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Author David Morrell Rob Holden: David Morrell, welcome to ReadersRoom.com. It's a pleasure to chat with you this morning. David Morrell: Thank you. It's interesting to be here. I've not participated in this kind of interview before. Rob Holden: I would like to start this off by talking about your latest bestseller, Creepers. Can you tell our readers a bit about the novel? David Morrell: Creepers is the nickname for “Urban Explorers”. These are history and architecture enthusiasts who infiltrate old buildings that have been abandoned for decades. It's like entering a time capsule. The novel dramatizes 8 hours of an expedition into an abandoned hotel in Asbury Park, NJ. Rob Holden: The novel itself is written in a crisp, almost clinical style as far as the Paragon Hotel itself is concerned. Did you spend a lot of time researching turn of the century architecture? David Morrell: The crisp clinical style is almost the sort of style you expect in a documentary. The reason I chose it is that every instant of every breath of the 8 hours in the hotel is depicted. There are no cuts, no summaries, no leaps forward. This is a very unusual technique. Creepers may be the only novel that uses a “real-time” approach to this extent. The technique gives the novel a mood of mounting suspense. The Paragon Hotel is based on several real hotels that have been abandoned. I did a tremendous amount of Internet research, particularly on the subject of Art Deco. Rob Holden: I would like to explore the timeframe of the book a little more. In a recent chat we did with Andrew Vachss, he told us that writing his last novel, Two Trains Running, using only 30 hours to tell his story was one of the most difficult things he'd done in his career as a writer. I am wondering if you found this to be true, given the even more limited timeline of Creepers? David Morrell: That's interesting about Andrew's book. The difference is that he could not include every step and every word of those 30 hours. Unless his novel is over a thousand pages long, he would have been forced to use cuts and summaries, which I avoided. I smiled when I learned that the Brilliance unabridged audio of Creepers lasts 8 hours, exactly as long as it takes the action to occur.I didn't find this confining. The opposite. The real-time technique gave me a defined structure. Each section begins with an hour. 9 PM, 10 PM, 11 PM, MIDNIGHT, etc. I thought of this as a ticking metronome of fear. The task was to give weight to each instant.

Rob Holden: I was surprised to learn, upon reading your Author's Note at the end of the book, that urban explorers really exist -- and there are quite a few of them. What has the reaction to the novel been from the urban exploring community?

David Morrell: If you type “urban explorers” into Google, you'll get hundreds of thousands of hits. There are groups around the world. In the US, often local groups can be located by typing ABANDONED NEW JERSEY or something like that. The big sites are infiltration.org and jinxmagazine.com. Michael Malice at Jinx did a positive review and included an interview with me. But urban explorers (they don't like the nickname “creepers”) are secretive by nature, so I haven't had a lot of contact, except with one of the French urban explorers who helped construct a secret movie theater in the Parisian catacombs.

Rob Holden: This is a first for me, in that as far as I can remember, I have never specifically asked an author about their publishing house in the three years I have been doing these chats. This novel is published by CDS books of New York as opposed to one of the mega houses that have published your works in the past. Can you tell our readers a little bit about why you decided to go with a small, relatively unknown publisher for this novel?

David Morrell: It's a major shift and a new paradigm. I've been a published author since 1972. Before CDS, I was with 5 various major traditional houses. More and more, I became dissatisfied with the traditional model, which has an assembly line approach. The editor works with the author, then passes the project to an art department, which passes it to a department that writes flap copy, which passes it to the publicity department, etc. Along the line, the corporate memory can fail. People make later decisions that aren't always in tune with the early ones. This is especially true in today's publishing world, where there is a lot of staff turnover. In contrast, CDS Books --the initials stand for Client Distribution Services -- is primarily a book distributor, the largest in the US. They publish a dozen books as a sideline. Each of these books is a special project. The same 6 people are attached to the project until publication. Each project is put at the front of CDS's massive distribution network. It's a much more efficient way of doing things. The author is a full partner. And in this case, my daughter Sarie (a former publicist for Random House) was the publicity director for the book. I had a wonderful experience.

Rob Holden: Do you see yourself remaining with CDS, as opposed to going back to one of the more traditional houses?

David Morrell: I'd love to replicate the experience. If a traditional house came to me with a improved model for doing a special project, of course I'd consider it. But I don't think traditional houses can break their methods, especially given the huge number of books they publish. By definition, they are an assembly line.

Rob Holden: I would like to go back a little over 30 years to when I first met you (as a reader, at any rate) and your first novel, First Blood. Since its publication in 1972 its main character, John Rambo, has become a part of the American Lexicon. Can you tell our readers a bit about where he came from?

David Morrell: I was a graduate student at Penn State in 1968. American literature. Penn State required its grad students to teach composition. In one of my classes, I had a number of returned Vietnam War veterans. They had a hard time accepting me as an authority figure, given what they'd been through. So we talked a lot after class. I learned about the difficulties they had adjusting to peacetime (these days we would call it post-traumatic stress disorder). Research shows that the majority of soldiers will suffer PTSD if they are in actual combat for more than 35 days. This has nothing to do with bravery or the lack of it. Rather, this is about a biological reaction. Anyhow, the more I thought about these students, the more I thought about a novel in which a decorated veteran returns to find himself in a miniature version of the Vietnam War in the US. A CBS News broadcast that juxtaposed a firefight in Vietnam with a riot in an American city gave me the idea. So I had my Vietnam veteran character, and I matched him with a police officer who was a war hero in Korea. None of that background is in the movie. The policeman is a fifties Eisenhower Republican against a radicalized Vietnam veteran who is young enough to be his son. Traditional military training versus guerrilla warfare. There were a lot of similar contrasts.

Rob Holden: Speaking of the movie, I have to ask, were you pleased with what Hollywood did with First Blood?

David Morrell: The novel and movie share many aspects of the same plot, but they interpret the story differently. In my novel, Rambo is furious about what he's been through and about how he has been treated stateside. The movie softens him considerably. The book is “war is hell”. The movie is “war is heck”. Ted Kotcheff did a great job of directing. Wonderful locations. Stallone is very good with props (Richard Crenna privately told me that he considered Sly to be in a class with Steve McQueen when it came to props.) Interestingly, McQueen was at one time signed to play Rambo, with Sidney Pollack directing. But they eventually realized that Steve was too old.

Rob Holden: Now I know that you are deeply involved -- along with Gayle Lynds – in ThrillerFest which, unfortunately, until recently has been one of the best kept secrets in the literary world. Can you tell our readers a bit about it?

David Morrell: Gayle and I are co-presidents of the International Thriller Writers organization. We've been in existence for a year and already have more than 300 members with world-wide books sale of more than a billion. One of our projects is THRILLERFEST. This will feature a star-studded list of many of the most famous thriller writers who will get together with readers and celebrate what thrillers are. It takes place next June at the famous Arizona Biltmore resort in Phoenix. Four days of special events. Brad Meltzer is giving a special presentation, as are John Lescroart, R.L. Stine, and Douglas Preston. I'm doing a session about FIRST BLOOD FROM NOVEL TO FILM. Lee Child. Steve Berry. Maybe Sandra Brown. Gayle Lynds. This will be a big deal. The room rate is fantastically low. Go to http://thrillerfest.com. for details.

Rob Holden: In our pre-interview chat, you mentioned to me that you will be heading in a new and exciting direction in the near future. Could you tell our readers a bit about that?

David Morrell: Marvel Comics has asked me to write a special six-part series about Captain America. I agreed to do it on three conditions. 1. This would be a campy project. I would make readers believe in the character. 2. It would have a major theme--the burden of being a hero in today's trouble world. 3. I would have permission to try to make the story moving, perhaps even make the reader want to cry given the heartbreak of the hero's story. The episodes have been written. We'll soon announce an artist. The issues will appear next year, probably around May. Then they will be collected in a book, with an introduction. Please check my website http://davidmorrell.net. for updates on the WHAT'S NEW page.

Rob Holden: I know you have just finished a massive tour for Creepers so it might be a little premature to ask this but, what is next for David Morrell -- book-wise?

David Morrell: I'm still clearing the road dust from my brain. Several projects are starting to appeal to me. I'm waiting for one of them to wrestle me to the ground and insist I start writing. The tour was exhausting. 43 sites. 4,500 rental-car miles. It's a wonder I'm not drooling instead of typing this sentence.

Rob Holden: Before we wrap this up, I would like to thank your daughter and publicist, Sarie Morrell for all her help making this chat happen. Sarie will be joining readers room as our publicity columnist starting in December. Finally, is there anything you would like to say to your fans who may read this chat at ReadersRoom.com?

David Morrell: Yes. For fun, go to http://theparagonhotel.com. where there's a one-minute animated trailer (with sound) for Creepers. It's very innovative, as if it's a trailer for a movie.There are lots of other fun things at that site--photos of Asbury Park in its prime contrasting with its current sad state, for example. And a “live” interview that I did with one of the actors on Friends.

Rob Holden: David Morrell, thank you for joining us here today, and much continued success in all your endeavors. Now ... get some rest!

David Morrell: Thanks. It was very interesting to do this.




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