Robert Masello's Blood and Ice (Reviews, Nov. 10) blends Victorian-era romance, an Antarctic adventure set in the present-day and a science-based horror story.
What audience are you hoping to reach with Blood and Ice?
I hope it will appeal to people who read authors as diverse as Anne Rice, James Rollins, and Preston and Child. But secretly? I would also like to reach women who might be drawn in by the romance between a dashing young cavalry officer aristocrat and a brave and beautiful nurse who works for Florence Nightingale. My mom read books like those, and I think in some ways I was trying to write a book that she might have enjoyed.
Many horror books and movies use the Antarctic as a setting. Did this figure into your planning?
Not only did it figure in, I stole liberally! No, wait, I paid homage. I had the closing scenes of Frankenstein in mind, for instance, when I wrote my own climactic chase across the icy landscape of the South Pole. That book made a very powerful impression on me when I was a kid, as did Dracula, and to some extent I think I'm always trying my best to recreate those same scary but awe-inspiring effects in my own work.
How did you go about your research? Did you go to the Antarctic?
Nope, I'm much too chicken to attempt the Antarctic; I get the willies just driving out to Encino. I do a lot of research online, in the library and by steeping myself like a teabag in dozens of books on the subject. Strangely, I think I write better about places I've never been than those that I have. Go figure.
Can you tell us what you're working on next?
I could, but I'm so neurotic that I'd probably have to change it then. One rule I try to observe in my writing life is almost never to talk about what I'm working on. Partly it's superstition—I'll jinx it—and partly it's because I can't bear people asking me, “How's that book about the exploding dog going?” months after I've realized what a stupid idea it was and abandoned it. But more than anything else, I'm afraid that I'll leach the idea of whatever power it had over my imagination. I think that a book is sort of like a balloon, and that the more you talk about it, the more the air escapes. I have enough trouble just getting them blown up in the first place.
