Sharing the Sickness: A Few Words with Peter Welmerink

Part 3 of my series of “Cool People I Met at Imaginarium.”

Tell us a bit about your latest work.

TRANSPORT. It is a post-POST apocalyptic military thriller (I like action-adventure better. L. Andrew Cooper called it zombie fantasy) about Captain Jake Billet, his crew of military misfits and their 72-ton heavy transport vehicle, the HURON. In 2025, we’re still here after the 2013 bird flu pandemic. The undead are still here, some even protected by local law.

In TRANSPORT (Book One), Captain Jake Billet and his crew must covertly bring a much-hated government official roughly 40 miles across West Michigan while avoiding everything and everyone who desires to stop, kill, eat and dismember them along the way. Not necessarily in that order.   

What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your work?

I’d say the themes of most my stories is the HERO JOURNEY and/or ROAD NARRATIVE. I also enjoy something that gets up and moves you, is action packed, adventure driven, but delivers characters who are also enjoyable to read, to laugh and cry with. The human element in a fantastical setting.

What would be your dream project?

My dream project would be a project so awesome and rewarding that I could quit my day job and write for a living, and survive. Yet, I feel I AM LIVING THE DREAM by being able to support my family with day job while doing what I love (writing) during whatever bits of available minutes I can scrounge.

If you have any former project to do over to make it better, which one would it be, and what would you do?

BEDLAM UNLEASHED, an Epic Fantasy, Viking berserker novel co-written with the talented Steven Shrewsbury. It was published. We didn’t pursue a new contract with the publisher when contract expired. I would love to see it brought to alive again with another publisher who, with our support, do it real justice.

I would just like to see this very fun, and brutal, and lively, Viking adventure available to the masses again.

And who knows, perhaps we could pursue the follow up book or two we were plotting to keep our giant brain-addled berserker smashing through Europe.

What inspires you to write?

The inspiration to write comes from a desire to tell stories, and adventure in make-believe worlds with make-believe characters. Writing, and being read, inspires me to write. Seeing the growing piles of books Steven Shrewsbury and Michael West have written inspires me to write.

What writers have influenced your style and technique?

Robert E Howard. RA Salvatore. David Drake. Chuck Wendig.

Where would you rank writing on the "Is it an art or it is a science continuum?" Why?

Neither. It is a sickness. I need to write or my head will explode. If I can’t sit down and write for several days, I get itchy and squeamish. I need to write because it is therapeutic, a break from the mundane, something and somewhere I can go when it is just me and a blank page.

Any other upcoming projects you would like to plug?

I am part of upcoming Horror anthology in which the authors involved need to write an Animal vs. Humankind story. I am writing something about ROADKILL. I have heard ramblings about other stories, with statements made like “otter porn” (not what you are thinking) and hamsters in space vs. astronauts in suspended animation. It sounds like there will be some Dark Humor/Comedy in this antho. I have also heard someone jokingly comment: “This is wrong on so many levels.”

For more information about Peter:

My blogs:
TRANSPORT (current novel series) related: grandrapidsaltered.blogspot.com
Author Interviews and other sundries: darkheroicfantasy.blogspot.com

Website:
www.peterwelmerink.com

Twitter: @pwelmerink

Latest book available: 

TRANSPORT (Book One) 
Kindle ebook edition
http://amzn.to/1tWk1XB

Paperback
http://amzn.to/1ytfz7b

Miscellaneous e-short stories:
http://amzn.to/1rnjITN