Author Interview: Wade Alan Steele

Bemidji, Minnesota—not usually equated with being a hotbed of cultural style—has per-capita, perhaps, a stable of authors who can hold their own with the denizens of the smarmiest of literary abodes. Even though he now lives elsewhere, I would like to spotlight one of these folks in particular. I present to you, a dear friend of mine, the talented author, Wade Alan Steele. He is the author of PLAGUE SEED and other fantastical delicacies.

So, we went to school together, you and I. Seems like an eternity ago to most, but like yesterday to us writers who never forget anything. Now, we sang in choir, you acted in many a production, but never, not even once, did I hear you mention writing as an interest. So, when and how did you first get the bug for this thing?

I blame New York City Transit.

I had just graduated from the National Shakespeare Conservatory (1995) in NYC and had escaped the next logical career step as an actor, being a waiter.  I was working at a new movie theater in uptown Manhattan and was living in Brooklyn at the time.  This meant an hour commute by subway.  I wasn’t making very good money, certainly not enough to do a lot of book shopping, and I had a fine at the Brooklyn Public Library that was growing by the week, so I was reading the same books over and over again.  I was also dating a lovely woman from Staten Island – another trek, believe me – and had a great deal of time to kill in transit.

I purchased a Mead Composition Book.  I had done some writing in high school and college, but had never finished a story, so I decided I would use that wasted subway and Staten Island Ferry time to write.

I started with a poem to the woman I was dating: “It was her autumn eyes that began my fall”.  As I continued writing, it started to sound like a character, and he sounded like a jerk.  I have been a Dungeons and Dragons player since the age of 13, so I had a whole world already built—I threw the character into that world and into a brothel.  Because why not?  The poem became the first chapter of the Plague Fall Trilogy.

 
Six filled to the last page Mead Composition Books later I had finished a story.  I was hooked.

 

Writing means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. What are some of your long-term goals? How ‘bout short-term?

 

Originally I saw dollar signs, someone optioning the book for a movie, mad bling—I’m not ruling those things out, but my goal now is to finish book two and three in the next year and a half and tell a good story.

The hardest part of the self-publishing path, especially on a shoestring budget, is that you have every job; writing, marketing, web design, book trailer creator—all of it falls to you.  I spend money where it matters; an awesome editor, Lexi Klenow and a crazy talented cover artist, John Amor, but the rest of it, all me.  I have serious respect for those self-published folk who can not only turn out awesome material, but also execute the backstage things so well.  It’s a crazy learning curve, takes up a lot of creative time, and I’ve got a lot to learn.

I have a survival job and am a father of two rambunctious boys, so my creative/business planning time is short (when it comes) and often happens either late at night (like now) or before sunrise, but it will always get done.  I’ve got a story to tell, damn it.  It will get done.

 
 

Plague Seed (book one in your planned trilogy) has managed nothing but positive reviews, with many reviewers clamoring for the next installment. Can you give us an indication of how long this wait may be? Any advance plot-lines you’d care to share with the public at this time?

 

Plague War, Book Two of the Plague Fall Trilogy is with the editor as we speak and my cover artist is working on the layout for the cover.  My hope is for a late February, early March release.

I am 25,000 words into Plague Fall, the final novel in the trilogy, and am very happy with it so far.  I am shooting for same release time 2015.

The events of Plague Seed, book one, were unkind to our hero, Drayvus Varden, banished elven knight turned professional mischief maker and killer, but as the novel closed it looked as if he would start down the hero’s path.  Plague War finds Drayvus trying to drink himself to death in the makeshift refuge village of Gate Town—he’s Nick Cage-ing the place Leaving Las Vegas style; Leaving Gate Town, that’s what I’ve been calling the first third of the book.  He needs to be dragged kicking and screaming to save his people from the disease he was used to bring back.

 

Any plans for other future new projects that you can share?

 

I’ve got a few ideas I’m very passionate about.  Being a horror writer, you probably know a little bit about witch hunting.  There is a 15^th century witch hunter’s manual called The Malleus Maleficarum, or the Witch Hammer, written by Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, two Dominican monks.  It is a hateful handbook, sanctioned by the church, laying out the process of finding, interrogating, and setting up a trial for an accused witch.  The Malleus Maleficarum became the standard guide to the massive witch burnings of the Inquisition.  I would like to write a historical fiction novel using this book as source material.

 
I also have a comic book in the works with my cover artist, John Amor called Geek Gods, about five 13 year old roleplaying geeks who find a planet in a box and become gods to its inhabitants.  That one has been in the works for a while, but it’s going to be worth the wait!  Amor’s work is really stunning.  (http://johnamorartist.com/)
 

 

 

I happen to know several of your best-kept secrets, the fact you find the song “Talk Dirty To Me” by Poison a guilty pleasure not least of which. But please, it’s been a long time. What can you share with my blog-readers that they might not know by visiting you on social media?

 

Dear lord.  Can it get anymore embarrassing than “Talk Dirty to Me”?  I am still lost in that era of music, man.  Can’t help myself.  Love the Hair Band stations on Pandora!

 
I’m a TV junkie like you wouldn’t believe.  Love my Supernatural, Community, and Parks and Recreation.  Really quite dull.  There’s my secret; I am really quite dull!

 

What advice might you give to an aspiring writer who is just trying to break in to the madness?

 

Read.  Read multiple styles and genres.  Get to know what you like, what you don’t like; what works for you, what doesn’t. Pick up a strange history book or a repair manual.  Read that.  Inspiration can come from the least expect places.

Write.  Write every chance you get.  When you start writing crap, keep writing; the likelihood that something brilliant will come next is greater than if you let crap writing defeat you. 

Get yourself a copy of The Elements of Style or, at the very least, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Grammar and Style.  No matter how brilliant you are in this regard, you will always learn something useful.

Share.  Share your writing with someone you trust.  I have something called the final “Wife Read”.  My wife is the world’s greatest reader!  If a sentence passes the wife test, I’m golden; I know I have a sentence that kills.

Hire an editor.  If you’re going to spend money, do it here.  You want your finished product to sparkle.  I rushed into my first self-publishing endeavor; a book of short stories called A Sudden Dominance of Shadows.  The stories could have used a copy and story editor to be sure.  Some day I will revisit the book; there are many worthwhile tales in there. 

The first grammatical or formatting error will cause even the most forgiving reader to drop your book like a hot stone.  Dress that child of yours up!

 

 What’s the best way for your fans to connect with you?

 

I am a social media pygmy, but I’m trying to build a greater online presence.

Amazon page: http://www.amazon.com/Plague-Seed-Fall-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B00B0JP334

Website:          http://wadealansteele.com

Facebook:        https://www.facebook.com/wadealan.steele?fref=ts

Twitter:           https://twitter.com/wadealansteele

Blog:               http://steelethisblog.wordpress.com/

…or directly:   steeleshadows@gmail.com

 

Any last words? (You are being interviewed on a horror author’s website, after all).

 

A few.  First, thanks for sharing your corner of the internet with me.  I miss you, bro!  Now that I am a Minnesotan once more, we must needs hang! Second, read Plague Seed.  It is Joss Whedon meets Dungeons and Dragons.  It’s a lot of fun and touching too.  Swords, dragons, elves, dwarves and… heart.  Ha!  Yup, I do my own marketing!

So, there you have it! Thank you so much, my friend, for allowing me the interview, and for dressing up my blog with flare and moxie. And here’s to—hopefully not in the too-distant future—you and I sitting around the fire with snotty drinks in hand. We will discuss the old days, the new days, and toast to the small dent we have managed to put in the publishing world.

Short Story: COMPLICATIONS

Okay, I don't usually post stories on my blog, BUT, I need YOUR (yes your) help to win the cute little thing found at Michelle Simkins blog, here: http://twe.ly/wxob -- It'll sit right between my signed copy of TERMINAL and my crystal skull. So, please go to this site and vote for my story (if you like it). PLEASE! Thank you. Now, enjoy the story (it's free):

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COMPLICATIONS

If he need sit any longer, they’d better find him a cot. Damn his ass hurt—and just what the hell could take so long? An animal bite sure as hell shouldn’t take all evening.

The shadows, deeper now, seemed to mock Jake. The sun, pleasant and bright on their arrival, threatened to sink below the tree-line. And the tiny waiting room—the one with an even tinier TV and a fricken pop machine too loud to hear the TV anyway—offered little to preserve the small bit of sunlight.

“Yer gonna need to be patient,” the cranky old nurse had said, early on. “There’s been a small complication…nothin’ to worry yourself about.” And Jake wondered why the old crone hadn’t retired yet—and why the hell she kept itching at her ass cheek. Instead of staring at her cigarette-wrinkled-upper-lip and her thinning gray hair, maybe he should’ve asked her what kind of complication his girlfriend had. But he didn’t—and he hadn’t seen a soul since. Not one damn white-smocked nurse.

For the tenth time, Jake wadded up a Snicker’s wrapper and tried to hit the ridiculously small trash can.

The wrapper missed, lilted off the side of the can and careened toward the white-tiled hallway.

When he went to retrieve the stray, Jake stared at the white and red emergency-room door. Nobody had come or gone from it in over an hour. Sure, a small town, Jake got that, but an hour? Just maybe nobody else decided to get hurt or sick today, but he found that highly convenient.

Jake paced and tried to sneak nonchalant glances through the small square window. The window, hard to see through to begin with, harbored a set of smudges which rendered seeing through it nearly impossible. And just what the hell was that white shit in the corner of the window? Had it been there before? Jack didn’t think so. He eyeballed it from where he stood and couldn’t decide if it consisted of cotton or something else—yarn maybe.

He crept closer. Ice spiders wriggled their way up his spine, his neck, and then finally his scalp came alive with the little electric pulses. “What the fuck?” he whispered to nobody.

The door swung open easy enough. A cool breeze hissed out past Jake like an unsealed vacuum. And then the stench hit him—something like mildew and blood. He expected to see moths flutter about in the musty din.

But all remained quiet—calm before a storm.

Bits of what looked like material, tiny chunks of yarn, lay strewn across the floor of the emergency-room and disappeared behind the lone examination table like a trail of bread crumbs.

Jake crept closer, following the trail, the stench building in his nostrils. He thought briefly about plugging his nose, but the smell, pleasant now, soothed his frayed nerves, lulled him like the gentle swing of a rocking horse.

And then a quiet moan brought Jake back from his burgeoning nirvana. The soft gasp sounded weak yet alive, satisfied somehow, like dead leaves settling after a fall rainstorm, or earthworms sucking back into the sanctity of their holes, damp and natural—guttural.

Then a scraping noise—a shoe on tile. More soft moans cascaded. This time Jake thought he noticed a note of pleasure in the breathy rasp. “Hello?”

A sigh, then, “Here…right here behind the table. No hurry.”

Jake noticed a white shoe sticking out from behind. It rocked back and forth in a rhythmic motion. He walked over slowly, curious, but not wanting to interrupt anyone’s good time. Better not be his girlfriend down there with one of them fancy-pants docs!

More sighs.

With a bit more calm than he felt, Jake leaned over—and stared. “What the hell?” Down below, on the cold floor, the old crone of a nurse lay there fingering a gash in her throat like it was her clitoris. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

The nurse glanced up with a dreamy look. “I suspect I’m dying…but…but what a way to go…”

“Who did this to you?” Jake felt a chill in his belly.

“Not a who, dear,” she moaned.

“What?”

“Exactly—a what,” she muttered, still preoccupied with the bloody hole in her neck. Blood pooled below her on the white tile, soaking into her hair like an old mop.

“Okay—okay, what did this to you?” he asked. “And where’s my girlfriend!”

“The most darling little thing you ever saw!”

Then Jake noticed the little pieces of green yarn all over the old crone’s neck. “What was it?”

The nurse stuck her finger a bit deeper into the wound, blood spilling quicker to the floor. “You’ll see. And you’ll be all the better for it—right through there.” She pointed toward a solid steel door. “You’ll probably find your girl in there too, although I’d wager she ain’t yours no more. No way you can compete with that cozy little bundle.”

Jake, without hesitation, scared now, raced to the door and pulled it open. Before him on the floor, between an office chair and an old metal desk, his girlfriend lay naked on the tile. On top of her belly, some kind of knit creature, a stuffed rabbit, jumped up and down.

The rabbit, no a bunny, he was sure it was a bunny and not a rabbit, appeared to be made of yarn. One yarn eyeball hung down out of its socket, looking like one of those snappers the kids used to play with. Red stuffing bled out of the thing’s right ear, left paw, and neck.

His girlfriend, bleeding profusely where the bunny had taken a bite out of her inner thigh, squealed. “Oh, Jake, can we take it home?”

Jake stared, nodded, then shrugged. Why the fuck not? The thing was cute as hell.

The bunny leaped off Jake’s girl and stood before him. It opened its mouth and hissed softly, arms spread wide, “Come…Zombunny wants to love you!"

WRITER'S SLUSH

Blogged by popular demand: the recipe for Writer’s Slush! Oh yeah, guaranteed to make you a better writer…or, at the very least, make you not give a shit if you suck.

It drinks better in the hot summer months, but alcohol is alcohol, right? Drink it whenever the fuck you want!

WRITER’S SLUSH

6 C’s H2O

½ C Sugar

1 can frozen OJ

1 can frozen Lemonade

½ can frozen grapefruit juice

1 tsp powdered/unsweetened ice tea mix

2 C’s Vodka or Brandy

Heat water and sugar (in a big pot) until sugar dissolves (do not boil, God NO; we don’t wanna ever boil the alcohol—it’ll go bye-bye. *Tears*)

Then add everything else (except the alcohol) and stir the shit around ‘til it’s all melted and mixed together into one big liquid concoction.

And now for the best part: add the Vodka or Brandy. Stir it all around some more…get it good and blended!

Pour the whole conglomeration into an ice-cream pail (it will fill it to the top) and put in freezer for 28 hrs. Now, I know, when you’re all geared up, it’s hard to wait the 28 hrs, but it’s worth it…so do it. Have some willpower for goodness sakes!

Enjoy, my friends! And, for fuck sakes, drink responsibly. Don't make me write a bunch of fricken small print...

Writing In The First Person

Many people don't, but I absolutely love writing in the 1st person--a lot! And I love reading books written that way as well. The main reason is because, to my tastes, the protagonist seems to come alive so much more brilliantly. When forced to concentrate on the internal thought process of one character, said character usually turns out more dynamic and interesting, someone who readers can rally behind and care about. You can almost taste their emotions, feel their pain, and when they bleed we bleed.

But here's my predicament now. Along with RED STRAIN (3rd person thank the Lord), I am currently penning the follow-up novel to JEWEL in the 1st person. The protag is a female (Tracey from JEWEL) paranormal investigator. At first I thought I could pull it off without too much difficulty. I'm married, understand women, well, at least in theory, and after all everyone has the same kinds of emotions, right? Wrong!

Every good book has a degree of sexual tension. I don't care if you are the prude of all prudes or the king of porn, we all like sex. And if you say otherwise you're a liar liar pants on fire!

Anyway, you can now understand my predicament. What runs through a woman's mind when she's aroused, feels amorous, or otherwise just wants to tear off a chunk? For men it's easy; I can just write from experience. But I know that women differ. Some are simple to understand, others more complicated, and others, well, impossible at all to predict. So where does that leave me?

To help alleviate some of my worries, and it does stay true to her personality from JEWEL, I've made Tracey to be a tomboy. She chews, cusses, hangs out with men mostly because most women (according to her) are bitches or worse. And that all helps, but...

Any feedback from my female fans would be most appreciated here. My wife has been a tremendous help of course, but she is only one woman, and well, I'd love to see varying view points on how to handle this delicate situation. Because you all know what will happen if I don't nail this dead on (ahem).

So please, feel free to respond in any way you feel inclined. Please share your thoughts on the female psyche. Thanks!

Novel Updates and Other Bits of Carnage

Another long hiatus, I know, and thank you to the many peeps surfing the social networking wave who pointed that fact out to me and got me back in the blogospherical saddle. I should be a more religious blogger, no doubt!

Some updates though--finally:

I am eleven chapters into RED STRAIN, my newest novel, which has been accomplished in only two weeks time, and so I am very optimistic of an April/May completion date (first draft). Somewhere closer to that time, I'll have the artistic representation and blurb posted on my website under the writing tab. Think zombieish peeps!

In addition to RED STRAIN, I am picking away ever so slowly at the sequel to JEWEL (currently being read by a major publishing house), entitled WEDNESDAY'S CHILD. Like JEWEL, the novel is written in the first person, but this time, I'm writing from the perspective of the opposite gender--very fun and interesting, have learned a lot! Stay tuned, please!

Shortly, there will be some exciting anthology news regarding my short story, VANDRAVEN'S TICK. I can't say too much yet, but soon...

So anyway, I got some stuff in the works, and will try my butt off to keep my blog updated. Thanks again for all who cared to remind me.

Sherlock Holmes!

Cool! My short story and subsequent stage-play by Roy C Booth, SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE CASE OF THE DIABOLICAL NECROMANCER, will be produced for the first time at The Wild Rose Theater on November 12th and 13th.

I can't say enough about how excited I am to see Roy's and my version of the great sleuth come to life. This will be an absolute treat! Any fan of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce are going to love this. And my hope is that any Conan Doyle fans will as well. I believe that we have stayed true to the Sherlock Holmes legacy, yet added a flavor not yet tasted.

I have heard some rumors of more good news to come with this play in regards to performances. More details as things firm up.

Writerly Updates

I have known for some time now, but it bares repeating once more (at least), that writing is as much about patience/perseverance and attitude as it is about the craft. Ask my wife, but patience isn't something that has come naturally for me--however, after several years of practice, I would like to think that I have learned how not to drive agents/editors out of their minds. And so I wait...

As of right at this moment, I have more than one, but no more than five agents/editors reading JEWEL and INHUMAN. It feels good. That's how I feel now, choosing to think that these kind folks are seriously considering my work, feverishly racking their brains as to how to possibly market my prose. But then, and more likely, they may just be behind on their reading. (Sigh). It's all good...

But I do not wait in vain! For the first time in my writing career, I find myself working on two projects simultaneously (ZEALOT & THE GULLIES). Both are horror novels and I like them equally in their own ways (much like children I would guess). They are very different from each other; and so each time I return from one to the other it is a breath of fresh air--invigorating. Below is a list of all my projects (novels only) and my progress to date:

Horror

THE GULLIES - 12,000 words

ZEALOT - 24,000 words

INHUMAN - 91,000 words (completed)

JEWEL - 71,000 words (completed)

Supernatural Thrillers

BROKEN MIRROR - 88,000 words (editing)

VESSEL OF THE DIABLO SI - 144,000 (editing - and yes I went crazy)

NO INNOCENT VICTIM - 22,000 words (currently on hold)

So there we are--projects galore. This of course does not include my short fiction and I should have some exciting news soon regarding a couple more anthologies that will include my work. In addition, there will be some exciting news regarding SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE CASE OF THE DIABOLICAL NECROMANCER and Roy Booth's subsequent theatrical representation. Please stay tuned!