Contacted via snail mail, Bentley Little graciously jotted down answers to a few questions for this interview.

Q: Why are so many of your books set in Arizona?

A: Because I’m from Arizona, my wife and I have a house there and a lot of my family still lives

in the state. I know and love the area. And it’s the territory I’ve staked out for literary

purposes. Stephen King has Maine, Dean Koontz has California, Joe Lansdale has Texas, I

have Arizona.

Q: You have a reputation for being a technophobe who’s afraid of computers. Is this true?

A: Not really. In fact, I spent 8 years writing computer instructions for the city of Costa Mesa

(admittedly a job that I hated). But I’m not on the internet or anything, and the reason is simple: time. Next to rock stars and actors, authors are probably the most egocentric people on the planet. I’m no different. You have to have a strong ego to write in the first place, to assume that your ideas are important enough to be published and read by others. So I know that if I WAS on the internet, I would be spending far too much time looking up information about myself, writing fake reviews of my work (as so many authors do) and defending myself against criticism—time that could be better spent writing. So I avoid temptation and am not online at all.

Q: Your novels are all interconnected, with characters from one book popping up in another and everything sort of tied together by the shadowy figure of suspense writer Phillip Emmons, your pseudonym on the novel DEATH INSTINCT. Would you care to comment on this?

A: No.

Q: Could you give us some brief thoughts on each of your novels?

The Revelation: THE REVELATION was written for my Master’s project when I was in

college. I’d probably be embarrassed by it if I went back and read it now, but it was my first book and will always have a fond place in my heart.

The Mailman: This one’s probably my own personal favorite. Part of it is because the family

is a fictionalized version of my own (with my parents and my brother—I took

myself out of the loop). Their house is our house, the town is our town. The

impetus for the story even came from a real incident that occurred when I was

working as a reporter. But aside from the personal connections, the theme of

the work has resonance for me; the ideas about conformity and individuality

and groupthink I still think are very important. I’ve addressed some of these

concerns since but not as well, I don’t think, and not as succinctly.

Death Instinct: Next to DOMINION, my least favorite book. Writing it was pure drudgery, and I was forced by my then-editor to try and turn it into more of a

mystery/suspense story rather than a horror novel. You’d have to be a moron not to know the identity of the murderer the first time he appears, but my editor wanted me to drop hints that the killings could have been committed by several of the novel’s other characters. I did so, reluctantly, and the result is a very stilted, awkward read. My intial conception was to let the reader know the murderer’s identity immediately and have tension be generated by the innocence and naivete of the characters, who would be in close proximity to the killer but remain in the dark about him until the end.

The Summoning: My wife, who at the time was my girlfriend, was talking to me one night

about Chinese vampires, who have a completely different background and set

of weaknesses than our traditional western vampires. I thought it might make

a unique story, and I decided to set the novel in a bigoted Southwestern town,

where the lone Chinese family would have a difficult time convincing local

rednecks that what they knew about vampires was all wrong. I like this book,

and it seems to be the favorite of quite a few fans.

University: My biggest seller to date. People seem to either love or hate this book—and

there are plenty of readers in both camps. I rather like it. It’s gross and

outrageous, but I think the satire works and, supernatural events aside, it’s a

pretty accurate portrait of my college years. The only thing I don’t like is the

ending. It’s weak. I couldn’t think of a good way to vanquish the evil, so I

just had my characters blow up the university. When Stephen King can’t

think of a good ending, he also seems to go for explosions and conflagrations,

so I consider myself in good company.

Dominion: Quite possibly my worst novel. At the time, I had a contract with a British

publisher, and they were putting out my books every nine months. I’d slacked off, a deadline was looming, so I dusted off the first half of this novel, which I’d written some time before, and hastily finished it. I think it was also a little too similar in tone to UNIVERSITY.

The Ignored: This is one of my favorites. It was actually written after THE SUMMONING

and before UNIVERSITY, but was published out of sequence. I thought it was a strong novel with crossover potential, and I wanted real money for it. My editor at Zebra loved the story and wanted to meet my price and put it out as a hardcover with a big push behind it. Then she left the company, the new editor was not as enthusiastic, and I turned down their offer. I tried shopping it elsewhere, but no one wanted it. So I shelved the book and let it sit there until I got the amount of money I thought the novel deserved. THE IGNORED garnered the best reviews of my career, hands down.

The Store: Another strong one. There was some restructuring going on at my publishing

company when this book came out, and it kind of got lost in the shuffle, not getting the push it deserved. I thought this was (and is) a very timely novel, speaking to what is happening to communities all over the United States. Like a little-seen movie that gets a second life on cable, however, this book seems to be gaining quite a few new readers lately.

The House: Another love-it-or-hate-it book. This one’s provoked some strong reactions. A

lot of readers who’ve written to me seem confused by THE HOUSE, and a lot of them have misinterpreted what it’s about. Originally written for my British publisher, this was to be very ambitious in scope. The first half turned out pretty much the way I’d envisioned it. But then the publisher rejected THE IGNORED and I was forced to finish this book quickly in order to meet a deadline and get a new book to market on time. Consequently, the second half was rushed. I still like THE HOUSE, but it’s not what it could have been.

The Town: It had been awhile since THE SUMMONING, and I thought it was time for

another ethnic-themed work. This time, I dug into my own background, playing with and building on some Russian traditions told to me by my grandmother. In fact the grandmother in the novel, who is kind of the hero (or heroine) of the book, is modeled pretty closely after my own.

The Walking: Actually, this is not the novel I would have written after THE TOWN had it

Been entirely up to me (that would have been THE ASSOCIATION, which comes out next). But I could tell that I was on the way out with my British publisher, so I decided to write something that would appeal to my editor. His complaint with my work had always been that the evil in my fiction was too vague, not specific enough. His taste ran toward vengeful spirits and demons out to conquer the world. So I decided to write a novel with a clearly defined reason behind the supernatural goings on. Ironically, the publisher still dumped me. To please myself, I set a chunk of the book in the past and gave it a western flavor. It turned out much better than I expected.

My thanks to Mr. Bentley Little for making this rare exception.