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Joe Schreiber
I had the pleasure of interviewing a very talented author named Joe Schreiber. Joe has written several supernatural thrillers including Chase the Dead and Eat the Dark. Most recently Joe wrote No Doors. No Windows. And the most recent entry into the Star Wars universe, Death Troopers.
I have published a review of each of these books following this article that includes my interview with Joe Schreiber.
Sam – Joe, tell me a little bit about yourself including where you grew up and what got you into writing.
Joe – I’ve been writing basically as long as I’ve been able to write. I grew up all over the country. My dad is a surgeon and he moved our family everywhere. I was born in Michigan and moved to Alaska, Wyoming, and California, kind of all over the place. But I’ve always ended up telling stories and writing stories because I knew it was what I was going to end up doing even if I didn’t make a living with it, but its been with me my whole life.
Sam – Tell me about your first book getting published.
Joe – I wrote a bunch of books that were really awful before I wrote something approachable that could get published. I finally did write something I felt was good enough which was right after college. I went about finding an agent and he was able to place my first novel. Before that I entered writing contests but it wasn’t until I got an agent that things got serious for me.
Sam – What was the first book you got published?
Joe – 1994 – a non-supernatural thriller called Next of Kin. Then there was a bit of a break. In 2006 I published a novel called Chasing the Dead, and another called Eat the Dark in 2007.
Sam – What draws you to the horror genre?
Joe – The writers I read while growing up were horror writers but I didn’t really think of them as such. I distinctly remember being 10 or 11 and reading The Stand for the first time and later reading Peter Straub and Clive Barker. I read them because they captivated me and held my attention and I never thought – “Hey this is horror!” I got started writing stories that I would be drawn to in that same territory.
Sam – Give me a brief synopsis of No Doors. No Windows.
Joe – No Doors. No Windows. is about a guy who comes back to his hometown for his father’s funeral and discovers a manuscript behind a shed at his father’s house. He didn’t know his father was a writer and his father is credited with the story. The story is about a house that has a wing that you can only enter when you are in the house. The son is really gripped by the story and discovers that the house in the story is based on a house in town. He goes to check it out and discovers that there are some really connections to some of the things his father wrote about. He extends his stay to see if he can finish the book himself and in doing so gets sucked in to this sort of perverse family history and old crime that the men in his family are complicit with. It’s a ghost story and my attempt to write a haunted house story in a way that is new but also entails some of the things I love about haunted house stories and haunted hotel novels I read when I was younger like The Shining and The Haunting of Hill House.
Sam – When you write about dark topics, how does your family react to that?
Joe – I get a lot of static from people about why I am so compelled to include kids in my work and I really have no defense for that except for that many of the books I read when I was younger included kids. I have a 5 year old and a 7 year old and love them to death. My worst fear is that something should happen to them but when you sit down to write there is a sort of emotional anesthesia that allows you to both channel and be immune to the terror you are describing on the page. If any of this stuff would really happen to me or even if I read about it in another book that someone else wrote, I find it profoundly effective. There’s a weird sense when you are writing the story and driving it forward you are immune o some of the horrible things you are writing about.
Sam – How hard is it to portray horror and violence in writing?
Joe – In my mind if you are going to tell a story whether its horror or suspense or romance, the writer is responsible for creating a recognizable world even if its set on a star destroyer or Altirus 7 you need to work to create and establish a familiar thing for a reader so the reader now feels sympathetic with the surroundings. Nothing is less effective than trying to get the reader afraid of something on page 1. If you don’t lay the groundwork nothing you write about after words is going to amount to much more than the loud music and jolting, startling moments that are in some of those less successful horror movies. They throw things up there for the immediate startle reaction and not the unsettling chill you hope for when you sit down to read a scary book or watch a scary movie.
Sam – How did you get approved to write an official Star Wars novel?
Joe – This is my least favorite answer, but its true – It just kind of happened. My editor at Del Rey, Keith Clayton was really involved in the Star Wars universe – he was sitting around with someone else at a bar or convention and talking about how cool it would be to do a Star Wars horror novel and it was sort of the end of it. He mentioned it to my agent and my agent mentioned it to me and I said, “Can I at least get a shot at this? It sounds like too much fun not to at least take a swing at it.” I was very surprised at how ready LucasArts was to try something new from the get-go. They were very encouraging and very open to some of the ideas we were talking about. They really wanted to do a Star Wars horror novel. They didn’t want to do it half way, they really wanted to push the buttons on it so I was ready to go.
Sam – Was there any pushback to writing horror and gore in Death Troopers?
Joe – None whatsoever actually. I felt like, “Wow, this is a great fit because they said they wanted to do a George Romero story in a George Lucas universe.” I told them I got it and definitely could do that for them. When the cover came out and it was all over the internet I couldn’t believe they were cool with it. I was just thrilled. This is exactly the tone I was shooting for. This wasn’t going to be the “Galaxy of Fear” young adult series, this was going to be something new. I t was a real show of faith on their part about what I was turning in to them.
Sam – Give us a synopsis of Death Troopers.
Joe – This takes place directly before A New Hope. Death Troopers starts out on an Imperial prison barge called the Purge which is transporting 500 prisoners to a prison moon and it breaks down. They are trying to repair it and come across what seems to be a derelict star destroyer. They can’t get it to respond to any of hit hailing frequencies so they send a group of people to board the star destroyer to salvage parts to fix up the prison barge. Some of them don’t come back and some of them do come back and it quickly becomes evident that they are carrying something that quickly spreads through the prison barge and affects everyone on board in a horrible way.
Sam – Were there any tributes to anyone in Death Troopers?
Joe – Night of the Living Dead from 1968 is the best touch point you can hit on for this. They’re not called zombies they are the walking dead. These people are in a graveyard and the walking dead are after them, hungry and not able to reason. That is the scariest thing to me. It’s not like Zombieland where you have action and comedy. I feel like Romero made these Guerilla movie horror films that were really good. As far as more subtle things – I got the imagery for the star destroyer from listening to music from Kubrick’s The Shining just to get a sense of that same ominous openness and expanse of space that can be terrifying even though there is nothing around you, just that sterile space that lends itself to creepiness.
Sam – Tell us a little bit about playlists that you reference on your website.
Joe – Generally when I write, I write in silence, but as I go through the book and think about it – certain songs create a mood and by the time I get done with the first draft I have songs in my head. So for fun I put together some of these songs as I edit the book and then the more I listen to it the more I realized that certain songs really grab the atmosphere I’m trying to create at certain times. It’s a lot of fun to do and people have gotten a kick out of having those songs out there and getting a sense of them. In a perfect world if I was creating a movie, those songs would be some of the ones that I would use.
Sam – Can you talk about your next Star Wars novel coming out in 2010?
Joe – It’s just finished and I just sent it in to my editor. All that they’ve said about it is that it’s a horror novel and it’s not a sequel. It’s not going to directly join with “Death Troopers”.
Sam – Where should people go to learn more about Joe Schreiber?
Joe – I am on Facebook like everyone else. I have a website at www.scaryparent.blogspot.com that I try to keep updated. I contribute every week to Del Rey Books website as well.
Sam – So what’s next for Joe?
Joe – I have another book coming out next fall which is an original horror story based on the TV show Supernatural that I am doing for DC Comics that just finished up too so that will be coming out next fall.
Click on the links to order Death Troopers or No Doors. No Windows.
To learn more about Joe Schreiber go to www.scaryparent.blogspot.com.
I’d like to thank Joe Schreiber and Joe Scalora from Del Rey books for setting up the interview.
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