Interview with Scot Savage
Q: Your first novel, Have Vampire, Will Travel, is set to be released Sunday, April 28th. What makes your novel different from other vampire stories?
A: We always stressed in our marketing this is “a vampire story with a different spin.” We’ve taken the liberty of re-writing the traditional rules/legends/lore about vampires. Some of them remain true: a vampire’s immortality and their special abilities such as mesmerism, bat transformation or turning into a mist. Others are false: vampires cannot be kept away by garlic and they can cast reflections in mirrors. Some are half-truth distortions of the facts: vampires being inheritably evil when, in fact, they actually can be virtuous, malevolent or somewhere in-between. Vampires still require blood to sustain themselves, but don’t need to feed as often as folklore describes, nor are they required to kill their victims to feed.
The young vampire, Roger Sparks, featured in the novel actually enjoys being a vampire, living in the moment (usually with reckless abandon) and kicking butt when needed. In our novel, our vampires do not lament and sulk about their curse. We also dispense with the over-used cliché of a vampire falling in love with a human—unable to decide whether to turn the other into a vampire or become human again themselves. Other authors have presented this admirably, but you won’t find it in our novel. As a matter of fact, you will find no romantic subplots in this novel as we wanted to avoid the trap in which the villain kidnaps the hero’s girlfriend to give him a disadvantage (I do that in some of my other novels). Even as a kid, I grew tired of the cliché of the hero having to waste precious time rescuing his loved one before resolving the greater conflict. Our heroes may date, but they do so on their own time, not during the novel. Instead, we wanted to get to the heart of the adventure, investigate the crime, get to the action and stay on target until the exciting climax.
Besides featuring super-natural evils, our detective hero, Maxx Shadow, must confront dangers of the mortal world. For example, Maxx explores the very real perils of rail-hopping. His is also in conflict with a rival gang of hobos who are the enemies of the hobo minions of the main antagonist, Ruby of the Rails. Although the rival gang of hobos lack the supernatural abilities of Ruby’s hobos, they are just as vicious and deadly.
Q: How did the two of you meet and what made you decide to co-author a novel?
A: Eric and I met when we were co-workers at Nielsen Media Research in Schaumburg some dozen years ago. Because of our mutual interests and hobbies, a strong friendship evolved and we began to hang around outside the office. I had been writing short stories and novels since I was nineteen and, unable to find a publisher, I put them on the shelf for several years. With self-publishing sites, such as www.lulu.com, I decided to give it a try. Since Eric had a great interest in my work, I asked him to be my second set of eyes as a proofreader and editor (in addition to the fine skills of my lovely wife, Nicole). We would meet once a week to read manuscripts out loud and find the errors. Eric would also find continuity mistakes and offer suggestions of his own, often picking my brain for a character’s motivation or a more plausible conclusion to an event in the story.
In September 2009, I was hospitalized with a heart infection, which led to an artificial aortic valve replacement. Along with my wife, Nicole, Eric faithfully came regularly to visit me. With a new concept for a novel, Eric sat at my bedside and helped put together an initial outline. With this project, Eric went above and beyond the duties of copyediting, coming up with ideas and resolutions of his own. As a result, I offered Eric co-authorship if he was willing to do a bit more additional work. He gladly accepted and the rest is history.
Q: Did you choose the genre, or did the genre choose you?
A: In this case, the genré chose me. After twenty-six years, I wanted to get something published and scratch one of many things off my Bucket List. Since vampire genré is hot and still will be for more years to come, I decided to jump on the bandwagon. I had figured that if any work I completed had a chance to be published, this one would be it. If it didn’t, I figured I would have to content myself with writing as an amusement/hobby and self-publish for friends and family. Hopefully, with, at least, one traditionally published novel in the bank, I might have a chance to expand to other genrés. I won’t expand on this here, as this should be answered with the upcoming questions.
Q: What was your inspiration for this novel? A person, place, an event? How did you get started?
A: In April of 2000, while channel-surfing, I caught a show on the A&E Network Investigative Reports hosted by former CBS Chicago anchorman and highly respected journalist, Bill Curtis. This particular episode was entitled Blood on the Tracks which focused on the dangers of rail-hopping especially to those who were weekend thrill-seekers rather than experienced hobos. A majority of the episode highlighted a serial-killing hobo, Joseph Silveria Jr. aka “Sidetrack.” Silveria is now serving two consecutive life sentences in an Oregon State prison. Silveria had confessed to five murders, but it is believed he committed dozens more before being apprehended.
I found this sub-culture, which very few knew about (or wanted to know about), to be totally fascinating. For the most part, hobos are just folks that have given up on regular society and want to live by their wits and be left alone while not bothering anyone else; however, there are a few bad apples, which lump them all in a negative category. The world of rail-hopping is a modern day Wild West, with the criminal hobos able to get away with their crimes because they are phantoms. They have no identity, and since they own very little, they can easily skip town at the drop of a hat, leaving everything behind to avoid arrest. Since trains pass through isolated areas, criminal hobos can easily dispose of victims in areas where no one will ever find them for years, if they are found at all. There were accounts of college students rail-riding during a summer break never to be heard from again.
Other than the unsavory hobo element, there are the physical dangers of rail-riding such as falling off trains, illness, malnutrition and dehydration. Also, rail-riding is illegal and a one-time thrill-seeker can have a felony arrest on record since railyard owners are very hard on those that are caught trespassing. Even non-violent hobos are very protective of their turf and not receptive to “pretenders” (those riding the rails who aren’t hobos and plan to go on to their normal lives after their rail-riding adventure). Even crossing these folks can be dangerous.
The segment on Silveria inspired me to write a novel about a serial killing hobo able to commit his atrocities and get away with them because he has no connections to his victims—just an unknown, faceless bum whom most ignore, never noticed and who is able to disappear like a breath in the wind on a moment’s notice.
My original concept for the novel was a realistic (but fictional) thriller of a detective’s account to track down and apprehend a hobo serial killer. It sounded great as an idea, but I had no clue how do make it sound plausible. The hobo in question would be hopping from state to state and this would definitely bring in the Feds, so I would have to change my detective to an FBI agent. I would have to do research and interviews about FBI procedure and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to use up my time and resources for a project that would probably remain just as unpublished as my previous ones. I also figured that since there was already a non-fiction book about Silveria entitled Murder on the Rails: The True Story of the Detective Who Unlocked the Shocking Secrets of the Boxcar Serial Killer by Lt. William G. Palmini Jr. and Tanya Chalupa, I would merely be writing a fictionalized account of the same story. I decided to put the concept on the shelf, but the idea never died.
Years later, I joined an online author group and they had a session on how to write a synopsis for a novel jacket. They asked everyone to contribute a sample to compare to the others, even asking us to make one up for those who had not completed any novels. I wanted to submit something new rather than something from one of my self-published novels.
While I was writing the blurb, I began to think of how our hero could find a serial-killing hobo anywhere at large in the United States. Thinking some more, what if the killer came to him? What if it were a band of serial killers? Finding a group would be easier than finding just one person. What if they were some insane cult coming to Chicago for some equally insane person and the hero had to figure out what, when and where so he could stop it? What if the cult were demented enough so that they worshiped an evil demon who they really believed existed and the demon wanted human sacrifices? What if the demon was real? If it were a demon, how could our hero fight it? What if the hero had a supernatural ally of his own, namely a vampire under his employ.
Without even trying, these elements slowly made a story unfold. With a supernatural backdrop, I had more leeway to suspend reality and not have to worry about making the investigation too realistic. With vampire stories being hot, this might be the project that could end up getting published.
Q: How did you develop your characters and their motives in your story?
A: Roger Sparks was a character I created in the 1990s and played in a fantasy role-playing game called Vampire: The Masquerade. He was basically an all-muscle-live-in-the-moment vampire who enjoys a good brawl and left the planning and strategy to his more intellectual, less combat savvy vampiric companions.
Maxx Shadow was also based on a role-playing character from the Dr. Who Role-playing Game created by a friend of mine; however, I changed the name and his physical traits of the character. Wanting to avoid romantic subplots, I made Maxx somewhat physically unappealing with a slight facial disfigurement to reinforce his lack of female companions.
The Shadow/Sparks team-up is inspired by the Green Hornet TV series from the 1960s. Shadow is the Van Williams/Britt Reid/Green Hornet figure who makes the plans while Sparks is the Bruce Lee/Kato counterpart who mops the floor with their adversaries (not to take away from Shadow who is a decent scrapper in his own right for a mere mortal).
Several of the evil hobo characters such as Slouch and Hooligan are based on the traits and motivations of the real life railway serial killer, Joseph Silveria Jr. aka “Sidetrack” as well as other nefarious hobos in my research.
Q: If you could be any of the characters in your novel, who would you be?
A: It might be interesting to be Dan Patch, Maxx and Roger’s spiritual advisor. He is a being, known as a Sage-Sentry, who is borderline between the natural and supernatural. He constantly reincarnates into a new body after he dies, sometimes a different gender or not even human at all (he claims to have been the world-renown harness race horse of the same name in the early 20th century), yet still retains the memories of his past lives, unlike us mere mortals who have no recollection once we reincarnate.
Q: I understand Have Vampire, Will Travel is the first novel in a series. Are you afraid the series will become dull or difficult to write after a while?
A: Although each novel will have an overall arc and tie-ins to other upcoming novels, we plan to write each Have Vampire, Will Travel as its own stand-alone adventure without it being necessary to read any previous or subsequent novels (although we hope people will read them all). There is no pre-determined number of novels in the series. In the event the series becomes dull or difficult to write, we will just simply end it with the last novel. However, we will continue to write the series so long as there is an interest. We are not afraid if something becomes dull because we will just have to find something else fresh to write about.
Q: Are there any books or authors that have inspired you in your writing?
A: I have been influenced by Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series as well as Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné Saga. Other authors include Stephen King and Marc E. Roger’s Samurai Cat. Marvel/DC comic/books and graphic novels have had some influence on my writing as well.
Q: Have you thought about crossing genres or writing a stand alone?
A: Before Have Vampire, Will Travel became our first traditionally published novel, I have self-published many different genres which can be found at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/scot_sa.... These include space spoofs, horror, sci-fi boxing, a super-hero novel and a thriller that takes place in the 1980s. One of the books, Weird Stories I Wrote While I Was Bored contains a short story that is a prequel-of-sorts to Have Vampire, Will Travel.
Q: Have either of you thought about writing individually?
A: As previously stated earlier, I have self-published individually. I’m sure Eric might want to try to write one solo and he’ll have my full support if he does.
Q: Many of the authors I speak with don’t necessary enjoy reading the same type of novel as those they write. What types of stories do you enjoy reading in your leisure time?
A: I enjoy mysteries, true crime, detective, science-fiction, fantasy, suspense, humor, light horror and an occasional biography.
A: We always stressed in our marketing this is “a vampire story with a different spin.” We’ve taken the liberty of re-writing the traditional rules/legends/lore about vampires. Some of them remain true: a vampire’s immortality and their special abilities such as mesmerism, bat transformation or turning into a mist. Others are false: vampires cannot be kept away by garlic and they can cast reflections in mirrors. Some are half-truth distortions of the facts: vampires being inheritably evil when, in fact, they actually can be virtuous, malevolent or somewhere in-between. Vampires still require blood to sustain themselves, but don’t need to feed as often as folklore describes, nor are they required to kill their victims to feed.
The young vampire, Roger Sparks, featured in the novel actually enjoys being a vampire, living in the moment (usually with reckless abandon) and kicking butt when needed. In our novel, our vampires do not lament and sulk about their curse. We also dispense with the over-used cliché of a vampire falling in love with a human—unable to decide whether to turn the other into a vampire or become human again themselves. Other authors have presented this admirably, but you won’t find it in our novel. As a matter of fact, you will find no romantic subplots in this novel as we wanted to avoid the trap in which the villain kidnaps the hero’s girlfriend to give him a disadvantage (I do that in some of my other novels). Even as a kid, I grew tired of the cliché of the hero having to waste precious time rescuing his loved one before resolving the greater conflict. Our heroes may date, but they do so on their own time, not during the novel. Instead, we wanted to get to the heart of the adventure, investigate the crime, get to the action and stay on target until the exciting climax.
Besides featuring super-natural evils, our detective hero, Maxx Shadow, must confront dangers of the mortal world. For example, Maxx explores the very real perils of rail-hopping. His is also in conflict with a rival gang of hobos who are the enemies of the hobo minions of the main antagonist, Ruby of the Rails. Although the rival gang of hobos lack the supernatural abilities of Ruby’s hobos, they are just as vicious and deadly.
Q: How did the two of you meet and what made you decide to co-author a novel?
A: Eric and I met when we were co-workers at Nielsen Media Research in Schaumburg some dozen years ago. Because of our mutual interests and hobbies, a strong friendship evolved and we began to hang around outside the office. I had been writing short stories and novels since I was nineteen and, unable to find a publisher, I put them on the shelf for several years. With self-publishing sites, such as www.lulu.com, I decided to give it a try. Since Eric had a great interest in my work, I asked him to be my second set of eyes as a proofreader and editor (in addition to the fine skills of my lovely wife, Nicole). We would meet once a week to read manuscripts out loud and find the errors. Eric would also find continuity mistakes and offer suggestions of his own, often picking my brain for a character’s motivation or a more plausible conclusion to an event in the story.
In September 2009, I was hospitalized with a heart infection, which led to an artificial aortic valve replacement. Along with my wife, Nicole, Eric faithfully came regularly to visit me. With a new concept for a novel, Eric sat at my bedside and helped put together an initial outline. With this project, Eric went above and beyond the duties of copyediting, coming up with ideas and resolutions of his own. As a result, I offered Eric co-authorship if he was willing to do a bit more additional work. He gladly accepted and the rest is history.
Q: Did you choose the genre, or did the genre choose you?
A: In this case, the genré chose me. After twenty-six years, I wanted to get something published and scratch one of many things off my Bucket List. Since vampire genré is hot and still will be for more years to come, I decided to jump on the bandwagon. I had figured that if any work I completed had a chance to be published, this one would be it. If it didn’t, I figured I would have to content myself with writing as an amusement/hobby and self-publish for friends and family. Hopefully, with, at least, one traditionally published novel in the bank, I might have a chance to expand to other genrés. I won’t expand on this here, as this should be answered with the upcoming questions.
Q: What was your inspiration for this novel? A person, place, an event? How did you get started?
A: In April of 2000, while channel-surfing, I caught a show on the A&E Network Investigative Reports hosted by former CBS Chicago anchorman and highly respected journalist, Bill Curtis. This particular episode was entitled Blood on the Tracks which focused on the dangers of rail-hopping especially to those who were weekend thrill-seekers rather than experienced hobos. A majority of the episode highlighted a serial-killing hobo, Joseph Silveria Jr. aka “Sidetrack.” Silveria is now serving two consecutive life sentences in an Oregon State prison. Silveria had confessed to five murders, but it is believed he committed dozens more before being apprehended.
I found this sub-culture, which very few knew about (or wanted to know about), to be totally fascinating. For the most part, hobos are just folks that have given up on regular society and want to live by their wits and be left alone while not bothering anyone else; however, there are a few bad apples, which lump them all in a negative category. The world of rail-hopping is a modern day Wild West, with the criminal hobos able to get away with their crimes because they are phantoms. They have no identity, and since they own very little, they can easily skip town at the drop of a hat, leaving everything behind to avoid arrest. Since trains pass through isolated areas, criminal hobos can easily dispose of victims in areas where no one will ever find them for years, if they are found at all. There were accounts of college students rail-riding during a summer break never to be heard from again.
Other than the unsavory hobo element, there are the physical dangers of rail-riding such as falling off trains, illness, malnutrition and dehydration. Also, rail-riding is illegal and a one-time thrill-seeker can have a felony arrest on record since railyard owners are very hard on those that are caught trespassing. Even non-violent hobos are very protective of their turf and not receptive to “pretenders” (those riding the rails who aren’t hobos and plan to go on to their normal lives after their rail-riding adventure). Even crossing these folks can be dangerous.
The segment on Silveria inspired me to write a novel about a serial killing hobo able to commit his atrocities and get away with them because he has no connections to his victims—just an unknown, faceless bum whom most ignore, never noticed and who is able to disappear like a breath in the wind on a moment’s notice.
My original concept for the novel was a realistic (but fictional) thriller of a detective’s account to track down and apprehend a hobo serial killer. It sounded great as an idea, but I had no clue how do make it sound plausible. The hobo in question would be hopping from state to state and this would definitely bring in the Feds, so I would have to change my detective to an FBI agent. I would have to do research and interviews about FBI procedure and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to use up my time and resources for a project that would probably remain just as unpublished as my previous ones. I also figured that since there was already a non-fiction book about Silveria entitled Murder on the Rails: The True Story of the Detective Who Unlocked the Shocking Secrets of the Boxcar Serial Killer by Lt. William G. Palmini Jr. and Tanya Chalupa, I would merely be writing a fictionalized account of the same story. I decided to put the concept on the shelf, but the idea never died.
Years later, I joined an online author group and they had a session on how to write a synopsis for a novel jacket. They asked everyone to contribute a sample to compare to the others, even asking us to make one up for those who had not completed any novels. I wanted to submit something new rather than something from one of my self-published novels.
While I was writing the blurb, I began to think of how our hero could find a serial-killing hobo anywhere at large in the United States. Thinking some more, what if the killer came to him? What if it were a band of serial killers? Finding a group would be easier than finding just one person. What if they were some insane cult coming to Chicago for some equally insane person and the hero had to figure out what, when and where so he could stop it? What if the cult were demented enough so that they worshiped an evil demon who they really believed existed and the demon wanted human sacrifices? What if the demon was real? If it were a demon, how could our hero fight it? What if the hero had a supernatural ally of his own, namely a vampire under his employ.
Without even trying, these elements slowly made a story unfold. With a supernatural backdrop, I had more leeway to suspend reality and not have to worry about making the investigation too realistic. With vampire stories being hot, this might be the project that could end up getting published.
Q: How did you develop your characters and their motives in your story?
A: Roger Sparks was a character I created in the 1990s and played in a fantasy role-playing game called Vampire: The Masquerade. He was basically an all-muscle-live-in-the-moment vampire who enjoys a good brawl and left the planning and strategy to his more intellectual, less combat savvy vampiric companions.
Maxx Shadow was also based on a role-playing character from the Dr. Who Role-playing Game created by a friend of mine; however, I changed the name and his physical traits of the character. Wanting to avoid romantic subplots, I made Maxx somewhat physically unappealing with a slight facial disfigurement to reinforce his lack of female companions.
The Shadow/Sparks team-up is inspired by the Green Hornet TV series from the 1960s. Shadow is the Van Williams/Britt Reid/Green Hornet figure who makes the plans while Sparks is the Bruce Lee/Kato counterpart who mops the floor with their adversaries (not to take away from Shadow who is a decent scrapper in his own right for a mere mortal).
Several of the evil hobo characters such as Slouch and Hooligan are based on the traits and motivations of the real life railway serial killer, Joseph Silveria Jr. aka “Sidetrack” as well as other nefarious hobos in my research.
Q: If you could be any of the characters in your novel, who would you be?
A: It might be interesting to be Dan Patch, Maxx and Roger’s spiritual advisor. He is a being, known as a Sage-Sentry, who is borderline between the natural and supernatural. He constantly reincarnates into a new body after he dies, sometimes a different gender or not even human at all (he claims to have been the world-renown harness race horse of the same name in the early 20th century), yet still retains the memories of his past lives, unlike us mere mortals who have no recollection once we reincarnate.
Q: I understand Have Vampire, Will Travel is the first novel in a series. Are you afraid the series will become dull or difficult to write after a while?
A: Although each novel will have an overall arc and tie-ins to other upcoming novels, we plan to write each Have Vampire, Will Travel as its own stand-alone adventure without it being necessary to read any previous or subsequent novels (although we hope people will read them all). There is no pre-determined number of novels in the series. In the event the series becomes dull or difficult to write, we will just simply end it with the last novel. However, we will continue to write the series so long as there is an interest. We are not afraid if something becomes dull because we will just have to find something else fresh to write about.
Q: Are there any books or authors that have inspired you in your writing?
A: I have been influenced by Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series as well as Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné Saga. Other authors include Stephen King and Marc E. Roger’s Samurai Cat. Marvel/DC comic/books and graphic novels have had some influence on my writing as well.
Q: Have you thought about crossing genres or writing a stand alone?
A: Before Have Vampire, Will Travel became our first traditionally published novel, I have self-published many different genres which can be found at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/scot_sa.... These include space spoofs, horror, sci-fi boxing, a super-hero novel and a thriller that takes place in the 1980s. One of the books, Weird Stories I Wrote While I Was Bored contains a short story that is a prequel-of-sorts to Have Vampire, Will Travel.
Q: Have either of you thought about writing individually?
A: As previously stated earlier, I have self-published individually. I’m sure Eric might want to try to write one solo and he’ll have my full support if he does.
Q: Many of the authors I speak with don’t necessary enjoy reading the same type of novel as those they write. What types of stories do you enjoy reading in your leisure time?
A: I enjoy mysteries, true crime, detective, science-fiction, fantasy, suspense, humor, light horror and an occasional biography.
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