Your story, “The House of Gears,” has as its protagonist Johannes Cabal, “a necromancer of some little infamy.” Herr Cabal is also the, um, “hero” of your two published novels and upcoming third, as well as several other short stories. As the author of a series, do you think about chronology when writing shorts like “House of Gears”? If so, where does “House of Gears” fit?

There is a chronology, although not an utterly rigid one, at least not as far as the short stories go. As a guide, the chronology is probably best described as follows:

“Exeunt Demon King,” in H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror #3, 2006

“The Ereshkigal Working,” in The Way of the Wizard (ed. John Joseph Adams), 2010

“Johannes Cabal and the Blustery Day,” in H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror #1, 2004

Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, Anchor, 2009

“The House of Gears,” in Fantasy Magazine, April 2011

Johannes Cabal the Detective, Doubleday, 2010

Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute, Headline, 2011

I trained as a librarian. It sometimes shows.

The novels have a stronger sense of continuity than the shorts, and it becomes harder to place the latter within the context of the former as more are written. I suspect I shall find myself writing the Cabal shorts with no eye at all upon where they exist within his life except in the broadest sense. That said, I do like the idea of setting a few shorts within the year in which Johannes Cabal the Necromancer takes place. For reasons of space and my own sanity, it was impossible to tell of every event within the novel’s time span, but there were definitely things in there that would bear recounting.

Being obviously something of a polymath, Cabal instantly recognizes the statue in Monsieur Samhet’s garden. Do you think he would like Shelley’s or Aeschylus’ Prometheus Unbound more?

Probably the latter. Most of it is lost, so it would be that much shorter. Well, he’s a busy man.

Samhet’s “solution” to escaping death combines knowledge of how the human brain works with an understanding of something that we, in our world, might consider computer programming—at least the sort that involves punch-cards. Yet in the end, his “improved” brain is exceeded by an at least somewhat normal human mind. What was your inspiration for such a villain?

I’ve taken a very mechanistic approach to the nature of intelligence that is certainly fantastical in scale (I made the brain-machine big, but it would really have to be absolutely vast to come anywhere near anything that seemed even vaguely intelligent) and in the vexed question of how a brain generates intelligence in the first place.

Complexity is certainly part of it, but plenty of very clever people, with Roger Penrose being one of the loudest voices, are firmly of the opinion that a purely mechanistic approach will never create an intelligence. He may be right; I read his book on the subject The Emperor’s New Mind a few years ago and was not greatly the wiser as to his argument afterwards so I cannot say. Then again it hardly matters. Magic works in Cabal’s world as does discredited concepts of physics such as the ether and gyroscopic levitation and television. Given Penrose’s position that intelligence cannot be created artificially until some currently unknown law of physics can be identified and quantified, then there’s no reason that such a law hasn’t already been found in Cabal’s world and is part of occult theory. Samhet, after all, was a necromancer before he bought himself a wrench set, so it’s probably he would combine such eldritch knowledge with more mundane nuts and bolts.

As to the exact moment of Samhet’s creation, I couldn’t tell you. My ideas often come to me as “How about…?” rather than “Eureka!” so they don’t make an impact on my rather patchy memory. I think it may have almost formed as it was written. I recall the image of Samhet’s house and its environs came first, and then everything else followed on. Sorry to be so vague, but the story was originally written for H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror back in 2004, but got the thumbs down because it lacked any supernatural aspects. After six years the details of its genesis are a little murky.

“…Cabal thought it unlikely that Descartes had ever considered the Evil Genius might spend at least some of his time lurking behind a plant pot. Not, he corrected himself, that he, Cabal, was evil. A little single-minded perhaps, but not evil. Not in any cosmic sense.” Would you please expound a bit on Cabal’s worldview: Does Cabal consider himself a moral man? Does he hold with notions of Good and Evil (in the ultimate sense), and if so, how does he account for his own actions in relation to such?

He certainly has a moral set, although it’s unlikely to win him any plaudits. He would argue that his moral scale is simply greater than most people’s and that he does not concern himself with the minutiae. Others would counter that by arguing that surely taking on such an Olympian worldview, isn’t he simply saying that the ends justify the means? For his riposte, Cabal would probably start shooting, so we shall never know.

As for good and evil, Cabal has faced Satan, evil’s cheerleader, the essence of malevolence. Satan is a sadist, a selfish meddler who breaks lives and minds because it amuses him to see things fall apart. What Cabal knows of God is equally unflattering, albeit in the opposite direction. God is obsessed with order, which leaves little space for individuality. In this, the cosmology of Cabal’s universe has a distinct kinship with Michael Moorcock’s view that things are really between Law and Chaos, not Good and Evil. On that scale Cabal is somewhere a tad to the Lawful side of the scale, at least according to intention. By actual deed, however … well, he does tend to leave a smoking trail of chaos in his wake.

What’s next for you?

The next big thing is The Fear Institute, which is due out later this year. Apart from that, and apart from Cabal altogether, I’ve got another couple of novels that I want to get into a polished state. When I’m not working on Cabal, that’s what I’ll be doing.

One of the novels is a children’s book that started off all shiny and happy and fun, and then went rather darker, so it will need its tone adjusting (I’ll be darkening the opening a little). The other is a two-fisted pulp thriller, which also ended up not quite as I’d originally envisaged. It was intended to be good, uncomplicated fun with much punching, yet somehow became a bit Nietzschean along the way. This seems to happen a lot to me, doesn’t it? I’m a generally happy, upbeat sort of soul, but when I write, the shadows tend to seep out.

It’s traditional to drop a hint here about some sort of super secret project that I can’t possibly talk about, but which is very exciting. Unfortunately, I can’t because I don’t have one. Sigh.

The Choose Your Own Adventure format has intrigued children for years—decades, now—and so it’s fitting that the series has always been child-focused, even at its genesis. Edward Packard, one of the first authors to use the second-person style of adventure writing, and author of the first official Choose Your Own Adventure novel, came up for the idea when telling stories to his children. He says, “I was making up a story about a boy named Pete who had been washed off a ship by a big wave and was cast up on the beach of a tropical island. But in continuing the story, I couldn’t think of what would happen next, so I asked, ‘what would you do if you were Pete?’ and I thought of a couple of possibilities. It was fun for them helping decide how the story progressed, so that’s how I got the idea for a book where ‘you,’ the reader, are the main character and make decisions leading to branching plot lines and multiple endings.” The format worked in his first book, Sugarcane Island. A few years later, Bantam bought the concept and developed the series.

When training new authors to write for the series, Bantam made sure to alert them to how important these books were to the readership. Author Ellen Kushner recalls that when she was first contracted to write for the project, her publishers told her that children loved the books so much they were saving their allowances to buy them. “That’s a big deal,” she comments. “I felt it was a sacred trust. I knew I needed to deliver.” She suspects that the reason they were so popular was that they were a hybrid creation—a book and a game—and the protagonist was the reader. “That’s really appealing to kids,” she says, “being dropped into the middle of a story—your story.”

“Appealing” seems like something of an understatement. The Choose Your Own Adventure series has well over 200 titles, with new ones still coming out yearly, and the series has been translated into French, Danish, Basque, Japanese, Serbo-Croatian, Malay, Catalan, and Icelandic, among other languages.

There’s something rewarding about being able to personally determine the outcome of a novel. As a child, I remember wishing Matt had gone away with his Native American friend Attean at the end of Elizabeth George Speare’s The Sign of the Beaver (rather than doing the responsible thing and waiting for his family). Author Jesse Bullington, meanwhile, recalls feeling unhappy at the ending of Lloyd Alexander’s The High King, when all magic had to leave the world. Another acquaintance of mine recalls being disappointed with the ending of Caroline Stevermer’s A College of Magics, wishing it had been more romantically satisfying. With the Choose Your Own Adventure series, however, the sense of helplessness is (at least partially) removed, and many children found in them a different sort of pleasure: that of experiencing agency inside a text.

It’s an undeniably neat concept—deciding what choices a character will make, what paths he or she will walk—and an idea that’s been put to good use in some of the most popular video game franchises, such as Bioshock, World of Warcraft, and Red Dead Redemption. Players of those games have expressed delight over the freedom to decide whether to be good or evil, being able to have a character that looks and behaves like no other in the game, or to simply not follow the storyline as the designers conceptualized it. The customizable nature of the gameplay seems to locate the player more firmly in the world, and yields a sense of personal investment, a deeper engagement with the text—and the Choose Your Own Adventure novels gave their readers something of the same experience.

Author and web designer Jeremiah Tolbert says he probably read every single CYOA book when he was a kid, and still has a few on his bookshelf. When asked why he keeps them, Jeremiah replies, “The time in my life when I read these was a rough one. I spent my weeks with my dad, but my weekends with my mom and her new husband. I hated going there so much. I didn’t have any friends there, where they lived. But I had this growing collection of Choose Your Own Adventure books. The concentration it took to make decisions and flip through the book was just enough more than reading anything else that it was a more complete escape from the turmoil around me as my mother and stepfather would have screaming matches.” A powerful testament to the anchoring nature of choice, indeed—and curiously, it seems that the simple act of being able to pick what you do, even if the consequences are dire, held many children in thrall.

Matt Staggs, a writer for Suvudu.com, liked the Lone Wolf ones the best. “But any of the original ones that (a) had a fantasy element and (b) had opportunities for gruesome death (with illustrations!) always thrilled me,” he says. And those “gruesome deaths” were always one of the most beloved features of the series—it’s interesting, then, that Kushner recalls the need to keep the violence down. “The ‘you’ character couldn’t kill anyone,” she says. “When they told me that, I remember thinking what? So the protagonist is allowed to die horribly, but can’t be a murderer? It was really frustrating!” Even without the option to kill others, however, many kids relished the potential for real consequences—I recall to this day the sudden flush of newfound determination after dying for what felt like the millionth time on The Planet of the Dragons—and given that series author Edward Packard recalls that The Worst Day of Your Life sold much better than The Luckiest Day of Your Life, it seems other children found the element of personal danger engaging, as well.

Still, for some, the unavoidably closed nature of the choices seemed limiting rather than liberating. Author Shanna Germain remembers feeling frustrated by the fact that while the novels presented “choice” as a selling point, there were only so many choices to be made. Shanna says, “I wanted more options—there were usually only two—and then I wanted the story to go on longer between the choices. Also, it often felt that the choices were too clearly delineated into ‘good vs. bad’ or ‘risky vs. safe.’ I wanted choices that would have made me think more carefully about the way I wanted to go in the story.”

Fantasy Magazine nonfiction editor Esther Inglis-Arkell, too, recalls a time when the “you” character was presented with what seemed to be two terrible choices. “I can’t remember the title of the book,” she says, “but it followed an ordinary kid through an ordinary school day where unusual events come up. I recall one thing was that a genie popped up and granted the kid one wish. First of all, one wish seemed very cheap, since I was accustomed to genies giving out three wishes. Then, I was annoyed when the text had two choices for the kid’s wish. One was something like a skateboard, which I had little interest in, and the other was that everything for the rest of the week would taste like pizza. Now, I loved pizza, but even as a child, I knew that a week in which everything tasted like pizza was a bad idea. I chose the first option, but when that was exhausted, I went back and read the second option. The kid found out quickly that when ice cream, milk, and even water tasted like pizza, life was no fun. I remember feeling very resentful of my avatar. I thought, ‘You got one wish and you messed it up completely!'”

It is fascinating, however, how much choice writers of the series were able to incorporate into books aimed at readers eight through twelve. Take a look at this dazzling Choose Your Own Adventure animation which depicts visually the number of paths and endings readers could have chosen; if you remember CYOA titles like The Cave of Time, The Third Planet from Altair, and Mystery of the Secret Room, you might enjoy seeing how many possibilities were open to you in each of those adventures.

Among all those possibilities, there were always “good” and “bad” choices—and that necessity proved challenging for the writers of the series. For Kushner, the distressing part of writing the series was that she came to the premise expecting things to follow standard narrative logic. “I thought of the cause and effect that exists in Arthurian stories, or fairy tales,” she says, “that courage and integrity should be rewarded. Then I turned in my very first draft and they said to me, ‘There’s a problem, here.’ Apparently, there was a formula I needed to be using. Endings for the series had nothing to do with logic—there simply had to be one-third happy endings, one-third bad, one-third neutral. But at first I couldn’t understand why people would want a bad ending, and that it had to be arbitrary, to boot. Sometimes, in the series, good choices had to yield bad endings—and that didn’t make sense to me! Then I realized that the endings weren’t the point. The adventures are the point, and that made so much more sense.”

For me, at least, that held true—I remember flipping ahead (cheating) to see if the story would end before deciding what to do. I did this by looking at the length of the next passage. I believed, perhaps erroneously, that shorter paragraphs meant more dire consequences. Knowing I was cheating, I’d pledge not to read anything that happened next—just see how much I’d have to read if I made that choice, or if the little options in italics appeared at the end of the paragraphs. I hated dying and ending the story due to my own poor decision-making; I felt like I’d failed a test or something—a feeling perhaps shared in part by Brad Deutsch, a physicist and all-around gentle soul, who believes the books “would have been much better if there were less of a sense of ‘winning’ and ‘losing’ in the stories.” Packard’s perspective is interesting here, however, as he hoped “most readers would want to go back and make other choices and end up by reading most, if not all, of the entire book.”

Still, right or wrong, dead or alive, the Choose Your Own Adventure books provided their readership with a lot of rewarding experiences for such slender novels. Packard fondly recalls that he received many letters “from enthusiastic kids and from parents and teachers who were happy that my books helped their kids get more into reading.” Kushner has a similar perspective: “I was really trying to be subversive with mine, to transmit my values, not just in terms of being knightly and noble, but to just encourage kids to go have imaginative adventures in wonderful worlds. I tried to put little clues in to where children could find more of that sort of adventure, like how in Knights of the Round Table, it begins in a bookshop where Merlin is the owner. I was trying to be the gateway drug for young readers. It was literary activism!”

For some children, the series undeniably motivated them to seek out more and different kinds of novels; for others, the frisson of agency inspired budding writers or role players to create their own storylines. Whatever the case, for kids who followed the series, whether we sought out titles set in the old west, or in spooky haunted houses, or in fantastic imaginative realms, the appeal of the books remained the same, as obvious as it might seem.

We got to choose our own adventures.

What inspired “Guinevere”?

“Guinevere” was inspired by a book cover done by Cliff Nielsen. He’s a great designer and his covers always catch my eye. Besides that, the latest King Arthur movie portrayed Guinevere as a warrior woman.

Where do you typically look for inspiration?

Today I look to the bookstore shelf to see what’s hot and what moves me. Sometimes it’s a sprawling spacescape; sometimes it’s a compelling figure in a moody setting.

Is there a storytelling component in your art?

I have always studied illustration. Even while studying classical art I’m drawn to the paintings that tell a story. Pretty pictures of flowers do nothing for me. An illustrator’s job is to tell a story with an image. The viewer must be drawn in to study what’s going on in the picture. It’s that interaction with the audience that I find compelling.

Is it a different experience for you when illustrating on commission versus producing art for yourself?

It depends on weather I’m creating a portfolio piece or a painting for a gallery. My portfolio work is designed to reel in new clients so it has the same feel as the commissioned work but without the restrictions of the editors and art directors. There has been a marked divide between my commercial and private work in recent years. The publishing industry isn’t interested in fine art anymore. They want something that looks like a movie poster, and that’s fine. The new trends present their own challenges. I do try to keep my hand in painting fine art. I feel like it compliments my digital work, and you never know if the industry will swing back in the other direction.

You’re also a photographer, and on your site, you say: “Light is the brush with which the photographer paints his masterpieces.” It seems light also plays a large role in your illustrations—why is light so significant to you, as an artist?

All a painter is doing is rendering lighting effects. Beyond that as an illustrator I use negative and positive space (light and dark) to create drama and composition. As a photographer I look and wait for the right light. In the studio I can mold the light to my will. That’s where I feel the most like an artist with a camera.

How do you think your experience as a photographer has altered your artistic style?

Artists have used photographic reference since photography was invented. I’ve been shooting since college to gather reference material, but with the development of digital cameras I was able to develop my photography skills much more quickly and I started shooting professionally. The heavy use of a photographic style in my illustrations is dictated by trends in the publishing industry. I always felt a little stupid trying to fake a painted look to my digital work anyway. It’s so much more pure this way.

How did you first get into making art?

My father was a commercial artist and I’ve always had all the encouragement and art supplies I needed. Since I could hold a crayon I always considered art my profession.

What have some of your favorite projects been, and why?

I love that Ace books hires me to do space opera pieces since it’s so outside my normal style. I thrive on challenge. The Conan The Hour of the Dragon piece I did last year for Prime is one of my favorite projects because I’ve always wanted to do a Conan cover.

I put my heart into making that cover both contemporary and at the same time a tribute to the classic Conan art I grew up with.

You were Chair of the Fine Arts/Photography Dept. at Adelphi Academy. Was this a teaching position? If so, did you enjoy teaching art and design?

I do enjoy teaching and I still do it through various private art schools and the Nassau County Museum of Art. The Adelphi position was a bit of a nightmare because I taught pre-K through twelfth grade. I did learn a lot about communicating the theory of art to a huge range of ages. I also feel like it’s a tribute to the great mentors I’ve had to pass on the knowledge.

What advice would you give to aspiring fantasy artists?

Study. Use reference. Tell a story. Don’t copy—instead, be inspired. In my book, The Art of the Mythical Woman: Lucid Dreams, from SQP was written with the fantasy art fan and art student in mind. The first half covers commissioned work and how an artist completes an assignment. The second half is personal work and I delve into art theory.