Welcome to Marcus Pelegrimas' guest blog

Welcome Mr. Pelegrimas to Love Romances and More, thank you for joining us.

Glad to be here!

Did you always want to become a writer?

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been writing monster stories. I started off at around eight or nine years old, typing them on my mom’s typewriter and kept writing all the way through school. It wasn’t until after I graduated college that I knew I wanted to write for a living. Unfortunately, I had a degree in Criminal Justice by that time but I committed myself to the process of writing on a professional level.

What is the most, and the least interesting fact about writing?

The most interesting fact about writing fiction is that anything goes. You can make up your own people, places, events or rules. The tricky part is sticking to those rules and making characters that seem like they’ve been there before the book started.

The least interesting fact is that there is a lot of waiting involved with writing. You write your material, send it off to an agent and wait. Send it to editors and wait. If you get an agent, you wait for them to sell your book. Even after something sells, you wait for editors to read it and then wait for more editors to correct the punctuation. It’s a lot of waiting and none if it is very interesting.

How did you celebrate your first release? What was it like to see your book in a bookstore? Do you have a special ritual for celebrating a book release?

I celebrated my first release with a big steak dinner. I was dirt poor when my first book was published and steak in any form was pretty great. I still get a thrill out of seeing my books on shelves. My ritual for a book release is to drive around to the stores and look for it. It’s a lot of cheesy grinning and pointing at the shelves until store security comes along to kick me out.

How did your family react to fact that you are a writer? Have your family read your books?

My mom has always been very supportive. She’s also a writer and has had many short stories, poems and a few novels published so she was tickled when I decided to take up writing as a career. She’s also a damn good editor, but at least she pads the criticism with cookies. She’s read Blood Blade and enjoyed it since she comes from a horror background. If she didn’t like it, I would have heard about it. My dad isn’t much of a reader, so he hasn’t read my books. He’s more of the one who asks how I’ll get health insurance. For the rest of my family, it never came as too big of a surprise that I wound up a writer.

Most authors are also avid readers. Is this the case with you? If so, who are some of your favorites? Have any influenced your writing?

My number one literary influence is Douglas Adams. After reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books in high school, I decided I wanted to be a novelist for real and not just type stories for my own amusement. Clive Barker’s works and especially the Books of Blood are simply brilliant. They’re intensely unique and unlike most anything else I’ve ever read. Brian Lumley’s Necroscope series is a big influence simply because it’s a classic action / horror series that puts a new spin on lots of horror standards. It’s brutal, bloody and doesn’t pull any punches. Very exciting.

Where do you get the inspirations for your books?

Most of the inspiration for my work comes from writing the sort of things I would want to read. My westerns aren’t the traditional sort of fare, but are something I would enjoy as a fan. The same goes for Blood Blade. I’ve always loved vampires and werewolves, but have always wondered why sunlight would hurt a vampire or why silver would harm a werewolf. I love getting the opportunity to make these classic sorts of monsters into something different than the norm.

You have been compared to Laurell K. Hamilton and Kim Harrison, yet I don't see much of a comparison other than the three of you writing about weres and vamps. When I read Blood Blade, I thought you were more reminiscent of Christopher Golden's Prowler books. That says to me that it will be difficult for bookstores to know where to put your books on the shelves. Will it be with the horror or sci/fi or lumped in with the romance where the paranormal books tend to end up? Do you find this confusion hurts or helps sales?

I completely agree about those comparisons. Because I’m trying to do things my own way where established monsters are concerned, people need to try and compare me to something else. Bookstores will always shelve things where they want by whatever system they use. No matter what category is written on the book, it may go somewhere else. I’ve seen Laurell Hamilton and Kim Harrison books in the horror, fantasy and general fiction sections. The important thing is that readers know they need to look in more than one section to find what they want. Paranormal readers are used to their favorites popping up in different parts of a store and most folks wander up and down all the aisles anyway. As far as how this will help or hurt sales, only time (and the cash registers) will tell.

I know you have written many westerns under Marcus Galloway before deciding to dip your pen into horror with this series under Marcus Pelegrimas. Why the change? What made you decide to write about monsters?

I’ve been writing for over ten years now and I got my first real break in the western genre. I still enjoy writing westerns, but horror and monster stories have always been my first love.

I had a hard time remembering which monsters were the vamps and which were the weres and an even harder time figuring out whether the vamps were supposed to be good guys or bad. They seemed to be bad guys until somewhere near the end of the book and then it was questionable. Did you do this on purpose?

This is to be expected somewhat because I’m not using vampires or werewolves in their strictly traditional sense. I’m tweaking those monsters a bit, borrowing from some folklore and adding some of my own touches to create monsters that hopefully stand as something other than just another vamp or were.

As for who’s good and who’s bad, that was definitely left uncertain. The Skinners are like the cops that are policing monsters and keeping them in line. They look at vampires and werewolves the way a cop would look at most criminals. Even a criminal informant who is technically working with the cops isn’t really a “good” guy. And, to some degree, monsters are people too. Some vampires may be good, some may be bad, and some may just be manipulative jerks. The thing about all monsters in the Skinners series is that they set themselves above humans on the food chain. Therefore, they don’t play by our rules or subscribe to our morality. That’s what makes these kind of characters so fun to read and write about.

There was no real spark between our two monster fighters. Can we expect some sort of love interest to grow there or will these two characters be more of a teacher/student relationship going forward?

Cole sees Paige as an attractive, strong and exciting woman so of course he’s attracted to her. He’s not exactly smooth with the ladies, but he’s going to try and get closer to her. Paige, on the other hand, is a fighter. She’s in a war against vicious and deadly creatures that have no qualms with shredding a human that steps out of line. For that reason, I didn’t see why she would be willing to get close to Cole right away.

This is where I needed to make a choice as a writer. I could have pursued the romance, but that didn’t make sense in the sort of story I was telling. In the same way I asked myself why sunlight would hurt a vampire, I asked myself what Paige would see in a guy like Cole. Forcing them together right away just to put romance in the book simply didn’t feel right. Their relationship will definitely progress through the series, but in this one they’re too busy fighting for their lives to stop and gaze into each other’s eyes for too long.

It seemed like the hero's being a game developer was going to be important to the storyline at the beginning of the book and then by the end it seemed more irrelevant. Will his gaming background play any significance in the books going forward?

Cole is a game designer, but that was part of his old life. When he becomes involved with the Skinners, he is forced to run, hide, fight and survive. The day job takes a back seat to that sort of thing. Still, it’s a part of who he is and it affects how he thinks. Cole is a gamer, so he may approach a problem like he would approach a puzzle or a tough spot in a game. That’s sort of his brain’s default setting. Also, I didn’t want to write a series about the ups and downs of software development. The monsters are much cooler.

When do you expect to release the second book in this series?

The second book is called Howling Legion and will be released this Fall.

Where do you see this series going? How do you see it developing?

The first book is just an introduction. There are a lot of other monsters out there, who all have their own agendas. There are other Skinners out there as well, who all share a history spanning generations. Events from each book will bring the monsters and the hunters closer to the surface. What happens when pics or videos show up on the internet after a major battle in a park somewhere? What happens when the monsters realize they can easily run into a city and raise hell instead of hiding in the shadows? The vampires have something to gain by blending in, but other species may see no benefit whatsoever in playing by human rules. There are also other monster hunters out there who don’t get along with Skinners. I plan on having a lot of fun in expanding this whole world and putting the Skinners through the proverbial wringer.

If you could travel through time to visit a special time period or famous person, what or who would it be and why?

I’d like to spend a week or two in the Old West. I could have some bad whiskey in a real saloon, far from the noise of the modern world. While there, I’d want to play some poker with Doc Holliday. I’ve always found him to be one of the most colorful figures from a very colorful time. I’m sure he’d fleece me for every cent I had, but it would be a good time.

Do you listen to music while you are writing and if so what music is it?

I enjoy rock in all its forms. I’m a huge Beatles fan, which I should also thank my mom for. We’ve both enjoyed The Beatles and they’ve inspired me through every possible stage of my writing. Led Zeppelin is also a big one, but I may listen to Prince, Metallica or The Talking Heads when working on something. Those are just the ones that come to mind right now.

I originally wanted to put a rock ‘n roll lyric at the beginning of every Skinners book, but getting the legal permissions just became too much of a hassle.

Are you working on anything right now, and can you tell us a teaser about these projects?

The second Skinners is in the editing phase and I’ll soon be working on the third. I’m also putting together another horror project as well as making the rounds with a proposed science fiction series. I love writing in a lot of genres and don’t plan on slowing down anytime soon.

Review of Marcus Pelegrimas' book:

Blood Blade