Ask the Author: Rod Collins
Answered Questions (6)
Rod Collins
Writer's block: work on something else; relax; go fishing; read a good book.
Rod Collins
I like story telling. And I like the solitude and the time spent with my characters. At times, the characters just take a story over, and then I chase after them as fast as I can.
Most of the characters in my stories are fashioned after people I've known and admired, so it's a way of being in touch again. The weak and evil characters in my books are also based on people I've known, sad to say.
And sometimes, I just amuse the heck out of myself as I pound away on the keyboard. If I read the story aloud to my patient wife and she is amused also, then I count that bit of writing as a success.
Most of the characters in my stories are fashioned after people I've known and admired, so it's a way of being in touch again. The weak and evil characters in my books are also based on people I've known, sad to say.
And sometimes, I just amuse the heck out of myself as I pound away on the keyboard. If I read the story aloud to my patient wife and she is amused also, then I count that bit of writing as a success.
Rod Collins
Use the active voice, let your characters tell the story as much as possible, and write every day...at least two pages.
Read your story aloud to check it for flow and to see if it has the music you hear in your mind. Remember, rewriting takes as much time as the original writing time. Rewriting is where the real work, and the real art takes place.
Amuse yourself and have fun. I collect names and cultivate the characters I find in real life. They are the ones with active minds and sometimes a great sense of humor.
Read your story aloud to check it for flow and to see if it has the music you hear in your mind. Remember, rewriting takes as much time as the original writing time. Rewriting is where the real work, and the real art takes place.
Amuse yourself and have fun. I collect names and cultivate the characters I find in real life. They are the ones with active minds and sometimes a great sense of humor.
Rod Collins
I'm about thirty thousand words into another Bud Blair novel I've titled Not Before Midnight. I can hardly wait to finish this story because the denouement is, in my humble opinion, a zinger.
I'm also dabbling with a character called Beer Drinker, a story about a young man who finally named himself at about age nine because he was tired of being call boy. This one is loosely based on a true story, and...yes...the real life character did choose his own name at age nine. His parents had just been plain whipped by the Great Depression and had barely enough energy to get through the day. Consequently, they just hadn't gotten around to giving him a first name.
I'm also dabbling with a character called Beer Drinker, a story about a young man who finally named himself at about age nine because he was tired of being call boy. This one is loosely based on a true story, and...yes...the real life character did choose his own name at age nine. His parents had just been plain whipped by the Great Depression and had barely enough energy to get through the day. Consequently, they just hadn't gotten around to giving him a first name.
Rod Collins
My grandfathers were great story tellers, straight from the rich oral story telling tradition of rural America. Grandpa Charles Augustus Troops would hold people spell bound with his tales of growing up in the Oklahoma panhandle country. Some of his closest friends were Cherokee, and he learned to speak the language.
Grandpa Truman Collins told tales from Missouri where his grandfather homesteaded in time to be arrested during the American Civil War by the North as a Southern sympathizer, and in return by the South as a Union sympathizer. The stinging worms story in Bitter's Run was based on one of his tales.
Consequently, I grew up liking stories and grew up wanting to be as good at story telling as my ancestors. One thing leads to another, and I began writing my first novel when I was thirteen.
Grandpa Truman Collins told tales from Missouri where his grandfather homesteaded in time to be arrested during the American Civil War by the North as a Southern sympathizer, and in return by the South as a Union sympathizer. The stinging worms story in Bitter's Run was based on one of his tales.
Consequently, I grew up liking stories and grew up wanting to be as good at story telling as my ancestors. One thing leads to another, and I began writing my first novel when I was thirteen.
Rod Collins
I wanted to build a story or part of a story around retired Portland Police Bureau Detective Dell BeBe, a fictional character from the earlier Bud Blair books. Two newspaper articles triggered the notion/plot for the story "Not Before Midnight." The first article was about human trafficking; the second was about gang activity in a remote, sparsely populated part of Oregon's High Desert country, an unlikely place for a gang war.
This book will be #5 in my Sheriff Bud Blair series, and should be out in time for Christmas shopping.
This book will be #5 in my Sheriff Bud Blair series, and should be out in time for Christmas shopping.
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