What or whom inspired you
to become a writer?
JOHN: When I was young, I had
anemia, so I wasn’t allowed to do sports. Instead, I stayed inside
and read. When I ran out of stories in my favorite series, I started
making up my own. After that, I couldn’t sop making up stories.
What was your first
book/story published?
JOHN: My first book was “The
Official Doctor Who And The Daleks Book”, about the English TV
show. As a result of that, I got to write a “Doctor Who” novel,
“The Chase”. Then I sold my first original book, “Uptime,
Downtime”. That was my own version of a time travel story.
You have written media
tie-ins, fantasy, science-fiction, and horror. What is your favorite
genre to write about?
JOHN: I just like writing, so I
don’t really mind what genre. I think my favorite, though, is
fantasy. I love being able to make up whole worlds and situations.
But I’ll write anything at all as long as it sounds interesting to
me.
One of my favorite books
growing up was Shockers: Grave Doubts. How did you come up with the
reincarnation plot?
JOHN: By accident! What happened
was that I went in to my editor, Craig Walker, about writing
“Shockers”. I thought he wanted three books in the series
initially, so I had three really good ideas – “Night Wings”,
“Blood Wolf” and “Alien Prey” (horror, fantasy and science
fiction). Then he said, “And what about the fourth book?” I
hadn’t realized he’d wanted four, so on the spur of the moment I
said: “Grave Doubts”. He loved the title, and asked me what it
was about. So I told him I’d let him know just as soon as I
decided! So then I went home and thought about it. Since I’d
invented a title, I realized I had to do something set about a
cemetery, and “doubts” suggested confusion. So I thought that it
should be about somebody everybody thought was dead… and then I
thought, no, it would be better if it was about somebody who *was*
dead. And then the whole story fell into place.
