Awake at Midnight welcomes Christopher Krovatin, author of the Gravediggers series, Venomous, and Heavy Metal & You.
Awake at Midnight:
First, can you trace the journey that would inspire a singer for a New York City-based death metal band to write children’s books?
Chis Krovatin:
Well, the band came after I’d released my first book, Heavy Metal & You, but I’ve always been a diehard metalhead. Reading–in general, but horror especially–is something I’ve loved from an early age, because it took me to new places and let me live out my fantasies. The only thing I loved more was telling stories, because that lets me direct these daydreams and emotions, lets me act them out in a world where I’m in control and my imagination is the limit. Metal does that in many ways too– beneath the satanism and the rock star mentality, there’s an energy to metal, a driving emotional strength that lets you tap in to parts of your heart often unexplored. So it’s not as much of a strange union for me as many might think. I wasn’t some stone-faced death metal dude who one day decided to write for kids, I was a goofy young-at-heart headbanger who maintained a vibrant inner life and decent memory of the things that made him feel amazing when he was young.
Your description of Indonesia in Entombed is very rich. What goes into choosing the exotic locations for the zombie outbreaks the Gravediggers encounter?
Terrain is important– I want Ian, Kendra, and PJ to have different challenges every time, from cliffs to quicksand. But culture is also vital when you’re dealing with magic. In Entombed I wanted the Gravediggers to interact with an ancient civilization that was rich and strange. So I sat down and did research into old-world cultures with interesting, creepy histories, and came upon this one. My thought process went a little like this: “Let’s see, we’ve had Inuit magic, we’ve had islander magic… where else? Where did headhunters come from? Borneo? I know nothing about Borneo. Let’s get reading.” It would’ve been easy to take the kids to Haiti, birthplace of voodoo and the zombie myth, but I’ve read a million books about zombies in Haiti, both in my research and as a casual reader. Besides, my vision of the living dead uses all magical traditions as reference points. There are Norse Wardens, Tibetan Wardens, Australian aboriginal Wardens. So I figured I’d take these Gravediggers to a place they’d never dreamed of to fight zombies they couldn’t possibly imagine.
Horror films have obviously had a big influence on your work; were there specific movies that influenced your latest novel and the series in general?
I don’t want to give too much away with references, but one that’s worth mentioning is Day Of The Dead, the last of Romero’s original zombie trilogy. It’s always been my favorite of the three, because I love the whole cave-dwelling aspect of it (not to mention Tom Savini’s absolutely mindblowing zombie make-up and effects). Caves scare the Hell out of me– they have their own strange and somewhat unknowable ecosystem. There’s no light, no heat, very little sound. It’s like being in a giant coffin, except you’re not alone. Romero really nailed that with Day Of The Dead. His influence looms over the whole series, obviously, but in this one I wanted to capture that claustrophobic terror of the cave.
What horror books do you remember from your childhood– what were your favorites, and what scenes stuck with you?
Hrm. Well, my favorite book has for a long time been The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury, and Jack Prelutsky’s two books of children’s horror poetry, Nightmares and The Headless Horseman Rides Tonight, remain two favorites for me. The novel that really got me into horror as a kid was Salem’s Lot by Stephen King. That book scared the bejeebus out of me, but I loved it. There’s one scene in particular– it ends with “It became unspeakable” –that I think truly instilled in me the power of fear. But for Entombed, two of the people I thank in the acknowledgments are people I read a lot as a child– H.P. Lovecraft and Mike Mignola. Obviously Lovecraft’s weirdness greatly influenced me, but Mignola’s reimaginings of old legends also inspired me to take the magic and traditions of ancient cultures and mold them to my own liking. Hellboy’s presence was huge in my youth.
You’ve changed the standard zombie mythology to center on the spread of a contagious fungal infection rather than a virus. An easy head-shot won’t save you anymore. Are there essential characteristics of the undead that you won’t stray from?
Ah, but let’s not forget that the fungal infection is controlled by dark magic! It never has to be one thing or the other, you see. The three things I think remain important about the zombie in my mind are the following: one, they’re reanimated corpses; two, they kill the living; and three, they are without human feeling. You can have zombies talk, or run fast, or dance around hilariously. They can be viral or demonic or fungal or clockwork. But to me, a zombie is a walking corpse with murderous intentions that has no discernible sensations, physical or emotional. The zombie is remorseless, inevitable, unstoppable. It is humanity’s shell, physically and mentally.
You’ve created characters with depth, all of whom begin to grow out of their stereotypical shells as they grow closer to one another. Which kind of kid were you growing up? Did writing any of these characters cause you to stretch into a different way of thinking?
Man, I was all of these kids growing up. I had Ian’s ADD and energy, Kendra’s know-it-all steel trap mind, and PJ’s love of horror movies and total cowardice. What was a stretch was taking these aspects of myself and turning them into fully-formed characters or one type or another. But that’s why it’s fun to have them all together– they learn from each other, and learn that people different from them have strength of their own. If I had to pick one, I guess I’d go with PJ, just because I spent a lot of my youth watching horror movies and reading Fangoria.
The series has gone from standard cabin-in-the-woods zombies to water zombies, and then in Entombed we are introduced to a terrifying new cave zombie. What other versions of the undead are out there waiting to be unleashed upon the Gravediggers?
Right now, we’re capping the series as a trilogy. That satisfied me at first, but the longer it goes since I’ve written about the kids, the more I want to write more of the books (obviously, sales matter too, but honestly, if my publishers came to me today asking for Gravediggers Part Four, I’d probably say yes). But come on, I can’t tell you what the next incarnation of my zombies would be! That’s half the fun of reading these books– seeing what kind of disgusting dead-alive monsters are coming next! What kind of zombies would you like to see?
With each book, the mythology of the Gravediggers and Wardens deepens. The Gravediggers’ powers develop, and we learn more about the delicate and sometimes hostile relationship between the two factions. In fact, the conflict seems to be just warming up, (not to mention another relationship that is warming up between Ian and Kendra.) Do you have an over-arching plan for the series, or is this truly the end?
Here’s what I’ll say: in my mind, the next arch of the Gravediggers saga is mapped out, and honestly, it’s pretty cool (man, my editor is going to bust my chops when she reads this). The conflict between the Wardens and the Gravediggers continues, and comes to a head. And the zombies… well, if the book series continues, you’ll see. It’s pretty sweet, though.
Where do you think the line is that divides adult, full-splatter horror and the type of zombie story that can be read by a more general audience, like the game Plants vs Zombies allows for? Have you ever had to go back and dial-down a scene because you thought it might be too intense for your readers?
It’s a hard line to draw, for sure. For Gravediggers: Terror Cove, my editor Claudia came back telling me I needed to up the zombie gore. After reading the next draft, she came back saying, “Okay, now we need to reel it in a bit…” But with zombies, splatter is a necessity. It’s just about making it work for you. As much as I love really dark, grotesque horror, I’ve never been a massive gore guy. With a movie like Zombie, I always loved the zombies more than the murders. But bloodless zombies are boring. Zombies in their very nature are about man as meat. So it’s about making the gore a frightening part of the story without making it gratuitous or unnecessary. There’s a part in Terror Cove where a character mentions that the zombies eat every part of their prey, and he says, “They ate the teeth.” That right there is more unsettling and grotesque than a metric ton of bloody guts.
What new projects are you working on currently?
Oh no, I’m not falling for that one.
Related Posts:
INTERVIEW with Christopher Krovatin
Gravediggers: Entombed (Coming Next Week!)
Gravediggers: Terror Cove
Gravediggers: Mountain of Bones
Heavy Metal and You
