I know you’ve got quite a collection of Night memorabilia. Do you limit it to one room? What’s your family think about your collection (sorry, just had to ask).
You already had a huge knowledge base, but did you have to do any supplemental research? What’s the most surprising new thing you learned while writing the book?
It’s not an easy answer — I wrote a whole book about it! I think it’s partly due to genius and partly due to luck that the film is stocked with archetypes that are so strong that they still resonate today. It is a metaphor machine; every scene seems to represent more than what is one the screen. It helps that it is strikingly shot, edited, and performed, and also basically invented the modern conception of the flesh-eating zombie.
Tons of it. The book generally indicates the research in the prose itself, and sometimes the hunt for the info is part of the story. Digging into the history of some of the cast took well over a year. It was strange work, but really gratifying and exciting.
My collection is actually quite small! You wouldn’t even notice it until you were in my office for a while. You’d probably be most likely to notice NOTLD on my T-shirts more than anything. So I don’t really have a “collection” in any normal sense; it’s much more subtly integrated into my life and definitely wouldn’t weird anyone out in my family of otherwise! But the internet is filled with people who have had to dedicate entire rooms to their memorabilia. I don’t have that collector’s gene.
I apologize, this is probably in the book but my memory is a leaky sieve: How did you first meet Night of the Living Dead’s director/creator, George Romero? I know you co-wrote The Living Dead with him; how did that collaboration come about?
I’ve never seen the movie either! I’ll have to look for that online.
Everyone in my discussion group agreed that Whalefall could be a crossover between adult and young adult fiction. It was a captivating coming of age story. I know you have written several YA books. Which was your favorite and which would you recommend as a first read?
I read Whalefall and watched Trollhunters, loved them both!
Whalefall is intensely claustrophobic and existential, while Trollhunters is expansive, mythic, and adventurous. When you move between such radically different genres and audiences, what aspects of storytelling stay constant for you—and what do you deliberately change?
Also, both Whalefall and Trollhunters center on characters who are thrust into extreme situations and forced to grow very quickly. Do you start with the emotional journey of your characters and build the world around it, or does the world come first and shape the characters?
Thank you!
Speaking of Trollhunters, how did your collaboration with Guillermo del Toro come about, first with Trollhunters in 2015, and then The Shape of Water in 2018? What was working with another author like?
In Partially Devoured you mention you started writing with a friend as a child, but by around 6th grade you were writing for yourself, and not really letting others read your work – “art-for-art’s-sake.” When did this begin to change? When did you start writing for others, and realize you could make a career out of it?
My favorite of my YA books is the two-volume epic THE DEATH AND LIFE OF ZEBULON FINCH. It’s one the best things I’ve ever done, but unfortunately, one of the lesser read! My most popular YA is probably ROTTERS.
Very, very late. I don’t think I wrote any fiction I wanted anyone to read until I wrote my first book, published as THE MONSTER VARIATIONS. I still am kind of ambivalent about the publishing process. I love writing so much, but the publishing part still feels a bit distant to me.
These days, I change everything that I can from one book to the next. Genre, POV, tense, style, length of sentences and paragraphs, how the chapters and sections are organized, everything.
Neither of your options for how I structure stories feels entirely accurate to how I do things. It’s almost always the story concept first, character second, world a distant third. There are always exceptions: my 2026 sci-fi novel THE SIXTH NIK required tons of world building that couched the whole thing. But I don’t do a ton of stuff that isn’t realistic — TROLLHUNTERS and THE SIXTH NIK are outliers.
That seems so contrary to what most authors do. I recently spoke to one who actually changed her pen name when she wanted to write in a slightly different genre so as not to confuse her readers. Why do you suppose you ended up creating project that are so varied, rather than just settling into a comfortable niche?
On a related note, you’ve worked on a variety of projects – screenplays, graphic novels, YA books, movies, etc. Do you have a favorite medium in which to work?
Hi Daniel - One of my favorite lines from WHALEFALL is when “Mitt is busy dying” the following sentence is “If you can’t know what’s right in front of you, you can’t know what’s beyond you.” This sentence brought up a lot of discussion in our book club. We had our own thoughts. Can you tell us what you meant by this sentence?
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Your imagination is something else! ! Do ideas come to you suddenly (like in the middle of the night) or when you deliberately sit down to write or some variation of that?
Both. I am always, always taking notes.
Novels. They remain the most challenging, rewarding, and immortal format.