Interview with John Saul by Emmanuel Paige

John Saul was born in Pasadena, California on February 25, 1942, and grew up in Whittier where he graduated from high school in 1959. He moved around a lot during college, going from California, to Montana, and Ohio colleges, majoring in anthropology, liberal arts, and theater. He never obtained a degree.

After leaving college, he took up writing, deciding that it was a fitting career for a college dropout, and he worked at various odd jobs to support himself while developing his skill as a writer.

He wrote several manuscripts that didn’t find much success, but in 1976 he was approached by Dell and asked to write a psychological thriller. He was happy to oblige and wrote Suffer the Children within a staggering 30 day period. It appeared on the best seller lists, even hitting #1 in Canada. All of his subsequent books have been best sellers and have been published world wide.

John resides in the Pacific Northwest, living in Seattle and the San Juan Islands, and also has a residence in Hawaii.

In addition to his novels, he also writes plays, acts in theater, and is a Vice President of The Chester Woodruff Foundation (New York), a philanthropic organization. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Northwest Writers Conference.

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Macabre Cadaver: What inspired you to become a writer?

John Saul: It’s simple. I had no other marketable skills.

MC: Who is your favorite writer(s) of all time?

JS: That’s hard. I enjoy a number of authors. I think PG Wodehouse is one of my faves.

MC: Which writer(s) had the most influence on you?

JS: That one is easy. Noel Coward.

MC: What is your writing schedule?

JS: My schedule depends on my location. If I’m in the Pacific Northwest I usually work in the afternoon. When I’m in Hawaii I try to work in the AM. Currently I try to write one scene a day. I used to be able to write a chapter a day, but I’m old now!

MC: Why did you choose to write stories of a darker nature?

JS: Given my druthers, I would prefer to write comedy, but the market for comedy is limited. When I started out I was willing to try anything and Dell Publishing Company needed someone to write dark thrillers. It was actually my editor who asked if I would try it. I did and discovered I was not only pretty good at it, but I liked the process itself.

MC: You were a starving artists once. Did you ever feel like giving up?

JS: I would extend my time frame. For example I would say, “If I’m not a successful author or playwright by the time I’m 25 I’ll find another profession.” But then I would extend the deadline another year or two. I did that many times.

MC: Did you ever collect your rejection slips? Did you keep count? What was the grand total of rejections you collected before you made your first sale?

JS: I never collected rejection slips. The fortunate thing is I didn’t have many of them. I was one of the lucky writers who got published very early in their career.

MC: Was Suffer the Children your first professional sale?

JS: No, I had a couple of other sales, but they were not very successful and they were under pseudonyms.

MC: I’ve read that you wrote Suffer the Children in a single month. How did you manage that? Thirty days is an impossible amount of time to write a novel. It sounds a lot like Robert Louis Stevenson when he wrote The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Did you feel entranced when you were writing it?

JS: Well, I had to do it. It was part of the contract. When you are a starving writer you will say “yes” to anything. I had a full outline of the action of the novel and it called for about 30 chapters. When I was in college I procrastinated to do my homework until the last minute. I figured I was able to write a fifteen page term paper in one day. So, I just considered writing a chapter a day like writing a term paper every day. If I kept saying to myself that I had to write a book in a month I would’ve freaked and gone out to party instead.

MC: I know you don’t consider yourself a “horror writer” but some of your work is very horrifying, and is classified as such. What is your opinion of the horror genre, and do you think it is a dead market?

JS: No, I don’t think it’s a dead market. I think it fluctuates like all markets. Right now I actually think it’s on an upswing. The reason I don’t classify myself as a horror writer is that some of my books are medical thrillers, some are psychological thrillers, some are straight thrillers and some are paranormal thrillers. Of course they are all on the dark side.

MC: If you had to do it all over again (starving artist to accomplished writer) . . . would you do it the same way?

JS: Absolutely! I’ve had a charmed career. And I’m still having it. (I’m not dead yet . . .  .I don’t think.) I had fabulous people helping throughout my career. I’ve had and am still having a blast.