Let’s start with an introduction: Who is Justin Gustainis?
I’m a college professor living in upstate New York. Writing fiction satisfies my soul (most days, anyway), but it’s my career in academe that pays the bills. At other times in my life, I’ve been a busboy, garment worker, soldier, speech writer and professional bodyguard (which wasn’t as glamorous as it sounds – I never got to meet Whitney Houston, or anyone like her).
Your next novel, Known Devil, was published by Angry Robot Books in February 2014. It is the third novel in your Occult Investigations Series. How would you introduce the series to a new reader, and what can fans of the first two books expect here?
The series is set in an “alternate” universe, one where supernatural creatures really exist, and everybody knows it – in other words, there’s no “masquerade.” Supernaturals (or “supes,” as they are often known) are accepted as part of human society, which is not to say there aren’t moments of friction. When the friction involves breaking the law, that’s when folks in Scranton, PA, send for my protagonist – Detective Sergeant Stan Markowski of the Scranton Police Department’s Occult Crimes Unit. As Stan says in the beginning of Hard Spell (the first book in the series), “When a vamp puts the bits on an unwilling victim, or some witch casts the wrong kind of spell. That’s when they call me. My name’s Markowski. I carry a badge.”
