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Know a Nominee, Part 19: John Dixon

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Welcome back to “Know a Nominee,” the interview series that puts you squarely between the ears of this year’s Bram Stoker Award nominees. Today’s second update features John Dixon, nominated in the category of Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel for Phoenix Island.

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

JD: I started PHOENIX ISLAND without knowing I’d started it. I sat down one day, banged out an eighteen-page character sketch out-of-the-blue, and there was my main character, Carl, a sixteen-year-old boxing champ and orphan, the son of a fallen Philadelphia police officer. I loved him instantly, but I didn’t have a story, and I was busy writing other stuff, so I put him away. A year or two passed. Every now and then, Carl would tap me on the shoulder, but I still didn’t have a story.

Then I heard about the Kids for Cash case, where two Pennsylvania judges sent juveniles to privately-owned detention centers in return for massive kickbacks. I was outraged, of course – as a teacher and youth services case worker, I’d spent two decades trying to help kids like the ones these judges had exploited – and further research led me to a horrifying truth: there exist outside the United States privately owned detention centers open for American business and immune to US laws. Anything would be possible in a place like that, I thought, especially if the kids in question were all orphans. That’s when I remembered Carl …

Those previously unrelated ideas collided, and the story blew up in my head. Ten months later, it was finished.

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

JD: Self-doubt plagues me. During PHOENIX ISLAND, I often wanted to burn it to ashes, but I hung in there and finished the thing. The most rewarding aspect has been its reception. Back when I was slaving over short stories that sold for five or ten bucks a pop, I never could have imagined that one day I would write a novel that would land a two-book deal, inspire a CBS TV series, and earn a Bram Stoker nomination. After all those years of getting up at four in the morning to write before work, it’s amazing to finally be writing full-time … and now I sleep in until 4:45!

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?

JD: Dark literature should do the same things that all good fiction does (as hard as that is to quantify), but horror – whether quiet or loud or somewhere in between – carries an extra burden: it must unsettle. PHOENIX ISLAND isn’t so much horror as horrifying, with realistic characters facing absolutely brutal situations, and I’ve been delighted by the dread it’s generated. When a Brazilian reader recently got in touch, praising the book but bemoaning my cruelty, I thanked her for her suffering and promised to deposit her tears, drop by drop, into the bottomless pit that is my soul.

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?

JD: I’m best when I write daily, start early, and kill all distractions. If I get stuck, it’s usually because I don’t know something … often a behind-the-scenes, big-picture something. If I’m lucky, getting un-stuck is simply a matter of walking the dogs or hitting the heavy bag or taking a long shower. Occasionally, however, my difficulty signals a bigger problem, something I’ve been ignoring or a wrong path I’ve been traveling, and those instances require more work, hours or even days of researching and rethinking. I hate these long pauses, but what the hell? They’re necessary, and sometimes, I get lucky, and the detour greatly improves upon my original intention.

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?

JD: Keep your main character in the driver’s seat. He or she must actively work toward goals. The plot should result from his or her decisions and actions, not the other way around.

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?

JD: It’s a three-way tie: seeing friends, meeting new people, and mercilessly crushing Craig DiLouie on the chessboard!

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

JD: From drunken revelers with smiles on their faces and murder in their eyes, to cute little German girls waving Nazi flags in grainy war reels, to Black Friday crowds trampling fellow shoppers in pursuit of that year’s Tickle Me Elmo, I am terrified by mob savagery. That’s a big part of PHOENIX ISLAND, which has been called “LORD OF THE FLIES for the 21st century.”

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

JD: Recently, I was bowled over by an advance galley of Peter Clines’s incredible Lovecraftian sci fi thriller, THE FOLD. Right now, I’m very much enjoying LEVON’S TRADE by Chuck Dixon (no relation). Next up is WILD LIFE, a dark thriller by Jeff Menapace. Menapace is a new-ish writer with a roaring v-12 engine for a brain and diesel in his veins, and I read everything that he writes as soon as I can get my hands on it.

About John Dixon

John Dixon’s dark thriller Phoenix Island inspired the CBS TV series Intelligence. A former boxer, teacher, ABC Studios consultant, and stone mason, John now writes full time. He lives in West Chester, PA, with his wife, Christina, and their freeloading pets in West Chester, PA, where he obsesses over books, chess, and hot peppers. Devil’s Pocket, the sequel to Phoenix Island, comes out this August from Simon & Schuster / Gallery Books.

 

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