Man, Dogs, and Evil: An Interview with thriller writer C.K. Raggio

1) Please tell us about Heron Park.

Heron Park is a crime thriller with a horror/psychological twist to it. A small town detective and an FBI agent team up to stop a sadist, who uses highly trained dogs to terrorize and torture his female victims. I tell the story from both sides. The cops searching for clues and chasing a monster, and the monster searching for prey while evading the cops. The dogs have a huge part in the story, and I think this is where Heron Park differs from other serial killer/cop novels.

2) Please tell us about your main characters.

Detective Cassie Logan is a woman who grew up on Long Island's Great South Bay. She's a fisherman's daughter, a tomboy who doesn't look the part. She's confident, hard working and loyal. But her toughness is tested time and again throughout the book. Sometimes she cracks, but she never breaks, and she only grows stronger as the story progresses.

FBI Agent Rick Sanders is a bit of a womanizer. He's good looking and he knows it, but he's also really good at his job. He studied to become a profiler but changed his mind once he realized that meant he wouldn't be leaving the office much. This training comes in huge with the case. Think along the lines of Criminal Minds. He also finds himself quite attracted to a certain Detective Logan.

Timmy. Timmy is a sadistic, twisted killer. You don't find out his real name until about half way through the book. His violence and corrupted imagination lead to some very disturbing scenes. I've been told from some unflappable readers that they were definitely reacting during his murders. Some nausea, some cringes, and a bunch of flinching. I won't say much more about him besides he was one hell of a character to write.

3) What inspired this story?

I'm a dog trainer, and I was working with a small terrier in a nearby park. It was a bit late, the sun almost going down so the park was empty. Or so I thought. As I came around a sharp corner there was a man in a hooded sweatshirt with a golden retriever who obviously didn't like small dogs. It ripped free from it's owner and charged us. I scooped my pup up just in time and yelled at the dog to stay (in my most masculine of voices). It slowed, but didn't stop. I was able to turn my body and stomp down on his leash as he continued to try and rip the small dog from my arms.

The owner finally got control of his dog. After some very disapproving words from me, which I can't say here, I strode in the opposite direction. This got me thinking. What if that dog had been too big for me to control? He could've killed the dog I was walking. Hmm, then - What if he'd been trained to attack, so that while I was focused on my dog being ripped apart the owner could grab me from behind? Jackpot!

And so Heron Park was born.

4) Why do you think so many readers have such interest in such terrible crimes?

That's a tough one. I'd guess that most of these people have a sort of curiosity to violence and death. Maybe a part of them likes to see, read and experience a controlled type of fear. It's the same reason that some people enjoy horror movies. It gets your adrenaline pumping. Turns on the fight or flight mode. Do you read it, or do you skip through to the next scene? Do you watch it, or do you cover your eyes? I think it all depends on a person's ability to separate themselves from the brutality. Kind of like a doctor working in an emergency room, or a detective working on a homicide case.

I don't like to hurt any living thing. I release spiders outside, save earthworms from drowning in puddles after rain storms. Yes, seriously. You'd probably never think that after reading my book. But anyway, I think it's more of a wonderment for me. Why and what made this, or these persons, act that way? I like to try and figure people out. I always have.

5) Does delving into the darkness as part of the writing process ever cause you any distress?

I love this question.

I've been reading horror and true crime stories since I was in high school. I began delving even deeper when I started writing Heron Park three years ago. To say that this research has made me cautious is an understatement.

I had no problem walking by myself at night in the woods a few years ago. Now I wouldn't even consider it. I've woken up in the middle of the night, okay so I wake up most every night to the smallest sound. And I'd be lying if I said I hadn't tiptoed around, bat in hand, looking for an intruder and double checking all the locks.

I'm a little worried I'm going to start sounding like a paranoid loon, but I'll tell you anyhow. I almost broke my husband's nose with an elbow when he snuck up behind me one day. Yeah, not good. He hasn't snuck up on me since though, so I guess that's a good thing.

All in all, it has caused me distress, but I think in a good way. The world isn't all ice cream cake and unicorns. That feeling of being watched, when your hair stands up, and that chill crawls up your back like a giant hairy spider, is usually right. While before I would've ignored it, shook it off, now I take notice and let my instincts decide what I should do next.

6) Do you have any links to any particular excerpts you'd like to share?

My first chapter is available on TG Davis' website - http://tgdavis0.blogspot.com/p/heron-park-by-ck-raggio.html?m=1

7) Where can readers find out more about you?

Website - http://www.ckraggio.com/
Amazon Author Page - http://www.amazon.com/C.K.-Raggio/e/B00AIBN4LI/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1
Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/ckRaggio
Facebook Fan Page - http://www.facebook.com/ckRaggio1
Goodreads - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16237045-heron-park
Pinterest - http://pinterest.com/ckraggio/

Want the Book?

Amazon Kindle - http://amzn.to/W4k3Ig

The Sins of the Nine Circles of Hell as Inspiration: An interview with award-winning horror/thriller anthologist Connie Corcoran WIilson

 1) Please tell us about your collection.

Hellfire & Damnation II is the second short story collection organized around the framing device of Dante’s “Inferno,” the 9 Circles of Hell, and the crimes or sins punished at each of those levels of Hell. It is 53,000 words long, with illustrations for each story and a “From the Author” section explaining the inspiration for each of the 11 stories. The first collection was 47,000 words, with 15 stories, but it had neither illustrations nor a From the Reader” section

2) What got you interested in writing a collection organized thematically around Dante's "Inferno"?

 I was searching for a unifying device that would allow considerable flexibility of theme, topic and setting. Someone said to me, “Why not use the 7 Deadly Sins?” (My publisher, as I recall). My response was that that had been done. I remember 1968’s Rod Steiger movie “No Way to Treat a Lady” that used the 7 Deadly Sins and the movie “7” with Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow also used it. There also was a film “Zodiac,” (Robert Downey, Jr., 2007) which involved use of the horoscope. So, I was considering many possibilities. Dante’s “Inferno” had not been used as a unifying device, as far as I knew.

Dante’s “Inferno,” which I read as an English Literature major at the University of Iowa, is a well-known classic that had thematic possibilities, especially after I investigated all the crimes and sins that ARE punished at each level of Hell.  I could not think of anyone who had “done” this particular organizational frame before, and isn’t that what writing is about: thinking creatively? When I investigated and realized how much leeway you can  have regarding the crimes or sins punished at the various levels of Hell (i.e., there are many MANY more choices than I have used, as of now, so the beat goes on), I realized that, for me, this was a good answer. The frame allows me to change it up and have a variety of settings and themes as I move forward. [Although a couple of levels----most notably gluttony and heresy---are more difficult to write than others. You have to expand the definition of “gluttony” beyond just eating food to any overuse of a substance, like drugs or alcohol.]

3) In the West, we, in general, are living in a considerably more secular culture than your standard (or not so standard) 14th-century Florentine poet. Do you think the increased secularism of our culture influences the ability of readers to interface with a thematic structure so intimately tied to medieval theology?

Not really. How can anyone in today’s society not “relate” to the theme of violence or suicide (featured at certain levels)?  I’m not trying to rewrite Dante’s Inferno. I’m merely using the various sins or crimes punished at each level as a unifying device to connect stories that might otherwise seem randomly selected. It works for me; I hope it works for the reader.

4) Please tell us a bit about the different story styles in the collection.

In some cases, I wrote from a first-person point of view, including the first story which is depicted on the cover about the “frozen dead guy” of Nederland, Colorado. Other stories are omniscient author or third person.   In one story (“Oxymorons”), I attempted using dialogue to carry the entire story. In others, I did extensive research and secured actual documents for “Letters to LeClaire,” (which was originally written for a museum in the town of LeClaire, Iowa, Buffalo Bill’s birthplace.) just as I did for “A Spark on the Prairie.” The reader is in for a great deal of variety, and it’s the kind of collection I’d like to read, with notes “From the Reader” on what inspired the stories and even illustrations.

5) Do you have a particular favorite among the stories?

I’m very fond of stories that mix humor with the horror. There are 2 or 3 in this collection that have that distinction: “Room Service” and “M.R.M” and “Oxymorons.” I can’t say they are necessarily my “favorites,” because I thought that “The Bureau,” which is a long story at 7,000 words, was intricate enough to merit a 99 cent E-book version all by itself and it went up on Amazon first as a “teaser,” before I was done with the entire collection. Just as you would always have something about each of your children that you really liked about each of them, there is something about each story that I really like. In one of the slower-paced stories, “A Spark on the Prairie,” I like the fact that it is carefully researched. The reader will learn quite a bit about the early treatment of Native Americans by the United States government and the early settlers. (Theme: greed).  I also often strive for surprise endings (think “The Sixth Sense”) and I managed to pull off quite a few of them, which isn’t always easy. And, as usual, I tried to have much of the violence happening off-screen, a la Alfred Hitchcock.

6) Please tell us a bit about some of your other works.

First book: “Training the Teacher as a Champion,” 1989. Scholarly work on teaching for Performance Learning Systems, Inc. of Emerson, New Jersey. Their company Bible.  Then, I put together a book just for my family entitled “Both Sides Now,” which consisted of anything I had ever written that sold, mostly humorous essays and poetry accompanied by some pictures. (2003) I then wrote a sci fi novel (“Out of Time”) and a script based on that sci-fi/thriller/romance that was a winner in a “Writer’s Digest” competition in 2007 and 2008. I wrote a second book of humorous essays entitled “Laughing through Life” (2011) and, also a full-color illustrated children’s book, “The Christmas Cats in Silly Hats,” written for my 3-year-old twin grandchildren at Christmas last year. I got out my 43-year-old scrapbooks and, from the reviews I had written for the Quad City Times between 1970 and 1979, I put together a book of 50 reviews in a retrospective fashion, including all of the ads that ran in the papers at the time (2010). The book was entitled “It Came from the ‘70s: From The Godfather to Apocalypse Now,” and I worked on it for 8 years. It won 5 national awards.  After that nonfiction book, I wrote 3 “PG” volumes containing supposedly true ghost stories told me as I traveled Route 66, entitled “Ghostly Tales of Route 66.” (Vol. I, 2007; Vol. II, 2008; Vol. III, 2009) Then, I moved on to a short story collection entitled “Hellfire & Damnation” (2011) the second of which we are talking about now. I’ve also begun a novel series, which will be either a trilogy or a quartet of books, stemming from a short story within “Hellfire & Damnation” entitled “Living in Hell,” and entitled “The Color of Evil.” The novel came out in January as an E-book and in March as a paperback. It has won an E-Lit Gold Medal, a Silver Feather Award from the Illinois Women’s Press Association and NABE, Pinnacle and ALMA (American Literary Merit Awards) either for complete works or for individual stories within the “H&D” series. One of the 4 books I wrote this year also received an award at the national level from National Women’s Press Association in September. I am concentrating on writing thrillers with suspenseful, horrific content, but more in the Hitchcock mold. I’m not ruling out True Crime or mystery genres, but I like writing the “H&D” series and I’m becoming quite fond of the cast of characters within “The Color of Evil.”

7)  Would you like to share some links to your works?

Readers should check out these links:  www.TheColorOfEvil.com

www.HellfireAndDamnationTheBook.com, www.GhostlyTalesofRoute66.com, www.ItCamefromTheSeventies.com and my own blog www.WeeklyWilson.com.  My main author site is www.ConnieCWilson.com.  

Also, I’d like readers to know that, for the five days leading up to Halloween (October 27, 28, 29, 30 and 31), “Hellfire & Damnation II” is completely FREE as a Kindle download. Tell your friends. And here is an interview (podcast) with New York City radio personality Cyrus A Webb regarding “The Color of Evil”: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/middayconversations/2012/09/12/author-connie-wilson-on-conversations-live

The Choice of Nuclear Retaliation: An interview with military thriller author Noah Beck

1) Please tell us about your book, The Last Israelis.

The novel is a military and psychological thriller ripped from today's headlines. Iran gets a nuclear weapon, and a variety of circumstances leave history up to 35 ethnically and ideologically diverse men aboard Israel's nuclear-armed submarine. They must unite to survive the threats at sea before confronting an unthinkable and deeply divisive dilemma.

2) Your novel has been described by some as a character study. Please share a bit with us about your main characters.

The complex mix of characters sharing the cramped hull of a submarine is very much a microcosm of the diverse Israeli society sharing a tiny country. There are two grandsons of Holocaust survivors but with diametrically opposed lessons and worldviews produced by their similar family histories; their clashing ideologies make for some of the most intense conflicts in the story. Among the other characters are: two native Arabic speakers (a Christian and a Druze), the son of Persian Jews who escaped from the 1979 Iranian revolution, an Ethiopian who crossed Sudan by foot as a child to reach Israel, religious Jews who serve on a mostly secular crew, and an officer who is secretly gay and struggles with whether to come out to his crewmates.

3) Techno-thrillers thrive on versimiitude and that often necessitates detailed populated by research. What sort of research was involved in writing this book?

In late March, I began watching submarine movies and realized that I would need to interview people who had actually served on an Israeli submarine. I got on a flight from the U.S. to Israel and was quickly amazed by how flat hierarchies there are – even with something as rigid as the military. With just a few friendly introductions, I was soon interviewing the former commander of the entire Israeli submarine force (who had himself captained countless missions). I also found and befriended one of just a handful of Ethiopians to have served on a submarine. Of course, most of my questions were artfully dodged (for security reasons) but these veterans were immensely helpful in keeping various story details realistic. There was also a ton of Internet research involved but by far the most interesting and rewarding aspect of my research was my interviews with the ex-submariners.

4) There are some very influential authors and books that have focused on lone submarines bucking the odds. Indeed, the continuing popularity of this particular sub-genre can even be seen in the American fall television line-up with the show Last Resort. In writing your book,are their any authors who influenced your style?

There are only so many plot permutations that any submarine thriller can realistically take, so there are bound to be other novels in that genre that contain basic similarities. To the extent that "The Last Israelis" may seem similar to anything else, it is a function of the limited plot possibilities for the genre rather than any specific influences that inspired me. Everything I wrote was dictated by the elements comprising the novel: the original characters that I had imagined specifically for this story (with their different worldviews, family histories, habits, etc.) and the dramatic possibilities that present themselves when Iran gets a nuclear weapon and these very diverse men must together confront the unthinkable.
5) Normally, I ask authors what inspired their books, but given the subject matter, I think anyone who pays a bit of attention to the news, in so far as it relates to Iran and Israel, can figure out what inspired the book. So, let's take a step back. Some techno-thriller authors produce works based on concerns of the day just to mine the dramatic possibilities of such events. Others explore their own political and personal concerns. Is this book more of the former or the latter?

The answer is both. I originally conceived of the story in 2009 as a concept for a screenplay about a doomsday, military showdown between Israel's Dolphin submarine and a nuclear-armed Iran. The premise was boiling with dramatic potential and the issue deeply troubled me. But writing a screenplay that within months becomes a widely released film is like Ayatollah Khameini taking a phone call from me and agreeing to dismantle Iran's nuclear program: impossible. So the project of authoring a screenplay that might influence the public debate on an issue that (in my overly optimistic assessment) would become moot in a few years seemed futile. But by the end of March of 2012, after I was still hearing the same type of weak talk and indecision about the Iranian nuclear issue, I resolved to drop everything and work on the story as an e-book, which can be released instantly. By 2012, e-books had also gained a far greater acceptance in the market, so self-publishing my novel seemed like a viable strategy for disseminating my doomsday warning about the perils of a nuclear Iran.

6) If you were somewhat politically motivated, why approach this topic in novel form versus non-fiction form? Did you have any concerns about some readers perceiving it as propaganda?

The format of a novel that is heavily based on history, current events, and researched facts has several advantages: a) it can be as informative as a policy paper but far more engaging and entertaining, b) it can explore certain issues in far greater depth, and c) it can conduct certain thought experiments in substantial and profound detail. As for the charge of propaganda, that is inescapable when the topic is at all political or controversial, but I did my best to present a diversity of political views and well-balanced debates about the core questions that the novel plumbs.

7) Please tell us about any of your other upcoming books.

I am toying with the idea of a thriller that is much less controversial (in the sense that it won't be about any hot issue dominating the headlines) and will be more in the genre of science fiction with a focus on questions of memory and perception. I realize that this sounds rather vague and abstract but that's partly because I haven't begun brainstorming about the idea in earnest and partly because I'd rather wait until I've written something before announcing that I've written it!

8) Do you have any links to any excerpts you'd like to share?

The first two chapters are available at this link: http://thelastisraelis.com/excerpts/

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Thanks, Noah.

You can see more from Noah at  https://www.facebook.com/TheLastIsraelis.

The Last Israelis purchase links for various vendors are listed at  http://thelastisraelis.com/buy-the-book/.