Horror World Conversation with F. Paul Wilson

F. Paul Wilson never set out to write a franchise character. But there was something about one of the characters in his novel The Tomb, a guy called Repairman Jack, that he just couldn’t shake. Fourteen years after Jack’s first appearance he resurfaced in Legacies, and he hasn’t gone away since.

But he’s about to.

Later this month, F. Paul Wilson’s penultimate Repairman Jack book, Fatal Error, hits the shelves, followed by next year’s The Dark at the End. These two works mark the end of the guy that Wilson says “hijacked” his career over 25 years ago – but that doesn’t mean Wilson has run out of stories to tell about the fan favorite.

On the eve of what are sure to be a couple of the biggest releases of his career, Wilson was kind enough to take a few moments to chat with Horrorworld about Repairman Jack, medical thrillers, e-books, and much more.

HW: What are the fictional characters and/or real people who have influenced your character Repairman Jack?

FPW: Well, he's kind of a pulp hero except he doesn't fight crime—he could be considered a career criminal himself, and some of his best friends are on the wrong side of the law. As I've said before, Jason Bourne UN-influenced him in that I tried to make him everything Jason Bourne was not. I made him blue-collar, self-taught, and fallible with no Special Forces training, no CIA or police background, no connection to officialdom. In other words, no safety net. He can't call on the system because he’s under the system’s radar. He has to rely on his own wits and his own network.

Your first Repairman Jack novel, The Tomb, came out in 1984, and it was fourteen years before the second one, Legacies. I’ve read where you said you saw potential in Jack to be a franchise character in that first book, but that you weren’t ready to write a series. What changed your mind?

In 1996 I was on the last of a 3-book contract for medical thrillers and bored to death with medical thrillers. I had an idea for a fairly straight thriller called Legacies with a science-fictiony maguffin and Repairman Jack was perfect for the protag. I decided what the hell and went ahead and wrote it. To keep the “medical” in the thriller, I had a doctor hire him. See? Doctor in thriller=medical thriller.  The publisher went for it and the response was terrific. I did another (Conspiracies) and then All the Rage, and soon Jack hijacked my career.

The release of the penultimate Repairman Jack book, Fatal Error, is coming in October, and we know the last one, The Dark at the End, is coming in 2011. What’s it been like to write the final entries in this series that’s been part of your professional life for so long? Relief? Sadness? A mixture of the two?

Relief, certainly. The major arc – the cosmic conflict between the Ally and the Otherness – has accrued critical mass and needs to detonate.  I can't draw it out any longer without vitiating the series. Nor do I want to. It's time to pay off on everything I've been building toward. I’ll miss noshing with Abe, drafts at Julio’s. And it’s with no little trepidation that I step away from a guy who has come to define my career.

What can you tell us about these last two books?

They're really one novel. The Dark at the End picks up two weeks after the close of Fatal Error, which itself dovetails with Reprisal (to be re-released as a trade paperback early next spring). Glaeken has been holding Jack in check from going after Rasalom. Because of the combination of events in Fatal Error and Reprisal, Gleaken unleashes Jack for a direct, frontal assault in The Dark at the End. Jack goes after Rasalom with everything he's got.

Are you prepared for the inevitable feedback from some readers who aren’t going to be happy with the way the series ends?

It's already here. Everyday the repairmanjack.com mailbox has email ranging from grief to fury over the loss of Jack. Lee Child seemed pretty surprised when I told him. "What's the thinking behind that?" I told him what I just told you: It's time.

As you progressed through the series, was there ever a desire to go back and rewrite some of the earlier material, much in the way Stephen King did with his first Dark Tower book?

Oh, I've done that. I revised The Tomb because I thought it was overwritten. I tweaked Reborn and Reprisal, and I've done a huge rewrite of Nightworld to bring it into line with all the changes I've made while writing the Jack series. The final Nightworld comes out in 2012 and will officially cap my Secret History of the World. No fiction beyond Nightworld in that timeline.

If you get a really good Repairman Jack idea in the future, will you consider revisiting the character?

Oh, I plan to do about 3 more set in his early years between his arrival in NYC and The Tomb. I'm going to fill in the gaps where he gets to know Abe and Julio and becomes the guy we meet in The Tomb. Then that's it. Then you'll know all I know about him.

What’s the future of the young Repairman Jack series after the last novel is released?

I contracted for three books and that will be that. The last one (Jack: Secret Vengeance) is due in February. They've been extremely well received, but that's all I want to do. Too many ripple effects into the adult books. I want to keep the whole series consistent.

What’s going on with the Repairman Jack movie? You’re on record as being less-than-thrilled with the film version of The Keep – does that experience make you nervous about a possible new movie?

Not much at all is happening.  Right now they could cast PeeWee Herman and it would be fine with me. Just make the goddamn movie.

Are there works of yours outside the Repairman Jack series that you would like to see adapted? Are there any writers or directors you think would be particularly well-suited for your work?

First off I want to see The Keep remade, but the rights are so tangled, I doubt that will ever happen; Michael Mann will do everything in his power to prevent another director from showing him up. I'd love to see Midnight Mass – the novel, not the novella – done with good actors and a decent budget. I think The Fifth Harmonic could be a great little film; and since it's set in Mexico, it could be made on the cheap. Masque (available these days only as an ebook under our original title, DNA Wars) will make a totally kick-ass SF film.

If you could steer readers who are only familiar with the Repairman Jack material towards other works of yours, where would you have them start?

Read the Adversary Cycle: The Keep, Reborn, The Touch, The Tomb, Reprisal, Nightworld.  If you like SF, read the LaNague series and DNA Wars, all available as cheap ebooks. There's Black Wind, possibly my best novel ever. And for stuff off the beaten track, try Virgin or Mirage or The Fifth Harmonic. Like medical thrillers? The Select, Implant, Deep as the Marrow. I've written about every freakin' genre except romance and western.

There’s a lot of nervousness, excitement, and hand-wringing about the move toward electronic publishing. What’s your take – as a writer and as a reader – on this new digital age?

I love it and I've embraced it.  I hate the piracy, but the leeches are always with us. I've put all titles from my backlist to which I still own e-rights up online as ebooks.  As I write this I've just finished my contribution to a four-way collaboration with Blake Crouch, Joe Konrath (as Jack Kilborn), and Jeff Strand.  It's a straight-to-ebook novel called Draculas, and we had a super-fun time writing it. If only all novels could be this easy and fast. 70k words in 5 weeks (plus 40k words of email). I'm glad to see I can still keep up with the younger guys. These are three excellent horror/thriller writers, turning in sharp, clean prose at an amazing rate. It's real horror, lots of gore, tons of action, and a fair amount of humor. This begs to be filmed.

What else do you have lined up that readers can look forward to?

Besides Draculas and the early Jack books, none I can talk about at the moment. A couple of projects are in negotiation, and I should have contracts to sign soon, but I never discuss a project until it's a for-sure done deal.

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