Horror author John Palisano has written many terrific short
stories and novels. Recently, I had the pleasure of reading three of them: Dust
of the Dead, Ghost Heart and the forthcoming Beasts of 1,000 Nights. A
“Pali-binge.” Everyone, please make John feel at home here at Twisted Tales.
SRW: John, speaking of “home (didja’ like that clever segue?
Huh?),” one of your novels takes place in New York, another in Los Angeles, two
very different locales. Yet, I thought you captured them both beautifully: the
architecture, the people, even the weather are practically characters. First,
where do you hang your hat? Second, how important is location to you in
developing mood?
JP: Thanks for the nice words, and for reading so thoroughly.
You have the distinction of being the first person to ever read Night Of 1,000
Beasts! I currently live in Los Angeles, although I’ve lived all over the
United States. Location is very important to the story for me. Like you said:
it becomes a character. It has its own obstacles and unique parts that reflect
and tell the story. Very few other locales would have been able to have all the
elements I needed for Dust Of The Dead to work. Same with Ghost Heart. You’re
right: the weather plays a substantial part in both stories. And then taking
those locations and exploring unexpected and little knows parts about them sets
a mood, as well. I showed a lot of places in LA that are right next to, or
under, well-known areas. Like the access tunnels to the subways right under
Hollywood Boulevard. In Ghost Heart we crawled inside old passageways that once
provided passage for freeing slaves, complete with large chambers and rooms.
Taken over by hellish creatures, all, of course.
SRW: One thing I’ve noticed about all three novels is your
protagonists always begin with a solid support group of family and friends.
Then, like a cruel god, you sweep in and wipe them away, leaving the hapless
protagonist to face seemingly insurmountable odds by himself. Now, I know it’s
a horror trope, but I’m strapping into my psychiatric armchair here…do you feel
being alone is horrific?
JP: Personally, that feeling of abandonment has always been awful
for me. I know that’s a universal fear. We like our alone time, but we all like
to know we can go home again, be it with our parents, or our close friends. In
these stories, it was important to isolate the protagonists. I was accused of
Mike in Dust of the Dead of him not starting out heroic. Well, that was by
design. I wanted him to be real and not this Perseus-like God, swinging his
sword right away. I thought it’d be interesting to see him falter a bit, and
make a few bad choices. We’ve all stayed home when we probably should have gone
out to something! I thought it’d be neat to play with that. In the end, though?
He rises. You’ve unearthed a bigger question, though, that definitely is a
through line in my work. I have been exploring what it means to be alone or
with someone, how do we change based on others we fall in love with or work
with, and what do we do when that support system buckles? How do we survive?
SRW: Let’s chat about Dust
of the Dead, my favorite of your books so far. Believe me, I understand
it’s hard to come up with an original zombie tale. I mean how many ways can you
change things up (“Arrrrr!”), right? But I think you’ve done it with Dust. The clever idea behind the tale
seemed rather organic, a natural. Tell us about the genesis.
JP: Hah! Cool. It began by me realizing a lot of zombie books
were really fan fiction, in that they took slightly skewed versions of
themselves, in their own hometowns, and pretended zombies came. Well, boring!
But I got to thinking about the reality of zombies, if they were feasible.
Well, corpses can be very toxic when breaking down. I thought about the biology
of a body breaking down. I pictured a dead body in the hot Los Angeles
environment. At the same time, it was summer, and I caught a sinus infection
from the hot winds. I read that it didn’t take much in the way of pollutants to
cause such a thing. So what if some of those pollutants were coming from dried
up undead, their bodies turning to dust? Hence the title. And then, as diseases
are happy to do, the infection changed and mutated over time so that it became
something even nastier. Of course I thought about what would be done about the
left behind undead? Which leads us to ...
SRW: A pretty hapless job being on the Reclamation Crew, I
imagine. But the details were solid. Did you ever have a similarly awful job?
Clean up crew at crime scenes?
JP: I’ve worked a lot of jobs people wouldn’t expect. Growing
up my family owned an autobody shop and a towing company. I worked there on and
off with my uncles and cousins. At one point my brother wanted to be a funerary
tech. We spoke a lot about it. Learned a lot about it. So all that blue collar
stuff was in there already. Working in towing, well, there are a lot of stories
about what’s left behind. I didn’t personally see a lot of that, thank God, but
I heard a good deal. I was always fascinated with even being able to clean up some
of that. It seemed unrecoverable.
SRW: Okay, John, now about that ending. (Possible spoiler
alert!) Um, those were aliens, right? Right?
And level with me…did you grow bored with the book, wanting to end it quickly?
It seemed a bit rushed with a major plotline left dangling. Or are you bucking
for a sequel?
JP: Right. Sure. Aliens. Heh-heh. Little Green Men. Seriously?
The idea was always to do another book or two in the series. I thought it’d be
out by now, but the editor at the time didn’t want me to get stuck just being a
zombie author. I think that was the right choice. Smart. But the story will
continue in a second book, a third written, called VOICES OF THE DEAD, which
begins exactly where Dust leaves off.
SRW: Moving on to Ghost
Heart. The book captures the sorta narcissistic nightclub scene of New York
well, I think. These characters don’t really have much going on outside of
nightly bar excursions, casual sex, partying (sigh…takes me back) and having a
dead-end job to finance said outings. But the protagonist, Rick, rises above
the pack, falling in love with a mysterious girl. Now, I gotta ask, are you
truly behind the love story? Or is it just a means to the horror?
JP: That was a very difficult mindset to return to: when that
was all that mattered. As I’ve grown older and now am a parent, priorities have
shifted. So going back to that first painful love that seemed like the best
thing in the world? That was tough. I’m so jaded and cynical! But I wanted to
recapture those feelings. The truth of being young and in love with the worst
possible person while a much better fit for you is just cast away. The truth of
putting so much into these things, only to have someone profoundly betray you.
Rick grows up as he grows a little colder by the end. He realizes he has to.
All the death. All the horrible things he sees. Love is not enough. Love leads
him to the most dangerous places. Is it worth it? That’s the question, for me,
that Ghost Heart asks: is living life at a thousand miles and hour worth it if
it’s all going to crash and burn? Or is it better to take it easy and live a
long, fruitful, if not boring, life? Looking back, it seems nearly every
horrible thing is a metaphor of a different aspect of his youth being taken
away. It’s a real feel good book!
SRW: Again, I think you’re trying something different with the
played out vampire story (and thanks for leaving all sparkles at home). There’s
even a Lovecraftian beast in the tale. Every author tries to write something
different, it’s in our blood. Do you think it’s possible to write a good book
utilizing the ol’ clichés? Or do you prefer to stake out new territory?
JP: Art is supposed to be a reflection, right? So if people can
guess the ending and all the plot points in between, then what is it? A way to
kill time? Are they just waiting on the one liners in between? I think story is
changing. Millions of people know what three acts are. They can predict the
twists and turns of so many movies and books. So the art needs to change. The
art needs to surprise and intrigue. If it doesn’t, then it’s not being honest.
I don’t agree with the popcorn film mentality. It’s just fun. Turn off your
brain. Well. No. Even in a tent-pole movie, people have a much better
experience if they’re trying.
SRW: The highlight for me was the scene where Rick sees
(hallucinates, he wonders?) Minarette lurking outside his uncle’s body shop
during a late night blizzard. Scene made me feel cold inside and out. Well
done. Do you prefer writing the subtly chilling scenes like that? Or do you
like the big “pop outs (as my wife calls them)”?
JP: Thank you. That was a scary scene to write for me, too. And
it was a major turning point in the story. Minarette goes from the Miss
America-Blonde goddess and changes into a dark, pale Gothic force. She’s still
sexy and gorgeous, but the switch is disturbing more for what it’s implying.
We’ve all known people who we’ve loved who seemingly change into new people,
and have been betrayed by them. That’s what that moment symbolizes. I definitely
prefer the character driven and spookier scenes. That being said, I think the
jump scare and action scenes can be equally great to write. I think the goal is
to always reach past your comfort zone and try something you haven’t
previously. Those moments are my favorites, overall, when a scene comes
together like magic, yet isn’t a cliche.
SRW: Beast of 1,000
Nights is your most unusual book yet. I detected a Jack Ketchum influence,
a little of the old schlocky “beasts attack” horror films from the ‘70’s vibe,
and a “Most Dangerous Game” nod. Close? Jumping to ludicrous conclusions?
JP: Certainly there’s a massive Jack Ketchum influence to the
book, although this one goes way into the supernatural where Jack doesn’t
really explore those places. His stuff is more real and visceral, which I find
very hard to read and not be completely affected from! Mostly, the influence
came from a winter trip to Colorado with Fawn and my son. We were riding up the
side of Pike’s Peak on an incline train and it was so amazing and gorgeous, and
I thought about how small we are, and about how if that train broke down and no
one could get to us, that any number of animals or environmental elements would
be severe threats to our cushy selves! I also work in Animal Rights and Rescue
and thought about how neat it would be if the animals did to us what people did
to them. So there’s a lot of what I think are very funny scenes. I mean, the
helicopter pilots are boiled alive in a huge pot by lobster creatures in the
middle of a snow-packed mountain. Absurd and hilarious, but at the same time,
illustrates just how brutal we are to them. So those were really the two
influences that converged.
SRW: Near the end of the book (MILD SPOILER ALERT!), there’s a
frankly bizarre scene where you’ve taken the human equation out of the picture
(who we’ve been following throughout the entire novel) and turn the tale over
to the titular beasts for a mega-battle. I just gotta ask…what’s up with that, John?
JP: That scene is vital. It illustrates that even when animals
serve us well and do our bidding, they are ultimately still disposable. Estella
sets them up because, well, what the hell is she going to do with a thousand
walking, talking beasts until the next longest night of the century? Buy them
ski passes? Pay for their condos? She’d rather take her inner circle and have
the rest kill each other. Totally selfish and horrible of her, but she’s a bit of
an arrogant jerk, isn’t she?
SRW: Perhaps the biggest surprise for me was the identity of
the “final girl.” Without spoiling it
for everyone, I applaud your choice. There you go again, fighting the cliché.
While I read, I wondered if this had been your intent from the beginning. Or if
you’d changed your mind as the finale neared.
JP: I always knew. Because life rewards horrible people left
and right, doesn’t it? Look at all these absolutely abysmal people who are
celebrities. We make them rich. We make them famous. We hang on their mental
flatulence. Meanwhile, the noble, the true, the folks who teach our children, the
people that make our food and our clothes and our shelter, are often treated
like hell. I wanted to show that. There’s a line where one character, a vegan,
pleads for mercy. She is told that her people showed no mercy to an animal for
being pregnant or good, and is slaughtered anyway. That’s a big theme in the
book: that the good guys don’t always come out ahead in real life, and doing
the right thing can sometimes cost you more than being a conniving jerk. It may
sound bitter, but I’m not. I just thought it was pretty funny and illuminating
to explore that sort of story: where the hero’s journey is interrupted and
hijacked by a no-good, selfish asshole. Kind of like people bullying cute girls
for winning Grammys.
SRW: What’s up next from the prolific keyboard of John
Palisano?
JP: A small collection of Halloween stories, “Starlight Drive”
has just been released, as well as my first short fiction collection, “All That
Withers” which is coming from Cycatrix Press in May. There will be more novels
soon! I’d like to say that the titles I have with Samhain are and will be
available into the foreseeable future, despite the changeover. We’re all
waiting to see precisely what that will be, but one way or another, the books
will be out there. So please check them out, and for the love of all that is
good, leave reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, people. And not just for my stuff:
for every author you read. Even a line or two. It helps tremendously and only
takes a moment. Thanks, Stuart!
SRW: There you have it, folks. If you have any interest in
horror, I’d recommend John’s books. You can find them and John at:
