David Morrell's New Thriller "The Naked Edge" Continues a Long Career

"Remember, I was a professor of American Literature," said David Morrell, when I spoke with him. In fact, David Morrell began teaching at my alma mater, the University of Iowa, in 1970 and became the world-renowned author of "First Blood" (on which the 1982 Sylvester Stallone film "Rambo" was based) in 1972 while a professor there. Morrell has written 31 other novels, including "The Brotherhood of the Rose" and "The Fifth Profession."

He praised the University of Iowa for letting him teach while writing the kind of popular fiction he wanted to write. He was not an instructor in the University's world-famous Writers' Workshop, but he lived in Iowa City and taught there for 17 years before moving his family to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1987.

While teaching, he pursued his own writing goals, saying, "My goal has been to approach the thriller or the horror field as a wide-open type of fiction that most writers have not treated seriously. It is a total joy for me to explore these genres and take them in directions they haven't been taken before and treat them with a seriousness that I believe they deserve. That is the secret to my career. It is why I write like I do and why each book has been slightly different."

Morrell added that the Horror Writers' Association has awarded him three Bram Stokers, (more writing awards than from any other literary organization), and he is co-founder of the Thriller Writers' Association

Morrell might still be living in Iowa City, Iowa, were it not for the tragic death of his son Matthew in 1987 from Ewing's sarcoma, a rare form of cancer, which the University of Iowa's Hospitals and Clinics tried, unsuccessfully to cure. Almost as unsettling was his granddaughter's being stricken with a similar illness recently (but, thankfully, with a better outcome, healthwise).

To memorialize his fifteen-year-old son, who died in 1987, David Morrell wrote a 1988 novel entitled Fireflies. It is a touching tale of his son's long hard fight against his terminal illness. He says it has caused more reader reaction than almost any other book he has written, touching many readers' hearts and is now available as an e-book.

"Fireflies is a dramatization about what it feels like to have a child die. I wanted to write a book about my son and what he went through. Matthew said, 'Nobody will remember me.' I wanted to write a book in which he is on the page and he'd be remembered by people who had never met him. I constructed the book as a work of fiction, although it was all real. I framed it with myself, as an old person, being able to go back in time, on his deathbed, the week before the crisis that killed his son in the hospital. That character knows everything that is going to happen, and is rushing in, trying to show doctors, 'If you do this - maybe this wouldn't happen and maybe he'll live.' Because it wasn't cancer that did my son in, it was a lot of other things, mostly to do with his immune system. Of course, in real life, a physician would think you were out of your mind if you claimed to have knowledge of the future." Morrell likened the "Fireflies" plot to a sort of "Twilight Zone" approach.

"My view is, yeah, a lot of stuff is inevitable. Matthew died a second time in the book, as he did in real life. There was nothing I, even as the character with the foresight to try to prevent it, could do to save him."

Talking about his deserved reputation as a nice guy (in a field where being Mr. Nice Guy is not always easy), Morrell said, "I believe there is a kind of determination if you like. The point is the dignity with which we conduct ourselves, the strength and the determination with which we lead our lives in an effort to be as productive and as good-natured as we can be. That is the way I've conducted my life, and when I can, I insert those values into my fiction."

For a very long time after Matthew's death, Morrell struggled, culminating with a dramatic sit-down on a curb in New York City where he realized he must find coping mechanisms to deal with the intense grief he felt over the loss of his son. He found he had to throw away the anti-anxiety medications that stifled his creativity. He tells a haunting story of a bird flying into the crypt chamber the day of Matthew's funeral ceremony, a symbolic event.

Although Morrell gave up the grueling double life of teacher and author in 1986, Matthew's death in 1987 was at least partially responsible for the family's decision to leave Iowa City and relocate to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where they reside today and where he has continued writing, producing a total of 32 books which have sold 18 million copies worldwide. Morrell's daughter works as his agent.

He makes frequent appearances at a variety of writing conferences around the country and continues writing, with his latest release being the thriller, "The Naked Edge." Noting the growth of e-books, Morrell said, "An author no longer feel the frustration of smothering a fervent need to write a particular book because publishers don't feel there's a best-selling market for it. This is a big deal." Besides predicting that e-books will surpass paper books within 2 years, Morrell thinks that agents will regroup to become "packagers" of books, taking care of the things that traditional publishers used to do, such as design of book covers, organizing promotional campaigns, and arranging for e-book conversion(s).