The First Scene: Where Bullets and Beasts Intersect: A Guest Post by Keith Rosson
A gripping and gritty take on grief, family and revenge from the author of Fever House. Read on for an exclusive essay from Keith Rosson on writing Coffin Moon.
Hardcover $30.00
Coffin Moon: A Novel
Coffin Moon: A Novel
By Keith Rosson
In Stock Online
Hardcover $30.00
From the author of the “exciting, suspenseful, horrifying” (Stephen King) Fever House, a Vietnam veteran and his adopted niece hunt—and are hunted by—the vampire that slaughtered their family.
From the author of the “exciting, suspenseful, horrifying” (Stephen King) Fever House, a Vietnam veteran and his adopted niece hunt—and are hunted by—the vampire that slaughtered their family.
First draft, first scene I ever wrote for my new novel, Coffin Moon, the protagonist is sitting there in the bathroom stall of some dive bar in some nondescript town in North Dakota. Early 1970s, Vietnam war still going hot. Noise coming in under the door. And the main character, Duane Minor, he’s sitting there in this stall with a revolver in his hand, terrified but resolute, steeling himself for what needs to be done next. He has a trio of silver bullets left, and hopes it’s enough to kill the vampire, seated just outside, that has utterly decimated his life.
Horror and crime tackle the same innate idea, just in different ways. In both genres it’s all about that terrible and fascinating moment after. The singular moment that lives beyond the mundane and understood world. It’s about reaching that terminal point in which everything has just barely gone dark, gone too wrong, gone too far. After the monster has been seen but not yet clamped down on your arm. After the bullet’s been fired but has yet to find its mark. That’s the space where so much possibility exists, that single stretched-out moment.
To me, all good fiction hinges on authenticity. On character, mostly. If I can make you, the reader, believe that these people in my books are human, capable of love and pain and hope, that they’re entirely fallible, any plot I might decide to throw your way becomes almost secondary. Because I’ve done my job: You believe. You root for these people to win and wince when they fail and are sad when they die.
I’ve wanted to write a vampire novel for years and hadn’t felt ready until now. To me, the reality of vampirism would be such a far cry from the posh, well-heeled and wealthy aristocrats we’ve seen throughout media. A vampire’s survival, after all, is predicated on one thing: murder. Killing and then drinking the blood of the slain. And to survive for any length of time as a vampire would require such a sociopathic willingness to commit those deeds that few would have the stomach for it.
And for those who manage it? Who’ve found that they have that proclivity, that willingness? Well, watch out. And what happens when a man like Duane Minor, driven mad with heartbreak and grief, meets one of those people?
That scene was the kernel. That singular moment in which Duane, flawed and broken, decides to step out into that bar with that revolver in his hand and move past the previously known and understood world, God help anyone that gets in his way.
