Ask the Author: Mark Lind-Hanson
Answered Questions (6)
Mark Lind-Hanson
It was a sombre, drenching, and eerie night. Cadwallader rose from his grave and headed, without haste, slowly and patiently, toward the castle that rose from the top of the hill.
Mark Lind-Hanson
I never make reading lists. I just go to the library and pick stuff out.
Mark Lind-Hanson
Many of my characters are, actually, lightly based on people I know. However, situations are generally juxtaposed, and several people in fact might simultaneously inspire the characteristics comprising one character. It's usually a conscious decision. Often people I don't really know (at all) help to make up a character, and I don't see how a writer can actually work in describing human nature if there is not a background from people he knows making up some basis of his work. But where it is conscious usually it's in good taste or good humor and all effort is made to not upset people I really respect. Actually I would be rather happy if certain friends read a character whose attributes were partly based on their own, recognized it, and laughed. Conversely- if someone had treated me badly, they well ought have done better else-wise I wouldn't have need write about them! And those people sometimes (as characters) perhaps end up worse than they actually are, in the fiction, but again, then - that's their own fault. I think there's always some element of using your relationships with others to create characters, there need to be reference points you understand in order to describe the psychology of a situation.
Mark Lind-Hanson
Of my characters I think the thing I like most about them is that they're individualistic- main characters have to be interesting on their own behalf and the best way to make them so is to give them different aspects of personality (not just general outside appearances) from each other. An accent might be rendered in humorous fashion and just writing it might be a crack-up. But I try to create characters that will stand out from their cohorts so the differentiation makes them more memorable. If I dislike a character I'll generally try writing them so that the reader won't like them, either.
Mark Lind-Hanson
Maybe everyone's dream as a writer is to one day earn a living off it! The same can be said of musicians. Unfortunately our modern world wants to inflict a lifestyle upon all creative workers which allows few rewards "just for" being creatively prolific. All creative artists now must also work at substantive "other means of support" just to hang on to a primal legitimacy as artists. This may be cruel, and it may also reflect that the "publishing world" has become a clique where true creativity is not as richly regarded as popularity ("public familiarity") or monetary return (always more to the publisher than the author!). So we are faced with a situation in which a clique of highly recognized names earn large sums for producing what is often pure dreck (but popular) and voices are turned away on the roadside who do not produce income for the book-makers. This is both a sand curse to those of us choosing to work in ebooks, since with limited means we're forced to do all the promotional footwork that otherwise publishers would take on for us- the only real reason to take on a publisher anyway is their economic advertising budgets work in your favor.
Nevertheless,what I would hope for most is to be read, of course. The importance of telling stories is in that there are (somewhere) ears to hear them. Books provide a fantastic element of subversiveness for adding to public debate, and without them we should live in a much poorer universe.
A world in which writers are afraid to write just because they won't make any money, or because someone with authority would not like hearing ideas they have to say, would be a world not worth living in.
Nevertheless,what I would hope for most is to be read, of course. The importance of telling stories is in that there are (somewhere) ears to hear them. Books provide a fantastic element of subversiveness for adding to public debate, and without them we should live in a much poorer universe.
A world in which writers are afraid to write just because they won't make any money, or because someone with authority would not like hearing ideas they have to say, would be a world not worth living in.
Mark Lind-Hanson
I think I was always headed towards writing, although my immediate and first ambitions were to work in music (and my general focus in life will always BE music) However at this time I live in a circumstance which makes travel to and from musical situations rather not a possibility. In the interim I decided to do what I can do without a need for a "steady ride" And writing does not necessitate the need for it. I can write from wherever I am however, using electronic means.
My books are actually things I conceive as being things I would like to read myself. I feel books ought to be an escape. Real life, as we all know, is bad enough. So my books to a great measure are intended as escapist fantasies. My last trilogy is just such a thing- headed in the medieval period of England. The next one is set in the California Gold Rush. And there are other ideas I am working on, which involve parallel, fictional realities. These are fantasies and as such they indulge quite a bit of poetic license. But so long as I have an international readership (which is growing) I am going to keep producing material fulfilling what I see as a means of leaving, at least for a few hours, the worries of modern economy.
My books are actually things I conceive as being things I would like to read myself. I feel books ought to be an escape. Real life, as we all know, is bad enough. So my books to a great measure are intended as escapist fantasies. My last trilogy is just such a thing- headed in the medieval period of England. The next one is set in the California Gold Rush. And there are other ideas I am working on, which involve parallel, fictional realities. These are fantasies and as such they indulge quite a bit of poetic license. But so long as I have an international readership (which is growing) I am going to keep producing material fulfilling what I see as a means of leaving, at least for a few hours, the worries of modern economy.
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