7 Questions For: Author Charles Gilman

Charles Gilman is an alias of Jason Rekulak, an editor who lives in Philadelphia with his wife and children. When he's not dreaming up new tales of Lovecraft Middle School, he's biking along the fetid banks of Schuylkill river, in search of two-headed rats and other horrific beasts. 

His novels in the Tales from Lovecraft Middle School series include Professor Gargoyle, The Slither Sisters,  Substitute Creature, and Teacher's Pest.

Click here to read my review of Professor Gargoyle

Jason Rekulak is an Associate Publisher and Creative Director at Quirk Books. An alumnus of St. Martin’s Press and Quality Paperback Book Club, Jason Rekulak has acquired a number of Quirk favorites, including the international best seller Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and the smash sensation Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. When he’s not identifying Quirk's next big hit, he manages their spectacular team of book editors and designers.

And now Charles Gilman faces the 7 Questions:  

Question Seven: What are your top three favorite books?

I’ve been reading and re-reading The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl for more than twenty years, so that’s definitely near the top of my list.  Everyone knows about Dahl’s famous novels for children; fewer people remember that he wrote dozens of outrageous short stories for adults. Many were originally published in The New Yorker and quite a few were adapted for anthology-style TV shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The best ones usually begin with an outrageous or gruesome premise: A woman murders her husband with a leg of lamb; a scientist invents a machine that allows him to “hear” the voices of trees; and so forth.  I started reading these stories when I was 12 or 13 years old, and I’ve never grown tired of them. Two other books I’ve re-read many, many times are Holes by Louis Sachar and Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin.

Question Six: How much time do you spend each week writing? Reading?

I have a day job in book publishing that keeps me pretty busy from 8-6, and I spend a lot of that time reading and editing manuscripts by other authors.  When I’m working on the Lovecraft Middle School books, I probably log an additional 30 hours/week on nights and weekends writing and rewriting, which doesn’t leave me any time at all for additional reading.  It’s exhausting (and god bless my wife for putting up with me) but of course I love it.

When I’m not writing a book, I do a lot of reading for pleasure.  Probably 3-4 books a month on average.


Question Five: What was the path that led you to publication?

I‘ve worked in publishing since graduating college, so I’ve had easier access than a lot of other people.  If you want to make movies, move to Los Angeles.  If you want to publish fiction, move to New York (and, if you can afford to, get an entry-level job in a publishing house). 


Question Four: Do you believe writers are born, taught or both? Which was true for you? 

I’ve been writing and making books for as long as I can remember.  I did a lot of copying and imitation all through elementary school.  In fifth grade, I was selling my comic books in the school cafeteria (each one was hand-copied on looseleaf).  I don’t know this means that I was born a writer (or born an editor?) but books and stories have been a life-long interest.  


Question Three: What is your favorite thing about writing? What is your least favorite thing?

Finding the whole story can be tough.  I usually sit down with a vague idea of where a story is going to go, and then discover the rest as I go along.  This discovery process can be very frustrating because I find that I have to explore a lot of dead-ends (and write a lot of wasted pages) to consider every opportunity.  I sort of have to think “on paper” which is not very efficient.  So I guess the beginning is my least favorite part....it’s sort of like building a jigsaw puzzle, and I’m searching through all of these pieces, looking for the corners or the border.  It’s slow and tedious.  But as I move along, as more and more elements lock into place, I start to really enjoy the process — and my very favorite part is always the last draft, when I feel like every element of the story is finalized and I can focus on punching up language, punching up word choice, adding jokes, adding interesting details, all the actual ‘writing’ -- that’s a real treat.



Question Two: What one bit of wisdom would you impart to an aspiring writer? (feel free to include as many other bits of wisdom as you like)

Be careful when soliciting feedback.  If you’ve written the next Lord of the Rings, don’t mind the criticism of someone who’s never read Tolkien (or who doesn’t appreciate Tolkien).  You have to find readers who share your tastes and sensibilities.  Go find them on the internet, or (preferably) in real life. 


Question One: If you could have lunch with any writer, living or dead, who would it be? Why

I’m going to say Roger Ebert because he just passed away last week and I’m still feeling crummy about it.  I first discovered him more than 30 years ago — I was clicking the channels on an old black-and-white TV and discovered him reviewing the movie “E.T.” on his TV show, back when it was still on PBS.  I started watching him every week and turned into this weird 11-year-old Movie Geek.  I’ve been reading his reviews, books, essays, blogs, and tweets ever since.  Really terrific writer, really great human being.  I feel like I know him better than a lot of my friends.  I wish I could buy him lunch.

lovecraftmiddleschool.com 

quirkbooks.com

Book Review: PROFESSOR GARGOYLE by Charles Gilman

First Paragraph(s): Robert Arthur was surrounded by strangers. 
He stood outside the entrance to Lovecraft Middle School, watching the students pass by, searching for a familiar face. Everybody was talking to someone. Kids were joking and laughing and goofing around. But Robert didn’t recognize a single person. 
Earlier that summer, his neighborhood had been redistricted. This was a fancy way of saying that all of his old friends were attending Franklin Middle School, in the north part of town, but somehow Robert got stuck attending Lovecraft Middle School, in the south part of town.

Charles Gilman will be here Thursday to face the 7 Questions.

Do you like the scary books, Esteemed Reader? You know I do, which is why a scary book is two to three times as likely to be our Book of the Week. When I'm shopping for book, I'm two to three times as likely to buy a scary one and as a kid I was five to six times more likely. As you know, my favorite middle grade book of all time is Roald Dahl's The Witches. 

If younger me had discovered the extraordinary Professor Gargoyle, I have no doubt I would've torn through the entire series of Tales From Lovecraft Middle School. It has touches of Roald Dahl's sensibilities, some wonderfully scary moments, relatable characters, and grossness combined with humor. As an adult, I'm curious to read the next tale, but Gilman has crafted an excellent book designed to suck in young readers in to the full series--and it's not just that the covers of the books are really, really cool.

Professor Gargoyle is an excellent stand-alone tale, but it's an even better start to a series, laying the groundwork for all that is to follow. Series writers take note: though the ending of this book sets up Book Two perfectly and leaves the reader wanting to buy Book Two right then and there, Gilman also definitively concludes book one. By the end of Professor Gargoyle, Robert Arthur's first plot has been resolved, though the door is opened for the plots that are to follow. 

So what is Robert's plot? Well as you read in the first paragraph, he's starting at a brand new school due to redistricting. Having just been built, it's literally a brand new school. And on this first day this happens:

Finally Principal Slater stood up with oversized scissors and sliced the long green ribbon in half. At precisely that moment, the clouds turned gray and a low drum of thunder rolled across the sky. 
It was weird, Robert thought. Just one minute ago, it had been a perfectly pleasant and sunny day.

That can't be a good sign. Really, if you're headed anyplace with the name Lovecraft, you're probably screwed:) Even worse, Robert's not the only one starting at Lovecraft Middle School:

Robert glanced over his shoulder, peering up at the bleachers, scanning the faces. There must have been four hundred kids in the arena. He knew that, sooner or later, he’d have to recognize someone. 
And then he did. 
The worst possible someone. 
Oh, no. 
Robert immediately faced forward. 
But it was too late. He’d been spotted. 
“Hey, Robert! Is that you? Robert Arthur?” 
He couldn’t believe his rotten luck. Glenn Torkells? The one person he knew at Lovecraft Middle School—and it was Glenn Torkells? The bully who had tormented him for years? 
“Robert! I’m talking to you!” 
Definitely Glenn Torkells.

If you'll allow me a small spoiler: Glenn Torkells might not be all bad. It might just be he's the sort of character who, through events in the story, becomes a friend and sidekick to Robert for the series. If that were so, and you'll of course have to read the full book to verify, Esteemed Reader, wouldn't it be an interesting way to introduce the sidekick character? 

The problem with having your bully character turn friendly (if that happened) is you would need an immediate source of antagonism to take his place. And this is crucial: Gilman knows not to make the bully friendly until that secondary, soon to become primary, source of antagonism comes along in the form of Professor Garfield Goyle (get it?), a Snape-ish instructor with a hatred for rats, which is odd, considering his diet:

Goyle raised the hamster high above his head. The animal swung its paws wildly, desperate to scramble away, but Goyle’s grip was too strong. He opened his mouth, as though threatening to eat the animal. 
It was just a dumb, cruel stunt, Robert thought. The same kind of mean prank that Glenn Torkells seemed to enjoy. Goyle was just another bully. 
Then there was a hideous snapping sound, and the bottom half of Goyle’s jaw collapsed. It fell open like the mouth of a ventriloquist’s dummy, revealing sharp white fangs and a gaping black maw. Goyle lowered the hamster between his lips and swallowed it whole.

I just love how unapologetically gross Gilman allows himself to be. He has a great deal of fun with rodents, particularly of the two-headed variety, and this will not be a fun read for the squeamish -or certain young girls and sisters, which will no doubt make the book all the more palatable for young boys:)

Professor Goyle makes a fine foil for this story (yep, I did), but Gilman is planning for a whole series. I'm not going to give away all his secrets, but Lovecraft Middle School gives new meaning to the idea of recycled materials. What the boys soon learn is that they're in for a lot more trouble than just one hamster-munching professor:

“Once I saw this movie about a haunted house,” he explained. “It looked totally normal on the outside, but inside all this weird stuff kept happening. Stuffed animals floating around. The daughter got sucked into a television set. Finally they figured out the house was built on an old Native American burial ground. The spirits of all the dead bodies were trapped under the house, so they were rising up to haunt them.” 
“You think Lovecraft Middle School was built on an old graveyard?” 
“It’s possible, isn’t it?” 
Robert shrugged. “When you’ve got giant squids coming out of lockers, anything’s possible.”

Dude, I know that movie:) I'd like to thank Charles Gilman for not referring to it as an "old movie," though many younger readers will likely not have seen it. That's the nice thing about writing for children. Younger readers aren't as likely to have been desensitized by countless horror stories, and so the scares that won't faze hardened horror fans may keep them up at night. 

But even those kids whose parents let them stay up for The Walking Dead will enjoy Professor Gargoyle. Gilman's packed in plenty of scares into a good story, well told, and very well-paced. The book moves right along serving up amusing characters and thrusting them in harm's way, without ever dragging. 

And that's where we'll leave it, except that, as we'll learn Thursday, Charles Gilman is the pen name of Jason Rekulak, editor. Knowing that, I got a chuckle out of this passage:

An elderly woman with cat-eye glasses was demonstrating for the students how to use the e-readers. “These can be filled with downloaded books and checked out from the library—as long as you’re very careful with them, of course. Personally, I’m a little old-fashioned. I still prefer the feel of a real book with real pages. The best feeling in the world, if you ask me. But we have to embrace the future, don’t we, children?”

Indeed. I read my copy on a Kindle:) As always, I'll leave you with some of my favorite passages from Professor Gargoyle:

Robert walked to his locker—A119—and entered the passcode he’d received in the mail. Each button made a satisfying chirp when he pressed it, and then the locker door opened with a gentle pneumatic whooooosh.

When he finally looked up again, the shelves seemed to have grown taller. It must have been a trick of the light—the tops of the shelves appeared to be leaning over him ever so slightly, like trees blocking out the sun.

“What is that?” Glenn yelled. 
“I warned you!” Karina said. 
“You told us scary spiders. You never said giant spiders!” 
“What’s the difference?!?”

He unfurled his glistening wings and they quivered with anticipation, spattering gooey mucus all over the classroom.

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: All reviews here will be written to highlight a book’s positive qualities. It is my policy that if I don’t have something nice to say online, I won’t say anything at all (usually). I’ll leave you to discover the negative qualities of each week’s book on your own.