Interview William J. Calabrese

by

 Tricia McGill

Tricia--Where did you get the idea for Endless Place?

William--To tell you the truth, I don’t really remember. Many of my ideas are years--even decades--old. They have been waiting all that time for me to find the right frame for them, so to speak. The idea for Borderland must be thirty years old. Idea: a guy falls asleep on a late night commuter train, misses his stop, and gets in a whole lot of trouble because of it. It just took me a while to figure out just what the trouble would be. The basic idea for The Endless Place--a house that seems to have a life of its own--is at least ten years old, maybe older. As they say: Years in the making! Cast of dozens!

Tricia--Do you always write in this genre?

William--No, my natural habitat is the historical novel. I do allow myself road trips, however. Borderland and The Endless Place were road trips. In the not too distant future I plan to allow myself another, with a mystery/adventure set aboard a cruise ship. But, in the meantime you can always find me down on the back lot at Nineteenth Century Fox.

Tricia--Tell us a bit about your hero and heroine, and your villain if you have one.

William--My hero (like Phil Sarone in Borderland) is an ordinary guy, just trying to make it through, my heroine is a ghost, and my villain is the Evil One and all his minions.

Tricia--Do you think villains are important?

William--Villains are very important--if you have one. Sometimes the villain is circumstances, nature, or the dark side of the human spirit. Sometimes the villain is just some tragic flaw in the main character.

Tricia--Where do you find inspiration for your characters? Do you base them on people you know or have known or are they completely fictitious?

William--In my historicals, I like to use people who actually existed. Not famous people necessarily (although George Washington does seem to make frequent guest appearances), but little-known people, everyday people. From the scant historical evidence I try to figure out what they must have been like. I don’t knowingly base my characters on people I know or have known, but subconsciously there must be some of that going on.

Tricia--Do you have a day to day schedule that you keep to in your writing or do you just write when the mood hits you?

William--I don’t have a schedule, as such, but I try to write something in my current work-in-progress every day. I find that, during periods when I am able to do this, my productivity and the quality of my work is much higher than it is in periods when I am only writing when the spirit moves me. The writer who sits around waiting for ‘inspiration’ ends up writing very little or nothing at all. Inspiration usually comes while you are banging away at the old word processor. You have to earn the visits.

Tricia--What is your long-term goal?

William--To go on producing entertaining fiction, at the rate of a book or two a year, until somebody in Authority tells me to stop. I think of my writing as not goal-related but as compulsive behavior. I have to write. It’s what I do and what I am.

Tricia--How long have you been writing?

William--Ever since I could. Most of my life, in other words.

Tricia--How long did it take you to write Endless Place?

William--It took me about six months. This is about par for a non-historical work that requires little or no research. Historicals can take longer--much longer.

Tricia--What book are you currently working on?

William--I am presently working on another historical, To See Father Washington. This story takes place in 1790 and is about a ten-year-old boy who lives in northern Massachusetts. When his father is falsely arrested for murder, the boy decides to walk to New York City (then the temporary Capitol of the United States) to enlist the aid of ‘Father’ George Washington

Tricia--What other books have you out there or coming in the near future?

William--I also have Borderland, a horror/sci-fi thing that was originally published by another publisher and was republished by Wings in April. This book won a 2002 Eppie Award. Wings has two other books of mine scheduled for publication, To Capture an Eagle (January, 2003), and First in the East (April, 2003). These two are historical novels, set during the Revolutionary War and the several decades following.