Bobby Nash writes novels, comic books, short fiction, and occasional screenplays. He also appears from time to time in movies and TV shows. His writing has won numerous awards, including Best Author in the 2013 Pulp Ark Awards, Best Pulp Character of 2013 (co-creator), the 2018 Pulp Factory award for Best Short Story, the 2020 New Pulp Fiction Award from The Sangria Summit, and the 2023 Sangria Summit Pulp Fiction Award.

 Daily Dragon (DD): Bobby, who is Abraham Snow, and what about him or his world has inspired you to write so much about him?

Bobby Nash (BN): Abraham Snow is the main character in my Snow novella action/thriller series. Snow is basically my love letter to detective shows from the ’70s & ’80s. I love action and I love thrillers. Mixing the two together seemed like fun. Abraham Snow, and the other characters in the series, are fun and I love writing them. Thankfully, readers are enjoying them too.

DD: In Evil Ways and Evil Intent, we meet FBI agent Harold Palmer. How did you create this character and his world?

BN: Evil Ways was my first published novel. It was my second attempt at writing one. It started out as a movie idea I started putting together for a filmmaker friend. When that didn’t take off, I took the parts I liked best and started putting them together with a few new ideas and this mystery/thriller was born. Imagine if John McClane found himself in a slasher movie. That’s Evil Ways in a nutshell. Evil Intent follows Agent Palmer in a new thriller as he takes on a domestic terrorist. One of my favorite parts of these books is the dynamic between brothers Harold and Franklin. I love writing them together. This is the first appearance of my fictional Sommersville, Georgia, a place that I’ve set a few stories.

DD: Palmer’s adventures tie into those of another of your characters, Sheriff Tom Myers. Who is he, and why did you decide to link these series?

BN: Tom Myers is the sheriff of Sommersville. He’s a secondary character in Evil Ways. Oddly enough, I never planned to use him or Sommersville after Evil Ways, but the character just wouldn’t let me forget about him. He appears in my novels Deadly Games! and Evil Intent, still as a secondary character. Years later, he finally gets his own series. In The Wind and Such A Night are out now and a third book, Standing on the Shadows is being written. I love this character. Good thing he wouldn’t leave me alone, huh? Ha! Ha!

DD: You have other thrillers, Freelancer and Suicide Bomb. What draws you to this genre?

BN: I love thrillers. I love action. I love the mystery and the suspense. Putting those things in a story makes me happy. Part of the fun, and headache, of writing these are working in the clues and red herrings. I like to play fair with my readers. All the clues are there. I want to give the reader a chance to figure it out before the main characters do so I play fair with the clues. They all start with character. Once I get to know my characters, start to like them, then I know it’s time to put them through hell. Caring about the characters makes the danger they face feel more real, more immediate. I also enjoy crafting creative murders in stories and in Suicide Bomb, I try to come up with some really interesting, and sometimes odd, ways for characters to die. That’s fun to me.

DD: You’ve also written several science fiction adventures, including the 2013 Pulp Ark Award Nominee for Best Novel, Earthstrike Agenda. What was the inspiration for this novel?

BN: Sci Fi is my first love. I grew up with [lots of classic sci fi shows]. I love sci fi. I read a lot of sci fi. I write it as often as I can. A different version of Earthstrike Agenda was actually the first novel I ever wrote. It was horrible (I hear this is not uncommon for a first attempt), but I liked the plot and characters so, after Evil Ways and Deadly Games! were released, I went back and rewrote Earthstrike Agenda. It became my third published novel. The second version works much better than the original attempt.

DD: Please tell us about Samaritan and Frontier.

BN: Samaritan was one of my earliest published pieces. It was a short story that appeared in Startling Stories Magazine issue 3. I love The Twilight Zone and this is my attempt at a TZ-style story, complete with a twist. I think it came out pretty well, though it was still early days for me. You can clearly see the influences. Frontier was a collection of various sci fi shorts I did early in my career. There are some fun ones in there and a couple that make me cringe a little.

DD: You launched a new series this year that’s set in the mining town of Dante, Arizona. Please tell us little about that.

BN: I was invited to do a short story for The Devil’s Due. The theme of the anthology was how deals with the devil always come with a price. I wrote a short about this small mining town in the old west named Dante. Imagine if a Western series included vampires, werewolves, and other creatures of the night living there as well as humans. That’s Dante. The founder of the town made a deal with a demon years early. Now that the deal is due, strange things start happening. There are those trying to stop it.

The publisher liked the story and told me that this has series written all over it and would I be interested in doing more. I’m no fool. I said yes and we were off and running. Dante’s Tenth and Dante’s Showdown are out. Dante’s Reckoning is currently being written for a 2024 release. I also wrote a short story for an upcoming anthology that will feature a character from Dante in it. So, yeah. This one I kind of fell into. It’s fun stuff. Plus, I get to write cowboys and monsters. How cool is that?

DD: Apparently not content with prose alone, you’ve also produced graphic novels, Lance Star, Sky Ranger, and Operation Silver Moon. They’re two different types of stories. Why did you decide to go with the graphic novel format for these particular works?

BN: Comic Books are my first love. I grew up wanting to be a comic book artist. Turns out I’m better at writing comics than drawing them. My first published work was in comics. I love them and write comics whenever I can. I’ve written twenty comics in the past year or so for a few different publishers so 2024 is looking to be a big comic book release year for me.

Lance Star: Sky Ranger appears in prose and comics. He’s a pulpy 1940s era pilot adventurer. We play with aerial combat, sci fi, horror, monsters, demons, and really whatever else feels fun. Some stories work better in comics format so we mix it up when we can.

Operation: Silver Moon was created as a comic story after artist Rick Johnson and I decided to do something together. The first question I asked him was what type of stuff did he want to draw. His love of werewolves and vampires gave me the spark to build the story from and we were off. We had fun. I hope we get to do another one day.

DD: Did you grow up reading, and do you read them now?

BN: Yes. I love comics. My first comics were Amazing Spider-Man issues 192, 193, and 194. They came in a three-pack that I begged my mom to get for me in the checkout aisle of Zayre’s, a store than no longer exists. She relented. I knew Spider-Man from the cartoons. Seeing him in comics was a revelation. I was immediately hooked on comics at that point. I still read them to this day, though, and I never thought this would happen to me, but I generally pick them up in trades these days. Plus, I always pick up some cool titles in the Comic & Pop Art Alley during Dragon Con.

DD: You have an essay in the newly released anthology about the Joker, The Man Who Laughs. What inspired you to write about this character?

BN: This one was easy. The editor asked. I said sure. I love the character. The Joker is interesting, especially considering how many different versions of him there are. The essays in the book look at different aspects of the character. My essay focuses on the art of The Joker and how he’s drawn, especially what those big teeth of his add to his persona.

DD: You’re a member of the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers. How did that come about?

BN: That came about after I wrote a few media tie-in stories for publishers who had acquired licenses to those characters. It’s been fun to play with those characters I grew up enjoying. It’s been fun writing The Green Hornet, Zorro, The Lone Ranger, Nightveil, The Spider, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, At The Earth’s Core, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, Night Beat, Box Thirteen, etc. It was the adventures of characters like these that originally sparked my love of storytelling. Getting to write them was such a pleasure. I hope to keep writing tie-ins. I would love to write at least one Star Trek or Marvel tie-in. Those are goals I’m working toward.

DD: Let’s talk acting for a minute. What draws you to it, and what was your first job?

BN: Acting is fun. I don’t get to do it near often enough, especially the past few years. My first background gig was on the pilot of a show about the Detroit Police Department, which was filmed here in Georgia. My car made it into the episode. I did not. That’s showbiz. Later, I did more extras work, had a few featured bits. I played an FBI agent, a fry cook, Tommy The Tech Guy, “Disco George,” and more. For a long time, I often got cast as the “angry fat guy,” which was a role I played with relish. It’s fun getting paid to be grouchy and mean. I hope to get back into acting more soon.

DD: You have an essay on your website about creating compelling book covers. What do you think a cover must have to qualify as compelling?

BN: Most of the time, your cover is the first impression your reader has of your book. If the cover grabs them, the reader will pick it up, read the back cover copy, maybe flip through a page or two. It’s important to learn what kind of cover your book needs. Not every book needs a painted cover. Not every book needs a photo cover. Learning what works for your genre, making the title easily readable from across the room or at thumbnail size on-line, determining the best colors to use, writing the cover copy, these are all super important to catching your audience’s attention. A clear title and cover design that fits your genre is vital, I think. The type of covers I use for Snow, for instance, are not the same as the covers used for Evil Ways. The covers reflect the story.

DD: You also take art commissions. What’s your favorite that you’ve done?

BN: I do commissions when someone asks. It’s not often, but I do them at conventions and Free Comic Book Day events, mostly. They’re fun. I also draw on the packaging when someone buys a book from my on-line store. It’s a little bonus thank you from me to them. Plus, the ladies at my local Post Office get a kick out of them. There are a few that stand out. Recently, I did envelopes with the Mark Hamill animated version of The Joker and one of DC Comics’ Darkseid that I thought came out pretty cool. I also did a dragon piece for this year’s Dragon Con charity art auction. It’s on display up in the Comics & Pop Art Track in the AmericasMart.

DD: What’s next for you?

BN: I always have multiple irons in the fire. After Dragon Con, I generally crash on Tuesday. On Wednesday, it’s back to work. On my open list is a full-cast audio drama script, a short story, and bouncing between Standing on the Shadows–A Tom Myers Mystery and Dante’s Reckoning. After that, I start on a three-issue comic book script and start prepping a Green Hornet novella (that’s a scoop for you—first time I’ve mentioned it publicly). Busy is good, right?

DD: Sure! What’s a good starting point for people interested in exploring your work?

BN: I usually point to Evil Ways as the novel that’s the most me of anything I’ve written. It’s pretty much unpolished me in that I’ve learned a lot since then and might not do things quite the same way today. If you’re looking for something newer to start, Snow Falls or In The Wind are usually good places.

DD: Thank you, Bobby.

BN: Thank you. This was fun. If anyone reading this wants to stop by and say hello, you can find me at Table 432 in the Comics & Pop Art Alley in AmericasMart. If I’m not there, I’m on a panel.

For more information about Bobby Nash and his work, check out his website, www.bobbynash.com