Know a Nominee, Part 22: Christopher Rice

Welcome back to “Know a Nominee,” the interview series that puts you squarely between the ears of this year’s Bram Stoker Award nominees. This update features Christopher Rice, nominated in the category of Superior Achievement in a Novel, for The Vines.

DM: Please describe the genesis for the idea that eventually became the work(s) for which you’ve been nominated. What attracted you most to the project? If nominated in multiple categories, please touch briefly on each.

CR: I just don’t have a problem believing plants could become animate and suck your blood. Call me crazy. But the “buy-in” for me on an idea like that is real cheap. Outside is the source of most of my terrors. Nature. Wildness. Environments beyond my control (or beyond my illusion of control, because really, when does anyone have complete control over their environment?) I started writing a killer plants novel first, then realized it was the closest I was going to come to ever writing a ghost story. That’s how THE VINES was born.

DM: What was the most challenging part of bringing the concept(s) to fruition? The most rewarding aspect of the process?

CR: The most challenging part of writing a horror novel is always the ending. Always. If you’ve opened up the fabric between this world and the next and you’ve allowed all of these gooey, terrifying creatures to come tumbling out, you can’t just shove them back through the divide with a pitchfork at the end of it and wipe your hands and be done. The landscape of your characters, both physically and psychologically, has been far too altered for that kind of clean wrap-up. But personally, I’m not a fan of bleak, nihilistic endings. Striking a balance between those two extremes was the most challenging aspect of THE VINES. And I’m happy to say I love the ending. I’m most proud of the book’s final line.

DM: What do you think good horror/dark literature should achieve? How do you feel the work(s) for which you’ve been nominated work fits into (or help give shape to) that ideal?

CR: A reckoning. Good horror offers a reckoning. The old rules get thrown out the window by the intrusion of a monster or a great evil, and new solutions are called for, and in the process, your characters have to deal with everything they’ve stuffed down for years and years. It’s the thriller construct times ten. Or times one hundred, in some cases.

DM: I’m curious about your writing and/or editing process. Is there a certain setting or set of circumstances that help to move things along? If you find yourself getting stuck, where and why?

CR: If I’m stuck, it’s usually because my mind has wandered off the book I’m writing and onto some imaginary projection of how I fear the book will be received out in the world. Manageable word counts. Breaking down the process into bite-size pieces. That’s how I get through the tough parts. No matter what I tell myself there’s always a part of my brain that thinks, “I will finish this entire book today,” even if it’s my first day of writing on it. It’s an insane restlessness that can only be curbed by daily, ritual restraint. I’ve become less rigid about the immediate circumstances of my environment when I write. I write in hotel rooms now. I write on planes. I sketch out scenes on a notepad in crowded, noisy restaurants.

DM: As you probably know, many of our readers are writers and/or editors. What is the most valuable piece of advice you can share?

CR: Write the book you want to read.

DM: If you’re attending WHC this year, what are you most looking forward to at this year’s event? If not attending, what do you think is the significance of recognitions like the Bram Stoker Awards?

CR: Writer’s events always make me feel less isolated, less alone, less like outcast from society desperate to keep his mind from tearing him apart in his sleep.

DM: What scares you most? Why? How (if at all) does that figure into your work or the projects you’re attracted to?

CR: Oh, gosh, where do I begin? There are the specific fears and phobias – being trapped in an enclosed space with a venomous snake, which I put in THE HEAVENS RISE (which was nominated for a Stoker last year) Having to use a bathroom at a desert rest area, which dovetails with the previous phobia. Being up against a psychopath or some sort of monstrous force that you can’t reason with. I’m a very verbal person, so the idea of not being able to defend myself with speech, is deeply terrifying. As a child, I was incredibly emotionally sensitive, incredibly obsessive and drear-ridden. If I could imagine something, I could see it out of the corner of my eye. As a writer, I’ve become attracted to this idea that if you stare your very worst fear in the eye – like that child trying to stare down his fears so he can use the bathroom late at night – and say, “You’re nothing!”, that something inside of you will give way, something that *needs* to give way. Maybe, when your feel the monster’s breath against your face, you’ll snap and lose your mind, or maybe you’ll become someone capable of killing monsters.

DM: What are you reading for pleasure lately? Can you point us to new authors or works we ought to know about?

CR: I was absolutely thrilled last year to discover the work of Greg F. Gifune, who I think is one of the best horror novelists alive today. For my Internet radio show, TheDinnerPartyShow.com, my co-host, Eric Shaw Quinn, and I recently launched something called CHRISTOPHER & ERIC’S FAVORITES. The Internet is so full of people hating on stuff – me included – that Eric and I decided to devote part of our site just to thing we love. The first book I chose to highlight there is called THE STORM AND THE DARKNESS by Sarah M. Credit. She’s a wonderful indie author who writes modern, character-driven Gothic with fierce smarts.

About Christopher Rice

By the age of 30, Christopher Rice had published four New York Times bestselling thrillers, received a Lambda Literary Award and been declared one of People Magazine’s Sexiest Men Alive. His first work of supernatural suspense, THE HEAVENS RISE, was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award. His debut, A DENSITY OF SOULS, was published when the author was just 22 years old. A controversial and overnight bestseller, it was greeted with a landslide of media attention, much of it devoted to the fact that Christopher is the son of legendary vampire chronicler, Anne Rice. Bestselling thriller writer (and Jack Reacher creator) Lee Child hailed Christopher’s novel LIGHT BEFORE DAY as a “book of the year”. Together with his best friend, New York Times bestselling novelist Eric Shaw Quinn, Christopher launched his own Internet radio show. THE DINNER PARTY SHOW WITH CHRISTOPHER RICE & ERIC SHAW QUINN is always playing at TheDinnerPartyShow.com and every episode is available for free download from the site’s show archive or on iTunes.

47North, the science fiction, fantasy and horror imprint of Amazon Publishing, recently published Rice’s supernatural thriller, THE VINES. Rice’s first erotic romance, THE FLAME: A Desire Exchange Novella, was recently published as part of the 1,001 DARK NIGHTS series. Thomas & Mercer, the crime fiction imprint of Amazon Publishing will release new editions of his previous bestsellers A DENSITY OF SOULS, THE SNOW GARDEN and LIGHT BEFORE DAY on December 9th, 2014.