Fun one today with an author who loves going dark and dirty and has no problem bludgeoning the reader over the head. I am of course talking about Roland Blackburn and I’m so happy to have him stop by for today’s 3Q’s!

Welcome Roland!

 

Steve: What does your writing time look like? Do you try and write at the same time each day? Do you have a word count you attempt to hit?

RB: It would be more metal of me to say I’m burning candles and conjuring the words at midnight, but my drab ritual is to just be up for an hour before everyone else in our household. I’m not naturally a morning person, so the best investment I’ve made in a while was a coffee machine with a timer. I grab two cups, lurk in a dark room, run through what I did the day before, then go.  Whatever happens before the kids wake up is what happens. With editing I put the earbuds in (Draconian, My Dying Bride, various soundtracks), but usually when I’m writing it’s silent. A great hour is 1200 words, and I’m disappointed if I can’t hit 500. It wasn’t the easiest to get used to doing, but I’ve been doing it this way for so long now it feels really odd trying to change it up.

Steve:  You decide to host a writer’s retreat. One weekend in a luxury house on an island. What three other authors do you invite to come along?

RB: This is a hard one, because it balances how much writing I actually expect to get done versus how many people I want to pick the brains of. Carlton Mellick III, because besides being a bizarro god, I’ve heard this is pretty much his legendary process (minus the island) and I’d really like to see him grind out a novella in three or four days. Danger Slater, since besides being a fantastic writer and one hell of a creative thinker, I believe he’d beat me to death if I didn’t offer him a free vacation. John Langan is, for my money, one of the best short horror fiction authors on the planet, and I think I could ply him with enough Scotch to get him to release at least one of his secrets. With my luck, he’d probably try to row back to shore after the first day of me pestering him.

Steve: Tell me about your newest release (novel/story/poem/novella) and why someone should read it!

RB: Shameless plug section! My second full novel, Mesonoxian, comes out with Bloodshot Books at the end of October 2022, just in time for Halloween. It’s basically Angel Heart meets The Vanishing, with clowns!

The quick rundown: six years have gone by since Elm woke in the ashes of a burnt-out carnival in Tennessee, his wife Doro missing, and his leg mangled. When he finds an impossible flyer for the extinct Mesonoxian Brothers carnival halfway across the country, Elm embarks on a journey to find those responsible for her disappearance, and in doing so find her. But when people start dying and the otherworldly secrets of the carnival begin to surface, Elm is pitched into an occult nightmare that threatens to tear his mind apart. With the fate of his wife in the balance, can Elm solve the dark question at the heart of her disappearance? Or will the Mesonoxian Brothers find him first?

I mean, I clearly know the answer to this. But most people would need to read the book to find out. If you’re up for dark mystery, cosmic horror, and the carnival occult, this book was made for you.

Steve: Bonus Question! You receive an invitation in the mail from one of these two people. The invitation invites you to have dinner and spend the night in their home. Do you accept the invitation from Victor Frankenstein or Dracula and why?

RB: Dracula. No hesitation.

Victor Frankenstein has a piecemeal Michael Myers stalking him that takes out family members and houseguests with alarming frequency. While the cosmic secret to life itself would be enticing, I’m dead the minute I walk in that door.  The only way to survive the night would be to violently antagonize Victor the entire time, and then what kind of houseguest would I be?

Dracula, on the other hand, has some alarming foibles, but for a bachelor he’s proven to be a great host. Sure, he’s a bit of a tyrant who is constantly wearing disguises, but he also seems to really care about what you think of him. He has a prodigious collection of wines, a fine library, and that chicken dinner he made Harker didn’t paprika itself. I think your first night would be a lot of fun, probably survivable, and you could learn a lot from a virtually immortal undead horror. If things start getting weird, well, you just sneak off at dawn. You might be a pint or two low, but those memories will last forever.

Excellent choice!

Thanks again for doing this Roland!

To find more of his work, check the links!

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Roland-Blackburn/e/B07NGKNJW6

Twitter: https://twitter.com/blackburnin4you