November 2008 Archives

Here at Scratchbomb HQ, I get a lot of review copies of upcoming books. Oh my yes, I'm practically inundated with literature. But while I love to read, I rarely get a chance to speak with the authors behind these works. But that ends today! Because today begins a regular feature on the site, Authors Cornered!

My first interviewee is L.X. Magruder, best known as the creator of dozens of young adult novels. He's the man behind such beloved children classics as The Sleepover Pals and Wikipedia Jones. Next month, Slapdash Books releases the first volume in his first series for adults, a twisted universe of vampires and other monsters called The Darkening.

First off, I'm surprised you decided to write a series of vampire novels. It's quite a departure from your previous work.

I've always been a huge horror fan, so I didn't see it as such a reach. If you go back and reread at my books, you'll see many elements of the supernatural.

Even though your last five novels were in the Johnson High Cheerleader Squad series?

The supernatural elements are subtle, to be sure, but believe me, they're there. I mean, there's no way those really complicated pyramid moves could have been accomplished without the occult.

How did you come up with the idea for this new series?

Vampires are huge in publishing right now. Particularly, books where vampires fight humans and/or other types of monsters. While these works raise some intriguing issues, I don't think they explore them as deeply as they could. That's what I hope to do with The Darkening series.

What kind of issues?

Like, what would happen if a werewolf did it with a mummy? How would that work? I'm sure you've wondered about that before.

I can't say I have.

That's the role of the artist--to ask the questions no one dares contemplate.

John McCain had to die for George Bush's sins.

In a fair world, the economic meltdown costs George Bush an election, not John McCain.

In a fair world, George Bush runs against a charismatic, photogenic candidate who conducts one of the most brilliantly organized presidential campaigns ever, a man who arrives at the precise moment in history when he's needed the most. And McCain gets to run against a robot and the winner of a Ted Cassidy look-alike contest.

In a fair world, George Bush is roasted in the media for idiotic misstatements, catastrophic misjudgments, and overall out-of-touchness.

In a fair world, none of these things happen to a man who spent five years as a POW in Hanoi. They happen to the guy who spent the war doing kegstands at Yale and protecting El Paso from the Viet Cong

In a truly fair world, George Bush doesn't have a powerful daddy to get him in the Texas National Guard, so he has to go to Vietnam, and maybe the experience transforms him, so when he becomes president he doesn't send servicemen to be maimed and killed on a complete fucking lie.

Last I checked, life isn't fair.

Election Day was great for baseball. And baseball was great for Election Day.

After the Mets collapsed yet again, I took all the emotional/spiritual/perspirational energy I poured into their hopeless cause and channeled it into following the presidential election. I also focused some of that chi into rooting against the Phillies, which didn't work out nearly as well.

Like any other good lefty, I read Daily Kos, watched Keith Olbermann, and tsked at Fox News ass-hattery. But it's easy to overdose on Smug when you live in a liberal bastion like New York and only consume media with which you agree. It's easy to fool yourself into thinking you know what your fellow Americans feel and want.

I fooled myself in 2004. I never deluded myself into thinking that John Kerry was a magnificent charismatic agent of change because, duh. But considering the state of the country at the time, and the obvious (to me) evil represented by Bush, I concluded that Kerry would prevail. I told myself there was no way Kerry could lose because...well, he couldn't, could he?

And then I found myself up at 2 in the morning, watching Ohio go to Bush, sucking down beer and wishing I was drunk enough to pass out and forget any of it had ever happened.