Saul, John

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John Saul

Personal

Born February 25, 1942, in Pasadena, CA; son of John W., Jr., and Elizabeth (Lee) Saul. Education: Attended Antioch College, 1959-60, Montana State University, 1961-62, and San Francisco State College (now University), 1963-65. Politics: "Mostly Democrat." Religion: "Sort of Swedenborgian." Hobbies and other interests: Reading, playing bridge, golf, and cooking.

Addresses

Home—Seattle, WA, and Hawaii. Agent—Jane Rotrosen, 318 East 51st St., New York, NY 10022. E-mail—[email protected].

Career

Writer. Formerly worked a series of odd jobs; rental agent with Airways Rent-a-Car, Los Angeles, CA; worked for a drug and alcohol program in Seattle, WA; Tellurian Communities, Inc., director, 1976-78, member of board of governors; Seattle Theater Arts, Seattle, director, 1978-80. Trustee and vice-president of Chester Woodruff Foundation.

Member

Authors Guild, Authors League of America.

Awards, Honors

Lifetime Achievement Award from Northwest Writers Conference.

Writings

NOVELS

Suffer the Children (also see below), Dell (New York, NY), 1977.

Punish the Sinners (also see below), Dell (New York, NY), 1978.

Cry for the Strangers (also see below), Dell (New York, NY), 1979.

Comes the Blind Fury, Dell (New York, NY), 1980.

When the Wind Blows, Dell (New York, NY), 1981.

The God Project (also see below), Bantam (New York, NY), 1982.

Nathaniel (also see below), Bantam (New York, NY), 1984.

Brainchild (also see below), Bantam (New York, NY), 1985.

Hellfire, Bantam (New York, NY), 1986.

The Unwanted, Bantam (New York, NY), 1987.

The Unloved, Bantam (New York, NY), 1988.

The Fear Factor, Bantam (New York, NY), 1988.

Creature, Bantam (New York, NY), 1989.

Sleepwalk, Bantam (New York, NY), 1990.

Second Child, Bantam (New York, NY), 1990.

Darkness, Bantam (New York, NY), 1991.

Shadows, Bantam (New York, NY), 1992.

Guardian, Bantam (New York, NY), 1993.

The Homing, Fawcett Columbine (New York, NY), 1994.

Three Complete Novels (contains Brainchild, Nathaniel, and The God Project), Avenel, 1995.

Black Lightning, Fawcett Columbine (New York, NY), 1995.

Three Terrifying Bestselling Novels (includes Suffer the Children, Punish the Sinners, and Cry for the Strangers), Wings Books (New York, NY), 1996.

The Presence, Fawcett Columbine (New York, NY), 1997.

The Right Hand of Evil, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1999.

Nightshade, Ballantine (New York, NY), 2000.

The Manhattan Hunt Club, Ballantine (New York, NY), 2001.

Midnight Voices, Knopf (New York, NY), 2003.

Black Creek Crossing, Ballantine (New York, NY), 2004.

"BLACKSTONE CHRONICLES" SERIES

An Eye for an Eye: The Doll, Fawcett (New York, NY), 1997.

Twist of Fate: The Locket, Fawcett (New York, NY), 1997.

Ashes to Ashes: The Dragon's Flame, Fawcett (New York, NY), 1997.

In the Shadow of Evil: The Handkerchief, Fawcett Crest (New York, NY), 1997.

Day of Reckoning: The Stereoscope, Fawcett (New York, NY), 1997.

Asylum, Fawcett (New York, NY), 1997.

OTHER

(With Ron Daum, Ann Combs and Mike Sack) Empress (musical play), staged reading in Maui, HI, 2003.

Adaptations

Cry for the Strangers was adapted as a television movie in 1982; the "Blackstone Chronicles" was adapted as a television miniseries in 1998, and as a video game, John Saul's Blackstone Chronicles, by Legend Entertainment in 1998; film rights to Midnight Voices were sold to the Warner Bros. subsidiary company Section 8 in 2002.

Sidelights

While best-selling horror novelist John Saul has produced a series of suspenseful thrillers since 1977, there is nothing mysterious about his rise to success. Saul, best known for eerie tales set in isolated locales and high-tech novels bordering on science fiction, has become especially popular among young adults who relish the author's adolescent characters as much as his frightening narratives. Today, with millions of copies of his novels in print, Saul continues to please his legion of fans with the successful formula he created early in his career.

"Saul's works are remarkably consistent in their structure, subject matter, and entertainment value; a reader who likes one of them will very probably like all of the others," observed Gary Westfahl in the St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost, and Gothic Writers. "The typical elements include vulnerable young people, an isolated small town, an adult outsider struggling to understand things, and some nascent or renascent evil that repeatedly threatens the protagonists." The critic added: "Saul's novels always work, just as horror stories have always worked, and they work at a powerful visceral level even when one's rational mind is howling in protest."

As a youngster growing up in Whittier, California, Saul enjoyed a normal childhood. When the question comes up, the author denies having lived through anything as bizarre as the experiences his young characters confront. Instead, Saul directed his youthful energies toward school and recalled that, even as a youth, he was very focused on writing to please his audience. "If you had to write 300 words on a subject," he told Andrea Chambers in a People interview, "300 words was exactly what they got. I sat there and counted them." Saul continued to hone his writing skills while in college by penning a "technically correct" twenty-line poem every day. But during his five years in college, as Saul's Web site biography explained, he was "variously majoring in anthropology, liberal arts, and theater, but never obtaining a degree."

Years of Odd Jobs

College was followed by a series of odd jobs, including stints as a technical writer and temporary office helper. Whatever he did by day, at night the aspiring author continued working on his unpublished books and stories. "Between the ages of 30 and 35 you really start to lose your dignity badly when you say you've been trying to be a writer for fifteen years," he admitted to Chambers. "I finally thought that by the time I was 35, I would no longer be a struggling writer, I'd be a failed writer." Speaking of those days with Linda Richards in January Online, Saul recalled: "I was a starving writer. I was writing books that no one wanted to publish. And earning my living in the car rental business. I had one wonderful job with Airways Rent-a-Car. Airways had a couple of offices in Los Angeles and one in San Francisco and I think one in Seattle. And there was nobody in the whole company—including the president—that had any interest in the car rental business at all. The car rental business was an easy way for people to make a living while they pursued their real careers, which was mostly acting and writing in Los Angeles and writing elsewhere. So, for the actors, everyone's job schedules were completely flexible and if an audition came up, no problem. You just went and did your auditions. For writers, they should feel perfectly free to bring their typewriters to the office. And if there's nothing going on, do not make any attempt to look busy, just sit there and type. That lasted for about 20 years and finally one day the guy that ran it said, 'Well, I've had it. I'm gonna get rid of the whole thing.' And that was the end of that."

After a number of works had been rejected by publishers, including comic murder mysteries and one novel about the citizens' band radio craze of the 1970s, Saul finally received a suggestion that paid off. A New York literary agent mentioned the tremendous popularity of horror novels, so Saul visited a drugstore paperback rack for ideas, wrote an outline for Suffer the Children, signed a contract for the book and produced it in less than a month. "I'd never really tried writing horror before," Saul recalled in a Publishers Weekly interview with Robert Dahlin, "but when I began, I found it fascinating. There were times I was writing certain scenes that I had to stop because I even scared myself, but I'm convinced that it helps to be a total coward when it comes to writing a book like this. If you can't scare yourself, how can you scare anyone else?"

Finds Success with Horror

Saul's first novel, about a dysfunctional family in a small New England town whose disturbed daughter becomes a suspect in the gruesome and mysterious disappearance of several of the town's children, became an instant bestseller. Suffer the Children introduces the themes which have dominated almost all of the works that followed, including the use of children and teenagers as victims or perpetrators of crime and a marked ambiguity which leaves the reader uncertain whether supernatural events are really taking place at all. Despite the book's popularity, reviewers lambasted Saul's exceedingly violent tale. Upon the book's release, a Publishers Weekly reviewer criticized the novel for its "graphically violent scenes against children which are markedly tasteless."

The brutality of Saul's first novel has not been matched in his more recent work. The author made a concerted effort to focus less on violent acts and instead depended on mood to frighten readers. "My books got progressively less violent because I really saw no reason for gore for gore's sake …, " Saul explained in Publishers Weekly. "It seems to me that what makes a book good is the tension in wondering what's going to happen next." Saul did not, however, stray too far from the formula that propelled him to the top of the bestseller lists. His next novel, Punish the Sinners, involves bizarre sex rites within an order of priests. Once again, Saul was criticized by a Publishers Weekly reviewer for opening the proceedings "with a dual meat-cleaver slaying" and then writing "with cleaver in hand throughout." Despite negative reviews, Saul's book enjoyed tremendous success and was followed by three more books with similar themes, all of which enjoyed equal success. As an example of a characteristic Saul plot, the ghost of a blind girl who was taunted and killed by classmates one hundred years earlier returns to seek revenge on the young descendants of her tormenters in Comes the Blind Fury.

Explaining his reasons for featuring children in his novels, Saul told a contributor to Publishers Weekly: "Children are very imaginative. They share a lot of fear based on the unknown, or what might happen in the dark. I can remember everything that ever happened to me since I was three, and that certainly helps me write from a children's point of view. Also, children are very appealing, both as villains and as victims. It's hard to stay mad at a kid, no matter what he does."

Saul ventured into a new realm with his sixth book, The God Project, his first hardcover publication. "I'd begun to feel I was repeating myself, and I needed something new," he told Dahlin. Instead of focusing on ghosts from the past as he had in his previous novels, Saul looked toward the future and produced a "techno-thriller" about a secret government project called CHILD. The project involves the genetic engineering

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of the fetuses of unsuspecting women. Once born, the children have amazing powers of regeneration, but when the project backfires, they begin to die. At the time the novel was released, Saul described The God Project as his most ambitious undertaking. "It seems as though I'm starting all over again," he told Dahlin."I feel just like a first novelist waiting around and wondering how my book will do, but I'm looking forward to reading the professional criticism—constructive criticism, I hope—that will be written about it." The book, which Saul described in Publishers Weekly as containing "very little overt violence," did not achieve quite the same level of popularity as some of his earlier books, but it did mark an expansion in the author's scope of themes and topics. Westfahl wrote: "Beginning with The God Project, Saul has more often focused on advanced scientific menaces; since he evidences little knowledge of or interest in science, Saul's approach to scientific horror has not been noticeably different."

In 1985's Brainchild, Saul combines the centuries-old revenge plot formulas of his earlier works with the futuristic slant of The God Project. The result is the story of Alex Lonsdale, a teenager who suffers brain damage in a car accident and is operated on by renowned surgeon Raymond Torres, a fourth-generation Mexican American whose ancestors were murdered when the United States acquired California in 1850. Although young Alex's recovery seems complete, his strange behavior disturbs his friends and family, who begin to suspect Alex's involvement when a series of brutal murders takes place. When Torres' hatred for gringos is revealed, the plot's revenge elements come into play. A Kliatt reviewer found Brainchild a fast-paced, "intriguing story with fascinating implications."

Not deviating from the successful premise of a ghost seeking revenge for the deeds of years past, Saul wrote Hellfire in 1986. Set in an isolated Massachusetts town, the story revolves around a wealthy family's plans to transform their now-abandoned mill building into a shopping mall. When their renovations go awry, the family matriarch fears they have roused the spirit of a girl who died there in a fire one hundred years ago. True to his formula, Saul includes several young characters, including an amiable girl named Beth and her spoiled, snobby cousin, Tracy. A Publishers Weekly reviewer found "an inevitability about much of the novel," but conceded that "the bloody, tantalizing plot rushes forward, the setting and historical background are well-drawn and Tracy is memorably, startlingly nasty."

A wealthy family stirring old resentments is also at the center of The Unloved. The plot centers around elderly Helena Devereaux, who lures her estranged son and his family to her estate on a South Carolina island, where her sweet-natured daughter, Marguerite, cares for the cantankerous old woman. Helena finally dies, but her control extends beyond the grave in the form of a malicious will that ties her children to her estate. When frequent sightings of her ghost occur and the formerly pleasant Marguerite begins behaving more and more like her mother, the plot takes an expected turn into the supernatural. "Saul plays out the expected Southern gothic but does so with empathy for the lives caught in the Devereaux web, from the relatives and friends to the dispirited townspeople who are dependent on the family for their very homes," remarked a Publishers Weekly reviewer.

Saul's twelfth novel, Creature, mixes modern-day headlines about steroid abuse with the mad-scientist motif of classic horror novels such as Frankenstein. In Saul's modern twist, the mad scientist is Dr. Marty Ames, an employee of the TarrenTech conglomerate, who poses as a high-tech athletic trainer at a local high school in order to conduct clandestine experiments upon unsuspecting jocks. In his attempt to create the perfect physical specimen, Ames accidentally turns his subjects into unmanageable, violent freaks. Critics were not especially impressed with Saul's adaptation of the classic horror novel premise. "While Saul's storytelling is energetic and atmospheric, it cannot mask the direction of this thinly drawn and predictable plot," commented Marc Shapiro in Inside Books. A Publishers Weekly reviewer also found the story formulaic, but added "it should please the author's fans as it continues Saul's focus on children as the vehicles and victims of unnatural forces."

Saul's novel Sleepwalk contains themes and a plot line similar to Creature. Once again, a sleepy town is the setting for a mysterious experiment on teenagers, but this time Saul introduces an extra dimension through the use of Native American folklore. The characters include Judith Sheffield, a math teacher who first suspects that her students are in danger, teenaged Jed, and his Native American grandfather, Brown Eagle. Penny Kaganoff in Publishers Weekly praised the book for its "compelling scenes in which Brown Eagle introduces Jed to Native American mysticism" and its climax, which includes "a spectacular display of man restoring nature to its rightful place—after having almost destroyed everything in the process."

Saul's novel Second Child appeared on the New York Times bestseller list just one month after publication, proving once again the author's bankable popularity. The story, featuring a teenage villain, centers around fifteen-year-old Teri MacIver, who finds herself living with her biological father after a fire kills her mother and stepfather. What Teri's father does not know is that Teri was responsible for the blaze which killed her mother and that she has come to live with him in order to propagate more evil. She finds the perfect victim in her shy, unstable half-sister, Melissa. An element of the supernatural is added when Melissa appears to become unknowingly manipulated by the ghost of D'Arcy, a young maidservant who committed hideous acts of violence one hundred years ago. In his review of the novel, Lorenzo Carcaterra in People wrote: "As you're reading, imagine a full moon and the tale being told around a camp fire deep in the forest: Saul spins a most enjoyable tale."

Saul's 1991 effort, Darkness, focuses this time on a group of teenagers in the town of Villejeune who are suffering from disturbing nightmares about a menacing old man they call the Dark Man. The prologue, described by a Publishers Weekly reviewer as "wonderfully scary," features the sacrifice of a newborn baby performed by none other than the Dark Man of the teens' dreams. Investigation soon shows that the Dark Man extracts fluid from the thymus glands of the teenagers by night. By day, he injects this fluid into the leading male citizens of the town, guaranteeing them eternal youth as long as the fluid supply is not exhausted. Despite the novel's promising start, the mystery of the Dark Man is "revealed halfway through the book," continued the reviewer, who found Saul's ending "cozily sentimental."

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In Shadows Saul again features school-age children prominently. At the center of the story is a school for gifted children called The Academy, where a diabolical experiment is being carried out without anyone's knowledge. The director of the school is embarked on a secret project to literally merge the intelligences of his young students with computers. When strange things begin to happen, the bright students realize they are in danger of being destroyed by the evil presence behind the experiment and must join forces to escape the terror of The Academy. With all the elements of a successful Saul novel, Shadows quickly became a bestseller.

The 1995 novel Black Lightning concerns serial killer Richard Kraven, who is obsessed with the metaphysics of life and death. He dies in the electric chair at the same moment that Glen Jeffers suffers a heart attack. After Glen's recovery, his wife, Anne, a newspaper reporter who helped send Kraven to his death, notices a pattern in a series of murders closing in on her that suggests Kraven's spirit and motivation have somehow managed to outlive him. A Publishers Weekly critic praised the "fast pacing and skillful narrative misdirection." Ray Olson in Booklist, comparing Black Lightning with Saul's previous novels, called it "really one of his better efforts."

In The Presence, Saul tells of a burned-out New Yorker, Katherine Sundquist, and her teenaged son, Michael, who move to Hawaii hoping to find a peaceful life in the sun. But soon scuba divers begin to go missing, strange creatures appear in the tropical paradise, and Michael's health is mysteriously in danger. A multinational corporation's secret genetic project and a recent volcanic eruption at the bottom of the sea seem to be oddly connected. To save Michael, Katherine must uncover the truth of the dangers facing her. The critic for Publishers Weekly found that "Saul distills familiar elements of horror, science fiction and the cyberthriller into a potent brew."

Publishes "Blackstone Chronicles"

High anticipation attended the 1997 publication of Saul's six-part series the "Blackstone Chronicles." Set in a small New Hampshire town, the novel series concerns the planned renovation of the abandoned Blackstone Asylum. These plans fall apart when a series of anonymous gifts to different towns-people cause death and ruin in their families. Each gift belonged at some time to an inmate at the asylum, and the identity of the mysterious benefactor who sends them, and his reason for causing so much misery throughout the town, are the core of the novel's mystery. In addition to its best-selling status, the "Blackstone Chronicles" was adapted as a television miniseries and a video game.

The Manhattan Hunt Club, published in 2001, is the story of Jeff Converse, who is wrongfully convicted of a subway mugging. Jeff is helped by anonymous benefactors to escape into the subway tunnels honeycombing the Manhattan underground. There, he and other similarly aided criminals are hunted as the special quarry of the 100 Club, an elite group of the city's 100 most influential businessmen. Without food, water, or weapons of his own, Jeff must escape his pursuers while trying to find his way out of the maze-like tunnels. The result is what Cathy Burke in People called "a creepy tale of murder, corruption and evil." Craig L. Shufelt in Library Journal believed that the "nonstop action keeps the book moving at a brisk pace," while Kathleen Hughes in Booklist judged The Manhattan Hunt Club to be "an enjoyable and clever yarn, packed with plot twists, improbable conspiracies, and lots of two-faced characters."

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Sauls' Midnight Voices concerns newly widowed Caroline, who is swept off her feet by dashing Anthony Fleming. After marrying him, Caroline moves with her two children to Anthony's apartment in the Rockwell, a venerable Gothic building in Manhattan with a dark anecdotal history. Caroline soon notices that the majority of the Rockwell's residents are aging socialites, the few children who live there are sickly, and when the children disappear, a younger "relative" of one of the building's residents quickly replaces him or her. Caroline soon realizes that her own children are in danger when her daughter falls mysteriously ill. Regina Schroeder in Booklist praised the novel: "Saul's handling of an old horror conceit conjures all the nail-biting tension of successful suspense, and the ritzy Central Park West setting he chooses makes everything even creepier." A critic for Kirkus Reviews concluded that the book delivers "a richly entertaining demonic payoff."

Continues Popularity with Readers

Like many other best-selling novelists, Saul is often underestimated by literary critics while he is adored by his millions of faithful readers. All of his novels have been bestsellers. One point about which critics are especially contentious is Saul's tendency to feature young victims and villains, thereby making his novels especially attractive to young readers. Because of the disturbing subject matter he deals with, Saul has said he was reluctant, at first, to recommend them to a young audience. "Originally, I thought they were a bit strong for children, for anyone under 15," Saul explained to a Publishers Weekly interviewer, "but since then, I've talked to school librarians who are happy with them. Young people like my books, and as it turns out, in this way I've introduced many of them to the act of reading. Librarians aren't concerned that any of my violence is going to affect children. They would rather have them reading, and these kids have told me they don't read the books for the violence. They read them for the plot."

If you enjoy the works of John Saul

you may also want to check out the following books:

Whitley Strieber, The Hunger, 1981.

Ramsey Campbell, The Influence, 1988.

Andrew Neiderman, Perfect Little Angels, 1989.

Bill Collins, writing in Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Review, described the strengths of Saul's writing: "Saul is an obvious master of the craft of telling a gripping story.… He knows what buttons to push, how to involve the reader quickly and thoroughly, and permits most of his characters to exhibit more than a usual amount of intelligence and courage as they face the almost inexplicable ramifications of the novel's unfolding plot." Similarly, an essayist for Contemporary Popular Writers noted that "critics have continually upbraided Saul for his formulaic plots, reliance on children as victims and perpetrators, and often-colorless dialogue. Saul, however, has cannily used that formula to shape his own swift twists of breathless plotting in a crisp clean style. He is also very adept at describing the psychic growing pains, wounds, and grievances of his younger characters. He is delighted by the fact that many of his younger readers find his work particularly attractive and that he has introduced millions of them to reading, according to school librarians.… Despite his lack of critical success, Saul's gothic tales continue to sell millions of copies on an annual basis." Saul's continuing success can be credited in part to his loyal fans. The John Saul Fan Club, founded in 1992, boasts some 20,000 members.

Speaking to Claire E. White in an interview posted at the Writers Write Web site, Saul explained what he likes best about writing a frightening story: "Writing a thriller allows me to immerse myself into a story. When I'm writing, the towns and characters are very real to me. I also enjoy the puzzle of putting the plots together. The motivations—the characters—all have to mesh with the plot." He also explained his work habits: "Basically I'm lazy. Most writers I know enjoy having written rather than the process of writing. I write a scene a day. If it's beautiful out I try to write in the morning and golf in the afternoon. If it's cold and rainy I procrastinate throughout the morning and write in the late afternoon. I've discovered I can write anywhere I have a computer, a comfortable chair and desk and a view to look at when I'm between paragraphs."

Biographical and Critical Sources

BOOKS

Bail, Paul, John Saul; A Critical Companion, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1996.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 46, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1988.

Contemporary Popular Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1997.

St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost, and Gothic Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1998.

Winter, Stanley, Dark Dreamers: Conversations with the Masters of Horror, Avon (New York, NY), 1990.

PERIODICALS

Advocate, August 28, 2001, Bruce C. Steele, "Fear and Loving in the Best-seller Rack," p. 44.

Best Sellers, October, 1982, Joseph D. Chibirka, review of The God Project, p. 262.

Booklist, June 1, 1995, Ray Olson, review of Black Lightning, p. 1684; July, 1997, George Cohen, review of The Presence, p. 1776; May 1, 2001, Kathleen Hughes, review of The Manhattan Hunt Club, p. 1595; May 1, 2002, Regina Schroeder, review of Midnight Voices, p. 1444; February 15, 2004, Ray Olson, review of Black Creek Crossing, p. 1004.

Detroit News and Free Press, July 1, 1990.

Inside Books, August, 1989, Marc Shapiro, review of The Creature.

Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2002, review of Midnight Voices, p. 696.

Kliatt, fall, 1985, review of Brainchild.

Library Journal, August, 2001, Craig L. Shufelt, review of The Manhattan Hunt Club, p. 166; September 15, 2002, Laurie Selwyn, review of Midnight Voices, p. 109.

Mystery Scene, Volume 16, 1987, James Kisner, "Interview: John Saul."

People, June 26, 1989, Andrea Chambers, "Careful Plotting for Success Lets Thriller Writer John Saul Enjoy All the 'Creature' Comforts," p. 79; November 19, 1990, Lorenzo Carcaterra, review of Second Child, p. 41; August 20, 2001, Cathy Burke, review of The Manhattan Hunt Club, p. 41; July 8, 2002, Scott Nybakken, review of Midnight Voices, p. 35.

Publishers Weekly, April 25, 1977, review of Suffer the Children; April 10, 1978, review of Punish the Sinners; April 23, 1979, review of Cry for the Strangers; April 11, 1980; June 27, 1980; June 25, 1982; August 13, 1982; April 29, 1988, review of The Un-loved; March 10, 1989, review of The Creature; December 14, 1990, Penny Kaganoff, review of Sleepwalk, p. 62; April 12, 1991, review of Darkness, p. 45; October 26, 1992; May 30, 1994, review of The Homing, p. 35; May 29, 1995, review of Black Lightning, p. 66; January 6, 1997, Paul Nathan, "Blackstone Chronicles to TV," p. 24; July 28, 1997, review of The Presence, p. 55; May 21, 2001, review of The Manhattan Hunt Club, p. 78; May 20, 2002, review of Midnight Voices, p. 47; February 23, 2004, review of Black Creek Crossing, p. 56.