Volume 1, Issue 1 – October 1998

P. N. Elrod Flexes Her Literary Muscles

With four vampire series currently in print, P. N. Elrod must be considered the Nineties’ premiere chronicler of the Undead. But neither the lady nor her creations conform to anyone else’s notions of proper post-mortem behavior. And that’s where the fun begins.

Crescent Blues: Over the past ten years, the name P. N. Elrod has become synonymous with “vampires.” You’ve recounted the undying adventures of four creatures of the night: Jack Fleming, Jonathan Barrett, Strahd and, with Nigel Bennett, Richard Dun. Other than the fact they each have the strength of ten and probably are fantastic kissers, what’s so fascinating about the breed?

P. N. Elrod: Aw gee, and here I’d hoped my name would be synonymous with the term “hot babe.”

“Probably are fantastic kissers”??? Heh, you need to read those nookie scenes again!

Anyway, you’ve already answered the question. Vampires are cool. They’re rich, young, worldly, possess great bodies, dress well, and have the best lines. Everyone wants to be cool or hang with someone who is so it can rub off on them.

Crescent Blues: In Bloodlist, you introduced readers to Jack Fleming, a fundamentally decent guy who’s first job as a vampire is to solve his own murder. This was something very new in vampire stories–a vampire protagonist who was neither evil nor angst-ridden. How did you come up with the idea of a vampire who’s a good guy?

P. N. Elrod: He was inspired by a character I did in a role-playing game. I was playing The Shadow, but he wasn’t flexible enough for what I really wanted to do with the guy. As The Shadow was a near-supernatural character, I joked that he must be a vampire, then got the idea of making up an original character who really was a vampire. I flipped through a list of reference books in the game rules for inspiration in choosing a name and combined Ian Fleming with Jack Chalker. It’s a lucky name. I’ve always believed that.

The opening chapters of Bloodlist are pretty much the opening moves of that second gaming session. Months afterward the character was still in my head, yearning to have more action, and I thought it was past time that I stopped dicking around and get serious about my writing and do a novel. Eleven months later I had my first rough draft. (I write a lot faster now. It comes with practice.)

I am NOT the first to have a good-guy vampire. That ground was broken by Quinn Yarbro, Fred Saberhagen, Lee Killough and later James Parriott. Some thought I’d taken the idea from Lee since she has a vampire cop — who also predates Forever Knight — but I didn’t read Bloodwalk and Bloodlinks until my third book was out. I wrote to let her know this, and in doing so made a new friend.

I was also worried that someone would think I took the detective vampire idea from Forever Knight as the Rick Springfield pilot aired about three months before Bloodlist hit the racks. But I was safe from the stigma of plagiarism since I’d signed that contract about 18 months earlier. Whew!

And yes, I am a great fan of the show. It’s wonderful.

Crescent Blues: What kind of reader reaction did you get?

P. N. Elrod: I’m still selling the same books 8 years later. The reviews have been 4 stars all the way on them all. The fan letters have been wonderful. I’m doing something right.

Crescent Blues: Was Bloodlist your first book?

P. N. Elrod: Yes.

Crescent Blues: Why did you choose to write under your initials instead of your name?

P. N. Elrod: There is still an unfortunate bias on the part of some readers who think anything written by a woman is not worth looking at, particularly in “traditional” male literature like the hard-boiled detective genre, hard s/f or adventure.

I heard of one guy who sneered at and would not touch any s/f with a woman’s name on it. He was absolutely shattered to discover the true gender of his favorite writer, C.J. Cherryh. I’d say he deserved it. Too bad he’s limited himself, as he’ll never know the fun of reading Lois McMaster Bujold’s Hugo-winning series or Elizabeth Moon or Anne McCaffrey or the other greats.

Besides, just using initials takes up less cover space, meaning they can print my name in larger letters!

Crescent Blues: The first Jack Fleming book in several years, A Chill in the Blood, was released earlier this year. Can you tell us a little bit about the book?

P. N. Elrod: I tidy up a few loose ends left from previous books, and set up the means for Jack to do some cool stuff in future stories. Angela Paco’s back, trying to hold onto her mobster father’s territory even if it starts a major gang war. Jack’s stuck fast in the middle and trying to get out of things with a low body count. Of course, we don’t always get what we wish for. The reviews have been love letters, so after a five-year hiatus I haven’t lost my touch.

Crescent Blues: What inspired you to mix vampires with gangsters?

P. N. Elrod: I love the classic pulp hard-boiled mysteries and film noire. If Bogart, Dick Powell, or Alan Ladd are in it and co-starring with a dangerous dame, I’ve probably seen it. There’s a edge of honesty to them; the emotions are intense, and justice uncompromising. The mood of the genre lends itself perfectly to a vampire character. Jack’s subject to dark moods, but not going to wallow in the angst. The hard-boiled detective has no patience for self-pity and neither do my vampires.

Crescent Blues: Jonathan Barrett, the vampire who “brought over” Jack’s vampire lover, was introduced in Bloodcircle, the third book of the Jack Fleming series. When did you realize you wanted to write books about Jonathan?

P. N. Elrod: From the first as I wanted to do something of an historical book at some point.

Crescent Blues: Did you know from the start he was a good guy, too?

P. N. Elrod: Yes, just not forthcoming with important information, since he was suspicious of Jack’s motives in the story.

It took time to develop Jonathan. When sketching out my concept for that story I was going to have Jack encounter an older, “head honcho” vampire who would demand Jack’s “allegiance.” (Yawn.) Jack would have only told the guy to go screw himself, and walked — which would have made for a very short, dull book. I still wince over that one. Thank God, I smarted up and quickly tossed that hoary old cliche into File 13 or my career would have been over.

After some hard thinking, I determined that the “guest vampire” would probably have the same attitude as my hero. Why should he even WANT anyone’s allegiance? What the hell good is that? If my next door neighbor imperiously demanded it of me I’d call the local psychiatric hospital.

I reasoned Jonathan would be like Jack and just wanted to be left alone to live his life like anyone else. With that premise, with my questioning the motivations of my supposed villain, the story had a chance to develop along much more interesting lines. He ceased to be a villain and turned into a guy who’s just trying to protect his family from someone he viewed as a dangerous stranger. To him, Jack was the bad guy.

There’s also the rivalry thing. He and Jack both loved the same woman, but at different times. Both are thinking the same thought: “What the hell did she ever see in THAT jerk?” It’s very funny. I plan to bring them both together again in a future story. Maybe I’ll call it “Another Stake Out,” but I think that one’s been taken. How about “Lethal Fangs?” A vampire “buddy” story!

I was originally going to have Jonathan dating from the Civil War, but that era did not suit the character I needed to write. I wanted a dandy, a somewhat snobbish gentleman of wry humor with a touchy sense of honor, so the Revolutionary War was best background for that sort of thing. Putting him and his family on the side of the British also made it more interesting. Everyone seems to love that twist.

Crescent Blues: In I, Strahd: The Memoirs of a Vampire, Lord Strahd von Zarovich “started life” as one of the baddest of the bad guys in the TSR role-playing game universe. Given your strong identification with heroic vampires, how did you come to write his story?

P. N. Elrod: My agent at that time was contacted by TSR to see if I might be interested in writing Strahd’s autobiography. My name was on the short list of authors. I looked over the reference material and a couple of the books written in the Ravenloft universe and decided I could do the job and do it very well.

Crescent Blues: How difficult was it to “change horses” and write about such a dark-hearted villain?

P. N. Elrod: About the same as for a actor going from one part to another. And every actor knows villains are the most fun to play. I gave him a sense of humor — a dark one, of course — which is his prime appeal to fans of that series. A bad guy who enjoys himself is more fun to read about.

I also wrote the books so that anyone unfamiliar with the series would enjoy it. It worked. It’s the only one of its sort ever reviewed by both Publisher’s Weekly and Locus, and both were love letters. One bright soul even noticed that the “voice” I used for Strahd was quite different from those I used for Jack and Jonathan. How clever of me. But that’s the acting angle again. You don’t play Richard III the same as you’d play Hamlet. Both were men with strong intellect, power, and good at putting up a false front, but Richard always knew exactly what he was doing and why; Hamlet questioned himself at every turn. Subtle stuff, that.

I was a drama major at university, and if I wasn’t a stellar actress then, I did pick up a lot of the techniques of the craft, which translate well into the craft of writing. When I write a book I run a film of it in my head, which gives the work a good visual quality. I’m the director, lighting crew, camera, continuity, costuming, special f/x, and star with an unlimited budget. What a power trip!

My really big thrill about I, Strahd: The Memoirs of a Vampire was the audiobook, which was read by the legendary Roddy McDowall. I’ve always been a great fan of his work. That man can pick and choose what he does, so it was a tremendous thrill and compliment that he decided to perform my work. He did a marvelous job of it, and I’d be recommending it to people even if I’d not written the book!

Crescent Blues: I seem to recall reading that you wrote for role-playing games before selling the first Jack Fleming story. Would you like to tell us something about that?

P. N. Elrod: It was how I broke into the professional market. I used to role-play in the late 80’s, created a few adventure modules and sold them to TSR, along with an article on gaming familiars. It gave me the professional credits I needed to help sell Bloodlist — and snagged my first fan letters!

Crescent Blues: The standard advice given to all young writers is to “write what you know.” How do you reconcile that with writing about vampires in 1930s Chicago, 18th century America and Britain, and furthest Barovia?

P. N. Elrod: Human emotions and interactions are a constant to all genres, all historical periods. Those are what good writers must draw on for the meat of their stories. So long as people will be people, we’ll stay in business.

I also do research and exercise my imagination. If I limited myself to “what I know” in the actual, literal sense I’d still be extremely unpublished. I know of a few who believe this is what they should do as writers. Theirs is a sad lot.

Crescent Blues: How important do you feel your research is to your books?

P. N. Elrod: It is a necessary element to any story’s background. Writers who ignore that factor give us a flat, colorless narrative. Writers who abuse it annoy me severely. By abuse, I mean overdoing it, making the reader wade through a “data dump.” That’s the writer showing off and saying “I’ve done allllllll this research, now you’re going to suffer and learn it all, too, mu-hahaha!” I try not to do that to my readers. Put enough necessary detail in to flavor the plot, not dominate it. Too much of any one spice in any one place can ruin a dish.

I’ve read some books that were about 50 percent data dumps. I’d skip pages and pages until it got to something on the characters, then resumed reading again. Think of all the paper that writer wasted. Think of all the readers put to sleep! I do. With a shudder.

Crescent Blues: You’ve also collaborated with Nigel Bennett, star of Forever Knight and Psi Factor, on Keeper of the King. What’s the story behind that partnership?

P. N. Elrod: Bill Fawcett, a book packager, came up with the idea of having actors in popular genre series writing stories in those genres, a Star Trek actor writing s/f, for instance. So at the August 1994 Galaxy Fair in Dallas, he saw Nigel and wondered if he might be interested in writing a vampire story. Bill’s worry was what if Nigel couldn’t write? My good friend Teresa Patterson, also a writer, said, “Then team him up with someone who can. Like Pat for instance.” (God BLESS that woman!) I didn’t know ANY of this was going on at the time and just as well! I’d have been a wreck!

Months later Bill approached Nigel’s agent with the suggestion, and happily Nigel was very interested in writing a vampire book. The following August he approached me at a New Orleans convention, the third time we were on a con guest roster together, and pitched the concept to me. After I mentally picked myself off the floor, I said I’d be delighted to co-write a book with him. He said I was on the short list of authors recommended to him, and hadn’t chosen yet.

A week or so later I sent him a “Writing 101” letter on things he needed to know about the business whether I got the job or not. One item I stressed was that he should be comfortable with his co-writer’s style of work, that it should mesh comfortably with his own style and ideas. I suggested he read the other writers’ works and my works and decide from those who he wished to go with. I was aware I might have been shooting myself in the foot with that, but on the other hand, I knew myself to be a damn good writer. If he chose someone else, then it only meant he was more comfortable with their style.

I still don’t know if Nigel ever read and compared, but a month later Bill called to say I got the job. It was the best thrill I’d had since the Roddy McDowall audiobook, and I’m still thrilled.

Crescent Blues: What are the advantages and disadvantages of writing as part of a team?

P. N. Elrod: I only have to develop, plot, and write half a book, which is a hell of a lot more fun and faster than doing it on your own! I like it enough to want to team up with a couple of other people I know to work on projects, but have not had the spare time to really get into them. Yet.

When you’re working with the right person, two heads are definitely better than one. You get this great surge of energy rolling during a really good outlining session when everything just clicks, and all the bits come together. The key to making this happen is one single ground rule: when story-storming NEVER say the word “no” to ANY idea. Once that is established you can go anywhere without fear of someone squashing your suggestions. It’s very freeing. I stole the concept from Chuck Jones, that’s why the Bugs Bunny cartoons are the best on the planet. No one in his story-storming sessions can say no, so it’s easy to have fun. When the work becomes fun inspiration positively flows!

One disadvantage is the danger of a member of the team thinking they know what’s best. I went through this stage at one point with Nigel. He wanted a specific scene in Keeper, and I thought there wouldn’t be a place for it. It was the closest we’d come to any kind of a disagreement. The scene was personally important to him and he really wanted it in. I realized my reluctance was a way of saying no; I was doing exactly the sort of thing that annoys me most. If the scene didn’t fit, as I feared it might, then it was my job as his co-writer to make it fit no matter what. If it refused to go in, then I would be honest about it and tell him — but it was only fair to him to first give it a try.

He sent down the pages, I started working on them, and damned if they didn’t segue seamlessly into the storyline! In fact, I was halfway through the edit of the scene before I realized what I was doing. Nigel’s instinct for the character was exactly right. I learned a most valuable lesson there.

The scene in question is toward the end of the book where the adult Richard is comforting the child Richard. I thought it worked beautifully.

Crescent Blues: You and Nigel have also used the books to raise money for charity. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Where did you come up with the idea of auctioning off characters in the books, for example?

P. N. Elrod: Bob Asprin was the first to do this that I know of, so I swiped the idea from him. Writers steal from each other all the time. Such fun, that!

Every book has a number of “spear carrier” characters who need names, so we give bidders at charity auctions the opportunity to lend their names to these characters. It’s a lovely way to raise funds, and everyone’s happy to be “immortalized,” particularly by a favorite writer.

Sometimes we know who the character is, like a cop or a nurse, sometimes not. Recently I just made up a character to put in an auction. I said whoever got the high bid would be included as part of a large society party scene. Now I’ll be writing in a drunken Scottish lord who will have an entertaining conversation with people like Oscar Wilde and the vampire hero. The high bidder was positively gleeful. He was the one to suggest Lord Burse be a drunkard.

Crescent Blues: Richard Dun, the hero of Keeper of the King, bears a more than passing resemblance to Nigel Bennett. And his nemesis, Neal Rivers, appears to be modeled on John Kapelos, another Forever Knight alumnus. Do you frequently draw the physical details of your characters from actors and other real people?

P. N. Elrod: From the first Nigel was to be the physical basis for Richard, as though he’d been cast in the part for a film. We adopted this for other characters to help us better visualize and develop them. It was Nigel’s idea to “cast” John as Professor Rivers, which was a most inspiring choice. He was such fun to write, and John was truly touched to have been the source of that inspiration. We gave him a signed copy of the book, of course! I hope he enjoyed it.

Crescent Blues: Can you give us some other examples?

P. N. Elrod: In my eighth Jack Fleming adventure, Dark Sleep, I’ve cast John, Nigel, and Jim Byrnes (Joe Dawson from Highlander) as characters in the story. That was GREAT fun. I could see them playing the parts were it made into a movie. They all have some great lines, and my editor recognized each of them. John knows what I’ve done and is quite pleased. I’ve promised to bring him back in a later book, too.

I’ve also cast Jon Pertwee (Sebastian Pierce), Pierce Brosnan (Jonathan Barrett), Basil Rathbone (Charles Escott and Alek Gwilym), Jean Harlow (Bobbi), Bette Davis (Marian Pierce), Nicholas Grace (Dr. Beldon) to name a few. Not every character is out of Hollywood, but it is fun to play casting director now and then.

Crescent Blues: If you could make movies of your books, who would you cast as the lead characters?

P. N. Elrod: Jack: Nicholas Cage, or Tom Amandes. Escott: Anthony Stewart Head. Strahd: Peter Wingfield (Methos from Highlander).

Crescent Blues: Do you like the way your characters have been portrayed on your book covers?

P. N. Elrod: Enough to buy the original paintings of many of them.

Crescent Blues: Recently, you’ve also branched out into editing. Do you enjoy the change of pace?

P. N. Elrod: Not when I have to correct spelling, punctuation, and viewpoint shifts. Most of the writers I’ve worked with happily pay attention to such details.

Listen up writers of the future — the less work you give an editor on the little stuff the more favorably they will look upon your story.

Do yourself a favor and memorize [William Strunk, Jr.,] and [E. B. White’s] Elements of Style. I still remember diagramming sentences in grade school. No one else in the class liked it except me. Sentences became these neat puzzles to be taken apart and put together in different ways. I’m still doing it, only now I get paid for it. Not a bad life at all.

Crescent Blues: Do you plan any more editing projects soon?

P. N. Elrod: Yes, a collection called Dracula’s London where the top names in vampire literature get to tell us what else the Count was doing in England when he was not being chased by Van Helsing and company. I can’t name names yet because of pending contracts, but this WILL be a major, MAJOR collection of talent!

Crescent Blues: This may be “sacrilege,” but the mysticism of Keeper of the King suggests an interest in the weird that goes beyond vampires. Do you have any plans to write about any other aspects of the supernatural?

P. N. Elrod: Much of that side of things was Nigel’s doing and a natural result of the story’s Celtic myth background. He did some good research and actually visited the sites we used in the book. He wrote and spoke most eloquently about them to the point where I very much want to visit them myself.

And yes, I want to do a non-fiction book on the topic of pagan belief systems. I will also be doing a fantasy series, but not right away, and maybe a contemporary fantasy called “My Life as a Ghostbuster,” based in part on the experiences of a shaman friend of mine. It should be very funny as well as scary, as I’ve never seen that guy without a grin on his face.

Crescent Blues: Would you like to explore other genres?

P. N. Elrod: Certainly. I want people to know I can write about other interesting characters than vampires, and can do it successfully in several other genres, like mystery, fantasy, s/f & romance.

Crescent Blues: How do you reconcile this with a passion for Barbie dolls?

P. N. Elrod: No comment.

Crescent Blues: Any other thoughts you’d like to share with our readers — and other writers?

P. N. Elrod: There are no ivory towers in this business. Writing is work, but I love the work. I may crab and bitch about it, but I wouldn’t want to do anything else.

Writing is a muscle you flex in your head.

You don’t get to be a literary Schwartzenegger without constant practice.

I work out all the time.