Interview: Brian Martinez on serializing his horror novel TRACKING BLOOD
The author uses Substack to join a list that includes Luke Jennings, Salman Rushdie, and Chuck Palahniuk.
“Since serials offer more immediate feedback, it would be cool to see readers comment and get involved as the story progresses. It’s always exciting to see people get into a story.”
Horror author Brian Martinez has launched his apocalyptic novel Tracking Blood as a weekly serial. In the book, the world is under attack by a virus that turns people into freaks with blood red eyes and a taste for flesh. They’re fast, they’re hungry, and they don’t ever stop.
Martinez will be sharing the latest installment of Tracking Blood every Monday from April 29 to October 21. The chapters will be hosted by Substack, one of a few different online publishing and writing platforms today that allow authors a chance to share their novels as serials.
Serialization is the publishing format where a larger literary work—like a book—is published over time in smaller, sequential installments. (We talk about this format more here—including mentioning some of the famous authors who’ve done it.)
On Substack, there are a growing number of authors sharing their fiction online through the platform. This includes Luke Jennings (who created the Killing Eve series), Salman Rushdie (author of Midnight’s Children), and Chuck Palahniuk (the author of Fight Club). The platform also works for an expanding number of indie authors. (We talk about a number of Substack fiction writers here.)
In our exclusive interview below, author Brian Martinez shares with Monster Complex™ the origins of Tracking Blood, his goals with serializing the novel on Substack, and how there are actually TWO versions coming—and what you see depends on which one you subscribe to. Find our conversation below!
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About TRACKING BLOOD
Deep in the frozen Pennsylvania wilderness, bounty hunter Will Sharpe is closing in on a fugitive. But this is no ordinary bounty: Will’s brother Stanley is a notorious hacker, wanted for masterminding a cyber-attack on the United States Government. He claims to have proof of who created the virus that turns humans into ravenous monsters.
However, their happy reunion is shattered by an onslaught of the infected. Forced to work together, Will and Stanley's only goal is to fight through the bloodthirsty hordes and get home. But every step takes them deeper into the mutated crowds.
Meanwhile, in the ravaged remains of Washington D.C., Will's wife Tanya and young son Ryan fight for survival. With time running out for the species, the two strands of the Sharpe family must reunite before the undying hunger swarms over the last light of humanity.
For fans of the Bleeders books and newcomers alike, see the origin of the Red Death with new eyes starting April 29, new episodes every Monday until October 21.
Note: The main story is free to read for everyone, however paid subscribers will have access to longer episodes that include extra scenes, characters, and sub-plots. Consider subscribing to enjoy the expanded story, as well as to support the author.
About the author
Brian Martinez has been known to watch a John Carpenter movie on repeat until people grow concerned. A certified Horror nut, he studied Film at Long Island University where he mostly made films about people dying.
Martinez is known for numerous books including A Chemical Fire, The Mountain and The City, Bleeders, and graphic novels Lungflower and The Eldridge. He also writes The Vessel, a Space Horror podcast on all major platforms, and has had his works adapted into audio.
Telegrams from Bloodstream City is his reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support Brian Martinez’s work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber HERE.
Interview: Brian Martinez on serializing his horror novel Tracking Blood
#1 What inspired your zombie serial TRACKING BLOOD?
The story behind Tracking Blood actually goes back to 2017. Amazon had a program called Kindle Worlds, which was basically their version of licensed fan fiction for the works of a few established authors.
One of those authors was Nicholas Sansbury Smith, who was nice enough to invite me to write a book in his Extinction universe. His take on the apocalypse was very different from mine, more of a militaristic approach, so I had a lot of fun weaving my own more personal kind of story within it. It was called Extinction: Isolation, and it was about a bounty hunter named Will Sharpe tracking down his estranged brother just as the world fell apart, separating him from his wife and son.
The book was popular with his readers, but unfortunately when Amazon shuttered the Kindle Worlds program the next year, it quite literally vanished forever. I always liked the book, though, so I held onto it until I was ready to tear it apart and rewrite it into the universe of my own zombie books, the Bleeders series.
The result, I hope, is a story that can be enjoyed by complete newcomers as well as people familiar with the Bleeders books.
#2 What do you hope to accomplish story-wise? What kinds of experience or journey for readers? Is getting in line as simple as clicking “subscribe” on your Substack?
I always aim for a satisfying story, whether it’s microfiction, short stories, or longer works, so that never really changes. Since serials offer more immediate feedback, it would be cool to see readers comment and get involved as the story progresses. It’s always exciting to see people get into a story.
#3 How does Tracking Blood fit into the bigger picture of who you are as a writer? How does it compare or contrast with your other stories?
Well, I’m known as a horror guy who writes a lot about the end of the world, so it doesn’t look like I’ll be changing that image anytime soon.
#4 I’m intrigued by how you described the reader experience. It sounds like the “free” and “paid” versions are both complete. That is, someone in the “free” track gets a complete experience. Is that right?
That’s exactly right. I wanted to explore ways that I could reward paid subscribers without somehow “punishing” free subscribers, basically to keep people reading regardless.
As I rewrote and expanded this story, I saw a good opportunity to do just that. What it boils down to is, anyone can read the Sharpe family’s story through all 24 episodes,
however if you’re a paid subscriber, most of the episodes have additional scenes with supporting characters and sub-plots. So for instance, in a main episode a character hears about some nasty stuff going down in a research lab, and in the extended episode you see exactly how nasty it is.
#5 What is available for the paid track? How do you describe this experience - is this like getting bonus materials, or an expanded story, or what?
The best thing I can compare it to would be the Lord of the Rings Extended Editions- you can absolutely watch the Standard Editions and follow the story from beginning to end, but the longer versions offer a bigger sense of the world, and some scenes and characters they would otherwise miss.
#6 Will the finished book get published eventually? If so, which version and what would it look like? (Seriously, how you described the two tracks has me mesmerized.)
That’s funny, I appreciate that. Eventually, I’ll publish it as a book, but not until long after the serial has run its course.
I’m a believer in making stories available in different formats, and on different platforms, because they’re generally separate audiences who wouldn’t know it existed otherwise. It would be the full, paid version of the book published, most likely, though it would be cool to offer them both somehow. Like the standard edition for free but the extended edition paid.
Amazon did away with offering free eBooks a while back, so maybe putting it up on my website or something like that would be another way. This is all an experiment, to be honest, so hopefully I’ll learn in the process and figure some things out.
#7 What do you like best about zombie fiction? What are your favorite zombie stories (movies, books, comics, whatever) that you tell your friends about?
That first part of a zombie story, when things are just starting to go wrong, that’s always my favorite stuff. I also love seeing the world we know stripped of its social niceties and used as a playground for survival. That’s what brings me back to it so many times, the feeling of playing in the sandbox. That and a healthy fear of people.
As for my favorites, I grew up loving zombies in movies like Return of the Living Dead and Night of the Creeps, and reading my older brother’s Dead World comics. But I didn’t properly fall in love with them until I watched Romero’s original Dawn of the Dead. Seeing characters fight to survive and live in a shopping mall just lit up my brain, and I probably wrote my first apocalypse story shortly thereafter.
As for more of my favorites, you can’t go wrong with 28 Days Later, Train to Busan, [REC], Shaun of the Dead, and the book World War Z. Dead Moon is also a fun one, with zombies on the moon.
#8 What are your pet peeves about zombie fiction? What do you do in your writing to avoid these same pitfalls?
I love most if it, honestly. That said, the biggest mistake I see in zombie fiction, or really any horror fiction, is failing to introduce characters the viewer or reader cares about before the blood starts to spill. They don’t even have to be likeable, in my opinion, so long as we’re interested in whether they win or lose.
I actually like to write main characters who other characters don’t like very much, but the reader thinks they’re funny or just understands why they do what they do. I probably don’t always succeed, but when I do, I think it makes for a good ride.
#9 What are the best ways for readers to keep track of you and your latest news as a writer?
These days it’s either my website (www.bloodstreamcity.com) or Substack. I’m on the social medias less and less, and at this point they’re just there for me to post about what I’m doing on Substack. It’s the first place I’ve been in a long time where it doesn’t feel like screaming into the wind.
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