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Hello Bookworms
Today’s post is a bit
special. Please welcome our talented writer Eric Turowski.
Title: Inhuman
Interest (Story by Tess Cooper #1)
Author: Eric Turowski
Description: Thirteen
words in a want-ad turn Tess Cooper’s world upside down after she signs on as a
paranormal research assistant to the mysterious Davin Egypt. He reveals a world
of grave robbing, clockworks artifacts in blue amber, antique revolvers that
fire strange ammo, and powerful forces beyond human comprehension.
As ancient occult
energies threaten to destroy her city, Tess must use her journalistic instincts
to stay one step ahead of the public works director, Drew Dawson, whose agenda
seems bent on destruction rather than maintenance. And possibly murder, but
will anyone believe her?
Yeah, right. When
garbage trucks fly.
If Tess teams up with
the hunky police lieutenant, Kirk Gunther, and the pale, oddball Mr. Egypt,
they might be able to save the city in time. That is, if Egypt even wants to.
And if Tess overcomes her phobias long enough to do battle in Granddad’s 1983
Subaru Brat.
Things are about to
get icky."
Why did you write
that?
How does a book about
the inability of the Western mind to successfully cope with paranormal phenomena
due to the cultural blinkers of Science and Christianity sound? Really, really
boring, right? Well, you’re in luck. I didn’t write that book.
Instead, I wrote
Inhuman Interest: Story by Tess Cooper. Tess is a reporter, a skeptic, and
frequently clumsy. Her new boss, Davin Egypt, is an occult researcher,
didactic, and consistently spooky. Together, they investigate bizarre events
that threaten to destroy their city. Tess wants to stop it. Egypt just wants to
observe it.
I chose a zany, scary,
fun quick-read thriller for a bunch of reasons. The first reason is kinda dumb.
My friend Julia Park Tracey sent me an e-mail: “Write a short, snappy novel in
February and we’ll promote it in May. It’s a thing,” she said. Prior to this,
Julia had offered other insane-o ideas. “Write an entire novel in November.
It’s a thing.”That thing turned out to be NaNoWriMo, and I wrote Willing
Servants, my first novel, which got snapped up by a publisher. So despite my
usual misgivings, I went ahead and did it. Dumb? Yeah, dumb like a fox!
The second reason is
that my first professional sale was “Thingies in the Hills,” a short science
fiction horror story told from the point of view of a teenage girl. It was easy
to write, it was fun to write, it got sold for pro rates, it only took a couple
days. It was funny, and scary, and snappy. I wanted to try it again, in a longer
work.
The most important
reason was that I wanted to write something accessible to a broad spectrum of
readers. I learned the hard way that straight horror is not for everyone. As I
proudly hawked my first novel, a young guitar student of mine wanted to read
it. She was thirteen at the time, and while I thought she could handle it just
fine, I didn’t want an angry call from her parents. I told her to read it when
she turned eighteen. I didn’t want to write books I couldn’t recommend to
everyone. So I picked two of the most popular writers, and mashed their stuff
together.
In this case, I chose
the unlikely pairing of Janet Evanovich and Stephen King. They’re not as
different as would appear from the high concept. One writes about crime in a
Trenton, NJ suburb, the other about horror in small town Maine, both write
character-driven novels, both are hugely successful, and, c’mon, is it really
that hard to imaging Stephanie Plum picking up a skip in ’Salem’s Lot?
Hopefully, the big
takeaway, other than plain old fun, is that readers consider the occult in a
new way, argue with my undefined version of the paranormal, and consider their
own stand on things beyond comprehension. That, and that you’re dying to read
the next one.
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