C.J. Henderson – interview

He’s written for comic books ranging from Archie to Batman and The Punisher to Cherry Poptart. He’s authored thousands of nonfiction pieces, he’s just shy of having written 300 short stories, and he’s also the author of the Professor Piers Knight series of Urban Fantasy novels. The first one featuring Knight is Brooklyn Knight, and the second, just out this month and also reviewed here, is Central Park Knight. His novels are blurbed by, of all people, William Shatner, so ya know they have to be pretty amazing–and, they are just that. I’m honored that C.J. has agreed to do the following interview with me–I hope you enjoy reading it!

Professor Crazy: This is indeed a pleasure to be interviewing you, C.J.! I loved reading Brooklyn Knight and Central Park Knight, but before I get to some questions about those two novels, I’d like to ask you a few about your career a s a writer of comic books. if I may. Between what years did you write comic books? Do you have some favorite super hero ones you have done stories for?

C.J. Henderson: I started writing comics in the early 80s, Eternity Comics first, then Marvel, DC, Penthouse, Tekno, Epic, Archie, et cetera. The thing is, though, I never stopped. I’m actually still writing them. These days I’m only doing comics for Moonstone, and more my own characters than anything else, but that’s more a time issue than anything else.

Favorite superhero that I got to write for: that’s easy. Batman. Always my favorite, and once I got to write issues of Batman, that was the top. Getting to write Batman is more satisfying that getting your first novel out. It’s just the ultimate.

Do you still write for comic books? Who are some of the comic book artists/illustrators you’ve collaborated with? Have you ever worked, for instance, with Jack Kirby?

No, never got to write for Kirby. Did get to work with Dan DeCarlo and Mike Grell. Fred Harper and Trevor von Edeen. A bunch of people … my favorite being Ben Fogletto. He was a penciller/inker who was offered work at Marvel because of his terrific story-telling, but they wanted him to drop his style and conform to the house style. He said “no,” and ended up at a smaller house with more freedom. Once we worked together, I never wanted to work with anyone else. I’ve talked a number of publishers into using him on book covers, and I’ve never been disappointed. If you just look up The Occult Detectives of C.J. Henderson, that’s him. I don’t want to argue with anyone, but I think he’s great.

You mention in Central Park Knight (or, rather, have the character George Rainert, Professor Piers Knight’s seventeen-year-old intern, mention to Knight) a place that should be full of magical energy Knight can siphon off and store: the Javits Center, “the site of the New York Comic Con.” George tells Rainert it took place in February, and that “Manhattan was hit by a record snowstorm,” but still, “thousands of people showed–thousands more than the promoters had hoped for.” This got me thinking about whether or not you were at that particular Comic Con. Were you, and, if so, do you have any anecdotes about it you could share? How many Comic Cons, if any, have you gone to/appeared at?

I do about 30 to 40 conventions every year. Anyone interested can see my con schedule in the NEWS section at www.cjhenderson.com. I did the Big Apple Show for years, since I live in Brooklyn, and it was held in Manhattan. Mike Carbonaro who ran it is aces, and he always had room for me. In fact, now that he’s sold the show to Wizard, they’ve been the same way, making sure I have a table at any of their shows. I’m doing Philly, Boston and the fall show here in NYC. I do others as well, and gaming shows, science fiction events, horror, mystery … ah, I guess just anywhere where people who read tend to gather.

Okay, enough about comic book related questions, though I admit that I collected and loved to read comics, especially Batman, Doctor Strange, Spiderman, Green Lantern, The Flash (okay–long story short, all super hero ones)….Harrison Ford might be getting too old. Knight has to look young, and he’s just a bit too craggy. So, big a Ford fan as I am, to be true to the character, I’d have to pass him or Cage. To tell the truth, I’ve been asked this question a lot, and I don’t have a good answer. David Tennant (sp?) would be good, Edward Norton with a goatee, a few others, but no personal favorite. I would be more than willing to listen to a studio’s suggestions, or bend to fan pressure, because I just don’t have a really strong opinion. This may be the first time this ever happened to me out of all my characters, too.

I agree that either actor you mentioned would be great as Knight (maybe especially Ed Norton).

An artifact known as the “Dream Stone” is very important to the plot of Brooklyn Knight. What is the Dream Stone, and why does an evil entity from another dimension want it so badly?

The Dream Stone is needed to make something happen. I don’t want to give away part of the ending, but say a witch wants to cast a spell, she needs all the ingredients for her cauldron. The Dream Stone is necessary for the forces of darkness to move forward.

How did you get first-hand information about the Brooklyn Museum? Did you have behind-the-scenes access to it? Are offices, for instance, on the sixth floor, as you mention that is the case with Professor Piers Knight’s office?

It’s the oddest story. The character of Bridget Elkins was based on my daughter’s best friend. The day after I decided she’d be a great model for Bridget, I ran into her mother. I told her mom what I was planning, and her response was, “You don’t know what she’s doing this summer, do you?”

When I admitted I didn’t, I found out she was working as an intern at the Brooklyn Museum! It was the most amazing coincidence. Anyway, she gave me a complete tour, back and forth, up and down, file rooms, storage vaults, everything legally possible. It was swell. And yes, the older, antique offices with lots of wood, they are on the 6th floor.

I did play with some details, however, working with the museum so as to alert the public that they do have a great number of anti-theft devices in place, but not where I say they are, not controlled the way I say, et cetera.

Red-headed Bridget Elkins from Wolfs Bend, Montana, is Knight’s summer intern. Knight seeks to both impress her and inform her about New York City when he takes her to the top of the Empire State Building and points out and describes boroughs and fascinating facts about New York City. Do you share Knight’s infectious enthusiasm about New York City and Brooklyn?

Yes. I thought when I first moved here that I would get my career going, make my name, then go back to the country. Well, I like to visit the country now, but after 35 years in Brooklyn, I don’t even want to move to Manhattan. I love Brooklyn. It’s the greatest boro in the greatest city in the world. The second book doesn’t have the same amount of boosterism because I want each of the novels to stand apart from the others, but yeah, to quote Ernie Hudson at the end of Ghostbusters, “I love this town!”

How does Knight float when he prevents thieves from stealing the Dream Stone from the Brooklyn Museum? What happens to the thieves when they open fire on Knight? (It’s one of my favorite earlier scenes in the book)

As Knight explains later to Bridget, he has the artifact, the Disc of the Winds, with him in that scene. That’s how he floats. The bullets miss Knight because he is wearing his ring. That’s explained later when he gives the ring to Dollins when the detective goes up against the fire monster. It’s revealed then that Knight having the ring is why Dollins wasn’t hit by bullets the last time they were in trouble.

The Dream Stone is sought after even after it’s moved to the police station. It gets stolen from the station in a very odd way, though, fortunately, it turns out to be just a copy of the original. How does it get stolen from the police station?

The fire demon envelops it and then, when it disappears, the stone goes with it.

When the Dream Stone eventually gets transported to Fort Drum, it’s still not safe. What happens to the Sherman and Abrams tanks that try to safeguard it?

They get destroyed by the second fire demon. It can’t be turned by explosives, so it simply blasts them out of existence.

Well, that should be enough questions and answers about Brooklyn Knight to give our readers an idea of what it’s about. Now, I’ll move on to some questions about its sequel, Central Park Knight.  I like it that you quote many different sources, from Balzac to The Wizard of Oz. What significance does the quote you choose of Balzac’s have to do with the start of Central Park Knight?

That quote, in the surface sense, gives Knight the idea of how to combat the horror that is descending on the world in the beginning of the book. Its reference to joy is meant to show that an excess of joy can only come through a sense of community. Those without it tend to be alone, those filled with joy tend to connect to the world around them … which has a great deal to do with how the book ends.

Sadly, after the first fifty or so pages of Central Park Knight, Bridget leaves to go back to Montana, though she is going to come back to start her new job at a children’s museum in Manhattan. You replace her with the aforementioned George Rainert, who is very smart, but overweight, lumbering, and geeky. I wasn’t sure if I’d like him at first, but as I read, I thought he’s a good foil to Professor Knight, because of his geeky pop culture references. Also, I was reminded of how Dr. Who is great season after season, no matter who the Doctor or his sidekick happens to be.  Did you choose to have someone like Rainert to appeal to the SF/Urban Fantasy/Comics geeks who might potentially make up your largest audience?

No, not really. It’s not that I don’t want to do things that will appeal to the fans, it’s that I’m really bad at trying to second-guess the audience. Too much planning makes things stale, so I just write and let the chips fall where they may. Now, Rainert was planned, but along different lines. Like I said earlier, I wanted the second book to be very different from the first. I personally don’t like series where every book is essentially the same thing over and over. So, I wanted Knight’s new intern to be the complete opposite of Bridget. Male/female. Trim/fat. College-grad/high-school grad. Small town/big city … you get the idea. I want the fans to have a good time, but for them to also have new things to experience every time.

In Central Park Knight, Professor Piers Knight faces perhaps his most difficult foes yet: dragons. I have read that I believe it was your editor who suggested that the novel have dragons in it–is that correct? Did you do a lot of research on dragons for the book?

Yes, the only thing the editor said was that they wanted a dragon in the book. They might have actually been kidding about wanting to be able to put a dragon on the cover, but I ran with it. I’m a very reactionary kind of person. I don’t write an outline for anything I do, but rather I bounce off each scene, building on them the way I think things would progress in real life.

Like Rainert. I based him on someone I knew a long time ago, someone I didn’t much like. And, I knew Knight wasn’t going to like him because he was going to just be realizing he missed Bridget when Rainert showed up. I wanted him to have to prove himself to Knight and myself. I was just as willing to have him fall short of the mark as succeed. I never actually know who my characters are until they reveal themselves to me.

Could you tell our readers a little about the two main dragons in the novel, why they’re so difficult to kill, and how Knight gets the scars that run across his chest?

The scars, which were revealed in the first book, but not explained, were something Knight picked up the first time he ran into dragons, years earlier. One of them, miffed at the professor, gave him a slight tap, a backward glancing blow, which sent him flying and tore his chest open.

As for the dragons, they’re alien creatures, visitors from a beyond dimension. There actually drawn much more from Lovecraftian references than sword and sorcery. So, the dragons in Central Park Knight have much more in common with Lovecraft’s elder gods than they do flesh and blood reptiles. That’s why they can be shape-shifters, why some spit fire and some don’t, et cetera.

What happens to Knight’s office in the novel?

It gets totally trashed.

In this novel, you let the readers know more about Knight’s past, including a torrid romance he had with a Chinese woman who shows up again in his life. Who is she, and why does she show up again?

Tian was a student at a dig where Knight was visiting when he had his encounter with a dragon that ended with him getting sliced open. They are separated during that scene, each not knowing what happened to the other. She has to return to China before Knight is ever found. When the dragons return to the world, the Chinese government (for whom Tian works) send her to find Knight since they are two of the only people in the world who know anything about dragons.

What relic does Knight use to defeat the dragons? Why does Knight and Rainert go to a theater on Broadway and the Eighth Street Playhouse?

Wow, you sure do ask a lot of questions that make it hard to keep things a secret. Obviously I’ve been dancing around a few of my answers, because I don’t want to give away some of the big reveals from the book. This one, though … yikes … I don’t know how to answer. Especially since Knight doesn’t actually beat the dragons … not alone. And, not all the dragons are evil …

Now, as to the other question, Knight and Rainert travel all over town gathering psychic energy for the big battle. Knight is not a Dr. Strange/Dr. Fate kind of magician that just flings magic around. He takes artifacts from the museum and has to use them as did the ancients who created them. The magic system in this series is based on the idea that human beings leave behind psychic energy wherever they go. Graveyards have it because of all the emotions funerals engender. Theater walls are soaked with energy after the premier of a great new movie. Et cetera. To be able to use any of his offensive artifacts during that battle, Knight needs da juice, so a hunting they must go.

To close, C.J., could you let our readers know if you’re currently working on the third Piers Knight Book? If so, what is it called, and do you know when it might be out in the bookstores?

Well, yes and no. Tor hasn’t given the green light to a third book yet, so I haven’t started writing it yet. However, the first few chapters of Central Park Knight came from the story “An Excess of Joy”. Well, I do know that the Knight story, “Pragmatic,” will be the beginning of the third novel. I know who the sidekick will be, I know what the major reveal will be in that book, I know I’ll be introducing another level of players … I mean, in Brooklyn Knight we learn about magic in that world and how it works. In Central Park Knight, we find out that there are dragons, but that they’re not just snarling lizards that love gold. In the third one, we’ll meet an entire new group of characters based on … damn, there you go again. You’re very crafty, Professor, but I can’t let this one out of the bag. What I have planned for the third Knight book (no, I don’t know the title yet) is one of the wildest things I’ve created lately. No reveal. Sorry. But I don’t even understand it enough myself yet to start giving things away.

So, I guess the answer is, no, I’m not writing the book yet, but I have the first few chapters. No title yet, either, but if the second one does well enough for Tor to throw the switch, believe me, everything else gets shoved to the side so I can jump right to work. I really love this series, and I want to do seven of them. If I can get to seven, I think I’ll have told the whole story. Fingers crossed.

Seven’s the lucky number! I’m sure you’ll hit seven with no trouble at all! I have really enjoyed spending some time doing this interview with you, C.J., and I and the staff here wish you much more success and happiness in the future!

If you’re a fan of the Urban Fantasy genre, and comic books, and love reading about characters who combine elements of the Dresden Files, Doctor Strange, Indiana Jones, and Dr. Who, I strongly suggest that you check out Brooklyn Knight and Central Park Knight by C.J. Henderson!

Here’s a few questions for you about Brooklyn Knight. I liked reading about Professor Knight, the curator of the Brooklyn Museum and hero of the series. He’s arrogant, and unabashedly a major fan and promoter of New York City and, in particular, Brooklyn. But, he’s highly intelligent, as well, and when he says he knows almost everything there is to know, he may be telling the truth. He’s a character I can imagine a comic book being written about, actually. I mentioned in my review of Brooklyn Knight that I thought Nicolas Cage might be a good person to play him, if the novel was ever made into a movie. What are your thoughts on this? Would you chose someone else, maybe like Harrison Ford, as Knight’s been also compared to Indiana Jones?