Wrath James White currently lives in Las Vegas, but his career path has taken him from the streets of Philadelphia to the fighting rings of the Orient. His writing has been described as violent, erotic, blasphemous, and extreme - and that's his own description. His fans think he creates brilliant, honest, brutal commentary on politics, sex, and religion; the readers who don't get his writing usually end up shocked into a stunned silence before running to the bathroom. Either way, he always achieves his goal of eliciting a visceral reaction from his readers. If you've read his short stories and novellas - like The Myth of Sisyphus, The Book of a Thousand Sins, and His Pain, you know they stay with you long after you've closed the book. The same goes for his collaborations with writers like Edward Lee, Monica O'Rourke, and JF Gonzalez (Teratologist, Poisoning Eros, and Hero, respectively).

Wrath, good to talk with you again, it's been a long time. Let's start things off by catching up the readers on what you've been up to recently. Do you have any new books or novellas coming out?

I've been a busy boy lately. In 2008 you can expect the release of Hero, a novella co-written with J.F. Gonzalez, Sloppy Seconds, a chapbook compiling five years of my entries in the WHC gross-out contest, the mass-market release of Succulent Prey in December from Leisure books and Orgy of Souls, my recent novella collaboration with Maurice Broaddus.

Before I get into my other questions, I have to ask something I've wondered about since I attended my first WHC Gross Out Contest - where the hell do you come up with those stories? And what made you decide to put them into a collection?

The gross-out stories are just pure fun. It may seem weird that I have fought so hard to prove that extreme horror is more than just mindless gore and repugnancy and yet I have spent so much time and effort writing the most disgusting tales imaginable for a contest whose prizes have ranged from $500 to plastic poop. Writing and reading those nasty little tales is a great creative exercise in pure sensual description. The descriptions are exaggerated way beyond anything you would use in a real novel or short story but it does get you to exercise those creative muscles. It reminds me of the type of exercises we used to do in Creative Writing class in high school. "Write a story involving all five of the senses". That's pretty much how I begin. I think of the most disgusting sights, sounds, smells, and tastes, I can imagine and then I try to relate them to real world experiences. Sometimes it results in bizarre juxtapositions of images and sensations like a cannibal in an abortion clinic or a crackwhore in a leper colony because the goal is to bring the audience to the brink of nausea and hysterical laughter. The question then became what to do with all of these wonderfully described horrors when the contest was over. It seemed natural to put them into a collection. When I lost my fourth attempt at the Gross-out title in 2007 the title Sloppy Seconds just came to me. It seemed wonderfully appropriate.

Your writing is definitely not for the squeamish - some of your stories would make Jack Ketchum squirm. Did your horror writing always have these elements of stark brutality, explicit sex, and extreme gore in it, or is this something that gradually emerged over the years as you practiced your craft?

My early writings, and we're talking back in junior high school and high school, were probably bad imitations of Stephen King. That's a pretty typical story among us writers who discovered horror in the 80s because he was the standard of excellence at that time. My current writing style probably emerged after hearing about Clive Barker's Books of Blood. My family was pretty broke back then so the books were out for months before I could afford them. As a result, I heard about how extreme, gruesome, sexual, and brutal the stories were before I ever read them and formed ideas in my about what they might be like and began trying to imitate them before I'd read any of them.

When I was finally able to purchase all three books and read them I was actually a bit disappointed. Not that they weren't excellent stories and a step in a new direction from what horror had been, it was just that they weren't even close to what I had imagined. They were tame in comparison to what I imagined. Still, I continued writing in that style. Then, after I stepped away from writing horror for more than a decade, the first book I read was Poppy Z. Brite's Exquisite Corpse. That book contained the unflinching sexual violence I had expected to find in Books of Blood. It convinced me that horror had at last come of age, so I decided to try my hand at it again.

My first published attempts at horror were a couple of stories I had originally written for Hustler Forum that I rewrote as horror stories. I thought I'd take out a bunch of sex and add some horror elements. When I read those stories now I am shocked by how little sex I took out. No wonder I got labeled as an "extreme horror author" right off the bat. Those first stories were absolute pornography. Believe it or not, I have scaled back on the sex more and more since those first stories, though the violence has probably increased.

You've said in other interviews that you started writing in high school, but after a nasty rejection from a magazine you didn't submit again until 13 years later. What was that story about? And what were you writing in the intervening years?

Ha! Believe it or not I wrote poetry. No, really. Some of the most violent and lascivious poems you'll ever read, but poetry nonetheless. And that story that was rejected by Night Cry back in high school was the skeleton that would eventually become "Couch Potato," which is now one of the more popular stories in The Book of A Thousand Sins.

I had an idea about a guy who watched so much television that he absorbed all of its violence and became like a walking reflection of media violence. Back then it was, and I quote, "An idea in search of a story." Years later, I rewrote it and elaborated on the socio-political and philosophical commentary, and added more backstory to flesh out the main character. It's one of my favorite stories now. I wish Night Cry was still around so I could resubmit it.

Every writer's writing is comprised in parts of who the writer really is. You bring an eclectic mix of qualities and attributes to the table: you're a former IKKC US Heavyweight Muay Thai Champion, former World Extreme Kickboxing Champion, avowed anti-religionist (if that's a word!), and a self-proclaimed Humanist. You've cited Albert Camus, Dostoyevski, Herman Hesse, Gore Vidal, Nietzsche, the Marquis De Sade, and Shakespeare as some of your writing influences, alongside Brian Keene, Jack Ketchum, and Clive Barker. You're a happily-married man with a good sense of humor and a fascination with erotica. So how do all these different parts of you find their way into your writing?

When you lump all of my interests, talents, and abilities together it screams sex and violence which of course are dominant themes in my writing but it also suggests the sensitivity, insight, and understanding that a husband and father needs to have and I think that comes across in my work as well. It's funny, because I get criticized for the same things in my writing that I do in my personal life. How can such a sensitive and intelligent guy fight for sport and be such a sexual hedonist? How can your writing be so insightful and thought-provoking yet contain so much sex and violence? I write the way I do because I live the way I do. I am merely being true to myself. Yes, I am a deeply introspective guy who reads philosophy and writes poetry but I am also an ass-kicking, horror-writing, sensualist/sex addict. As an honest expression of the artist, my writing has no choice but to reflect this.

You're not the only writer whose works include extreme violence, sex, and gore. But you do seem to go a step beyond in that your writing frequently has a grim aspect to it, much like Jack Ketchum, unlike someone like, say, Brian Keene or Monica O'Rourke who often temper their blood and guts with humor. When you are writing, how do you know when you've gone far enough, that you've reached that point where the violence and in-your-face brutality are about to cross a line? Or do you feel that the story itself creates the line?

That is it in a nutshell. The story decides how far the sex and violence needs to go rather than the other way around. I don't set out to write a story where a guy roasts another guy on a spit and eats him alive. I set out to write a story about a man who believes he has a disease that is causing him to become a cannibal sex killer. In researching cannibal sex websites I found that being roasted alive on a spit was the most common fantasy among "chefs" and "long-pigs".

Actually, Succulent Prey didn't even start out as a cannibal sex story. I was trying to write a traditional werewolf story with a twist. I wanted to deal with the addiction to the flesh from the viewpoint of someone driven to literally consume a woman's flesh in the same way others are driven to make love to it. It was a sort of cathartic thing. That's the difference, I believe, in the way I write and some of the other extreme horror authors. I am desperately trying to express my emotions, thoughts, and feelings. It has such a serious tone to it because I take it seriously.

In Succulent Prey, I was trying to express how it feels to be a sex addict, something I have struggled with quite a bit in my life. In Orgy of Souls I was expressing my feelings towards Christianity. I am not, as you noted earlier, a believer. I work through a lot of my feelings towards religion in my writing in books like Teratologist, Poisoning Eros, and The Book of A Thousand Sins. Orgy of Souls is no exception. I think that the honesty in my work, both my fiction and the non-fiction on my blog, is part of the appeal. I put a lot of myself in my work and I don't sugar coat it. I drop it on the reader's doorstep raw, bleeding, and undisguised.

Have you ever read anything that totally freaked you out or scared you, or that continues to haunt you to this day? For instance, one of the few scenes in any books that ever really gave me a chill was the first time I read Pet Semetery, when the dead cat shows up at the door. Also the scene going to the cemetery for the first time, climbing through the deadfalls.

The torture scene from George Orwell's 1984 really messed my head up as a kid. I was blown away by that. I read 1984 when I was thirteen and the idea of being completely at the mercy of someone with no conscience or empathy or remorse was about the most terrifying thing imaginable to me. I still can't think of many things more terrifying than that.

What do you prefer to write, novels, novellas, or short stories, and why?

I really believe that novellas are the perfect format. It allows you to really develop the story and the characters while keeping the pace brisk. Orgy of Souls flies along but it still gives you a lot of background on each character and really lets you get into the character's heads. I tried to do the same thing when I wrote Succulent Prey . I wanted it to have the same pacing as a short story or a novella. I didn't want there to be any long lulls. It is much easier to do that in novella form than in novel form because of the shorter length while still allowing time for full character development.

You've been involved in several collaborations - Monica O'Rourke, Edward Lee, Maurice Broaddus, and JF Gonzalez are some of the people you've worked with. How do you know when a person is right to work with - is it their personality, their style of writing?

All of the above. I have done some bad collaborations that I aborted because the chemistry just wasn't working. At one time I would do a collaboration with someone just because they asked. We're talking short stories here, not novels or novellas, but still, it resulted in a lot of wasted time and effort. With longer works I showed much better judgment and only collaborated with people whose writing styles meshed well with mine. I didn't want the differences in styles to be jarring to the reader.

The one comment I have consistently heard about my collaborative efforts is that you can never tell which author is writing. That's deliberate and necessary to a good collaboration. If the styles are too dichotomous the transitions from one author to the other will jar the reader right out of the story. I also try to only collaborate with authors I can learn something from. I want to write with authors that I like to read so I can see their creative process and get a feel for how they do it. It helps me to grow as a writer.

Which of your own books would you like to see made into a movie, and why?

Succulent Prey, Hero, Orgy of Souls, His Pain, even Teratologist and Poisoning Eros would all make great movies for different reasons. I think a director would have a ball with some of the more descriptive scenes. They are also the books that have the most to say and that's what I like in a movie. I like movies that keep me riveted with one shocking event after another culminating in a moment that leaves me thinking about it for days afterwards. I think all of the books listed above fit that criterion. Like I said, I write what I would like to read and it is also what I would like to see on the screen.

You've got a myspace page (www.myspace.com/wrathjw) and a blog (wordsofwrath.blogspot.com), but no web page. Is there a reason for this, or is it something you just haven't gotten around to yet?

I have had a couple of web pages over the years but I don't have the technical expertise to maintain them and I'm not organized enough to keep up with renewing the domain names. They have all lapsed over time and the domain names have been snatched up. I no longer own the rights to WrathJamesWhite.com. That's pretty weird huh? I have a blog, a Myspace page, a page on Goodreads.com. I think that's probably enough. If I could get a reliable webmaster I might try a web page again but right now I'm content.

You make no secret of your political views on your blog. Have you ever received any negative feedback from people who disagree with you, or feel that you should stick with writing and stay out of politics? Could you ever do that, seeing as how politics, like religion, are entwined throughout much of what you write?

Occasionally, I get feedback on my blog arguing with my points of view, but I welcome that. I wouldn't write it if I didn't want to invite disagreement. Only shallow insecure people surround themselves with yes-men. If I didn't want to be disagreed with I wouldn't be friends with Maurice and I certainly wouldn't post on his message board or go to his church for a debate on atheism. Most of what I write about politics tends to be pretty commonsense and I am an exhaustive researcher. I get my facts straight before I put my opinions out there, so I'm not afraid of saying something profoundly stupid and getting challenged on it. If and when I am proven wrong then it is always worth it to learn something new. I get 100x more positive feedback then negative but even the negative is good because challenges to my arguments and viewpoints sharpen them. I like to be right, not just think I am. If I'm wrong then I want to know so I can change.

A while back on your blog you posted your own versions of the Ten Commandments, all of which were based on common sense. Why is it, do you think, that organized religions can't apply common sense alongside of their 'peaceful' goals?

Now you are opening up a great big can of worms. To me, the biggest problem with organized religion is the entire concept of faith. If you already know then there is no need to learn. If all the answers are supposed to be in a book then there is no need to look outside of it for answers and no room to question the assertions contained within. If the book says that you should hate one group of people then you are not a true believer if you don't. You are not being a good little sheep. If the book says that something is sinful then you are not a true believer if you find virtue in it. If something in the book contradicts widely accepted scientific facts or socially accepted norms or modern morality then, as a believer, you are still obligated to stick to these antiquated ideas and outmoded ways of thinking.

It is your duty as a believer to remain willfully ignorant. You can try to escape this by reinterpreting texts or outright ignoring some texts or choosing to view them as symbolic or allegorical but then you risk denying the word of God. And not everything is open to such intellectual sleight of hand. Some things are pretty black and white and you have to either accept reality or believe the religious myth. I have never understood how some genuinely good people will readily embrace really hateful and intolerant viewpoints simply because they don't want to disagree with some piece of religious text and be labeled a non-believer. I forget who said it, but one of the most insightful quotes I've heard about how religion affects morality is "With or without religion you'd have good people doing good and evil people doing evil but for good people to do evil it takes religion."

Back in 2006, you and I were in one of the Borderlands Bootcamps for novel writing. I remember reading an excerpt from a book you were working on - at that time the first thing I'd ever read by you - about a woman who was locked in casket and routinely deprived of food and water by her lover, so she could experience what it had been like to be a slave on one of the slave ships that plied the waters between Africa and America. The three chapters I read were really amazing, and I thought at the time, "Why does everyone make such a big deal about this guy being an 'extreme' writer? This isn't so bad." What ever happened to that book?

That was 400 Days of Oppression and it is still in development. As soon as I finish the novel I'm working on now, one I've been writing and rewriting for the better part of 13 years, I'll get down to finishing 400 Days. I hit a roadblock in that story last year but I have recently had a breakthrough, so I'm dying to get back to it. 400 Days of Oppression is extreme in an entirely different way. It will be an emotional mind-fuck of a story, however it won't have any of the extreme violence of some of my more popular works. It will have a lot of sex because it does deal with themes of bondage, domination, and sadomasochism. And, as an exaggerated and sensationalized exploration of the problems in interracial relationships, it is bound to push buttons.

What's one subject you'd really like to write about but you've never gotten around to yet?

There are many subjects that I write about on my blog that I haven't gotten around to yet in my fiction. Fatherhood, sexism, homophobia, global warming and environmental protection, genetic research, racism. I have tackled racism recently in books like Hero and the two novels I am trying to finish up this year, Yaccub and 400 Days of Oppression. I would like to write a book about politics but that will have to be a bit farther in the future. I think that there are some pretty minor but fundamental flaws in the United States Constitution that could and should be corrected that would make America a stronger, fairer, better country and so I want to write a book detailing those changes and their results. That will be rather research intensive because I want to make sure that I am not merely being naive and I have considered all of the possible ramifications of those changes socially, economically, globally, and historically. So, that will have to wait until all of the other projects have been completed and I have some room to breathe.

I fervently believe that if you have an idea that might potentially help someone then it is your moral duty to share it with the world. It drives me crazy when I think of how many life-altering ideas are out there sitting in the minds of people who do nothing with them because they think that they are just horror writers or just bus-drivers or just mailmen or just a housewife or just a construction worker. I can't imagine how many valuable contributions to human knowledge are right now being wasted because someone has convinced themselves that they are not important enough to contribute anything. I refuse to be like that. When I do write my political manifesto it will probably be in the form of a post-apocalyptic novel detailing my vision of a utopian society.

People tend to mellow as they get older, get married, have children. Do you see this happening to you, and will it affect your writing at all?

Oh, I have mellowed. I don't chase women and fight in the street like I used to. I don't think that will affect my writing though. Even when I'm old and impotent I think I'll still be writing about sex. Though I can't honestly imagine myself old and impotent. Old, yes, but still with a throbbing erection tenting the front of my pants.

Ooookay, moving on! What, if anything, bothers you the most about the genre of horror/dark fiction today?

It is fractured right now. Too many writers, hunkered in their own little bunkers, at odds with everyone else. Writers who prefer quiet horror or traditional horror blaming extreme horror writers for the fall of the genre. Extreme horror writers blaming writers of quiet horror for neutering the genre. I have been in that camp myself in the past. I still get nauseous and mildly enraged when I see a PG-13 rating on a horror movie. Literary horror authors leaving the genre because they don't want to be associated with other authors they view as untalented hacks. Older, more established writers, looking down on newer authors for not paying their dues. It is getting ridiculous. It isn't any one facet of horror that is killing it.

In my opinion, it is these elitist attitudes that are doing the most damage. I think even the fans are afraid to admit that they like anything now because they don't want to get ridiculed by those who think they know what everyone should or shouldn't like. Go on any popular horror message board and you hear this type of petty bickering going on incessantly. It is disappointing and I think it drives fans away.

Writing is an ongoing process, and a good writer never stops trying to get better or trying new things. How is your writing different now than it was ten years ago? Twenty?

I am continuing to get better at hiding my socio-political and philosophical views in my work without clubbing the reader over the head with them. I'm getting better at that but I am certainly not there yet. I still write with a sledgehammer. But ten years ago I wrote pure propaganda.

Do you have any other upcoming projects you'd like to mention?

You mean I haven't mentioned them enough already? Orgy of Souls, co-written with Maurice Broaddus coming out in June from Apex books and Hero, co-written with J.F. Gonzalez available now from Bloodletting Books. And if you want to read some really gross and hilarious stories then pick up Sloppy Seconds, also coming out next month from Skullvines Press, with illustrations!

10 Quick Questions:

What were the first horror book and movie you ever read/saw?

My first horror movie was an old black and white movie called The Screaming Skull that scared the hell out of me and gave me nightmares. I was probably four when I saw that one. The first horror novel I read was Pin by Andrew Neiderman when I was nine. A pretty disturbing book.

What are your three favorite books of all time?

The Outsiders by Colin Wilson. This was the book that changed my life.
Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite.
Pimp, The Story of My Life by Iceberg Slim.

What is your favorite drink?

Ice cold water.

Name 3 things you'd change if you were the President of the United States.

I'd abolish the lobbying system.

I'd make it illegal for a Presidential candidate to use anything but public funding for his campaign.

I'd mandate a testing system and minimum educational, intellectual, and job history requirements for the Presidency.

If you could, what would be 1 thing in your past you'd do differently?

I'd have stayed in college.

If you could go back in time and interview 1 person, who would it be, and why?

It would be Arthur Schopenhauer. I love his philosophies and I would have loved to have seen him continue and write more.

What do you see as the next big trend in horror?

I wouldn't even pretend to know.

Who are 3 up-and-coming writers you think people should be reading?

Maurice Broaddus

Monica O'Rourke

Andre Duza

When you're not writing, working, or training fighters, what are your hobbies?

Watching porn.

Who is the one person you'd most like to collaborate with on a book, and why?

Jack Ketchum. Because there is so much I could learn from that guy.

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Any last words for aspiring writers?

Stay out of those silly message board disputes and write. Read outside the genre. Read non-fiction. Read history as well as current events and study people. Increase your knowledge and your understanding of people and it will add depth to your writing.

Thanks for talking to us!

Thanks for having me.

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For more information on Wrath James White's books, stories, and novellas, and to find out about his upcoming projects, visit him at wordsofwrath.blogspot.com and www.myspace.com/wrathjw.