Author Interview: Ghostflowers by Rus Wornom

Episode 112

Release Date: October 18, 2023

Continuing their Spooky Month theme, your hosts are joined by Rus Wornom to talk about his new dark fantasy novel, Ghostflowers. They discuss the genesis of the novel ("the vampires of Madison county"), the differences between horror in short stories vs horror in novels, and music as a narrative device.

Find more from Rus Wornom here:

https://ruswornom.com/ Find us on discord: https://discord.gg/dpNHTWVu6b or support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fictionfanspod

Thanks to the following musicians for the use of their songs:

- Darkest Child by Kevin MacLeod

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

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Episode Transcript*

*this transcript is AI generated, please excuse the mess.

Lilly:0:05

And welcome to Fiction Fans, a podcast where we read books and other words too. I'm Lily.

Sara:0:11

And I'm Sarah, and I'm so delighted that we have Russ Warnham here on the podcast tonight to talk about his novel Ghost Flowers.

Rus:0:19

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Lilly:0:21

Well, before we dive into our book conversation, first, what's something great that happened recently?

Rus:0:26

Well, just two days ago, I got back from Key West. So I had a very nice Key West vacation with my wife and got a little too drunk one night.

Lilly:0:35

That's the way to do it.

Rus:0:36

that's, yeah, that is Key West. It's, it's the best. It's a little more sedate nowadays than it used to be. I started going back in 1990 as a matter of fact. but, it's been wild and wooly and I absolutely love that island. I noticed, It's the first time I've ever worn sunglasses in Key West, and that's because I had cataract surgery last year, and everything is at least 15 percent brighter now. and I didn't know it was that dark. It was just an amazing thing. So, being in Key West with sunglasses, I had to take them off and look at the sky. The sky in Key West is just a different blue. than it is here in Virginia. Here it's a light blue. There it's like, a vibrant blue filled with energy. and I know it's, yes, the scientific explanation is water molecules and sunlight. I don't care about that. It's magic. Key West is magic. that's why it's Margaritaville.

Lilly:1:34

Oh, that sounds amazing. I'd love to go sometime.

Rus:1:37

Oh, it's wonderful. Where are you located?

Lilly:1:39

I'm in Seattle, the opposite of warm blue skies.

Rus:1:42

I, uh, yes, I understand, but you have the science fiction museum there, don't you?

Lilly:1:47

yes, MoPOP. I went for the first time a couple weeks ago.

Rus:1:50

It's supposed to be very good. I'd love to see it. Well, you know, it's only a plane ride and a hotel

Lilly:1:56

Yeah.

Rus:1:56

can give you some hotel recommendations.

Lilly:1:59

Awesome. Sarah, how about you?

Sara:2:01

My good thing is that I went to go see a play with our aunt called Born with Teeth. I believe the playwright was Liz Duffy. And it's about Shakespeare and Marlowe's collaboration writing Henry VI. And I mean, obviously it's historical fiction. Yes, they did collaborate. Scholars pretty much agree that they did collaborate writing these plays, but everything else in the play was historical fiction, but it was fantastic, small theater. No intermission, short play, really, really good.

Rus:2:33

That sounds wonderful.

Lilly:2:34

Very fun. Well, my good thing is that my Brussels sprouts are finally ready to harvest.

Sara:2:39

Oh, that's exciting.

Lilly:2:40

Yeah, I haven't grown them before. So I'm very excited. In Stardew Valley, they only take like 16 days to grow, but ours have taken like four months or something ridiculous.

Sara:2:52

I think Stardew Valley might have lied to you

Lilly:2:54

I guess. Anyway, so I haven't tried them yet, but they're ready and that's exciting.

Rus:3:01

My wife has started, growing basil

Lilly:3:04

Ooh,

Rus:3:04

on our front porch. And normally whenever we attempt to grow anything, it dies. so we have plastic plants on the inside of the house, but for some reason she is making the basil work and it is great in especially in a nice pasta,

Sara:3:21

I need to know her secrets because every time I've, like, I'm generally okay at growing plants, but every time I've tried to grow basil, it has died. Very tragically.

Rus:3:31

And where are you?

Sara:3:32

I'm in, the San Francisco Bay Area.

Rus:3:34

Do you have enough sunlight? We, we have a little box, little planter on the porch and it gets some direct sunlight, some non direct and it just seems to grow. You're a temperate, climate.

Sara:3:45

I think, my problem might be that it gets too much sunlight and too much heat, and it dies because I don't water it enough because California we're not in a drought this year because we had a lot of rainfall and a lot of snow, but generally we don't have a lot of water. So I try to, keep that, at a minimum.

Rus:4:03

And what about any fires locally lately?

Sara:4:06

we actually haven't had anything but a couple of weeks ago, there were fires in Oregon and Northern California that you could smell the smoke like that was really bad. but it's just, you know, life as usual here in the Bay area.

Lilly:4:20

Well, what is everyone drinking this evening?

Rus:4:22

I am drinking Pacific Peak Red. It's a cheap red from California. a friend of mine said, Eh, I tried it, but it gives me headaches. Um, no, it doesn't give me headaches. I enjoy it, and it goes great with a Mexicali casserole, which I had for dinner just minutes ago. So, that's what I'm drinking. What about you guys?

Sara:4:42

It's a heat wave here, so I felt like cider, so I'm drinking cider.

Rus:4:47

Very good?

Lilly:4:48

I, rather appropriately for this book actually, have risen from the dead to do this recording tonight. So I am drinking mint tea with honey.

Rus:4:58

Very nice?

Sara:4:59

I did, consider, drinking scotch for this episode, but I didn't like Sheriff Hicks, so I was like, I'm not going to, even though I love scotch, I'm not going to drink scotch for, for this.

Rus:5:13

I had a bad night with scotch about 35 years ago, and that's why I don't drink scotch either. So, Hicks does. He's, a bad apple, so to speak.

Lilly:5:23

Well, that perfectly segues into our talk about ghost flowers. but a little bit of a diversion first. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what inspired you to write this story?

Rus:5:35

Absolutely. I've been writing professionally since 1983, started off, doing freelance work with, a small alternate weekly in Norfolk, Virginia called Portfolio, and it just went on from there. I've always been a slow bloomer. So my first. Fiction wasn't published until 93. I knew an editor. I met an editor, from Warner books, a great guy named Brian Thompson. And, I'd always been interested in fiction and always wanted to write my own short stories, my own fiction, but, finances and whatever, just never got the chance. I met Brian at a, convention, a science fiction convention, a small one, in Hampton, Virginia, at Fort Monroe, my wife and I were sitting at a table, we invited him over for dinner, and we just started talking, We just struck up a friendship and a few years later, when I was living in Orlando, I met him again at a Worldcon and he said, Hey, listen, do you want to write a couple of books for me? And how can I say no to that? so actually he said just one book at the time, but within, a month, it was three books. So, I started writing fiction at that point and just haven't stopped. that was Dungeons and Dragons. He asked me to write for, he was the head editor for Dungeons and Dragons, Wizards of the Coast at that time. And since then I've written my own stuff. And then in 96, I had novella published in fantasy and science fiction that, was nominated. On the long list, not on the short list, for the Horror Writers Association, for Best Novella in that year. That was great. That was Puppy Loveland. That made me feel really good. then, I just kept writing, and Ghost Flowers came to me during that year, 1996. my wife, I was in the bathroom shaving, going to work. I was working at the local newspaper in Hampton Roads, Virginia. the Daily Press and she just stopped me in the bathroom while I'm shaving. I'm mid stroke. Okay. And she says, I want you to write a really bad novel and make us a million dollars. And I started laughing. Yeah, sure. I mean, that could happen, but I started laughing because I, you know, I'm a realist. She goes, write the vampires of Madison County. 96. Madison County was like the number one hardback bestseller for a year and a half. Nobody could believe how important that was. And it was a story about love, very rare love, older people falling in love and then just being together for one night and never seeing each other again, but knowing that they have met the love of their life. And I just finished shaving and in the five minutes that it takes me to shave and wash my face off, I. I knew the characters intimately. I knew one of their names, not the other one. I knew where it happened. I knew what happened. And I knew that one of them had to die. And, that was it. I had the beginnings of the novel. this was at the time in 96 when A writer could, if they had an agent could write an outline, the synopsis and three sample chapters and possibly sell the book. So that's exactly what I did. and then my agent left her agency and I had no one to represent me. I got involved with work. Real life took over. I left, That idea on the shelf. from 96 until 2013. And in 2013, I said, Now's the time to write it. I'm not getting any younger. I'm gonna do it. It took about a year and a half for me to write it, but my got a new agent, and it was bought by Journalstone Publishing and was published in July of 2022.

Lilly:9:17

That's fantastic. What a story behind the story.

Sara:9:21

I definitely have some follow up questions, about that, but before we go into specifics about ghost flowers, you mentioned that you had written for like D& D. how is the experience different writing, Like, for example, a spelljammer book versus writing a horror novel, your approach change at all? are there differences?

Rus:9:43

yeah, there are tons of differences. in this case, all three books for Dungeons and Dragons were works for hire. what that means is they tell you what they, want, you give it to them. In the case of Spelljammer, which was the sixth book and the last book in the Spelljammer series. The gentleman who was going to write it was, I believe, the writer of the first book, but he was getting married, and he was converting to Judaism, and he had to go through Judaism lessons, so the editor, Brian Thompson, asked me to write it. Okay, great, that's fine. So they sent me the first two books, they sent me, the outline chapter by chapter for the book that they needed me to follow, but beyond that chapter I could do anything I wanted. I could add characters, I could kill people off, whatever, just as long as it didn't deviate from As opposed to ghost flowers, I had free reign in my head to do whatever I wanted and took advantage of it. for instance, the main character's name started out as Cassandra. And, when I got her idea, the internet was just born, basically it was 96. later on in the early 2000s, Around 2006, 2007, I realized Cassandra was a trite name. it was used in some vampire series that isn't really popular now, but was popular around 2006. and I even think they made a movie or a short TV show about it. so I made Cassandra her middle name and I just started wondering, well, what is her name? she's going to be a being of darkness, but she embodies the light of Summer, and I realized, oh, her name is Summer. Okay, so huge differences. I had to follow that outline for, Spelljammer. Now with the other two books, they were basically Dungeons and Dragons choose your own adventure. And I had no knowledge, How to write a choose your own adventure and was not on the Internet in 1993. very few people were, so I had to figure out with index cards. Actually, no, that's not true. I wanted to start it out with index cards and then that confused the hell out of me. So I used, I just used lined paper and made little boxes with, arrows and lines and figured out what the structure was and that was kind of fun. It was very interesting. and they were also, Limited in the wordage, the first book, I delivered a hundred thousand page novel, the other two books were 50, 000 pages, uh, 50, 000 words each. So two different approaches. one work for hire, you do what they ask you to do and deliver it kind of on time. the first book, they gave me 13 weeks. I delivered it in 15, had no problem with that. Basically the same thing with the second book. They gave me, eight weeks. It was nine weeks. The second book was also eight weeks, but I made it seven weeks. So I kind of covered for that one.

Sara:12:37

with a choose your own adventure book, eight weeks is a really short turnaround, it seems to me.

Rus:12:43

It was, I remember sitting at the table. I pulled some 16 hour days. for each book, Spelljammer, I pulled at least three, maybe four 16 hour days, and when I was finished, I remember sitting at the table, about to eat dinner, and I just kind of sagged and started crying because it was over. And thank God it was over. I still don't know how I wrote that. I mean, they sent me the guide books and gave me Dungeons and Dragons creatures that I could use, and I remember one review came out years later that said, basically, this was an okay book, but he gave the elves beards, and elves don't have beards. I'm sorry, you know, that wasn't in the literature.

Lilly:13:30

Yeah.

Rus:13:31

So very interesting, very interesting concepts.

Lilly:13:35

So who are your favorite current writers and who are some of your greatest influences?

Rus:13:40

two greatest influences are Edgar Rice Burroughs, Princess of Mars, Gods of Mars, Warlord of Mars, especially the Mars series, and, Stephen King. Edgar Rice Burroughs was the first writer that I read, blew me away and said, I know this is not real. humans can't go to Mars, Mars is a dead planet. But I'm believing what he's writing. Thank you. While I'm reading it. And the second one, Stephen King, besides his stories and just the way he approaches real life and adds dark fantasy to it, I saw him at several conventions, in 1979, and then the next one in 1980, and in 79, I remember him at the hotel in Providence, he was just a real guy. He comes into the awards banquet for the World Fantasy Con with a 12 pack in each arm. And yes, I know he was an addict, but I didn't know that at the time. but that's beside the point. It's just that he's a beer drinker. and he writes these bestsellers and the combination of Burroughs and King kind of said to me, I'm a dork. I can do this, you know, can put words together. And so I've been practicing my entire life since even before that. But 1979 was the time at that convention, where I looked around the hotel, just standing at a stairwell, as a matter of fact. And I realized this is what I want to do. I had a choice. I could go to USC, which I did later. but I realized where I wanted to go. I had a choice. Do I want to write anything but books? And I said, no, I'm books is the most important thing. That hasn't stopped me. I've pitched to, you saw my bio. I pitched to Star Trek four times, met with producers, but I'm happy. I love books. I don't have it to be read pile. I have it to be read table. You can't see it over here. It's about 40 books.

Sara:15:37

That's the best kind of table to have.

Rus:15:40

I'm amazed at standing up, seriously.

Lilly:15:43

We have a to be read spreadsheet. It

Sara:15:45

We, we, we

Rus:15:46

Oh, that's organized. I like that. Very good.

Sara:15:49

specifically for the podcast. I don't do that for my personal reading, but for the podcast, yes, I schedule, schedule it out quite far in advance. As you know, because you contacted us quite a while ago, and

Rus:16:01

Well, yeah, but that's good. Thank you for remembering me and thank you for having the spreadsheet.

Lilly:16:06

Yes. Well, and also, it felt like a good book because we do Spooky Month for October every year. So, this is one of our Spooky Month episodes.

Rus:16:15

Very good. I love it.

Sara:16:17

So talking about your writing and your process, a little bit, how much do you plan when you write, what is your process like

Rus:16:24

My process when it allows me. Is to outline as much as possible. I look at it as a, bare bones skeleton. And then as I'm writing flesh starts to appear that said. That's what happened with Ghost Flowers. Ghost Flowers just flowed and came out of me when I wrote that outline. And then it did the same thing when I wrote the book. the book that my agent is trying to sell now the Enigma Club, is based on Edgar Rice Burroughs. The Pulpit Ventures of the early 1900s, 1920s, 1930s. And as I was writing that I started with the outline and it would only allow me to write it one chapter at a time. And then I had to actually go and handwrite the entire chapter. And once I was finished with that. I would go and write the outline for Chapter 2, and then I'd write Chapter Nothing else has ever stopped me, nothing else has ever prevented me before, from writing the outline first, and then writing the material. I still don't understand. What it was with the Enigma Club. Maybe it was too personal. I'm not sure. but that said, you know, she's trying to sell it. so normally what happens is I write the outline, then I write the book, flesh it out. Then the fun part starts with, the rewrites. I absolutely love rewrites because I get to cut, I get to add, I get to cut, I get to add. Put something here, take something out over there. And then when that's all over, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. Ghostflowers had 13 drafts. probably had the same, but I lost track it's all about cutting. there's still stuff like Stephen King and Salem's lot. There's some important stuff that he had to cut because it was just too long. A book ghost flowers was the same. They asked me to cut a little bit and I cut. About 20, 000 words, and it just, I would have liked it, but it wasn't necessary. But that's the thing with novels, you can play a little bit. You can add a little here, a little bit there. Short stories, novellas, they gotta be a, obviously they've got to be a lot shorter, so they've got to be compact. And I think that's why I am drawn to novels. you know, people say horror is best written for short stories. Okay, if you like short stories, I like short stories, but I don't love them. I love novels, to me, the best horror is novel length. That said, there's some great short stories, especially, there's this one, Winston Churchill wrote a horror short story called Man Overboard, which is one of the scariest things I've ever read. And, William Faulkner wrote A Rose for Emily. you wouldn't believe that he had a horror story in him, but A Rose for Emily is great. I mean, I can't forget it. And then there was one I read when I was a kid, in elementary school, in Read Magazine. I don't know if, did you guys ever have Read Magazine? Or Scholastic Book Fairs? I mean,

Sara:19:21

a scholastic book fairs? Yes.

Rus:19:24

okay. Scholastic published Read Magazine. It was a way to promote books. Their affairs and their book sales and read magazine republished. Kurt Vonnegut's story, the title of which I can't remember, but it's about a near future where everybody has to be equal. So ballerinas have to wear chains so that the lesser ballerina Can't be worse than them, and they can't be better than the other. And the other one was, believe it or not, a horror story by John Steinbeck, when chewing gum was something that parents hated. This was in the 50s, and it was about chewing gum that came alive and attacked Paris. I remember, yes, that's the, that's the impact that short stories can have.

Lilly:20:08

Absolutely. Well, this is not a short story. This is a novel. and it is set in the rural South in the 1970s. And I was wondering what inspired that choice.

Rus:20:18

It came to me when my wife gave me the idea, and I never deviated from it. I just wondered what year in the early 70s it was. I knew it wasn't as close to us as 1976, and it definitely wasn't 1970. Sooner or later, it just hit me that it was 1971. So, at that point, I had to do a lot of research, because, I mean, I lived through it. But I didn't remember all the music. I didn't remember everything. I remember what my hometown was like. So her hometown is an amalgam of my hometown, which is Hampton, Virginia. And the place that I had just left, working, I was working at the newspaper in Caroline County here in Virginia. A very rural county, but I imagined her county as in the western part of Virginia, close to Rome, somewhere between Roanoke and Richmond, an imaginary county, where it was a little rural. And a little, little suburban, definitely not urban at all, but a little suburban and a little less population than my hometown, which my hometown at the time was about 120, 000 people. So probably about 60, 000, make it half, somewhere around there. And I just put in the stores that I remember, the streets that I remember, the drive in theaters, the drive in restaurants that I remember. I put those in there and tried to make it as real as possible.

Lilly:21:38

And you sure did. There were some amazing specifics in there about what struck me specifically the drive in theaters and the drive in diner. how did you use those details to sort of set the scene for your readers?

Rus:21:51

Harlan Ellison. In the early 80s, I was at a conference called the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, and he was a writing teacher there for the writing workshop, and I was a member, and he talked a lot about verisimilitude, and I've never forgotten that, because to me, to make horror, to make dark fantasy believable, you have to make it as real as possible, and sometimes you have to take people on steps. He wrote a story called Croatoan. Which is about very early seventies. Before Roe versus Wade, when abortions were illegal. So it's about this guy in L. A. whose girlfriend had an abortion, she's now regretting it, and she demands that he go down into the sewers to find their baby. And the verisimilitude, the making it believable from one step to another, he went step by step how he did that. Going from the house... Going from the street to the sewer. Taking the sewer cover off and looking down to see what it's like. What the smell is. Then, the guy goes down. And that's how you, not only build suspense, but you build reality. So, I realize that if I'm going to write Ghost Flowers, I have to make it as real as possible. And sometimes, you have to take people on steps. And, there's a point where, One of the main characters dies in the bathroom. And I realized this is a point where I have to make it step by step sitting on the tub. Feeling her heart stopping, dropping to the floor, falling over, feeling the carpet on her eye. you just try your best to make it as real as possible.

Sara:23:27

so you use, music a lot in this book to kind of set the scene. there are a lot of references to musicians and songs. can you talk a little bit about how the music relates to the story as a whole?

Rus:23:41

In the 1970s, radio was king. Yes, everybody came home and watched their favorite TV shows. But when you're driving, the radio is on. In the summer, spring and summer, the window is down, you probably don't remember, but there was a vent, not a vent, it was a window, it was a little triangular window, that you opened up and turned so the wind could come through, because there weren't air conditioners back then, there weren't a lot of air conditioners back then in cars, so you had the window on, you had the breeze coming through, and it was a summer breeze, and you could smell the green onions, and this is what I'm talking about, verisimilitude, verisimilitude. You could smell the dirt, you could smell the car exhaust. You hear the music from the other people's cars, and you heard it every day because you were in your car every day. You didn't want to be in your house. You wanted to get out, especially if you were a teenager and in 1971, radio and cars and getting out, that was the best. Music was part of life. Music was, I mean, some people say you need a soundtrack in the background when you're walking down the street. In the seventies, we had that. It was called AMFM. And I had to go back and search my memories of my favorite songs, some of them that I couldn't use, like Brandy. Brandy is, a thematic song, and I have had the idea for 30 years, and this is part of what went into Ghost Flowers. I had the idea for at least 30 years of using Brandy, and she's waiting for a vampire to come back. Into her life, and he's never coming back and that kind of tied in when I got the idea for ghost flowers Brandy was recorded and Released a year later after ghost flowers. I

Lilly:25:25

Ah.

Rus:25:26

I know but that's alright I put a playlist on YouTube and I said this is thematic. It doesn't belong at 1971 but this was important to ghost flowers. So

Lilly:25:38

Oh, I found that playlist. It was very fun. I couldn't listen to it while I was reading, because listening to words while I read just like messes me up. But I've had it on last couple of days. It's nice.

Rus:25:49

Okay, well, excellent, thank you. listening to that playlist, you'll notice it is almost chronological from the beginning of the book to the end of the book. And there were some songs in there that I was finding during my research going, oh my God, I remember hearing this on the radio. She would have heard this and she would have liked it. And at the same time, there were songs that I hated that she loved. I never liked Janis Joplin, but she loved Janis Joplin. So I put her in, not only in the playlist, but I mentioned her several times in the book. I listened to AMFM, at the time and didn't remember those. So I had to do a lot of research and that seriously, that was probably the most fun research that I had.

Sara:26:31

there any overlap between, the songs that you enjoyed? And the songs that Summer enjoys.

Rus:26:37

Absolutely. Absolutely. I let her like the blues more than she should have a, uh, A 20 year old girl in 1971 probably wasn't listening to a lot of the blues, but She heard a couple of songs that she liked, like Dark End of the Street by James Carr. and I didn't even know that existed back then. I was all pure rock and roll. But she was smarter than me. She read Preem. She read Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone, back in 1971, was a tabloid. It was a folded up tabloid, like a newspaper, but, you know, folded over twice. So that you opened it up and it was a larger size. She read that, she read Cream, and, she kept up with it. And I put a little irony in there too, when she was thinking about leaving with, Michelle to go to New York City. She mentions a club, the name of which I can't remember. Oh, the Fillmore, the Fillmore East. It closed a week before the book happens.

Lilly:27:36

Oh,

Rus:27:37

yeah, but that's only for readers to know. She would have figured it out once she got there.

Lilly:27:42

yeah.

Sara:27:43

I love that kind of, very tiny detail that doesn't have any impact on the story, but if you know, you know.

Rus:27:50

Peter Straub was like that. He would write notebook after notebook from what I read about the things that have gone on with his character's life. so basically the novel that was produced was, forgive the cliche, but the tip of the iceberg. Everything else was under, the surface. And I'm like that to a degree. Not too much, but you're absolutely right. It's a little thing. that gives flavor, even though you may not know it.

Lilly:28:17

So genre definitions vary wildly from person to person.

Rus:28:22

Yes, they do.

Lilly:28:23

would you tell our listeners what genres this novel is and why?

Rus:28:27

Some people would call this a horror novel. and it has aspects of horror, but it's not body horror. It's not psychological horror. I look at this as a dark fantasy. Let's come right out and say it. It's a vampire novel. One of the influences was the, classic TV show, dark Shadows, which I have not been able to get out of my head, since it was on tv.

Sara:28:50

And which gets mentioned a couple of times.

Rus:28:52

And it does because it was important in 1971. it ended in 1971, if I remember correctly. And the movie, the first movie came out in 1970. She has a Barnabas Collins Glow in the dark poster on her wall. I had that. Poster as well. bought from famous monsters of film land, if I remember correctly, Barnabas vampires. I wanted, obviously I wanted to put a theme in there. but at the same time, 1971, everything was culturally relevant. The popular culture was just. I can't say it was just beginning, but popular culture was just becoming important. Probably popular culture started with rock and roll, with the rock and roll movies, then with horror movies, science fiction, the Adam Age, stuff like that. But by 1971, people were conscious of it, and she was certainly conscious of what was going on around her.

Lilly:29:47

All right, we're almost to the spoiler section, but before we get there, I have a question for Sarah. Sarah, who should read this book?

Sara:29:55

you should read this book if you like tragic romance with a very vivid sense of time and place. you will absolutely love it.

Lilly:30:04

Or if you're a trash person like me who just loves vampires.

Rus:30:08

I can't disagree with either one of you. That's awesome.

30:14

The remainder of this episode contains spoilers

Sara:30:24

You mentioned earlier that Ghost Flowers, you had like 13 drafts, and that your drafts change, sometimes pretty drastically. Can you talk a little bit about how different the final product is from that first draft you had?

Rus:30:37

I'm going to tell you a true ghost story. My mother had. The flu, she was born in 1917, so she had the flu in 1931, and she was sick on a twin bed somewhere in her house in Hampton, Virginia, and, feverish. She remembered that the door closest to her creeped open, and a hand appeared, Then disappeared. So when she tells me this, I'm going, yeah, it could be a ghost, but yeah, she's got the flu and she's feverish. So she's imagining things. Then she says, but my uncle died that day, right about the time I saw that hand. that has stuck with me. I've got a couple of ghost stories my parents told me. That was a chapter in the novel, but without the hand. I made her sick. did you guys think when reading it, there was anything weird about Summer's mother and the way that she had her Hummel figures? laid out in patterns in the, chest with the glass doors in the dining room. Did you pay attention to that?

Lilly:31:40

Well, I thought there were a lot of things weird about Summer's mother, but

Sara:31:44

yes.

Rus:31:45

Yes. So

Lilly:31:48

that one, no.

Rus:31:49

my mother loved crossword puzzles and I'm not going to lie to you. Summer's mother was based on my mother, I love my mother, but she was not the nicest person. She not like Carrie's mother. This is an exaggeration. She's not talking about dirty pillows and wants to crucify Carrie on the wall. Which, by the way, that's a lovely movie. I miss that movie. I miss movie making like that. 1976, that wasn't too far from Ghost Flowers. My mother loved crossword puzzles, and at that time, Summer's mother is a little bit older, born a little bit earlier than my mother. in this chapter that I wrote, her father brought her the very first crossword puzzle book ever published. It basically created crossword puzzles. And this was like you've got to do the research and find out when crosswords were first invented. It's fascinating. This book came out with a pencil attached by a string to the book so you could do the crossword puzzles, and it was a bestseller. Summer's mother's father gave her that book while she was sick and she was doing crosswords, and that was one of the reasons why she has the hummels laid out in straight fashion, and you can't disturb them. You can't disturb anything in her house because she's... Basically OCD. That term didn't really exist in 1971, so you have to show it instead of explain it. That entire chapter had to go. it was just one of those things that, yeah, it gave her mother a little more depth and explained her pathology, but it didn't really matter to the story. So does that answer your question?

Sara:33:21

Absolutely.

Rus:33:22

I was afraid I was just rambling and then I lost thread, but okay.

Sara:33:27

No, no, no, that was, that was definitely an answer for, what was something that changed between draft one and the final product that answered the question.

Rus:33:35

Well, yeah. that was the hardest thing. seriously, that book was finished except for that. except for that little chapter. And I realized the book needs her. The book needs a little explanation. Why is she nuts? Why is she so rigid? And it has to do with crosswords. It has to do with going one way and going the other. And you can't go any other way. then at the end, Things had to be cut. And I realized that has to do with background, but it doesn't have to do with story. So it came out,

Lilly:34:05

Can you talk a little bit about how you used Duke and Hicks, the two law enforcement officers in this book, to highlight each other's differences?

Rus:34:14

well, I didn't realize I was, but that's so that makes that a very good question. Let's think about cops for a minute. There are good cops and there are bad cops. Duke is, if he isn't a good cop, he's a neutral cop. He's never bad. Hicks, on the other hand, does what he wants. he's the sheriff, he is in charge. And, I don't know how people, other writers think about names, but, you know, Hicks is a great name for a redneck sheriff. Duke, on the other hand, I wanted something Southern. I wanted something relatable. And his last name is, the last name of a former brother in law who I like im measurably. And Duke just came to me. and it was Duke Caldwell and counterpoint. Yes, during the later portions of the book, they are definitely counterpoints. Hicks wants to do what he wants and will do what he wants. Duke tries to talk him out of it and suffers for it. So yeah, the sheriff has the power. he's got the guns. he can do whatever he wants. and Duke suffers. that said, I love Duke. And this, I stole from the real Caldwell, who was my brother in law. He told me once he could eat a hamburger a day and be happy. Yeah, and I used that line, Duke said, if he had a hamburger a day, he'd be a happy camper. And, you know, there are people like that.

Sara:35:41

I love Duke. I mean, I felt really bad for him because it can't have been easy working for a man like Sheriff Hicks,

Lilly:35:49

I really got the sense he was just trying his best.

Sara:35:52

Yeah,

Rus:35:52

Exactly. And, and, you know, you're doing your job, you're a deputy, and Hicks didn't really bother Duke all that much in day to day. But when this happens, or when he gets obsessed about something, and I'm sure there were other incidents in their past where Hicks would get obsessed about something. Yes, Hicks was a force of nature.

Sara:36:12

that's for sure. another force of nature, although not necessarily in the beginning, but because of how things turn out for him, is Ben. And I loved Ben. Ben was fantastic. but he does kind of, drop off after that very climactic shootout. What happens to Ben afterwards? is Ben okay?

Rus:36:35

Ben is wonderful. Oh,

Lilly:36:37

Thank you.

Rus:36:38

yes. I have been asked, my wife, my sister in law, they want me to write sequels. you know, it's been a year. I'm waiting to see what sales are like. If it is justified, I will write sequels. But, that said, Summer talks to me. She tells me what's going on in her life. I know what she's doing two years after the events of Ghost Flowers. Ben, I know immediately what happened to him and I know what's going on. that's how much I love Ben. Ben stays in, Stone, uh, Stonebridge. For a little while, but he meets a woman, What he doesn't know is she is an agent of Michelle's enemies. Helena Knightsbridge yeah, she's an enemy. she knows something is up with Ben. She realizes he's, now a vampire, but son of a bitch. She falls in love with him just like he falls in love with her. And so she has to turn against her employer. that is a potential sequel, if there is a sequel with Summer, I have to somehow get them to where Summer is, and Michelle is, remember my wife said, this is Madison County with vampires, it's a love that you only meet once, well I'm gonna let them meet one more time. And they'll be together for a while after that, but it's going to be years because sometimes they ain't happy stories. That's just real life.

Lilly:37:57

Speaking of, you mentioned earlier you had always seen this book as having a sort of a bittersweet ending. did you ever have a feeling like, well, maybe I could just nudge it one way or the other a little bit?

Rus:38:11

yes. With its sequels, yes. Because I really wanted to end this with... Them never seeing, each other again. And then I realized, never is a long time.

Sara:38:23

when you're a vampire.

Rus:38:25

Exactly. Especially when one is, you know, going through America, traveling, that's summer, because that's what she's doing now after the events of the book. And Michelle is holed up in his... Basically mansion in Boston, which is where he's located. Sooner or later, they're bound to meet up. so I had to take that into account. my original intent was to never have them meet again, except maybe 20 years down the line. Now I'm not so sure. I got to work that out.

Sara:38:54

personally I feel like they've suffered enough. They deserve, I mean it seems from the background that we get in Ghost Flowers, they've had, a lot of very unhappy previous lives where Summer has died quite a bit. I feel like they deserve a happy ending.

Rus:39:11

Okay, well, I'll tell you a little secret. This is her seventh incarnation and his sixth, and they go back to the 1400s, when, speaking of Shakespeare, as, you guys did, a very important event happened in the 1400s, which inspired Shakespeare. At the same time, there was a famous vampire in, Wallachia, which is a province of Transylvania. Who may have visited Italy at the same time and summer's first incarnation was created. So that's in the back of my head. I have no idea if I'm ever going to use that, but I'm just telling you and your listeners.

Lilly:39:53

fantastic.

Sara:39:56

Now I definitely want the prequel novels, the sequels, I want it all.

Rus:40:01

Uh, well, that sounds wonderful. And I'll be glad to do that. Excellent.

Lilly:40:08

Well, one final question before we wrap up. What would you like readers to take away from this book?

Rus:40:13

a sense of being in the 1970s. I, seriously, I have told people before, this book made me time travel. I remembered things I hadn't thought of before, I discovered things I hadn't thought of before, about 1971. you need those, mnemonic devices. You need the music to, remember where you were, what you were doing at that point. And I know that many of your listeners. Have no idea what the seventies were like. watch Mad Men. It's all cigarette smoke. It's all TV and radio. it's all cars with their windows open. it's Coke and McDonald's. McDonald's hamburgers at the time were 25 cents. there was no Taco Bell, at least in the suburbs. Didn't the Taco Bell start in LA?

Lilly:41:04

Sounds right. I would have to look it up.

Rus:41:06

yeah, there was Jack in the box, but that came in the mid seventies. Ghost Flowers is not just a story, but it's also about an evocation of a particular time and place. And seriously, isn't every novel an evocation of a particular time and place?

Lilly:41:23

indeed, and this was a particularly visceral one, I will say.

Rus:41:27

Thank you. I did my goddamnedest to make it visceral. And seriously, Why make a lame vampire novel? Make it as visceral as possible, in every way, so it's memorable.

Sara:41:41

Incidentally, the first Taco Bell, opened in 1962 in Downey, California. So, Taco Bell did exist.

Rus:41:49

Downey is a suburb of L. A.

Sara:41:51

Yep.

Lilly:41:51

That might as well be a different continent than the rural south of the 70s.

Rus:41:56

and it was, and it was. Going to L. A. in 1971 was a dream. At that time, I was watching, Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. And I wasn't watching it for the show. I was watching it for the end of the show, because they would show previews of what's coming up next. And I always was more interested in what's coming up next. And then in 1970, they started talking about Disney World, opening in 1971. And that just started making me think, Disneyland. I'll never go to Disneyland. It's there. Disney World is there. Am I ever going to go to either one? Thank God I've been to both. you know, Going to Disney World is the same thing as reading a good novel. It takes you into a different realm. It takes you into a different place. Is it escape? Sure. What novel isn't escape? Even if it's a novel about real life, you're still going into somebody else's life. You're still going into somebody else's past. that's how you learn. I have learned more from reading novels than I have ever learned in a classroom.

Lilly:43:03

Russ, thank you so much for spending your evening with us. We'll let you get back to your regular life. But first, is there anything you can tell our listeners that they have to look forward to from you? You said you had a book that's getting shopped around.

Rus:43:17

My agent is shopping around a novel based on the pulp novels of the 20s called The Enigma Club with the premise what if there were an island in the Gulf of Mexico about Well, several hours off the coast of Florida, where the pulps were still alive, where if you could go to that island, you could experience the, events that happened in the Doc Savage novels. You could find a city that looks just like New York City, where somebody like The Shadow will help you escape, the gangland wars of the 1930s. So she's trying to sell that and at the same time I'm writing a mystery novel with a co writer, called, Murder at the Freaky Tiki.

Sara:43:59

I like the title.

Rus:44:00

thank you. It takes place at a tiki bar. And I went to school, grad school for writing at the University of Miami. So I'm a huge Hurricane fan. And I am writing a horror novel. I don't call it a dark fantasy, although it is a dark fantasy, but it's also very much a horror novel about Miami, and four of the people who live in Miami and what happens to them if they go off the deep end, at the same time, a hurricane comes threatening Miami with an unknown force that is, both supernatural, and, bad. Just just very bad.

Lilly:44:37

Well, it might be bad, but those all sound great.

Rus:44:40

All right. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Sara:44:43

it has been an absolute pleasure. Before we actually let you go, one last question. where can you be found on the internet for our listeners who want to hear more from you?

Rus:44:52

Okay. I do have a website. It's Russ Warnham dot com. So I'll spell it r us. That's one s r u s w o r n o m. It's it's basically a blog, but you can read an excerpt from the Enigma Club, you can read an excerpt from Ghost Flowers. I have just become a member of the Burroughs Bibliophiles. I'm sorry, I said that wrong. ERB APA, E R B dash A P A. That means Edgar Rice Burroughs Amateur Press Association. So, I'm writing articles, just absolutely free on my first literary love, which is Edgar Rice Burroughs. So, yeah, please look me up. I'm on Facebook. I'm still on Twitter, but I'm not active there because I really don't like what's going on on Twitter.

Lilly:45:38

Well, thank you again for this wonderful interview. And I can't wait to read what you've got coming out next.

Rus:45:43

I can't wait to write it.

Sara:45:50

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Fiction Fans.

Lilly:45:54

Come disagree with us. We are on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok at FictionFansPod. You can also email us at FictionFansPod at gmail. com.

Sara:46:05

If you enjoyed the episode, please rate and review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and follow us wherever your podcasts live.

Lilly:46:13

We also have a Patreon where you can support us and find our show notes and a lot of other nonsense. Bye!

Sara:46:20

for listening, and may your villains always be defeated. Bye!