Interview by Harry Shannon

wenty-six year old Kealan Patrick Burke has only been in the United States for a brief period of time. His list of accomplishments is already quite impressive and his first collection "Ravenous Ghosts" received advance praise from Thomas F. Monteleone, Mark McLaughlin, Gene O' Neill, Jack Cady, Gary Braunbeck and several other genre stalwarts. He's got a lot going on. We'll let him speak for himself...

Click image for more information on Ravenous Ghosts.

HARRY SHANNON: You are an Irish import. Tell us how you met your wife and somehow ended up in the Ohio wilderness writing and editing horror fiction.

KEALAN PATRICK BURKE: Well, I was at a low ebb, thinking up ideas for stories and never getting the chance to write any of them down (see: Creative Hell) and working my ass off in a bar. One night an American tourist came in (insert Bogart-isms and lounge music here) and we hit it off immediately. After keeping in touch for a while, Jen invited me to come to America for a trial period…to see if I liked it (and her) enough to stay. I did, on both counts and ended up getting married and relocating permanently.

My wife offered me a year to focus on my writing. At this stage she had never read any of my work (if she had, she might have revoked the offer - I came here armed with old stuff). If I hadn't sold a single story after twelve months, we agreed I would forget about writing full-time and get on with my life. I ended up selling thirty stories and three anthologies.

HS: What was your educational background in Ireland? What kind of jobs did you hold?

KPB: I went to an all-boys Catholic school where I discovered my love for English and my irritating (to everyone else) desire to get assigned essays for the weekend. From there I attended and graduated with honors from the ill-fated Institute of Journalism and Theater at University College Dublin, (robbed of its prestige when one of the course instructors was accused of child-molesting and killed himself to avoid a trial.)

I left college with a headful of dreams (who doesn't?), which were quickly allayed by the harsh realities of a strangulated Irish job market. Journalism was soon forgotten, replaced by quick cash bar jobs and brief stints on building sites. I worked as a security guard for about two years, then moved to Cork city and back to bar work.

HS: But you ended up writing and editing. What's the first book or story you can remember that knocked your socks off?

KPB: Short story wise, it would have to be a toss-up between Karl Edward Wagner's "Where The Summer Ends", Richard Matheson and Richard Christian Matheson's "Where There's A Will" or Charles L. Grant's "A Garden of Blackred Roses" - all from Kirby McCauley's landmark 1981 anthology DARK FORCES. In many ways, these stories, as well as many others from that volume, are the reason I'm writing what I'm writing today.

The first true horror novel I read (aside from the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators books I was devouring as a child) was Stephen King's Pet Semetery. While the plot is little more than a riff on "The Monkey's Paw" - there are certain scenes in this book that still make me squirm. Peter Straub's "Ghost Story", which is still my favorite horror novel of all time, was next.

HS: What were some of your first influences as writers?

KPB: You mean, what writers influenced me? King, I suppose, in the beginning though shortly afterward, I started emulating and wherever possible attempted to imitate the style of Charles L. Grant and Ramsey Campbell.

HS: How old were you when you wrote your first story?

KPB: Unlike some talented folk who can recall a story about machine gun-toting lunatics they wrote when they were zygotes, the first story I remember writing was a werewolf story entitled "Silverware" about a guy driving home to his family at Christmas who sees a werewolf in his rearview mirror. SITTING IN HIS BACK SEAT!!!!!!! I think I was about eight at the time.

As you might imagine, it sucked. Real bad.

HS: Like everyone else's, but you did it! What is your creative process like as a writer?

KPB: I dread these questions because my "process" isn't terribly interesting. My answer to King's On Writing would be about a paragraph long. I just sit down and write. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes when I think I've written a masterpiece, an editor I respect pans it and it goes in that mysterious Place Where The Crap Goes - The Bottom Drawer. Other times a story I hate will get picked up by a terrific market and I start questioning my judgment. Some days, I can't get past the first line and I want to beat the living shit out of that blinking cursor.

HS: How much rewriting do you generally assign yourself before sending something out?

KPB: I have sent first drafts of stories off and had them accepted. Conversely, I have also agonized over stories for weeks. Example: "Cold Skin" which appears in RAVENOUS GHOSTS but originally appeared at Gothic.Net was a first draft and sold immediately. "The Defenseless" which appears as an original story in RAVENOUS GHOSTS, took eleven major rewrites before I was happy with it. It depends on the story. My wife has a lot of input too. She's not afraid to tell me when something sucks.

HS: How about your process as an editor?

KPB: Hmm. That's a little different. In fact, it's totally different. By and large, an editor's day is filled analyzing the work of other, oftentimes much better writers than he/she. This can damage the confidence of the weaker ilk, leading to strange acts of random violence or histrionics at the baptism of a total stranger at the local church.

Like everything else, there are good and bad sides to it. This year, I've seen them all.

HS: You've come up with some amazing projects as an editor. Run them down for us.

KPB: The first anthology I decided to put together was HOUR OF PAIN. I went into this blind, with only the promise that it would feature No Big Names. Of course, I didn't know it in the beginning but that also meant No Big Publisher. Still, a year and a half, many, many cups of coffee and some obliterated voodoo dolls later and it has finally landed at the printer.

HS: Who's publishing it?

KPB: It'll be released in May by Dark Vesper Publishing.

HS: A Published anthology first time to bat isn't bad at all. What came next?

KPB: Next up was a book from the other end of the spectrum, an anthology called TAVERNS OF THE DEAD. This was an anthology of bar-themed stories featuring contributions by Big Names such as: Neil Gaiman, Peter Straub, Ramsey Campbell, Edward Lee, Nicholas Royle, David Morrell and many, many more. It will (hopefully) be released this year by Cemetery Dance Publications.

HS: Killer roster, and Cemetery Dance does exceptional work on collectible books.

KPB: Yes they do. Cemetery Dance are also publishing my third anthology, a smaller but very dear to my heart project entitled BRIMSTONE TURNPIKE, which collects five novellas by Thomas F. Monteleone, Scott Nicholson, Tim Waggoner, Harry Shannon and Mike Oliveri. All the novellas are linked by a strange abandoned gas station on the titular stretch of highway and the old man who resides over it: Johnny Divine.

HS: You have also published quite a few stories at this point. Where can we expect to see some Burke tales?

KPB: Yes, it's been a good year for me, publishing wise. Then again, I've been submitting like a madman. I have had stories accepted to Fangoria's Frightful Fiction, Scared Naked, Would That It Were and the anthologies: Verte Brume: The Anthology of Absinthe, Fresh Blood, The Night Has Teeth, The Fear Within, The Book of Final Flesh, Vicious Shivers and The Decay Within.

HS: Tell us about your first collection as an author and how it came to be.

KPB: My first collection is entitled RAVENOUS GHOSTS (from a novel I never finished) and will be published in a few weeks by 3F Publishing (www.3Fpublishing.com). I originally just wanted to gather together stories that were scattered across many computers in many rooms and shoved into filing cabinets here and there. I wanted the best of them together in some kind of coherent package and so I approached new publisher 3F, the owners of which I had known for quite some time. I asked if they'd be interested and their enthusiasm knocked me for a loop. I wrote some new stories, rewrote some old ones and got Jack Cady and Gary Braunbeck to bookend the collection with an introduction and afterword respectively. I hunted down Mike Bohatch for the cover art and the rest is history. I am exceptionally pleased with the galleys and eagerly await the finished product. The girls at 3F really poured their collective heart and soul into this book, as did I. It should be something special.

HS: How can folks order it?

KPB: It's available for preorder now at Shocklines, probably the best independent bookstore on the Internet, run by the wildly supportive Matt Schwartz. The original deal was that the first 100 copies preordered would be issued signed by yours truly. I'm not sure if there are many of those left, but readers can always e-mail me at elderlemon2003@aol.com and I'll rectify the situation for them if they receive an unsigned copy.

HS: Can you give us an idea of the material in the collection; the kind of stories?

KPB: Dark. Tales From the Crypt-ish. Tell you what, anyone who wants to sample a story from the collection before parting with their hard-earned money can e-mail me and I'll send them a tale from the book. Once the book is released, it will be available from most online stores and brick-and-mortar stores like Barnes & Noble.

HS: Fair enough. What else have you got planned for 2003 and 2004?

KPB: Apart from promoting RAVENOUS GHOSTS, I am currently editing QUIETLY NOW: A TRIBUTE TO CHARLES L. GRANT for Borderlands Press. This is a book of original fiction in the "quiet horror" vein with nonfiction essays dedicated to Charles L. Grant. It will be a signed limited hardcover with a frontispiece illustrated by Gahan Wilson. There's a stellar lineup for this one.

Other than that I'm not sure. I'm considering some projects, but I'll have to wait and see. All I am certain of is that I won't be taking on as much as I did in 2001 and 2002. I value my sanity.

HS: Any novels in the works?

KPB: Yes, as a matter of fact though I'm reluctant to talk about it (tends to drain my enthusiasm). I can tell you that it is called THE BLOODRUNNERS and it's a horror/western hybrid.

HS: Trick question: Where do you see the genre going in the near future?

KPB: Quite honestly I see it being flooded and suffocated by lesser grade material as happened in the eighties when King hit it big and suddenly everyone was writing about vampires and small towns in peril and evil children (I think I just summed up my novel…ooops).

HS: There goes my next project, too. Why do you think this is happening?

KPB: I think it's much too easy for anyone who wants to be published, regardless of talent, to get published these days. The standards are slipping and as a result, the true talents are leaving the field or are being lost in the deluge of mediocrity.

HS: What is your favorite/least favorite sound

KPB: My favorite sounds are my wife's laughter and my son's laughter. The Mail truck or "You've Got Mail!" follow somewhere thereafter. My least favorite sound is the alarm clock or those friggin birds that hang around in the walnut tree outside our bedroom at dawn.

HS: Favorite and least favorite words?

KPB: Favorite: "Accepted for publication" and "The contract is in the mail." Least Favorite: "…going to pass on this one," or "Delayed."

HS: When you die what do you want to hear God say to you?

KPB: "Oops sorry. Thought you were that other painfully thin white Irish boy with the struggling career. Back you go for some success and fortune."

HS: Kealan Patrick Burke, you're a gentleman and a scholar. Thanks for your time.

KPB: As are you, Harry. It's been fun. Thank you!