Author Interview & Giveaway: Meet R.S. Belcher – THE NIGHT DAHLIA

If you’ve been hiding under a rock or you’re a new follower of mine, you may not know that R.S. Belcher is one of my FAVORITE authors, and so it is with great pleasure that I welcome him back to Books, Bones & Buffy to help celebrate the upcoming release of The Night Dahlia. After the interview, don’t forget to enter to win a copy of this amazing book! (And please note: If you haven’t read the first book in the series, this book works great as a standalone, so don’t let that stop you!)

Welcome back to the blog, Rod! I absolutely loved your follow-up to Nightwise, The Night Dahlia. It’s been several years since Nightwise was released. In the fast-paced world of publishing these days, three years between books seems long. What was your path to writing and selling the sequel?

Thanks so much for having me back, Tammy, always a pleasure.  I had the idea for The Night Dahlia not too long after Nightwise released.  When Brotherhood of the Wheel was released, I pitched the idea to my agent, Lucienne Diver, and she pitched it to the folks at Tor Books and they greenlit it.  At the same time, I also got the go-ahead to write a third Golgotha novel, The Queen of Swords, and a sequel to Brotherhood of the Wheel,  called, King of the Road (which will be out on New Year’s Eve this year).  Tor wanted The Queen of Swords first, and then The Night Dahlia.  I’ve been very fortunate to have a publishing partner in Tor that has been very supportive of all three series.

For readers who aren’t familiar with the series, can you give us a brief overview?

The Nightwise books are my love letter to the Detective, Noir, and Hardboiled genres that I loved so much as a kid.  My protagonist, Laytham Ballard is a very powerful mage who started out with a promising and healthy future, but fell hard and long.  He’s kind of an occult rock star in his twilight years.

He was a mystical cop, one of the Nightwise who protect the world and humanity from occult threats, but he was a dirty cop, and he either got kicked out or quit, depending on who you ask.  Everyone in the occult underground, The Life, knows him, or at least his reputation.

He’s a drunk, a substance abuser, a con-man and worse.  He also is almost as badass as he thinks he is and can pull off magical stunts other wizards wouldn’t dare.  He tries to help people, to be the hero he is in his mind, but more often than not he fucks up and falls short.

In Nightwise he helped a dying friend revenge the death of his wife by tracking down a very, very bad wizard.  In The Night Dahlia, which takes place a few years after Nightwise, he is hired to find the daughter of a very powerful Fae crime lord, kind of “the Fairy Godfather,” if you will.  She’s fallen into the Los Angles porn scene and Ballard has to go back to L.A., his old stomping grounds, and revisit a lot of the damage he’s wrought, including his time with the Nightwise.

Laytham Ballard, the protagonist of The Night Dahlia, is one of my favorite “love to hate” characters. He’s sort of a jerk, but I can’t help liking him all the same. How much fun was it getting back into Laytham’s head for the sequel?

Full disclosure, there is quite bit of Laytham Ballard in me, or me in him…it’s complicated.  I love writing the character, and it’s a little scary how easy it is to get back into his head.  I usually take at least a week or two between projects to clear the old mindset out of my head.  Laytham Ballard is very different from Jimmie Aussapile, from the Brotherhood of the Wheel books, who I also identify with quite a bit.  It does take a little bit of time to “shift gears” and reorder my thoughts, but writing Laytham is like coming home.  Make of that what you will.

You introduce a character named Vigil Burris in The Night Dahlia, and he and Laytham are thrown together for much of the story. I thought the two of them were great together, and I got a real “buddy film” vibe from their interactions. What was your inspiration for their relationship?

I love the Robert B. Parker Spenser novels and I wanted to give Ballard someone to play off of who was an equal, kind of like a Hawk to Ballard’s Spencer, or Murtaugh to his Riggs, from the Lethal Weapon movies, so I came up with Vigil.  I had the idea for him for a while and had toyed with doing a novel based around Vigil and the Fae mafia.  Vigil and Ballard clash on a lot of things, but they both come from the same place, they’ve seen a lot that has shaped them.  They respect each other and they have each other’s number.  Ballard’s a bullshit artist, especially to himself, and he needed someone to call him on that.  In a lot of important ways, Vigil and Ballard complement each other.

I understand additional material was added to a re-release of Nightwise this year. Can you tell us what was added? Do I need to reread the book? (And believe me, that would not be a hardship!)

The new edition of Nightwise has a fantastic cover by the same artist that did the work on The Night Dahlia‘s gorgeous cover.  It includes a new Ballard short story called, The Wire Mother, that takes place in 2008, before the events of Nightwise.  I hope the extra short story will be an incentive to folks to pick up the new edition.  And thank you, if you do!

I’m always amazed by authors who can juggle more than one series at a time. How do you keep the momentum going for the three series you’re currently working on?

Research and dreaming up plots has always been fun.  Like with characterization aspects of the writing, it sometime takes a little pause between works to shift gears, but I find ideas for the series fly at me all the time.  My biggest stumbling block isn’t ideas or plots, it’s how fast I can get them out of my head onto paper.

Sometimes I do get excited for the next project, “the grass is always greener” syndrome, but with each book I’m learning more discipline, and more focus and that helps a lot, actually and also helps my speed at writing more projects.

I know you’re working on King of the Road, the sequel to The Brotherhood of the Wheel, which actually includes characters from Nightwise. What else can we expect to see from you in the near future? Any more books in the Golgotha series, for example?

Right now, I’m writing a new Golgotha book (working title is The Ghost Dance War) and I have the Golgotha novel one after this one plotted out.  I have ideas for at least two Nightwise books in my skull, and two Brotherhood of the Wheel novels in mind right now.

I also have an idea for a Nightwise/ Brotherhood crossover arc that would go across two books, one from each series.  And after a lot of emails and questions at conventions, I’m getting the initial plotting underway for a Memphis Mafia novel, based off the characters from Brotherhood of the Wheel.

Next up this year, I have a stand-alone novel project that I’m excited to get working on after I finish The Ghost Dance War.

Wow, that makes me extremely happy! What is something cool about writing The Night Dahlia that you’ve never revealed? For example, something you had to do special research for, or how an idea came about.

There is a YouTube series about porn actors and their day-to day lives that was fascinating and horrifying.  It helped me create some of the characters for the novel.  I also researched some porn industry mythology that was  pretty obscure and even had elements of urban myth, for one character that shows up in the book, and who was a real person, or as real as anyone is in pornography.

Also, I had to wander down some pretty creepy dark alleyways in Buddhism (yes, Buddhism) to research parts of the book.  One last tidbit.  There is an infamous real-life person in the book whose death occurred after we had put the book to bed, so our timeline is a little retro now, but not much.  Well worth it to have that asshole off the planet.

I couldn’t agree more! And finally, let’s do a fun lightning round of questions:

Favorite food?

Yes, please.  Spicy, bad for me, with occasional bouts of binge healthy eating.  I promised my daughter I’m going to try to eat better.

Favorite song?

I love music so much.  It really influences me in every aspect of my life. My “favorite song” changes over time.  Some songs take me back to different places, people, and times.  Some of my favorite music makers include Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Nine Inch Nails, Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, Howlin’ Wolf, Johnie Lee Hooker, Black Sabbath, The Pixies, How to Destroy Angels, The Sex Pistols, Joy Division, Bauhaus, David Lynch, Mozart, Shriekback, In this Moment, David Bowie, Five-Finger Death Punch, Devo, Skrillex, Lynyrd Skynyrd, AC/DC, Blue Oyster Cult…I could keep going all day.

Favorite TV show?

These days, Mindhunter.  I also love Hannibal, Luke Cage, the Santa Clarita Diet, Black Mirror, American Gods

Last book you read and loved?

Nos4A2 by Joe Hill and Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman.

Last movie you saw and loved?

Black Panther. My favorite movie of all time is Casablanca.

Favorite thing to do in your spare time?

Spend time with my son and daughter.

Thank you so much, Rod! I’m thrilled that we have so many upcoming books to look forward to:-D

About the Author:

R.S. (Rod) Belcher is an award-winning newspaper and magazine editor and reporter. Rod has been a private investigator, a DJ, a comic book store owner and has degrees in criminal law, psychology and justice and risk administration, from Virginia Commonwealth University.  He’s done Masters work in Forensic Science at The George Washington University, and worked  with the Occult Crime Taskforce for the Virginia General Assembly.

He lives in Roanoke Virginia with his children: Jonathan and Emily .

Find R.S. Belcher: Website | Twitter | Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Book Depository | IndieBound

Read my review of The Night Dahlia

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