MC: How bad was your former job at the Philadelphia City Paper that you came up with the plot for Severance Package?

DS: It was a living hell, Mike. I can’t believe I made it out alive.

Actually, the people at City Paper are great. I wrote the book when I was still working at the paper, and I was worried that my employees would… you know, read into it. When in truth, there were only two or three people I wanted to kill.

MC: The book is really violent but it’s also really funny. How important do you think that balancing act needs to be?

DS: Ultra-important. To me, Evil Dead 2 is the perfect balance of both; it goes teetering wildly from demonic possession to a Three Stooges routine… is there anything more thrilling?

MC: One of the two main characters, Jamie DeBroux is largely oblivious to what is transpiring around him. Why did you go that route?

DS: Mostly because I tend to be oblivious to what’s transpiring around me. Especially in an office environment.

MC: Severance Package ties into your last novel The Blonde. Do all of your books take place in the same “universe”?

DS: Yep. You don’t know how tempted I’ve been to write the crime novel equivalent of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, where I tie in all of these separate stories into one novel. But I do like the idea that people who slog through all of my books will be able to see the little connections here and there. I’ve been planting seeds since The Wheelman—some of which may take root. Some of which may be gobbled up by crows.

MC: The plot of the book is like a nesting doll. First we get the boss who may or may not be a little nuts telling his staff that they are all secretly working for an intelligence agency and that they are all about to die. Then little by little you reveal just how deep all the connections are. How much fun was the plot for this one to figure out?

DS: I honestly figured it out as I was writing it. I had the basic set-up in my head, and a hazy idea of what might happen at the end (though that changed); the rest was kind of me winging it. Same thing happened with The Wheelman. The only book I’ve only kinda sorta plotted was The Blonde, and that was because I was afraid I’d screw it up.

MC: One of the things that I really enjoyed in Severance Package is that all of the action scenes feature women except for one near the end of the book. What was the reasoning there?

DS: That was me having fun with action movie clichés—it’s almost always the guys who take charge, kick ass, etc. I also wanted to do a reverse of The Wheelman, which is pretty much a sausage party.

MC: You’ve created a singularly badass character in Molly Lewis. Where did she come from?

DS: Partially from my wife, who is also a singularly badass character. Molly was also inspired by a lot of 1980s slasher flick heroines—the mousy types who are usually the only ones left standing at the end, nearly naked, bleeding, trying to swing a hatchet into a hockey mask.

MC: 9/11 is a running subtext in the novel. Why is that, and was their any concern on your part in using it?

DS: A lot of that is based on what was going through my head on 9/11. I happened to be on the 36th floor of a Philadelphia skyscraper that morning, and a lot of the shock and confusion and wild speculation you see in Severance Package came from that experience. I was trying to recreate what the world felt like at very moment.

(That said, some part of me really wants to write the full version of Center Strike, the novel referred to in Severance. Though that would probably be wrong, on so many levels.)

MC: Severance Package ends on a pretty startling note. Do you expect to continue that story at some point?

DS: I do have a sequel in mind, but I’m not sure how soon I’ll get to it. This is a familiar pattern with me: I finish a book. Two or three sequel ideas pop into my head. But then I move on to the next shiny little toy.

MC: Aside from your Marvel Comics work, what else is coming up from you?

DS: I’m finishing up my fifth novel now. I’m in that all-too-familiar zone where one day I think it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever done, and the next, a total flaming disaster. Ah, the writing life!