We're kicking off a month of great interviews, both on air and here on the blog. Today's super special guest is Mr. JG Faherty, author of The Burning Time.
JG is offering up three ecopies of The Burning Time, and he has offered to digitally sign them for you! Be sure to enter the Rafflecopter after the interview... Good luck!
JG: The Burning Time
is, at heart, a book about Good vs. Evil. But, as we all know, Good rarely has
an easy time of it. The hero in the story is a backwoods magician and healer
who has been searching for decades to find the Agent of Chaos, also known as
the Trickster, who long ago killed his mother in a battle of magics. Now the
Trickster is corrupting a small NY town, part of an ongoing plan to eventually
open the gates to another realm and release the Elder Gods. In the process, the
town is slowly going mad. At the end, there's a major struggle between dark and
white magic that claims more than a few lives!
JJ: You have quite a
few novels, novellas and short stories under your belt. With all of those ideas that run through your
head, how did this one stand out from all the other tales that I’m sure are
racing around in your brain?
JG: Yeah, you've captured me to a T. I'm a bit ADD when it comes to writing. Can't concentrate on one
project for too long. So I've always got 4-5 stories and/or novels going on at
once. As is typical of me, I started writing this book three years ago, put it
away for over a year because I got stuck in the middle and didn't know where to
go, and then one day went back to it, had that 'Aha!' moment, and finished the
whole second half in something like three months. Then, of course, you have to
put it away again for a few months so you can edit it with fresh eyes.
JG: Definitely. The two main characters, John Root and Cyrus
Christian. I won't tell you who's who, that would spoil the surprise, but I
came up with them first and then built the entire story around them.
JJ: What is your
favorite line in the book?
JG: I think this short passage, simply because in two
sentences it encompasses how totally the town of Hastings Mills has succumbed
to the Trickster's influence:
Under the night sky, Hastings Mills bore little resemblance to its former self. The sounds of sirens, howling dogs, gunshots, and screams had replaced the usual quiet. At least a few men would go to the hospital tonight, their skin charred and peeling, their lungs scorched, their scalps blistered and hairless.
JJ: How did you get
your start in writing?
JG: I guess that depends how far back you want to go. In
elementary school and middle school I used to write short-short scary mysteries
about a sentient cat. I also did a lot of comics, mostly grossly humorous
spoofs of TV shows. Then I discovered music, booze, and drugs, and art, in that
order, and kind of got away from writing for a long time. I tried my hand at a
novel in college but hated it. Stopped after 3 chapters because it was obvious
I was trying to imitate Stephen King. It wasn't until I was almost 40 that I
tried again, this time because I answered an ad for The Princeton Review to write short reading passages for one of
their elementary school study guides. I got the job, ended up writing three
entire study guides plus dozens of additional reading passages, and I realized
I had a talent for it. From then on, there was no looking back.
JG: Right now, I have three novels I'm currently bouncing
between, plus a novella I just started.
JJ: What is the
scariest thing that has ever happened to you?
JG: That's a tough one. We all deal with so much scary stuff
all the time as part of life. A few years ago my dad needed a quintuple bypass.
That was scary. The whole economic crisis is scary – never knowing if you're
going to lose your job and not have money for the mortgage! On a more personal,
supernatural note, when I was a kid I had a sleepover one time in the winter.
In the middle of the night there was a tapping on my window. My friend and I –
we were in bunk beds; he had the top bed – woke up and saw this really
scary-looking guy staring in at us. He had to either be very tall or standing
on a bench, because I had old-fashioned high, small windows. We shouted for my
parents, but the face was gone by the time they arrived. Of course, they told
us we were dreaming. The next morning we got up early and went outside, and
sure enough, someone had moved a bench underneath my window.
Except there were no footprints in the snow, and there was
no new snow.
My parents didn't believe us, said we did the whole thing as
a practical joke on them. Which, in their defense, wasn't out of the question.
My friends and I had odd senses of humor even then. But we walked away knowing
someone, or something, had been watching us.
JG: Not unless you count ideas coming to me in the middle of
the night and I get so anxious to write them down that I can't fall back to
sleep! I think over the years I've become numbed to horror stories – my own and
other peoples'. Movies, books, none of it effects me in my dreams. I can't even
tell if my books are mildly scary or really scary when I write them. I only
discover later which it is, when people tell me something I wrote scared the
crap out of them. When I write, I'm trying more for atmosphere and emotion than
outright fright.
JJ: Have you ever (or
do you still) done anything really strange around the holidays? For example, do
you tell ghost stories around the tree instead of the Christmas story? Anything
a little unusual or out of place? :-)
JG: I come from a family – both sides, my own relatives and
my inlaws – who are not big horror fans. So nothing weird like that around the
holidays. I get to play spooky music on Halloween!
The closest I come to a weird holiday tradition is that on Christmas Eve and
Day I am 'allowed' to mix in my two Christmas Comedy CDs with the rest of the
Christmas music, so that every few songs you get dogs barking Jingle Bells or
Bob & Doug Mckenzie singing “The 12 Days of Christmas.”
JG: Best one I ever gave was diamond earrings for my wife,
one day after her boss fired her on Christmas Eve. She was worried we wouldn't
have money for bills, and I was handing her diamonds. She tried to make me take
them back, but I wouldn't. A week later she found a new job and suddenly I
didn't have to take the diamonds back anymore!
The best one I ever got is harder to think about... a couple of years ago my
wife bought me a fantastic Gretsch guitar, it is beautiful, but it was a
combination b-day and Christmas present. Does that count?
Author Bio: Besides THE BURNING TIME, JG Faherty is the author of the Bram Stoker Award-nominated GHOSTS OF CORONADO BAY. His other books include CEMETERY CLUB, CARNIVAL OF FEAR, THE COLD SPOT, and HE WAITS. He has also written more than two dozen short stories for various magazines and anthologies. He enjoys exploring abandoned buildings, photography, hiking, and playing the guitar. As a child, his favorite playground was a 17th-century cemetery, which many people feel explains a lot. You can follow him at www.twitter.com/jgfaherty, www.facebook.com/jgfaherty, http://about.me/jgfaherty, and www.jgfaherty.com.
Author Bio: Besides THE BURNING TIME, JG Faherty is the author of the Bram Stoker Award-nominated GHOSTS OF CORONADO BAY. His other books include CEMETERY CLUB, CARNIVAL OF FEAR, THE COLD SPOT, and HE WAITS. He has also written more than two dozen short stories for various magazines and anthologies. He enjoys exploring abandoned buildings, photography, hiking, and playing the guitar. As a child, his favorite playground was a 17th-century cemetery, which many people feel explains a lot. You can follow him at www.twitter.com/jgfaherty, www.facebook.com/jgfaherty, http://about.me/jgfaherty, and www.jgfaherty.com.
GIVEAWAY!
Enter for your chance to win one of three ecopies of The Burning Time...
I don't know that we have any strange holiday traditions, but I am big on traditions in general.
I love family traditions. It always makes the holidays feel so much more special!