This interview is from 2011, and was the first interview I did for Zombie Zone News that left me a little starstruck. C'mon, it's Craig Spector--who co-edited those awesome Book of the Dead zombie anthos, in addition to being a kickass writer in his own *ahem* write. ;-)



Craig Spector is an award winning novelist, a screenwriter, actor, musician, editor, and all-around badass. I first became aware of him as one-half of the duo known as Skipp and Spector. They collaborated on the first EVER zombie anthology The Book of the Dead in 1990. Two years later, an amazing sequel appeared. This was the very first time that Romero-style zombies were featured in prose. The results were exceptionally bloody, terrifying, innovative, and all-around chompilicious.
Skipp & Spector parted ways in 1993, leaving Spector to write visceral, emotionally tumultuous books like To Bury the Dead and Underground. Imagine my profound fangirlish excitement when he agreed to answer a few questions just for us.

CS: Hi Wednesday, and all of ZZN! Happy to be here!

WLF/ZZN: The amazing Book of the Dead was the first-ever zombie anthology, and introduced me to zombie literature. Do you think the undead are grateful for being thrust into the mainstream?
CS: Thanks, Book of the Dead, inspired by the brilliant pantheon of Living Dead films by George Romero, kind of put zombies in the map in mainstream literature. Having granted them that higher level of public exposure, I find them as a whole to be shockingly ungrateful. Perhaps that’s because they’re dead and want only to chomp my entrails. But a card would be nice, something, I mean, c’mon -- I know you’re f*cking dead, but a little decorum would be nice. But, waxing sanguine, I think that’s just part of the coarsening of our culture -- selfish and no manners in life. Why should living death be any different? But still it makes me sad. And makes me want to shoot them in the head.

WLF/ZZN: What are your feelings on the proliferation of zombie literature? Can we ever have too many stories about the carnivorous undead?
CS: If they’re GOOD zombie stories? Yes. If they SUCK? Uhm, spare us, no. Hint: if you’re idea of “good” is, and then the zombie bites his dick off, back to the drawing board, junior. THEIR brains are mush, we expect no different. YOU, being still living, have no such excuse. Work it a bit harder.

WLF/ZZN: I recently watched Animals. I wonder if you could talk a bit about the joys and frustrations inherent in working in a collaborative medium like film?
CS: LOL, wow – I did a fairly extensive interview covering that on dreadcentral.com, go there to read it (and it’s got links and videos and everything! http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/40975/depth-interview-craig-spector-talks-screenwriting-splatterpunk-and-more ) Suffice to say, loved working on the adaptation, worked like bloody HELL on the adaptation, but, Hollywood being Hollywood, something (to put it mildly) got lost in the page to screen translation.
But film is an inherently collaborative medium, which is part of the fun and part of the challenge, as opposing to writing fiction, which is intensely solitary. Also in fiction, you’re pretty much functioning as God in the Zen sense – you create and populate the universe and everything in it. In film, as a writer you’re more like the birth parent – once you sign a deal it might be your baby but it’s their movie, you’ve ceded your parental rights, and you’re lucky if you get visitation. I love collaborating and prefer to be as hands-on as possible through development and even into pre-production thru post, which is tough for a writer to get. I’ve been fortunate so far.

WLF/ZZN: You and John Skipp are basically the Lennon and McCartney of Splatterpunk. How many consecutive days would fans have to take to the streets in order to get you guys back together for a project?
CS: LOL. Interesting metaphor, and I think in many ways true. But we had our solid ten year run, and then it was simply time to do other things. As to your question, probably approximately as long as it would take to get a Lennon/McCartney reunion going, so barring a Zombie Lennon/McCartney reunion, odds are slim.

WLF/ZZN: Speaking of Splatterpunk, it seems that the term is here to stay. Do you feel that the term is appropriate to your work? Is there another word or phrase you'd use to describe the unflinchingly violent?
CS: Splatterpunk -- v1.0, from the 80s -- perfectly yet imperfectly encapsulates a moment in time in our culture. I think the word – which, contrary to what the media said, was NOT invented by David J. Schow – was fun and cool until it was not, which was approximately and exactly when the critics and morons took over and started carving it up to more neatly fit on poorly defined boxes. Which is approximately exactly when I opted out and moved on.
With the current rE-release of the S&S backlist in eBook form from cool-ass upstart companies like www.crossroadpress.com, I’m toying with the concept of SplatterPunk v. 2.1, The Re-Boot. A new version, for the new digital age. Except this time, I’ll be a bit more proactive in the branding of it. Last time around, I was just having too much fun, didn’t really see the stupidity coming, and simply wasn’t experienced enough to head off the inevitable. My bad. Stay tuned for more on SP2.1 rearing its gnarly head in 2011, in film and literature, on the net and in the zeitgeist. We live in scarier times. Time for some scarier stories.

WLF/ZZN: The raw emotion in your novel, To Bury the Dead had a chilling authenticity. Would you say that you strive for this level of emotional realism, or does it just come naturally?
CS: Thank you for that – it was my intended effect. To Bury the Dead– now rE-released from crossroadpress and on amazon.com, B&N, etc., under its original title, A Question of Will(http://www.amazon.com/A-Question-of-Will-ebook/dp/B004DL0Q6U/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1299155267&sr=8-2 ), was the first novel I wrote after the breakup of Skipp & Spector. So I was basically in a rather odd position – a first time novelist with a ten book bestselling track record. Weird. I felt I should send a message out – I’m not “half” of anything, my first name is not “&”, and I’m “all” of something else. So I studied my entire body of work to that time and boiled it down to its essential DNA, which to me was, take an unreal supernatural situation and inject a level of hypereality into it.
With A Question of Will I deliberately flipped the concept: take a totally real situation, nothing supernatural at all, and just make it get so intense and strange that the fabric of reality unravels for the hero.
Paul Kelly – the hero – is a genuinely good man. Then someone murders a loved one. Society and “the system” fail him. So he seeks answers – or, more, THE answer – elsewhere, on his own terms. Hence the original title, A Question of Will.
I worked on the book for four years, while also writing movies, etc. Did tons of research: interviews with people from support groups for loved ones of murder victims, reading the DSM-IV manual for psyche profiles, doing controlled burn exercises as a firefighter (since the hero was a firefighter/EMT in Jersey, just outside of NYC, in Sopranos country.) Finished and turned it into the publisher in May 1999. Then, in a grand display of cosmic irony, in October of 1999 my phone rang one Saturday morning in LA – my family, calling from back east, to tell me my only and older brother had, the night before, been viciously, brutally, inexplicably murdered.
So, presto – life imitating art imitating life until your head explodes. I got to find out if I really did my homework. I saw the police crime scene photos of my dead brother as the authorities found him. I made myself look, take it in, absorb it. Because this was not a game or an entertainment, it was f*cking reality. And I needed to see simply, what was.
So yes, a level of emotional realism is core to everything I write. I love monsters and playing with the imagination, but these are ultimately metaphors and extensions of our own urge to comprehend the human condition. When I write, I have to crawl into the skin of the characters – all of the characters, good, bad, and in between. I need to try to see the world through their eyes and feel it through their skin. Plus it helps that I have high atrocity threshold, verbal acuity, a stubborn streak a mile wide, and am more than a bit… uhm, crazy. But a professional about it.
At the end of the proverbial day – love my work, hate it -- prefer the former, but the latter is preferable to indifference, which is worst of all. Indifference is the rosetta stone to most human atrocity. So if you read me, trust that: somewhere along the way, I will f*ck you up. If I’ve done my job right, that is. I work very hard at doing my job right. Because I want you to pay attention. Not to me, per se. To yourself. To the world. To your own life. And then, you can make more intelligent decisions. I hope.

WLF/ZZN: Your most recent novel, Underground is referred to as a "fantasy" novel. I think of fantasy as something teenagers read while they're waiting for their WoW updates to finish. When did fantasy become so terrifying?
CS: Jesus, save us from more f*cking labels. LOL. I don’t know when fantasy writ large became terrifying, but mine are ;). Personally I consider UNDERGROUND a “metaphysical thriller”, in that it operates on overlapping and intersecting alternate realities that are “bleeding over” into the real lives of the characters. Emphasis on, bleeding. It’s a squishy, bad acid trip of a book. But fun! :D
Plus, there’s a LOT of true-life history embedded in it – largely untold tales of our great US nation, and some of the godawful sh*t done that was considered normal and socially acceptable in our rich cultural heritage, which has been largely whitewashed and sanitized so as not to unduly disturb the livestock…uhm, consumers… uhm, voters… uhm, general public. If you get my drift.

WLF/ZZN: These days, horror fans come in every age and from all walks of life. Which horror fans in particular should pick up a Craig Spector book, like now?
CS: Uhm, ALL of them. LOL. Seriously. They’re all coming out in eBook from www.crossroadpress.com at $2.99-$3.99 a pop and available on Amazon.com, B&N.com, eventually the iBook store (I’m a hardcore Mac guy but Christ it takes Apple forever to approve something.) That’s a f*cking Happy Meal. That’s a yuppie cup of coffee at your favorite corporate hipster caffeine franchise. Don’t be such a cheap bastard; even in a f*cked economy, that’s big bang for small buck. And the coffee is just at good at 7-11 or Wa-Wa these days for a fraction of the price.
So go do it, I dare you. And when you’ve read it, friend me on FB or come to my website at www.craigspector.com, or check out my music at www.reverbnation.com/craigspector. You can contact me at any of those places. If you’re nice, I’ll say hi back. So go do it, and get back to me. Support the arts of artists you like.
Oh, and all your “digital content should be free” readers? STOP stealing content – music, books, movies. Grow a conscience and a spine. You’re not Sticking It to The Man, you’re stealing bread from the mouths of artists you like. Which when you think about it, sucks… like we don’t get hosed enough already.
Thus endeth the rant. :D So far, THE LIGHT AT THE END, ANIMALS, and DEAD LINES (all Skipp & Spector) have come out from Crossroad Press; THE SCREAM is coming out later this month; and A QUESTION OF WILL(aka TO BURY THE DEAD) is out. The other books are upcoming in 2011… except, alas, for the BOOK OF THE DEAD anthos, which, for contractual reasons, won’t be.

WLF/ZZN: Is there anything you can reveal about your personal strategy for zombie defense?
CS: My zombie defense strategy is fairly straightforward: firearms, ammo, body armor, altitude. Zombies tend to suck at climbing. Plus, most zombie movies and lit don’t take fully into account the real effects of decomp on a dead human. And they miss one salient fact – zombies smell bad. Like, dead body bad. Which, if you’ve ever smelled a dead body, is impressively unique. Zombies are dead humans, and the longer they’re up, the worse they smell, especially when reasonably fresh. Which makes it a bit hard for them to deploy the element of surprise. You will DEFINITELY smell them before you see them.
So, guns and ammo first. I recommend a sniper scope on a good hunting rifle vs. semi-auto anything – one shot, one kill. But ideally also have an Amorlite AR-15 for swarm situations, and a nine mil or Magnum for close kills.
Fashion-wise, a good motorcycle jacket – like the newer racing ones made from heavy duty nylon Cordura -- are good. I have one that actually has high density removable foam armor panels tucked into the arms, chest, and back, in case you accidentally lay down your bike; it’s lightweight and fluids-proof, with a high collar. Go for the same with pants, but make sure they’re cargos, you’ll need the pockets. Zombies are not pit bulls, their bite power is hugely exaggerated.
Carry betadine solution for spray control – if you’re bit, you’re screwed, but you don’t want contact with fluids either, and zombies are chock full of ‘em – stagnant blood, drool, snot, sh*t. They tend to leak a lot. Most of them pissed themselves shortly after ambulating, the jury is out on how or if they still digest the flesh they consume. But you don’t want it on you.
Gain altitude and hold the high ground – in a major urban environment you can go from rooftop to rooftop. Use rock climbing and rappelling gear, re-deployed to horizontal, to cross streets.
Next rule: do not centralize supplies – food, water, etc. – in one location. Have several bases. You never know when you might be overrun and everyone needs a B and C plan and a Z plan for Zombie.
For practice I heartily recommend a trip to Atlanta this October to experience Atlanta Zombie Apocalypse. 2010 was its inaugural year and I hope the creators were successful enough to do it again. I attended this past year while in Atlanta re-writing a script with my old friend and colleague, Philip Nutman (Wet Work, Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door.) He was playing the role of the Mad Scientist. I got to play several different zombies over my time there. It’s more than a “spookhouse” attraction – for 30 minutes you’re actually IN the zombie apocalypse. Which was more sick fun than you can imagine…. but if you’re on this site, you already dig it, so go. Better than f*cking Disneyland. Pix are up on my FB page. You gotta do it to believe it. Too much fun.

WLF/ZZN: What aspect of Zombie Zone News has impressed you the most?
CS: Zombie Zone News is absolutely one-stop shopping for all your Zombie Zone News needs! What more need be said?

WLF/ZZN: Do you have any advice for kids who want to grow up and get a job scaring the hell out of people?
CS: Get a real job! LOL. Seriously, if you yearn for a steady paycheck and respectability, this is not the job for you… but then, in America in the 21st century, if you expect a steady paycheck you’re an idiot anyway. But if you have that as yet unscratchable itch to shock, disturb and terrify those around you through the arts and writing, go for it… just don’t show your teachers, as they’ll promptly turn you in to the authorities (if you’re underage, post Colombine, it’s standard practice.) And don’t just free publish it on a blog or e-zine, either… they’ll just use that as proof you were planning to shoot up your high school. Get it real published online, start building credits as a writer. Even rejection slips can keep you out of the psyche ward.
If you’re someone who doesn’t LIKE the night before the term paper is due? This is NOT the job for you. Writing professionally is all about hitting deadlines, so get used to pressure. Get used to rejection, weaseling, and chasing people for paychecks, too. Basically, grow a skin. You’ll need it.

WLF/ZZN: Any projects on the horizon we should watch out for?
CS: I have new scripts of THE LIGHT AT THE END and DEAD LINES out to studios, Whitley Strieber and I just made a deal for the movie rights to THE NYE INCIDENTS (our original alien human mutilation psycho killer graphic novel) with Todd Lincoln attached to direct; Whitley and I also have another script, THERAPIST, adapted from the novel by Anne Strieber, making the rounds; I have a new screenplay for my novel in progress, TURNAROUND, which is a darkly comic twisted meta love story set in Hollywood, and having recently arrived in Europe I’m working on three new ideas. I’m doing a script for an indie right now called ANGEL CIRCLE. My first ever solo music CD, Spector: So Lo (http://www.amazon.com/Craig-Spector-So-Lo/dp/B004JZFQSI/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1299154270&sr=8-9) is out from Crossroad and on Amazon and iTunes and I’m working on my 2nd as we speak. I DO have a zombie story, kicking the back of my brain, wanting out, utilizing some of the very survival techniques I outlined here. So if the big ZA hits, feel free, but in fiction land, no copping my licks and calling them your own kids lol. But that’s just in the works right now, lotta other stuff in the pipe first.
Thanks Wednesday, and thanks to all the ZZN crew, fans, and readers. Cheers!