Ask the Author: Kent Anderson
Answered Questions (13)
Kent Anderson
Hi Dave -- I love it when cops tell me they love Night Dogs because it assures me that I got it right. Truman was based on an old dog I saw one day in Missoula, MT a long time before I wrote Night Dogs. Now he's as real to me as any old friend. I miss him. Pharoah was based on a guy I used to wave to on the street in north Portland, but it was another guy who jumped in and saved me that day, a situation that's virtually non-fiction except for changing the guy to Pharoah.
Kent Anderson
Not very involved. The director seemed like a good guy, but it was a French film company, a Vietnamese director, filming in Canada.
Kent Anderson
John -- It wasn't a major mass-grave at Mai Loc, but it was memorable.
Kent Anderson
Hi John -- Thanks for all the material you sent me last year. I'm going to try to begin inhabiting this site.
Kent Anderson
Thank you, Don. Please see my other answers of tonight. I think Green Sun is a great book -- I mean a for-real great book about a part of our culture that no one has written about like I have. I just need to find an agent and a publisher.
Kent Anderson
Hi Marc -- I hope to hear back from you soon. Thank you.
Kent Anderson
Hi Marc -- I just sent you an email. Thanks for including your email address here because I don't know which buttons to push to respond from goodreads. But I'll try to find out.
Kent Anderson
That isn't how it happened.
Kent Anderson
Thanks Ronnie -- See the answers above that I've just answered tonight -- 2/15/16. Green Sun is finished, it's the book I wanted to write and it's as good as I could write it. I think it's as good as the other two novels, but quite different too. It's about being a cop in Oakland, CA in the mid-80s.
Kent Anderson
Not with the director and cast that almost made it. Google Night Dogs and Tran anh hung and see what happened.
Kent Anderson
I don't know who's going to publish it. I finished Green Sun six months ago, on July 28th, but parted ways with my agent - for the second time - almost two years ago. So the book is out knocking on doors for an agent now. Meanwhile, I've started on Hanson #4, and it seems to be moving along better than I could have imagined, which is good since I don't have another 20 years to work on it. But having another book I'm responsible for makes it easier to be patient (cuts the anxiety a little) trying to sell Hanson #3, Green Sun.
Kent Anderson
Hi Connor -- I just now discovered your note. I'd hate to have to adapt Night Dogs into a script. A lot of stuff going on in there. Tran Anh Hung did it after the book was optioned to him some years back. They almost made the movie -- but didn't.
You should be able to contact me on this page, and I hope I can find my way back to it. I almost enjoy writing scripts -- a very different way to tell a story, and the format and length keeps me from digressing.
Kent
You should be able to contact me on this page, and I hope I can find my way back to it. I almost enjoy writing scripts -- a very different way to tell a story, and the format and length keeps me from digressing.
Kent
Kent Anderson
This will take a while --
The opening words I wrote above weren't intended as a pun or a joke, and I think maybe they're the short answer to the question.
In any case, I'm gonna answer this question a bit at a time while I figgure it out for myself. I submitted this question myself, so I'd be forced to answer it over the next few days or weeks.
1. I see life as scenes, isolated scenes, and I can write scenes each with its own self-contained narrative arc (if that's the correct term) so I can usually pass them off as short stories. If you look at the scenes in my novels, you'll see that almost all of them can stand alone.
2. This begs the questions, why do I see life that way? What is a plot? Why do readers want a plot in a novel? How is a novel different from so-called real life?
TO BE CONTINUED
The opening words I wrote above weren't intended as a pun or a joke, and I think maybe they're the short answer to the question.
In any case, I'm gonna answer this question a bit at a time while I figgure it out for myself. I submitted this question myself, so I'd be forced to answer it over the next few days or weeks.
1. I see life as scenes, isolated scenes, and I can write scenes each with its own self-contained narrative arc (if that's the correct term) so I can usually pass them off as short stories. If you look at the scenes in my novels, you'll see that almost all of them can stand alone.
2. This begs the questions, why do I see life that way? What is a plot? Why do readers want a plot in a novel? How is a novel different from so-called real life?
TO BE CONTINUED
Kent Anderson
Hi John -- I'm trying to figure out how this author page works and decided to turn off my question button thing, but you'd asked your question before I did, which is fine with me.
One of the reasons I decided to put myself on this site is because I'm about to make my books available as ebooks and I want people to know that. It'll be a couple of months at least before that happens, but here I am. Also I'm really, finally about to finish a 3rd novel, Green Sun, which I'll want to talk about here. So stay tuned -- I'm even going to try a blog -- and thank you for asking. Kent
One of the reasons I decided to put myself on this site is because I'm about to make my books available as ebooks and I want people to know that. It'll be a couple of months at least before that happens, but here I am. Also I'm really, finally about to finish a 3rd novel, Green Sun, which I'll want to talk about here. So stay tuned -- I'm even going to try a blog -- and thank you for asking. Kent
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