BY: BOOKMANS

What intrigues you so much about American pop culture? What current writers, comics, films, TV shows, etc., do you feel are doing fresh and exciting things, and what elements of pop culture have influenced you most? What do you think will be the next big thing to capture mainstream America's imagination? For instance, this J.J. Abrams "1-18-08" trailer seems to be causing quite the online furor - but what does it take for something to elevate above clever marketing and truly take hold?

America has exported a lot of things to the rest of the world (although our claims of exporting democracy are a little inflated - I think Greece beat us to that), but the most important and long-lasting export has been our pop culture.  Not everything we've come up with is entirely original, but we have a knack for borrowing disparate elements and combining them in new and wonderful ways.  We've given the world jazz, Westerns, Hollywood movies (and Sundance movies and Tribeca movies), TV, rock and roll, country & western music, Superman and Spider-Man, Mickey Mouse and Woody Woodpecker, the Three Stooges and John Updike, hard-boiled mysteries, Frosted Flakes, Twinkies, iTunes... the list goes on and on. There's always something fresh and new, even in the midst of all the old, stale, derivative pap out there - sometimes the old and stale is still brilliant (see "The Dick Van Dyke Show").

Current loves, in no particular order: "The Wire" and "Big Love" on HBO, the Classic Jazz channel on Sirius Radio, the crime fiction of James Lee Burke (and Don Winslow and James Ellroy and... never mind), the nonfiction of Charles Bowden, True West Magazine, Calexico and Dave Stamey.

Living way out in the country, I'm on dial-up (horrors!) so I know not this "1-18-08" of which you speak. I think "Snakes on a Plane" proved that hype and marketing can only take something so far, but after that it needs to have something special about it to cause the public at large to embrace it. By contrast, the first printing of the first Harry Potter book was 50,000, I think, and the marketing machine didn't really push it, but look what happened when the magic spark ignited.

As for the next big thing...well, I think that'll be "Missing White Girl," after this interview appears, right?

What's next on the horizon for you? I see you have a tie-in, "Supernatural: Witch's Canyon," coming out near the end of the year, and more books in the "30 Days of Night" novels, based on the comic - a property that's about to hit the big screen this year. Can we expect another original novel in the near future?

I'm currently in the middle of an original horror novel, which is already sold and will be published sometime next year, with the working title of "River Runs Red." It's also a border-centric novel, although the border in this case is that delineated by the Rio Grande.

In addition to that, I'm working on a new comic book series called "Graveslinger" with another writer, named Shannon Eric Denton, and an artist named John Cboins.  I'll have a "CSI: Miami" novel called "Right to Die" out sometime during 2008. September is the tenth anniversary of my western/horror comic book "Desperadoes," and there'll be a special trade paperback edition collecting the most recent miniseries, "Buffalo Dreams." And I have another original horror novel due next August, so I'll continue to be busy.
 

You're also co-owner of Mysterious Galaxy, an independent bookstore that specializes in horror, science fiction, mystery, and fantasy, based in San Diego. How did you come to be involved in the retail side of the book business? Do you feel you have a unique perspective, given your career? You're (understandably!) very vocal in your support of independent bookstores - why are brick and mortar bookstores still important in the 21st century?

I started my "literary" career in retail, when I joined the staff of Books Inc. in San Jose, CA in January of 1980.  The turning of the decade seemed a propitious time to make a major job change, and I never looked back.  Books Inc. was, like Bookman's, a regional independent chain, with stores in California.  They transferred me to manage the La Jolla store, which was how I wound up in San Diego.  When they eventually closed their southern CA stores, my wife Maryelizabeth Hart and I knew someone would have to take up the slack--my store had become the center of science fiction/fantasy/horror events and hard-boiled mystery events for the region, and the one mystery bookstore, which focused on cozy mysteries, was closing its doors.  With our partner Terry Gilman, we put together a plan for a store that would specialize in the genres we loved the most (although I couldn't come up with a good argument for including Westerns in the mix), and we opened Mysterious Galaxy 14 years ago last May.