Geek of the Week: Wayne Simmons, part I

This past weekend at P-Con, I finally sat down with author of apoc-shockers FLU and Drop Dead Gorgeous, Wayne Simmons. We chatted about horror movies, the end of the world and which books are worth saving — he’s also partially to blame if I’m covered in tattoos by this time next year! This interview’s been in the works since Octocon last year, but the time gave me the chance to read one of his books, and anyone that reads my blog knows what a fan I am of his work now  (it helps that he’s just a really nice guy, too). Basically, I’m saying ‘go read his books!’ …but after you read the interview, of course . Now you’re beginning to see why I said it was a zombi-firic weekend at P-Con!

What was it that really grabbed your interest in horror growing up, the books or the movies?
Probably for me I’d say movies to start with, and comics. The first exposure to genre and horror was comics like 2000 AD, Marvel and DC titles, and Eagle that my dad brought home and gave to me. I was reading those before I was reading books. Then I was exposed to horror through Hammer House of Horror, which I was watching alongside the likes of the early Clint Eastwood films; Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. I think that got me really interested in genre. And then of course my tastes developed when I picked up the likes of a fighting fantasy game book, I got really into those. So I’ve pretty much been reading those and watching genre films since I was about four or five years old.

You’re relatively new to writing. Were you writing stories while you were working more on the journalistic side?
Like yourself, I did a lot of writing for magazines online, and reviewing other people’s work and interviewing people. I started getting a taste for it myself. I would have always done creative writing in my past, but never anything serious and I never would have been interested in doing something like a novel. For a start, I didn’t even know how to write a novel. Then I realized — I don’t think anyone knows how to write a novel; it’s just something everybody does differently. I did a lot of reviews and stuff, but I stopped when I started writing creatively because I think there’s something a bit wrong about writing yourself, then deconstructing other people’s writing in reviews. It just didn’t sit well with me. I would occasionally do a review, just because I like doing that, but only if it was going to be positive. I’d never write anything negative because I just don’t feel comfortable doing that to other people’s stuff when my own work’s out there for criticism.

I started writing, weirdly, not with short stories before moving onto novel writing. My first published story was a novel, and that was released in November 2008. I did okay, it sold about 2,000 books. Probably the breakthrough for me has been FLU, which has done really well over the last year, it just came out in April 2010. A lot of people think that’s my debut novel. What confuses them is that I’ve just re-released Drop Dead Gorgeous now through Snowbooks again after I took it off Permuted Press.

Before starting FLU did you have the idea for your zombies, or were you playing on the current fears in the media?
Interestingly enough, that’s what started me. I remember watching the early footage of Swine Flu being reported, noticing how you had police walking about with surgical masks, and guys walking about with big suits on and it seemed like the beginning of a zombie film to me. I just thought, ‘I wonder why nobody’s using this and basing the concept on flu for a zombie story?’ I did a quick check to see if anybody had really done it, and I don’t think they have. So I thought, right, I’ll do that, and I’ll make it a traditional George Romero style zombie horror. That’s where it really started, just based on that concept, and it was entirely inspired by the news reports.

Stay tuned for part II of my interview with Wayne Simmons tomorrow!