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Michael Slade
 
A: The defining influence on Slade (Alice Cooper taught me to refer to my Hyde in the third person: it keeps you sane) is that he practices criminal law. A criminal trial always involves wildly disparate elements,
dictated by the scattered pieces of evidence dug up by the police. Whether
acting for the defense or the prosecution (I've represented both), the
lawyers on opposing sides take those pieces and conjure up rival stories in
which all the fragments seem to fit. Each submits his or her fiction to the
jury, and the side that tells the best story usually wins the case. The
trial process is the same as the common creative writing exercise in which
an instructor offers the class a list of disparate elements—for example, a
wedding ring half-buried in the sand, a black crow with a broken wing, a
madwoman screaming in an attic, an empty silo for an atomic missile—and
allows the students half an hour to write the Great Canadian Short Story
with all those elements in it.
Plotting a Slade novel involves the same process. Each book—with one or
two exceptions—is a three-ring circus. There's a whodunit puzzle at the
center (what one reviewer calls "the Slade-of-hand") to try to trick the
reader. Ringed around that is psychological horror. I pick whatever
interests me at the moment—voodoo, headhunting, Lovecraft, Bigfoot, Jack
the Ripper, snuff films, cannibalism—and gather all the horrific details I
can find. The outer circle is police procedure. I have numerous contacts in
the Mounted Police, and I use them to keep Slade one step ahead of common
knowledge. After we (Slade has different members adding to the mix) have all
the disparate elements on the table, we work them like a jigsaw puzzle into
a cohesive plot. Then—as wordsmith—I go out and live the story before I
write it. If it takes place in Africa, I go on safari. If the climax is in
the sewers of London, I talk my way into a tour of the sewers. And so on.
Finally, I'm ready to write it from a very detailed outline, and the
characters are free to improvise a bit, as long as they stick to the script.
A: My first murder case involved a man who was found standing on his head in a urinal in the men's room of an upcountry bus station, screaming that he was Jesus Christ. He'd driven there in a stolen car, so the judge
gave him three months in jail. Each prison day began with the man taking a
shit and rubbing it all over himself and his cell. One day, while the guards
were hosing him and his cell down, they found torn-up bits of paper on the
floor. Pieced together, the bits made up a gibberish death warrant aimed at
his wife, accusing her of various sexual sins for which she would be burned
at the stake and those who had led her astray would be made to eat the
ashes. The "warrant" sat on the warden's desk, and no action was taken
before the man was released.
On the day he got out of jail, the man returned to his house and peeked in
the back door window. His wife was on the phone with a relative, but he
thought it was her lover. So he burst into the kitchen with a baseball bat
and beat her to death so severely in front of their two young kids that the
pathologist later found her to be a mush of broken bones. There was so much
blood!
The trial was a struggle to keep him from flipping out. Eventually, he was
found not guilty by reason of insanity. John Banks (another part of Slade)
and I did the trial together. I recall us sitting in a room with our client
when suddenly he wasn't there. A shadow seemed to pass behind his eyes and
his mind was gone. At that moment, the room filled with a sour stench like
rancid goat cheese. John and I exchanged a look because we both knew that we
were witnessing a man slip from latent into florid psychosis. In a few of
the Slade books, you'll find this sentence: "There are three kinds of sweat.
The sweat of work. The sweat of fear. And the sweat of insanity." That
first-time experience in that trial was the source of that statement.
A year or two later, John and I did a case that involved a Canadian who had
volunteered to fight with the U.S. Army in Vietnam. Evidently, he went to
Asia with multiple hits of Owsley acid, and when they went out on nighttime
helicopter gunship raids, he would strip naked and sit so the machine gun
extended from his body like a huge metal penis. He had rigged up an aviator's leather helmet like the one Snoopy wears to battle the Red Baron, except
it had a horse's bridle that fit into his mouth. The bridle hooked the
trigger of the machine gun. Ripped on acid, he would jerk his head back as
they flew over a village and let the gun erupt until he ejaculated.
Needless to say, he was discharged from the U.S. Army as unsuitable for war
and returned to Canada. The allegation in the case was that he took umbrage
at America for treating him in such a shoddy manner, so he waylaid an
American backpacker in the woods. The victim was spread-eagled facedown over
a boulder with his wrists and ankles tied to stakes driven into the ground,
then he was sodomized and finished off by having rocks dropped onto his
head.
As various charges were making their way through the courts, our client
refused to plead to one. The judge sent him, John, and me into a room to
discuss his refusal, and that's when I saw the same sort of shadow pass
behind his eyes, and smelled—for the second time in my life—that goat
cheese stench. John and I locked eyes. Again, we had witnessed a man slip
into psychosis.
That's why Slade writes what he writes. Those are two stories out of a
hundred trial stories from a legal practice that specializes in the law of
insanity.
A: For a country that has such strict laws about handguns, there's a lot of gunplay in the Special X series. So when Becky (my daughter, and another member of Slade) and I were asked if we'd like to do some handgun shooting at the WHC in Phoenix, we jumped at the research opportunity.
The sign outside the shop was of a huge Teddy bear holding a machine gun.
The first thing I noticed on entering was that all the store personnel were
armed and positioned to catch any troublemaker in a crossfire. No wonder.
The store was a gun-lover's arsenal with every type of weapon imaginable,
from valuable historic flintlocks and dueling pistols to the current
state-of-the-art. As we looked around, we could hear sporadic gunfire from
the range downstairs.
A number of handguns were on display for rent. While I was searching for a
9mm Smith & Wesson like the Mounties use, Rebecca looked into the next case
and said, "Are these for rent too?" The case was stocked with machine guns.
The practice of criminal law does a lot for the imagination. Because you see
so much crime concentrated in one place, you get very wary about the dangers
out there. As we entered the confined firing range down in the cellar, I had
a mental image of some guy having just lost his job and been left by his
unfaithful wife, so he trucks on down to a gun shop to blow off a little
steam, and in I walk to the Travis Bickle question, "Are you looking at me?"
Imagine five side-by-side barrel tunnels like bowling alleys. Every shot
booms like thunder. Everyone eyes everyone else to make sure no one's a nut,
then the range settles into a rhythm of minding your own business and bang,
bang, bang.
No one noticed when we switched from a handgun to a fully automatic Uzi, but
when Becky cut loose with the machine gun, every person in the cellar
reacted on instinct, suddenly gripped by our genetically-evolved fight or
flight response. A machine gun has so many parts moving so quickly that it
feels like something inanimate has come alive in your hands. When I got my
turn to blast away and rip the target to rat shit, I felt two reactions.
One, now I know what if feels like to have the power of Thor in your grasp.
And two, I'm the only person on earth who I truly trust to have a weapon
like that around me.
A: Write about what you know. That truly is the best advice for all writers. Get out and live your story. Start simple and work up. The first Slade novel—Headhunter—was researched mainly in Vancouver because that's Slade's hometown. I hung around skid road, I searched the river for the
eeriest slough, I talked my way into ride-alongs with the cops, and I could
still be writing books set exclusively here. Adventure is just outside your
door, no matter where you live. Without imagination, you can't be a writer,
so pick a weird site, go take it in, and constantly ask yourself, "What if?"
For Ghoul, I was ready to venture out there, so I made a pilgrimage to
Lovecraft's home town, called up two local authorities who didn't know me
from Adam—Henry Beckwith, Jr. (Lovecraft's Providence and Adjacent Parts)
and Les Daniels—to ask them what I should see. Both graciously offered to
show me around. Les ushered me to St. John's Graveyard, where there's a tomb
that both Poe and Lovecraft supposedly sat on, and left me sitting there in
the moonlight to plot my book. I remember hearing his voice calling back as
he walked away: "What do you think of Clive Barker?" I called back: "Never
heard of him." Les's last prophetic words: "You will." So I sat on the tomb
and scribbled into the night, and that's where Slade got that novel. I like
to joke that it's ghost-written.
Cutthroat took me to China; Evil Eye on safari in Botswana; Death's Door to the top of the Great Pyramid in Egypt; Bed of Nails into the cannibal caves of the South Pacific. Each of those trips was financed by the book before,
but the initial novel was researched around my home. If you live your story
with a "What if?" mind, there will be no line between fact and fiction,
research and invention. What you imagine will be rooted in real life.
A: Bed of Nails is a good example of your other questions. The wager concerned me writing a novel out of three words: "Ted Bundy's house." I had already planned to write a cannibal killer novel set in the South Pacific. So how was I to connect those wildly disparate elements? Why not use the
World Horror Convention itself? Everything I saw, I put into the novel. And
what about the Thirteen Steps to Hell in Maltby Cemetery? Is that eldritch
or not? And this writer I met, Brett Savory, seems like a good sport, so let's kill him fictionally in a Lovecraftian way. But how do we get to the South Pacific from a gathering of horror fans? Wait a second! That might work.
I'm hooked on gatherings of writers because I'm a fan, too. That's why I've
been to the last four WHCs in a row. I go for the people. Who wouldn't want
to hang out with such likeable ghouls? Writing's a lonely business, so cons
are to reconnect. As for the Slade message board, it links me to the Sladists. It used to be that I had to wait for letters to be forwarded from my
publishers. Now if I want to know what CD a character should be listening to
for characterization, I ask the Sladists and instantly get back a wealth of
ideas. As for the line between fellowship and work, the only rule is, don't
let the former eat up the latter. Always keep an eye on what tragically
happened to Truman Capote.
A: I'm on record as saying that Headhunter will be up on the screen in the fall of 1987. Naïve me. Now I keep my mouth shut. There have been several options, and Slade has a joke: "We can't afford to have the Special X series made into films. We're making too much on the options!" Hope springs eternal.
A: Slade began writing because of downturn in the economy. They slashed the legal aid budget by 50%, with the same number of lawyers still at the trough, so that gave me and my two law partners an opening to fill the spare time by jointly writing a novel. The reaction to that book led to the next, and the next, and the next, and before I knew it, the Slade Mythos was spawned. I wish I could say that it was all a grand design, but it's a Frankenstein monster. This and that got stuck together, and one day, "It's alive!"
A: Whodunit, horror, police procedure, Western, science fiction, romance, erotica, suspense, action, historical, non-fiction. Readers will find all of those elements mixed up in the series so far, so we can go wherever we want in any particular book. Because Special X is the hero, and not any one character, there is no need to move outside the confines of the squad to have "creative freedom." For instance, the next book—#11 comes out of my dad's combat experience in World War II: he took part in two of the three great turning points and came back from shoot-down survival odds of 2-out-of-100—introduces new main characters. You can expect to see the series going on for some time to come. Each book stands on its own as a complete story, but all the books lock together into a larger picture. For hardcore fans, it's a 4,000-page odyssey so far. That goes back to your question about wildly disparate elements. Not only is it a challenge to fit the pieces together to form an individual book, but the books also have to fit together to form the BIG story. Slade thrives on challenge.
A: When I was a teen reading John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie, and Ellery Queen, I yearned to be a member of the Mystery Writers of America. So the moment Headhunter was sold to a publisher, I joined MWA. Before the book was released in North America (it came out in Britain first), the CBC
decided to do a profile on Slade. They flew me to London to film at Scotland
Yard, and among the exhibits in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's
Wax Museum, and in the study at the Sherlock Holmes pub. Then we went to New
York. The book was published while I was there, and someone came up with the
bright idea to film Slade schmoozing with his writer friends at MWA. So the
action would be spontaneous, they asked me not to speak to anyone before I
arrived at the Friday afternoon cocktail party.
They needn't have worried, because I didn't know anybody at MWA. I was an
author without a book published in North America until that very day, so I
knew I was about to bomb on national TV. When I came out of the elevator,
the camera was rolling. The only reason I knew which way to turn to reach
the MWA office was because the cameraman was backing down the hall. Luckily,
the name was printed on the door, and I knocked fully expecting to be
greeted by, "Michael Who?"
Instead, the woman who answered gave me a scepter with a severed doll's head
stuck on the end. They'd had a publication celebration cake made with
candles topped with small severed heads. As I walked in—shocked to my
core—someone called out, "Michael, come on over here." I found myself at
the centre of a group of leading mystery authors. I guess my surprise
showed, because one of them whispered in my ear, "Keep smiling for the
camera. You don't know us yet, but we take care of our own." (Of course, we
must not forget that those life-saving hams were on national TV, too).
That was 1985, and henceforth MWA was my group. For GHOUL, my publisher sent
me on a gruelling cross-Canada promotion tour—77 interviews coast to coast,
five cities in seven days. After that, promo tours became my main escape
from my writing cell. Then in 2001, I was asked to be a GoH at the WHC in
Seattle. The experience was so much fun that I became addicted. Next, it's
Horrorfind. So to return to your question, I've been around for over twenty
years, but different realms of socializing have drawn me here and there.
A: Slade has been with Penguin right from the beginning—all ten Special X psycho-thrillers, with more contracted for—and the violence has never been an issue. Why? Because what other people call "explicit horror," I call "reality." The Slade novels are all about a team of psycho-hunters
within the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who manhunt the kind of killers
that I have been involved with in the practice of law for over thirty years.
Lawyers call photos of the crimes they commit "hamburger shots." If you're
writing horror for horror's sake, the amount of gore you can use will depend
on the state of the marketplace. But if you are writing "true" fictional
crime, the level of "horror" in real life never fluctuates, so there is no
need to change with the times.
Also, the level of "reality" that a novel will support increases in direct
proportion with the complexity of the non-horror elements. A Slade novel
tries to get the reader coming and going. Hopefully, the mystery lures
him/her on to find the solution, while the horror makes him/her jump back
from the page. But he/she has to brave it by returning to the scene of the
crime, or the puzzle in the whodunit will remain unsolved.
It's all about balance.
It used to be that war movies were relatively bloodless. The Marine hit on
the beach died in John Wayne's arms with the comment, "I'll sleep tonight,
Sarge." Then came Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers. You can't say
there's too much horror because that's the reality of realistic war.
The same with realistic murder.
A: Yes and no. Once you know how psychotics and psychopaths think—and I know that from countless hours spent with the hundred plus killers that I've worked with in criminal trials—you can make up the rest. I argued the last hanging case in Canada before the Supreme Court, so that inspired
Hangman. But the killer in the novel isn't the killer in that case. Again,
it goes back to your earlier question. Live the story, and see where your
imagination takes it. One of my favorite reviews is, "God help the world if
Michael Slade goes insane."
Who says he isn't?
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