James Boice predicts the end of the world as we know it in 'The Good and the Ghastly'. Photo: Michael Turek.

The world as we know it has ended, leaving a few pockets of survivors in the wake of the apocalypse. These survivors do their best to remember what life was like before, and it’s from these vague – and often inaccurate – recollections that the new society is built. Romeo and Juliet was written by Stephen King. Bob Dylan wrote both ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and ‘Beat It’. And everyone now worships a Visa commercial actor named Kevin Lithis.

This is the world of James Boice‘s third novel, The Good and the Ghastly, and it certainly lives up to its title. This not-so-brave new world is a distorted echo of our own, a satirical melting pot in which everything is fair game, and no one escapes unscathed.

The story itself follows Junior Alvarez, a wannabe gangster who sets about creating a criminal empire like the world has never seen from the crazy ruins of Northern Virginia (NoVA). On his trail is Josefina Hernandez, the mother of one of his victims, who will stop at nothing to see her son revenged. At the end of the day, it’s hard to say which character is scarier.

James Boice has already become known for his literary invention thanks to his debut novel MVP, and 2009′s NoVA, but The Good and the Ghastly looks set to cement that reputation. His imagination is so utterly unique and engrossing that it’s tempting to make comparisons with Chuck Palahniuk and Douglas Coupland – but Boice has a voice that is entirely his own.

We caught up with James Boice shortly after the publication of The Good and the Ghastly to ask him a few questions about his inspirations, NoVA, and the impending apocalypse.

Dan Coxon: Where did the first seed of an idea for The Good And The Ghastly come from? It seems a curious mix of satire, sci-fi, and criminal memoir.

James Boice: The very first seed, from what I can remember at this point—it being now 6 years since that seed was planted—was the story of Whitey Bulger. I was living in Somerville, MA at the time, in fall 2005. Bulger was the FBI’s Five Most Wanted, eventually behind only bin Laden. He had been on the run for over a decade at that point. His old headquarters were an auto shop down the street from me. There was a Whitey Bulger sighting somewhere in Europe that seemed very legit, so everyone was very excited.

I was interested in the psychology of such a person—brilliant, bold, pioneering, and utterly evil. I am not from Boston, so I could not write a Boston novel—you have to be from there, otherwise it just will not work, it will be very bad. I had only been there a few years. I could not write a Dennis Lehane type novel about this kind of person. Where was I from? NoVA. That wouldn’t really work either—a man like Junior Alvarez in modern day NoVA would probably go into defense contracting as opposed to crime. Somehow when I started writing, the story set itself in the future. Everyone at that time was especially worried about the future, the end of the world. Especially with trigger-happy psychotics like Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld steering the ship.

DC: The Ghastly outnumber The Good in the book. Was this your conscious intent? Or do you think it’s just down to the story’s satirical nature?

JB: It was not my intent. The title came about in the course of writing the book. I did not start out saying, This novel will be about good and evil. That’s the backwards way of writing a novel. Better off writing an essay in that case. The novel was only going to be about the life of Junior Alvarez, until Josefina suddenly broke her way into things early on. Because there will always be consequences, I think I realized. You cannot live without consequences. Maybe a more accurate title would have been The Consequences and the Ghastly—but that’s not a good title.

DC: You seem to have had fun creating the alternate version of NoVA. Any particular favorites? Or any bits of NoVA trivia that didn’t make it into the final draft?

JB: I love taking the piss out NoVA, which is where I was raised. Everyone from NoVA feels a lot of angst towards it. For a quiet boring suburb, it is a very intense place. Very competitive, very materialistic, lots of pressure to be brilliant and successful, etc. There’s a pressure-cooker atmosphere. That results in a lot of angst and the need to achieve catharsis by taking the piss out of the place. It’s also a microcosm of America. It is a relatively new place that built by a handful of lawyers for the purposes of enriching themselves and isolating themselves from the ugly parts of life (tyranny in the case of the Founding Fathers, crime and overcrowding and other blights of urban living). The interesting thing is what happens to people when they have succeeded in isolating themselves from the parts of life they do not like. So NoVA is important and interesting, in my opinion.

Bits that did not make it to print: I tend to have a short memory (which is good), so I’ve forgotten most of what was in early drafts. I remember the President of the United States was a former gay porn star. He kept a cell phone to God in his tremendous, Visa-colored appendage.

'The Good and the Ghastly' by James Boice.

DC: Why do you think post-apocalyptic stories seem to be on the rise again right now? Does it say more about where we think we’re heading, or where we are at the moment?

JB: We human beings lived with the possibility of instant imminent annihilation for half the last century. And then when the Cold War was over we turned around and had to face the very real possibility of some religious hillbilly nut from God knows where getting hold of nukes and blowing everybody up. And there’s been nothing we could do about it except stock up on cans of beans and hope it doesn’t happen. We’re powerless against it. We hate that. So post-apocalyptic stories are cathartic for us. Reading about our destruction is a way of giving us a kind of power over it. The only thing worse than the apocalypse would be not seeing it coming. And not knowing what to expect in the aftermath.

DC: If our world was rebuilt from scratch, as it has been in the novel, what would you want to leave out or change? Or is there anything that you’d desperately want to see survive?

JB: I probably would “see” nothing survive, because I’d be toast, my last moments spent screaming and crying like a little girl from my roof or something. But I know what you mean. I would like to see my books survive. And my charred body. Future people would mistake me for a King Tut figure or something and carry my mummified remains around to their museums, tell authoritative legends about this exotic mysterious king of Ancient America dug out of his tomb (i.e. embarrassingly humble apartment), start religions based on my doctrines (i.e. novels).

DC: What can we expect to see from you next?

JB: I’ve got a short novel in the can and have been writing short stories all summer. And I’m thinking about a novel. About what? A lady never tells.

The Good and the Ghastly is available now from all good bookstores, and the Simon & Schuster website, priced $25.00. For further new releases and author interviews, check out our dedicated Author Interview page.