Stefan Petrucha – Interview

Professor Crazy’s Case Log: I’m going to be interviewing the famous and highly gifted author Stefan Petrucha today. He has a column here now, and he is the author of the best-selling X-Files comic book series and has written eighteen novels, including Timetripper, The Rule of Won, a book he coauthored with Ryan Buell (the host of A&E’s Paranormal State) called Paranormal State: My Journey Into the Unknown, and his most recent novel, which I reviewed here, the paranormal historical vampire novel Blood Prophecy. He has also appeared in three episodes of Paranormal State. Will I also have paranormal experiences during this interview? Who knows…read on to find out!

Professor Crazy: You prefer to be called Stefan or Steve? What is your favorite color, and what is your quest? You could answer those, but I have some very sensible, non-crazy questions for you, as well. I want to concentrate them mostly on your latest novel, Blood Prophecy, but I have a few I’d like to ask you first about Timetripper, The Rule of Won, and Paranormal State: My Journey Into the Unknown. Oh, and others…like this one:

Who have been some writers who have influenced you, and who are some of your favorite current authors? Also, the television series Dark Shadows–think all you want to before you answer–thumbs up, or thumbs down?

Stefan Petrucha: Stefan. Purple. I seek the grail. You?

Influence, influences, been around a while so that’s tough. My favorite author may be John Steinbeck, but I’d also count Samuel Becket, Kafka and MT Anderson. In terms of comic, Stan Lee, Allan Moore and early Frank Miller. Most recently I loved Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test, my review of that is up here at Boomtron.

Dark Shadows? That’s an easy question about an old obsession. I love it, warts and all. My first screenplay, written back in fifth grade, was a spoof of the feature film, called House of Shady Darkness. I wait in terror and anticipation for the new Depp/Burton film, which, so far, seems to be making the rights decisions. All my thumbs up.

How did you land the comic book writing gig? What years did you write the X-Files series? Have you written for other comic books?

I tried breaking into comics for about ten years, there’s an article about that somewhere, then spent the next ten writing things that were paid for but usually never published. I seemed to have a knack for picking companies about to go out of business. Among them was Meta-4, the first New Age superheroes, which focused on the paranormal.

So when The X-Files premiered, of course I was watching. After the first ep, I frantically dialed my old pal Jim Salicrup, told him he should absolutely get the rights and to please, please let me write it. I think his spouse made a similar suggestion to him (about the rights, not me). I’d been writing for Topps Comics, obviously knew the subject matter like crazy, so when Peter David said no, I got the gig.

Before and since I have written many comics, most recently The Nancy Drew Graphic Novels, which I co-wrote with my wife, Sarah Kinney, and the Slices satire series (Harry Potty, Breaking Down, Percy Jerkson) which I co-write with my daughters.

I liked your take on time travel and the many different potential paths and outcomes our lives can go in that you write about in Timetripper. The main character, Harry Keller, doesn’t so much travel in time as trip through it, seeing all of the vast array of threads or paths our actions (or inactions) that would result in each case. The novel brings up lots of questions, like: Is there free will? Do we have control over our own lives? What actions might have made dramatic differences for the better or the worse in our lives, if we had taken them, rather than the ones we actually did take?  Could you give our readers some idea of what the concept of “A-Time” is in Timetripper?

Timetripper was originally a comic I wrote in the late eighties, with art by the late, great Tom Sutton. It was fantastic to be able to visit the character again for a four novel series.

Anyway, the notion that Harry travels through time rather than in it, is a nice way to put it, but then again, everything travels through time. It’s more like he travels outside linear time. I always like to play with the borderlines of genre. When things get blurry, they’re more interesting, terra incognita. So, there’s that the cliché line from a dozen time travel movies/novels where the scientist explains that time is only linear because that’s how we perceive it.

In Timetripper, the question becomes, what if we didn’t perceive it that way? What would things look like? Harry Keller, after suffering an emotional trauma, no longer sees time the same way. He thinks he’s going crazy. Technically he is, but he’s also getting a different picture of the world, where past, present and future exist simultaneously. When he accesses that “mental state” he calls it A-Time, as in amoral. There, human lives appear in shifting trails, changes in the present changing events in the future in a way only Harry can see.

What are the Quirks you write about in Timetripper, and what do they do that makes them dangerous?

One thing Harry notices early on is that A-Time is inhabited by various creatures that are invisible to those who only see time linearly. One such creature, which he names a Quirk, is essentially a sequence of events that been popped out of the time trails.

Disassociated, it wanders around trying to find a spot to fit itself into someone’s future.

In the book, yes, there’s free will, but there’s also fate. Once the Quirk is lodged back in place, its sequence (someone slipping on a banana peel, or someone committing suicide) must occur. If it’s nice, like winning a lottery, great. If it’s a mass murder….

A character’s life in Timetripper doesn’t go very well at all. Todd Penderwhistle’s actions lead to violence and his arrest in one scenario. Why is Harry willing to die to save Todd?

At first, Harry’s control over his freaky perceptions is pretty minimal. He senses that Todd’s important, and feels compelled to save him to prevent something horrible from happening. As the series progresses, we find out what it is. There are four books in all, YesterMorrow, InRage, BlindSighted and FutureImperfect.

When you started out writing the YA novel that became a popular best-seller, The Rule of Won, did you have the self-help book The Secret in mind?  I enjoyed reading and reviewing it (my review appears at a different site), because though I am not a teen or young adult myself (except maybe in spirit or when I hop in to my own private time machine, patent pending), I think anyone who reads it can identify with its main message (or one of them): Don’t put your trust and happiness into the hands of anyone else but yourself.

Thanks. I absolutely had The Secret in mind. Rule was the follow up to my first hardcover, Teen, Inc., done with Walker Books for Young Readers (currently being optioned for a TV series). At the time I was bouncing around ideas with my editor and publisher, The Secret was huge and I had a lot of ideas about how I wanted to critique it. A high school getting completely wrapped up in the idea seemed a great way to go. It also gave me the chance to do something I really hadn’t before, develop an entire community as a sort of character in its own right.

What would you say is so bad about following someone else’s plan for your life, and wishing for what you want? Won’t doing this result in a better world for all of us, and, of course, eliminate any opposition at the same time? It’s clearly a win-win situation, isn’t it? (Just doing a little Devil Advocating here….)

Ha. Look, there’s nothing wrong with having a positive outlook. In fact, unless you think your heart’s desire is at least possible, you may blind yourself to ways of achieving it. The problem with The Secret and its ilk, is the claim that you always and only get what you wish for. That means that all those folks who died in the Japanese earthquake, on some level, wanted that to happen.

Aside from engaging a classic blame-the-victim mentality, it’s patently ridiculous. My issue with it was best summed up in an SNL skit with Sarah Palin (Tina Fey) and Hillary Clinton (Amy Poehler), where Palin says, “If you want it bad enough, you’ll get it!” And Hillary responds, “Right. That’s why I didn’t get the nomination. I didn’t want it bad enough.”

Who is Ethan in The Rule of Won, and what Craves, or wishes, of the students at the high school the novel focuses on comes true?

Ethan’s basically a displaced yuppie. His dad lost his job and they’ve been forced to move to a less affluent neighborhood. He’s in shock. Where’s the money? The status? And he sees The Rule of Won as a way to get back what he’s lost. So he forms an after school club, which starts group-wishing. Lo and behold their wishes, more funding for the school, the team winning a basketball game, come true, with everyone assuming it’s because of their wishes.

Why is Caleb’s girlfriend, Vicky, so interested in his going to the Rule of Won meetings that Ethan organizes and holds? Is the role of Alyssa, Ethan’s sister, in making the Craves come to fruition supposed to be evidence of her psychic abilities?

The main character, Caleb, is a total slacker, on the outs because the school thinks he caused the gymnasium to collapse. His sort-of girlfriend, Vicky, meanwhile, is a social climber, very interested in appearances and her own future. She doesn’t want to hang with someone who might drag her down. She sees the club as a way Caleb can redeem himself.

You did lots of research for your latest paranormal vampire novel, Blood Prophecy, as vampires are long-lived. You had to have consulted several sources on a variety of subjects, like early American history, the Puritans, the Algonquin and Abenaki Indians, and Egypt during the time of Napoleon. In your research, did you come across evidence that the Algonquins and Abenakis believe in vampire-like beings, or is this aspect of your novel a creative addition of your own?

Some websites and books say that certain Native American Myths involve vampire-like beings, but when you dig deeper, there’s no actual reference material, so I find those claims very dubious. As far as I know for certain, that aspect is completely fictional.

Why did you decide to have a Puritan, Jeremiah Fall, be the main character of Blood Prophecy?

Puritans are totally fascinating – incredibly strict (dancing is a sin!) yet innovative (the first children’s books). They basically formed the bones of our nation, and you don’t have to dig too deep to find many of their ideas, for good or ill, still alive. They’re also related in some ways, to the Gnostics, sharing their terrific distrust of the world and the human body.

I thought that complete distrust of hunger, defining it as “of the Devil,” would be a perfect counterpoint to the hyper-hunger that drives a vampire. Because of his upbringing, Jeremiah’s self becomes this tiny thing stuck between a huge set of beliefs about life and salvation, and a vast, bestial lust. Very Freudian, in that sense, and, of course, so are vampires.

Though Blood Prophecy is a vampire novel, you never use the word vampire in it–why?

Technically, because at the time Jeremiah was turned, the word didn’t exist. It was either non-extant or very rare a hundred years later when the bulk of the novel takes place. So it’s historically accurate. But, it’s also fun to try to talk about what something is rather than what it’s called.

Who is Skog, and how does Jeremiah become a vampire (or vampire-like being)?

Without giving too much story away, he’s the thing hidden in a burial mound that Jeremiah and his father accidentally unleash while plowing their back acre.

Why does Fall head to Egypt ? Is the black obsidian stone he finds there supposed to be the Rosetta Stone, or a similar one? Why does he think the stone is so important?

The only thing giving Jeremiah hope is the possibility he might still be saved. Also having lots of time to read, he finds an obscure line in an Abenaki song, echoed again in an ancient Greek scroll, which makes him believe he might actually be cured. What he finds, is an ancient stone. Technically not the Rosetta Stone (they dig that up shortly later), some words from the song are inscribed on its surface.

Who is Bandias?

Related to the stone is a Gnostic myth, which I essentially made up. It’s the story of the first man, created before Adam and essentially abandoned, unfinished, by God. Bitter, Bandias plays the serpent in the garden, and continues to exist just beyond the veil of creation, looking for a way to enter and destroy it. Like Timetripper, this was also originally a comic – one of my favorites, The Bandy Man, published by Caliber Press at the peak of my X-Files fame.

Who are the Mamluks and Murad Bey, and why does Jeremiah fight for them against the French?

At the time Napoleon invaded the Middle East (which has more than a little resonance today), Egypt was ruled by the Mamluks, under Murad Bey. The Mamluks were once a group of slave-soldiers, kidnapped and trained to fight. They eventually freed themselves and started doing things like taking over countries. They are not Egyptian, or particularly from any region, with many of their numbers kidnapped from all over the known world.

Why doesn’t Fall drink the blood of humans?

Because he’s a Puritan. It would be the worst sin imaginable. Even as his beliefs change over time, fighting that hunger is how he’s able to continue to define himself as human.

One final question about Blood Prophecy: What is the city of Ys and why does Fall journey to it, before eventually traveling to Eden?

There are several points in the book where myth and history intersect. Ys is a real myth, a city on the water built by a Christian King for his pagan daughter. When the stone is stolen from the French, Fall follows it there, surprised to find it actually exists.

I haven’t yet read the book you coauthored with Ryan Buell, the host of A&E’s Paranormal State, called Paranormal State: My Journey Into the Unknown. But I and my teen daughter really enjoy watching the series. I was wondering if you have ever appeared on the series yourself, and if so, when, and what episodes were you in? Have you ever experience any paranormal phenomena yourself? Did you work on the book in person, or via email?

Knowing Ryan Buell has been a lot of fun. Ryan and I worked on the book for a period of about a year and a half, usually via long phone conversations between episodes.

I was invited to watch them shoot the fourth season “Ghosts of Gettysburg” episode, which was a great experience. I stayed in the haunted bed and breakfast that night, waiting for the supposed ghostly sound that would appear at 3 AM. In fact, I was hanging with Ryan and Chad in one of the rooms, counting down the seconds on my wristwatch, when a low rumble rattled the whole place!

After the book came out, I was invited to appear in a few fifth season episodes as a researcher. Given my paranormal background, it made sense. The first was probably the best, “They Only Come Out at Night,” where I manage to Google the myth of Puckwudgies. While I didn’t experience anything up close, there was some wild video footage captured. I also appear in “Paranormal Detour” and “Haunted Homecoming.” Having spent ages writing about the paranormal from the fiction side, it was wild to hang with the real thing.

I’m sorry the show’s no longer shooting, but PRS is up to great stuff. I may be appearing with them for a haunted lockdown in Salem , MA , this summer. Ryan’s also working on his first novel, which is terrific. I’m pleased to say I’m helping him out with that a bit, too, advice-wise.

I know from having visited your website and through corresponding with you that you have a couple more novels that will be coming out soon. Would you please tell our readers what they are about, and what their titles will be, and when we can expect to see them in bookstores?

October third, Dead Mann Walking will be released from Ace/Roc, first in a series. In two words? Zombie detective! It’s noir meets the dead, and I think it’s my best work to date.

Next March sees Ripper from Philomel books. I don’t know how much they want me to say about it yet, but it’s kinda like Harry Potter, only without magic and with a serial killer. Heh-heh.

The covers for both have been made public, so I hope you use them here, and I will be chatting about them at length in my own column as the pub dates draw nearer.

Whew! That’s been a lot of ground! Thanks so much for having me, Professor!

Thanks for doing this interview with me, Stefan! Perhaps whenever I get the chance to review your other novels that are upcoming I can do a follow-up interview with you to discuss them with you! I and the entire staff here at Boomtron wish you much further success, and if any of our readers haven’t yet checked out your books, I highly recommend that you do, because Stefan is a great writer. Now, just as soon as I get all of these flies out of my Time/Space Machine, Stefan, you can be on your way!