From the Polish pop culture site Badloopus, May 18, 2022
We talk to Robert McCammon, the best-selling writer and one of America’s most important horror writers, about national reworking of historical trauma, writing, relationship issues with publishers, and of course the latest novel, ” Zew Nocnego Ptaka,” which opens the Matthew Corbett series.
Do Americans still work through the dark pages of their own history in pop culture?
I think we do, and certainly there are a lot of dark pages to work through, but I think many authors in many different countries also do this work, and not just in America. Germany…Japan…Russia…South America…Australia…those countries and more have been used as backdrops in exploring the dark pages of their history, and with current events as they are I’m sure there are unfortunately more dark pages to be written in the history of the world.
Where the idea for the first volume of the novel series about Mathew Corbett originated from? To remind us of the gloomy period of “witch burnings”?
I had the idea of doing a colonial-based novel for some time but it took awhile for the plot to work itself out. Then I came up with the character of Matthew, and once I decided what kind of person he was—an original thinker for that era and someone who had the tendency to shake on a problem like a bulldog with a bone—then the book really seemed to write itself.
In Speaks the Nightbird you have created a wide spectrum of characters, with different views on life, different attitudes to the problem of “witchcraft accusations”. Is this only a necessity for the plot? Or, more broadly, an attempt at a historical portrait of the society of those times?
Well, I found it interesting that people never really change throughout history. You have the good and the evil, those who give back to society and those who only take, those who wish well for others and want to have good lives, and those to whom destruction is their only motive. So in a way the citizens of Fount Royal in 1699 are no different from the citizens of any town or city in any period of history…certainly in the present, as well.
You gave up writing for several years, and during that period you did not publish anything new. Was it a preparatory stage for a new series – about Mathew Corbett? Or maybe just a simple excess of writing? A need for a break?
Simply put, I was disappointed in the publishers’ response to Speaks the Nightbird and as well their past response to my novel Boy’s Life. They didn’t seem to recognize that I wished to grow as a writer and the only way to do that was to try something ‘different’ from what I’d been doing in the past. I was disappointed that the publisher, for all the talk of looking forward and encouraging writers to be more daring and creative, turned out to be simply another corporation that really—at least in my opinion—didn’t realize the strength of a novel even when it was put in front of them. So I needed a break to decide whether I was going to continue writing or not.
Why do you focus on realism in this novel, at the same time giving up completely on factual or horror themes, which have previously been an indispensable element of your work?
Again, I wanted to do something different from what I’d been doing, but I think there are ‘horror’ elements in Speaks the Nightbird, in the idea of something evil and unknown stalking the village of Fount Royal, and of course if there is a ‘witch’, then ‘the devil’ must be involved there as well.
To what extent do you stick to historical realities in Speaks the Nightbird? Do you sometimes modify facts for the sake of the plot?
I do try to be as true to the history as possible, and in fact one of the joys I’ve had doing the series is what I’ve learned from all the research I’ve done, and only a bit of what I’ve learned is actually used in the books. But I have to say also that any professorial historian can probably find errors in the work, because I believe that no historical work can be entirely accurate. You would have had to live through the period yourself to be totally accurate, because there are so many small details that you’re going to miss while painting the big picture. But you do try to do the best possible, of course…while knowing you’re going to miss something.
Speaks the Nightbird strongly condemns certain social attitudes, among which the most striking is a tendency to pass judgment without a proper evaluation of facts. Is this a reference to the “cancel culture” still present e.g. in the world of show business?
We may call the current condition ‘cancel culture’ but it’s been around since the beginning of time. There have always been tribal attitudes in the family of man. Broadly speaking, there is the position that if someone says or does something the ‘others’ don’t like, there is a punishment handed out, and that punishment might be banishment from the group or some other penalty…at its extreme like stoning in the ancient world, being seized by the Inquisition in medieval Spain, taken off the street by the Gestapo in Nazi Germany, becoming a political prisoner in Russia or in many other countries. The ‘witches’ of history were likely to be women—and men also, of course—who the community felt threatened by, and who did not ‘fit in’ to the society for whatever reason. So this is certainly not new, though you might think so due to the presence of social media.
Mathew Corbett is one of the few voices of reason in the novel. He is the only one who do not want to pass judgment but to solve the case. While preparing for this novel, did you come across historical references to such a character in real life? Does Mathew have a historical parallel?
I’m sure there was a historical parallel to Matthew, because the witch-hunts stopped at a particular time and at least one person had to be thinking ‘this is absolutely wrong’. As more and more people became more highly educated, the witch hangings and burnings went away. So I’m not sure history has ever recorded who the first person was who questioned the witch hunts, but someone like Matthew would’ve been a good candidate. It was interesting in my research to find that most ‘witches’ were hanged, though some were burned if they’d committed murder in the name of ‘the devil’. Witch hunts, hangings, and burnings were certainly not confined to early America. Germany had the most, followed by Spain.
Will you return to writing fantasy or horror prose? Will you focus exclusively on the historical novel?
I will return to whatever calls to me and whatever I want to read, as I am the first reader of all my writing.
What was the most difficult part of preparing to write this novel?
It wasn’t difficult. It was a joy to do and I was ready to go by the time I sat down to actually start writing.
When you start writing, do you already know the whole plot? An exact outline? Or do you allow yourself creative freedom Turing the writing process?
I start out on page one with an idea of what the book is trying to ‘say’. I usually have a beginning scene, a middle scene and most of the time an ending scene. Other than that, I am simply guided by what I think works. And creating strong characters who very often will direct your progress is helpful too.
How many volumes about Mathew Corbett are there now? And how many do you plan to write? Do you have a precise plan?
The eighth book in the series—titled The King of Shadows—will soon be published in America. There will next be a book of short stories and a couple of novellas starring Matthew and some of the others who populate Matthew’s world. Then I’ll be doing the final book in the series, so there will be ten in all.
Can you tell us something about the next volume of the series, which is to be published in Poland?
Yes! In The Queen of Bedlam, Matthew takes one more important step in following his destiny. He becomes involved in the mystery of a series of murders in New York and crosses the path of a dangerous and shadowy figure who will come to be integral in his future…a man to whom revenge is the proverbial ‘dish eaten cold’.
I can say also that I have had a tremendous amount of joy and fun writing this series and I hope the readers can both sense and share that!
Thank you very much for the interview.