by Mike Collins

1. For people unfamiliar with you can you give us a little background on who you are?

I'm always tempted to make up a fake life when I get this sort of question--it seems the perfect spot to make myself mysterious and interesting. Except then I'd lose track of the web of lies and make a fool of myself, and no one wants that, although it would be entertaining.

I was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, played a lot of stickball (badly) and learned lots of Spanish curses from my neighbors (now largely forgotten). Went to public grammar school and private Jesuit high school, where I lost religion. Then a few listless years at Rutgers University getting a largely useless English degree (but damn I had fun) and then. . .well, like most people, there follows a long period spent at a white-collar job wherein nothing much happened.

I started publishing my own zine, The Inner Swine (www.innerswine.com), in 1995 and I'm closing in on the 50th issue. At its height TIS had a circulation of about 1000 and had national and international distribution, believe it or not. These days we're down to about 200 and almost all our distribution is out of business.

I'm happily married with three cats living in Hoboken, NJ, which means I made it about 5 minutes from the exact spot of my birth. I'm strangely proud of that.

2. The Electric Church is a very different book from your previous novel Lifers. Why did you decide to write a science fiction novel?

Sci Fi came first, actually. When I was a kid I read pretty much any mass market paperback with a Darryl K. Sweet cover Del Rey Books could push into the bookstore, and all my early work (meaning when I was 11-18 years old) was Fantasy or Sci Fi. The original version of The Electric Church was written in 1990 or so.

Then I started reading more broadly and my writing followed; Lifers was written in 1997 and eventually published in 2001. You can now buy a copy for a penny on Amazon. Go ahead! It might be fun.

3. The world of "The Electric Church" is interesting. There aren't any seperate countries. Everything is under one unified System. Can you give us a primer on this world and how it comes to be?

Hmmmn...I could, but I purposefully left that murky in the story. I hate it when stories have their characters lecturing on and on about how the world got to be the way it is--it's like Broadway Musicals: No One Behaves that Way. I mean, the USSR dissolved not so long ago and changed the world I live in, but I do not go around pondering it in any detail, if at all, and it never comes up in casual conversation. So why should my characters spend half the book teaching you what happened in the world?

And I *like* that. It leaves a lot of the pieces up to the reader. There'll be clues, snippets here and there, but it's up to the reader to figure out what happened, or invent what happened. Too much information or explanation works against the story.

But here's the short version: The world unified under a single government, theoretically via treaty and agreement in the sense that no war was fought, but it sparked worldwide resistance--riots, revolts, etc. Almost as soon as it was formed the unified world was on the verge of collapsing, and in desperation The System Security Force was formed, funded, and given a very loose and wide charter. The SSF--the System Cops--brutally restored order and have kept the System of Federated Nations secure ever since.

4. Obviously TEC is set in a dystopian future as others have mentioned. What is the allure of using a broken world as a setting?

I just posted about this on my blog, actually--the thing is, utopias or even balanced worlds are *dull*. Just as happy people are dull. Pain, suffering, rot and brokenness are *interesting*. Your characters have to have something to strive against, and with a broken world there's just endless opportunities to explore dark, rotten areas.

5. The hero of TEC is one Avery Cates. A Gunner, a muderer and an all around bad guy. Except he lives by a code that sometimes seems to get in the way of his chosen profession. He's also pretty funny. What can you say about Avery?

I love Avery. I love beating him up, smacking him into walls, shooting him, and breaking his heart. Avery would be an accountant or a mechanic in a sane, peaceful world, but to survive in his insane, unstable one he's learned the profession of violence, and learned to repress his gag reflex, but he still hates it on some level--and yet enjoys being a bully, on another. I think that's the allure of the character--he feels bad about being a bad man, but he glories in the power being a bad man grants him.

6. One thing I noticed early on is that you mention to certain major events, like the riots, but offer little detail. Why did you decide to go this route?

See my answer above--this was a conscious decision.

7. Did you intend for the book to be sort of a social commentary about the haves and have nots? I found Avery refering to himself as "old" at 27 and meaning it, to be pretty telling. To him someone in their 50's is ancient. Avery talks about the lack of healthcare for the poor throughout the book...

Not a commentary, really, as to have commentary you need a POV and a purpose. The world is envisioned as nightmare version of where the world might be heading--economic collapse on a global scale, with the world split between those who have power and money and the 99% of the world who don't. Of those 99%, a small number can aspire to be cops or elite service workers of some sort, but for the most part people are living grinding lives of desperation.

Avery's age and his obsession with it is one of the ways I introduced clues to the world's condition without going into info-dumps or soliloquies. He's 27, refers to himself as old, and whenever he encounters someone older than about 30 he's shocked and amazed. There're also some small references to children being as much of a threat as adults. The idea is definitely that lifespans have shortened, due to living conditions, starvation, lack of healthcare. But again, it's never stated explicitly.

8. You have created some terrifying villians in the Monks themselves. Particularly one that has a score to settle with Avery, Barnaby Dawson. What can you tell us about the Monks themselves?

They're happy fellows, for the most part, singing songs of fellowship in the streets and dancing a little soft-shoe...

The idea for a Monk stemmed from a bit in Douglas Adams' "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" wherein an Electric Monk, a labor-saving device that believed things for you, malfunctioned and started believing wild, crazy things. Like almost everything I read, I started to think immediately on how to steal this great idea, and after an evening spent drinking Peach Schnapps I decided that what the Monk needed was more murderous intent, crazy pseudo-religious babbling, and weaponry.

9. You have also created a wildly memorable character in "King Worm" Richard Marin, head of Internal Affairs. Marin shines through as someone not thrilled about the current system he's one of the top dogs in. Where did he come from?

That's a harder question. This was one of those times when your subconscious plays tricks on you. From the get-go Marin was odd, though I didn't decide on his actual nature until the story was close to completion, at which time it became perfectly obvious and, having been filtered through my booze-soaked brain, pure genius.

Marin's sort of the perfect bureaucrat in a way. Always smiling, always a little bit "off" so you can't feel comfortable with him, always holding the power of life and death in his cold, strangely dry hands. He actually may be my favorite character in the whole book, and someday we'll see more of him.

10. At the end of TEC, you note that Avery Cates will return in "The Digital Plague". What can you say about your next book?

The Digital Plague should be out in May/June of next year, actually. Let's just say that if you think Avery Cates gets his butt kicked in TEC, you will be weeping for him in TDP.

There's a background story about the universe Cates exists in, of course--I don't see it as a static world where it'll always be the same, things are shifting. Again, a lot of it is in the background and has to be sussed out, but big things are coming, and a lot of the transition is in this second book.

11. Your book was chosen as one of the launch titles for Orbit in the US. What's that been like?

Well, it's interesting to have so much publishing muscle behind you. My last book was published by the tiniest of tiny publishers and the marketing team was me, my wife, and my Mom. Things went about as well as you can imagine.

Everyone is so excited about Orbit entering the US market--I've literally have people go from Listening Politely to Rabidly Interested in my book just because they hear that Orbit's publishing it. To have that kind of clout behind you is intoxicating, and I've started walking about with a crown and a T-shirt that says KING OF ALL SPEC FIC. Is that wrong?

12. What's reaction to TEC been like so far? After reading it I was happy that someone had pointed it out to me. I think it's the kind of book that fans of writers like Richard Morgan and Jon Courtney Grimwood would enjoy.

Mainly it's been very positive--which is amazing. And the interaction with people who have read it is amazing. This new Internet world we live in is great--there was a time when if you wanted to contact an author you could either send a letter to their publisher and probably get a form letter in response, or you could do your detective work, track down their house, and get arrested. Nowadays you just send an email and BAM! You can actually get into a conversation. Having someone email me that they read my book and loved it--and that person not be my Mom--is absolutely amazing.

When I was a kid and I wanted to contact an author, it was just about impossible. This year, when Scott Turow picked my story "Ringing the Changes" for inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories, I was able to glean his email from his web site and send him a thank you note, to which he responded. If that ain't progress, I don't know what is.

13. Aside from your next book what else can people expect from you Jeff?

Well, I have a short story appearing in the upcoming issue of GUD Magazine (www.gudmagazine.com) and a story appearing in the debut issue of the newly revived magazine The Whirligig (www.whirligigzine.com) which will be bowing at World Fantasy Con in November.

I'll also be attending World Fantasy Con, so if you're going, come by and buy me a drink. Or two.

And there's always a new issue of The Inner Swine on the horizon--our motto is "Misinformed Opinion. . .Bad poetry. . .STYLE."