Ask the Author: Andrew Timothy Post
Answered Questions (6)
Andrew Timothy Post
Don't give up just because it's hard. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. And don't judge your talents by the first one, two, three, five, or ten stories or novels you've written. They're bound to be junk. You're a neophyte. Give your talents time to ripen, keep burning up paper and ink and electricity writing, and it'll get better. Not easier, but better.
Andrew Timothy Post
I've got several projects going, all science fiction. There's a half-finished novel with a beta reader right now about a female interstellar mercenary (based on a real, living person who fought in wars all over the world in the nineteenth century). I'm also about six pages into a new project about the sole wakeful crewman on an interplanetary freighter. Not sure if it's going to be suspenseful, scary, or silly. But that's the fun of writing and watching a project develop.
Andrew Timothy Post
Exercise. I go out and take a walk or (if I'm feeling particularly stuck) a viciously exhausting bike ride. I'm big on active meditation: walking or pedaling and just letting my mind wander. It'll fly away from me, flit around in the ether for a while, and then bump up against an idea. Physical exertion and active meditation usually break me out of the doldrums. Doesn't hurt to sleep on it, either.
Andrew Timothy Post
Playing God. It's the physiological high you get from calling worlds, characters, and even natural laws into existence with the tap of a finger. The knowledge that you have a story that needs telling up in your head, a blank piece of paper in front of you (on a screen or in a typewriter), and that you decide how it all ends. It's intoxicating.
Andrew Timothy Post
They say truth is stranger than fiction. I don't usually write historical fiction, but sci-fi...yet I usually look to history for inspiration. I read books about historical figures and wars and global conflicts and trade routes and whatnot, and I get inspired like you wouldn't believe. The pages of history are filled with larger-than-life characters, exciting times, bountiful riches, and situations that can't be made up, too unreal to be believed. Everything you need to tell a great story is right there in the narrative nonfiction on the bookstore shelf.
Andrew Timothy Post
I lived in South Korea for four nonconsecutive years, during which time I learned about the General Sherman incident of 1866. I was a fan of books such as Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" and "The Sand Pebbles" by Richard McKenna, and I knew I wanted to do something similar. So as soon as I read about what had happened to the General Sherman and her crew on the Daedong River in Pyongyang in 1866, I knew that I had the makings for a story that I'd been yearning to tell. The obscurity of the actual event meant that (a) nobody had ever written about it before and (b) nobody could call me on the carpet for any historical inaccuracies.
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