Raising Stony Mayhall

Article first published as Interview: Novelist Daryl Gregory on Raising Stony Mayhall on Blogcritics.

Writer Daryl Gregory always provides enlightening and entertaining discussion, that’s why this marks the third time I have interviewed him about his work. Last month saw the release of his newest novel, Raising Stony Mayhall, described by publisher Del Ray as “In 1968, after the first zombie outbreak, Wanda Mayhall and her three young daughters discover the body of a teenage mother during a snowstorm. Wrapped in the woman’s arms is a baby, stone-cold, not breathing, and without a pulse. But then his eyes open and look up at Wanda—and he begins to move. The family hides the child—whom they name Stony—rather than turn him over to authorities that would destroy him. Against all scientific reason, the undead boy begins to grow. For years his adoptive mother and sisters manage to keep his existence a secret—until one terrifying night when Stony is forced to run and he learns that he is not the only living dead boy left in the world.”

In addition to chatting about his newest novel, Gregory also explained how his previous novel, Pandemonium, came to be translated into Hebrew, as well as what else is on the creative horizon for him.

Tim O’Shea: In terms of this novel’s timeline, the first zombie outbreak happened in the late 1960s. What was your thinking in terms of the timeframe of when Stony was born?

Daryl Gregory: It’s a nod to Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, which came out in 1968. In the world of the novel, a guy who also happens to be named Romero films the outbreak a documentary. We go on from there, and the book spans Stony’s entire “life,” from when he was discovered as an undead baby beside the highway in ’68, to his eventual second death in his forties in 2010.

Conveniently enough, I was born in 1965, so Stony’s life and times are basically my life in times, with a few key differences. (Stony spends his life as a zombie, for example, while I am only a zombie before I’ve had my first cup of coffee.) Stony eventually discovers that he’s not the only living dead boy in the world, and he goes through a political awakening when he realizes he’s part of an oppressed community.

Using my own chronology was my chance to talk about growing up surrounded by sisters (only two of them, but I felt surrounded), as well as childhood friendships, and finding your place in the world. A reviewer on GoodReads called it a zombildungsroman, and that’s the best, most efficient description of the book I’ve found.

O’Shea: The lead character, Stony, is fascinated with the nature of his body and his mind (understandably, given that he’s a zombie). What are you trying to explore by this character examination?

Gregory: Stony is a thinking man’s zombie! Or a man’s thinking zombie? Regardless, he’s a scientist at heart. And just because his own circumstances seem to be impossible, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t try to figure out who and what he is.

The thing about real, Romero-style zombies (as opposed to, say, genetically altered humans who act like zombies) is that they make no sense. If they’re dead, how do they move? If they have no metabolism, why do they eat, and how do they digest what they eat?

Instead of disregarding those questions, Stony takes them as facts of his world, and begins experimenting on himself to see what that means about him. One small example: If his brain is nothing but inert matter, but he still is conscious, then consciousness must exist outside the body. He arrives at religious explanations based on the evidence.

O’Shea: How elated and surprised were you when Publisher’s Weekly pegged Raising Stony Mayhall as its pick of the week?

Gregory: Very elated and very surprised. Publisher’s Weekly does a great job of covering science fiction and fantasy, but I didn’t expect to see them choose a genre book as their pick for all readers. (Then again, maybe they do this more than I’ve realized.) I’m just very grateful.

O’Shea: Did you find that response from your GoodReads giveaway helped spread the word about your new book?

Gregory: My publisher graciously put up 20 copies for the giveaway, and we had a huge number of people sign up to win free copies of the book. I don’t know if that will turn into sales, but I hope so. At the very least, it exposed a lot of people to a book they might not have picked up at the local bookstore — if they even have a local bookstore.

O’Shea: At what point in the development of Raising Stony Mayhall, did you realize that you wanted an element of humor in the story?

Gregory: I think that was built in from the beginning. A strict zombie story is dependent on constant, increasing levels of terror. But Stony is a bent life story, so there’s room for all range of tones and elements. There’s humor, because life is humorous.

O’Shea: Not every author offers to sign and mail bookplates to fans, when did you decide to start doing that–and is that another way you try to stay connected to your fans?

Gregory: I stole this idea from new Del Rey writer Kevin Hearne. My editor told me what Kevin had done, and it seemed like a good idea. For one, bookstores are now ordering what to place on the shelves based on pre-orders, so it seemed like a good idea to encourage a jumpstart. But also, there are plenty of folks who I’ll never be able to meet or sign books for, and this seemed like a nice way to stay in touch and say thanks.

O’Shea: You just wrapped up a Clockwork retreat, what do you enjoy most about these creative retreats?

Gregory: I would like to say that it’s because I get a tremendous amount of work done, but that’s a lie. It’s really about hanging out for a week with fellow writers, talking about business and craft and crafty business people. These guys — Matt Sturges, Chris Roberson, Bill Willingham, and the rest of the gang — are my Council of Elrond. I’m trying to learn how to break into comics and balance that with writing prose, and these people are all doing that — and all doing it differently! I also come out of these weeks recharged, ready to try new things.

O’Shea: Not every writer can say “hey my book just got translated into Hebrew“–but that’s exactly what happened with Pandemonium. How did that book deal come about? How many different countries have published your novels?

Gregory: Pandemonium is in three countries so far — Italy, the Czech Republic, and this edition from Graff Publishing in Israel. I’d gotten to know Rani Graff at science fiction conventions, and one day a couple years ago we were sitting in a bar at a WorldCon and he told me that he wanted to publish Pandemonium, but was having trouble getting through to the rights people at Random House. And I said, my editor is sitting next to me! I introduced them, and I think they shook hands on the deal that day.

O’Shea: What else is on the creative horizon for you?

Gregory: My first collection of short stories is coming out from Fairwood Press this fall — it’s called Unpossible and Other Stories. I’m also working on a new novel, and writing comics. I’m writing Planet of the Apes from BOOM! Studios, and my other comic for them, Dracula: The Company of Monsters, is finishing up soon with #12. The eight-year-old Daryl is very impressed with me right now.

Recently BOOM! Studios released Shmobots, a graphic novel by writer Adam Rifkin and artist Les Toil. I recently was able to conduct an email interview with Rifkin. Before getting to the questions, here’s BOOM!’s official breakdown of the creators and the project: “SMALL SOLDIERS and MOUSEHUNT screenwriter and DETROIT ROCK CITY director, Adam Rifkin, pairs with pin-up artist supreme Les Toil to create Shmobots! In an world where man needs robots to do menial labor, a city decides to contract with the lowest bidder in order to create its army workforce. But the whole thing backfires and the robots end up being lazy and stupid — with attitude. So what do you call these slacker robots? They’re a bunch of Shmobots! A darkly funny tale of passion, romance, and sexy-time! Once you go chrome, you never go home!” Honestly I had to interview the writer after I read the 128-page trade paperback and it had such absurd scenes like “The Diary of Anne Frankenstein”. It appealed to my odd sense of humor. BOOM! is uploading pages from the book for free, on a daily basis, here. My thanks to Rifkin for his time and for BOOM!’s Chip Mosher for his assistance.

Tim O’Shea: The Diary of Anne Frankenstein AND a Stan Lee endorsement? Rarely can a book pull off both–how did you score the Lee endorsement?

Adam Rifkin: Getting a thumbs up from Stan Lee was a real dream come true. The man has been such a hero of mine for so many years that I really can’t put into words how much that endorsement means to me. I actually had met Stan a number of years ago when I was shooting episodes of a television series that ultimately never aired called WELCOME TO HOLLYWOOD. It was a show based on a movie I had made of the same name. Stan played himself in one of the episodes and as a result he and I had become friendly. He truly is one of the nicest guys I’ve come across in this business. Anyway, after SHMOBOTS was complete I sent Stan a copy just to get his feedback. Not only did he dig it, but he gave us that fantastic quote to use with his blessings. WOW!

O’Shea: Back to the Diary of Anne Frankenstein, were you a little nervous doing (albeit absurdist) concentration camp-based comedy?

Rifkin: Nah, since I’m a Jew I’m allowed to make Holocaust jokes. Plus, since Mel Brooks had already kind of paved the way, I figured I was safe. Political correctness is generally the killer of all comedy. I don’t thing anything should be off limits in the interest of humor, there’s always a way that just about anything can be funny. Context is everything.

O’Shea: Comedy in comics is such a nuanced skill on many levels, but most definitely in a visual sense. When you wrote a scene, such as the prostitution sting, did it take a great deal of revision and discussion between you and artist Les Toil–or did he get the scene from the start?

Rifkin: Les and I have worked together so many times in the past that we really have a great short hand when it comes to seeing things the same way. It really didn’t take long at all for us to figure out how to visually make the story funny.

O’Shea: Is there a favorite scene of yours that Toil drew, where he upped the level of comedy to a degree you didn’t envision when you originally wrote it?

Rifkin: My favorite enhancement of Les’, of which there are so many, would have to be his visual interpretation of the SHMOBOTS themselves. We worked a great deal on what their individual designs would look like, but once we agreed on those, Les just really brought each character to life. I’m amazed at how expressive he managed to make each character, and these are robots, yet you really see their changing moods and recognize their personalities. Les is a genius!

O’Shea: What was your thinking behind the way you write Eyeballs’ dialogue (he ends and begins anything he says by saying his name)?

Rifkin: The character of Eyeballs The Robot was actually the very first nugget of the idea for SHMOBOTS. For years I would torment the editor of my films (Pete Schink) by talking in a monotone robot voice and repeating “Eyeballs” before and after each sentence. Because it annoyed him so much I’d do it all the time. We even created a back story for Eyeballs The Robot as having been a Robbie The Robot style rip off character that had starred in a series of bad 1950′s sci-fi B-movies like EYEBALLS GOES WEST and EYEBALLS MEETS HERCULES. Eventually as I was coming up with SHMOBOTS it seemed like a natural fit to include Eyeballs as a major character.

O’Shea: Speaking of dialogue: typically cuss words are represented with gibberish characters but letterer Johnny Lowe opted for obscuring the words instead. Was that his idea or something that you requested. Also, I thought it interesting that Eyeballs is the only robot who has a robot style font for his dialogue. Why only him (of all the shmobots)?

Rifkin: The idea to censor the cussing came from the higher ups at BOOM Studios. They felt that if the book could skirt by with a less restrictive rating that they could present it to a wider audience. I had no problem with the idea but I didn’t want to cut the books balls off by rewriting the dialogue to use words like “heck” and “darn”. My initial idea was to censor the cuss words the way they used to do it in old Mad Magazines, like this; “#!!!@* YOU!” I felt the content would maintain its integrity but it would still be newsstand friendly. Ross Richie of BOOM thought that the Mad idea felt a little too retro and suggested that we just scratch out the swear words, as though they were being bleeped. I loved that idea and that’s how the whole scratching out the cuss words came about.

O’Shea: Would you agree that the character of Natalie and her subplot (while indirectly crucial to the book’s plot) has a different tone than the rest of the book?

Rifkin: That was intentional. She’s not a slacker by any stretch and I wanted to paint her painful situation as seriously as I could. I felt that handling her sub plot like a straight domestic drama would be funnier than trying to make an overt joke out of it.

O’Shea: Would you say the story is a comedy with an element of mystery–or how would you characterize it?

Rifkin: To me the whole thing is a comedy. Yes there are some serious elements at times and even some tense ones, but those only exist to ultimately to service the comedy.

O’Shea: If the interest was there, are you game for revisiting the world of shmobots?

Rifkin: Absolutely! I don’t just see SHMOBOTS as one graphic novel. These are characters that I love and would love to explore many times over in many different incarnations; movies, TV show, toys, music, more comics, I see SHMOBOTS as something I could live with for many years to come. Plus, spin offs as well. Don’t be surprised if you see a series of Zinc comics or even a cartoon show about his bass ass mechanical exploits!

O’Shea: As a longtime successful director and screenwriter, are you partially attracted to writing comics because you’re able to see the results of your efforts come to full fruition (in the printed book) more quickly than compared to the much more time consuming film-making process?

Rifkin: Well, funny you should say that, because that was what I was thinking when I decided to write SHMOBOTS. I thought it would be a quick and fun way to bring a silly little story to life. Turns out that SHMOBOTS took longer to produce than any other 2 movies I had ever made combined. It took forever! Mounting and producing SHMOBOTS was every bit as intricate and time consuming as any big movie, the amount of detail to keep track of was immense. In many ways, much more complex than actually directing a film, because a film enables you to rely on so many people for so much of the heavy lifting. On SHMOBOTS it was me and Les and that’s it.

O’Shea: Do you have any other projects in the pipeline with BOOM?

Rifkin: We are talking about teaming up on something pretty cool as we speak. Mum’s the word at the moment though…wouldn’t want to jinx it.

O’Shea: Is there anything else you’d like to discuss that I did not ask you about?

Rifkin: I just would like to thank the entire comic community as a whole for receiving me and my first ever graphic novel SHMOBOTS with such generous and open arms. I had such a fantastic time at the San Diego Comic Con this year promoting SHMOBOTS, meeting fans and signing copies of the book. The response has been overwhelming and I just want everyone to know how much a truly appreciate it.