As originally posted on Dark, But Shining.

One of the great things about entertainment in the internet age is that getting feedback to creators is a lot more…direct than it used to be. After reading and enjoying Monster Island and Monster Nation, I got in touch with the author, David Wellington and let him know what I thought of the books (which you all know as you read the last installment of this column, right?) I also figured that he’d be a pretty good candidate for an interview at this august weblog. Luckily, he agreed.

MM: So, David, first of all: why zombies? Horror has a thousand faces to choose from, so why did you choose zombies for your Monster novels?

DW: I always start my writing projects with one cool image. In this case I had been watching a lot of zombie movies. 28 Days Later, the remake of Dawn of the Dead. I went back and watched all the George Romero films. They were all about the survivors, about how people would hold up in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. I wondered what it would be like if you could get out into the devastation and see what the zombies did when there were no people around. I had this image of an astronaut coming back to earth after the zombies had eaten everybody. I saw him walking around New York, walking down 42nd street, unable to take off his space suit because if he did the zombies would smell him and kill him instantly. I wanted to know what he would see–what the millions of zombies would look like, how they spent their time. That’s where the character of Gary came in—originally he was just supposed to be a passive observer who could go behind enemy lines, so to speak. I wanted him to show us what New York looked like when everybody in it was undead.

MM: Pretty tough to have a live human making those observations, and I suppose that the ramblings of a typical zombie would make for sorta…tedious reading.

DW: I tried to do some of that—the viewpoint of a typical zombie—in Monster Nation with the character of Dick. In short enough doses it seems to work!

MM: In short doses and as flavor, you got me there.

MM: I understand that Monster Island started as an online serial. In fact, I first heard of Monster Island from a story that talked about online fiction jumping to print editions. Can you talk about that the origin of the project and how it came to print?

DW: I had an idea for a zombie novel. A friend of mine had a blog. He suggested I write my story as a serial, posting a short chapter every monday, wednesday, and friday. I said that was a great idea and that if he gave me six months I could work up an outline, do some character sketches, a lot of research, and so on. He said I didn’t understand: he wanted my first chapter by that Monday. I ended up doing all the research and outlining as I went along.

MM: Way to work by the seat of your pants there. How much writing time were you able to devote to an “average” chapter?

DW: A couple of hours, most of which went to research. The chapters started out very short because I just didn’t have time to write more—the first chapter of Monster Island is, I believe, under 750 words. It turned out that was actually a good thing, as people don’t want to read more than two or three pages at a time on their computer screen.

MM: Were you literally writing your novels chapter to chapter or were you able to write the works ahead of time and simply publish on a schedule?

DW: Monster Island was written in real-time. The book changed considerably in the process of being written. I liked doing that but when I was working on the sequels I tried to write two weeks ahead. It’s crucial in a serial that you keep to a rigid timetable. People want their fix when it’s promised to them and not a couple days later or a week later or maybe you’ll take a break for a month… no. They won’t stick around. Some family issues came up while I was writing Monster Nation and I almost fell down on the job. That two week window is for emergencies, so that I can keep a book going no matter what.

MM: Did you approach writing for serial publication differently than a traditional novel? Now that you’re working on a contract (big assumption here), has your process changed?

DW: My serials run for five months per book. That’s sixty chapters, three times a week. That gives me an iron-clad structure. It keeps me from rambling or exploring things too deeply–there’s a plot to be considered. I think it makes for a much faster-paced, high energy book. Every chapter has to end in some kind of cliffhanger and you have to keep things clear and straightforward so people can keep it all straight in their heads for five months. I was very concerned when the first book came out in print that it wouldn’t work, that it would be too choppy or feel too rushed. Instead people seemed to love the pacing and the breakneck speed of the story. So even when I’m writing knowing that a book will eventually be published, I write it the same way.

MM: There is something to be said about the straightforward structure/content that is dictated by serial publication. Did you feel it necessary to go back and add some meat to particular scenes when you went from the serial to the novel format? And how did Monster Island make it over to Thunder’s Mouth? Did you use the serial to sell the novel or did an enterprising editor see your work online first?

DW: I expanded a lot of things in the revision between the serial and the novel—but only to clarify or to strengthen a certain scene. I didn’t change the plot at all. The ending of Monster Nation got beefed up quite a bit and the ending of Monster Planet got a complete rehaul because I wasn’t happy with it the first time.

DW: Monster Island got a great review on BoingBoing.net and the reviewer there offered to show it to his own publisher, who happened to be the head of Thunder’s Mouth. The publisher bought up all three books sight unseen—largely because I’d already proved I had an audience.

MM: One of the great things you did in the Monster novels was to approach the undead in such a way as to allow them to be actual characters, rather than simply a faceless mass of plot complications. What made you go that route?

DW: I wanted somebody who could show you what the zombies did when there weren’t any living people around. That’s where Gary came from, originally, and then Nilla.

MM: Do you think that making undead characters in your novels changes zombies, perhaps making them less scary by way of “humanizing” them?

DW: I hope not! There are plenty of garden variety zombies in the books, and I hope they’re still scary. I find them scary. Zombies are just the same as you and me except that their personalities, their souls, whatever, have been torn away. You can’t like a zombie, and you can’t reason with them. They exist to consume and nothing else. That’s pretty terrifying to me, especially when they outnumber the living by a million to one. I think when you humanize a zombie, you see it for its truly terrifying self, because it’s all about looking in a mirror and seeing how little of your life has any meaning or purpose.

MM: Sort of the perfect existential monster then? Zombies “live” in this perpetual state of hunger that can never really be satisfied, no matter what or who or how much they can eat.

DW: Exactly—but they can’t ever stop, they can’t question why they do what they do. The real terror of Gary’s character is that he does have that ability, he can see the consequences of what he does and knows he’ll never be satisfied, but he chooses to go ahead and survive anyway, that for him at least survival is far more important than living a meaningful life.

MM: Nilla and Gary (from Monster Nation and Monster Island respectively) are both undead and yet very different characters, though similar in a number of ways (both start out as servants of the Epidemic and Mael, and yet both manage to rebel in different ways and end up on completely different paths as a result of that.) Could you talk about your different approaches for those characters?

DW: Gary was supposed to be a scum bag. People were supposed to hate him–he had sold out his own humanity, had willingly joined the opposition. Instead the readers cheered for him. They identified with his desire to survive, to keep going, no matter what it cost him. The living characters defined themselves by what made them better than the zombies–nobility, compassion, a sense of purpose. Gary was much more human, in his way, because he just wanted to survive, and he was willing to throw away his principles if it meant one more day, one more hour of existence.

MM: But in the end, that pursuit of survival takes hold of the narrator, as well, the guy that we’re supposed to be cheering for. So maybe Gary was right, and at least he was honest about it…

DW: It’s a question we all face eventually. Death is part of the human experience, but most of us live in denial of it just so we can get through the day. When it finally comes around we fight it as hard and as long as we can, often prolonging lives that are nothing but suffering. When my time comes I hope I’ll have the courage to accept it and let go, but I don’t know if I will or not. It’s not necessarily that Gary was right, or honest—just that he was human.

DW: For Nilla, survival wasn’t really a problem at first. She didn’t choose to be undead but it made things much easier for her. As a result, when she was given her marching orders she had the ability to make her own decisions. To try to find something beyond mere survival, something worth existing for.

MM: Even if it’s something as simple as finding out her own name.

DW: It’s less about the destination than the journey. We all need something to get us out of bed in the morning, even if it doesn’t seem important to anyone else. Nilla had nothing, nothing at all, so just that little bit of information was priceless to her.

MM: What inspired you to include the snippets of internet/graffiti/video/etc in the chapter breaks for Monster Nation?

DW: Monster Island was set almost entirely in New York City. Monster Nation was supposed to show what had happened to the rest of the country, to drive home the fact that this was happening everywhere, all at once. The snippets are there to give you a kind of background chatter, color commentary on the end of the world. They also develop the story quite a bit, tell you things the characters couldn’t possibly know.

MM: Of course, I’m never going to be able to convince anyone that I didn’t steal that from you…

DW: I stole it from somebody else, who stole it from someone else… one inspiration for that part of the book was Dracula, which is a completely epistolary novel. I was also inspired by the opening credits sequence of the remake of Dawn of the Dead.

DW: Honestly, I don’t think you can “steal” a device. Otherwise any writer who used section breaks or numbered chapters would be guilty of plagiarism.

MM: Would you classify your work as horror or science-fiction, or are these sorts of genre designations not really something you think about? It seems like you could certainly make arguments for either camp.

DW: It’s horror! It’s zombies, so it must be horror, right? Okay, honestly, I started out writing science fiction as a kid. I didn’t really pigeonhole Monster Island as belonging to any particular genre, not when I was writing it. My vampire novel, Thirteen Bullets, is very much a work of horror but I would say the monster books belong to a subgenre, to the post apocalypse story, which can fit into fantasy, sf or horror. I’d like to think that anyone who can appreciate any of those genres will “get” it.

MM: I was thinking of I am Legend, which you could call a “vampire” novel, though any resemblance between it and vampire novels of the time (or of today—not a swooning goth in sight in Matheson’s work). Matheson took a standard horror trope and took it to the nth degree, but then he grafted on a modern, rational sensibility. Do you think that zombies are afforded a unique genre status since they’re largely a modern creation, and not born from distant (European) legend?

DW: I think zombies still count as monsters, which is a subgenre of horror. I’m not a huge fan of the idea of genres and subgenres to begin with, actually. Genres only really exist in the bookstore, where a clerk has to decide what book goes on what shelf. Readers who only read in one genre are shortchanging themselves, and critics who write off an entire genre or who spend all their time deciding when a book has “transcended” its genre waste everybody’s time. If a book is good, it’s good, if it’s entertaining then it’s worth reading.

MM: Name a favorite horror movie or book, and maybe why it’s something that folks would enjoy (particularly if they’ve never heard of it).

DW: Rent this movie: Session 9. Very creepy story set in an extremely creepy real-world setting. Read the ghost stories of M.R. James. The classic master of Edwardian creepiness. The style’s a little old fashioned but he gets you every time.

MM: Thanks for your time, Dave. Any last words? Perhaps a plug for a website that’s near and dear to your heart?

DW: Well, there’s always www.davidwellington.net! People can find all my serials there as well as news and information about my upcoming projects. Thanks for asking me such interesting questions.