Edo van Belkom imagines Death behind the wheel
by Timothy Pike
There were exactly two times in his life when award-winning horror author Edo van Belkom felt like a rock star.
Both were in connection with his young adult novel Wolf Pack, which inspired the Paramount+ series of the same name, and in our interview this month, Edo gives us a glimpse into these moments—career high points any author would aspire to.
He also shares the best way to get your book made into a movie or TV show, talks about the setback he suffered not long after his paperbacks appeared in airports and drugstores across the nation, and reveals the three authors who had the biggest influence on his work.
His most recent release is a brand-new, expanded edition of Death Drives a Semi, a collection of some of his best stories that was originally published in 1998.
Thanks for joining us, Edo. Why did you decide to resurrect Death Drives a Semi after 25 years?
Of the some thirty-five books I’ve written, Death Drives a Semi is the one I’m most proud of. While I always knew I wanted to be a writer, I didn’t know what exactly I should be writing. I tried poetry and rock songs, but they were all terrible and clearly not my strong suit.
That changed late in my teenage years when I read Ray Bradbury’s terrific collection The October Country. After finishing each story in the book, I was awestruck by how well they were written and the way they had made me feel. I’d never had that type of reaction to reading anything before, and at that moment, I decided these were the kinds of stories I needed to write, and that I would strive to write stories that might give someone even just a bit of the wonder I had experienced.
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That was a lofty goal, and I started working toward it. By 1998, I had published, say, fifty stories, a few of them award winners, and others that were worthy of publishing in a book I would consider to be my October Country.
So in 1998, the book was published by Quarry Press of Kingston, Ontario. It was a finalist for the Best Collection Bram Stoker Award the next year, as well as the Aurora Award for best long-form work in English. There was an Italian edition published, and the book eventually had a second printing. A success by any measure for a single-author collection, and I was satisfied that I had accomplished my goal.
Fast forward twenty-five years, and my young adult novel Wolf Pack is the inspiration for a TV series on Paramount+ starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. That revitalized the book series and also put me on a lot of blogs and interview shows, one of which was with Mark Leslie Lefebvre, a successful author of many diverse books, and a publisher as well.
In our interview, he revealed that Death Drives a Semi had an effect on him similar to the one The October Country had on me, and he suggested reprinting the book. And hey, it’s been twenty-five years since the original publication.
At first I said no, because I am not as active in the writing profession as I once was, but the more I thought about it, the more I warmed up to the idea. Eventually I came on board and the result is an edition with all sorts of bells and whistles, and the pride I had in the book’s original publication was rekindled. Mark did an amazing job producing the book.
The stories in Death Drives a Semi are some of my best, and it took ten or twelve years to write them. I would love to tell you I wrote a wonder story every time out, but that would be akin to a songwriter penning a top-ten hit every time out.
Where did the title come from?
It’s from the story “Death Drives a Semi.”
I started my writing career as a newspaper reporter, and for a couple of years I worked for the Cambridge Reporter in Cambridge, Ontario, while living in Brampton, Ontario. The two cities are about an hour apart, and every day I had to drive along Highway 401, which is a major highway with ten lanes at its widest.
I hated the commute, especially in the rain and at night. My job would have me driving at two or three in the morning, and when you’re driving along and a tractor-trailer passes you, it can be a bit unnerving. On one occasion after being passed by one of these big trucks, I looked up and couldn’t see any driver behind the wheel.
From there I got to wondering about who or what was driving these trucks. After that, it didn’t take much to put Death behind the wheel and create a scenario in which the truck passing a motorist three times would result in Death taking your life. It could almost be a classic Twilight Zone tale.
Did you write the stories all at once or collect them over several years?
The stories in Death Drives a Semi are some of my best. I would love to tell you that I wrote a wonder story every time out, but that would be almost impossible. That would be akin to a songwriter penning a top-ten hit that would stand the test of time every time out.
It took close to ten or twelve years to write them all, and when the book was first published, I sent the publisher about thirty of what I considered to be my best work, and they selected the twenty that were in the original publication.
I have enough quality stories that are good enough to make up another full collection, but we’ll see how well this edition does before working on a follow-up.
Have you always lived in Brampton, Ontario?
No. I was born in Toronto, in an area called Downsview, which was primarily Italian when I was growing up. My mother was Italian, and my first name is both Dutch and Italian. But even though I was half Italian, I was never considered to be Italian by people in the neighborhood. Edo van Belkom is just too Dutch of a name.
Anyway, after university, I got a job at the Brampton Times, a daily newspaper in Brampton, Ontario. Although it wasn’t legal, they had a requirement that you had to live in Brampton in order to work at the paper. So I got a small apartment there, then got married. My wife eventually got a job at the Brampton Library, and well, after a few years, we were entrenched.
Which of your books were the most fun to write?
Without a doubt, it has to be the two novels Scream Queen and Blood Road.
Scream Queen is about a reality television show set in a haunted house where things go terribly wrong. They are supposed to set up the house to make it seem haunted, but when things start happening, no one is sure what parts are the show and what parts are the house. It was a spoof on cheap Hollywood horror, and the Gowan Brothers were just a couple of low-budget hacks. I envisioned them being played in a movie by Bruce Campbell and Jack Black, and from there, the book kind of just wrote itself.
Then there was Blood Road, my vampire truck driver novel. I always rejected the notion of the vampire as being some noble creature lording over humanity. They are parasites, and that puts them on the bottom of the food chain, not the top. And so, I wrote about an aging vampire who had once been at the top, but now his teeth had fallen out and he had to work to make a living. My tagline was, “Not all vampires are tall, dark and handsome. Some are old, fat and ugly.” Apparently, few vampire lovers wanted to read about such a creature, although I think it’s the best novel I’ve written in terms of story arc and character development.
But having said all that, writing any book is hard, and the most fun about writing any of them is being finished.
Which authors have you drawn the most influence from?
Well, I’ve already mentioned Ray Bradbury, but the other two in my holy trinity are Robert Bloch and Richard Matheson.
Bloch is known as the author of Psycho, but he had a long career of writing stories that mixed horror and macabre humor seamlessly. My all-time favorite story of his is “Enoch,” which has the kinds of twists I seem to have emulated in my own stories. It was gratifying, then, when the Horror Writers Association had a call for a book entitled Robert Bloch’s Psychos, and I placed a story in it called “The Rug.” That story, one of my best and included in Death Drives a Semi, was a Stoker Award finalist and probably was the closest I ever came to writing a story Bloch himself would be proud of. Unfortunately, he passed away before the book was finished, so we’ll never know, but I’d like to think he approved.
As for Matheson, he has authored countless novels that have been made into television shows and films. The made-for-television movie Duel is based on one of his stories and was Steven Spielberg’s first full-length film. I remember being mesmerized by the movie when I saw it as a kid, and that fascination translated to his written works when I sought them out later in life.
I once did a virtual panel on getting your written work made for film and television, and when they asked what my suggestion was, I just said, “You’ve got to write a good book.”
Do you have a daily writing routine?
When I was writing full-time, I tried to keep my work hours steady between nine and five. The rest of the time, I was either thinking about what I was going to write or working on some promotional thing to move my career forward. I even tried to not do too much on the weekends so I could maintain a semblance of a normal life.
But on a smaller scale, I tried to write 1,500 words a day. Some days I went beyond that, some days I struggled to produce 500, but there was always some sort of output. If you’re consistent, the pages add up, and you end up producing several books and stories a year.
What is an obstacle you’ve faced on your journey to literary success? How did you overcome it?
One of my goals as a writer was to eventually be published in mass-market paperback because a writer is always trying to reach as many people as possible, and mass market puts your work within reach of millions of people.
So it was a milestone for me when Scream Queen and Blood Road were published in mass market by Kensington Publishing. Finally, my books were in every bookstore, airport, and drugstore. But, especially for Blood Road, the books never seemed to make it in the stores.
And the thing about mass market then was that it was all about sales. By the early 2000s, there weren’t mid-list writers like there were in the 1980s and 90s, so if your books didn’t sell well when they were published, that was it and they were on to the next author.
And so, after working twenty years to reach that point, I suffered a setback of, say, five years. I proposed about eight different novels to Kensington, each one rejected. Not only that, but they were suggesting I write a classic horror story, maybe set in Maine or some rural locale, and that’s when I knew I was done in that format.
As a result, I moved into writing for young adults. I started by editing two anthologies, Be Afraid! and Be Very Afraid!, which were both pretty successful, and then moved into novels for young readers with Wolf Pack, Lone Wolf, Cry Wolf and Wolf Man, which were my most successful books, and which sixteen years later inspired a television series created by Jeff Davis of Teen Wolf and Criminal Minds fame.
Can you tell us about a high point in your career?
There were only two times in my life that I felt like a rock star.
The first time was when Wolf Pack won the Silver Birch Award. The award ceremony was held in an outdoor venue on the shores of Lake Ontario. The Ontario Library Association, the organization that puts on the award annually, had bused in thousands of school-aged children to the venue. When I was introduced, thousands of kids were screaming and holding their copies of the book—my book, Wolf Pack—over their heads like a political rally or a rock concert. After working in isolation and anonymity for so many years, it was a surreal experience to be so appreciated.
The other time was when I was in Los Angeles for the Wolf Pack premiere. Few people get to ask their wives, “How would you like to come to Hollywood with me and walk the red carpet?” But that happened, and even though not too many people knew who I was and I had to say, “I’m Edo van Belkom. I wrote the book the show is based on,” a lot of times that night, I still, once again, felt like a rock star. Then, seeing the screen in the opening credits that read, “Based on the novel by Edo van Belkom,” and being the only person (along with my wife) in the theater cheering, provided a sense of satisfaction that is pretty hard to top.
What’s your best advice for authors who want to stand out in the crowd and be noticed?
I once did a virtual panel for a book festival on getting your written work made for film and television, and each of the other panelists had done up proposals and screenplays of their works and were going on about how they were pitching these things to producers and studios and anyone else that would take the time to hear what they had to say.
Then when it came to me and they asked what my suggestion was, I just said, “You’ve got to write a good book.” That stunned everyone into silence, but that had been my experience. I wrote Wolf Pack in 2004, and it was optioned and made into a television series sixteen years later with no prodding or pitching by me.
There had been interest in the book when it was first published. One person had been an associate producer on the Survivor television series. The other person said they had a development deal with Paramount Pictures. But nothing ever happened at the time and I never expected anything to come of it after so many years.
But it did, and the only reason I can think of as to why is because the book resonated or connected with someone who believed in it.
Sure, you can do a blog, produce videos, and be a presence on social media to promote your work in every possible way, and I’ve tried those things with middling degrees of success. But the best advice I can give is to just write the best possible book, or story, or song, or poem you can, and then let it out into the world. If you did the best you possibly could, were true to yourself, and were proud of what you accomplished, there is a very good chance that someone else will feel the same way as you do about your work.
What’s next for you? Can you give us any teasers?
Well, the second season of Wolf Pack is on the horizon, so I’m looking forward to that, not only to see what happens in the show, but because Jeff Davis has mentioned to me the possibility of making a cameo appearance on the show. I’m super excited about that, and I’m actually hoping I get killed so I’ll be able to be on set one day, then come back for another and get all made up for dead. How much fun would that be?
Beyond that, the next three books in the series, Lone Wolf, Cry Wolf, and Wolf Man, will be published in print editions in the coming year, so we’ll have the entire series to promote in actual book form, in addition to e-book and audiobook. And finally, if Death Drives a Semi does well enough, I’d like to do an all-new collection of stories and do this sort of thing all over again.
Edo van Belkom is a Canadian author of some thirty-five books and over three hundred short stories in the genres of horror, science fiction, fantasy, and mystery. His young adult series Wolf Pack served as the inspiration for the new Jeff Davis supernatural TV series Wolf Pack starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. His short fiction has been published in countless anthologies, including Year’s Best Horror Stories, Year’s Best Erotica, Robert Bloch’s Psychos, the Hot Blood and Shock Rock series, as well as several anthologies based on role playing games. His story “Rat Food” (with David Nickle) won the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association, and “Hockey’s Night in Canada” won the Aurora Award, Canada’s top prize for speculative fiction.