Liberal Memorial Library: How did you come up with Soul Hunters?
Zachary Carpenter: I've always been a fan of horror and all things creepy and unexplained. The concept of slicing a monster's head off and saving the person about to get eaten was always something I found appealing. So I began writing a series of short stories where I and a bunch of my friends from my youth group at church were the heroes. I called them "Knights of the Covenant." It's not a work that I would try to publish or anything though. But Soul Hunters eventually developed out of that basic idea, where there was a group of people who are like vigilantes and they kill monsters. They are a mysterious group that to outsiders they are just monster hunters, but to each other they call themselves as a group, "Soul Hunters." And for the explanation to that one, you'll just have to read the book.
LML: What was your inspiration?
ZC: Okay, well my inspiration for Soul Hunters, (once it actually became Soul Hunters,) was a video game series called "Hunter the Reckoning." It was about this group of monsters hunters who seem to always get called back to a certain town when the ghouls try to come out of the woodwork. I played the first game, was hooked, but couldn't find it for the console I had but found and bought the 2nd one...Never got to play the 3rd one though...makes me sad...But there was the games, and then I also watch the first Underworld and the Hugh Jackman movie Van Helsing. Those gave me a lot of ideas to work with. Then as the story progressed and continued to get better I started playing the Resident Evil and Silent Hill games.
LML: Did you always want to write?
ZC: No, never saw myself ever being a writer. It was like pulling teeth to get me to even try to read when I was younger.
LML: How did you get into writing?
ZC: I read a book by Frank Peretti called, "This Present Darkness," when I was 13. It was a book about a small town and how there was this church that these demons were trying to destroy the people going there and also it showed the angels fighting to keep those people safe. It inspired me to take a stab at it. Inevitably, everything I wrote starting out just seemed like a bad knock off of Peretti's work, but then I started writing fan fiction of the character Casey Jones from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and I even had ideas for an X-Men story. I never got around to writing that one, but the Casey Jones one was the first actual full length, novel size story I wrote. I never did anything with it though. It's on an old floppy disk. Yeah, I wrote it on one of those older computers. I’m not sure if I can even get it back.
LML: How do you reconcile having zombies with Christianity?
ZC: This is the one I've wanted to answer the most. Well first off let's cover some basics:
- Soul Hunters is meant to be a horror story.
- It is a story that shows a conflict of Good and Evil.
- God isn't some pansy that sits idly on his throne when crazy crap starts going down.
Exodus 15:3 says, "The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is his name." So, I don't just have demons possessing dead bodies (thus making zombies), but I also have werewolves, deformed flesh eating creatures, some with wings, some that look almost human, and goblins that take after Hannibal Lecter. I also have a demon possessed, knife happy scarecrow whom I have affectionately named Jack. So, how do I reconcile having a buffet of evil when this is supposedly a "Christian" book? Well for one, the hunters in my story need something to hunt! But more than that, it's because, it is only when we see the evil pursuing our own lives that we see our need for God. We see that we need him to desperately come in when we are surrounded by those monsters and save us before they eat us. Now, do I mean this literally? I'm not opposed to that possibility if it ever came down to that, but in our own personal lives when people realize that the battle for their soul is real, that God is pursuing their hearts, and so is the devil, we need a savior who is willing to slay the zombies and werewolves and demons in our lives. Because as much as God loves people, and as personal as he is in wanting to reveal himself to folks, the devil is just as committed to personally destroying people and making sure they don't see God's love for them. It's personal for Satan too.
LML: How did you get into the process of publishing?
ZC: Well, when I started Soul Hunters I did want to get it published, but of course, I didn't know where to start. So when I was 19, a lady in the church I was going to at the time, Amanda Schwab, had gotten her first book, "Woman Beautiful," published by TATE Publishing. She referred me to them and they have been great. TATE Publishing helped me with editing the story, helping it to be more fluid as a piece of writing, and they helped me with producing it and marketing. The great thing about TATE is that most companies will only market a book for maybe 2 years at the most, and if it doesn't sell they move onto the next book. But with TATE that work with an author to continually market the book, and are always committed to helping it be as successful as it can be, regardless of sales. So in other words, they won't leave you stranded in the gutter if your book doesn't sell. They will still continue to work with you through everything.
LML: What about Soul Hunters 2? Will there be a Soul Hunters 3?
ZC: Soul Hunters 2 is coming along pretty good. Right now it's going kind of slow and that always sucks, but I am over half way finished with writing it! It does follow the same characters, but it takes place in Denver, Colorado instead of the fictional "Broken Edge, Kansas," that the first book took place in. I can't give away any spoilers about the story, other than in book 2, a law has been passed in Colorado and a couple other states that give werewolves and goblins the same rights as normal human citizens. But as far as submitting it to the publishers, they want Soul Hunters to have been out at least a year before I submit the next one.
As for Soul Hunters 3, yes, there will be a third book. In fact, there will be the original SH trilogy, and then there will be a prequel trilogy, and the story line for those actually starts in the year 1888, and that trilogy will follow the ancestors of some of the main characters in the original trilogy.
LML: What other kind of writing do you want to do?
ZC: I love writing song lyrics. I can write short prose pieces too. I LOVE writing fan fiction, and it's been years since I've done any but last fall I took a creative writing class at the college and got a chance to start another fan fiction story. This one is about the character Scorpion from the Mortal Kombat video games. I also have another idea for another horror story, but it is set more in a fantasy world like Lord of the Rings, only it's a horror story. Yes, I will be one to try to put a horror twist to anything.
I've caught a lot of crap from certain people about my interests. I guess they don't see how somebody who professes to be Christian would even give those things the time of day. But the way I see it, and this isn't mine it's from Ted Dekker, another awesome author, "It's critical that we use a very dark brush — a black brush when we paint evil, and when you bring the Light into that darkness, as characterized in John 1, it becomes very vivid, and when it dispels the darkness, we see the brilliance that's there." He also said, that anybody who wants to impact their culture must speak the language of their culture. Right now, zombies, werewolves, and vampires are part of that language.
For those who want to know more about go to http://www.soulhuntersofficial.com/ or http://www.tatepublishing.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment