Joe Konrath's/Jack Kilborn's Fraidy Blog Tour

Crime author and blogger extraordinaire Joe Konrath is currently touring other sites throughout the month to promote his new horror novel.
Afraid is written under the terribly-kept secret pseudonym Jack Kilborn and will launch on March 31st. Buy it from your favorite bookseller if you dare.

Due to his e-popularity and disinclination to say No, Joe's ended up at multiple sites daily, and at his blog, you can track all of his travels. Via the blogosphere, you can be everywhere without going anywhere at all. We at Women of Mystery are delighted to be one such virtual speed bump beneath the wheels of his speeding tour bus. In order to add extra value and joy for our readers, I tried-- and it wasn't easy-- to formulate:

9 Questions No One's Asked Konrath (yet)

1) Caesar or Waldorf? Or is it wussy to eat things without faces?

I hate salad. The closest I get to vegetables is french fries.

2) The adrenaline rush of horror is partly shock and surprise, but unlike movie viewers, readers pace books themselves. They can short-circuit the thrills by closing the covers as their hearts race and they imagine the scary music swelling. You've even said you expect some readers won't finish, especially people who don't typically read horror. Is it as much of an authorial triumph when readers have to stop reading to grab nitro pills or a nearby pail?

I strive to entertain. To entertain with words means to somehow affect the reader. Make them smile or laugh, make them cry, make them think, and, in some cases, scare the holy hell out of them. So when someone emails me saying they have to get therapy because my book was so frightening, I count that as a win.

3) During your funny interview with sometime co-author Jeff Strand, I especially enjoyed the uncomfortable silence. May we have one?

No. But I can give you a thoughtful pause.

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How was that? Good for you?

[Break for sandwich and cigarette- ed.]

4) Related to the earlier question about shock and surprise, even though I know what's coming, William Peter Blatty books still make me clammy. Who still chills you after multiple reads, and what makes certain horror stand up?

There are so many books I love, it's hard to pick. Blatty's LEGION is a really creepy book. I'm also in awe of MASTER OF LIES by Graham Masterton. Scariest first chapter ever. PRESSURE by Jeff Strand is one of the scariest books ever written. I love DESERT PLACES and LOCKED DOORS by Blake Crouch.

5) I'm also a Columbia College of Chicago grad (1995), and I lived there for almost 20 years! Now that we've e-fived and bonded, may I have one of your kidneys?

I'm sorry, I've already promised it to a stranger I met on Facebook. If only you'd asked me yesterday. I do have some bone marrow left, however.

6) During your stop at Erica Orloff's blog, you sketched a brief history of horror including the Marquis De Sade. That reminded me of reading his 120 Days of Sodom. The later chapters, which he only bothered outlining, read as if even their creator was getting bored with the permutations of mutilations, poop-ery, and degrading sex. However, he was required by his concept to keep rearranging his players and their orifices like so many Tetris pieces. Over the course of a novel with serious amounts of carnage, not to mention several different death-dealers in action, how do you keep the scenes feeling fresh and immediate for you and readers?

AFRAID has a high body count, and some terrible things happen, but the point of the book isn't to catalog atrocities. It's an adventure novel, and hopefully the reader cares about these characters and wants them to survive. So it's not really about coming up with unique ways to kill people, and more about dropping characters into bad situations and ratcheting up the tension.

7) How much more awesome is my version below than your current author photo? You may use percentages to estimate. My mom likes knowing the art-school tuition's not going to waste.


It is 73.3% more awesome than my current photo. How did you know that in real life I speak in dialog balloons?

8) I loved the list of your Twittered jokes from Charlotte Hughes' blog. Consider them stolen. Your crime novels employ a lot of humor. Should people expect Jack Kilborn to ease the nastiness and fright with moments of levity? Do you think that kind of contrast's necessary, like adding salt to a cake batter, to make the horror feel more horrible?

For AFRAID, I wanted to evoke one emotion only; fear. I think the relentless tone of the book makes it scarier. Though, if you look really close, there's probably some dark humor in AFRAID, which will make you grin while shaking your head and saying, "That is just soooo wrong."

9) You began this month-long virtual blog tour with the candid preconception that they don't work. WoM's own Terrie Farley Moran lent her actual condo for a previous tour when you road-tripped in the flesh to 600 bookstores. I know this month's not over, but have you revised your opinion, or should Terrie start boarding up the windows and refreshing the Scotch Guard on her furniture?

I've already seen the benefit of this blog tour, and I think it's actually working. To what degree, I'm unsure, but I've noticed some bumps in my Amazon numbers, and my website and blog are getting more hits. Also, if you Google "JA Konrath" I'm getting several thousand more hits than I was last month, which means more people are linking to me.

Will this tour catapult me to the top of the bestseller lists? I doubt it. But it will sell a few more books than if I hadn't blog toured.

Hi, Terrie! :)