Interview with Patrick D’Orazio…

We would like to welcome, Patrick D’Orazio, author of Comes the Dark, which was recently reviewed here at Doubleshot Reviews, and recently released, Into the Dark. Thank you for taking the time to talk with us, Patrick.

Thank you!  It’s my pleasure.

What or who gave you the inspiration to start writing?

Back in high school, I used to love playing RPG games, like Dungeons and Dragons as well as others focused on science fiction rather than fantasy.  What really stuck with me from those experiences was being the Dungeon, or Game Master.  That is where I had the most fun.  The guy who created the scenarios that the players went through, and improvising challenges for them.  I discovered that while I liked the pre-created adventures that were already written for gaming use, my real passion was creating stories myself, often on the fly, and winging it as it went along.  I wanted to create written stories for the players, create worlds around them, and that is what I did the best.  It was a blast and I realized that I wanted to actually create books based on those adventures, so my passion for fantasy, science fiction, and horror reading that I did in turn influenced my game creation, which in turn influenced my writing on down the line.  That was probably the biggest influence on me as far as being an author and creating worlds for characters to live and die in.

How do your family/friends feel about you taking on this endeavor? With horror, specifically, zombies being a niche genre do your family/friends read your work?

My family and friends have all been very supportive.  I think part of that is because I whined and moaned for years about wanting to be a published writer and finally did something beyond scribbling down a few story ideas or pecking away at a keyboard with no real objective when I started writing Comes The Dark. Perhaps it was a relief for them that I finally started to take this desire seriously and wanted to create something that wasn’t just for myself, but was for a wider audience.  Zombies were actually the fuel that got me to really sit down and create the idea behind my trilogy, because after getting married and having children, I had a profoundly different perspective on the world at large and what terrified me-the ideas that the concept of zombies plays right into-it compelled me to write it all down.  As far as reading my work, a few of my friends helped me along by providing guidance, support, and suggestions as I wrote my novels, and now that my books are published, everyone else I know has been willing to read my work, despite the fact that no one I personally knew before all this started was a zombie fan or had read anything in that genre.  But that is okay for me-in a way, it is good, because it has kept this weird, odd part of myself separate from the regular day to day life I have.  I am not surrounded by horror fans, I am surrounded by people who rarely watch the movies or read the stuff, so their perspective on it is entirely different from the other writers and fans I now interact with.  It provides a healthy balance.

Comes the Dark is a zombie novel of survival…why zombies?

Zombies fascinated me as a kid.  I loved watching Dawn of the Dead and wondering how I would survive the apocalypse.  What plans I would make, how I would be smarter than everyone else in my efforts to survive-the place to hide out, the weapons, all that tactical stuff.  The idea of living in a world scraped free of all the people who annoyed you as a teenager also sounded really cool whenever you felt alienated by the people around you.  But as I got older, and a new wave of zombie movies came along over the past decade or so, I started to have a different perspective.  I was married with kids, and all the sudden, zombies weren’t cool anymore, they were scary as hell.  The thoughts of having my family ripped away from me, or worse, turning against me because they had been bitten and risen from the dead, was probably one of the worst nightmares I could dream up as a father and husband.  So my stories, at least most of the ones including zombies, have mainly dealt with the emotional devastation that would come from losing your family and losing everything that matters to you as a human being.  It represents a lot of real fears I think anyone who has ever been responsible for another human life might have.  You can’t control things, you can’t always protect the ones you love, and those fears are always hovering at the back of your mind.  Zombies are a great manifestation of those types of fears for me.

Are their other genre of writing that interests you and do you think you will ever branch out of the horror genre to try your hand at something new?

Now that I have gotten published within the horror genre, and have written quite a few short stories, many of which are not necessarily horror related, I would love to dive back into the science fiction and fantasy genres…I would love to create a YA adventure novel and have ideas for several different novels that run in a wide range-mixing and matching genres sounds like a fun idea.  I love writing short stories, because it allows me to test the waters in a wide array of environments without making a full, novel-length commitment, but also allows me to see if a full length novel would make sense for me to focus on in the future.  Genres like Bizarro fascinates and scare me, because they are challenging and I am not sure what I am getting into with them, but I still have taken a swipe at them.  I want to force myself to try on different story hats, whether I feel that I can write for every different audience type or not.  So who knows?  I am pretty sure I won’t be known only for my zombie stuff when all is said and done…or at least I hope that is the case.

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One of the aspects of Comes the Dark that I really enjoyed was that the characters were people you might have living next door. They held their own, but they weren’t perfect shots and they didn’t have these fantastical save the day moments where, as a reader I was left thinking ,“Yeah, cause that’s believable” What made you decide to write these types of characters rather than say, someone who was a sniper in the military?

The simple answer is that as I was coming up with this story, as it pulled at me and compelled me to write it, I knew from the beginning that it would be about an average suburban guy surrounded by other average folks.  Almost none of them have any sort of training or experience dealing with dangerous situations, let alone anything resembling warfare or the apocalypse.  I wanted this to be about how those people survive, questioning if they even can survive under almost unbearable circumstances.  And if they did, what it would turn them into?  How would this change them, reveal their humanity or their lack of it?  They make tactical and strategic mistakes on an ongoing basis and have to keep trying, or die trying.  They are nowhere near perfect and that is reflected in what they say and what they do, and how they react to every new situation that gets thrown at them.  That is what I wanted this story to be about-you and I, the people living in our neighborhoods, the people you see every day at work and at the story…and how those people would cope with real nightmares.

Into the Dark has recently been released, can you give us a little behind the scenes tidbit?

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Well, Jeff and the other survivors he is with, Megan, George, and Jason, are about to be forced to start dealing with a much larger group of survivors and just like in the real world, they are a pretty diverse set of characters.  There will be people they like being around, while others they end up hating.  I hope that these new characters add a great deal of depth to the story for the reader, because they will carry on through to the final book in the trilogy.  The story remains focused on Jeff, but with the second and third books, we delve a little deeper into some of the other characters and what makes them tick.

What are your current projects? Anything coming soon or in the works that you would like to share with our readers?

I have about twenty short stories I have written, most of which will be released throughout 2011.  A lot of horror, zombie related stuff, but also plenty of other genres, including sci-fi, fantasy, bizarro, and action/adventure.  I will continue to write short stories, but am also working on a couple of different novels, including one that will deal with the survivors from my trilogy.  The trilogy stands alone as its own story, but I think there is more to tell after it is completed and plan at least a couple of more books in that world.

Last question, since I’m usually over-caffeinated because I love my coffee and my rating system for reviews is based on espresso shots…what is your favorite coffee drink?  If not coffee, is there another drink that is a must during your day?

I am actually not a coffee drinker, and hope you don’t hold that against me.  I get my caffeine mostly from iced tea, which I am pretty much addicted to.  Unsweetened and very strong.  Coffee actually scares me, since there are so many different choices out there.  I guess that’s why I don’t like flavored teas.  Too many choices! I am a pretty simple guy when it comes to my beverage selections.

Thanks.  I appreciate it.