Immortal Lycanthropes
by Hal Johnson
"A shameful fact about humanity is that some people can be so ugly that no one will be friends with them. It is shameful that humans can be so cruel, and it is shameful that humans can be so ugly." So begins the incredible story of Myron Horowitz, a disfigured thirteen-year-old just trying to fit in at his Pennsylvania school. When a fight with a bully leaves him unconscious and naked in the wreckage of the cafeteria, Myron discovers that he is an immortal lycanthrope--a were-mammal who can transform from human to animal. He also discovers that there are others like him, and many of them want Myron dead. "People will turn into animals," says the razor-witted narrator of this tour-de-force, "and here come ancient secrets and rivers of blood."
Interview:
Please welcome author Hal Johnson who has stopped by to answer some questions and share some details about his book Immortal Lycanthropes.
What is your favorite part of the story in Immortal Lycanthropes?
I always wonder, when someone asks me about my favorite part of a book, or my favorite character: is it obvious? Can you tell? I mean, I do have a favorite part, and I do have a favorite character, but I have no idea if my favoritism comes across. I try to bestow my love equally among the chapters or characters of Immortal Lycanthropes, like a parent with many children; but that’s no guarantee I succeeded.
My favorite part of the book is the middle section, the two chapters that take place at the Fortress of the Id. I like them best because what I like best about any book is the world it takes place in. I like fantasy books when their settings are filled with enough background detail that I can imagine other adventures are happening in other places in the same world, but on a different part of the map. I can’t stand it when a book feels insular, like the only people in the world are the characters, and the only thing happening is the plot: You know, like when there’s a wedding in a sitcom and every guest is a regular. In Immortal Lycanthropes, it’s in these two chapters that Myron really gets to see the larger world he’d only received hints of before. There are all sorts of were-creatures and all sorts of secret societies, it turns out, and they all have their own agendas.
The fact that the world is larger and scarier than your front lawn and family is something you realize as part of growing up. The fact that the world is larger and scarier than we will ever comprehend—this is something you never really get used to, but Myron’s getting an inkling by the time the chapter ends.
Who is your favorite character?
I really like Mignon Emanuel, because she always has some kind of scheme running. She sees the other characters as pawns to be moved around in a great game of hers, which is an attitude I’d probably be annoyed by if I encountered it in a real person who viewed me as a pawn—but since I’m the one writing about her and everyone else, I don’t need to feel insecure about it. Even as she manipulates Myron, though, Mignon Emanuel seems to really respect him, which few people in the book do. He may not be special in the way she claims he’s special, but she’s smart enough to know that he’s special in some way. So she may be evil, but she’s not condescending, and that’s something I valued in a grownup when I was Myron’s age.
How long did it take you to write Immortal Lycanthropes?
People often ask me this question, and I always say nine months, which is more or less accurate. It’s a pretty lame measurement, though, because obviously what really matters is how many man-hours, and that’s something I don’t even know how to measure. When I’m writing I find myself thinking about the book not quite all the time, but almost all the time, running over characters and events as you hang out with friends, or editing mentally what you wrote the day before as you commute in the morning. I kept little pieces of paper in my pocket and jotted down notes and ideas all day long whenever I had some downtime, assembling them into some order every could of days. So at times it felt like I was working on the book all day every day, even though that has to be false: I mean, sometimes I read other books, and sometimes I went to sleep.
What book are you reading now?
This is the best possible question, because all I really like to talk about is books.
I’m reading John Franklin’s Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, which is just what it sounds like, Franklin’s own record of the expedition he led. I like books about explorers, because part of me wishes I could have been an explorer and part of me realizes it’s a lot of hard work; so I read books about them. And thanks to the magic of Google Books, old, out-of-print books, like this one (from 1824), are available for free. So I get to read a first-person account of a bunch of doomed saps trekking through the Canadian wilderness, trying to find a northwest passage we all know isn’t going to be there for them.
Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft knew how strange and terrifying things get as you approach the pole. I’m not sure why this is: maybe it’s because your compass isn’t working, and north and south are about to switch places, and the whole thing is a nightmare. Well, John Franklin and his party don’t know that it’s supposed to get scary as they head up past the arctic circle, but I read the wikipedia article on this expedition, and I know that it’s going to get scary for them, all right.
If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?
I’ve been lucky enough to have a writer or two look at my writing and offer criticism (thanks, Paul Park!), but it would be ridiculous for me to assert that I have ever learned anything form real people and not from books. So my mentors, who have never met me and who don’t know I exist, are Daniel Pinkwater and Jorge Luis Borges; or rather the books they wrote.
What do you prefer paperback, hardcover, or ebooks?
I am perhaps the last to love this dying breed, but I love mass-market paperbacks. If you ask a publisher, she’ll tell you that mass markets were killed by ebooks, but this is a patent falsehood; ebooks were killed by publishers as part of a long campaign to commit suicide. Until the ’90s, you could find all sorts of authors in mass-market paperbacks, no matter how highbrow: I read Eco, Pynchon, and Nabokov all in (old, used) mass-markets. Then someone came along and decided that mass-market paperback were low-class, and that only genre literature – specifically sf, thrillers, and romance – belonged in this format. Literary work deserved the more expensive trade paperback.
Genre literature I like a lot, so it’s not like this fate of mass-markets offends me; but I do lament that so many authors will never see their works published in convenient, affordable editions that can fit in your pocket.
But I like other kinds of books, too. I mean, I’m not crazy.
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