BY: BOOKMANS

Author Jeff Mariotte talks about his new thriller Missing White Girl, the drawbacks to a diverse body of work, the importance of the independent bookstore, and his first Bookmans experience.

Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild Award-nominated author Jeff Mariotte is a busy man. His name may not be immediately recognizable to some, but a visit to his website reveals an astounding resumé: novelist, comic creator, writer and editor, short story writer, bookstore owner - and that's just for starters. Dig deeper and you'll find an individual who has delved into horror ("The Slab"), Westerns (comic series "Desperadoes"), young adult fiction (the "Witch Season" series), and media tie-ins for such pop culture juggernauts as the DC Comics universe, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel," "Star Trek," "Conan," "CSI:," "The Shield" and "Supernatural," with aplomb.

And now he's just released "Missing White Girl" (Jove Horror), a supernatural thriller set along the border of southeastern Arizona, where he and his family happen to make their home. You can keep up with his current projects, special appearances, and personal musings, at his blog Dispatches from the Flying M.
 

Congratulations on the release of your new novel, "Missing White Girl," which takes place in Cochise County. As a resident of southeastern Arizona, was it a natural draw for you to set the novel, as you state on your website, "the dark heart of the Arizona/Mexico border"? Was there a specific experience that inspired you to base the novel's events here, or was it the inevitable absorption of your surroundings and the complexities of the border situation?

"Missing White Girl" was mostly written in response to living a dozen miles from the border. We moved here in 2004, so it's still new to me - which is, I think, what prompted me to think about it in different ways than someone who's grown up with it might have. I lived in San Diego before this, which is also a border town, in its way - but by the time you get to our part of the city, there are a million or so people between you and the border, so you don't feel it with the immediacy that you do here, where there are maybe a few thousand.

Living where we do, in the Sulphur Springs Valley, I see Border Patrol all the time, of course. Occasionally I see border crossers. When I go into town for the supermarket or anything else, the border is right there. It's in the news all the time. It has a presence that is undeniable and unavoidable. And it represents, as all borders do, an entry into something different, someplace different, a new world, a fresh start. The novel didn't grow out of a specific experience or incident - it was more my way of exploring the conflicting, often contradictory ideas and thoughts that grew out of proximity to the border. That's why the book contains the voices of people on every side of the issue, from border humanitarians to vigilantes to law enforcement to the border crossers themselves.
 

The novel is a supernatural thriller - why not write a straight-up mystery novel? What does this particular genre allow you to say or do in Missing White Girl that a standard mystery may not allow? Do you think the setting adds to the depth of the mood you've created, and perhaps lends a certain genuineness due to that melding of cultures and the  history that exists along the border? And do you think it allows you to say something fresh about the "missing white girl" anomaly?

First, I tend to think in terms of the supernatural when I write, so that's just naturally the direction I take when I start to work out a story. In this particular case, including the supernatural element worked for me for a variety of reasons. I wanted to include the connection to the Cabeza de Vaca expedition of 1528-36 (partly to demonstrate that the existing border is a relatively modern development, and trying to "control" it stands in the way of tens of thousands of years of history), which agitated for a supernatural tie to the present day. I also wanted to hint at the way magic and miracles are much more a part of daily life in some households south of the border than they tend to be for us - there's a reason that "magical realism" as a literary form developed in Latin America.  And borders, after all, don't have to be between countries - they can be between what we know and what we believe, or what we accept as "reality" and what we don't.

Without, I hope, giving away too much, the "missing white girl" of the book's title isn't the missing white girl from an upper middle class Sierra Vista family.  There is a missing teenage girl, Lulu Lavender, from a blended-race family, and most of the book's action revolves around the search for her (while the sheriff's department and the media are focused on the missing white teen), but the real girl of the title is absolutely connected to the book's supernatural aspects.

You're an incredibly prolific writer in a number of genres and media - short stories, comics, media tie-ins, novels, westerns, supernatural, mysteries, young adult fiction; do you enjoy that variety and actively seek it out? Or do you consider each opportunity as it comes along and like the challenge? Though I get the impression you're a genuine fan across the board. Do you have a favorite medium to work in, or do they each bring their own unique gratification?

I guess I'm a living example of how not to build a writing career. The writers who should be emulated, career-wise, who become big successes, tend to be the ones who do the same thing time after time - not teling the same story necessarily, but the same type of story. John Grisham and his legal thrillers, Laurell K. Hamilton and erotic horror, Tom Clancy and technothrillers - it just seems easier for readers to grasp what they're about and to come back book after book after book.

My method has been the opposite. Not by design, but maybe by some personality defect. I'm interested in lots of different things and I tend to explore those interests. I'd get bored writing, for example, one of those mystery series that go on with the same characters for a dozen books or more (not that I don't read some of them).

You're right in that often the reason I take on certain projects is because I'm too big a fan to turn them down. The "Age of Conan: Marauders" trilogy, for instance, falls into that category - I have been a fan of Conan since high school, so when I was asked to write a trilogy set in his world, I had to say yes.

I also love the different media in which I get to write. Comics have been a lifelong companion, and writing them requires a discipline and technique entirely different from novels. If I had to pick one, it would be prose fiction, specifically the novel form - but I don't have to pick, fortunately, so I get to write comics and short stories and novels and whatever else comes up.