Intervju med Robert Swartwood

Robert Swartwood

Robert Swartwood (född 1981) bor i Pennsylvania med  hustru och ett antal marsvin och sköldpaddor. Han har publicerat ett stort antal titlar inom olika genrer. För skräckfantasten kan det vara intressant att veta att Swartwood medverkat i t.ex. ChiZine, Postscripts, Space and Time, and Best New Zombie Tales, Vol. 1. Bland hans senare titlar bör nämnas romanerna The Calling , The Dishonored Dead och The Serial Killer’s Wife Besök gärna www.robertswartwood.com för bibliografi och mer information.

Swedish Zombie: The authors I interview here on swedishzombie.com must first say a few words about what they know about Sweden. What do you know about my small country, Robert?

Robert Swartwood: Stieg Larsson, Stieg Larsson, Stieg Larsson.

Swedish Zombie: You write in different genres, which I see as an advantage when you as author constantly expose yourself to stylistic and thematic challenges. How do you see upon your fiction writing?

Robert Swartwood: I don’t like to be restricted as a writer, so dipping my toe in various genres can be refreshing. I grew up in the horror genre, reading Stephen King, and so I wanted to be a horror writer. And some of my earlier work could be considered as horror. But I had other work that wasn’t really horror. And I remember one time a writer friend of mine sat me down and said, ”You know, you’re not really a horror writer.” At the time, I was somewhat offended, but then I realized that my friend was right and that me not being a horror writer was a good thing. What I am, first and foremost, is a storyteller. I don’t try to cram certain characters into certain situations just so my work can be considered one genre or the other. As trite as it sounds, I try to let the stories tell themselves.

Swedish Zombie: What is your relationship to horror fiction in general and zombies in particular? What has influenced you and what drives you to contribute to the genre?

Robert Swartwood: Again, I grew up reading Stephen King. Actually, no. I grew up reading a lot of stuff – namely The Hardy Boys series – and then in middle school I started reading Michael Crichton. But it wasn’t until I started reading King did I realize I wanted to be a writer. In terms of horror, I believe that true horror is more of an emotion or state of mind than just a genre. When people think of zombies or vampires or ghosts, they immediately want to lump them into the ”horror” genre. And while that’s all well and good, I think that true horror is that … well, emotional dread given to the reader that isn’t very easy to do. People think that if you have a lot of killing and blood, that’s horror. But it’s a sad truth that most everybody nowdays has become desensitzed. What really gives readers the creeps – at least for me – is that unknown factor. I don’t want to actually see the monster; I want to hear it coming, I want to see its shadow growing along the wall. The same applies to zombies. I don’t care much for the usual gore that’s contained in most zombie fiction. Oftentimes, it’s the same thing, again and again. What makes those stories interesting are the human characters dealing with the zombies, but then again, those types of stories become redundant too. For me, I love thinking outside the box, and that was my main interest in writing The Dishonored Dead; I wanted to do something within the zombie genre that had never been done before.

Swedish Zombie: In the novel The Dishonored Dead and short stories In the Land of the Blind and The Hunter * you tell about a world where the dead have won and the living are treated as pests. But it is not just a story with action and violence. There are both sadness but also hope in the text. What are your thoughts on the inhabitants of the city of Olympus and the world you created?

Robert Swartwood: The dead in the novel and stories are simply a product of their envirnoment. From the moment they are animated, they are taught that the living are disgusting and vile creatures that don’t deserve to live. One review made the statement that the novel was more a political novel that just happened to feature zombies, and in many ways this is true. In fact, I would even go so far as to call the novel allegorical. There’s definitely a social commentary going on. The antagonist in the novel, Philip, absolutely hates the living and will do whatever it takes to kill all of them. But what I find interesting about him (and why I wanted to delve back more into his backstory in ”The Hunter”) is that, in Philip’s mind, he is not bad. Of course, many bad guys never believe that what they’re doing is wrong, but for Philip, he’s just going along with what he was always taught, and so in many ways he is doing the right thing.

Swedish Zombie: You combine the apocalypse with everyday drama in The Dishonored Dead. The world threatens to crack and in Conrad´s home, the mood is somewhat gloomy at times. I like how you handle the psychological aspects of the story but wonder where you as a writer get inspirations from?

Robert Swartwood: It’s probably best I go way back to the very beginning before the novel was even dreamed up. It all started with the story idea of a boy who hears this strange music coming from somewhere in his backyard. And then, when I sat down to actually write the story, that changed to this first line: “Like everyone else he knew, Steven’s heart did not beat.” And the story that grew from there — “In the Land of the Blind” — was a world where the majority of people were dead but the world still had some life left in it, and of course that life was a threat to the dead and needed to be destroyed. That story won one of the ChiZine short story contests. Later, after it was published, a friend told me his wife had read the story and loved it but said she wished it was longer. At the time I said something along the lines that I didn’t think I was ever going to expand the story, but, as is often the case with us writers, the story stayed with me and I wondered what might happen if I tried to tell a longer story from one of the zombie hunters’ point of view.

Swedish Zombie: If one analyze your novel he or she will find references to many things in literary history. Personally, I find myself including George Orwell. In addition to the dead´s taste for Greek mythology there is a story that reminds of Cain and Abel. I am thinking of Conrad and Philip. How much of your story is conscious paraphrase and how much depends on chance?

Robert Swartwood: I don’t outline my novels, but I think about them for awhile before I actually sit down and start to write, so I usually know where the novel is headed. That doesn’t mean that sometimes surprises don’t come out of nowhere. In fact, when I decided to write a longer story in the universe of ”In the Land of the Blind”, I figured it would be nothing more than a novella. But then as I started writing it, a character appeared out of nowhere, a very minor character that was nothing more than stage decoration. While the protagonist and another character were leaving a building, they passed a janitor. Why there had to be a janitor there, I had no idea, but the janitor appeared in my head and so I placed him there. And it wasn’t until a few chapters later did the real reason for the janitor’s appearance become apparent, and suddenly what had only been a novella-length work turned into a full-blown novel. For me, it’s those moments that make writing so exciting.

Swedish Zombie: Personally I enjoyed the element of how the dead are worried about their children when they turn 10-11 years. But I had a hard time with the Pandora´s, although I understand and appreciate the symbolism and also understand its function in the story. How much of what you write must have a logical explanation and how much do you think belongs to the genre that you just accept?

Robert Swartwood: In the original published version of ”In the Land of the Blind” back in 2004, the Pandoras were not even called Pandoras. They were just these … metal boxes buried in the ground. Why metal? Who knows. But when I wrote the novel, I realized that those metal boxes would play a major factor and so I wanted to give them a name and Pandoras seemed perfect. It wasn’t until my agent read the novel that the idea came up to tweak the Pandoras a bit. He said they just didn’t mesh well with the overall story, these metal boxes in the ground, and he was right. It was my wife’s idea then to make the Pandoras more … organic, so to speak, and once that idea came up everything seemed to come together. You have to assume that readers of speculative fiction go into books like these prepared to suspend belief, but there’s only so much suspension of belief many readers can take. For the Pandoras, I knew it was essential to make them logical in the universe of the novel. In our world something like a Pandora might be too far-fetched, but in the world of The Dishonored Dead, they make sense. Or so I’d like to think.

Swedish Zombie: You mix various genres. Horror, Sci-fi, fantasy, adventure. I have often difficulties to categorize zombie novels as they can be so different. If you had to sort The Dishonored Dead in a compartment, where would you place it?

Robert Swartwood: This is tough. Like I mentioned before, I just like to think of myself as a storyteller and not worry about genre. I think when writers worry too much about genre, they begin to restrict themselves and force stories in ways those stories sometimes don’t want to be forced. When I initially sent out queries to agents for this novel, I called it a literary thriller. But it’s not really ”literary,” whatever that means. It is, however, a thriller, and I think that’s the easiest way to describe it.

Swedish Zombie: Your writing has been published in both anthologies and magazines, and you self-publish your work as e-books. How is the situation for a writer in the U.S. in this genre? I ask because in Sweden there are not many established horror writers, and there are some titles published by independent publishers, but the situation is quite different that in the U.S., with publishers like Permuted Press, Creeping Hemlock Press, Night Shade Books, and so on.

Robert Swartwood: There are definitely a lot of options for writers right now in the U.S. It seems like every week a new small press publisher pops up. And while publishers can be great, recently I’ve been leaning more and more towards bypassing them completely, which I actually have been doing with several novels so far. These are books my agents and I had tried selling to major publishers and which always came close but then were put away ”to come back to at some point,” as was always said on the chance I eventually did have a book deal in place. Before, the major reason to sign with a publisher was because publishers could get you into bookstores and, hence, to the readers. But now with more and more e-readers becoming available, writers can go directly to the readers. Also, I don’t know how it is in Sweden, but in the U.S. more and more bookstores are closing, and if they’re not closing, they’re stocking only the books they know will sell, which are the major bestsellers. It’s becoming even harder than ever for a writer with a new book to get attention. And yet, there is still that stigma about self-publishing that keeps a lot of writers away. The stigma comes more from the writers’ peers than anyone else, I think, and there’s that whole need for validation and acceptance. Personally, though, I feel the true validation and acceptance comes from readers, not other writers, so I have no problem self-publishing my own work and making it available to readers at a very low cost. In the end, everyone benefits.

Swedish Zombie: This blog is devoted entirely to zombie literature, but I know that some readers are apostates, so can you tell us something about what you written in general?

Robert Swartwood: As you mentioned before, I write in many different genres. In the past few months, I’ve published fiction in literary magazines, horror magazines, and crime magazines. Just recently, I published a new e-book which is a straight-up thriller with no supernatural elements at all called The Serial Killer’s Wife. It’s about a woman who has one hundred hours to retrieve her serial killer huband’s trophies – the fingers he cut off each his victims – to save her son.

Swedish Zombie: What can we expect from Robert Swartwood in the future? That you intend to write more is probably a fact, but what ideas are tumbling around in your head? Can you reveal a little? What would you like to write? 

Robert Swartwood: I hope to release two more e-books by the end of the year. One is the first novel in a thriller trilogy called Man of Wax. It’s kind of like The Hunger Games but for adults. And, if all goes well, horror legend David B. Silva and I will release our supernatural western Walk the Sky, which in many ways could be considered a zombie story. I’ll have to let you know when it comes out.  

Swedish Zombie: It's been fun and interesting to read some of your work and review it here on swedishzombie.com. Thank you, Robert and I look forward to continue to follow your literary career. 

Robert Swartwood: Thank you, Jonny, for hosting me at Swedish Zombie. It's been fun and a real honor. I especially have to thank you for pushing me to look further into the world of The Dishonored Dead; if it wasn't for you, I probably wouldn't have written "The Hunter", and that little revelation about Philip never would have crossed my mind. So thank you again, and thank you to all your blog readers for their time!  

www.robertswartwood.com

*The Hunter är en novell som är specialskriven för swedishzombie.com och publiceras onsdag 6/7 2011.

Läs även andra bloggares åsikter om Robert Swartwood, författare, intervju, skräcklitteratur, zombier, e-böcker, self-publishing, swedishzombie.com