Please introduce yourself and tell us about your background as a writer.
I’m Charles R. Rutledge and I started writing pretty much as soon as I could read. I didn’t get serious about it until much later though. Like a lot of writers, at first, I just wrote for fun and to entertain friends. When I did become serious, I sold a couple of short stories and that led to me collaborating with author James A. Moore on what would become my first published novel, Blind Shadows. Since then, I’ve written three other novels with Jim, and one on my own. The solo book is my most recent, Dracula’s Return.

What are the most prominent influences on your writing? How do you incorporate those influences without being derivative?
I have three big influences in terms of how I put words on a page. Lester Dent (aka Kenneth Robeson), author of most of the Doc Savage pulp novels. Robert B. Parker, author of the Spenser private eye series and many other books. Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan, Solomon Kane, etc. I think it’s the mix of those styles, and bits and pieces of other writer’s approaches that keeps my style from being too derivative of any individual writer, though I do catch myself in a ‘Dent-ism’ or Parker-ism’ at times. I usually sound more like Dent, I think. People say my work is fast-paced, and that’s derived largely from Howard. He was a master at narrative force.

With self-publishing easier than ever, there are tons of books being released every day. What makes your work stand out from the crowd? What can readers get out of your work that they can’t from anyone else?
I am a comic book guy and have been most of my life. I owe as much to people like Jack Kirby, Steve Gerber, and Roy Thomas as to the prose authors mentioned earlier. One of the big things I got from comics is the crossover. I’ve written a Country House Christmas Ghost Story with a barbarian in it, and I lifted Bram Stoker’s Dracula more or less intact from the novel and dropped him into a modern-day police procedural. I’m always trying to do something different, and I think people like that about my work. I usually get complimented on my fight scenes (I taught martial arts for three decades), my snappy dialogue, and the fast pace of my fiction.

Many authors say marketing is one of their biggest challenges. What tactics have you found to be most effective for getting your name out there?
The two biggies are networking and maintaining visibility. You do the first by going to conventions and conferences. The more writers you know, the more you can help each other promote your books. Word of mouth is the best but hardest to get advertising, and it’s even better if you and your fellow writers are recommending each other to readers. For visibility, I keep my name out there by appearing in a lot of anthologies. If you don’t have a novel out in a particular year, it’s good if readers see your short stories in a bunch of anthologies so they know you’re still out there. Plus, you network that way too as you get to know other authors, editors, and artists. And new readers who enjoy your work in an anthology will seek out your solo books. How do you get to be in a lot of anthologies? Write a lot of stories, be easy to work with, and hit your deadlines.

How much do your audience’s expectations factor in to what you write? Does this ever cause you to hold back from experimenting?
I write what I want to read and hope other people will want to read it too. I don’t pay much attention to expectations. Experimentation is pretty much my watchword.

Have you had any new stories published recently? Are you currently working on any?
My most recent short stories published in the last couple of months were “The Adventure of the Stone Men,” a Sherlock Holmes horror yarn for Gaslight Ghouls, “The Shadow Over Waikiki,” a PI story with Lovecraftian elements for Castle of Horror: Volume 8, and “Snake-Men on a Train,” a weird western written with James A. Moore for SNAFU: Dead or Alive. I also achieved a lifelong goal by appearing in Weird Tales magazine with a non-fiction piece.

I’m working on a couple of things just now, a werewolf novella, and a ‘creature feature’ novella about giant centipedes. I’ve already sold five short stories that will appear in anthologies in 2023.

Name one newer and one older book you have read and enjoyed recently. (“Newer” meaning from the past year or so, and “older” meaning written before 1980.)
I read a lot, but my favorite recent new book was Jonathan Janz’s The Dismembered. A favorite reread from a couple of weeks ago was Tarzan at the Earth’s Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Any final words?
To anyone reading this who thinks it’s too late to become an author, I sold my first novel the year I turned 50. It ain’t over until it’s over.