with Kevin J. Anderson
We are delighted to welcome author Kevin J. Anderson to Omnimystery News.
Kevin writes primarily in the sci-fi genre, but he has written a mystery series featuring — what else — a zombie private investigator named Dan Chambeaux, who everyone calls "Shamble", for reasons that will become obvious once you've read his cases … seven of which are collected in Working Stiff (WordFire Press; January 2015 trade paperback and ebook formats).
We asked him to tell us more about his cross-genre adventure, and he titles his guest post for us today, "One Size Doesn't Fit All".
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Photo provided courtesy of
Kevin J. Anderson; Photo credit Sarah Thompson
Following sage and standard marketing advice, most publishers will tell an author to pick a genre (or a sub-sub-genre) and stick with it, forming your brand, building your readership … and never deviating from it. Write book after book in the same mold to give the fans what they expect.
Well, I expect the fans to be a little more flexible than that.
Most authors, following that advice, will carve their niche, snuggle up in a nice warm blanket of familiarity. But sometimes that blanket becomes a straightjacket.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created a very popular character in Sherlock Holmes, but he wanted to write other stories with other characters (particularly Professor Challenger, best known from The Lost World). But the readers demanded more and more Holmes, and only Holmes, to the point where Doyle felt trapped, despising his own creation. Southwest mystery writer Tony Hillerman created the compelling Navajo investigators Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee in a wildly successful series, but when he tried to write something completely different — such as the excellent novel Finding Moon — readers frowned and said, "These aren't the droids we're looking for."
I'm afraid I never learned how to stick with a genre even as I became more and more successful as a writer. Ideas come to me from all different directions, and my interests bounce around like a pinball working through a maze. I have too many stories in too many genres that I want to tell.
My first novel, Resurrection, Inc., was hard-science fiction gothic horror murder mystery, which was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award given by the Horror Writers of America. I followed that with a role-playing game trilogy. I've written numerous novels for Star Wars, X-Files, DC Comics, and Dune, as well as the steampunk fantasy adventure Clockwork Angels with legendary rock band Rush. I've also written the original gigantic epics of Terra Incognita, The Saga of Seven Suns, and The Saga of Shadows.
With all those giant, serious epics under my belt, though, sometimes I just want to have fun. Real fun — laugh-out-loud, snort milk out your nose kind of hilarity.
After a particularly exhausting set of deadlines on a very serious set of books, I carved out some time and secretly wrote an absolutely delightful (well, to me at least) series about a private eye. A zombie P.I. named Dan Shamble. I could let myself go with all the humor and ridiculous contrived situations that the absurd premise demanded.
I wrote the first Dan Shamble novel without telling anyone, working on it as my own private project, and sent my agent the thoroughly satisfying manuscript for Death Warmed Over. Surprise!
Dan Shamble is set in a world where all the familiar supernatural creatures have come to life, thanks to an unlikely set of circumstances. A human detective killed in the course of an investigation, Dan Shamble is back from the dead and back on the case, complete with a firebrand human lawyer for a partner, a ghost for a girlfriend, and an abrasive cop as his BHF, or Best Human Friend. He solves cases with mummies, werewolves, vampires, trolls, and all sorts of creatures.
I absolutely loved the fun and the humor in the series, and I dove into writing more Dan Shamble adventures, even as my agent shopped the manuscript around to the usual suspects of the major publishers. Note that at this time I had more than a hundred novels published, fifty of which had been national or international bestsellers.
Imagine my surprise when I kept running into roadblocks. "But Kevin J. Anderson doesn't write humorous urban fantasy," said one publisher after another. "He writes big epic science fiction or fantasy."
Excuse me? I'm not a one-trick pony. I adored Dan Shamble, and I was confident my readers would follow me. Fortunately, Kensington Books agreed, and they published Death Warmed Over, then Unnatural Acts, Hair Raising, and Slimy Underbelly. Even as I wrote my other novels under contract (mostly big science fiction), I kept going back to my zombie detective, writing individual shorter cases that were published in magazines and anthologies. Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. has been picked up for comics, role-playing games, and even an option for a TV series. Right now, I am cowriting a crossover comic adventure with Dan Shamble and Kolchak the Night Stalker.
Those seven individual short stories have now been collected in Working Stiff. Dan Shamble tries to track down a fortune teller's missing deck of cards in a vampire circus; he wakes up in a nailed-shut coffin in the back of a semi truck heading cross-country; he is hired by Santa Claus to find his missing Naughty and Nice list; he is commissioned by a vengeful harpy to prove that a specially designed crypt is truly escape proof; he tries to solve the mystery of fragmented zombie graffitti that just might be a message from beyond the grave; he has to solve the murder of a costumed Star Wars stormtrooper at a cosplay convention, with a Klingon as the only witness; and he tracks down a dognapped Hellhound owned by infamous rogue werewolf cop, Hairy Harry.
Working Stiff, just released in trade paperback and all eBook formats by WordFire Press, collects every one of Dan Shamble's standalone cases. Rereading them for this edition, I was reminded of just how much I enjoy these characters and these stories.
By now, after following me for well over 100 books, my readers don't really know what a "Kevin J. Anderson book" is. Some might come in expecting a fun and innovative story, like my Star Wars work, or SF epics like my Saga of Seven Suns or the Saga of Shadows, or my Game of Thrones-style fantasy Terra Incognita trilogy, or my Dune novels with Brian Herbert.
Or maybe you're just in the mood for a zombie detective.
No matter what genre you typically like, I can promise you a good read. One size doesn't fit all.
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Kevin J. Anderson has published 125 books, including numerous novels in the Star Wars, X-Files, and Dune universes, as well as a unique steampunk fantasy novel, Clockwork Angels, based on the concept album by the legendary rock group Rush. His original works include the Saga of Seven Suns series, the Terra Incognita fantasy trilogy, the Saga of Shadows trilogy, and his humorous horror series featuring Dan Shamble, Zombie PI. Anderson and his wife Rebecca Moesta are the publishers of WordFire Press.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at WordFire.com and his author page on Goodreads, or find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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Working Stiff
Kevin J. Anderson
The Cases of Dan Shanble, Zombie P.I.
Back from the dead…and back on the case!
Even being murdered doesn't keep a good detective down, and in the Unnatural Quarter — inhabited by ghosts, vampires, werewolves, mummies, and all sorts of creatures that go bump (or thud!) in the night — a zombie P.I. fits right in. Dan Chambeaux, a.k.a. "Shamble," solves a string of madcap cases with his ghost girlfriend Sheyenne, his Best Human Friend Officer Toby McGoohan, and his firebrand lawyer partner Robin Deyer.
This collection contains seven cases from the files of Chambeaux & Deyer Investigations. Dan Shamble has to solve the mystery of a stolen deck of fortune-telling cards and the undeath-defying feats of a vampire trapeze artist, finds himself sealed in a coffin in the back of a truck with no idea where he's being taken, and is even hired by Santa Claus to find his lost "naughty and nice" list. Being trapped in an unbreakable monster-proof crypt, deciphering a string of mysterious zombie graffiti, investigating the murder of a costumed fan at a science fiction convention where the monsters are the normal attendees, or tracking down a kidnapped hellhound for legendary vigilante werewolf cop Hairy Harry — it's all in a day's work for Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I.
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