Michael Koryta

Michael Koryta's latest novel is The Prophet.

From his Q & A with Ali Karim for The Rap Sheet:

AK: But on to your own work ... I devoured The Prophet like a crystal meth addict discovering one of Breaking Bad’s Heisenberg stashes. But I thought it would have been perfect had it contained a supernatural undercurrent, like some of your previous yarns.

MK: I go book-by-book with it. I don’t really have a grand plan for what will have a supernatural undercurrent or not, but this one never struck me as benefiting from that. I wanted Adam [Austin] to be haunted in a way that felt as painful to us as possible, and adding a layer of supernatural component to that, I think, might have reduced it. Put up a wall of distance between his feelings and the readers. But obviously, it’s all a matter of execution. The one area where I really see that being an issue is that Adam’s overwhelming desire throughout the book is a chance to speak to [his sister] Marie ... again, to tell her that he’s sorry, to justify himself and explain how he’s made things right, all of that. And in reality, we don’t get those chances. So holding her off from him in the way the dead are held apart from us daily seemed a better choice for this particular story. To me.

AK: Do you like the hint of otherworldly influences in fiction, by say, John Connolly, Michael Marshall, Peter Straub, and Stephen King?

MK: Of course, I’m a huge fan of that genre, or I wouldn’t have written in it. King is one of the most influential writers to me, by far, and I have read Straub on a hit-and-miss basis, probably most of his work. There are indelible classics like Ghost Story in there--wow, what a great novel. Marshall I’ve read and enjoyed, and Connolly as well. [Robert] McCammon, Joe Hill--there are a bunch out there, though I do think the genre isn’t...[read on]

Learn more about Koryta's favorite authors.

--Marshal Zeringue