Neil Leckman's Blog - Posts Tagged "interview"
The 1st interview of 2012
Ink Drop Interview. Later this year I'll be doing one for the newletter at work.
Neil Leckman Nation by Walt Bonora
This was published in the September 2012 HAC TICS
He began his life as a baby. The first words out of his mouth were “alien infestation.” Then he morphed into a science fiction writer of short stories and poems with names like Zombie Tuna, Wurms Evolution and Evil in Flight. With nearly 100 short stories and poetry in print, Neil Leckman is quite the prolific writer.
By day, he is a CPD voucher examiner, but at night he dons the mask and cape of a writer who takes us into a world that few could imagine. Think of a guy stuck in an elevator and all the buttons he pushes turn into finger snapping critters. In Wurms Evolution, trilobites evolve into wurms – centipede-like creatures that eat human brains.
Dorothy Davies, his editor who lives on the Isle of Wight in England, noted humorously, “beneath that smiling exterior beats a heart of pure dark¬ness, which emerges only when Neil starts to write…the rest of the time he is one nice guy.” So one could ask, as I have, what drives Neil? Why sci-ence fiction?
“Well, I like the unimaginable, the unthinkable, and frankly I like to give readers a good scare,” Neil said. OK. That was good enough for me. Don’t want to rattle a man who created the Spider King, a creature so deadly it eats human souls. “When I was a kid, my stepbrother had all these models of monsters in our bedroom. He thought they were real because, he said, ‘they have to be real. Who could make up this stuff?
“Another time my brother said, ‘Wouldn’t it be creepy if someone was watching us through the front window?’ We both turned and saw a pale face in the glass and ran scream¬ing into the kitchen. Next thing we know someone is pound¬ing on the kitchen door and we both ran screaming to our bedroom. That went on for a few minutes, back and forth, until one of us recognized my dad’s voice. He had locked him¬self out and was trying to get us to open the door.”
In Tacoma, Wash., Neil worked as a security guard at a ship¬yard. “There was a guy there who insisted he was a were¬wolf,” Neil said. He didn’t stay there long and took a job as a bouncer in a club in Spokane, Wash.
In the 1990’s his journeys landed him in Denver where he worked for a company that installed background music for funeral homes. “I tried to infuse some music from horror films to scare the funeral directors, but try and scare a funeral director. Can’t be done. I mean, they’re around dead people all day.” Then one night, in June 2010, he woke up in a cold sweat and said, “I gotta start writing about aliens laying waste to the world.” And so he did. His first paid assignment was writing an introduction to a series of Frankenstein stories called Stitched–Up, published in August 2010. He produced his first collection of stories in 2011 with his oldest son. Since then, he has published a book of art, a collection of short sto¬ries and a book of poetry. His works have been published in numerous science fiction anthologies, many of them available on Amazon.com.
But Neil isn’t just a writer. Something else lurks inside him – and that is an ability to create bizarre artwork, which often accompanies his stories.
Neil Leckman often evokes a kind of Jimmy Buffet, Margaritaville, low latitude attitude. But at night, watch out. A bone crushing, soul snapping, mind evaporating thriller could be just around the corner. If you want to scare yourself, check out Neil’s blog at: http://virtualcubicle.net/cubification
He began his life as a baby. The first words out of his mouth were “alien infestation.” Then he morphed into a science fiction writer of short stories and poems with names like Zombie Tuna, Wurms Evolution and Evil in Flight. With nearly 100 short stories and poetry in print, Neil Leckman is quite the prolific writer.
By day, he is a CPD voucher examiner, but at night he dons the mask and cape of a writer who takes us into a world that few could imagine. Think of a guy stuck in an elevator and all the buttons he pushes turn into finger snapping critters. In Wurms Evolution, trilobites evolve into wurms – centipede-like creatures that eat human brains.
Dorothy Davies, his editor who lives on the Isle of Wight in England, noted humorously, “beneath that smiling exterior beats a heart of pure dark¬ness, which emerges only when Neil starts to write…the rest of the time he is one nice guy.” So one could ask, as I have, what drives Neil? Why sci-ence fiction?
“Well, I like the unimaginable, the unthinkable, and frankly I like to give readers a good scare,” Neil said. OK. That was good enough for me. Don’t want to rattle a man who created the Spider King, a creature so deadly it eats human souls. “When I was a kid, my stepbrother had all these models of monsters in our bedroom. He thought they were real because, he said, ‘they have to be real. Who could make up this stuff?
“Another time my brother said, ‘Wouldn’t it be creepy if someone was watching us through the front window?’ We both turned and saw a pale face in the glass and ran scream¬ing into the kitchen. Next thing we know someone is pound¬ing on the kitchen door and we both ran screaming to our bedroom. That went on for a few minutes, back and forth, until one of us recognized my dad’s voice. He had locked him¬self out and was trying to get us to open the door.”
In Tacoma, Wash., Neil worked as a security guard at a ship¬yard. “There was a guy there who insisted he was a were¬wolf,” Neil said. He didn’t stay there long and took a job as a bouncer in a club in Spokane, Wash.
In the 1990’s his journeys landed him in Denver where he worked for a company that installed background music for funeral homes. “I tried to infuse some music from horror films to scare the funeral directors, but try and scare a funeral director. Can’t be done. I mean, they’re around dead people all day.” Then one night, in June 2010, he woke up in a cold sweat and said, “I gotta start writing about aliens laying waste to the world.” And so he did. His first paid assignment was writing an introduction to a series of Frankenstein stories called Stitched–Up, published in August 2010. He produced his first collection of stories in 2011 with his oldest son. Since then, he has published a book of art, a collection of short sto¬ries and a book of poetry. His works have been published in numerous science fiction anthologies, many of them available on Amazon.com.
But Neil isn’t just a writer. Something else lurks inside him – and that is an ability to create bizarre artwork, which often accompanies his stories.
Neil Leckman often evokes a kind of Jimmy Buffet, Margaritaville, low latitude attitude. But at night, watch out. A bone crushing, soul snapping, mind evaporating thriller could be just around the corner. If you want to scare yourself, check out Neil’s blog at: http://virtualcubicle.net/cubification
