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 Neela Sakaria: Please tell our readers about your background as an attorney and as a writer.
Beecher Smith: I graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1974 and went to work in Memphis with Glankler Brown in its Tax Department. While there I concentrated my practice on estate planning, probate matters, and individual income, gift, and estate tax. When the managing partner of the department died in September of 1976, I was asked to succeed him by Elvis Presley and served as personal attorney to Elvis the last year of his life. After probating his will, I served as lead counsel for his estate, rezoning Graceland so it could operate as a museum and incorporating Elvis Presley Enterprises to handling merchandising rights and licenses. I still remain of counsel.
My major in college was English Literature. I have always loved poetry and well-crafted fiction, especially fantasy, science fiction, and horror. I am a past president of the Poetry Society of Tennessee. I was elected its Poet Laureate for 1995. In 1996 I was also elected Poet Laureate of the Mid-South Writers' Association and inducted into the International Society of Poets Laureate. In 1998 I was awarded Prose Writer of the Year by the Mid-South Writers' Association.
In 1994 my short story "Return of the King" was included in The King Is Dead: Tales of Elvis Postmortem (Delta Books Division, Dell Publishing). Among other contributors were Harlan Ellison, Joyce Carroll Oates, and Clive Barker.
Recovering My Sanity, the first collection of my 41 award-winning poems and three short stories was published by Zapisdat Publishing (Palo Alto, CA) in 1995. Three poems from that collection have been selected for publication in Legal Studies Forum (University of West Virginia, 2004).
Neela: What was your motivation for writing The Guardian? There was some historical inspiration, correct?
BS: Having read Anne Rice's Queen of the Damned, I said, "I can write this stuff, too!" Not long before that, opposing counsel on a high profile case had made some highly offensive, untrue, and unprofessional derogatory comments about me, for which I had no remedy because they were protected speech under the law. He later apologized in private to me and promised a public apology upon conclusion of the case, but never did. He became my inspiration for the "bad lawyer," Reynolds Field. One key element of successful fiction is poetic justice. Since I had no access to a remedy in real life, I found relief and a remedy in writing about this as a subplot in The Guardian. Asking myself the essential question, "What if?" I imagined a plot around my antagonist crossing a vampire and suffering exquisite punishment for his transgression.
While researching vampires, I discovered that the authentic Dracula (Vlad Tsepes) had died mysteriously in battle and his head was cut off and hung by the Turks on the main gate of Constantinople, his headless corpse interred beneath the chapel at the monastery of Snagov. According to all vampire lore, it would have been impossible for him to return as one of the "undead."
Even more fascinating is the historical account of the Dracula-Bathory Feud. In 1476 Dracula embarked on his last campaign and third reign as Voivode (Prince) of Transylvania. He had married a cousin of Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, and his fortune was on the rise again. But he was as hated by the nobility as he was loved by his troops and subjects. Accompanying as second in command was an inexperienced young aristocrat named Stephen Bathory, who, at the beginning of that campaign could not even read a war map. Bathory had the most to gain from Dracula's death. Acting as field commander, Bathory learned quickly and, three years later, won a decisive victory over the Turks at Kenyer Meso (The Field of Corn). A grateful King made Bathory Prince of Transylvania. Within three generations the Bathories were the largest landowners in Hungary and its wealthiest family.
As the Bathory fortunes rose, the Dracula fortunes waned. Dracula's son was weak and ineffective, as was his grandson. However the two great-grandsons, John and Ladislas, fought with valor defending the Siege of Vienna in 1535 and received patents of nobility as a reward from King Ferdinand. They acquired considerable land holdings in the Banat area of Hungary. But standing between them and their ambitions was Stephan Bathory, grandson of the man who had the most to gain from Dracula's death. There was litigation over title to Fagaras, hereditary seat of the Draculas, and Bathory won. It was alleged Bathory bribed the judges.
About the same time, Paracelsus, former Court Physician to King Ferdinand, also lost a suit over payment for royalties for his medical books. He, too, alleged bribery of the judges. Paracelsus is renowned by history as the Father of Diagnostic Medicine. He taught to treat the cause of a disease, not the symptoms. He developed the first and only effective cure for venereal disease that was used for the next 500 years until penicillin was discovered. But he also practiced alchemy, claiming he had found the Philosopher's Stone, could change lead into gold, and possessed the Elixir of Eternal Life. Both Paracelsus and Ladislas Dracula were present in Vienna in 1537. Both were angry, disappointed men. All the foregoing is historically accurate. What if Dracula's great-grandson purchased the Elixir of Eternal Life from Paracelsus, only subsequently to learn its awesome and awful side effects? Then, after Lad Dracula is awakened from his tomb by grave robbers, he finds his lands belong to Elizabeth Bathory and has a tryst with her.
Finally, much of Memphis' rich heritage and history are employed to show how the characters in the present got to be the way they are.
Neela: How would you describe Dalton's character. What are Dalton's greatest strengths and weaknesses? What was your inspiration for the character?
BS: Dalton is a brilliant, alcoholic attorney, who is too fixated on his recent losses--social, status, financial--to concentrate on his practice and attend to what is most important. He is a pushover for a pretty face and loves the ladies too much. He has a wonderful Irish tenor singing voice. Too trusting, he looks for the good in everyone, only to be more disappointed whenever they let him down. Dalton's greatest strengths are his intelligence and his devotion to family and friends. Also his perseverance. He never gives up.
Neela: Do you consider it a "horror book"?
BS: It fits the genre, but I prefer to call it a "high concept epic thriller of horror and the supernatural."
Neela: What are your thoughts on the future of the genre? Do you think that it is thriving or that it faces threats from the prevalence of movies and other forms of entertainment these days? What are the challenges for horror writers?
BS: Going back to Aeschelus' tragedies, elements of horror and the supernatural have always been with us. The problem today is twofold. Most of the horror genre today deals with "splatter" or technology than the supernatural. I love the works of Stephen King and Peter Straub because they can be both cerebral and visceral in the same manuscript. The dumbing down of horror, reducing it to Michael Meyers ("Halloween") and Killer Jason (Friday 13th), does nothing, as far as I am concerned, for the good of the genre.
The worst challenge for a horror writer is that as a genre it pays so poorly. For every King, Rice, Barker or Straub, there are hundreds or thousands of Beecher Smiths scratching and clawing their way up the ladder, but few make it to the top. Robert McCammon, one of my favorite southern horror writers, had to drop out in order to make a living.
Neela: What were some of the challenges you faced in getting The Guardian published, and what advice do you have for other writers who are looking to write their first book? ?
BS: The Guardian is my first published novel. It was accepted by editors at two different publishing houses (not at same time) and both times they moved on and the manuscript stagnated until I took it to small press.
My advice to writers is to write what you know about, from the heart, with your own unique style. Follow the rules of grammar and punctuation, or at least know when you are intentionally breaking the rules. For fiction the only crime is boring the reader. There are only two effective methods of writing a novel. Either tell a story nobody has ever experienced before, like Clive Barker or Peter Straub, or retell a successful story better than the original. Forrest Gump is merely the Americanization of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot.
Finally, persevere. The only ones who succeed are the ones who keep trying.
Neela: Rumor has it you are working on a sequel? Is that true? Are you working on any other projects?
BS: The sequel will eventually come about. Right now I am finishing the third and final anthology in the Monsters from Memphis series, Even More Monsters from Memphis. Also, I am about 60% finished on a credible sequel to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in which the Monster gets a second chance.
Neela: Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?
BS: In 1998 a family of friends I deeply loved died in a triple murder-suicide. I e-mailed my friend Brent Monahan that, "We read and write horror to remind ourselves how well off we generally are in real life."
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