Interview with Kat Huddleston, Author of Dead Man's Trigger (A Max Maguire Vampire Novel Book 1)

What's the story behind the story? What inspired you to write this book?

As far as monsters go, vampires are my favorite. They are basically people with one heck of a drug addiction and some very nifty superpowers. There are some serious drawbacks as well, such as not being able to go out into the sun and being a serial killer. Intelligent monsters have always seemed more fascinating to me. Think Hannibal Lecter or the velociraptors in Jurassic Park. There’s a reason why we’re drawn to smart monsters. Vampires can make a choice about who their victims are in a way that werewolves may not and zombies certainly can’t.

One of the questions in Dead Man’s Trigger is whether you have to kill to survive as a vampire, and it’s something that’s important to my protagonist, Max Maguire. A terrible thing happens to him when he gets turned into a vampire, and how he deals with that is what drives him through the story and will be with him through the series. When the idea for the book came to me, it was a high school history teacher trying to help one of his students, but he ends up being turned into a vampire. So a teacher who loves his students and wants a good world for them gets turned into a monster, and that affects him profoundly. I thought it was the start of a rich character facing deep moral questions, and the vampire mythology came after Max.

As far as what inspired me to write the book, I was an entertainment journalist for the Syfy Channel for about 25 years. I was a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the novel Interview with the Vampire. I’ve always been a sci-fi girl. I wrote short stories and screenplays, and it was a story that seemed too big to tell any other way.

The book was actually published four years ago, but I felt it still needed some work, and nothing happened with it. My husband of 24 years died of cancer in June, and it was devastating. It still is. Working on the book was a project I could do that helped me get out of bed and put one foot in front of the other. Understand, I’m still heartbroken. But in a way, I’m in Max’s shoes. Something terrible happened, and I have to figure out how to deal with it. And I learned so much. My book was positioned incorrectly originally and came off as a vampire romance rather than the urban fantasy vampire thriller it is. And reworking the book into Dead Man’s Trigger has given it so much more depth, in my opinion. It’s a better book now. I’m really proud of it, and I know my husband, Chuck, would be too.

If you had to pick theme songs for the main characters of your book, what would they be?

I’ve been thinking about this, not so much for Dead Man’s Trigger, but for the next book in the series, Kill Radius. Max is trying to rebuild his CD collection, and I was thinking about what songs would have been important to him. “Sign of the Times” by Harry Styles would be a song Max would have been drawn to, along with “Two Ghosts.” I think Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” would have spoken to Max’s past, and it’s a song that touched my heart too. I also like “I Should’ve Been a Cowboy” by Toby Keith. If you read the book, you’ll know why Max would have liked that one. In a different time and life, Max would’ve been a cowboy.

What's your favorite genre to read? Is it the same as your favorite genre to write?

Urban fantasy is my jam. I like any kind of contemporary fantasy, and I loved Interview with the Vampire, the early Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter books, and the Sookie Stackhouse novels. But in the beginning, it was Ray Bradbury’s The Stories of Ray Bradbury, which is sitting behind me on my bookshelf. I also loved Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions. Sci-fi hooked me, but urban fantasy captured my heart. I still write sci-fi in short story form and have a short story collection I’m working on that I hope to publish in the next year called Livid Dreams.

What books are on your TBR pile right now?

I finished The Dresden Files novels by Jim Butcher, as far as they’ve gone, and I’m working my way through the Joe Ledger series and Joe Ledger: Rogue Team International series by Jonathan Maberry. I’ve also started on Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia.

What scene in your book was your favorite to write?

I love writing the action stuff. But there were some challenges with Dead Man’s Trigger because Max was a Special Forces sniper, and that comes up in the book eventually. I have never been a Special Forces sniper, so getting that to be accurate took some work. Hopefully I managed. I also created revolvers, sniper rifles, and other weapons that would only exist to kill vampires. There is bound to be some evolution beyond a good old-fashioned stake to the heart in a contemporary story, so that was fun. I also really loved the scenes with Max and Sumi, an eight-hundred-year-old Japanese vampire. She’s an artist, and she’s deaf and mute. She’s also one of the leaders in the war that’s going on between the two vampire factions. She became one of my favorite characters to write because I’ve never written anyone like her.

Do you have any quirky writing habits? (lucky mugs, cats on laps, etc.)

I am a true night owl, and when I’m deep in writing mode, I’m often up ’til 5 a.m. or later. Sometimes the sun beats me before I go to bed. I’d actually be a really good vampire. We keep the same hours.

Do you have a motto, quote or philosophy you live by?

I’ll go with George Lucas on this one: “May the Force be with you.”

If you could choose one thing for readers to remember after reading your book, what would it be?

My hope is that readers connect with my protagonist, Max Maguire. Max is funny and scary, and he draws trouble in a way I think a good urban fantasy protagonist should. Hopefully, it’s a fascinating world with a grand battle at its center that people will enjoy. There’s a lot more story to tell, and I’m working on the next book, Kill Radius, and I’ve plotted out a third book, Terminal Eclipse. I’m also hoping to get the audiobook for Dead Man’s Trigger done by early next year. So there’s a lot more Max to come.