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David Wellington Author of Monster Nation, 23 Hours, and Frostbite

David Wellington has been called one of horror fiction's most exciting authors and his work has been described as original and compelling. He takes the familiar monsters (zombies, werewolves, vampires) and makes them terrifying and gruesome once again.

Wellington has written eight novels, among them Monster Island (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006), 13 Bullets (Three Rivers Press, 2007), 23 hours (Three Rivers Press, 2009) and Frostbite (Three Rivers Press, 2009). He makes his Marvel Comics debut as the writer for Zombies Return: Iron Man. Available September 2009.

Wellington is one of the pioneer's of the "blogger turned published author." What started out as an experiment on his part, turned into a series of successful book deals. His books Monster Island, Monster Nation and Monster Planet were all initially available online and for free. He was eventually offered contracts by traditional publishing houses for all three novels.

Why horror? What is it that draws you to the horror genre?

When I was a kid my mother read voraciously--five or six books a week. She would let me read anything she finished. She was also a big believer in free speech, so when she read a horror novel she would tell me, "You can read this if you want to, but I don't think you should. It's going to give you nightmares." Well, of course, if your mom tells you not to do something, right away, that makes you want to do it. And so I devoured Stephen King and Peter Straub and Dean Koontz novels, all that I could get my hands on. She was right about the nightmares, but I just couldn't get enough.

Are horror writers really as dark and twisted as the public would have us believe?

Why? What have you heard? No, just kidding. Writers in general are a pretty well-adjusted lot. We get to work out our issues on the page, which is a great kind of therapy--especially when you get paid for doing it.

You have a great fascination with monsters such as werewolves, zombies, vampires. Would you tell us a bit about what draws you to these characters?

I like monsters. Always have. A good monster isn't just a bad guy, he/she doesn't just rampage for no reason across the countryside killing indiscriminately. They should have an agenda all their own. But they definitely aren't good guys, either. They aren't bound by somebody's idea of who they're supposed to be. So you never really know what a good monster is going to do--and that makes for really fun stories.

You have been quoted as saying that your favorite monster of all time is featured in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (He’s also my favorite too). Why do you identify with this character the most?

Dr. Frankenstein created the monster but he didn't know what to do with it once it was alive. In the book he runs away when he realizes what he's done, and the monster is left to figure out who he is and why he exists--with no help, nobody to ask questions, no one who will even talk to him. He's completely alone and he has to figure out what to do with this existence he never asked for. Now, the choices he makes are the wrong ones, of course (or it wouldn't be a horror novel). But that incredible bleak loneliness, the suffering he feels in the absence of any kind of explanation, has always been something I could identify with. The movie version of the monster is a little different, he's given some role models but they're bad role models, so he becomes bad. He's much less in control of his own destiny, so he's just a rebel, really. But that's pretty cool, too.

Your vampires are very different from some of the vampires (if not most) featured in recent books. (The word Twilight does come to mind.) What are your thoughts on this?

When I wrote 13 Bullets, my first vampire novel, it was a direct reaction to the paranormal romance novels of the time--though not entirely a negative reaction. There was one thing I really liked about Laurell K. Hamilton's stuff, which was that in her world everybody just accepted the existence of the supernatural. As a result she didn't have to spend half the book with the cops wandering around finding victims drained of blood, with two little wounds on their necks, thinking it must be a rabid dog... they knew it was a vampire, right away, and that got the story moving with this incredible energy. That got me wanting to write a vampire novel. I didn't really like the idea of the monsters falling in love with us, though. To a vampire, a human being is food. It's like one of us falling in love with a cow. I didn't buy it. So I decided my vampires would be predators, much faster, tougher, and even smarter than we were--and totally unconcerned with our safety.

You have had great success with online publishing. There seems to be a lot of controversy surrounding the idea of having your work appear online for free. Some believe that appearing for "free" ruins your chances with traditional publishing houses. Any thoughts on this?

It doesn't ruin your chances at all. Enough people have done it successfully that it has become an accepted marketing strategy. Of course, a publishing house is a business, and nobody in business likes the idea of giving things away for free, but they get over it when they see all the free publicity rolling in. The biggest opposition was actually the old guard of writers, who see online marketing as somehow being unfair competition--as if they couldn't do the same thing. That's pretty much died down by now, because everybody is online. You have to have an online presence if you want to sell real world books.

With the amount of free online material today, how does one go about getting noticed?

It's tough. You need a truly creative approach, and you need a book that's good enough to support the attention. It's one thing to create some brilliant guerilla marketing strategy using the internet. But once people buy the book they need to actually enjoy it enough to tell their friends about it. Without that kind of word of mouth advertising, you're doomed. Web marketing gets you some attention right at the beginning but to really succeed you still need the traditional channels.

What did you take away from your experience of publishing online?

It's a lot more work than you think it's going to be. You can do it very cheaply, which is the main reason people started doing it, but the investment of time and energy is enormous--and you have to have a healthy ego to deal with the people who just want to flame you for no reason, and the internet trolls, and so on. It's not for the faint of heart.

Tell us about your upcoming work with Marvel Comics and in particular the story that you have crafted for Zombies Return: Iron Man?

It's pretty exciting stuff! Since this volume reveals what happened to some of the most popular flesh-eaters (such as Spider-Man and Wolverine) at the end of Marvel Zombies 2, this time Marvel has reached out to the cream of the crop of zombie writers to tell the stories. It's going to be gory and exciting and it's just such a treat getting to see my words come to life on the comic page. The event will last five weeks and it starts in September.

What are some of your favorite books in the horror genre?

Carrie is a classic, of course, and I actually enjoyed Odd Thomas, though there are some weird things in that book. The stuff I really love has always been the classics: Frankenstein, Dracula, Jekyll and Hyde, but also more far-flung stuff like Arthur Machen and Marion Crawford.

Any upcoming work that we can look forward to?

My new book 23 Hours is available now--it's the fourth volume in my vampire series. Then there's Frostbite, my first foray into werewolves. That's coming out in October.

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