What's next for Jack?

Cherry Bomb is coming out next year. (A Cherry Bomb is vodka, white creme de cacao, and grenadine, for those who are curious.)

Also, this seems to be the year for Jack's ex-partner, private eye Harry McGlade. A McGlade novella was recently published in the DarkArts Books collection Like A Chinese Tattoo, and Delirium Books just released a McGlade limited edition hardcover chapbook called Suckers co-authored with Jeff Strand, teaming up Harry with the star of Strand's cult horror series, Andrew Mayhem. It's funny as hell, and 100% fat free.

I hear you've got a book coming out under a pseudonym. What can you tell us about it?

Afraid written by Jack Kilborn, who is actually me. I tried to write the scariest book of all time, and by early accounts I may have succeeded. Because it is very different than the Jack Daniels books, we decided to use a pen name. It will be out this year in the UK and Australia, next year in the US. It's a real thrill ride, and I attempted to incorporate all of the major fears people have. Here's the jacket copy:

"Nestled in the woods of Wisconsin, Safe Haven is miles from everywhere and everything. With one road in and one road out, this is a town so peaceful it has never needed a full-time police force. Until now.

A helicopter has crashed on the outskirts of town, and something terrible has been unleashed. A classified secret weapon, programmed to kill anything that stands in its way. Now it's headed for the nearest lights to do what it does best. Isolate. Terrorize. Annihilate.

Soon all phone lines are dead and the road is blocked. Safe Haven's only chance for survival rests on the shoulders of an aging county Sheriff. And as the body count rises, the Sheriff realizes something even more terrifying--maybe death hasn't come to his little town by accident..."

How do you go about researching your novels?

I research as needed, adding enough realism to make sure my reader doesn't cry "bullshit." But the research I do rarely finds its way into the story. The narrative needs to keep moving forward, and unnecessary details are like speed bumps. As long as it reads within the universe I've created, I don't spend too much time fretting over minutiae. Which means I get a lot of email from people who say I got things wrong. I think that's great--what other job allows you to make your fans feel like they're superior? I'm very good at making other people think they're smarter than I am, which is easier to do than I might believe.

What are you doing to promote Fuzzy Navel? Reaching for a 1000 bookstores?

For Rusty Nail I visited 612 bookstores. We called it the "J.A. Konrath No Sex Tour," which almost ended in divorce from an equally frustrated Mrs. J.A. Konrath. This year I'm staying closer to home. I'll still be touring, but on a more limited basis. Maybe 300 stores, tops, and never away for more than a week at a time. And that way I can ensure my son won't be singing Harry Chapin's "Cat's In The Cradle" every time I call home.

Plus there will be a huge Internet promotion, the likes of which have never been seen before, probably.

Still drinking Jack Daniels while you write?

I can't drink while writing because the prose comes out less coherent than usual, and I'm not very coherent to begin with. So I save the whiskey for special occasions, like interviews, and operating farming machinery. Talk about getting plowed...

What other writing projects--screenplays, novels, short stories, anthologies, poetry slams, ransom notes--are you working on these days?

I have two high-profile shorts being released this year, one in the anthology Blood Lite where I co-wrote a comedy horror story with my literary hero, F. Paul Wilson. It's fun to collaborate. We worked it out like a lengthy Mad Lib, where Paul wrote all the verbs and nouns, and I was limited to modifiers and prepositions. He's the bigger name, so I really couldn't complain.

I'm also in the anthology Wolfsbane and Mistletoe to which I contributed a werewolf novella. I take the shape-shifting genre in directions no one has ever thought of before, because my ideas are really lame. If it's successful, the Next Big Thing could very well be Were-Coral. You heard it here first.

Like everyone else in the biz, I have an action screenplay I'm shopping around. I'm also working on some Monk fan-fiction, at Lee Goldberg's suggestion, where Monk and Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker fight the Transformers and E.T. and the T-Rex from Jurassic Park and The Hulk and then everyone has sex. I'm calling it A Million Little Pieces, but this time it's 100% true.

Also, it has zombies.

What didn't I ask that I should have asked?

You could have asked me about my addiction to amphetamines, or my bizarre sexual fantasies, or my controversial views on religion and politics, but I'm glad you didn't because then I'd just freak out my potential readers, of which there are dozens. So thanks for that, and for the interview. And please remember to please buy multiple copies of all of the crap I mentioned. You'll love my writing, or my name isn't JA Konrath/Jack
Kilborn...

Well, maybe I'll ask about those next time.  

J.A. Konrath's Fuzzy Navel will be released from Hyperion in hardcover in July.

Contributing editor Mark Terry is the author of the Derek Stillwater thriller series. His newest thriller, THE SERPENT'S KISS, is available in stores and online.