An Interview with Ben Tripp, Author, “Rise Again”

Iraq War veteran turned Sheriff Danielle “Danny” Adelman swore to protect and serve the citizens of Forest Point, but finds her abilities tested when a worldwide pandemic threatens to overwhelm the town with both the living dead and survivors seeking refuge. Already struggling under the weight of her own Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and worry for the sister who disappeared days before the outbreak, Danny is challenged to maintain order and safety for the people who depend on her.

Rise Again is the debut novel of Ben Tripp, who recently spoke with us about reconciling slow vs. fast zombies, society’s failure to deal with the real-life epidemic of Post Traumatic Depression and how, surprisingly enough, his experience as a designer of theme parks played into creating some of Rise Again’s most riveting scenes.

Rise Again may introduce your work to a brand-new audience, but some of us already know you from your political commentary. In what ways did your political leanings inform the story and the characters depicted in Rise Again, and was making sure that this was a novel that anyone could enjoy regardless of their political affiliations a consideration?

Good question! The book does have a political point of view, but it doesn’t take sides. It’s more about how we use our political opinions to shape what we think is going on in the world, rather than using politics to respond to what’s really happening. That’s a problem from end to end of the political spectrum. It’s like two people arguing about whether to fight fire with water or sand, and meanwhile the house is burning down. This message has resonated with folks of every political stripe.

I found Danny to be a difficult character to like at first, but as I came to understand what she had been through and what she still had to get through in order to become a healthy person again I warmed to her. Can you talk about some of the challenges of creating a character that readers might find difficult to “know” yet still be compelled to follow? It has to be difficult.

The same thing happened to me. Danny and I disagree on just about everything, but she’s one of those characters that showed up and said, “let’s do this thing,” and as the story progressed, she kept surprising me. I think the key to writing difficult protagonists is simply not to judge them. It’s the same with real people. Eventually you find out why they are the way they are, and then you’re rooting for them.

Danny, like a lot of vets, has had a hard time getting the help that she needs for her Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and her injuries, and at the beginning of the book is doing a lot of self-medication. Did you speak with any vets in the process of researching the novel?

Yes. Some folks I’ve known for years are struggling with this stuff. It never goes away. We as a society should probably be thinking a lot more about this, because we’ve got hundreds of thousands of traumatized veterans among us who are expected to be invulnerable, and to put the damage behind them. We call them heroes and expect that to be enough. It isn’t.

If I can veer away from some of the political stuff for a moment, I’d like to ask you about how you went about creating the “rules” for your zombies. It seems like every novel or movie has its own rules for how the zombies work and how the contagion spread. How did you develop yours?

The way the contagion spreads was just one of those weird mental pictures: millions of people going crazy and running until they died. The zombie rules however, come from two sources: first, I based the way the disease operates and evolves on research into viruses. The technology now exists to make designer viruses in the laboratory, and I promise you, it’s being attempted. The second thing I wanted to do was reconcile the ’slow’ and ‘fast’ school of zombies. That was a lot of fun.

Were there any particular horror movies or novels that helped inspire your vision of what Rise Again would be? For that matter, were there any from other genres? Even nonfiction or documentaries?

There are so many places we find inspiration — a million little influences. To name a couple, I was inspired by the nonfiction The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, which is mostly about Ebola and scared the pants off me; and of course George Romero’s zombie movies, and all their misshapen little children. Oddly enough, a lot of what I wrote comes from my career as a designer of public experiences. People in groups behave in certain very predictable ways, so certain setpieces in the book were inspired by that.

I’ve been very taken with the art you’ve created for the book, such as the peel-and-stick zombie injuries and zombie portraits. How long have you been working in the visual arts? What are some of the professional projects you’ve been involved with? Further, people tend to like to categorize others, like “artist” or “writer.” Do you find that some people have difficulty accepting your competence in several areas

Thank you. I’ve been an artist all my life. I come from a family of artists. If you wanted to rebel, you became a writer. My main career has been as an experiential designer, which means I design theme parks, urban developments, masterplans, museum attractions, and things like that. I worked for Walt Disney Imagineering for several years. But I’ve also been writing, and sometimes that’s my primary job. It’s all storytelling. That’s how I explain it to people. Writing, designing, making art: it’s all storytelling, and I just have a variety of storytelling tools at my disposal.

So will you be writing any more zombie fiction? What’s next for you?

There’s a sequel to Rise Again over the horizon — and it makes Rise Again look like a slumber party. I recently completed a vampire novel that could be described as ‘the anti-Twilight.’ Beyond that, I’m always working on a few things… most of them horror or sci-fi. I’m a genre guy.