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F. Paul Wilson
The Official F. Paul Wilsom Homepage
You're
likely to find a trend running through a lot of my featured author lists.
Aside from the fact that each of the writers listed is, in my opinion an
excellent writer, many of them are also really, really nice people. I know
this, because in many cases I've had the distinct honor of meeting the writers
in person. That's a bonus in my book, a pleasant side effect of being in
the industry.
F. Paul
Wilson is no exception to the list when it comes to being a genuinely likable
person. He's "good people" as my mother is fond of saying. And, of course,
he's disgustingly talented. As I have said before and will say again, I
am jaded. I've been reading horror for years, and I have been STUDYING horror
for almost my entire life. Be it movies, television shows, comic books,
novels, short stories or just plain a gathering of people recalling fond
ghost stories and legends they've heard in the past, I have been on a constant
diet of horror for as long as I can remember.
My mother
raised me to be a gentleman, while my brothers (Thank you Kurt and Steve)
fostered within me a passionate love of the macabre. The end result is that
I can admire even the worst attempts at horror, but very few of them ever
give me a genuine chill.
What,
exactly is my point here? My point is simply this: F. Paul Wilson managed
to scare the crap out of me on a couple of occasions. He actually had me
physically shuddering, and pausing in the middle of an intensely satisfying
read to give serious contemplation to the full ramifications of the scene
I'd just finished reading. I read it again and the same thing happened again.
It wasn't a fluke, it was a moment of true fear and honest to God terror.
It almost never happens to me, not when I'm reading and not when I'm watching
a movie. But Paul did it, he scared the hell out of me.
That,
ladies and gentleman, is a rare accomplishment. I forgot that I was reading
a collection of words on paper, and was swallowed whole by the images and
intensity generated by those words. What an absolute delight! Which
book? Well, I did say twice, didn't I? Both of the books are in The Adversary
Cycle: Six books long, and I find myself wanting to read them again,
despite the lengthening list of books I still have to read. The books, just
for the record are as follows: The Keep, The Tomb, The
Touch, Reborn, Reprisal and Nightworld. Find them,
read them, and savor them. They are a treat of absolutely epic proportions.
Hollywood couldn't touch 'em on a bet, and the one time they tried with
The Keep, they made an excellent movie that was still an extremely
pale reflection of the depth and power of the original material. F. Paul
Wilson has the almost unnatural ability to make a reader sink into the story
and forget that there's a world waiting beyond the pages of a book. And
The Adversary Cycle is just one (or six, depending on your opinion) example
of his talent. Every character he writes is ALIVE, and that is a rare and
precious gift. His medical thrillers like Implant and The Touch
(Though Paul might disagree with me on that last one), his science fiction
novels, like Dydeetown World and Masques (With Matthew Costello
another future featured author) and his short stories are all just as richly
embroidered as his supernatural horror novels. Simply put: He's one of the
best writers around right now. Oh, and
before I forget, he's also the creator of my all time favorite hero in any
book, Repairman Jack. Repairman Jack is everything a hero should be. He's
fast, he's intelligent, he's seriously capable of causing massive injuries
to his foes and he's human. I'm in the process of finishing Legacies,
where we FINALLY get to run across Jack again. (He's also shown up in The
Adversary Cycle, along with a cast of equally human and wonderful characters.)
And I have once again found myself in a world that is just slightly richer
than the real one, just a touch more real than most writers ever manage
to create. A reviewer
who recently reviewed my forthcoming novel Under The Overtree gave
me what is, to date, one of the finest compliments I have ever received.
He told me he's love to see Jonathan Crowley (One of the main characters
in the novel) teamed up with Repairman Jack. I had a grin for hours afterwards.
That anyone in one of my novels could even be mentioned in the same breath
as my all time favorite hero in a novel is enough to give me hope that I'll
get the hang of his writing thing one of these days. If you haven't read
F. Paul Wilson, you should. If you HAVE read his works, then nothing I've
told you here is likely to come as a surprise.
Did I
mention, by the way, that Paul is a really nice guy? He is. I wouldn't lie
about a thing like that.
