An Interview with Author Daniel Kraus

Author Daniel Kraus' latest novel, The Living Dead, is in stores now, and we here at NTG were fortunate enough to sit down with Daniel to discuss his career, the craft of creative writing and some of the challenges that went into assembling the final chapter in George A. Romero's 'Dead' saga. 

John Betancourt: So, Daniel. What would you say, got you into writing? 

Daniel Kraus: Well, I can actually pinpoint it. It was a friend of mine, when I was just a little kid. I grew up in Iowa, small town, and I had a friend who lived in my neighborhood who I don't know why, but he was writing, you know, just silly little monster stories. I mean, this was probably first grade or something. You know, it was really young. And we just started doing that as just, a mode of having fun. 

We basically drew monsters and he had a folder of monsters and I had a folder of monsters. And those were sort of our cast of characters. And then we would write stories where monsters would face off against each other. So, it was really a ‘Godzilla’ type of monster battles. So really, that's where it started. And then eventually, you know, he stopped writing. But I kept going. And then after a time, I started putting humans in the stories. And recently I'd forgotten this. But recently I was going through my archives because they were being acquired by the University of Pittsburgh. 

And I came across something I'd forgotten, which is, once I got into middle school, I was writing, I would say like novella length manuscripts. And somewhere around fifth or sixth grade, I wrote a -- I would have called it a book back then, but it was probably one full notebook’s worth of a novella-ish, Freddy Krueger story. At the time, I think -- I think there were three Nightmare on Elm Streets. And so, this was like a fan fiction, you know? It was my imagined Nightmare on Elm Street 4. 

John Betancourt: Well that just takes me back and that’s amazing to say the least and obviously, writing got into your blood. And I guess that's really the next question that I have, in that, is what is it you love most about writing in general that's kept it going for you? 

Daniel Kraus: Well, I love everything about it. I mean, it really suits me as just a trade. You know, I love -- I love being alone, really. I love sitting here all day in this very seat that I'm sitting in and working and I think it started when I was a kid, writing those stories. You know, and then when I started writing novel length manuscripts in probably high school, the key was that I never showed them to anyone. Because of how they were introduced into my system. Writing was never an outward facing art for me. It was never something that I was doing to get a reaction from somebody else. I was never trying to find praise. It was something I did, as someone else might play a video game.

You know, like it was something that I did. It was a solitary endeavor that I had no desire really for anyone to read what I was writing. And to this day, that has really guided my career. I'm very disinterested, usually in a book's release. But, you know, I'm really, really passionate about a book while I'm writing it. And then when it comes out, it's usually -- and this book's a little different because I'm dealing with George Romero, and that's an important, very important component of this that I want to take care of. But for myself. I don't read reviews. I generally just I kind of clock out once the book's done because it's never been about that for me. What I love is the writing of it. And everything after that is secondary. 

John Betancourt: That's actually a great perspective, I must say. And that brings up an interesting question. What book of yours, are you most proud of at this point in time? 

Daniel Kraus: Oh, well, I'm going to set Living Dead aside. Because that's sort of a special beast. I wrote two volumes of a story called The Death and Life of Zebulon Fitch, which is really the longest thing I've written. It was too long to be published in one book. So, it's split into two volumes. It's about fifteen hundred pages. And it's, you know, it's one of those things where I don't know if I'll ever be able to top it. And that's not to say it was exceedingly popular. I don't think it was. But it's one of those works that was an idea that I'd had many, many years ago and sat on, that was way too complicated to ever attempt and I figured I'd try it once I was old and had time and perspective. And finally, I just went out and did it and to me, it was just such a major effort that I think it will always be my favorite work. 

John Betancourt: So obviously, you've accomplished some incredible milestones in your career. What does it feel like to hold the title of best-selling author and also work on a George A. Romero project and work with, you know, someone as prestigious as Guillermo Del Toro? 

Daniel Kraus: Well, those are three different questions. As far as being best-selling, I mean, it is a nice thing to be able to say, but it's not something I want to linger on too much. You know, I'm always a little wary of people who throw that around too often because it feels weird to me. It's, you know, best-selling has the word selling and it's about money, you know. And I feel like it's kind of, awkward or gauche to talk about book sales. I'm really keyed into the art of it and I don't like to get too hung up about, you know… I mean, it is a business. So, you have to sell a certain amount of copies to stay afloat and to have people to buy your next project. But I really try not to think too much about the sales part. 

That's part of those external forces that I spoke of earlier, that the less I can consider myself with them, the better. As for working with those names. I mean, it's good. It feels good to be associated with people who are great artists, you know. It was a thrill to be involved with projects, with Guillermo. But it was the utmost thrill to be involved with George A. Romero because he was, up until the day he died; he was really my hero. I grew up on Romero, like most kids, grew up on Star Wars. He was totally a guiding light for me growing up and really affected who I was as a person. And then eventually who I was as an artist and his movies and stories really shaped me from a very young age. 

John Betancourt: So, with that in mind, what then did you do to get into the proper mindset to work on The Living Dead?

Daniel Kraus: Well, there was a lot to it. I mean, I knew a lot about George Romero just because of being a fanatic. But once I was brought aboard the project, I really wanted to take it to the extreme level. In collaborating, you want there to be another presence there. That's the whole point, is that you have someone who's offering something different and who is probably copacetic with you in most ways. But you don't want them to be aligned with you in every way, because what’s the point? You want somebody who will throw things at you that you're not expecting, that maybe you don't even always agree with. The idea is that you have to wrestle with those ideas of theirs, thereby forcing you to be more creative, to make your own vision fit in with theirs. And thereby creating something that's a surprise to you, hopefully. So, I didn't have that with The Living Dead. And that was a big problem. But because of how high of esteem I held George in, I had to figure out a way that he was going to be present beyond the manuscript that he left.

So, he left this manuscript. And it would have been one thing if he had written half the book and stopped. That would have been difficult, but easily understandable. That was not the case. He had written patches of it. A lot of it was in the opening third. But some of it was for the middle and some of it was for the very end. So, it was it was a much more difficult process to figure out how to effectively bridge all these different pieces. So, I really had to delve into everything I could figure out about George. So that meant obviously studying the films once again and definitely not just his six zombie films, it meant all of his films to get a sense of who he was. And of course, I’m fan of all of his movies. But I went back, watched them all, watched them again with commentary tracks whenever he was present for those. Read every interview I could get my hands on, the more obscure the better. And then interviewed people -- but primarily his wife. To try to understand him better as a person and a thinker, to figure out what he thought about, you know, all the all the big topics. Politics, religion, technology and anything you could think of. 

I had my own suspicions about a lot of these things, but I wanted to get them confirmed and then dig into them deeper. So, I wanted to have a sense of if we disagreed with anything there and generally, we didn't. Probably because he was so enmeshed in my DNA. But there were certainly things that he loved or hated that I wasn't aware of, that I wanted to be aware of. And then the final piece of that puzzle was learning from his wife, what were the works of art that he really loved? Because my theory was that if I could watch the movies he loved, for instance, and study them, could I figure out what was in those movies that was inspiring him? And then I could turn to those same movies and try to be inspired by them as well. So, the idea was that I could in some ways hope to emulate his inspiration process. And this was a weird idea in retrospect.

But it really worked, I think. Or at least it had the effect of making me feel like it was working. And, you know, maybe it was all a magic feather and it wasn't working at all, but it gave me the feeling that he was guiding me and maybe that alone was enough, just the sensation of it. But I did directly borrow things, you know. He was obsessed with the opera Tales of Hoffmann, obsessed. He talked about it for the entire 50 years of his career. He talked about it incessantly. And so, I, for example, use the three-act structure of Hoffmann as a model for three act structure for The Living Dead. So, there were there were things I was able to transfer more literally like that. 

John Betancourt: So, all of that sounds like a pretty daunting challenge. Were there other challenges that you encountered when you were writing this book?

Daniel Kraus: Well, I mean, I've never spent so much time just thinking about a book's structure. Because, you know, as I was saying before, it was missing all these pieces. So, that was just challenging. The challenge was making something fluid. Generally, you know, even if you've got it planned out, you're making it up as you go along to some degree. So, there's a natural flow to it. This was, more difficult, because I had points A and B, and F and M, and R. But there were but there were a lot of points that were missing. And so to come up with all those missing pieces, some of which were small, but some of which some of which were very large, and make it all feel like the work of a singular voice, which is always part of the challenge when you're collaborating, was a tall order. But this was such a dream project for me that, I was up for tall orders. Like, I wanted to take this as seriously as possible and try to go as deep with it as possible.  

John Betancourt: So, obviously, since you immersed yourself deep within his world and his work. Every Romero movie that I've watched had some type of underlying social commentary embedded in its framework. Was that something you tried to inject into this as well? 

Daniel Kraus: Yeah, but of course, it was already there. Oh, you know, from the manuscript pages that he had already written, it was just chock full of that stuff. That's why Romero wrote, you know, generally with screenplays instead of books. But he certainly wasn't making movies because he loved zombies. He was making movies because he had things to say and he had backed into the zombie thing. And that was what Hollywood had kind of stuck him with. Although he loved working with zombies and was so grateful for the chance and the opportunity and the fandom around it, he was also cornered by it. You know, he had to work with that metaphor. And so, he sure did. And he did it in brilliant ways. And so, all that stuff was baked into the book from the get-go.

You know, in reading his original pages that stuff was when he really came to life. Like if he was describing zombie action, you know, it was good. It was strong. But when he was going into somebody’s backstory or, you know, really digging into the shades of gray in somebody that would make them a classic Romero character where they were both good and bad all at the same time. That's when you could tell he just lit up. Like that's what he was really having fun. And of course, there's just the scope of it. You know, in his movies, he was famously getting his budget slashed all the time. And so, you could also tell in the pages how gratifying it was not to worry about that for once. 

John Betancourt: Yeah you definitely see that in the opening of the book, since it is so unfettered and horrifying. But since we are still on the topic of commentary. Was there any particular message that you wanted to inject into the book, though? 

Daniel Kraus: Inevitably, yes. There's a reason why this is by Romero and Kraus and not just Romero. And, you know, I wasn't just sealing up little cracks here. There were significant chunks of the book that were going to be written by me. So inevitably, my concerns are going to be all over the place, too. I think generally we over overlapped in those concerns. But I'm sure that there were there are things specific to themes that I'm interested in, that are in the book. But my goal was primarily to extend what I knew of George’s plans because it wasn't all there. So, I knew what George had written and directed for his first six zombie films. And I had some sense because of the manuscript and also because of external texts. Whether that's commentary tracks or interviews or things that gave me another clue about where he was going with this whole zombie thing. So, my goal was to fill those gaps. 

So, we had one through six. We had six zombie movies and then I had some inklings of what happened after that. So, my theory was, if I could fully understand one through six, I could sort of predict seven, eight, nine and ten. You know, like I could follow the thread. So, my role was really to do some heavy thinking about that. And from internal and external clues, solve the mystery of what the zombies meant and where they were going. And what was, you know, to ask the big question, what's the meaning of all of it? Where was it all going? What was the point? And so, I solved that question in one way. I'm sure another writer would have solved it in a different way. And the author's note, you know, is pretty transparent, and it will tell a reader why I came up with the conclusions that I did, and they can, of course, feel free to disagree. 

John Betancourt: So, since Romero’s entire body of work has come up multiple times, it’s probably best that I ask this particular question. In that, what is your personal favorite when it comes to his movies?

Daniel Kraus: Well, when I’m asked this question, I have to take Night of the Living Dead off the table because that almost isn't a movie to me. I always compare it more of an album that I love. You know, it's so a part of who I am and how I grew up that it's beyond my judgment. I can't. I can't think critically about it very well. So, with that aside. my favorite films of his… there's two that really fight for the top position. Part of me wants to say Martin. because Martin is so, so good. And that was Romero’s favorite film of his. But really, the two that I would watch any day of the week and do watch, any day of the week; are Day of the Dead and Creepshow. For some reason, Day of the Dead -- of his six zombie films and I love all six of them, Day of the Dead has always been the sweet spot for me. There's just something -- I'm a sucker for one location, horror movies. Well, I shouldn't say one location horror movies, I should say one location stories. I'm a sucker for those. I love how controlled, and efficient it is. Aside from that, Creepshow is sort of my… it's kind of my emotional favorite. Like, I just love Creepshow.

Day of the Dead is actually a very serious, grim movie, Creepshow is just a blast. It is so much fun. I never get tired of seeing it. You know, I'm not a fan of things in the sense that I collect stuff, you know, like I don't collect things, I guess is the best way to put it. Except, except, I have a weakness for Creepshow. I’ve got little Creepshow knick-knacks and shirts and hats and an old movie theater kit from when it first came out. Oh, I am fully obsessed with that picture. 

John Betancourt: That’s okay. It really is an amazing movie, so that obsession make sense to me. And just on quick side note. Have you had a chance to watch the new Greg Nicotero/Shudder iteration of it? 

Daniel Kraus: Oh yeah! I have. And I like it. And I can say no more about season two. Let’s just leave it at that.

John Betancourt: Oh yes, let’s definitely leave it at that. Instead, let me ask you, what do you hope audiences take away from this book? 

Daniel Kraus: Well, you know, I mean, out of the millions of people who have seen his zombie movies, particularly Night of the Living Dead. This is… it's the end of the story, you know? And the zombie movies were Romero’s major contribution to society. It's hard to point to any -- you know, for something like Dracula or Frankenstein, we have these sort of classic texts. These books that were written. For the zombie, we don't have a book. We have a movie. It was Night of the Living Dead. And it changed the landscape of horror and arguably independent filmmaking. If you're a fan of Night of the Living Dead, or Dawn of the Dead or any of these films. You know, you want to see how it ends. 

And I think The Living Dead, ends the story in a way that I hope George would have been proud of., and to some extent, I know he was planning. There are elements of the end that I had to supply myself, but there are parts of it that that he supplied and wanted to be there. And yet I want if I want to communicate anything, it's just that; if you were a fan of George, you owe it to him to hear the end of the sentence that he started 50 years ago. And I am but a humble shepherd to make that happen.  

John Betancourt: Well, now that now that the saga has come to a close, what's next for you as an author? 

Daniel Kraus: Well, one month later, after this book comes out, I have got another book coming out, for a totally different audience. It's called They Threw Us Away. And it's a book for kids. But it is also a Daniel Kraus book, which means it is fairly scary and harrowing as far as middle grade books go. It's a Watership Down-like book about teddy bears. Who wake up in a trash dump and they don't know why they've been thrown away. And then at the end of September is my first comic book, and it comes out from Vault Comics. It’s called The Autumnal and that is an eight-issue comic.

John Betancourt: Well it’s wonderful to hear that you’ve got more great stories lined up for later this year. So, where can folks find you on the interwebs? So, that after they finish The Living Dead, they can go find more of your work. 

Daniel Kraus: Well, I would just go to DanielKraus.com. It will have links to all my books and any social media that I'm currently dabbling in. 

John Betancourt: Well Daniel. Thank you so much for your time today. Really do appreciate you taking the time to talk with me.

Daniel Kraus: Hey, my pleasure. 

This interview was lightly edited and condensed for clarity.