons. Could you provide further information on that?

This is where that picture I gave to Gene blowing fire in the eighties comes back into play. One night I got a call from writer Ken Sharp, who had been at Gene’s house that day looking through folders of old photographs and came across my shot. Considering that Gene and Ken must have seen thousands of fire blowing shots over the years I took as a great honor that my shot stood out, perhaps mainly because it was a mirror image. I remember that was a pain to create in the darkroom back then – now you can do the same thing on the computer in minutes. So I gave them permission to use the image and soon after decided to let them use some others if they wanted. I was really happy with the quality of that book and how nice my photographs turned out. I ended up with around seventeen images being used, and several full page shots and the rest being two thirds and a half page images. Metal Hammer recently used one of my shots of Gene for a poster in their UK version of the magazine which was kind of cool.

What future projects do you have in the works? Can we expect future editions of Richard Galbraith Presents?

I guess I have been in thirteen books so far and a fourteenth on the way – a shot of Cains Ballroom in Tulsa will be in a book on ballrooms and county dancing. So perhaps not too bad for a guy from a small town in Oklahoma that has not shot a show in years… Besides the recent Deep Purple and Angel CD reissue and various magazines the past year it has been quite a ride recently to have so many images used.

For new projects I don’t have anything in the works in the way of my own book, but I did have an email about a film in the works and needing some stills for that and also trying to get some pictures cleaned up to send to someone else for a possible book project in the works but it’s still under wraps so I can’t mention any names… It would be nice to do another self-published book in the future but I would rather it be one where I could get several hundred copies printed at one time to get the price down. I still feel that the print on demand photo books run a bit high to do but just didn’t have the funding to print several hundred at a time. So it looks like my KISS photo book will be more of an item for the hardcore KISS collector. I would have loved to have had a book about twice the size and twice as many photos along with passes and tickets. So I guess I will see what happens…