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Women in Horror Month: Interview: David Simms Talks to Alice Henderson, Author of A Solitude of Wolverines

Recently, our reviewer David Simms had an opportunity to interview Alice Henderson, author of A Solitude of Wolverines, published late in 2020 and reviewed earlier this year. We’re sharing it now, as part of Women in Horror Month!

 

 

David: You have a new thriller out, A Solitude of Wolverines. Can you tell us a little about the inspiration for it?

 

Alice: In addition to being a writer, I’m a wildlife researcher. I travel to remote locations and do species presence studies. I was out in the field in Montana, setting up remote cameras in the hopes of capturing images of wolverines on a wildlife sanctuary there. I got the sudden inspiration to bring my writing and wildlife work together and create a suspenseful series that would both entertain readers and inform people about the plight of different species. I chose wolverines for the first book because so few people know about them, and they are in trouble. They are the largest members of the weasel family, weighing in around 35 pounds, and are important members of their ecosystem. For instance, in winter, many animals such as coyotes, foxes, and other types of weasels follow wolverines to the best scavenging sites, which aids in the survival of those species. They used to roam as far south as New Mexico and as far east as the Great Lakes, but a combination of habitat fragmentation, anthropogenic climate change, overtrapping, and other threats has reduced the wolverine population to less than 300 in the lower 48.

 

David: The love of the environment is apparent in your novels, from your incredible debut Voracious to this new title. Is this a conscious decision, to bring awareness to readers or to simply utilize these stunning settings as their own character?

 

Alice: Thank you so much for the compliment on Voracious! I really loved writing that one. Yes, it is absolutely a conscious decision to bring awareness to the plight of species. It’s very important to me to help struggling species in whatever ways I can. It’s an extra bonus that the remote locations where species like wolverines live are excellent isolated settings that are conducive to suspense.

 

David Your background is, to say the least, varied and impressive. I know that readers would love to know what it’s like to work for George Lucas. What can you tell us about that time?

 

Alice: There were a lot of great aspects to working for Lucas. I was surrounded with a lot of fellow creative people. We would eat lunch at Skywalker Ranch, and there was a display case in the main house there with things like Indiana Jones’s fedora and whip, the idol from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Cherlindrea’s wand from Willow. We’d have these huge parties for Halloween and Christmas. The Halloween costumes people created were stunning! No one went small. I remember one person created a Titanic costume that was even wired for electricity. Two people were in it and it could break in half when a third person, dressed as an iceberg, crashed into it. There were also a lot of wonderful private screenings of movies.

 

David: You’re a wildlife researcher, right? How has that impacted your writing? Is it tough not to talk too much about the science and details in your writing, especially in a fast-paced thriller, when the passion for these animals is so strong?

 

Alice: I am a wildlife researcher, yes. I do a lot of species presence studies to determine what species are using a particular piece of land. I walk transects and look for spoor, set out remote cameras, and place out bioacoustic recorders. One of my specialties is bats. By examining the recordings of their echolocation calls, I can determine what bat species are present. I also do a lot of remote computer work, such as mapping sanctuaries and designing wildlife corridors. When depicting this research in my fiction, it can be tough to strike a good balance between being technical enough to interest readers who love science, and not so technical that it can turn a reader off. I try to take a middle ground that will pique readers’ interest while still maintaining the pace of the suspense.

 

David: Readers love to know what inspires authors to do what they do. Who are your biggest creative influences – and why?

 

Alice: One of my favorite writers is Robert McCammon. He truly brings settings and characters to life. I feel like I could call those characters up on the phone. He engages all the senses, making readers feel like they’ve been in that place, in that time. His fiction was really an inspiration for me to include the senses in a vivid way in my own writing. I also love the wilderness settings and mysteries of Nevada Barr; the combination of science and history used by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child; the action of James Rollins novels; and the tough character of V. I. Warshawski by Sara Paretsky.

 

David: I’ve seen the photo of you at the Arctic Circle. Your adventures have taken you all over the world. What has been your wildest adventure – yet?

 

Alice: I would have to say it was that trip to the Canadian Arctic! It was an incredible journey. We drove up the Dempster Highway, 740 km of dirt, to Inuvik, Northwest Territories. From there, we took the new Tuktoyaktuk road, 138 km of even rougher dirt all the way to the Arctic Ocean. We spent months exploring the Yukon and Northwest Territories on that trip, taking in vistas of tundra and seeing it change from the greens of summer to the reds and golds of fall, to the white of winter. I delighted in seeing collared pikas, the northerly cousins of our American pikas, grizzly bears digging for roots in fields, black-phase red foxes bounding on the tundra.

On that same trip, we took a little float plane out to Katmai National Park and lived among huge Alaskan brown bears for a time. They were fishing as the salmon spawned upstream. These massive bears would stand at the top of a waterfall and catch the salmon as they leaped in mid-air.

 

David: Is there a top destination on your wishlist?

 

Alice: Definitely Antarctica. I’d love to get embedded with a research team and spend a season down there. Setting a novel there would be an extra bonus! To set foot on that continent would be a dream come true.

 

David: What can readers do to help the new administration of this country focus on helping the environment regain some of what the animals need to survive?

 

Alice: Right now there’s a bill in the House of Representatives that is waiting to be brought to the floor for a vote. It’s called the Paw & Fin Act and would restore and strengthen the Endangered Species Act, which has been under attack and weakened in recent years. Readers can write and tweet to their representatives and urge them to bring the bill to the floor for a vote. In addition, encourage your representatives to support legislation that will tackle climate change.

 

David: We’ve all had to adjust during this pandemic. How have you coped, stayed sane, and thrived?

 

Alice: I’ve been sheltering since March. Normally I travel far afield during the summer field season for wildlife research, but this summer I stayed home. That felt really strange, so I tried to keep as busy as possible. I kept up with my local species like bats and the American pika, and wrote the second novel in the Alex Carter series. I also built a radio telescope and have been listening to storms on Jupiter. I make stop-motion shorts, and I began pre-production on my latest one.

 

David: You’ve written in other people’s universes, primarily Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Supernatural,two of the coolest series to have ever aired. Can you explain a little about those adventures and would you return there?

 

Alice: I loved writing the two Buffy the Vampire Slayer novels and the Supernatural novel. Both were shows I really enjoyed, so delving into those universes was a blast. It’s fun to take characters you love and create new adventures for them. The second Buffy novel I wrote was a Choose Your Own Adventure style novel called Night Terrors. That was a challenge! It has something like twenty-one different endings, and I created a huge flowchart on my wall to tie everything together. The other Buffy novel, Portal Through Time, won a Scribe Award (the award given by the International Media Tie-In Writers Association), and I felt really honored. Writing the Supernatural novel Fresh Meat was fascinating because I got to dig into the history of the Donner Party and research a mythological monster that I’d never seen anyone use before. I’d absolutely write another tie-in novel.

 

David: Finally, what’s next for Alex Carter and Alice Henderson?

 

Alice: The second book in the Alex Carter series is written and off to my editor. In it, Alex journeys up to the Canadian Arctic to study polar bears and must fight for her life out on the ice. The months I spent in the Canadian Arctic were truly inspirational, and I loved setting the next Alex Carter in the magic of that setting. It’ll be out in Fall 2021.

 

Thank you so much for the interview!

 

Book Review: Neptune’s Reckoning by Robert J. Stava

Cover art for Neptune's Reckoning by Robert J. Stava

( Amazon.com )

 

Neptune’s Reckoning: A Montauk Horror Story, by Robert J. Stava

Severed Press, 2020

ISBN: 9781922323644

Available: paperback, Kindle

 

Neptune’s Reckoning is an undersea thriller to be reckoned with.  It’s a sleek, well-designed craft that cuts through the competition, hitting all the right peaks.  File this book in the category of “Books that should have been nominated for a Stoker Award”.  Peter Benchley will always be the master of ocean-themed horror, but author Stava comes pretty close to matching him with this book.

 

Reclusive historian William Vanek spends his days at home on Long Island, researching shipwrecks and naval history of little significance.  An old friend of his from Navy intelligence recruits Vanek, along with extreme photographer Danielle “Dan” Cheung and shipwreck specialist Arnaud Navarre, to look into the recent discovery of a missing World War II destroyer, the USS Exeter.  The story rolls out at a pace as smooth as glass, as the three of them are drawn into a web of mysterious killings at sea and government cover-ups.  The mystery deepens, as it becomes clear the destroyer was involved in some dangerous, high level research before it sank.  It’s up to the three of them to discover the truth about the Exeter, and put a stop to who (or what) is responsible for killing boaters in the Montauk area.

 

Neptune’s Reckoning is as good as it gets for a horror/thriller novel.  The pacing is perfect; it hits the bull’s-eye between breakneck speed and slow burn.  There’s a secondary story thread involving toxic waste dumping near the Exeter that adds another factor to the story, and is just as interesting as the primary story.  All the secondary characters are critical to keeping the story flowing: they are drawn perfectly and enter and exit the narrative at just the right time.  The eco-warriors and small-time criminals make excellent foils to the main story, and are as intriguing as the main characters.  The book also does a nice job splitting the story settings between land and sea.  Each section gets enough time, preventing the book from being one-dimensional.

 

It’s worth noting that if you haven’t seen Stranger Things, doing a bit of spot research on Camp Hero, Montauk, NY, and the conspiracy theories around them helps to lend a greater understanding of the book’s background.  The stories behind Montauk are not critical to following the book, but it does help.  There’s also a nice touch of sci-fi involving the entity inhabiting the waters around Montauk.  It isn’t just a shark or oversized squid tearing its victims to shreds, it is much more mysterious-and deadly.  The reader won’t get a total explanation for everything that happens at the end of the book, and that may be a bit frustrating for readers who prefer every plot thread to be explained in full.   Everyone else will love the smooth sailing that is Neptune’s Reckoning. 

 

This is one you can’t miss, and it should find a wide audience for horror and adventure readers alike.  It’s also tailor-made for the silver screen; let’s see if Hollywood picks it up.  Highly recommended.

 

Contains: violence, limited gore, profanity

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

A Cold Trail (Tracy Crosswhite #7) by Robert Dugoni

  ( Bookshop.org )

A Cold Trail (Tracy Crosswhite #7) by Robert Dugoni

Thomas & Mercer, 2020

ISBN-10: 1542093228

ISBN-13: 9781542093224

Available: Paperback, ebook edition, audiobook

 

Cedar Grove, Washington, was a small town that never changed, where everyone knew everyone else’s business.  Homicide Detective Tracy Crosswhite had grown up there and thought she had put it behind her. When Tracy and her husband had a baby, though, she wanted her baby daughter to know where Tracy came from, so while their main home was being gutted and refurbished, she and her husband moved back to her childhood home.

After years of never changing, the small town was seeing a tremendous rebirth.  The family-owned stores she grew up with had changed hands and were undergoing renovation.  Prosperity was not without its perils, though.  One of the local business owners was suing the town for unfair business tactics, and her husband, Dan, was their lawyer.  Tracy reconnected with the local acting sheriff, Roy Calloway, while he temporarily came out of retirement to cover for the current Sheriff.  A recent house fire turned out to be arson, and the only fatality, Kimberly Armstrong, the current Sheriff’s wife, had been murdered.  Kimberly, a local reporter, was writing a book about a long-cold murder case from 1993 of a local woman, Heather Johansen.  Sheriff Calloway has a hunch that somehow, the two cases were connected, and he could use some outside help.  Tracy was it.

A Cold Trail is a procedural crime thriller that started slow but delivered with a powerful punch at the end.  It began like the small town it depicts.  Slow and unchanging.  Until it changed.  The author did a great job laying his framework.  At first, it felt like a sleepy little town that happened to have had a couple of murders there. Mix in greedy land developers that were being excessively secretive, and stir.  The plot worked well for me as it developed gradually, building suspense slowly much as a real crime investigation would. The story really came together in the last third.  The questions disappeared as the suspense built.  The ending was a fun twist.  The characters were believable as law enforcement types that were slow and methodical.  They worked well together, and it felt like I was watching an actual family work through the issues of two overlapping investigations.  The detailed descriptions of police procedures and legal proceedings lent an air of authenticity to the work.  This isn’t my kind of story, but it felt right.  The descriptions were good, giving me enough to picture the scenes.  The only thing that didn’t work for me was occasionally the author used an odd turn of phrase that just didn’t fit.  It’s interesting how word order makes or breaks a sentence.  In the end, this was a good book worth reading.  Recommended for adult readers.

 

Contains: Violence, Adult situations.

Reviewed by Aaron Fletcher