Year: 2010

Subterranean Press has unveiled the cover art for their upcoming limited edition of Robert McCammon’s classic WWII thriller, The Wolf’s Hour. This is from their site:

Robert McCammon — THE WOLF’S HOUR APPROACHES

As you can see, SubPress favorite Vincent Chong has created an utterly perfect cover for Robert McCammon’s classic WWII adventure novel, The Wolf’s Hour. Now that the dust jacket is completed, Vinny has turned his attention to the interior art, including a full-color pull-out illustration of one of the novel’s high points—the death-train scene.

If the illos and a sturdy signed edition of Hour aren’t enough to convince you to unlimber your wallet, don’t forget “The Room at the Bottom of the Stairs,” a new 36,000 word Michael Gallatin mission, debuts in the limited edition.

Pre-order The Wolf’s Hour from Subterranean Press

Hi, everyone, and as always, thanks very much for all the comments.

Big news today!

I’ve been meaning to answer more of your questions but I’ve been very busy for the last month. Subterranean Press is doing what I consider the definitive edition of The Wolf’s Hour in November or thereabouts, and I was asked to do an introduction.

So I started thinking about what I could say in this introduction. It would most likely be something boring, like talking about my interest in the werewolf legend and in World War II history and how I decided to do the mash-up.

But, I didn’t think that would be good enough, so I thought…okay, I’ll write a new Michael Gallatin short story.

What started out as a short story ended up as 123 pages of new Michael Gallatin material. I guess this would be called a “novella”. Anyway, the story takes place after the events depicted in The Wolf’s Hour. It’s also made me start thinking about writing some more Gallatin material in the short form (say, a book of two novellas and three short stories) because my problem with writing a Wolf’s Hour sequel is that I don’t want to repeat myself. In the shorter form, it might be possible to do some different things that I couldn’t do in novel length.

The new Michael Gallatin story is done and will appear in all editions of The Wolf’s Hour published by Subterranean Press.

So, for all who’ve been asking about a Wolf’s Hour sequel, this is probably the best I can do right now. More stories may come later. We’ll see what the response is and if it’s strong enough there will definitely be more Michael Gallatin.

Okay.

Working now on The Providence Rider. Moving pretty well there but I did devote the last month, as I said, to the Gallatin story. The Five is still making the rounds of publishers but no offers yet. The question was asked if The Five is a “dark” novel, and though it does have supernatural and “dark” elements it also has “light” elements, so it’s not strictly along the lines of my earlier work.

You know, I’ve been puzzled as to why The Five hasn’t been picked up by someone, because I think it’s the best book I’ve ever written. But tonight I kind of came to this conclusion:

I was at a library benefit tonight and had the opportunity to speak with a couple of other writers, and we were talking as writers do about the business, and publishers, and genres and such.

Never in the history of publishing (at least never in my thirty years of being in the business) has the role of “genre” been so tight. I mean, everything has to fit a category.

That’s just the way it is. People in publishing are very afraid of losing their jobs these days, so what’s going to be bought and pushed is usually the “safe”—meaning “it’s been successful before”—choice.

So I was thinking on the drive back how the one thing I’ve always wanted to achieve and feel I have achieved is a double-edged sword.

The Five is unlike anything else being published today. There is absolutely nothing else like it out there. Also, the same can be said of the Matthew Corbett series.

What I’ve worked very hard to achieve is being unique. Being the kind of writer who does work that no one else does. Of going my own way, on my own road, and feeling I’m doing the right (or write) thing.

I think I’ve created my own genre that no one else shares. For instance, a woman came up to me and asked me to describe Boy’s Life. Is it “horror”, is it “fantasy”, is it “literary”, or “mystery”…or what?

My answer to that was: you know, I think it’s something altogether different.

My trials and tribulations in the publishing business began with Boy’s Life. I think I created something that no one else could do. Which kind of astounds me when I think about it, but Boy’s Life follows no publisher’s model of success. That’s also true of the Matthew Corbett series and certainly true of The Five.

So I think I’ve achieved my desire to be unique. Now…in this world nothing is free, so if you walk to a different drummer you might find yourself on the path that no one else wants to walk. But still…this is something I should be very proud of, I think. I believe what I’m doing is good and important, or obviously I wouldn’t want to be doing it, and because it has no previous “model” it stands on its own.

I think that’s what I’ve always wanted to achieve. So here it is, but again the world being what it is, a price must be paid for everything.

Now…don’t worry about The Five. It’s going to find a good home and I think it’ll have a strong future. You know, the plans you make don’t always work out but I’m here to tell you, guys, there is always…always…another plan.

So thanks again for your comments. I have to say, I’m writing this late night near two o’clock and I’m pretty tired after the library benefit, but I got one question from a gentleman who lives in Charleston (and I tried to go back and look up his name on the Facebook page but I couldn’t find it, I guess my eyes are going too) concerning the fact that there’s mention of a “lightning rod” in Speaks the Nightbird when that particular item wasn’t invented until much later.

I wanted to address this because I don’t want to “duck” a research question. The answer is, this is one of those things that invariably will bite you. And there will be more than one in each book. Writing about history is fraught with research perils. You can take care of a thousand things (and there really will be thousands of things to take care of) but a few are going to get past you, no doubt about it.

I don’t have a research assistant or staff. It’s just me. And, I have to say, I’ve gotten more careful about researching as the series has progressed, because I’m aware of earlier mistakes I’ve made. I hate making mistakes, but after they’re made and in print all you can do is grit your teeth and hope you won’t make any more, which is kind of the impossible dream.

As I’ve said before, you’re never going to write a perfectly accurate historical novel. I think I threw in that “lightning rod” comment just as an aside, and this is where you can get hammered because I was probably too busy researching a dozen other things to think about an aside. My bad, and I hope it won’t happen again but I know it will. I will never, ever tell you all the mistakes I’ve made in this series so far because some of them are real screamers. At least, I screamed when I realized they were in print, too late to be removed from the eyes of experts who know everything under the sun about a single subject. I just have to do the best I can do in any book, which will certainly fall short of being perfect.

Did you guys like the podcast? I’m getting ready to do a second one. I really enjoy doing them, and some of the songs and bands you’ll be hearing are mentioned in The Five by the character Terry Spitzenham, who plays keyboards and is the band’s retro freak and encyclopedia of, as the drummer Berke Bonnevey puts it, “the moldy territory”.

Lots of good things ahead, guys. Very excited. Oh! Almost forgot! How about Chuck Hartsell’s video for Mister Slaughter? We’re doing videos also for Speaks the Nightbird and Queen of Bedlam. Chuck also wants to do a video for The Wolf’s Hour.

And…we’re planning on doing a longer form music video for The Five. I’ve written the words for some of the songs in The Five, so what we might do is put music to one of them and fire that up with a band doing the original song in the video.

How about it? Summertime is coming, guys!

Thanks for all your support and good wishes, and I’ll check in with you a little later on.

Best,
Rick

Subterranean Press has also posted an update about their edition of The Wolf’s Hour:

Robert McCammon — Major THE WOLF’S HOUR News

April 21, 2010

Robert McCammon has just turned in a brand-new 36,000 word novella, “The Room at the Bottom of the Stairs,” about a further WWII adventure of Michael Gallatin that will be included in The Wolf’s Hour, pushing the book to just shy of 700 pages. We expect the inclusion of this major piece of new fiction will drive sales of this limited edition, making it a must have for every serious McCammon fan.

To accommodate the expected demand for The Wolf’s Hour—this novella was a last-minute addition, long after the book was announced—with Mr. McCammon’s permission we’ve decided to increase the print run to 750 copies, to cover the increased printing costs, to compensate the author for a significant new piece of fiction, and to give his many fans a chance at this important collectible edition.

Hi everyone,

As always, thank you for your comments and questions and most of all for your readership. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: a writer would be nothing without readers, and I gratefully appreciate the time and effort you spend on my behalf.

I wanted to answer a couple more questions this time out, but first I wanted to talk about some things I’ve seen remarked on: the first being that the time between Matthew Corbett books seems very long and the second being the idea that I get no “respect” from the publishing industry.

The story behind Mister Slaughter (there’s a story behind everything, isn’t there?) is that it was finished and turned into my then-agent in April of 2008. I wasn’t happy with the job of promotion that Pocket had done with Queen of Bedlam. I was balking at doing another book with Pocket, and I wanted an “upgrade” in terms of what the publishing house (Simon and Schuster) would do with Mister Slaughter. So my then-agent came back to me with the revelation that Scribner (part of the Simon and Schuster company) was going to publish Mister Slaughter in hardback, everything was in place for that to happen, but we had to wait for Susan Moldow, the head honcho (honchess?) at Scribner, to sign off on the deal. That wouldn’t happen, though, until September because Ms. Moldow would be away during the summer. But I was told not to worry about it, because the deal was a “slam dunk”.

Imagine what I felt like when I got a call from my then-agent in October of 2008 saying he didn’t know what had happened, but the deal had blown up and Scribner would not be publishing Mister Slaughter but I was welcome to go back to Pocket.

Still can’t figure out if it was a setup to get me to go back or if I was just plain lied to, but I fired my then-agent within a couple of weeks after that and went on the search for a new agent and, of course, a new publisher. That turned out in time to be Subterranean Press, based in Michigan.

I was pretty down about things, but I started writing The Five in February of 2009 and finished in October of 2009. That book is making the rounds of New York publishers. I’m hopeful for a quick result, but it might be months before the book is picked up by anyone. So right there is an example of how you can finish a book and it’ll be a year or two before it comes out.

I’ll begin The Providence Rider in March and intend to finish in October. But what I’m trying to say is, the long lag between books is not my doing. I want to get on a solid publication track. So what might appear to you as an excessive time between books is particularly frustrating to me. I’m trying to get the corporate horses to pick up their speed, and the nags won’t go. Sometimes they refuse to move at all.

As for Pocket, my hope was that they’d see the potential in the Matthew books and really go to work promoting them, but I think my horror work still gets in the way there. One problem is: where do they go on the shelves in a bookstore? My name is still in the horror section, but the Matthew books are more Historical Mystery. We all know Boy’s Life was not “horror”, and neither was Gone South, yet those two books are shelved in the horror section where booksellers (particularly the big box stores) recognize my name from my earlier works. That’s one reason I caution beginning writers to be very, very careful how they start out, because if you begin as a genre writer you’re going to find it a very hard, torturous journey to be able to do what a writer ought to feel free and be encouraged to do: write about any subject, in any timeframe, that appeals to the creative nature. But I think Pocket just couldn’t get a handle on the Matthew books, and I probably stayed at that particular party too long.

Now to the part about “respect”. Again, we’re talking about corporations. They respect money. Can you ask for respect from a building? From stones and bricks? You might, but you’re not going to get it.

I get the respect I need from you guys. I re-read something I wrote awhile back, the introduction to my short story collection Blue World. I was talking about fast cars, the idea of moving forward, and in it I kept coming back to the phrase “Trust me”, in regards to letting me take the wheel and steer the ride. That’s what I feel you do, in allowing me freedom of the creative nature. You do trust me, and right there is the best respect anyone could ask for.

I will tell you that I think The Five is the best book I’ve ever written. All-in-all the book is exactly what I hoped it would be. The Five is something I have needed to say for a long time, but it took me awhile to know how to say it.

I feel like there are great things ahead. I have ideas stacked up and ready to go. There are things I could tell you now that would make you jump with joy, if you’ve liked my work up to this point. All I can say is…trust me.

I hear you when you say the wait between Matthew’s stories is long, and I wanted you to know it’s a problem I’m actively trying to solve. I think Subterranean Press has done a fantastic job with Mister Slaughter, and I have no hesitation in saying I hope they will publish the rest of the series.

Okay…onward, then.

Denise Quinn and Mike Wilkerson (among others) have both asked about sequels to Swan Song and The Wolf’s Hour.

I’m thinking of (maybe) a sequel to The Wolf’s Hour, but I have so much on my plate yet to do that I want to keep on my schedule. Now, that’s not to say that if The Wolf’s Hour actually becomes a movie and does well that I wouldn’t really really give some thought to continuing the story, but…

My take on sequels is that they’re never going to be as good as the original book. Yet my intention is for you to actually want me to write a sequel. Does that make sense? If you want me to write a sequel, it means you enjoyed the book and the characters enough to want to keep going with them. That’s a very high compliment to a writer, but sometimes (I think particularly in the case of Swan Song) the story is told and if there’s any continuing story it should be written in the reader’s own imagination.

I don’t consider Matthew’s stories to be “sequels”, but rather one continuing book. His story is not finished yet, and won’t be until we get to the last book in the series. But everything else I’ve done, I kinda figure those stories are finished. Having said that, though, it’s really a good thing that you want me to write sequels because it’s an indication of how much you enjoyed the original work.

Hope that makes sense.

I know there’ve been some questions about the availability of e-books. Believe me, this is an area of chaos and confusion for the book industry. I find it very interesting that Amazon promoted the Kindle as being able to download current bestsellers within minutes of their pubdates, and then suddenly the publishers are saying they want four or five months leeway between the release of new books and the e-book version. So that’s why Amazon is plundering back-lists and the publishing companies are trying to grab hold of as many older titles as they can. It’s a complicated issue. Amazon wants to be able to set e-book prices and the publishing industry wants to be able to set e-book prices. Chaos and confusion, added to by the huge number of e-book readers on the market and soon to be on the market. I have enough chaos in my day-to-day, so like you guys all I can do is watch the circus parade go past and wonder who’ll be bringing up the rear with the brooms. No doubt it’ll be the writers.

Again, thank you so very much for your comments and I particularly appreciate that you’re reading and re-reading the older books. I hope you’ve enjoyed Mister Slaughter. I will say about The Providence Rider that not only do we leave New York in this book, we also leave the colonies. But—no fear!—we’ll return to the familiar trappings of Number Seven Stone Street ‘ere the tale is through.

See? I’m getting back into the colonial mode after the rock’n roll book!

Thanks for reading and for writing, and I’ll talk to you again a little further on.

Best Wishes,
Robert McCammon

Hi everyone,

As I’m waiting for the official pub date of Mister Slaughter, I’ve been going back over comments and questions that some of you guys have posed over the last few months, and I wanted to respond.

First off, I can’t tell you how fortunate I feel to have loyal readers. Telling a story and communicating with people is what it’s all about, and I have to say that looking back over all the comments I feel like a very lucky person indeed. I’ve always said that I first write a book for myself because it’s a story I want to read, but knowing that other people are enjoying the books, understanding the characters and what I’m trying to express…it’s really a great feeling, so I wanted to thank all of you very, very much.

I really enjoy reading your comments. I’m so glad my work has given you pleasure and, in a way, become a part of your life. What more is there for a writer, than to reach out and be accepted? Again, I’m a very fortunate man.

To the comments and questions:

Jean-Frederic Chaleyat asks about movie rights to The Wolf’s Hour, and what’s going on there.

I can answer that the movie rights have been optioned and there’s a very good chance the movie will actually be made…but, as always, we’ll have to wait and see.

Paul Taylor asks if there’s any way the “hardcore” can read The Village.

You know, I took The Village out of its box not long ago and re-read it. I think I probably need to tighten it up some, but it wouldn’t be such a difficult task. The problem—and I think this is also part of why it was never picked up by a publisher—is that it concerns a part of World War II that most Americans know nothing about. (And probably don’t care much about, either!) Namely, the partisans fighting in Yugoslavia against the Germans. There’s really more to it than that, but it’s told from the viewpoint of the Russians and…well, it’s a pretty complicated plot. Plus it’s very bloody and violent. But…I might at some point clean it up and put it out there, so The Village is certainly not dead. It’s just that right now I have so many other things going on.

Frederic Doss asks how he would find out about acquiring the film rights to Gone South.

Years ago, I got a telephone call in the middle of the night from a young man who’d just won a big lottery jackpot. He’d gotten my number from the operator by saying it was an emergency call. But, anyway, he wanted to use some of his newfound money to option one of my books and make a movie.

I spent about an hour talking him down to earth. I told him to enjoy his money and not throw it away, which is exactly what he would’ve been doing if he’d tried to get into the movie-making business.

The film business will gladly eat any amount of money you wish to throw at it, burp and ask for more. Without hugely deep pockets and a studio behind you—and even with these things—you would likely have nothing to show for the money you’ve spent.

I hope someday Gone South becomes a movie. I hope others of my books become movies…if they turn out to be any good. Because, really, even spending multiple million dollars on movies doesn’t mean they’re going to be watchable. It’s just feeding the beast.

So, Frederic, thank you for asking, but please keep your money, go out to good dinners, enjoy some bottles of wine and nice trips and have fun with your cash. Even if you had millions to throw away, I would say don’t go down that movie road. There’s a reason most movies are put together by conglomerates and financial companies using other peoples’ money!

Wayne Rogers wants to know what happened to my hair.

Okay, here’s the mathematical formula to explain it: Life as a writer + dealing with the publishing business + fatherhood to a teenaged daughter x the trials and tribulations of 2000 to 2009 = WYSIWYG!

Lisa Schneider asks if I might be coming to Southern Cal for a signing, and Jodi asks if I might be coming to NYC for a signing.

Not anything planned right now, but I think we have to see how Mister Slaughter does.

If I could work out some book signings in both places, that would be fun.

Carmella Dillman asks if Speaks the Nightbird will be released as an ebook.

Working to figure out if that’s possible right now. Also working on getting some other titles into ebook formats.

Kyle Bakke asks if I’m not proud of Swan Song, and why I never talk about it.

Kyle, I’m very proud of Swan Song, but when it first came out it was blasted by some critics who said I was trying to copy King’s The Stand, and much of the heat directed at me over that book was pretty hot. Over time, Swan Song has stood on its own, but I guess it’s still a sore spot for me. One of the reasons I wanted to do historical work was that for awhile some of these same critics were saying that everything I was writing was ripping off King. I remember somebody talking on a forum about MINE, saying that they’d heard it was an idea King was going to do and that I must have ripped it off before he could write it. Another person said I’d ripped the Wolf’s Hour character off from the werewolf in The Talisman.

But the deal is, the last King book I read was The Dead Zone. I just stopped reading him, because of the very cutting criticism I was getting. Somebody even said the monster in Stinger was like the monster in IT, which I never read.

So if I don’t talk about Swan Song, it’s not that I’m not proud of my work…it’s just that it was not really recognized as my work until enough time had passed to cool some fires.

Some news: The Five is making the rounds of publishers right now and I’ll be starting the next Matthew Corbett book, The Providence Rider, pretty soon. I’m putting the plot together now, and tying some things together with things that happened in Mister Slaughter. Going to be interesting to get my head back in the flow of 18th century language as opposed to modern.

Again, thank you very much for your comments. I’m so glad you all have your favorite books.

This sounds like a cliché, I know, but my favorite book is always the one I’m working on.

Thanks for sticking with me.

I wish you a great and happy beginning to 2010, and I look forward to your continued comments and questions on the website.

Best Wishes,
Robert McCammon