When private investigator Shyla Sinclair is invited to a mysterious billionaire’s mansion in Texas, she’s shocked to witness the tycoon’s brutal murder by his assistant, but even more shocked to witness him come back to life. This supernatural detective novel, “Dead First,” is the latest from horror writer Johnny Compton. It comes out Tuesday, Feb 10.
Compton will be at Underbrush Books in downtown Rogers Wednesday, Feb. 11 to debut the book. He recently spoke with Ozarks’ Daniel Caruth about the inspiration for the novel, and why he believes readers will be drawn to his enigmatic detective.
Johnny Compton: Shyla Sinclair is a Black woman, a young woman living in Texas. She’s been through a lot of different places in her youth, and we find out the reason why. She has a little bit of a buried secret in her past. And that’s one of the motivating factors, the primary motivating factor as to why she takes on this risky case and this strange case with this strange individual who apparently cannot die.
She is a little bit of a smart aleck, and she likes to keep people at a distance because, in part, she’s protecting her secret and because of trust issues that were developed due to her past, which again gets uncovered as the story goes along.
Nonetheless, I think she’s going to be a character that people hopefully connect with in terms of something that resonates as far as her anger and trying to deal with the idea that anger sometimes can have a purpose. But can that usefulness sometimes be outweighed by the destructive nature of the anger and learning to, to a certain extent, let things go, and what the cost is of letting certain things go from your past.
Daniel Caruth: Yeah. Well, I mean, it seems like you like a main character with a secret, with a haunted past a little bit. I’m thinking of Eric in your first novel, “The Spite House.” I mean, a narrator who, as a reader, you can kind of feel is holding something back a little bit. Why is that an element that you’re drawn to in your characters? I mean, specifically for a protagonist.
Compton: I think that’s a great question. I think one of the reasons I really like having characters with some element of their past come into play, not only in terms of how it relates to their own personal history, but also impacting the story itself directly, it helps me to sort of fast forward certain elements of the story, especially when you’re dealing with the supernatural, in most of the cases that I’ve dealt with, or most of the stories that I’ve written.
The cases of these characters either directly involve something supernatural in their past, or it involves something so distressing and harrowing that they’re not totally mind blown when something incredibly startling happens to them. And that way I don’t have to spend a certain number of chapters having them try to grapple with the fact that, oh my God, I saw a ghost, or now I’m dealing with vampires, as it was with “Devil’s Kill Devils,” or anything along those lines.
The things that we get introduced to in “Dead First,” for instance, they are better equipped because of this past. So with Eric’s case in “The Spite House,” his past involves a brush with the supernatural. I’m not going to divulge whether or not that’s exactly the case with Shyla here, but whatever it is that’s in her past, it involves something that equips her to better handle the stress of the situation that she is immediately plunged in, but still gives leeway for me to explore why she would be startled and feeling overwhelmed. The big thing I try to keep in mind, though, is to make that backstory intertwine, hopefully, with the story effectively.
Caruth: And well, speaking of those supernatural elements, I mean, the main element of this story, which would maybe in another story be a big spoiler, but this happens in the first act, is that we’ve got an immortal billionaire on our hands here, Saxton Braith. So can you tell me just a bit about how you came up with that conceit? Especially at a time right now when we’re seeing really extremely rich people who are in some ways trying to cheat death or trying to extend their lives and become immortal here in reality. So how did you come up with this idea?
Compton: That’s a great question. And it does tie into, like you said, the present reality: some extremely wealthy people who are trying to reverse aging or otherwise seem to set themselves apart from ordinary folks who are at some point going to have to die. And that’s not exactly a new thing. I mean, that goes back into ancient histories of kings and other various monarchs and imperialists searching for a fountain of youth or trying to find some kind of elixir that will prevent them from dying. Even the concept of, at least I'm going to have a lineage of kings. My children will be the kings. And I need to give birth to a son for the proper birthright of kingship and what have you.
And I say all of that to piggyback on your point, because I don’t really otherwise have an interesting reasoning behind what birthed this story. Sometimes I’m just struck by an idea. I have a spreadsheet of ideas that I keep with me, and sometimes I have notes along the side of the idea itself that tell me the origins of it and how to expand on it, and I have that for novel ideas and short stories, and it’s a very lengthy list. And sometimes there’s a lot of detail, and sometimes it’s something that I only remember getting up in the middle of the night and writing it in a notepad, or opening my computer to add this idea that maybe came to me in a dream or just maybe came to me suddenly, and that’s it. And then it just becomes a matter of: do I think this is a fun topic to work from?
And so this one is one of the latter scenarios. I always wanted to write a detective story and blend it with the horror genre. What kind of case could somebody be on that is a little bit different, hopefully, from some typical, obviously, from your standard detective stories, which I love so much. But if I’m going to incorporate something that’s fantastical, what can be done? And I didn’t want it to be about finding a grimoire or a type of spellbook or something like that, which I think is—if you’re going to get into this kind of genre blending—I feel like I’ve seen that before, and there’s nothing wrong with that, obviously. But I wanted to try to tackle something a little different.
And this idea came to me several years ago: What if somebody couldn’t die, but they wanted to hire somebody to find out why that was? And I feel like that’s just such a curveball on the concept. And it also gives me a chance to explore the idea that certain extremely wealthy people, as you mentioned, also seem never to be satisfied. And this is a person who it seems like should be in the most dreamlike, ideal situation imaginable and have infinite wealth. And I also can’t be killed. What more could a man ask for, literally?
And instead, something about the lack of control over not knowing why he is in this condition seems to be the driving factor of why he’s hiring Shyla to find an answer.
Caruth: Well, I know you’ve talked before about “The Golden Arm” as one of the stories that sort of led you to the horror and ghost story genre. And this story, I think, has some elements of something like “The Monkey’s Paw.” And can you tell me a bit about maybe some of those ghost tales that have been passed down, like those traditional tales that have a bit of a morality story in them? Do those play a role in the types of ghost stories and horror stories that you tell and that you write? If they do, I mean, what about that do you find kind of compelling or interesting to put your spin on?
Compton: They definitely do. And I love that you bring that up. I’ve been fascinated by ghost stories, as you mentioned, since I read “The Golden Arm.” “The Monkey’s Paw” gets referenced, I believe, at least twice in “Dead First.” Specifically, a character brings up “The Monkey’s Paw,” and I remember reading that when I was probably 7 or 8 years old, and various other stories of lore that I remember. As you mentioned, morality tales, they are about unearthing history, and they’re also just about general strangeness and trying to accept strangeness in the world and trying to grapple with the idea that there are supposed to be certain things that are unknown. And I’m extremely fascinated by that element of it, probably more so than anything else—just the unanswered questions.
And this is why I have an editor. And my readers would be thankful for that because my editor is there to keep me on track in terms of saying you can’t just leave every question unanswered. I wouldn’t do that literally, but I would come a lot closer to leaving a lot more questions unanswered. Because even with something, for instance, like “The Golden Arm,” I wrote about it on my blog once upon a time. One of the things that just fascinates me about it is we never get an answer in the traditional story of why they even have a golden arm, which is such a bizarre thing to have. It’s just supposed to be taken at face value. Oh yeah, you have a golden arm.
The monkey’s paw itself—why exactly it can grant the wishes, it does, and why it twists those wishes in that way—these are vital questions that we don’t get the backstory to. When I’ve seen adaptations of these types of stories before that do provide answers to some of these questions, I feel like it weakens the story a little bit. You’re supposed to have this bizarre, ambiguous, creepy element to it. That is not only the fact that this thing exists and it does what it does, but we never understand why completely.
That, to me, is just… The never understanding why and not really having a direct explanation for it. I feel like that’s sometimes lost, especially as we get more into the modern view of ghost stories and speculative fiction and even stories and TV shows that try to present these things as, what if they were real? There’s such an attempt to answer the questions and examine every element of it so thoroughly. And I remember just growing up and the stuff that creeped me out—“Unsolved Mysteries.” There’s a reason why it’s called “Unsolved Mysteries,” right? Like, I remember that scared me because if the show was called “Solved Mysteries,” I don’t think it’s as enigmatic. And I don’t think people would remember it so fondly.
Trying to introduce these elements of the bizarre and the strange and leaving people wondering what else about them, I feel like that element of those stories that I read when I was younger is what permeates the kind of storytelling I’m trying to bring into the world now.
Caruth: Yeah, well, that’s interesting because you were somebody who definitely dissects a lot of this genre and all of the elements from the highbrow literary elements to the lowbrow. You have a podcast, “Healthy Fears,” that goes through a lot of that. And you clearly have a passion for this. Can you tell people who maybe don’t know just about what that podcast is?
Compton: Sure. “Healthy Fears,” I started it in 2020, and unfortunately it’s been neglected more recently. But it’s a podcast that kind of went into the idea that fear in and of itself is not necessarily a negative thing. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. But different types of fears are natural to us, and fear is sometimes the one thing that keeps you from making a horrible mistake, potentially a fatal mistake. In one of the earliest episodes, I think I present the idea that we’re all here because some ancient ancestor of ours, at some point and some time, probably in prehistory, was afraid of something and decided not to go into that cave because they heard something growl in the dark, maybe.
And if you didn’t have a natural fear of that, you might go in there and then, you know, next thing you know, you’re bear food or whatever it may be, and you survive. And we’re all kind of inheritors of those survivors who understood that fear is a positive thing.
And then sometimes you have irrational fears that can keep you from moving forward in your life. And I try to explore all of those elements in “Healthy Fears,” and I try to capture them and present them through the lens of a work of fiction, typically, and various, you know, whether it’s a movie, television show, book, like you mentioned, comic books, plays—just a lot of different things. And you know, from fear of the dark to a fear of the unknown, fear of life not making sense and kind of the world being chaotic, and on and on.
When I started the podcast, it was before I got a book deal. And the writing thing has kind of consumed everything else that I do. But I would love to revisit the podcast, possibly even in a video series format, since I just started venturing into trying to create videos for YouTube because I am still very much fascinated by the various fears.
I mean, I didn’t even touch on a fear of just going into the woods. I feel like that could be a two-parter, and I had that already prepared before other things took off in life. But that’s what the podcast is about. And I’m glad that people are hopefully still stumbling across it and hopefully getting something out of it.
Caruth: Yeah, well, it’s a very impressive podcast. I mean, just the knowledge that you bring to it, so many different elements. I mean, I think in one episode you mentioned Freddy Krueger and then also the movie “Friday.” There's a lot of knowledge that goes into that. What is it about horror and ghost stories and fear that intrigues you or entices you and that you want to sort of follow that and learn more about it?
Compton: Oh, I truly think that this is one of the — I feel like we have a lot of evidence for this, the oldest forms of storytelling that we have. And horror transcends basically every culture in terms of from ancient times to modern times, all corners of the earth.
And it’s especially fascinating to me that we invented fake monsters, even in ancient times when there were so many very obviously real horrifying things. Obviously we still have that in the present day.
But I mean, at a time when people weren’t even that far removed from the food chain the way we are now, and it’s legitimately, you know, a certain animal might wander into your village or whatnot and eat people, and we would still come up with, yeah, but there’s an even worse version of that. And it’s like something in us just still wants to explore more of it and ascribe something even darker to these things that terrorize us. And I don’t know, for some reason, that just got its claws, metaphorically speaking, into me at a young age.
And I find it to be—of all the different things that are so fascinating about being a human being. And I totally understand why some people are more fascinated by love and altruism and kindness, and I definitely am interested in those things as well. But I keep coming back to horror because there’s something so—the fact that it can engage so many different emotions within us—that you can tell a love story that’s still a scary story, and you can tell an exciting story, or you can tell a grim story, you can tell a tragedy, and all have it wrapped up in a scary story. I just keep going back to it.
And it’s at this point where the vast majority of my ideas end up. I have a friend named Clement Clarke Chapman, who’s a wonderful author in his own right, obviously. And at a recent conference, he was talking about how sometimes we’ll come up with an idea and it’s not originally maybe as much of a scary story, something that says, put a ghost in it.
And I just thought, man, I want to get that on a T-shirt, because that is basically my motto. A lot of the time it feels like I’ll come up with a detective story like I have now, and it’s like, yeah, but what if we put a ghost in it and maybe some other things, and I feel like it just enhances everything. It just fascinates me.
Caruth: Well, speaking of the detective story, this is sort of your first foray into that, going back to “Dead First.” And with a lot of detective stories, you know, we see investigators come back for a series. I know the book hasn’t actually come out yet, so indulge me a little bit. Do you think we’ll see Shyla again in another work?
Compton: I would say it’s a possibility. I’ll definitely put it out there. I’m only three books in, so it’s hard for me to say — I always feel weird saying anything definitive about my style or my pursuits when I’m still at this relatively early stage of my career. Having said that, this is the first time that I’ve written something where I thought I really could revisit some of the characters, the ones who survived. You know, it’s a horror story, so I don’t think it’s too much of a surprise to say that some people survive and some people don’t.
The ones that survive, I’ve thought there’s more to tell here. And hopefully I’ve created characters to where I don’t have to keep revealing necessarily new things about them to keep them interesting. You pointed out at the beginning the secrets that certain people have. Shyla’s secrets get revealed in this book. I want the more to learn about them to be in the present day. You know, sometimes people develop and change in ways, and that in and of itself is fascinating, not just their history.
So if I do revisit Shyla in a story later on, which I do think is a possibility, that’s something I’ve considered. I’m hopeful that there’s more to her character that I can present, just based on the growth that she’ll have, from the experiences she’s had based on this story, and then anything that might happen in the future.
Caruth: All right. Well, Johnny, you will be at Underbrush Books this next week. I think next Wednesday, Feb. 11th, you’ll be with local podcaster Nichole Hamilton. Can you tell us a little bit about what people can expect at that book signing, that event? What people need to know.
Compton: Yeah. Just show up. It’s always cool to talk to somebody live. I still go to author events live and in person. And it’s one of those things where you’re going to get answers, probably in that setting, that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to get, even in a wonderful interview like this. It’s just such a unique environment. And you go see authors discussing their books live. So definitely show up for that element as well.
And I feel like the conversation is going to be wonderful. I’m going to be there with a seasoned pro in terms of delivering some wonderful discussion. So I’m really, really looking forward to it. And I hope that the people that are going to be in attendance, and those that are considering it, are really looking forward to it as well.
Johnny Compton’s new novel, “Dead First,” comes out Tuesday, Feb. 10. He’ll be at Underbrush Books in Rogers for a talk and book signing Wednesday, Feb. 11 at 6:30 p.m.
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