Today we are interviewing Michael S. Walker on his newly released book: Vampire Henry. This book will be coming out on Amazon shortly and currently on Horrified Press.

You’re new book, The Vampire Henry was published on October 8. What gave you the idea for your new book?

I have always loved vampires, probably since I saw Bela Lugosi in the original Dracula when I was a kid. And I HATED what Stephenie Meyer did with the genre. Really? Vampires who glitter and strut around in the day? So I wanted to write a vampire book that was the total antithesis on that, as unglamorous as it gets. I have always been a fan of the misanthropic poet/novelist Charles Bukowski, and the idea of turning him into a bloodsucker greatly appealed to me.( If your readers don’t know who he is, he was a writer who was an alcoholic and worked at the post office for a long stretch of his career until he became famous.) In my novel I just substituted his addiction to booze with blood. I must add that the book is based LOOSELY on Bukowski. A lot of it comes from my own experiences.

This is your second book. Tell us how it’s different from the first book, 7-22. Any similarities between the two?

Different as night and day. 7-22 is a YA fantasy novel, greatly indebted to Lewis Caroll and the kind of absurdist logic he created in his Alice books. It is whimsical and humorous. Henry is an adult novel, full of graphic sex and violence. Definitely R rated stuff. It actually scares me how different this book is from my first!

Was writing and publishing your second novel easier? Did you change your writing, editing, or publishing process? Any lessons learned?

It was pretty much the same process, writing wise. If I am passionate about a project, it does not take me long to see it through. Henry probably took me all of three months to complete. And publishing was easier too because I had more connections this time around! And as far as lessons learned? One word—PROMOTE PROMOTE PROMOTE!

What are you doing next? Are you going to continue to write vampire novels or are you going to move on to something completely diffferent?

Right now I am working on writing a novel about a rock group in a small town, It is largely autobiographical, and the prose is close to something Kerouac or Hunter S. Thompson might churn out. I was tempted really to do a sequel to Henry, because the ending, frankly, calls out for a sequel. We will see! And the idea of making a graphic novel from my first book, 7-22 appeals to me. But I need to see, contractually, if I can pursue that idea.

What advice would you give authors who are planning on writing their second book?

Do it. Don’t be discouraged if your first book went nowhere. Learn from that and move on. If you are a real writer you will find a way…