Four Live Rounds

BC: First and foremost, I want to entertain. I want the reader to close the book thinking, “that was a helluva story.” Beyond that, I do strive for realism. I want the reader to identify with my characters’ emotions, whether it’s fear, sadness, or happiness. The places I write about, from the Yukon to the Outer Banks to the Colorado mountains are rendered accurately, and that’s very important to me, because I want the reader to have the benefit of visiting these beautiful places in my books.

HW: The villain in Locked Doors seems almost a force of nature, cunning, instinctively brilliant when it comes to creating mayhem. Do you worry that readers might write him off as unrealistic?

BC: I decided to approach Luther Kite a little differently than my bad guy, Orson Thomas, in Desert Places. In the first book, I tried to humanize Orson, to gin up sympathy by explaining what happened in his childhood to turn him into this monster. With Luther et al., I made a conscious decision not to delve into any of that, and for this reason I think he comes off as almost mythic, larger than life, maybe with even a tinge of the supernatural. I don’t worry that readers will find him unrealistic, because I didn’t try to make him like your typical realistic humdrum villain. What I want is for readers to fear him.

HW: What’s the most important thing a book has to do to keep YOUR attention?

BC: It’s actually very simple... a great story told through great writing. I don’t care if it’s western, horror, thriller, historical, romance, or literary. I just want to know that I’m in the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing.

HW: Who are your literary heroes?

BC: I grew up on southern writers -- Walker Percy, Pat Conroy -- the fantasy of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. In college I discovered Thomas Harris, Dennis Lehane, James Lee Burke, Caleb Carr, and my favorite writer, Cormac McCarthy. McCarthy just blows me away. His prose is so rich. He is unlike anyone else out there today. His 1985 novel, Blood Meridian, in my opinion, is the greatest horror novel ever written.

HW: What makes Blood Meridian “the greatest horror novel ever written?”

BC: The writing is mind blowing. The violence (which occurs frequently and in vivid detail) rises to the level of poetry in McCarthy’s hands. And the story is fascinating. It’s based on historical fact and follows a bloodthirsty gang through the Mexico-Texas Borderlands in the mid-1800’s, who have been hired by the Mexican government to collect as many Indian scalps as they can. I read Blood Meridian every year.

HW: Reading Desert Places and Locked Doors, it seems that you’re drawn to the horrific. The books are filled with horrific acts, and with terrifying set pieces, as in the descent into the Kites’ basement in Locked Doors. Did the horror genre hold any attraction to you growing up?

BC: I honestly didn’t read a lot of horror growing up, but I always loved the sensation of fear produced by a scary movie or a great book. Some of my first short fiction (written in middle school) could be classified as horror. In fact, there’s a short story on my website called “In Shock” that I wrote in the 8th grade.

HW: Might there be a sequel to Locked Doors someday?

BC: Midway through the writing of Locked Doors, it occurred to me the story might be a trilogy. I may finish out the trilogy at some point. I’m starting to miss my characters (the ones that survived), and I have a feeling that I will return to the world of Locked Doors at some point in the future to check in on them. We’ll have to see.

HW: Your latest novel, Abandon, is set in Colorado, where you’ve lived for the past six years.  Did you intend to write a novel set in that state when you moved there, or did your surroundings inspire you to?

BC: This was definitely a case of my surroundings inspiring me. Two months after we moved from North Carolina to Durango, we had some friends come out to visit. My wife and I took them on a backpacking trip into the San Juans, and it was on this trip that I first saw the ruins of a mining town—Sneffels, Colorado and the Camp Bird Mine. It made a huge impression, the idea of living in these extreme conditions, particularly in winter. The claustrophobia, the desperation, the kind of people who would subject themselves to such a life fascinated me.

HW: Did you have any particular goals in mind when you embarked on this project?  Did they change as you worked?  Do you think you met your goals?