Lots
of fun this week here at Supernatural Central. Today we're chatting with W. T. Watson, author of HUNTING the BEAST. Welcome!
SC: Tell me a little bit about your main character of this book.
WTW: Zachary Collins, or Zach, for short, is a character derived from folklore. I love to read old and new stories about ‘monsters’ and other strange phenomena. If you study the lore of Phantom Black Dogs, you find that some stories state that Black Dogs are shapeshifters and there is at least one account of a Dog turning into a human being (though not a very nice one).
Once I had the idea of a shape-shifting Black Dog in my mind, I began to consider such a character and Zachary sprang into my head almost fully formed.
In his human form, Zach is tall and dark, but he has to watch his temper since the red flare of his eyes can give away his actual nature. In my world, the supernatural beings who live in the human realm must comply with the rules of the Charter. Zach’s people, the Black Dogs, enforce the Charter on the werewolf packs. Zach believes in the spirit of the law and not the letter of it, as you discover in the first chapters of the book, but, once he goes on the hunt for a rogue wolf, he is going to bring that wolf in.
In his true form, Zach is a massive jet back hound with self-illuminating red eyes.
In both forms, Zach is an adept magician using both the necromantic talents native to his People and rune magic that he has learned from other sources.
SC: Sounds like this book is right up our supernatural alley. Do you believe in the paranormal and if so, do you have an experience you can share?
WTW: I’m an animist so I do not feel that anything is really ‘beyond’ the normal. I live in a world full of spirits and accept that what I can see with my eyes is the tip of the iceberg of what is actually there. Therefore, what most people consider to be paranormal is natural and quite normal to me, if a little unsettling at times.
My experiences tend to fall into the realm that some would call synchronicities. For example, my spouse and I recently moved to Canada. They are a Canadian citizen and had taken a job here and, as I am American by birth, I am in the immigration process. As such, I cannot work in Canada so I was asking my Higher Powers what I should be doing with myself. A week later, out of the blue, I got an email from Beyond the Fray Publishing regarding this book. It had been quite some time since I made my initial inquiry and I had assumed that they weren’t interested.
A few months later, “Hunting the Beast” was in print, I had been asked to do a non-fiction follow-up, my spouse dreamed the beginning to a book that we are collaborating on and I am the busiest unemployed person I know!
SC: That's great. Welcome to Canada. What titles are you working on now that you can tell us about?
WTW: I am working on a nonfiction follow-up to “Hunting the Beast”. I don’t have a title yet, but it will deal with the Phantom Black Dog phenomenon that inspired the novel and some of the theories surrounding that phenomenon.
Book 2 of Zach’s adventures, tentatively titled “Missing Time” is complete but has not been accepted for publication yet.
SC: Well thanks again for stopping by. Let's take a look at your book now.
Excerpt
Stakeouts are not the most interesting part of my jobs but, on this night, the surveillance duty was alright. It was warm for an October night in Buffalo and Chippewa street was alive with a number of interesting characters. I took a sip of the hot Jamaican Blue I had picked up from the local coffee shop and scanned the street again, trying to parse a werewolf out of the crowd of students and young professionals moving up and down the street.
I’d been told by one of the local witches, a frequent information source, that she had seen a wolf that she did not recognize from the local pack at The Palmero, the local metal bar. Now, it was possible that Alonso Martinez, the Buffalo Pack Alpha, had inducted a new member but, if so, I should have been informed. I am, after all, the Buffalo Region’s Black Dog and I am responsible for enforcing the Charter, the laws of the Otherworld, on the werewolf population.
Whether Alonso was holding out on me or we had a rogue wolf in our midst, I needed to know about it so I had been watching the Palermo for several evenings, hoping to encounter the mysterious werewolf.
I had finished my third cup of coffee and was beginning to think that this night was a wash when I spotted the wolf. He had come around the corner from Delaware slowly. He was a young man of average height incongruously wearing aviator shades in the dark night. It was not the silliness of the sunglasses at night that cued me; it was the fact that as soon as he got close to the human crowds people formed an unconscious ring around him.
Humans have worked hard to become rational beings, to ignore the things that go bump in the night, but they have not evolved so far that they do not recognize a predator in their midst. The boy did not even have enough control to damp his inner carnivore so that he could mix with human society. That made him a rogue and my job now was to bring him in.
I exited the car slowly, conscious that sudden movement might alert the werewolf and moved across the street. Even an untrained wolf had uncannily sharp senses so I checked to make certain the wind was blowing in my face before moving closer to my target. I had dressed in black so I blended with the Goth crowd outside the Palermo until I was directly behind my subject. Speaking softly enough that nonhuman ears could not hear me, I murmured, “ Listen carefully and do not move. I know what you are. Stand quietly and I promise you that no harm will come to you . . .
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