Tuesday 7 January 2014

An Interview with J.L. Benet





What inspired the pen name J.L. Benet?

My mother is Quebecois (French-Canadien), and Jean-X is common in that side of the family (Jean-Francois, Jean-Maurice, Jean-Phillipe, etc.). Loup is French for wolf, so it seemed fitting. I started using just the initials as Jean-Loup, when pronounced correctly, sounds too close to Jean-Luc (as in Jean-Luc Picard). When mispronounced, it sounds like Gene Loop.
I chose to use a pseudonym early in my career partly because I am a teacher and I wanted a separation between my school life and my writing life. My writing has caused some issues when I taught for a conservative school. They had a problem with what I wrote, despite their using the fact that I’m a published author as a selling point when recruiting students.

What is it about werewolves that turned you on enough to write an entire novel about one?

I love the duality of man aspect. I’ve never been that interested in the classic Horror that was focused on the person or people fighting against some monster. I wanted to be in the monster’s head. The psychological aspect of Horror is what really attracts me to the genre, and the concept of having a protagonist and antagonist in one person is a compelling concept for me.

Native American themes are quite prevalent in Wolf Hunter. In what way did you tap into your own Native American roots to make it true to life?

The bearwalker mythos that I drew heavily upon for Jack and his grandfather is drawn directly from the Ojibwa/Chippewa tradition. I based the initial idea on the stories my grandmother told me, but I also did a good deal of research to make sure I got it as faithful as possible, while still respecting the traditions of my elders. I found the elders were rather reticent to talk about the subject, and talk around the topic, only really coming around to telling anything in a rather circuitous fashion, and then tending towards vaguery. I think that holding back made the topic that much more interesting to me.

This novel has been had been in the works for a while, right? What kind of journey did the manuscript take from the first time you sat down to write it to the final product?

It was actually accepted a few times. I won’t name names, but I can speak about the process. I did the normal route for the first rounds, hitting the big mass market paperback houses like Leisure Books and Pinnacle. Not too long after it was finished, I got accepted by a small press that was just starting. After they expressed interest in the book, but before they actually sent me a contract, they decided that Horror wasn’t a financially feasible genre, so they dropped their Horror line. An editor for another small press heard about my reading at World Horror Con (I think it was the one in San Francisco) and asked if I had any full-length novels that might be looking for a home. I sent Wolf Hunter off and it was accepted. Not too long after the acceptance (no work had been done on the book yet), there was a shake-up at the publishing house. My editor left and the Horror line fell to the head of the house. I was told this person wasn’t a huge fan of Horror and was going to pretty much dump the Horror books already contracted into the market with as little work possible. With the suggestion of a few of my friends who know the industry and who had some inside scoop on the situation, I pulled my book.




What other werewolf works did you keep in mind while writing Wolf Hunter? Did you consciously make a nod to any classic works or did you try and steer as far away from them as possible?

As Wolf Hunter served as my Master’s thesis, it did require a good deal of research. I did read a bunch of books that featured Nazi werewolves, but none really did what I wanted to do. There are bits and pieces from actual stories and from non-fiction books about medieval rites and such. I did keep in mind the bearwalker stories, because I wanted to make sure that aspect was faithful, without actually revealing those aspects that are considered sacred. Due to the nature of these stories, there are very few stories in print that feature bearwalkers. It is said that to write about it will bring evil upon the writer. I was told by one of the Chippewa elders that this is the reason why none of the books featuring the bearwalker have been financially successful. I’m not so sure about that, but I didn’t want to tempt fate by revealing things that others in the tribe would have felt sacrilegious.

What’s next on the agenda for you?

It was a secret, but I was outed last World Horror Con. I am currently writing paranormal romance under a different pseudonym. I am still filling the pages with were-creatures, but the pages aren’t dripping with gore (I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t any gore).

Lastly, should werewolves ever sparkle?


I know it may seem like heresy, but I think some werewolves can sparkle. In the Ojibwa stories, the bearwalker will actually glow when going around at night in animal form. That said, glowing isn’t sparkling. 

Thursday 2 January 2014

Who Says Quiet Horror Can't Have Horny Teenagers?



     Because it most certainly can. To be fair, the thrust of Michael Rowe’s Wild Fell isn’t about horny teenagers, and their misadventure is important to the plot and not meant to be a cheap thrill. We learn the fate of a pair of teenagers who die tragically in 1960 before meeting Jameson Browning, the novel’s protagonist.
     Jamie has a few problems on his hands, including a father that lives with Alzheimer’s. He has also been in an accident that has left him with a boatload of money. The condensed version of his is that he buys a house on Blackmore Island called Wild Fell without ever visiting the property (kinda kooky, isn’t it?). While there, he begins experiencing things that will make the reader rather uncomfortable (you have no soul if they don’t, just sayin’).
     At any rate, Wild Fell isn’t your ordinary kind of house, but then it wouldn’t belong in a haunted house novel if it was. It’s true that Wild Fell embodies some fairly traditional ghost story elements, but Rowe’s handling of it sets it apart from the rest. Too many people say that you can’t do anything new with the ghost story, that it’s all been done to death. That simply isn’t true. There are standard elements to the ghost story, but a talented author can take those elements in God knows how many directions.
     And that is what Michael Rowe has done with Wild Fell. Saying that his treatment of the ghost story is imaginative would be unfair. Inventive is a much better word, in my opinion. Rowe takes the story in directions that I really hadn’t expected, not that surprises are necessarily the be all and end all with me. The fact that the direction was genuinely creative and tempting was much more satisfying. It does
     I know I haven’t hit too many specifics about the book in this post—it would be way too easy to spoil good parts of the book if I did. What I can do is recommend this book. I read it on my Kindle, but there’s a part of me that wishes I’d bought the hard copy. I would have something to sit on my shelf, something to be preserved.
     But then I would have waited slightly longer to get my mitts on it, wouldn’t I?