Author Interview – Bradley Convissar
When and why did you begin writing? My best friend and I began writing a book together in middle school. It was about a kid who had to hop dimensions looking for colored keys. Highly influenced by the basic Nintendo games at the time. I remember one thing from this book and one thing only: I remember the main character noting that he knew that he was in Japan because all of the trees were so small. Banzai style.
How long have you been writing? I’m 35 now… I started writing when I was twelve… so… uhmm.. can you give me a calculator. I’m a dentist and a writer, not a mathematician, dammit!
When did you first know you could be a writer? I always knew I could do it. I just get distracted waaaaaay to easily. I would start a novel, get bored, turn to video games, watch TV… start another novel a couple of months later. The whole delayed gratification thing really dissuaded me. Write a novel. Spend months editing it. Spend months looking for an agent. Wait a year to see it in print. It wasn’t until the eBook revolution when I knew that the waiting was minimal that I kicked myself into gear.
What inspires you to write and why? The need to tell stories. The need to quiet the voices in my head. The need to share my ideas with the world. Or with anyone who will listen.
What genre are you most comfortable writing? I love writing psychological horror. But I get bored without some action. So I’ve pretty much morphed into a horror/supernatural thriller writer. I don’t like zombies. Or vampires. Or sex for the sake of sex or violence for the sake of violence. Or serial killers. I will use these things to enhance a story, but not as a basis for a story. In that regard, I definitely gravitate more towards the Koontz/King camp of horror (though I don’t even know if it would be called horror today) instead of the Clive Barker camp, though I loooooove Barker’s books. Weaveworld may be second favorite book ever, after Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.
What inspired you to write your first book? I wrote and finished my first book when i was a senior in high school. It sucked. I lost my brother to an asthma attack when I was eleven and he was nine. I was there when it happened. And I think I used writing back then as a way to explore my feelings on death and dealing with death.
Who or what influenced your writing once you began? Just reading. The more I read, the more I wanted to write. And the more bad stuff I read, the more I said to myself: if this crap can get published, then why not me?
Who or what influenced your writing over the years? Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Peter Straub, Clive Barker, Jeffery Deaver, Lincoln Child, Douglas Preston…. Star Wars books, playing Dungeons and Dragons, reading Dungeons and Dragons books, playing Magic the Gathering… during my late teens and early twenties, I probably read more epic fantasy than anything else, and that was a great influence in regards to mythology creation
What made you want to be a writer? The desire to work in your pajamas. Though as a dentist who wears scrubs every day, I pretty much work in my pajamas now.
What do you consider the most challenging about writing a novel, or about writing in general? Staying off the internet. Off of Facebook. I’ll admit, it was easier 20 years ago before the internet and Windows and computing in general was what it is today. I have a very short attention span. The instant gratification of screwing around on the internet is sometimes a real big distraction. Sometimes I wonder how much more I would get done with just a typewriter.
This is the second edition of the book, and the errors noted in several of the reviews have been corrected.In the Fall of 1955, the state of Nevada used the electric chair to execute a prisoner for the first time.
It was also the last time.
Molly Blackburn, nicknamed Jane the Ripper by the Las Vegas press after killing eleven men while posing as a prostitute, was strapped to the chair without incident. The switch was flipped.
Everything after that went horribly wrong.
Since that day, a copycat Jane the Ripper has appeared almost every decade in a different city, mimicking Molly’s choice in victims as well as her methods of murder. She kills eleven men then disappears, never to be found. The similarities between the bodies left behind each decade is uncanny. As if they are all the victims of the same murderer, not a copycat.
But that’s impossible, of course, because Molly Blackburn is dead, her execution witnessed by a dozen people.
FBI Agent Jack Shaw, the lead investigator in the Jane the Ripper cases since the seventies, finally catches a break in 2009 when the intended fifth victim manages to turn the tables on the newest copycat . Everyone believes that the horror has finally ended with her capture. Shaw is not so sure, though, wondering if someone else will take up the mantle and kill seven more men to complete the cycle. But when no more bodies with her distinctive markings show up over the next two years, Shaw allows himself to believe that maybe he has seen the end of the Jane the Ripper murders.
As it turns out, what he thought was the end was only the beginning.
His hunt will take him across the country, and even when he thinks he’s finally discovered the truth, he quickly learns that not everything is as it seems.
That not every monster is created equal.
That the nature of good and evil is not as black and white as he has always believed.
That not everything that is broken can be put back together.
That not every fractured soul can be saved.
When blood, smoke and ashes rise, no one comes out the same on the other side.
Blood, Smoke and Ashes is a 115,00 word supernatural thriller that also contains the first half of my crime/thriller novella “I Never”
Buy Now @ Amazon
Genre – Thriller / Horror
Rating – PG13 bordering on R
(Horror with some violence / Some sex, not overly graphic)
More details about the author
Connect with Bradley Convissar on Facebook & Twitter
Blog http://bradleyconvissar.blogspot.com/
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