 |
| Craig DiLouie har kommit för att stanna |
Swedish Zombie: Hi Craig and welcome to Sweden in the virtual world! I recently interviewed your colleague Kim Paffenroth here on swedishzombie.com and it turned out he knew a lot about Swedish cuisine. What comes to your mind if I say 'Sweden'?
Craig DiLouie: I’m well versed in all of the Swedish stereotypes and icons—socialism, long life span, low murder rate, happy people, Volvo, ABBA, Swedish meatballs, IKEA, beautiful women. I haven’t had the pleasure of visiting, but it has always struck me as a great country.
Swedish Zombie: I have previously rightly praised your novel Tooth and Nail in a review. It contains many of the traditional genre elements as an infection, people who are dangerous and remain to be very dangerous even after death, and the collapse of society. Your contribution to the genre is a bit unusual in many ways, including that the story is centered on an infantry battalion that get into trouble home in the United States. What were your thoughts on the very concept of the novel?
I wanted to write something different. First, I wanted the story to focus on what happened to the military during the apocalypse. Second, I wanted it to be as realistic as possible. And third, I wanted the people to have realistic reactions to what was happening to them. The result is a much more tense, much more dramatic, much more believable story, with all of the prerequisite violence and gore that horror fans demand. The fact is these soldiers would be bewildered and terrified, the cities they fight in would quickly become toxic sewers without electricity or water, and as long as they were supplied and the communications and command structure held out, they would continue to follow orders and do the best they could do to protect civilians and destroy the threat.
Swedish Zombie: You depict the individual soldier with a large dose of empathy, but the war effort fails completely. I cannot help but make comparisons with, for example, the war in Iraq. Am I doing wrong by this?
Craig DiLouie: Whatever you think about the Iraq War, many soldiers believe, deep down, that they are fighting to defend their homes, families and way of life. They believe that when the fighting is over that they can come home to a safe place. The zombie apocalypse turns this concept on its head. It turns out for these soldiers that America is far more dangerous than any war zone they could have imagined, and that they must now shoot down the very people they swore an oath to defend—people who are now fighting them, armed only with tooth and nail, in a war of total extermination.
This takes an incredible toll on the soldiers. The soldiers are trained to fight insurgents but the tactics and thinking required to fight zombies is entirely different than everything they know. Many soldiers get post traumatic stress order from killing just one, two, three people; imagine killing dozens, scores, even hundreds. The soldiers are “fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here” and yet their country is collapsing, and they are far away from their families and cannot help them. These and many other issues crop up in Tooth and Nail, presenting additional conflict.
Swedish Zombie: You write in a genre that is about entertainment, but like all good entertainment it is a result of reality and real-world conditions. Your country has in recent year’s endured major trauma like 9 / 11. What kind of reactions did you get from your fellow citizens? Have you received feedback from actual soldiers?
The feedback on both of my zombie novels has been incredibly positive and humbling. Both Tooth and Nail and my next zombie novel, The Infection (www.infectednation.com), have received fantastic reviews. The most gratifying feedback I’ve received to date, however, has been from soldiers who enjoyed the book and thought I was a veteran. I made a serious commitment to try to make Tooth and Nail as realistic as possible, and the fact that actual servicemen see it as realistic and compelling is again extremely gratifying.
Swedish Zombie: I have read about you on the internet and discovered that you have used the Internet to do research for Tooth and Nail in a very creative way. Among other things, you have used YouTube. Can you tell a little about it for your Swedish readers?
Craig DiLouie: Again, it was extremely important to me to make the story as realistic as possible. As a result, I read military manuals covering everything from radio protocols to bayonet fighting, vetted the story with a veteran of the 101st Airborne, conducted tons of online research, and watched endless YouTube videos to get the look and sound of certain weapons right.
For the Infection, I did a ton of research as well. I learned the basics of driving and operating the weapons system for a Bradley fighting vehicle, how to clear the jam in an M4 carbine, blow a six-lane bridge, survive in a refugee camp, and more. I drove from Pittsburgh to eastern Ohio and back in the virtual world of Google maps, studied how emergency generators work, and watched YouTube videos showing what it is like to sit inside a Bradley, what its cannon sounds like, and so on.
Swedish Zombie: Your zombies / infected are more reminiscent of those infected in the movies 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later than those classic zombies in Romero pictures. What are your thoughts on and approach to the godfather George Romero?
Craig DiLouie: As creators of The Night of the Living Dead, George Romero and John Russo did so much to define the genre that they are naturally a strong influence on any horror author writing about zombies. However, fiction genres should innovate or risk going stale. That’s how we end up with living zombies (28 Days Later), fast zombies (Dawn of the Dead remake), and zombie comedies (Shaun of the Dead). Even Romero himself innovated to an extent by making The Crazies, a film about a virus that makes people violently insane. My books feature fast (they run like ordinary people), living zombies compelled to spread their virus violently through biting.
Some people get upset about living, fast zombies but to me they’re so much scarier than the traditional slow, shambling type, which you could evade simply by walking away quickly. I never could believe that slow zombies could result in the rapid collapse of society. But again, that’s just me. Some people also get upset about zombies being alive and don’t think they’re zombies at all, but I do; I define a zombie as any person turned into a mindless automaton.
As a vibrant, growing genre, there’s plenty of room for all tastes. As for me, I like them all—fast, slow, living, dead—as long as it’s a good story. As long as the conflicts are realistic, the setting is richly imagined, and the characters are people I care about, I want to read it.
Swedish Zombie: One of the things I really like about Tooth and Nail is the fluency in the story. It feels like it just flowed out of you. It is is very factual novel, but without that the text actually is loaded with details about the weapons and ammunition. How does it work when you write? Do you delete and edit much or it is becoming good from the start?
Craig DiLouie: I wrote Tooth and Nail in just six months. For each chapter, I ran through the scenes fairly quickly, and then went back for a rewrite. After that, only polishing. All of this was integrated with a process of researching things I needed to know upfront and on the fly.
Craig DiLouie: As the world ends, five ordinary people must pay the price of survival. That, in a nutshell, is The Infection. I enjoyed writing Tooth and Nail to tell the military’s story during the zombie apocalypse. It’s got tons of action, tactics and protocol, and features more of an ensemble case, with the military itself—and the Infected—being the main characters. For The Infection, I wanted to get much deeper into the psychology of survival and the toll this takes on people. I was fascinated with the idea that these people would be trapped on the razor’s edge of survival, unwilling to die, but also unable to truly live again even if things were to magically return to normal. While the zombies in the story, in a sense, are the living dead, the survivors are, in another sense, the dead living. The Infection also features monsters that appear alongside Infection, and which raise the stakes for the human race.
Swedish Zombie: I am certainly not the only one making a comparison with Stephen King's The Mist. You move across the boundaries of genre and succeed very well in making your voice heard, I think. But which were your intentions with this novel? It contains elements that challenge zombie puritans as me and readers of this blog.
Craig DiLouie: While writing The Infection, I finished a scene in which two characters gun down a small crowd of zombies in a hospital corridor, and I thought what now? Is this it—they’re constantly going to shoot zombies for the rest of the novel? I felt the urge to raise the stakes. By introducing monsters into the narrative, I was able to escalate the tension for the rest of the book because you never knew what was going to come at you next, and it increases the terror for the characters in that world. I knew it was a risk but decided to go with it, as I enjoyed the result that the story becomes unpredictable.
Swedish Zombie: One thing I find peculiar in your stories is how you certainly describes individual human courage, but the community is always at the center and is a prerequisite for survival. Here I find much in common with George Romero. How about that?
Craig DiLouie: During an apocalyptic event, people would be much more likely to collaborate to survive. Many apocalyptic stories focus on the individual versus the group, and how the group is governed. Typically, in survival situations, people tend to rally around strong leaders. Different groups would compete if resources were scarce or more likely cooperate if abundant and they meshed well.
For the purposes of my storytelling, I don’t believe that my stories deserve a “hero”—a single person who constantly gives of himself to help and rescue the others in his or her group. Heroes would probably die pretty quickly as simply a matter of probability—you take big chances on a long enough timeline, and you will probably lose. So my stories are always about people working together with complementary strengths, which is to me simply more realistic than a single action hero.
Swedish Zombie: In your last two novels, you take the war home to America. Is it merely a narrative device to create tension or do you have other, deeper intentions with your invention?
Craig DiLouie: Zombie apocalypse is, by definition, civil war. The war in Tooth and Nail is fought not for money, or land, or religion, or power, but for the dominance of one species (in this case, a virus) over another in the food chain. It is a war of unlimited spectrum, a total war, a war without mercy, a war to the death. The idea of a modern military fighting against its own people in a war like that was a concept I found deeply fascinating and packed with conflict. I also liked the idea of these soldiers being battle-hardened; they have seen the horrors of war, but nothing has quite prepared them for what they will encounter during the zombie apocalypse.
Swedish Zombie: Two of the strongest protagonists in The Infection are female. Swedish Zombie is not a political blog but cannot avoid noticing that you appear to be an equal writer without old prejudices about gender or race. Is it deliberately or perhaps just a result of the fact that it works well with strong women in the zombie genre, such as Alice in the Resident Evil series?
In the case of incorporating strong women into The Infection, besides the fact that I simply wanted to have a decent variety of characters, it is a simple fact that women have proven themselves to be very strong in survival situations.
Some are highly trained for and have a special responsibility in such situations; in The Infection, for example, Wendy is a cop. As a result, she has an automatic advantage over the average man in that she has access to weapons, is proficient in their use, has the badge of authority, and is specially trained in survival and combat.
Some women, like some men, will do anything to protect their family. In The Infection, for example, Anne's family is slaughtered and she commits herself to killing as many Infected as she can. Not to kill the people, but hurt the virus controlling them. If the virus is a tiny Moby Dick, she is the story's Captain Ahab, fearless, lethal and obsessed with defeating Infection.
And some women, again like some men, are strong simply because have a strong personality; in Tooth and Nail, for example, Dr. Valeriya Petrova is a scientist fighting to survive against impossible odds as Infection races across the staff members of her laboratory. Like Anne in The Infection, Petrova is simply a strong person, unwilling to give up.
Swedish Zombie: You describe with a sure hand military operations and violence and death. But in The Infection there are also elements of physical attraction and sexual tension. How was it to make the jump from the pool of blood to the erotic realm?
Craig DiLouie: As a writer, I incorporate elements into the plot that make sense as needed—conflict, combat, attraction, sex—and try to do the best job I can do with each of these elements. I don’t particularly enjoy writing one type of scene over another—to me, it’s all part of the book.
Swedish Zombie: You have previously written novels in other genres and are very productive on many fronts, for example, in articles on diverse subjects.. I personally appreciate the diversity and that a good writer does not necessarily stick to one genre over a lifetime. What authors and books have influenced you the most or have meaning for you?
Craig DiLouie: My day job has always been as a technical writer in the electrical industry. The great thing about being a professional writer is it forces you to write every day. Instead of writing your fiction only when driven to by the Muse, you write every day because it is your craft. Even when I am not writing, I am working on my current novel—thinking about it, taking notes, imagining scenes and snatches of narrative.
Swedish Zombie: What can we expect from the author Craig DiLouie in the future to come? What would you like to write? What are your ambitions?
Craig DiLouie: The horror genre has been so productive and welcoming that my intention is to continue writing horror books as long as people will read them.
Swedish Zombie: The Infection is like made for a sequel and I have read up on gossip about it. Is it true and when will it be released in such cases?
Craig DiLouie: The gossip is true--there is a sequel in the works, tentatively titled The Killing Floor, which will be released by Permuted Press in late 2011 or early 2012. The Infection's story arc focuses on several people trying to survive long enough to reach sanctuary, only to find they are so damaged that they would rather live on the road. The Killing Floor has a much tighter story arc, with much higher stakes for the human race. It's even darker than The Infection, if that's possible.
Swedish Zombie: Lastly but no less important: thank you for taking the time to answer my questions and I look forward to read more great novels written by you. Is there a chance that we zombie enthusiasts can keep you in the genre?
Craig DiLouie: I’ll be here for a long, long time.
Thank you for the interview and the opportunity to share these thoughts with your readers! If they’d like to learn more about my fiction, they should visit www.craigdilouie.com.
Läs även andra bloggares åsikter om Craig DiLouie, författarintervju, Tooth and Nail, The Infection, apokalyps, monster, zombier, swedishzombie.com
0 Kommentarer:
Skicka en kommentar