Well first off, thanks for inviting me to your blog! It's an honor!
As for me, my name is Ben Willoughby, and I live in the southeast United
States. I’m very happily married to my beautiful wife Mary, and we have a
wonderful little one-year old daughter.
I’m an indie author, and my genres include fantasy and horror. My wife
tells me I need to work on a romance novel, but I haven’t conceived one yet.
What
is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
I have a horror novel coming out on April 26 called Deadly Whispers. It deals with the concept of ASMR – or Autonomous Sensory
Meridian Response. It’s the nickname for that sensation you get whenever a
sound or action triggers a relaxing feeling in your scalp (eg., tingles). I
first discovered the term while watching an instructional massage video for
relaxation purposes; I soon discovered that there’s a whole subculture for it.
If you go on YouTube, you’ll find dozens of ASMR videos, with someone (mostly
women, though some men do it as well) speaking to the viewer and simulating
various sounds with a high tech microphone.
Eventually I came up with this idea: what if someone did some really disturbing ASMR videos? I had the
vision of a beautiful woman gutting someone alive and using their organs for
the purposes of sound. I developed around that idea, and came up with the
storyline of Deadly Whispers. I wrote
it intending it to be a dark comedy, albeit with some serious elements thrown
in. Granted, I have a very sick sense of humor. Just recently, when I was
editing the book, I was reading one of the murder scenes. The dialogue by the
killer is exactly like dialogue found in most ASMR videos, but he’s doing
terrible, horrible things while she’s saying it. I started cracking up reading
it. My wife asked me what I was laughing at, and when I told her, she just
rolled her eyes.
Introduce
us to your book’s characters. What is it
about these characters that appeal to you as
a writer?
Available April 26, 2016 |
The story focuses around three key
characters.
Rob is a man suffering from a quarter-life crisis, mainly from the fact
he’s still single. Out of desperation, he goes on a mail order bride website.
There, he comes across a beautiful Eastern European girl named Anna. He
eventually falls in love with her, and she moves to America to marry him.
Anna, who I just mentioned, is a beautiful woman who does ASMR videos. As
is probably already inferred, she’s not alright in the head, and her ASMR
videos involve someone suffering or dying. There’s a reason she does this,
which is explained in the book.
Finally, there’s Mike, who is Rob’s best friend. He’s a private
detective in his day job, and he begins to suspect Anna. He puts his smarts to
good use in order to find out the truth about her.
As I wrote the story, I realized near the end that it had developed into
a relational triangle with Rob as the central point: Anna does love Rob, and
wants to keep her relationship with him; Mike, like any good friend, doesn’t
want his buddy ending up with a crazy girl. I think most readers can sympathize
with either Anna or Mike in this regard: most women will know what it’s like to
want to make your relationship work, even if outside forces threaten it; most
men will know of at least one friend in their life who ended up with a crazy
girl and were nearly destroyed by her.
One thing I was actually quite proud about is my wife, who loves
romance, felt a real connection between Rob and Anna. She actually told me, “If
there weren’t so much killing in this story, it would actually be pretty
sweet.”
Does
the title relate to the story?
It’s actually in reference to a lot of ASMR accounts that have the word
“whispering” or “whispers” in the title, because using the sound of the human
whisper is so common in ASMR. (In fact, it’s actually seen as overplayed in
some circles.) The working title was Deadly
ASMR, but changed it to Deadly Whispers to connect it closer to the subculture. I’ll admit it’s not the
most clever of names, but it works for what it is.
Tell
us more about the cover design. How
involved were you with creating the cover?
With the exception of my fantasy book Gods on the Mountain, I do my own artwork for my book covers. Given
I do graphic design in my day job, I have some experience with that. My goal is
to try to come up with something to catch a viewer’s eye that also won’t end up
on the website Lousy Book Covers. (Which, by the way, every indie author should
go to; take a gander, then pledge to make your own covers better.)
With the cover for Deadly Whispers
specifically, it just plays on the idea I mentioned earlier of a violent ASMR
artist. A woman’s slender hand holding a bleeding heart up to a microphone
probably gets the point across about the book’s content!
Also, if anyone thinks it looks way too violent, they should probably
know that the initial cover design was a lot cleaner. When I shared it on
Twitter and asked for feedback, people told me to make it MORE bloody.
Tell
us something about your book that isn't mentioned in the synopsis.
Available Now at Amazon |
People who have followed my work will know I’ve written horror in the
past: I wrote about a pregnant woman plagued by a demon in Raw Head; I wrote about a young woman protected by her deceased
father in Daddy’s Girl; I wrote about
a haunted house in The House That Homed.
Almost all of them (save perhaps House,
which was comedic horror) scared my wife.
This story, however, absolutely terrified
her. This surprised me, because there are no monsters, demons, or ghosts in it,
just normal people. However, I can’t even talk about the story with her for a
few minutes before she says, “Alright, let’s talk about something else!” In
fact, I ruined ASMR for her forever – she can’t watch an ASMR video, or hear
someone talking in an ASMR-inspired voice, without becoming freaked out. She
also told me once, after reading a chapter, “You know, if I didn’t know you
personally, I’d think you were a sick man.”
Potential readers might also be amused to know that there’s a scene in
the book that was inspired by a nightmare my wife had, as a result of reading a
few chapters. I won’t say which scene, though. You’ll have to read it and
guess!
Give
us a summary of your book in a tweet.
“A dark comedy about a murderous ASMR
artist.”
How
much of your experience is in your writing?
It depends. The pregnancy in Raw Head was heavily influenced by our own experiences with the birth of our
daughter. In Daddy’s Girl, a lot of
what Alex and her father did in the morning was what my own daughter and I did
in the morning. The deep depression that Edmund suffers from in Gods on the Mountain is based on my own
struggles with depression.
In Deadly Whispers, a lot of
the sweet (albeit cheesy) talking between Rob and Anna was inspired by the way
my wife and I talk to each other. Some of the dialogue in the scene where Mike and Rob play video games was
directly taken from playing video games with college buddies. The scene where
Mike’s policewoman friend, Sabrina, is checked out by a lesbian barista, came
from a real incident where a female friend of mine was checked out by a lesbian
hostess.
Available Now at Amazon |
Describe
your writing process.
Obviously, every story starts with an idea. I think that’s a given. (No
pun intended – wait, was that a pun?) A lot of my ideas come from reading too
much into something, or researching a subject, and then something just clicks.
For example, I was talking with a neighbor, and she told me about the Spanish version
of the bogeyman. I researched the name, found other bogeymen and folklore
spirits, and came across the story of Raw Head. From there developed the idea
for my novelette by the same name.
Before I write the story itself, what I first do is sit down and write a
synopsis. I jot down all the characters I can think of at that moment, any
locations I’d need to remember the name for, and then a simple summary of what
happens in the story. When I sit down and work on the actual manuscript, I open
up the synopsis as well, and reference it whenever there’s need to do so.
I know a lot of authors shy away from doing this, because they’re afraid
it’ll hinder creativity, but I use my synopsis as a guideline, not a measuring
stick. If I come up with another character, I go back and I add it to the
character list. If I come up with another location I might need to remember the
name of, I go back and add it to the location list. If I want to change the
story around, I’ll go to the summary and shift things around. In other words,
my synopsis and my manuscript really feed off each other, rather than one
controlling or limiting the other.
By the by, a lot of my writing happens at night, when I come home from
work. Partially this is because that’s often the only time I have to write, and
partially this is because my wife enjoys it. She says hearing me type relaxes
her and helps her sleep. I am not making this up. I guess in some ways my
typing is her own brand of ASMR!
How
much research do you put into your work?
As I said before, a lot of my work is inspired by my reading or
experiencing something, so many times my research actually comes before the
creativity. For example, the reason I knew about what happens to pregnant women
at the gynecologist, as seen in Raw Head,
was because my wife and I experienced it firsthand with her pregnancy. I didn’t
need to research it, because I was often there, in the room, when the stuff was
going on. I was likewise there in the delivery room when our daughter was born,
so I didn’t need to research what happened during a delivery.
With Deadly Whispers, I had
already read a bit on the world of ASMR, and was very familiar with various
ASMR personalities. A few ASMR artists are actually referenced in the book,
albeit not by name. Anna herself was, in terms of looks, based on a specific
ASMR artist, though I won’t say who – I don’t want to ruin her career!
What
are your hobbies, interests outside of writing?
Do any of these activities find their way
into your books?
Available Now at Amazon |
I like to draw, I smoke a pipe, and (mandatory if you’re a writer) I
like to read, both fiction and non-fiction.
A lot of my interests definitely end up in my work, whether as minor
points or parts of the character. Edmund’s love for history and theology in Gods on the Mountain comes from my own
love for those topics. That Alex’s dad rides a motorbike in Daddy’s Girl comes from my own riding a
motorbike. Jenny’s love of HP Lovecraft in The House That Homed comes from my own love for his stories. In Deadly Whispers, the love Mike and Rob
have for Mike’s Hard Lemonade (no pun intended) comes from my own love for it.
It might be humorous to add here that, in The House That Homed, the characters of Homes and Scomes – two
homeless guys addicted to Mountain Dew Kickstart – came from my life as well. I
like to drink Kickstart, and my wife accused me of being addicted to it.
What
is the best advice and harshest criticism you have received as an author? What have you learned from either?
In college, I took a screen writing
class. My professor told me these words:
“You are the most erratic writer I’ve
ever met. I’ll tell you why. Your dialogue sucks,
but your descriptions are beautiful.”
He was absolutely right. I was trying too hard to be clever in my
dialogue, while also taking a lot of what I had learned from other writings to
come up with interesting set ups or deeper scenery. I’d like to think I’ve
learned since that advice was given a decade ago, and that I’ve created better
dialogue and rely on subtlety when necessary. I suppose I’ll let my readers
decide that.
What
advice might you give aspiring authors?
The advice I might give aspiring authors is this: don’t fall for the
trap of therapeutic thinking. I mean when you take positive-thinking to an
irrational level. Not everyone who hates your work is evil. Not every critic is
just a hater. Learn to weed through compliments as well as your criticism. You
can learn from your enemies as much as you can be harmed by your friends. I
know all this isn’t very popular to say, but I say it nonetheless.
Too often I think people have this idea that if someone gives you
anything less than a 3-star review, they must be Hitler reborn. I got a 2-star
review for Gods on the Mountain, and
another author asked if the reviewer was a personal enemy of mine. I didn’t
really care – the vast majority of people who have read and reviewed/rated Gods loved it, so I can’t complain that
somebody out in the world doesn’t like it.
What
kinds of books did you read as a child?
Did the genre you read most influence your decision to become an author
of the kind of books you write today?
When I was young, I took a huge liking to Science Fiction. I loved the
works by classic sci-fi authors like HG Wells and AE Van Vogt. In my preteen
years, I got sucked into mystery novels, especially those about Sherlock Holmes
and Hercule Poirot. In college, I finally started reading the fantasy genre,
especially books by RA Salvatore.
I can’t really say anything specific inspired me to write. I just
started to write and create when I was a preteen, and found that I really
enjoyed doing it. I started out writing comedy action stories in middle school
and high school, then got into more serious stories in college. Whatever I
wanted to write, I wrote it. I guess in some ways I still operate by that
principle today. I don’t want to fit myself into the niche of “fantasy author”,
or “horror author”. I know a lot of authors out there do that, and have made
good money doing that, and more power to them. It’s just not for me.
What
specific authors or books influenced what you write today?
George RR Martin had a big influence on my fantasy writing. I loved how
in depth he got with world building, even in some aspects that other fantasy
writers never thought about. Westeros felt real
to me. I won’t say everything about his world building was perfect (eg., the
same house ruling a nation for thousands upon thousands of years), but it
inspired me to put more thinking into the world of Calambria for Gods on the Mountain.
HP Lovecraft had an influence on me in just how weird or surreal you can
make horror. My initial idea for Raw Head
was more like a murder mystery movie, going back and forth between a police
detective and a pregnant woman. Then I remembered the weird dreams my wife had
during her pregnancy, and decided to go a less conventional route.
Victor Hugo also had an influence on me when I started to commit to
indie writing. What I love about his work is that he has this amazing talent to
build every single character in his book, no matter how minor. If there was a
janitor who appeared for one page in his book, he made certain you didn’t
forget about that janitor. By contrast, I’ve read some books today where you
forget someone’s best friend because of how non-memorable they are.
What
types of genres do you read now for pleasure?
I still read non-fiction and fantasy whenever I get the chance. Recently
I’ve been reading a lot of horror for fun, including Richard Laymon’s stuff. I
also need to give a shout-out to Kristopher Rufty, who has some fun novels.
Do you have any favorite characters, and if so, what is it about them that appeals to you?
Do you have any favorite characters, and if so, what is it about them that appeals to you?
If I had to give a favorite literary character, it would probably be
Roose Bolton from the Song of Ice and Fire series. A lot of people who have only seen HBO’s big budget fanfiction
are confused by that, but if you read the books, he was what I can only
describe as “deliciously creepy”. Martin captured his sociopathic nature
through his actions and words without beating you over the head with it. Roose
was partially the inspiration for Rhys, the main villain in Gods on the Mountain.
What
is next for you?
I have another horror novel I’ve been busily working on that I hope to
release before the end of the year. The current working title is Mannegishi, and it’s an alien story
mixed with Cree folklore. It harkens back a bit to Raw Head, with families and individuals going about their daily
lives, dealing with normal issues, but having all that interrupted by
supernatural powers.
I’m also working on a sequel to Gods on the Mountain called The Merchant
Rebellion. It’ll have Edmund and Diane return for another adventure, and
will feature more Celia and of course the beloved Fulk. I certainly intend to
write even more Edmund and Diane adventures in the future, and haven’t
forgotten about them.
On a side note, I sometimes joke with my wife about making a Deadly Whispers 2. I only do that
because I know how much it makes her freak out. I don’t know if I’d actually do
that, however – it would depend on how well the first book was received.
You can reach Ben Willoughby at the following places: