2 Book Lovers Reviews
Jonathan Janz - October 30th, 2015
October Month of Horror - Guest Post
About Jonathan Janz
Jonathan Janz grew up between a dark forest and a graveyard, and in a way, that explains everything. Brian Keene named his debut novel The Sorrows “the best horror novel of 2012.” The Library Journal deemed his follow-up, House of Skin, “reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Peter Straub’s Ghost Story.”
In 2013 Samhain Horror published his novel of vampirism and human sacrifice The Darkest Lullaby, as well as his serialized horror novel Savage Species. Of Savage Species Publishers Weekly said, "Fans of old-school splatterpunk horror—Janz cites Richard Laymon as an influence, and it shows—will find much to relish." Jonathan's Kindle Worlds novel Bloodshot: Kingdom of Shadows marked his first foray into the superhero/action genre. Jack Ketchum called his vampire western Dust Devils a "Rousing-good weird western," and his sequel to The Sorrows (Castle of Sorrows) was selected one of 2014's top three novels by Pod of Horror. His newest release is called The Nightmare Girl. He has also written four novellas (Exorcist Road, The Clearing of Travis Coble, Old Order, and Witching Hour Theatre) and several short stories.
His primary interests are his wonderful wife and his three amazing children, and though he realizes that every author’s wife and children are wonderful and amazing, in this case the cliché happens to be true. You can learn more about Jonathan at www.jonathanjanz.com. You can also find him on Facebook, via @jonathanjanz on Twitter, or on his Goodreads and Amazon author pages.
An interviewer once asked Stephen King something like, “What new monsters will you be utilizing in future stories?” The tenor of the question suggested that King should answer with “vampires,” “zombies,” “crazed hillbillies,” or other iconic villains. King’s reply, however, avoided the bait (and here, I’m paraphrasing): “At this point in my career, I’m more interested in people.”
I’ve long had an interest in werewolves. In film, in books. As a child, I was fascinated by the beasts in An American Werewolf in London, Silver Bullet, The Howling, and other films. On the page, novels like The Nightwalker, Cycle of the Werewolf, and David Case’s Wolf Tracks really spoke to me during my twenties.
But to write a novel about a subject, I have to be more than entertained by it—I have to be enthralled by it.
Like Stephen King, I’m deeply interested in people. Why they do what they do, how they become what they become. I want to know if they can transcend their baser natures and strive for something better. I want to know if they can learn.
I’ve long wanted to write a werewolf novel because the monster lends itself to internal conflict, emotional turmoil, and regret. Regret is something with which I’m intimately familiar, as I tend to replay each of my mistakes over and over and over. This creation of torturous psychological loops is one of my biggest faults as a person.
Which leads me back to werewolves.
Very few creatures in fiction possess the same seemingly contradictory sets of emotions. On one hand, you have rage, ferocity, bloodlust; on the other, you have terror, resistance, and sorrow. A character can crave the change because it endows him/her with superhuman powers. A character can dread the transformation because these powers, once unleashed, are ungovernable.
I mentioned the pronoun “her” above for a reason. Most werewolves in popular culture are male. Oh, the Ginger Snaps trilogy was excellent, and there are several female werewolves in fiction, but for the most part, the lycanthrope is a male-dominated point-of-view.
But what about a woman who is bitten or scratched? What becomes of her? Does she possess the same emotions and thoughts as a male lycanthrope? And what of her situation prior to being attacked—how does that affect her behavior before, during, and after the change?
To examine all of these questions and more, I knew there had to be multiple victims in the opening set piece of WOLF LAND, my soon-to-be-released werewolf novel. There are two men and two women cursed with the change, as well as a trio of other equally-important characters who are faced with the prospect of surviving in this terrible new reality. Because I always allow my characters to step forward and take the wheel, so to speak, it was incredibly interesting to watch each person react differently to the initial attack.
Taken alone, yes, the werewolves were engrossing creatures. Whenever they appeared on stage, I couldn’t look away. Yet even more mesmerizing was the way each person reacted to the macabre changes unfolding in the small resort town of Lakeview, Indiana. In this way, the werewolf was a lens through which to view each individual’s deepest thoughts, insecurities, and emotions.
WOLF LAND is a brutal novel. It is violent, it is unrelenting. It is unspeakably dark.
Yet it is also full of humanity and heart. That duality—the darkness and the light—is what fascinates me most about people. Like my hero Stephen King, I’m constantly amazed by human behavior, by the human psyche.
And through my werewolves, we get to see the best and worst of humankind.
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2 Book Lovers Reviews