Ask the Author: Dane Huckelbridge
Answered Questions (9)
Dane Huckelbridge
Barry's daughter, 12 years later. Persinette!
Dane Huckelbridge
Thanks so much! I'm happy to hear you enjoyed it. I've got a few things in the works at the moment, hopefully they work out. Publishing is a slow process, unfortunately. Cheers! Dane
Dane Huckelbridge
Ah! Looks like we have something in common. My grandparents' farm was/is just outside Shipman, on "Huckelbridge Road," as a matter of fact. Although I believe most of the old-timers pronounced it "Maguppin' County" back when I was growing up.
Dane Huckelbridge
The free breakfasts at Denny's.
Dane Huckelbridge
At the moment, I'm putting the finishing touches on a novel that's very close to being ready to go out, and I'm getting started on a non-fiction book about man-eating tigers in Nepal and India in the early 20th century.
Dane Huckelbridge
Not very well, that's for dang sure.
Dane Huckelbridge
My advice is to keep your chin up! Being a writer—and doing it for a living—is tough. It can take decades, and it can bring you to the brink of total despair. This is something I don't think is emphasized these days, with all these sun-shiney writing conferences and MFA programs and fellowships and what-not. Folks like to pretend that writing is this fun thing you do with your friends over glasses of tasty wine, when in reality, it's often a pretty difficult thing you do all alone over bowls of cheap ramen noodles. So my advice, and I don't know if it's very good advice, is to not get discouraged, and if you're serious about it, to never give up. I told someone once that deciding to be a writer is like deciding to row a boat across the Atlantic. It's actually a pretty bad idea, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. But if you're crazy enough to try it, never stop rowing, because it's the only way you'll ever make it to the other side.
Dane Huckelbridge
I'd say it usually starts with a single, simple, compelling idea. A title, even. And the story just unfolds from there. I get lots of bad ideas, and I usually realize they're such after two or three pages. But once the needle hits the groove, and three pages turns into thirty, thirty to one hundred, and the story's still going, then I more or less know. When I get really into a story, I often find myself getting out of bed in the middle of the night to add a detail that I'm afraid I might forget by the morning. But this doesn't happen often, usually I only come up with an idea I feel confident in every couple years.
Dane Huckelbridge
It actually started with a short story idea I had about a fellow who gets stuck on a desert island with only a few pairs of contact lenses—and he's essentially unable to see without them. From that story, and from an article I read about the cemetery on Hiva Oa in the Marquesas, something started to take shape that would eventually grow into "Castle of Water."
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