Embedded Files
Welcome back, friends and people who don't yet know that they're my friends! I hope you joined us last week for my interviews with Chuck Dixon, Daniel Arenson, and Elita Daniels. If not, click here. They're still up!
Before I get to the the three interviews which I have to share with you today, I wanted to share a bit of craft with you. If you've clicked anywhere else on my website, or know me at all, you've probably come across the cover for The Secrets of the Universe. Above, you're going to see a picture of what I started with. I bought some white quartz stone at the hardware store, I went out into the woods and lay them out on a rock in a pattern which reminded me of a galaxy. I took a few photos and then monkeyed with the color in Photoshop, until I got the cover we know so well. Every "star" in the final picture is either an actual rock, a bit of moss, or a variety in heat and shadow picked up by my playing around in Photoshop.
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I am publishing interviews three times a month with roughly three authors/artists/interesting people each issue. Please enjoy this week's talent and come back in two weeks for three more exciting interviews.
SCOTT ALLIE
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: Scott, thank you so much for agreeing to do this. You've written and/or edited quite a long list of comic books and graphic novels which I have personally deeply enjoyed, including Hellboy, BPRD, Star Wars, Alien, Prometheus, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Solomon Kane for a start, so this is a big thrill for me. Such a large portion of your own writing can be classified as "horror."
In your experience as a writer, an editor, and even a reader, what makes for a successful horror story?
SCOTT ALLIE: You gotta dig into the characters, and it has to be about their experiences. I don’t like horror that lacks mystery. If it’s all about violence and monsters it’s less compelling. The mystery creates the grey area that leaves the reader to wander around in his own ideas, and that’s where the reader has room to really feel the emotions at the heart of good horror.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: What mistakes do see other writers making when attempting to work in this genre?
SCOTT ALLIE: Sometimes people get really wrapped up in complex mythologies or backstories, without making it about the characters. With so much genre fiction, I think the problem is writers getting real caught up in their own clever ideas, and putting that before character and mood and plot. The mythologies and backstory can be important, can be a big part of the fun, but they can also block the story itself.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: It may seem impossible to believe, but there will likely be some readers of this interview who have never read a Hellboy, BPRD, Abe Sapien, Baltimore, Witchfinder or any "Mignolaverse" graphic novel. Would you care to tell them what they're missing and how these books are different from other graphic novels being produced right now?
SCOTT ALLIE: Mike’s created some of the most iconic characters in comics in the last twenty years, and he’s woven an incredible web of stories involving them. The heart of it all is the story of Hellboy, from his birth as a part demon in WW2, through his monster fighting adventures, to his death and his current journeys through Hell.
The interconnectedness of the stories is really fun, and rewards people who read everything, but we work hard to make sure every series works on its own. I love meeting new readers who’ve just plugged into the books. They’re so excited about discovering all these layers, they all have different favorite characters.
Obviously Hellboy is undeniably the most popular, but you meet a lot of people that say Lobster Johnson is their favorite book, or BPRD, or whatever, and that always makes me feel like we’re doing it right.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: Speaking of the B.P.R.D., it seems like the world is just about over in that book. The planet is filled with armies of monsters and transformed ex-humans. There's no way to know how many thousands or millions are dead. The United Kingdom is missing. How can you ever come back from that? Should we expect that world to end in a few years and the BPRD Universe to simply get cancelled, from lack of survivors? Or is there hope?
SCOTT ALLIE: Oh, that’s the point … we don’t come back. We’re breaking things that can’t be fixed. When we kill a character, he doesn’t just come back. Indonesia was one of the first major land masses to get wiped out. England is missing, as you say, but there’s more to be told there.
There’s still hope, but there’s no hope that they’ll put things back the way they were. It’s not like the Marvel Universe, where Galactus comes in and destroys everything and it gets rebuilt next month.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: One of the most stunning comics I've read in many years is Mike Mignola's Hellboy in Hell, which you edit. There are only a half dozen issues out so far, but I get the feeling like we're watching one of those rare true classics of the medium coming into existence.
As an editor, how involved are you in the mapping of the story? Or do you see your role more as giving Mike the room he needs to create?
SCOTT ALLIE: For the stuff Mike writes himself, I’m the sounding board. Mike loves talking through a story, and I like listening to it over and over. It gets refined, it evolves.
By the time he’s drawing a story—he usually draws before writing anything down—by the time he’s drawing a story, he’s told it to me a dozen times, and it’s gotten better through that process. I ask some questions, maybe make some suggestions, but not that much when he’s writing it himself. But I’m sort of just acting as first audience.
If I laugh at the right places, then that part of the story doesn’t change. If Mike thinks he’s got a great bit and it falls flat when he’s telling me, he reworks it.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: I recently re-read the four Abe Sapien graphic novels, which you wrote collaborating with Mike Mignola. Abe seems to be a very different character now than he was in the early days of the BPRD. In many ways, where he is now seems to mirror where Hellboy himself was when BPRD started. I've heard that he's your favorite character from the BPRD. Can you talk to us a little about the journey Abe has made and where you see him going?
SCOTT ALLIE: Yeah, I love Abe. He’s Mike’s second best character design, which is saying a lot … I wrote an Abe short story in a prose anthology years ago, and I loved it. I love him.
Abe went many years not knowing where he came from. Ten years ago or so he discovered that he was originally a scientist during the American Civil War. As the world started getting infested with frog monsters, Abe didn’t really question the fact that he sort of looked like them, but when the frog war concluded in King of Fear, the Black Flame called the similarity out and started convincing people that Abe had something to do with these monsters overrunning the world.
So Abe’s solo series is all about him either dealing with or running from that suspicion. Abe left the Bureau saying he was going to disprove this, but really he’s just been running from the accusation. That’s about to change. He’s going to confront things head on, and in doing so he’s going to uncover some of the biggest secrets of the Hellboy universe, and specifically how they relate to him.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: There's been a great ramping up of the amount of product with your name on it in the last couple of years. BPRD is now monthly and you and Mike Mignola are about to add Hellboy and The BPRD as well as Frankenstein Unbound.
How do you manage to keep from getting overwhelmed and how do you make sure the quality doesn't suffer?
SCOTT ALLIE: Well, I recently handed off about half my workload to other editors. All the Whedon books, the stuff I was doing with Art and Franco, Beasts of Burden, some other stuff I brought to Dark Horse. That’s freed up a lot of time.
We’re lucky that enough pros like Mike’s work enough that they want to work on these books, and we can be pretty choosey about who we work with—and that makes the work a lot easier. John Arcudi is key to a lot of that, of course.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: I am personally a massive fan of Robert E Howard, so I really enjoy adaptations of his work, such as your Solomon Kane comics. There are very few writers who have had such a profound influence on my own writing as he has had. What's your relationship with Howard? Has he been a big figure in your creative journey?
SCOTT ALLIE: He was a big figure in my development, but he’s less on my mind these days. I was talking to a writer friend of mine the other day, someone who disagrees with me about one of my heroes, Joyce Carol Oates. She said, "Wow, you’re still into her?” And I realized I hadn’t read her in a while, but she maintains a big influence over me.
Howard’s the same way. I haven’t read anything in a while now, but he did a certain something—adventure stories that had an oppressive atmosphere of horror—better than anyone else. In BPRD: Abyss of Time, we introduced a new character that we didn’t realize was going to become such a big part of BPRD. I named the character Howards, because that story had a certain sideways REH influence. I love that we have a character named after Robert E Howard in the Hellboy comics, because Howard’s s huge influence on Mignola too.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: Many people reading this interview may be unaware that the adventures Buffy the Vampire Slayer continued after the television show ended into a season eight, nine, and ten in graphic novel form (With many issues written by Joss Whedon himself). You have been instrumental in this, both as a writer and as an editor.
What can you tell us about the challenges of translating this beloved television show into a 2-dimensional comic book?
SCOTT ALLIE: When I was doing the comic at the same time as the show, I was shocked to realize that they could do an episode of a show a lot faster than we could do an issue of the comic. So trying to do the comics evenly vague coordinated with the show was very difficult.
Once the show ended, in 2003, Joss and I started talking about continuing the ongoing story of the characters in comics. It took us a while to get that off the ground, but eventually we launched Season 8, overseen by Joss. Since then a lot of other shows have come back as comics series, Season 10, Season 6, whatever. It was a huge success for us, so it naturally spawned a lot of imitations.
But it was an incredible education, doing the book with Joss. Steering that story, writing parts of it with Joss as my editor—I learned a lot doing that. At first the goal was to do things that you could never do on TV—that was a big part of our focus. We sort of took that too far in Season 8, so we made sure to dial it back a bit and maintain the focus on the characters in subsequent seasons.
One of the hardest things has been maintaining the big cast of Buffy, and giving the main characters enough room in a 22-page comic, compared to a 45-minute episode of a TV show. The structure, the balance had to work differently in comics than it did in the show, and we had to figure that out over time.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: As an editor in a world where everyone has a screenplay in their backpack, how do you find new writers and artists and what qualities do you look for in them?
SCOTT ALLIE: I read as much small press stuff as I can. Which isn’t as much as I like. I try to listen to recommendations, but a lot of recommendations are just people doing their friends a favor. If I read anything that really moves me, I try to work with that person. I want to be excited about writing. I see plenty of art—so much art comes my way, and I can immediately look at it and see if I love it. It’s harder to tell with writing. You have to spend more time with it. I literally have a stack of comics one foot high next to me that I have to read. When …? I’m doing an interview on Thanksgiving morning.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: What's your deepest darkest secret?
SCOTT ALLIE: The ending of Fight Club 2.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: Would you like to ask me a question?
SCOTT ALLIE: Have you ever gotten a straight answer to the previous question?
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: When I first started interviewing authors, I used to ask everyone this question. Now I only ask it every once in a while. But years before, I used to play a game at parties to amuse myself. I would turn to strangers, or people I had only just met, and ask them what their deepest darkest secret was. Usually, it would get a laugh.
But to my horror, sometimes they would actually tell me. There is apparently a significant portion of the population just waiting for someone to ask, so they can unburden themselves.
Scott, if you decide you're one of those people, I'm here for you!
BUT SCOTT ALLIE BOOKS ON AMAZON: http://www.amazon.com/Scott-Allie/e/B001JOYTBM/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1418079316&sr=1-2-ent
VALMORE DANIELS
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: Valmore, it's a pleasure to talk you again. I wanted to feature you early on in this series because I am a fan of your work, and you've always been really decent when we've spoken. Tell me, since you started this journey, and published all of these many books, how have you grown and changed, as a person?
VALMORE DANIELS: Thank you for the generous compliments. One of the most challenging aspects of publishing when starting out is learning to deal with reader response; more specifically, criticism.
When you first receive negative feedback, it can be devastating. After putting months and years of work into a project, it is difficult to have someone express their dislike for the end product and not take it personally. I struggled with this early in my publishing career, but as time went on, I began to realize that such criticism is not directed at me as a person. It's merely the reader expressing their emotional state at the time of reading.
Their feelings are just as valid and legitimate as the reader who praises your work. Though I feel I've grown as a writer over the past few years (which has resulted in more positive reviews overall) I still receive the odd negative critique; now, it does not affect me on a personal level whatsoever. Although many writers suggest not reading reviews, I read every one of them, and keep both positive and negative criticism in mind when crafting new work.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: There are three books out now in the series: The Interstellar Age. I've enjoyed and left reviews on the first two. Please tell our readers about this story.
VALMORE DANIELS: The seed for the idea came when, as a teenager, I watched the launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia. I wanted to be on that flight, and began to think of ways someone as young as I was could accomplish that. I wrote a short story, The Quanta, which comprises the last few chapters of Forbidden The Stars (though many elements changed later on in the novel version). I had a few other ideas rolling around in my head after that, including faster-than-light travel, first contact, and the future of government.
Once I combined all those ideas, the trilogy took shape. I began writing the first book in the trilogy around 1993, and twenty years later, completed the story with the publication of Worlds Away.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: You and I have both written about the limitations of space travel. My series, Farther Than We Dreamed, and your series, TheInterstellar Age, both begin with an awareness of the science which makes interstellar or inter-galactic travel difficult, if not impossible. But so many of the most popular science fiction stories gloss over this. Why focus on the problem?
VALMORE DANIELS: I have always had a fascination with the concept of “the process”. From an early age, whenever I was given a toy, the first thing I would do was take it apart to see how it worked. When approaching the story of faster-than-light travel, my primary interest was also to examine exactly how that would work. Of course, many of the concepts I include stretch the boundaries of known physics … but with all the recent advances at CERN, my ideas might not be too far from future reality.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: Stephen Hawking warned humanity, not so long ago, that we shouldn't be too eager to make contact with an alien civilization. He cautioned that the meeting might not go so well for us. Is he right? Should we hide, or risk everything to make contact?
VALMORE DANIELS: As with any initial encounter between two civilizations, historically, the more advanced culture tends to swallow the other. In some instances, the less advanced society might be destroyed; in other cases, their quality of life is improved by exposure to technological and medical advances. While those who fear change would warn against contact with an alien species, there is always the consideration that we might be the more advanced society in such a meeting. After all, if there are more advanced races out there, why wouldn’t they have made contact with us already?
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: Not so long ago, I remember the first book in The Interstellar Age only having about 20 reviews. I see now that that number has ballooned up to 194 reviews. At least one of the factors appears to be that, as many authors do, you have made the first book in your series free. Was this a difficult decision for you to make, to give the book away to thousands of readers? And are you pleased with the results?
VALMORE DANIELS: It was a marketing strategy I was initially opposed to, mostly because I wasn’t confident that the free offering would translate to sales of the rest of the series. When I considered that the trilogy was 265,000 words, and should it be made into an omnibus, the free sample would comprise over 53,000 words (or about 75% of the first book), I realized anyone could essentially read the first book free anyway. By making the first book free, I was able to take advantage of many of the advertising sites to promote the series. In a year-to-year comparison, overall sales of the series has doubled since making the first book perma-free.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: Looks like there are five books out now in your Fallen Angels series. I haven't read this one yet. Please tell us about this series. And now that it's complete, without spoiling anything, are you happy with the ending?
VALMORE DANIELS: As a teenager, I was a voracious reader, and my tastes were primarily in fantasy. In a discussion with friends, we realized that many of the tales we enjoyed had their roots in the Bible. I decided to go straight to the source and read the Old Testament. Two of the stories caught my imagination; the story of The Flood, and humanity’s relationship with angels (who, as it turned out, weren’t always very benign). A few years ago, I became interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and how they described a somewhat different version of events from the Bible. That sparked the idea of bringing those angels from before the Flood to modern times.
I took a few chances with the story. I wrote it in first person—I believe this allowed me to more fully explore the characterization of the main characters. The second chance I took was that I used a different protagonist to narrate each of the five volumes. I wasn’t sure readers would appreciate reading the story from five different points of view, but feedback has been very positive.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: You've now written and published two completed series. How does that feel? And what's next?
VALMORE DANIELS: Completing both series has given me a sense of accomplishment much akin to seeing your child grow up and go off to college. It’s also bittersweet; you’re going to miss being in that world.
Currently, I’m working on another five-book series called The MoonWar Cycle. In a distant star system, the seven moons of a gas giant were terraformed several millennia ago, a fact unknown by the occupants of those moons (no spoilers why). Each civilization has developed at different technological and biological rates. When they finally become aware of one another, it’s much as Stephen Hawking feared: it does not go well for any of them.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: You've developed a very healthy body of work at this point and I'm sure you've come to understand your skills a lot better now than just a few years ago. If you had to judge yourself, what do you consider to be your greatest strength as a novelist, and what's hardest for you?
VALMORE DANIELS: I’ve always considered myself to be a storyteller first, and a writer second. While I can appreciate reading finely crafted prose once in a while, my appetite for stories is insatiable. I write in the style I like to read: I don’t want the writing to get in the way of the story. One downside to fast, efficient prose is that I sometimes fall into the trap of telling rather than showing, which is why I rely on input from my editor who is quick to point out trouble spots.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: What have you been reading lately?
VALMORE DANIELS: The last five books I’ve read are: Husk, by D.P. Prior; Witch’s Curse, by Debra L Martin; Doctor Sleep, by Stephen King; Kill Room, by Jeffrey Deaver; and Song of Dragons, by Daniel Arenson.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: Star Wars or Star Trek?
VALMORE DANIELS: I like them both equally, but for different reasons. Star Wars for the sense of adventure and heroism; Star Trek for the sense of wonder and exploration (not counting “Into Darkness” which I was not pleased with at all).
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: How will the world end?
VALMORE DANIELS: It hasn’t already? You mean to say we are not intangible entities of consciousness floating in an alternate dimension and dreaming all this?
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN:Would you like to ask me a question?
VALMORE DANIELS: I recently read that NASA is making plans to send astronauts to Mars. If you had the opportunity to accompany them, would you go?
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: I would, if the intention was to make a return trip. Contrary to so much else which excites me and to my own work, I'm also deeply influenced by C.S. Lewis's sci-fi series. In it, he proposed that Earth is the only place in the universe when humanity truly belongs. And there's a part of me which wonders if he might be right. It makes the possibility of our destroying this world and finding a new home less practical, but there's something about the idea which I wonder if might be true.
Then again, could there be a world where we're actually better suited to live? What if the gravity was just a touch less? Or the day 30 hours long?
BUY VALMORE DANIELS BOOKS ON AMAZON: http://www.amazon.com/Valmore-Daniels/e/B003UWQMEI/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1418079389&sr=1-2-ent
MAT NASTOS
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: Matt, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. Please tell us about the Cestus Concern.
MAT NASTOS: THE CESTUS CONCERN tells the story of Malcolm Weir, a former US Army Ranger who had been disabled while overseas. He wakes up in a lab to find a year of his life missing and his arms replaced by cybernetic prosthetics. He escapes from his keepers and starts on a race to discover what happened to him as the government tries to get him back.
The book, and the WEIR CODEX series, is a hardcore action/adventure story. Lots of action, explosions, and tons of really cool cyberpunk/sci-fi all mixed in together. My goal on the books was the start big and fast, and to never slow down. In the back of my head, I was either writing a mid 70s style mass market sci-fi paperback or a 1980s/90s action flick. It's an insane action-thriller starring a couple of characters I think readers can really relate to. A lot of people seem to love Mal and his sidekick, Zuz...along with The Cube.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: Reading the free sample of the Cestus Concern, I could immediately see that you have a skill for writing action scenes. It's all very easy to visualize and understand. It's exciting. You might be surprised how many other very talented writers have difficulty doing this. How do you approach writing an action scene?
MAT NASTOS: When it comes to writing action, I think it helps that my first career was in art. I drew comic books and did storyboards for sci-fi films/tv for about 15 years before I started writing. Being able to think visually, and even sit down and sketch things out, helped me immensely.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: The opening pages give a premise very similar to the classic Robocop movies, and also Marvel's Deathlok. In what ways is what you're doing similar, and how is it different from those stories?
MAT NASTOS: Huge fan of both Robocop and Deathlok, but neither one were in the front of my brain when I sat down to write. As I've mentioned in a number of places, the biggest influence on me for THE CESTUS CONCERN was the work of a man named Shotaro Ishinomori. He was a Japanese artist/writer -- the single most prolific comic book artist of all time. His creations, Kamen Rider and Kikaida (he also created the first of the heroes that would eventually lead to the Power Rangers), were some of my earliest TV heroes as a kid growing up in Hawaii in the 1970s. In my mind, his work on Cyborg-009 was one of the earliest pieces of cyberpunk and was a HUGE influence on the WEIR novels.
At the heart of all of the stories -- Cestus, Cyborg-009, Kikaida, Kamen Rider, Robocop, Deathlok, and even something like Wolverine -- is the sense of a someone who has lost control of their life...has had it taken away by someone (or someones). They stories are all driven by that character trying to regain that control. It's one of the core pieces of cyberpunk in general: the loss of individual identity and the attempt to reclaim it.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: Looking through your biography, you claim you're best known for, among other things, "Dinosaurs in the sewers." Okay, two questions, how did I miss a story about dinosaurs in a sewer? And how the heck do you fit a dinosaur in a sewer?
MAT NASTOS: I made the transition over from art to writing back in about 2000 when I started writing for film. Since then, I've written about 8 produced movies...and they've all been B-movies for places like SyFy Channel and Cinemax. Most of those have gained really large followings overseas (truthfully, the US releases/versions tend to be pretty weak when compared to the International ones). Outside of the Tail Sting/Stinger films, the Dino-Sewer ones have been the most popular. So far they've only had release beyond the US in Asia and Europe, but sales and viewership have been huge. I get more fanmail from fans in Japan or Germany for the Dino-Sewer series than almost anything else short of my Disney work.
I think the reason a lot of fans have responded well to my film work is that I don't take it terribly seriously. I understand the types of films we're making and try to have as much fun as I can (while adding in tons of violence, a bit of nudity, and a whole lot of references to 80s and 90s pop culture). To this date, I'll say there are more hidden references to the German band, the Scorpions, in Stinger than anywhere else in the universe. Good or bad. :)
How do you fit a dinosaur into a sewer? All it takes is about two weeks of writing with very little sleep and a whole lot of vodka!
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: I've also read and enjoyed the preview pages of The Man with the Iron Heart. What can you tell us about that book?
MAT NASTOS: MAN WITH THE IRON HEART starts out grounded in the true life plot by the British government and a band of Czech rebels to assassinate one of the most vile men in the Third Reich, Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi-appointed ruler of Czechoslovakia. From there, I take a bit of a detour, introducing plots by a race of elder gods and their war against Odin. The lead characters are an out of place, pushing past middle aged, soldier named Ian MacAndrew, and Odin's warrior, Donner Grimm. They fight Nazis, battle werebears, and try to save who they can in the middle of war-torn Europe.
As with the Cestus books, there is a ton of over-the-top action, but I stir in a healthy dose of the occult with things this time around.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: The book description for The Man with the Iron Heart reads, in part, "Nazis, Norse Gods, and Lovecraftian monsters: what more could you ask for in an action-adventure novel set in the midst of World War 2? "Man With the Iron Heart" is perfect for fans of Hellboy, Indiana Jones, Supernatural, Lovecraft, or Inglourious Basterds"
Boy oh boy does this book sound like it was aimed at me! I love all of that.
Can you talk about some of these influences in your work, as relates to this story and also more broadly?
MAT NASTOS: High action and adventure is a huge influence for me. When I decided to move into prose writing, my main goal was to tell the sort of stories I enjoyed. Honestly, I'm writing 80s/90s era big-budget action movies in prose format. If you enjoy that sort of thing -- Predator, the Terminator, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, the movies of Jean Claude Van Damme, The Crow, the new Dredd film, Hellboy...and tons more -- then I think you'll love the heck out of my books. Those things are my biggest influences.
Beyond those, the Hellboy comics, the work of HP Lovecraft, and the other stuff I mentioned help to color the world of MAN WITH THE IRON HEART. Mignola's Hellboy work has been a favorite of mine since it first appeared back in the early 90s. In it, I found another fan of Lovecraft and of the early generation of weird tales authors who inspired him (Clark Ashton Smith, Bierce, Howard, Poe, Dickens, Chambers, and Dunsany). The power of those weird tales resonated very strongly with me and it was cool to see them brought out in something like Hellboy.
The same thing for Indiana Jones. He was a man of science tossed into the world of fairy tale and myth. That convergence has always been intriguing for me. Rational thought thrust into the irrational.
All of those things, and the worlds of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, mix in the other half of the equation for me, too: Big action and an insane world populated with characters you can identify with. For me, that's one of the most important things. Having characters your reader can specifically relate to...good or bad.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: It's been many years since I last read an Elfquest book. I have such fond memories of reading the original saga as a boy. To be honest, at the time I felt like the story was complete. I see that you have been involved in the creation of some much more recent stories in that universe. What am I missing out on?
MAT NASTOS: Growing up, Elfquest was my single favorite comic. I loved the series and I loved the artwork of Wendy Pini. My goal in life had been to draw Elfquest -- it was one of the main reasons I decided to go to comic book art school back in the early 90s, and one of the reasons I had decided to become a comic artist at all. Tons of love. I was hired by the Warp Graphics art director, Barry Blair, back while I was still attending the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and started working on my first issue for them in early 1994. It was one of the highlights of my art career.
There was a lot of really cool Elfquest material published after the Pinis opened the door to other creators in the early 90s...and some funky stuff that killed the mythology of the series a bit (the future-world material of Jink or The Rebels was ill-conceived at best). Check out the Blood of Ten Chiefs books (which adapted the old prose anthologies to comic format) for some cool stories. Barry's New Blood work was always a lot of fun as well.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: I've been familiarizing myself with your work for the last couple of days. You do have a few other books out. If a new reader was encountering you for the first time today, what book should they begin with, and why?
MAT NASTOS: Either with THE CESTUS CONCERN or MAN WITH THE IRON HEART. Both are series that I'll be continuing with -- both leads have stories I want to continue to tell. With the CESTUS books you've got a bit more material available -- 2 books and a novella. Book 3, THE CESTUS CORRUPTION, will be out in early 2015.
How to pick between the two? Do you prefer occult/fantasy or hardcore sci-fi? But I say why choose? Get both :)
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: What are you working on now?
MAT NASTOS: Prose-wise, I'm finishing up the third Weir novel, THE CESTUS CORRUPTION, and the second Donner Grimm novel, THE UNWEAVING, now. Both are set to release in early 2015. Outside of prose, I am writing the BRIGADE comic for Rob Liefeld. We had a really successful Kickstarter for the comic and it's going to be released in the next few months. I'm also writing a new ELFLORD comic series with the amazing artist, Tony Vassallo. It'll be out, along with a series based on my Aegisteel characters (from THE OLD SERGEANT and THE LAST IMMORTAL) in 2015 from Outland Entertainment.
I've got a more due out from Disney, but nothing I can talk about yet. On the art side, I just finished up work on pieces for Star Wars and Star Trek trading card sets that are either out now or due out in January 2015. You can keep up to date with me (and find out about my appearances) over on my website at: http://www.MatNastos.net
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: What's your deepest darkest secret?
MAT NASTOS: I actually liked the Howard The Duck movie.
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: Would you like to ask me a question?
MAT NASTOS: If you had three days' warning of the end of civilization and a safe place to hide, what book would you take with you?
NOAH K. MULLETTE-GILLMAN: I've had a big thick copy of the Mahabharata sitting and waiting for me to read more than a few pages of it for about a decade now. I'm not Hindu, but I hear this is the world's first science fiction/superhero epic. Not to mention, it's a nice thick book.
But I'll only pick that if we stipulate that I also have some empty pages to write on, because there's no way I'm going to survive very long if I can't write!
BUY MAT NASTOS BOOKS ON AMAZON: http://www.amazon.com/Mat-Nastos/e/B005FNCMAI/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1418079439&sr=1-2-ent&pebp=1418079418293
That's all for this week. Please come back in fourteen days for the next set of interviews. I have some really exciting guests lined up.
In the meantime, why not read a book or two from this week's featured authors?
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