The Blake Crouch Interview (Part 1 of 2)

Here for your reading pleasure is Part 1 of my 2 part interview with author Blake Crouch. Enjoy! 

MEB: Blake, welcome to The Man Eating Bookworm.

Blake: Thanks for having me!

MEB: To start why don't you tell all the Wormies a little about yourself.

Blake: I was born and raised in North Carolina. Came out to Colorado about eight years ago, and love it. 

I started writing very early on, like in middle school. Wrote some bad poetry in high school, and started my first terrible novel my senior year called Down From the Sleeping Trees, which was a weak attempt at the Prince of Tides. That book never sold but did ultimately land me my first agent. 

In 1999, I decided to write my second novel, and this time, it was going to be the kind of thing I would also want to read. It morphed out of a story I'd written in a creative writing class called "Ginsu Tony" about two brothers' final meeting before one of them is executed in Montana. That book became Desert Places, which I edited with my professor at Chapel Hill, the great Bland Simpson. That book got me my first book deal, and I was off.

MEB: One thing I love about your stories is how location and setting play a huge roll. From the desert in Wyoming, the high peeks of the Colorado Rockies, Haines Junction(Yukon), to Ocracoke and Portsmouth (North Carolina), you do a great job of planting the reader firmly in that location. Have you been to all these places, and if so, do you visit a place to help with the writing, or do you discover a great place on your travels and decide to set a story there?

Blake: I've been everywhere except for Haines Junction, Yukon (it's kind of a long drive north). Also, with my newest novel, Run, I couldn't visit every single place, because it was a 2,000-mile road trip from Albuquerque, NM, into Canada. Google Earth helped a lot. 

But location has always been an important facet of my stories (not sure why), and I imagine it will continue to be. I think that location helps me to establish mood, which is a considerable component of building suspense, terror, etc. And being a fan of great writers like McCarthy (and Conroy) who write so well about weather and landscape, I aspire to follow in their footsteps.

MEB: Most of the places you write about are practically cut off from the rest of the world, they're remote and harsh. What is it that attracts you to write about these types of places?

Blake: It probably has something to do with where I want to take my characters....to the absolute, utter ends of their ropes. Kind of hard to do that in a big city with ample cellular towers. I like to put my characters through hell, and remote locations are a key ingredient. When there's no power, no means to contact the outside world, and no roof over their head, they start having to make tough choices. And characters at their breaking point are really the only kind I'm interested in writing about.

MEB: Serial killers and murderers inhabit a large portion of your imaginary world, from Orson Thomas and Luther Kite (Desert Places/Locked Doors) to Martin (from *69), Nathan (On The Good, Red Road) and Lucy (Serial/Killers). What is it about these types of individuals that attracts you to pen their stories?

Blake: I've always been fascinated by the darker side of human nature, even in my earliest attempts at fiction. Where it comes from, I don't know (and kind of don't want to know). I think what draws me to them, is that they are true representations of evil in a world where sometimes evil is thought not to exist. People do bad things, but no one is deemed "bad" anymore. Everything is explained away through upbringing, etc. I'm not saying that doesn't play into it to some extent, but if you look at the history of serial murderers in the 20th Century (from Fish to Gasey to Bundy) you cannot say that they aren't evil. I like how writing such characters brings the topic of evil into a lot of my work in a pretty seamless, and organic way.

MEB: I read in an interview that one of your favorite serial killer books is The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris. Being this is a Canadian blog I have to ask: Have you read Michael Slade's Special X thrillers, beginning with Headhunter and Ghoul?

Blake: No, should I add them to my list? I'm always looking for something to rock my world like SOTL did.

MEB: Definitely add them to your list. I think they would be right up your alley.

I'm guessing there is a well read collection of Edgar Allan Poe in your home library. Who are your essential authors and who are your more modern go to guys?

Blake: Absolutely. I love "The Tell-Tale Heart", "Cask of Amontillado", "The Black Cat", "Fall of the House of Usher", and "The Pit and the Pendulum" in particular. Other favorite writers (it's a pretty eclectic list): Cormac McCarthy, Larry McMurtry, C.S. Lewis, Don Winslow, Hemingway (I have the great fortune of being friends with a handful of my faves (Marcus Sakey, Joe Konrath/Jack Kilborn/Scott Phillips, F. Paul Wilson, Brian Azzurello, Michael Koryta, David Morrell)), Gillian Flynn, Bill Bryson, and plenty more I know I'm forgetting.

* This concludes part 1 of my 2 part interview with Blake Crouch. Part 2 will be posted tomorrow afternoon. Remember to leave a comment today for a chance to win a e-book copy of DRACULAS (A Novel of Terror) (via Amazon.com and Kindle).