Featured Interview With William Hill
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I love fantasy, adventure, thrillers and the supernatural, so that’s what I write about, both for adults and young adults. Back in the sixties, I was a reluctant reader until I discovered Dr. Seuss, Star Trek, Doc Savage, and Marvel Comics. Born in Indiana to a household active in state government and loving basketball, I stayed out of trouble, usually, by reading and drawing. The political atmosphere, Dracula and Dark Shadows sparked my interest in vampires and ghosts. In Kansas City during high school, I read spy thrillers. During college, I devoured fantasy and SF novels. This creative brew influences my stories. I escaped the corporate drudgery of human resources to write fiction back in late 1989 and moved from near Dallas, Texas, to Lake Tahoe and then the Carson Valley of western Nevada where I am happily: married for 26 plus years to Kat, snow skiing, hiking, writing, drawing, using photoshop, and encouraging my son in college. No pets. We decided to raise a child instead. One of my mottos is Eat dessert first. Life is uncertain. I am a chocolate lover.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I despised Dick and Jane. I loved Dr. Seuss, but I started learning to read in first grade because there were too many interesting comic books to read for them to be read aloud to be. Also, my mom forced me to change school and attend a school where she worked, a long drive. If I learned to read, I could return to my neighborhood school where all my friends attended, so I worked at it. The opposite of many kids, I read a lot in middle school, and the Lord of the Rings and Dune in high school. I wrote my own stories for English assignments, from science fiction to spy thrillers. This was before computers. I started writing seriously as an escape from the corporate world when I experience my first writing software. February of 1987, I moved onto a peninsula at Spring Creek Lake in Texas, purchased a computer, wrote, and commuted to work. I wrote what eventually became Wizard Sword. It led to Dawn of the Vampire being published.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
My current favorite authors are Brandon Sanderson, Jim Butcher, Rick Riordan, writers of YA and regular fantasy. I have been reading lots of graphic novels because they’re faster to read. I am inspired by the works of: Tolkien, Roger Zelazney, Michael Moorcock, David Eddings, Dean Kontz, Stephen King, cartoonists Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes, Schultz of Peanuts, and Breathed of Bloom County. Too many Marvel Comics writers to list, from Walter Simonson to Stan Lee, Neal Adams, Kirby, Ditko, and on.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
Dawn of the Vampire, a story about a reunion of buddies who discover a haunted underwater mansion and release a new breed of vampire, then they have to deal with them, was originally published in 1991. It was my first novel to reach print, sold well, especially in NE Tennesse around Bristol, TN/VA and the Tri Cities, because it was set in God’s Country. The book was a bit of a rush because my editor was going back to law school, so I had a deadline. The project was finished by an assistant.
So why did I rewrite it?
I first set out to correct errors and add the real names of place, like the graveyard from King College to East Hill. Then, I wanted to improve the interconnectivity of the story: John’s death, Aunt Jada, and the history of South Holston Dam, especially the building of it and the flooding of communities. I know a little about what happened when Shenandoah NP was built, and they relocated lots of reluctant moonshiners. Knowing most of my readers lived in or were connected to Bristol, I felt I should highlight more of God’s Country. I wanted to add more humor and diving, as well as strengthen the female characters. I modernized DOTV, too. At that time, I was also working on the screenplay, which led to the decision to revise or eliminate some of the characters. The most common complaint about the story was introducing too many protagonists to start. I wanted fireworks, not head scratching questions of who is that? To improve the writing flow, I told the tale from one POV, Troy’s, who is referred to as Heavensent as he had survived near death experiences. That removed some of the choppiness. Having lived out west now for nearly 30 years, I learned wildfires come with droughts and changed the atmosphere.
So what is the book about? Living on the edge. Coming back to life and the shades of gray between living and undying. Finding out what’s important in life.
Wreythville’s cemetery had rested quietly submerged under South Holston Lake for decades, but now a drought and receding waters have exposed an island of graves. Those coffins should have been moved when the dam was constructed, but no one, certainly not the TVA, wanted to go near such cursed ground, nor what lurked within the hidden pine boxes. Some things were best left alone. And yet, more than a half century later, a reunion of childhood friends disturbs the newly emergent graves and a lake bed-dwelling mansion of haunts. Where the blood brothers seek adventure, they find death, dark transformation, and a new breed of the undying.
A malevolent spirit and its kindred, an ancient breed of blood drinkers, return with frightful new powers that defy even the sunshine. These vampires can stalk by day to exact vengeance on those who entrapped them. Vanishings and murders plague God’s Country as former nightwalkers work to reclaim Holston Valley and stalk the shadows of Bristol. Von Damme’s zealots and vampires will let nothing stop them, not the eroding waters, not the forest afire, and not even the glare of broad daylight. Troy, Silke, and his blood brothers must join forces with the darkness if they have any hope of stopping the Dawn of the Vampire.
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