1.- Could you introduce yourself to Jamreads’ readers?
Thanks for having me as a guest at Jamreads! I’m a professional writer, both fiction and nonfiction. After getting my start in small press, where I was lucky to hit it big with several zombie novels, I got an agent and have been writing horror for major publishers ever since. Notable works include How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive, Episode Thirteen, The Children of Red Peak, Our War, and One of Us, all published by Orbit (Hachette Book Group), and Suffer the Children, published by Simon & Schuster. While mostly horror novels come out every year, I also do quite a bit of self-publishing, notably military/WW2 fiction.

2.- How did you start writing?
I’d wanted to be a fiction writer since I was nine, a dream that strengthened in high school. I lived on a farm outside a small town in New Jersey. Life was simple, but it was the kind of place that required quite a bit of imagination for an active, creative brain. I discovered Robert E. Howard, terrific teen wish fulfillment stuff, and I loved being able to live outside myself for a short time as I became totally immersed in these great stories. I found myself not only wanting to visit these lives and worlds but create them for others.

3.- Your career starts with Tooth and Nail. What was the original idea behind this book? How was the process of getting it published?
I’ve always been a big fan of apocalyptic fiction, the ultimate SHTF scenario and one ripe with so many great stories to tell. When I discovered zombies by way of Joe McKinney’s Dead City, I fell in love with it. At that point, I’d had a few small press works published, which produced good sales for a small press doing print-only at the time, which is to say not that great, and I was honestly thinking about hanging it up for a while as my daughter had been born and I was focused on being a father. I’d recently read a novel about the last Roman legion on the Rhine, however, Eagle in the Snow I think it was called, and I loved the romantic idea of a military unit fighting to the last to protect a country that was already doomed. At the same time, I’d discovered small press zombie fiction, David Moody and all the great stuff being put out by Permuted Press, and I kept finding myself reading books about a band of survivors in the post apocalypse, wondering, “Okay, but how did it all end? And what happened to the world’s best-funded and most powerful military?”
Putting all this together, I wrote Tooth and Nail on a lark, which is about an infantry unit deployed to New York City during a zombie apocalypse scenario. Sales exploded, which led to a relationship with Permuted for The Infection and The Killing Floor–to which I recently got the rights back, re-published them, and rounded things out as a trilogy with The Final Cut. Sales did really well for them too, which as I said earlier led to me getting an agent and starting an ongoing relationship with big publishers.

4.- Zombies and infections have been an evergreen topic in the genre, why would you think it happens?
Apocalyptic fiction is as old as Genesis, the story of the Flood. The story remains the same in many respects, only the means of apocalypse is always connected to mass fears embedded in the zeitgeist. Martians landing, nuclear war, environmental collapse and climate change, asteroids, oil depletion, economic collapse, plague, terrorism, and of course zombies. The great thing about zombies is fear of the “other” is a constant fear, so it has constant appeal. It also provides an apocalypse where there is a terrific monster threat and the survivors use a lot of gunplay to survive it. Lastly, it always offers hope, as long as you can outlast the zombies long enough to build a new world.
In my view, there have always been two types of zombie fans, the Z Nation crowd and the Walking Dead crowd. The Z Nation crowd loves the wish fulfillment aspect of the end of the world–the self-reliant, tough survivor, usually ex-military, who builds a tribe, kills everything in sight, and doesn’t have to hold a job or pay bills or taxes anymore. The Walking Dead crowd feeds their existential dread by indulging what an apocalypse would really look like, with its horrors and big philosophical and ethical questions about survival. Both have their place in the genre, but personally I gravitate to TWD, as I just think it’s more realistic, I dig complex stories, and I have plenty of existential dread to exorcise.

5.- You mentioned you also write military historical fiction. How do you manage to change between registries?
I started writing that stuff after reading the memories of a submariner fighting in the Pacific during WW2. I thought, don’t read this book, man, you’ll end up wanting to write a novel, and that’s exactly what happened. The result, my first real foray into self-publishing, was fantastic, which was Crash Dive, a six-book series, which was extremely popular. After that, I wrote Armor, a series about a Sherman tank crew fighting from North Africa to Berlin, Strike!, a novel about the Battle of Midway, and some contemporary and slightly futuristic war novels. Switching from zombies to military is not that hard for me, as you’re still writing about fear and survival and hope and the catharsis of victory at the heart of it, and with the WW2 stuff I get to indulge another passion of mine, which is military history.

6.- I find really interesting the concept behind Episode Thirteen. Could you tell us more about the influences that pushed you to write this kind of book?
I’ve had a terrific relationship with Bradley Englert, my editor at Orbit, for years. I pitched him some ideas, one of which was about a ghost-hunting TV show crew that investigates a home and discovers a house within the house. It just wasn’t working the way I pitched it, and I knew he loved found footage horror movies, so I blurted out I could write it as an epistolary story–a series of documents, making it a “found footage novel.”
He loved that, and I thought, oh brother, what did I get myself into, because writing epistolary is easy to do but really, really hard to do right, but I figured out an approach that I think worked beautifully, really playing to the strengths of the form while mitigating its weaknesses. The novel came out last year and is still producing steady sales, making it one of my most popular books. I’m super proud of it. I’m returning to the form with an oral history coming out next year, My Ex, The Antichrist, about a rock musician who discovers her ex may be the Biblical Antichrist and must try to stop him before he takes over the world. The novel is her and her band’s recollections.

7.- Your last published book is How To Make a Horror Movie and Survive. How would you define it?
That horror novel came out this year. It’s more playful than other horror stuff I’ve written. The story is about a slasher movie director in the 1980s who is tired of making rote sequels and wants to make a truly great horror film. Lucky for him, he discovers a cursed movie camera that kills anyone he cares about. The story is the making of this ultimate horror movie. Thematically, the novel explores the horror genre, why we seek out horror when we try to avoid it in real life, and how far is too far for horror creators. Tonally, like I said, it’s playful, combining moments of brutal horror with deep characters and even a little comedy, trying to replicate that experience of watching one’s first horror movie while growing up.

8.- What could we expect from Craig DiLouie in the future?
Next June, My Ex, The Antichrist will be available in bookstores, libraries, and online retailers everywhere. I’ll also be releasing quite a few self-published works. Readers can stay tuned at www.CraigDiLouie.com and by signing up for my mailing list.