LJ Talks To…Best selling Repairman Jack novelist, F. Paul Wilson

by Christopher Ryan, New Milford, NJ -- Library Journal, 11/6/2007 6:58:00 AM

 The New York Times bestselling author of 30 novels, F. Paul Wilson, is on a roll: his 11th Repairman Jack adventure, Bloodlines, is earning solid reviews and steady sales; June 2008 marks the debut of a YA series based on Repairman Jack’s early adventures; and progress is finally being made in the 12-year effort to bring Repairman Jack to the big screen. This is in addition to a continuing series of Borderlands Press’s deluxe editions, and the popularity of a newsletter and website (www.repairmanjack.com). Christopher Ryan spoke with him about what makes his best-known character so appealing, his fans, and why he fought pleas for more Repairman Jack novels for so long. So, what makes the character so popular with thriller/horror readers?

 In creating Repairman Jack, I took every cliché about the loner hero and turned them on their head. Jack is closer to the reader than, say, Ludlum’s Jason Bourne. You know, trained by the government, still somewhat connected to the government; that super-confident, kind of bigger-than-life character. I wanted a guy who was self-taught and feeling his way forward. And people love that. They could never be Jason Bourne; they have a better chance at being Jack. He’s a very regular guy; people can see themselves having a beer with him.

 But you knew people loved Jack from his debut in The Tomb. Why did you resist writing additional adventures for 14 years?

 Honestly, Jack wasn’t intended as a series character. I wasn’t interested in doing a series at the time. I wanted to finish The Adversary Cycle (an eight volume series including The Keep, The Tomb, The Touch, Reborn, Reprisal,and Nightworld). I had other books I wanted to write. I am surprised [by Jack’s enduring popularity]. I didn’t think it would go on this long. But I have been able to do what I wanted to do: an H.P. Lovecraftian haunted house story (The Haunted Air), a drug tale (All The Rage), a fish out of water story (Gateways).

 You’ve said that one of the bigger surprises Repairman Jack has held for you is who reads it. Care to elaborate?

 Half the people who post on the website are women. There may be more men registered, but women are much more active on the site. I’ve asked them, because I originally thought of Jack as men’s action fiction. They said they see him as a realistic person who could be a white knight, one with tarnished armor, but a white knight nonetheless. No masked hero stuff, no mansion; he lives in a small Upper West Side apartment. They believe they could run into him around New York City. And they feel his code is honorable, even though he’s a career criminal. My website is even run by two women, Lisa and Susan, who absolutely love the guy.

 New York City and all five boroughs figure prominently in most of the Repairman Jack novels as do Long Island and New Jersey. What drives you to write so intimately about the area?

 I came of age in Manhattan as a high school kid. I knew the subway like the back of my hand, knew where to go to get firecrackers in Chinatown, and how to get a beer at McSorley’s. As a result, New York City really is a continuing character. I am familiar with South Jersey also, especially the Pine Barrens area.

 Readers can enjoy any of the Repairman Jack novels as a stand alone adventure, or can follow the bigger scope of the whole series, or embrace the impressive scale of combining the Repairman Jack series with The Adversary Cycle, which brackets and weaves through the Repairman Jack books, and offers the end to the entire epic tale in the final book, Nightworld. What influenced such an ambitious project?

 H.P. Lovecraft was a significant influence. I was not influenced by the prose; I read him at 11, 12, and I was running to the dictionary all the time; he wrote very dense prose. But the way he re-imagined a mechanistic universe, with other places, other dimensions, and other beings that were so indifferent to us. I found that chilling. You had evil and indifferent on one side, and the so-called good side wasn’t truly championing us either.

The other really influential source came in school. I was a Biology major but my English boards were so high they put me in honors English classes. The Greek concept of catharsis really grabbed me; the build up of tension, the need to blow that off with a big “whoosh,” the need for something to happen, that influenced me. I believe you need to do that in novels as well.

 You have said you were not ready for Repairman Jack to be a series when you wrote The Adversary Cycle, including Nightworld, which is the end for both series. Has Jack’s popularity made it difficult to stay true to that ending as originally written?

 I know what the last Repairman Jack novel has to do, and what one other has to do. I have to edge toward that now. Bloodlines is the 11th book, and I’ve already written the 12th. Cutting Edge is the name of that one, and it is a perfect title for what happens, but people keep saying, “Like that ice skating movie?” I might have to shy away from it, but it is a perfect title for this book. Now I am printing out notes and planning for the next four (about 16 are planned).

 You go to significant lengths to keep all of this straight for readers (including posting a “Secret History of the World”), and to keep them both informed and involved with your work via your newsletter and website. Why such an effort?

 This is my life’s work, my writing is, and I want people to participate, to make connections. The website does that for people. And it is all me, I wrote most all of it.  

There are connections to be made in the books, too. Heinlein did that. I love it when I made a connection he put out there; it made me feel like an insider, and I want to give that to my readers. I’m always dropping stuff in that only certain readers will know. For example, in the town of Monroe, there is a restaurant Nemison, a fish place, which is a reference to E.R. Eddison’s “A Fish Dinner in Memison”. And there is a Spanish character somewhere in one of the stories that I named Diego Vega, that’s Zorro’s name. One novel has six song titles from The Byrds in it. All through my work, that stuff shows up just for me, and the fans that recognize it. I want to add to the experience for them.

 All this work and being novelist isn’t even your first career, is it?

 I’m a physician. I still hold doctor’s hours on Mondays and Tuesday. I planned to do less, but then some partners retired, and the others partners keep pushing for me to do more.

Michael Mann directed a film version of The Keep, to which you’ve given mixed reviews. How are efforts going to get a Repairman Jack film made?

 First, you need to know this has been going on for 12 years. Right now, everyone likes the script, it will be rewritten, but people are happy with it right now. Ryan Reynolds (Blade: Trinity) will be Jack. Beacon Films is committed to Ryan. He has to like the director (the project needs a director before a budget can be done), and then the package will be ready.

 Jack reflects your professed Libertarian views. How much of you is Jack, and how much of Jack is you?

 The libertarian aspects are there, sure. But Repairman Jack started out as finding someone who could survive that roof scene (the first image he had for The Tomb), but this living under the radar is a lot of work. He’s basically a career criminal; Jack breaks a law every day. Emotionally and intellectually I’m behind what he does, but I don’t want to be him.