Honored samurai, ruthless ronin, wayward vagabonds, shadowy ninja and helpless villagers... welcome.
Opening Volley
It’s perhaps been just a little too long since I pushed out a newsletter, but with good reason as I was busy writing a short fiction piece for publication (which was accepted — more on that later). This week award-winning genre author Lee Pletzers (aka Richard Lee) whose worlds, both near- and distant-future, are often home to monsters both known and manufactured. Wherein unnatural silence blankets everything, and all is bleak to the point of smothering. The few survivors are often forced to belly-crawl over the broken shards of their own dreams lest their nightmares snatch them away...
Main Event
Tell us a bit about yourself and the type of fiction you write?
My name's Lee Pletzers and I used to write horror and splatter horror stories. Since the lockdown, I started writing a thriller. The novel bled out of me in four days as I sat on a swing chair in the sun. When I finished I knew there was going to be a second volume. So, Death World became a duology. If you love Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp, and Mark Greaney’s Gray Man? How about: David Baldacci, R. R. Haywood, and Sarah Lotz?
If so, then Death World is a book for you.
When did you first start writing? Were you younger or into adulthood? Do you still write in the same genre?
I used to draw a lot when I was much, much younger. I used to write and read a lot as well. I think I was around seven when I stopped drawing and tried to write knock-off Dirty Harry stories. Action stories switched to horror after viewing The Omen on TV when I was eight years old. I stayed with horror until my mid 40's a realized that I read a fuck-ton of thrillers. More than horror. I might know a thing or two and wrote a book to see if I did. I took out the first chapter and subbed it out. It was picked up on its first outing under the title: P (this is what New Zealanders call Meth). You can read it here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B2Q6ZTSY
What is your latest title and can you give us an idea of what you may be working on currently?
My latest published book is called, Scorched Earth (a time travel story). It's a story of an average Joe caught in a wormhole and ends up 30 years into the future. And It's not a pretty picture. There have been riots, destruction, and a nuclear war, Pockets of people trying to survive. Water and food is radiated. Living is a struggle. On top of that a new creature has emerged, The Unspeakables. They survive on human blood.
At the moment, I'm working on the second book of Death World. Death World is a story about a Kiwi PI on holiday in Japan who gets involved with a Yakuza assassination and takes a bullet. The police pin six murders on him and awaiting trial in prison, he meets Ted Middleton, CIA and together they escape prison and James goes on the hunt to clear his name. The truth and consequences will shock him to the depth of his being and show him the dark side of mankind and gangsters alike.
Death World 2: Caged. Revenge tastes sweet. But not for James and his partner, Tara.
Who are some of your favorite authors?
Easy question: Richard Laymon, Brian Lumley, Stephen Leather, T. M. Logan, (early) Dean Koontz, and of course Made in DNA. (Ed’s note: wink wink, nudge nudge.)
Are you a sit down and jam it out in big chunks kind of author, or do you take a lot of small notes, scribbling here and there, piecing together your first draft kind of author? Or somewhere in between?
I punch it out in large chunks to get to the first draft. With work and an exploding blog, I don't seem to have much time for writing. I'd love to get to the novel everyday, but something always pops up.
In what medium do you like to record your notes? Pen and paper? Email? Desktop computer? Voice recording device? Blood?
Pen and paper. Sometimes I use the whiteboard at work. Blood and parchment would be awesome but I find dried blood hard to read. My writing is shocking.
How about the actual novel?
I used to use Scrivener on my MacBook, but my Mac only has 2gbs of RAM. No where near enough and it was soldered into the motherboard. No way to update it. I managed Scrivener 2.9 but version 3.0 was a no-go. And 2.9 slowed down on me. Apple's way of telling me to upgrade the hardware but forking out heaps of . So, I bought an iPad Pro 12.9 and a keyboard. But some software doesn't work properly on iPad, like Pages won't show spelling errors or layout options. Word is costly and wants to pay monthly to write online, so now I'm using Google on my iPad. I am testing out some alternatives to Scrivener, and there are some that are identical to Scrivener but only for Linux or Windows.
Anything else you would like to share not covered above?
I think that's it for the moment.
Here are some links:
My books
My website
Medium
Twitter
Instagram
Thanks, Lee. It’s great to be in contact with you again. (Full disclosure, yes, I do “know” Lee from Twitter, but we haven’t been in contact for a few years since the pandemic.) What follows is an honest review of Scorched Earth (from 2020):
Set several decades after a "limited" nuclear holocaust, the novel revolves around a small group of characters on all sides of the unfolding drama. A multi-character POV creates an eerie verisimilitude to an already chilling reality when it becomes all too apparent that "good" and "evil" overlap with such intensity that we can see ourselves in the mirror.
While clearly a "last stand against the darkness" post-apocalypse vision, Scorched Earth encompasses horror and science fiction in equal measures — “monsters” (which I will say nothing about to avoid spoilers), time portals (a surprising, but well-done element), super soldiers (one of the more disturbing aspect of the novel), and longevity drugs.
Scorched Earth is a great action-suspense thriller. Highly recommended.
We never meet without parting
Coming issues... In no particular order, author interview with Lisa Kuznak, (Pallas, which launches VERY soon), artist interview with DRES13 (forget EVERYTHING you know about Marge Simpson; get ready for a new thirst), a review of Trouble in Twi-Town (a ripping scifi PI novel by author Henry Vogel).
Until then!
Made in DNA
Microsoft has made Office more expensive since they turned it into a subscription bundle, but the suite of tools and the integration is pretty dang nifty.
I've always been a big Mac fan, but I got a Surface in 2016, upgraded in 2021 and love it. I just finished revising my novel, which I wrote entirely in Word, managed admin stuff in Excel, and took notes, riffed, outlined, etc. in OneNote.
Pretty cool interview. I was glad to see some love for Richard Laymon. I like the idea of pen names also. It's something I've been thinking about for myself.