Hold on to your hat, next up for an interview is Naomi Kramer.  If you haven’t experienced any of her books, it is a must.  I have read everything she has written and haven’t been disappointed yet.  Naomi has two series that are my favorites, Maisy May and Dead(ish).  I had a great time interviewing Naomi, her sense of humor shines through. 

Hi Naomi, are you a coffee drinker?  

AHAHAHAHA… yes. Just a little. Like, two or three cups a day, on a good day. Don’t ask about the bad days. *twitch*

What is your favorite?

Caffeinated. I drink almost any coffee, instant or ‘real’, except the ultra-cheap stuff, which I only drink in emergencies (an emergency being, it’s morning and I have no other coffee). I do like my coffee very strong – I blame this on working with Italians for 2.5 years. They got me onto espresso, and I’ve never really recovered.

How many books have you written in your career?

I… umm… well, crap. I don’t know how to answer that. Somewhere between zero and thirty, depending on what you count as a ‘book’ and whether you can hunt down everything I’ve written and published. And let’s not even think about all the half-written and quarter-written books I have lying in my ‘Limbo’ folder on my computer. *shudder* I think I have twenty-odd ebooks up on Amazon at the moment.

What genre is your favorite?

To write? Humour, I guess. Alternative or noir. I’ve gotta admit, I’ve never quite figured out which genre most of my books (DEAD(ish) books, I’m glaring at you!) belong to. Mostly I just write, then worry about classification later. Maybe my favourite genre is really, “OMG, wut?”

I notice that you get a lot of “strange” reviews.  Why do you think that happens?

Well, look at the source. I write weird-arse books, so I don’t find it surprising that my books seem to attract weird readers. 😀 I suppose it’s possible that they cause brain injury, too.

A lot of kids seem to read your adult books, why do you think they pick them up to read?

Because they’re naughty, I guess, but sort of infantile at the same time. DEAD(ish) in particular – Linda’s not exactly sophisticated in her torment of Mike. She doesn’t construct complex traps in which the trappee feels himself slowly, increasingly wrapped around and restricted and unable to escape. But to be fair, she might just be allowing for Mike’s limitations. He’s not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. Getting back to the kids – there’s the simplistic humour, the rude words, and the occasional hint at naughty sex. If I remember my childhood correctly, that’s a trifecta. Not that I wrote them to appeal to kids – I wrote them to appeal to me. I guess that says a lot about me. 😛

Dead(ish) is such a…..different type of book, where in the world did you get the idea?

I was half-awake late one night, long ago, and I saw a scene in my head… a dead woman arguing with a living guy. She wanted something, and he was being a total arsehole to her – telling her to go away, she was dead and icky and he didn’t want her around any more. So I grabbed my laptop from next to the bed and typed up the scene. Months later, I opened the document, read it, and thought, ‘He killed her, and she needs to find her body!’ … and then I started to write DEAD(ish).

What do you do for leisure or entertainment?

I read, voraciously. Mostly fiction, but I branch out into science, biographies, and history every now and then. I love vampire fiction, fantasy, and science fiction. I will watch movies and TV shows, but I’m the same with movies as most people are with books – they’re nice and all, but I tend to lose interest and wander off.

What is your favo(u)rite hobby besides reading or writing?

I love the optional u! 😀  I guess I’d have to go for knitting (but I read a lot more than I knit). Or maybe painting and drawing. I’m a terrible painter, I’m a sub-standard drawer (no, that’s not fake humility, that’s simple fact… in contrast, I’m a pretty talented writer), but I still love to do both. But you’ll usually find me either writing, reading, or eating. Or drinking coffee. Is that a hobby?

Hmmmmmmm….I say yes!

What is the most dangerous thing you have ever done?

Sent a copy of DEAD(ish) to my mother. Nah, seriously, I tend to live a pretty boring life. I’ve never gone sky-diving or bungee-jumped. I’ve had open-heart surgery a couple of times – does that count? I didn’t exactly do it for fun, though. Hey, I did get a traditional Samoan tattoo from people I’d known less than a week, on the floor of a convention centre, without paying any attention to whether they were using sterilized equipment. How’s that?

That classifies as VERY dangerous!

How would your friends describe you, in one word?

Awesome. Insane. Funny. Who? Maybe all of those.

If you could visit any city in the United States, which city would you pick?

New York! I grew up in the country, in a teeny-tiny town of 600 people. That’s probably why New York calls to me. It’s so huge and diverse and full of life.

You change your hair color a lot, what color has been your favorite?

I love them all, they’re like children! But maybe yellow. It causes colleagues to call me ‘Sunshine’ and smile whenever I walk into the room. Unfortunately, yellow’s also a pain in the neck to do myself, because my natural hair colour – as far as I remember, anyway – is a mid-browny colour, so I have to bleach the crap out of it before I add the yellow dye.

Tell me the ONE character in your books that is the most like you.  You can only pick ONE, no cheating?

Oh, Linda, without a doubt. She’s like a bitchier, more impulsive version of me. She does and says all of the things that I would find tempting, but probably wouldn’t actually do or say (but maybe think).

I knew it would be Linda.  When I talk to you on line, I feel like I am talking to Linda. 

When you sit down to write, do you wear anything in particular to inspire you?

Geez, I’m a bit too much like Linda in that regard. You’re lucky to find me wearing clothes at all. Not because I have a wonderful perky body that I like to show off. Just because… meh, clothes.

You seem pretty thick skinned, so what, if anything is your weakness?

TRUTH. I hate reading reviews where someone’s pinpointed every single one of my weaknesses as a writer. Basically, I’m thick-skinned because I’m pretty realistic about my strengths and weaknesses. Probably more so about my strengths, because deep down I’m a fairly arrogant person. But a review that accurately nails every flaw in a book? GAH. Makes me want to curl up in a ball and never write again… for five minutes or so.

What were you like as a child?

A pain in the arse. From the moment I was born, I was causing trouble to appear all around me. For starters, I was born with a moderately-rare congenital heart condition. Off I went to a big-city hospital. Luckily for me, I was born at a time when they were just starting to figure out how to perform open heart surgery on toddlers. I was two when they operated. But even during the operation I managed to be a pain in the arse – the surgeon finished up having to cauterise one pulmonary artery to keep me alive. So now I have a mildly dodgy ticker and only one functional lung.

Anyway, it’s not just in health matters that I was a pain as a kid. My dad says that I survived all that only because I’m incredibly stubborn – something he knows from painful and repeated experience. *grin* He often tells a story about me in hospital when I was two – must’ve been pre-surgery, I reckon. Apparently one of the other patients, a four year old boy twice my size, wandered up and took my teddy bear. Me being me, I got up, went after him, thumped him one, took back the bear, and went back to whatever I was doing. The poor thumped kid ran off to his mum, bawling his eyes out. She came into the room, hackles up, looking for the horrible child who’d hit her precious baby. He pointed at me… and she smacked him upside the head and told him off for getting picked on by a tiny little girl.

My mother, on the other hand, tends to dwell on the tantrums that she claims I had primarily in public, and the tendency I had to climb before I could walk. She says I’d happily build myself a ladder to get somewhere like a kitchen bench, presumably just because I could, and only then think about how I might get down (“MUM!!!!”).

I deny everything, by the way. I have no recollection of any such events. 😛

What were your childhood dreams?

The first ever dream that I remember having is of riding a tiger. Looking back, I can see that it might have been a perfect symbol for my life. Get on the tiger, start riding, then ponder how the hell I’m going to get off.

When did you first, without hesitation, call yourself an author?

Umm… hmmm. I’m not sure I really do even now. I call myself a writer – because I write. 😛 I don’t know that it’s really because I don’t feel as though I’m worthy of such a dizzying moniker… I’m simply… a writer! I write stuff.

Thanks, Naomi, for a fabulous interview!  I can’t wait for the next Dead(ish) book, it sounds like it is going to be a doozy. 

Get Naomi’s books from Amazon US, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.

And for the record, BigAl says he                                                                                                            Maisy May. 

What a wonderful surprise for me when Edward Lorn agreed to this interview.  If you are into horror, Edward should be at the top of your “want to read” list.  As we got to know each other, I also found that he could branch off into comedy!  It was a fun interview.

The most important question! Are you a coffee drinker?

I’m a little more than a coffee drinker. I’m a caffeine addict. Most kids can’t stand the taste of coffee, but I started drinking it around fifth grade, without my parents’ permission. I’d smuggle a mugful from the carafe to my room every morning. This backfired, though, as I was soon diagnosed with ADHD after my teacher requested I be tested due in part to how I bounced off the walls of his classroom then became borderline zombified toward the middle of the day.

What is your favorite coffee drink?

I like French roast, but my current favorite is Pike Place Roast, which is available in K-cups for the Keurig. It’s under the Starbucks brand, but I don’t care much for their coffee overall. Still, Pike’s a delicious medium roast that perks me up better than ice cubes on my nipples.

How many books have you written in your career?

This is an interesting question because I can answer one of two ways. If you mean novels I’ve published, the answer is four. If you’re talking about in my lifetime, I believe the total is close to thirty now. I only publish a tenth of what I write, and that percentage is based on short stories, novellas, and full-length outings combined. It’s all practice until you hit that publish/submit button.

What genre is your favorite?

It’s a tie between literary fiction and horror. When combined, I’m in readers’ heaven. Stephen King, Robert McCammon, Kealan Patrick Burke, Marisha Pessl, and Joe Hill will always be favorites of mine. Genre horror (horror novels without any literary flair) is fun, but it tends to lack the emotional depth I look for in fiction. Point in fact, Jack Ketchum writes terrifically gory, nausea-inducing books, but his word choice and sentence structure is stripped down to its simplest form. This doesn’t detract from my Ketchum fanboy status, though, as sometimes, I just want a little dumb fun. Action over depth, and all that. This is why Michael Bay movies are so successful.

I see you write horror.  What got you interested in writing in that genre?

My sisters (who’re twelve and fourteen years older than I am) were huge horror fans. They’d be allowed to stay up nights to watch the thrillers and chillers on cable, and I would watch with them, albeit from the crack of my bedroom door, where I could see the living room television down our short hall. When they moved out, I jumped into my mother’s rather extensive horror novel collection: King, Saul, Straub, Koontz, Laymon, and the list goes on. Reading horror fiction changed the way I saw horror overall. In the movies, the killer was always the focus (Freddie, Jason, Michael Myers, Pinhead, Leatherface), and rarely did I ever have an emotional connection with the victims. They were simply stalks in a corn field to be sliced through, whereas most literature values character development over story arc, at least the good stuff does, anyway. I soon found that I appreciated getting to know the cannon fodder, and my love for books was born. Overall, though, I believe I’m just a thrill seeker, and if I wasn’t throwing words together in an attempt to scare the masses, I believe I’d be a roller coaster engineer.

What is the most embarrassing thing you have done?

This one time, at band camp…

Hmmmmm…..I really want to ask for you to continue, but I am just a little bit afraid to!

Describe your writing in one word?

Fictitious.

What would be your dream vacation?

 I’m too out of shape for this, but I’ve always wanted to do the Horror Campout. You’re given a tent and supplies, and told to survive the night. Those that stay in their tent are certain not to survive, and there’s multiple “killers” roaming the woods as well. Either that, or Hawaii. Yeah, Honolulu sounds nice.

 I think I would pick Hawaii.

What is the most dangerous thing you have done?

I once called a woman The Pensioner. Long story…

We will leave that story alone, I have a feeling it could get you into MORE trouble!

Are you married?

Yup. I’ve been married to the same woman for thirteen years. She’s my best friend, and she loves video games. I really couldn’t have found a better match.

Do you have any children?

My daughter Autumn is eight, and my son Chris is two. Autumn is proving to have her father’s love of storytelling and reading. As far as Chris is concerned, he loves Netflix and Thomas the Train toys. I have high hopes that he’ll one day rule the world with those qualities.

When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I had all the normal career wishes: doctor, policeman, fire fighter, sailor wrench, and so on. But writing was always a part of those things. I wanted to be a doctor who wrote medical novels, a cop who wrote crime fiction, that kinda thing. My love for the written word started early. Shortly after I learned to read I became obsessed with being the one who wrote the stories. I started my illustrious career by lying, because it was much easier than grammar and spelling and junk, but no one appreciated my lies as much as I appreciated books. I suppose this was because people know going into a novel that the story didn’t happen, whereas I never prefaced my lies with, “This is a piece of fiction.”

Sailor Wrench, huh?  

Describe your outlook on life in one word.

Mercurial.

Do you like reality TV programs?

I don’t watch much television these days, but when I do, I try to steer clear of those train wrecks. Still, I’ll stumble across one every now and again, and I find myself ogling, like any normal person passing a terrible car accident, to see if there’s blood, if there’s a Reebok sticking out from under the sheet that blankets the motionless lump on the gurney. But, like a ten car pile up on the interstate, I try my best to avoid them, and when I can’t, I think little of myself after having rubbernecked

I was going to ask which one is your favorite, but after THAT answer, we will just move on. 

What’s the most unusual conversation you’ve ever had? (besides this one)

I was sitting in a Coffee Kettle in Troy, Alabama (the knock-off Waffle House has since been torn down and a Popeye’s erected on the site), when an older man in a mechanic’s jumper sat down next to me at the bar, which overlooked the cooking area. He ordered breakfast and a coffee, nodded a hello to me, and began rolling a coin across the back of his knuckles with fluid ease. I told him what a nifty trick I thought that was, and he smiled. “I learned it in prison,” he said. Having never been in the joint, I didn’t know it was improper to ask a con (ex or otherwise) what they had done, so I inquired as to what landed him in the clink. He shrugged, told me I shouldn’t ever ask a question like that, then added that he was a “short eyes”, and that he hadn’t faired well inside, but he’d eventually made a friend, and this friend had taught him several coin tricks, one of which was the quarter-over-the-knuckles routine he was currently performing. I had no idea at the time what the hell a “short eyes” was, nor was I going to ask, seeing as he’d just told me how rude that was, so we continued talking. He knew card tricks as well, but didn’t have a deck on him, so he proceeded to instruct me without visual aids. I forgot everything he told me mere seconds after he stopped talking, but I assured him that I’d try when I got home. We spoke for another hour or so about how I was an aspiring author, and how he’d always wanted to write a book, but didn’t think anyone would like to hear his stories. I remember very clearly asking him if he thought prison had taken, if he felt he’d been rehabilitated. He offered me a broad smile and shook his head. “It wasn’t all for naught, though,” he said, still grinning. “I learned these new tricks, and the kiddos love tricks.” I figured he was talking about his own kids, and we lapsed into a silence until his food arrived, and I left. It would be four years before I found out that “short eyes” was prison slang for “child molester.”

As an Indie author, how do you promote your books?

I don’t do much in the way of marketing, other than a free promo or giveaway or a blog tour here and there, but I don’t purchase ads or spam potential readers. I figure I’ve made enough of a name for myself by now, and people are either going to read me or they’re not. I’ve always felt that the best tool for any author is word of mouth, and if my writing is good enough, my readers will talk about it.

Do you always wear identical socks?

Who wears socks anymore? They’re so last year. When I do use foot gloves, I make sure to wear open-toed sandals as well. It’s very chic.

To get the total look, make sure the foot gloves are black.  Just helping you out, I am sure your wife will appreciate it.

Tell me the one character in your books that is most like you.

Larry Laughlin, from my novel Hope for the Wicked and its upcoming sequel, Pennies for the Damned. He’s one of the easiest characters to get into because he’s me. Well, aside from all the murder and mayhem he gets into, anyway. I have the same sarcastic sense of humor, and we share thought processes, which makes him that much easier to write about. I simply ask myself, “Well, E., what would you do in this situation?” And BAM! we’re off.

When did you first, without hesitation, call yourself an author?

Probably after I finished Life After Dane, the novel Red Adept Publishing released in July of 2013. While writing that book, I felt the first stirrings of author status. I know that sounds weird, being that Dane was my fourth novel, but what I’m getting at is, I felt I’d finally found my own voice. Life After Dane is damn-near perfect in my eyes, and I wouldn’t change a single thing about it. I can’t say that about anything else I’ve ever written. My newest project—a serial novel entitled Cruelty—is coming close to being my new favorite, but it’s not entirely finished yet, and I believe a good ending makes or breaks a story. Episodes One through Four are currently available on Amazon.com for $0.99 each, and Episode Five should be released within a day or two of this post going live. Imagine a slasher film as a literary novel. If that intrigues you, give Cruelty a go.

Last question, Have you ever danced in the rain?

Done more than just dance. I love the rain. There’s something cleansing about it, and not just in the literal sense either. Stand outside in a downpour and take a deep breath. It’s invigorating, as if you’re being detoxed and intoxicated all at the same time.

Ed, this has been a blast.  Thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview.  Best of luck to you and I think I will pick up Cruelty.  I will let you know how it goes.  If I am afraid to come out from under the covers, it was a success.

I hope you enjoy it! Thanks for having me!

Get Edward’s books from Amazon US, Amazon UK, or Barnes & Noble.

I am so excited that Michael Crane agreed to this interview.  He is known around town as the “king” of horror and slice of life short stories, and after reading his books, I have to agree.  He has turned me into a fan.

Michael Crane is an indie author and scribbler of inane babble that can sometimes end up as stories. He went to Columbia College Chicago where he earned a BA in Fiction Writing and drank one too many Red Bulls. He’s the author of In Decline (stories), Giggles (a novella), and Lessons and Other Morbid Drabbles. Some of his favorite writers are Richard Yates, Raymond Carver, Ray Bradbury, David Sedaris, Kurt Vonnegut, Flannery O’Connor, and Alice Munro.

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