Tom DeFalco and Sarah Zettel and Other News

As promised, I'm posting a bit more often now.

Scroll down for interviews with Tom DeFalco and Sarah Zettel.

In the other news department - the next issue of Interzone magazine (206) has my double-headed interview with David Naughton (who played David Kessler, the werewolf in An American Werewolf in London) and Camden Toy (who played a number of villains in Buffy and Angel). They're talking about their experiences in the make-up chair - Naughton in 1981 and Toy (20 years later!)in 2001. My thanks go to both gents for their enthusiasm and for being so damned nice.

I've also got a new interview coming on September 1st on SFSite.com. This one is with writer and scriptwriter Dennis Bartok, who is talking about his new horror movie Trapped Ashes. The movie certainly looks like one-to-see and has its World Premiere at the Toronto Film Festival on September 12th 2006, as part of the Midnight Madness horror/genre showcase. And Dennis is another nice man too!

There's more stuff in the pipeline of course, so see you soon!

Tom DeFalco Interviews Comic Creators About The X-Men

With the third X-Men movie reaching cinemas on the May 26 2006, now is the perfect time for an in-depth history of the Marvel X-Men's comics career, from their birth in 1963 to their unparalleled success in the present day.

Comics Creators On X-Men features interviews with every major talent involved in Marvel's X-plosive series, including Stan Lee, the original co-creator, and writers and artists from Roy Thomas and Chris Claremont, through John Byrne and Dave Cockrum, to Grant Morrison, Mark Millar and Chris Bachalo.

This 256-page book traces the creation of the X-Men, in a chronological exploration of their most resonant adventures and villains. Along the way, interviewer Tom DeFalco, former Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics, uncovers the brainwaves, conflicts and legends that shaped X-Men into one of the world's most popular series of comic books.

Surprisingly, the book didn't take long to put together. "Titan and I first began discussing Comics Creators On X-Men in early 2004, along with Comic Creators on Fantastic Four," said DeFalco. I did CC on FF first and began working on CC on X in the early summer of 2005. Actual research, interview, transcription, editing, approval and production time took about ten months."

Having also done CC on Spider-man, DeFalco now has a trusted approach to these books. "First," he said, "I pull out my old comics, hunt down new ones and write up a bunch of questions. I do some research on each of the interviewees - even if I've known them for years. I have to do a lot of research because I don't trust my memory. I'm almost as bad as Stan Lee when it comes to remembering anything. Once that's done, I arrange a convenient time to chat. I prefer talking to my subjects, rather than the question and answer method that's so commonly used in the age of the Internet. This allows me to react to statements and follow tangents.

"The actual interviews can run anywhere from one to five hours in length and are usually filled with digressions, gossip and even the occasional cooking recipe. (Hey, most of us are freelancers who spend a lot of time at home!)

"Then I have the interview transcribed by a couple of lovely and patient young ladies. I usually end up with a rough manuscript that can run anywhere from fifty to a few hundred pages in length which I boil down.

"After that my editor - Simon Furman - takes a pass at the interview and we send them back for approval. Once it's been approved, Simon works his magic and printed book appears on my doorstep a few months later."

The process has its high and low points for DeFalco. "I love talking to the various creators and getting their views on our wonderful craft," he said. "I wish I could have been reading these Comic Creators books when I was first starting out as writer. They would have been very helpful.

"The transcribing stage is harder though. Transcribing a tape recording can be a very tedious process and I really don't have the patience for it. And the editing stage can also be quite painful. A creator will go off on a tangent that I find fascinating, but really has nothing to do with the subject at hand. I'm always torn between including and deleting these gems."

The X-men have been popular for over forty years, so what does DeFalco think is behind its longevity? "I think the series is about traumas that come when you possess a special talent (or passion) and that's a theme that everyone can identify with. I also think the X-books have been blessed with some of the finest creators the comic book industry has even seen."

Tom DeFalco is currently working on the monthly adventures of Spider-Girl and producing another five-issue limited series for Marvel called Last Planet Standing. He's also done a couple of Kolchak stories for Moonstone and contributed to the new Marvel Encyclopedia from DK Publishing, which will go on sale this summer.

Sarah Zettel talks about Camelot's Sword

Sarah Zettel's latest Arthurian romance, Camelot's Sword, has been released by Harpercollins. Another stand alone tale, this time Zettel is looking at the lives of the people on the fringe of the famous royals, who don't seem to have it any easier than Arthur and Guinevere…

The book opens at Castle Cambryn, where Lynet's father Kenan is Cambryn's Steward - holding Queen Guinevere's lands while she rules with Arthur in Camelot. But the lands are coveted by Morgan Le Fey and she uses her magic to influence Kenan's ambitious son Colan, who murders his father and is promptly outlawed.

Facing local turmoil and possible civil war, Lynet leaves her sister hostage at Cambryn and embarks to fetch Guinevere to resolve the mess. The journey brings revelations about Lynet's ancestry, and introduces her to Squire Gareth. Already dishonoured for past misdemeanours, Gareth must redeem himself by putting aside his womanising ways and help Lynet bring peace to Cambryn.

The roots of Camelot's Sword reach deep into the past. "They go back to the original stories (although I use that term advisedly) in Malory, "said Zettel. "In Gareth's tale in Le Mort d'Arthur, Lynet and her sisters are sorceresses, so, I just adapted that story." Arthur has always enthralled readers hasn't he? "I think it's because it's not one story, but many. It's not just Arthur, it's all the knights and all they did, and those adventures can be changed and updated and turned around into something that has interest and meaning for the audience of any age, and still have the resonance that goes so far back you feel connected to its deep, deep roots."

Sword's characters are as haunting as the tale but as always, it takes hard work to achieve apparent effortlessness. "Gareth was the most difficult character to write," Zettel admitted "I've never written about such an unfinished hero before. He had to do a lot of growing up during the course of the book, and I wanted to be able to portray that as believably as possible. Lynet was easier, I think. She was in many ways just a young woman setting out on her own for the first time, and I've been there in my own life."

Giving her characters a vivid setting didn't take too much research for Zettel. "I had the basic shape of the legends in my head, and did sort of brush-up reading on that end. But I kind of research as I go. I'll read a book or two to get some basic facts and then I'll jump in. When I run into something in the plot or setting I'm not sure on, then I'll do additional research on that point, and go on. Having written about alien worlds I've never been to, the ancient landscape of someplace I've actually walked just didn't seem like it was going to be that difficult."

Will there be other Zettel tales set in Arthur's world? "There might. I've written a novelette set in my version of the Arthurian universe that will appear in the first installment of the new on-line publication Jim Baen's Universe later this year. I'd actually love to do Arthur's mother, Ygraine's, story. Morgan and Guinevere have been done repeatedly, but no one ever writes about Ygraine. But right now, I'm in the middle of the last book in this series, tentatively titled Camelot's Blood, which will be the story of Lynet's sister Laurel, and her marriage to Sir Agravain."

For more information about the author, visit Sarah Zettel's website.

The year so far…..

I hadn't intended to have the updates this far apart on my blog, but sometimes life just takes over and you find you're not really in the driving seat anymore.

It's time to put some kind of update out now - especially as some really nice folk (John, Neil you know who you are) have been hassling me for updates.

So what's been happening?

January brought an invite form Andy Cox to join the Interzone magazine team as Book Reviews editor. I thought long and hard about taking him up on the offer - once I'd got over the blushing sense of flattery. The problem wasn't because of the job he was offering but my dwindling amount of spare time. But it seemed too good an offer to pass up so I re-arranged my workload and went for it.

It was the right decision. It's a new challenge for me, stretching me in ways I hadn't expected and teaching me things about reviewing and language with every issue. The review team are a great bunch of experts who make my job really easy and the Interzone team are a hoot.

Something had to give though and you'll find a lot less of my reviews going online this year. I'm still reviewing for SFX magazine and of course I get a review in Interzone now and then. But it's not completely over, there's still my news items on The Alien Online website and my interviews and some reviews are still going online at SFSite.com. New additions at SFSite.com include Jon Courtenay Grimwood's excellent 9Tail Fox and an interview with Tom Lloyd, author of The Stormcaller.

There's been lots of other stuff going on too, of course. The finished DVD from the Memorabilia event at the NEC arrived and cameraman Mark from the Dysfunction Group company did a fantastic post-production job on the interview footage he shot, combining it with various shots of the event, to produce a slick end product. I've been going to the Memorabilia event at the NEC for many years now and it just keeps getting better. The next one is August 12th and 13th 2006, so go give it a try.

John Aitken and I have just completed the Fantasycon trivia quiz - 36 questions about SF, Fantasy and Horror that always earns us loads of earache from the competitors at the BFS's Fantasycon event.

I'm also reading, re-reading and researching author Raymond Feist - who will be a guest at this year's Fantasycon in September along with Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker and Juliet McKenna. I'm interviewing Raymond on stage and looking forward to the event with a mixture of nerves and extreme pleasure. If you haven't got your ticket yet, why not.

I've also had the great pleasure to interview actors David Naughton and Camden Toy this year. David played David Kessler, the American tourist turned werewolf in my one of my favourite horror flicks, American Werewolf in London. The movie celebrates its 25th Anniversary this year and the full interview will be appearing on SFSite.com in the upcoming months. Meanwhile, I've combined David's experiences in the make-up chair in 1981 with Camden Toy's experiences in the same make-up chair 20 years later. Camden played four wicked villains in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. He's a wonderfully animated speaker and if you get the chance to see him at a convention, do it. The article about their claustrophobic traumas will appear in the next Interzone magazine (issue 206).

There's also a new DVD out from Red Dwarf star Robert Llewellyn (Kryten). Watch out for an interview with him coming soon to SFSite.com but meanwhile, drop in at his website, it2i2 and check out his take on Artificial Intelligences.

I'll be posting some back interviews onto this site over the next week or so and hopefully a recommendation or two for some really good books.

See you soon.

Sandy

Sandy Auden is currently working as an enthusiastic reviewer for SFX magazine; a tireless news hound for Starburst magazine; a diligent book reviews editor for Interzone magazine and a combination interviewer/reviewer for SFSite.com and TheAlienOnline.net. She spends her spare time lying down with a cold flannel on her forehead.