Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Shawn Mackey whose recent book, This World of Love and Strife has been published on March 15, 2022.

Living in New Jersey for all his life, Shawn Mackey has been writing since childhood. Though his favorite genre is horror, he has a deep appreciation for fantasy influenced by mythology and science fiction that questions the modern world and its future.

Welcome to BookPleasures.com Shawn, thanks for taking part in our interview.

Bee: Please tell us something about This World of Love and Strife that is not in the summary.  (About the book, character you particularly enjoyed writing etc.)

Shawn: This will sound strange to anyone that’s read This World of Love and Strife or heard of the Japanese television show genre Tokusatsu, but the original story was most inspired by a show called Kamen Rider, also known as Masked Rider in the United States.

It’s about a man who was abducted by an evil organization and turned into a cyborg. He barely manages to escape before they can brainwash him and at the end of each episode he fights one of the organization’s cyborg monsters.

My story was a lot different except the very last part. I wanted to do a series of short novels where the protagonist investigated demonic activity, usually in the form of supernatural activity like ghost hauntings or sightings of mysterious cryptids, and after solving the novel’s mystery, would face down the demon in physical form and battle in hand-to-hand combat.

That latter detail was important because I like the idea of a guy who was tough enough to take down these monsters with his bare hands.

As I plotted out a few books, I realized it was going to be less episodic and more of a continuous story, but much of those original elements still remains.

The difficult part was making a heroic character in a horror-oriented setting. To fit the mood, I decided to start him off at his lowest point. The drug addicted misfit is far from the courageous saviour I initially imagined, but I think those elements occasionally shine through as the story goes on.

Bee: I always enjoy looking at the names that authors choose to give their characters. Where do you derive the names of your characters?  Are they based on real people you knew or now know in real life? How do you create names for your characters?

Shawn: I always do my best to avoid using names of people I know in real life. For side characters, I try to make their names enhance the setting if I’m writing fantasy.

For main characters, their names are as important as any other characteristic and usually set in stone from the start. I’ll sometimes change a side character’s name but main character names just about always stick. 

Bee: How completely do you develop your characters before beginning to write?

Shawn: I’m not extremely thorough but I do like to be prepared before starting. At the very least, I have down their background relevant to the story and their physical appearance in mind.

I don’t really need a full profile with their favourite food and favourite color and things like that. Their wants and needs are the most important aspects.

Everything comes easy after that. I usually have a small kernel of their personality in mind. That always unfolds with the actual writing. 

Bee: Which actor would you like to see playing the Cato?  How about Aldous? 

Shawn: The honest answer is I have no idea. The more interesting answer would be Robert Pattinson for Aldous and Sylvester Stallone as Cato.

Pattinson really turned me around with his amazing performance in The Lighthouse. Back in the 00s, the popularity of Twilight and its sparkling vampires got the famous movie monster some flack. Pattinson was the face of this as the lead.

It would be interesting to see him play a vampire who could almost be considered the evil version of that character.

Though he wasn’t who I had in mind while writing it, he’s a great first choice. As for Cato, the only actor I can visualize is Stallone as Rambo in First Blood.

 Of course, this was forty years ago so it doesn’t count, but I can’t think of any recent actors who simultaneously have the right physique and can play the troubled young man.

Bee: Tell us about your cover. Did you design it yourself? 

Shawn: I didn’t design the cover but it followed my basic requirement: black and white with red text.

Bee: What draws you to the horror and dark urban fantasy genres?

Shawn: I’ve had a fascination with horror since childhood that I think started with Goosebump books and Tales from the Crypt and later on into Stephen King novels and horror movies. I can’t pinpoint the appeal for me back then other than consuming adult entertainment as a kid.

A large part of it was probably the more mature themes that weren’t touched upon in the cartoons I was supposed to watch.

Though I lost interest when I got older and realized a lot of it wasn’t as good as I remembered, it all made an undeniable imprint on me.

Though I modeled my writing after literary classics when I initially started, the subject matter inevitably returned to themes and subjects from my past obsession with horror.

The vast majority of my writing inevitably melded my two favourite genres as a child, horror and fantasy. Almost always a combination of the two, which is mostly known as dark fantasy.

 It’s a fitting name since has the whimsy of fantasy and the dread of horror. I find it difficult to write a pure distillation of the two. One always creeps into the other, even if it’s only a few droplets.

Bee: When did you first have a desire to write?  How did this desire manifest itself?

Shawn: I wouldn’t call it a desire. It’s more of a compulsion, as though the books need to be written. I don’t always want to but it’s got to be done.

I first started writing in second grade after we had to do creative writing prompts in class. I found myself doing it after class.

From there, I would write about my favourite cartoon and video game characters. I didn’t start getting more creative until around fifth grade. I lost interest around seventh grade but started again a little bit in high school.

It wasn’t until a year after I graduated that my interest returned. I wish I could say what exactly renewed it but I’m unsure.

For about a year, it was mostly scribbling down story ideas. I started to take it more seriously after reading Stephen King’s On Writing. His advice to read four hours a day and write two-thousand words a day seemed like a decent enough blueprint.

I was reading about that much, now delving into older books like Dostoevsky and Dumas. I started writing two-thousand words a day and kept the routine for about two years before attempting to write an actual book.

I’d say the first two attempts were abysmal failures but the third was somewhat passable. From there, rather than stick to a daily routine I tried to write two or three books a year, which I’ve mostly kept to since then. 

Bee: What writers have you drawn inspiration from?

Shawn: I would say the primary three are Fyodor Dostoevsky, Robert E. Howard, and H.P. Lovecraft.

From Dostoevsky, I learned to create intricate characters with complex psychologies and realistic personalities. In his book, the internal narrative is just as important as the external narrative, if not more.

For any story I write, I use Howard’s short stories as a measure for exciting plots and larger than life characters.

If my story isn’t at least as engaging as one of his pulps, then it needs tuning. Lovecraft taught me how to create an unnerving atmosphere.

 Of course, this is mostly for writing horror, but works well for suspenseful scenes in general.

Bee: You are sitting in a coffee shop. What does your writer mind see?

Shawn: If I’m literally sitting in a coffee shop then my writer mind is thinking about the book I’m writing or going to write and not paying any attention to the actual coffee shop.

If we’re speaking of a hypothetical coffee shop, I don’t go to one often unless it’s a rest stop on a trip.

In that case, I’d probably make note of the cashier. There’s probably a hipster in the corner leeching free Wi-Fi and several people walking in and out of the bathroom while I wait for my order.

All in all, I’m trying to get in and out as soon as possible.

Bee: What do you do when you are not writing?

Shawn: Mostly reading. If I’m watching a movie or playing a video game, it’ll be related to whatever genre I’m writing at the time so I don’t get too distracted.

I try to make sure my hobbies enhance my writing, though when they sometimes don’t cross over, I’ll occasionally get an idea from them, but it’s almost always the other way around. I’m basically a writing machine.

Bee: What are you currently working on?

Shawn: I’m getting ready to write a new horror novel within the next week or so.

I end up incorporating a bit of the genre in all my work whether I set out from the start or not. It’s been a while since I wrote a pure horror story rather than the dark fantasy subgenre so I’m interested in seeing if it’ll be different than my past attempts.

Bee: Thanks again and good luck with This World Of Love and Strife, as well as your future endeavors.

Follow Here To Read Bee's Review of This World Of Love and Strife