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What if a Hoax Became Terrifyingly Real?
Robert Stava Author Interview
By Summers Last Twilight focuses on the nefarious work of the villain, Steven Crowley, who is building a secret cult. What was your inspiration for the cult that he is secretly building?
The cult was modeled after both the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley’s Thelemite order “A∴A∴”, the later which he co-founded in 1907. I also drew on Umberto Eco’s “Foucault’s Pendulum, which is a masterpiece on these types of cults and Hermetic Orders like the Rosacrutions. I leveraged their rituals & practices into the story as well as Crowley’s own teachings which were intriguing: to me it was as if it was all an elaborate joke/game to him, while at the same time he was truly searching for some higher mystical reality. Crowley may have been having us on, but he was exceedingly smart, if something of a lunatic. The ‘what if?” came in the form of “What if someone actually applied the techniques using current Quantum Physics theories…what if something that was half a hoax became something terrifyingly real?”
The Sacred Order of the New Golden Dawn comes back in this novel. Do you feel that you were able to explore all the chaos they can bring?
There was a conscious decision to be merciful to the reader and keep it under 300 pages. You could write volumes on this stuff.
I felt that the actions scenes of violence and mayhem were expertly crafted. I find that this is an area that can be overdone in novels. How did you approach this subject to make sure it flowed evenly?
Really? Now that’s a compliment! I can only tell you I try and write those parts cinematically, visualizing them like a choreographed movie scene. I find older movies where they relied purely on acting and directing useful for that, as opposed to most current ones that overly rely on CG effects and flashy editing.
There is a band of quirky characters through the novel that I enjoyed, especially CID detective John Easton. What was your favorite character to write for?
John Easton. When I originally conceived of the character, I knew I wanted a variation on the classic British Detective, but had no idea how to avoid the usual tired cliché’s. The answer provided itself on a red-eye flight to London when I found myself jammed into a seat next to this restless guy who turned out to be a CID Detective Superintendent from Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force. Something I’d never heard of or ever thought of before. He was going on leave after suffering a gunshot wound in the leg the day before and was half-zonked on Cabernet & Percocet to handle the pain. It was definitely a ‘Bingo!’ moment. We ended up in an engrossing conversation most the flight and I got a good piece of my character’s backstory effectively handed to me from the real McCoy. When I got to the hotel I couldn’t sleep so turned on the TV and the first image was a a movie with Callum Keith Rennie in it and thought, “Bingo #2 – and that’s what he looks like!”. Then it was a question of mixing in a few of my own traumatic experiences, a latent psychic ability (based on a woman I once dated) and a dash of the original James Bond and he pretty much stepped out of the pages ready to go. He’s a recurring character who pretty much writes himself – sorry I can’t explain that better – and since he’s a capable guy it’s I’m always curious how he’s going to get out of any particular mess I throw him in.
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Some nightmares refuse to stay dead… In the sleepy Hudson River village of Wyvern Falls, something dark and corrupting has re-emerged from the shadows, a secret cult seeded by the infamous Aleister Crowley. A cult that was supposedly struck down on the eve of the Great Depression: The Sacred Order of the New Golden Dawn With them will come nightmares and chaos, opening portals to horrifying dimensions . . . By Summer’s Last Twilight. A new chapter in Horror has begun…
By Summers Last Twilight
By Summer’s Last Twilight is the latest novel from horror author Robert J. Stava, set in the deceptively sleepy New York state village of Wyvern Falls. The book continues a long line of Stava’s work set in Wyvern Falls, and as such contains a great deal of information that may not be clear to the newcomer reader. Characters emerge, engage, and disappear – or get killed, since according to Stava that’s his favorite thing to do in a horror novel – without much in the way of apparent rhyme or reason, though there is a core group of heros and villains to tie the story together.
The nexus of the plot focuses on the nefarious work of the villain Steven Crowley, the latest descendant in the line hailing from the Occult provocateur Alistair Crowley – the latter infamous for his no-holds barred orgies and invocations of arcane rituals. In this story, though, the orgies and rituals have a sinister metaphysical purpose, shattering the membranes that separate our dimension from that of maddening demons who want to feast upon our flesh and our very sanity.
Steven Crowley has managed to worm his way up to the top of this quiet little town, his arcane calculations proving that this town would be the optimal spot to perform his ritual. A hurricane late in the summer washes a body out into a tree, catching the attention of the local plucky teenage gang of racial stereotypes who inevitably get to the bottom of things.
A man named John Easton is the grown-up that helps them get to the bottom of this, facing off against snakelike thugs like Razor and Weatherman who seem more motivated by violence for its own sake rather than any kind of humanity, however perverse it may be. Easton has numerous torrid affairs – this book drips with explicit sex, if that’s your thing – all of which end in bizarre disaster and let him sort of elbow the reader and go “women, right?”
Easton’s affairs include a near-sexual encounter with the breathy 15 year old French girl which, while going uncompleted, remains the most horrifying event in the entire book. Women don’t really get to do too much in this book except be lovers or mothers or crazy ex-girlfriends or literal objects of sacrifice, but so it goes in the world of Wyvern Falls.
There’s plenty of violence too, which would be remiss of a horror book to forget. The violent scenes are some of the most lovingly crafted and passionately executed sections to be found, giving the book a clear claim to the genre.
However, there’s too much of everything else. The horrific moments of the book are few and far between, interspersed with vast sections where characters sit around and explain things to one another.
Such lengthy exposition can somewhat be forgiven, given the by-design arcane nature of the source material. Crowley’s cult drew upon vast swaths of information that would be unfamiliar to the average reader today (or indeed to anyone ever) and Stava does an admirable job with providing expository backstory through the several interludes that intersperse the main story line.
All in all, though, the book remains in its own little world – if you are the type of reader who already enjoys this genre or Stava’s work in particular then you’ll find yourself right at home.
Pages: 288 | ISBN: 1515150747
LITERARY TITAN 