Travis Heermann's Blog, page 18
September 26, 2012
Author Interview Series #66 – James Kahn
Oh, the power of social networking. A couple of weeks ago, I was attending the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold writers’ conference, learning about things like social networking, promotion, etc. Since I launched into the Twitterverse and punched the ion engines back in March, I’ve been getting a steady, daily stream of new followers. That’s just how it works.
So I was monitoring my incoming followers between panels at the conference, and then I see James Kahn come through as new follower.
When I was twelve, I read the novelization of Poltergeist. It scared the crap out of me. I think I read the whole thing in two days. Soon after that, I was so stoked about the upcoming release of Return of the Jedi that I could not wait, and I bought the novel and read it before the movie arrived. Both of those books were written by James Kahn.
But being a kid in the days before the internet, I mostly lost track of this guy who wrote two of the biggest books from my early years.
And now, here he was on my Twitter feed, out of nowhere, with a creative life that has gone in a number of directions, as you’ll soon see. A few tweets and couple of emails later, we have an interview. All hail social networking.
His first science fiction novel World Enough and Time, has just been re-released. And it’s available for$0.99 on Amazon for one day only, September 27.
TH: Over the years, you’ve had a lot of creative irons in the fire. What is The Story of James? Is it a novel? A blues/jazz riff?
JK: A soap opera. Or at least a picaresque novel with many chapters. There was the suburban growing up/rock’n’roll band chapter. The med school chapter. Getting married and moving to LA, working emergency rooms while I wrote novels and spec scripts, getting a foothold in the TV world. Moving to the Sierras to raise our kids, my Mountain Man chapter. Moving back to southern California to dive heavily into the TV world, Melrose Place, Star Trek, writers’ rooms and production deadlines. Then as that career faded away, getting back into practicing medicine, writing novels again, and rediscovering my early love of making music, writing and producing two CDs of folk/Americana. And now the latest chapter, helping to create the first ever Community Film Studio, and producing my first feature film, The Bet, a teen coming of age rom com, hopefully to be released next March.
TH: What was the Mountain Man chapter?
JK: My wife, Jill Littlewood, didn’t want to raise our young kids in L.A., so we moved to a little house on the side of a mountain in the Sierras. I wrote, worked in the local E.R., chopped wood, let my beard grow a foot long, sang songs, put a claim on a gold mine, found $1.67 worth of gold (which I still keep in a matchbox), and generally took on gruff ways.
TH: What were your first serious creative impulses that led you to a creative career?
JK: Reading Amazing Stories, and Strange Tales comic books at age 9, and rewriting the endings of the stories I had ideas about.
TH: Every artist has things they would like to accomplish, e.g. first sale, next sale, first novel sale, first bestseller, etc., but you’ve had a career spanning over thirty years. What accomplishment are you striving for right now?
JK: Want to do another CD, this one of kids’ songs. Want to finish the new horror novel I’m working on. Want to write and direct my own low budget feature film.
TH: What about the writing process most appeals to you? What is the most fun?
JK: I love falling into new worlds and meeting new characters in my mind. The best part is when they really start to live, get lives of their own, so they tell me what they’re saying and doing, and I just transcribe it, the work feels like it’s flowing through me.
TH: Have your reached the point at which you realized that you had “made it” as an artist, whether it be writer, musician, or TV producer? If so, can you describe the milestone or circumstances where you had that realization? Do you recall how that felt? If not, what is the milestone you’re seeking?
JK: I’ve never exactly had that feeling. I’ve always just written because I love to write. It’s something I can’t not do. Of course there have been moments of “career” elation. Being assigned the novelization of Return of the Jedi, seeing it go to #1 on the NYT bestseller list, rising to co-executive producer on Melrose Place, being in charge of producing major TV shows, completing my first CD – these were all thrilling milestones. All punctuated by waking up the next morning with an urge to write something else.
TH: What circumstances brought about your being assigned the Return of the Jedi novelization? It’s only one of the most important movies in film history.
JK: Two things. I was recommended by Spielberg, who loved my novelization of Poltergeist – and who gave me the Poltergeist assignment based on reading (or maybe it was Frank Marshall who read it) my novel World Enough and Time. I was also recommended by Judy Lynn Del Rey, wife of legendary sci-fi author Lester Del Rey and editor of the Del Rey imprint for Ballantine Books. Del Rey first published World Enough and Time, which Judy Lynn loved – and Del Rey was also publishing Return of the Jedi.
TH: Some say that artists have to look at themselves as a business, a branded commodity. Do you take that approach?
JK: I’m trying to do that a little more now, for the first time in my life. No agent, nobody knocking on my door, trying to organize my writing priorities and realizing if I want people to experience my art I have to get out there and market it. Not quite sure how to do that yet.
TH: What are the most effective ways you have found to promote yourself?
JK: None yet. Just discovered Twitter. I’m on Facebook, but don’t quite get how to exploit it yet. Went to Chicon to promote the re-release of my old sci-fi novel, World Enough and Time, but nobody seemed that interested yet. So I’m just exploring the world of self-promotion.
TH: Can you recall a moment when a two or more influences or inspirations came together and smacked you with a cool idea?
JK: Don’t know where my inspirations come from. They just seem to crawl into my head, and I wake up with them.
TH: What is the most memorable moment (good, bad, or other) you have had in your life as an artist?
JK: Probably when Kathleen Kennedy called the ER where I was working and asked if anybody there could help her figure out how to resuscitate an alien. Several of us went down to the set of E.T.[: the Extraterrestrial], wrote the med tech dialogue and donned hazmat suits in the E.T. death scene, which led to me getting the assignment to novelize Poltergeist. I’d call that first phone call a memorable moment.
TH: So you also contributed to E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial (another film that made box-office history). What were the memorable moments of that experience?
JK: Watching Spielberg direct was pretty awesome. Pounding on ET’s chest felt kind of silly, in a gleefully Hollywood way.
TH: Your career shows a quite a number of different phases and creative pursuits. Is it fair to say that writing has always constituted your primary creative drive?
JK: Yeah, I’ve always thought of myself as a storyteller. Short stories, novels, scripts, songs, they’re all stories. I tell jokes too.
TH: In what ways do your creative efforts feed one another?
JK: They don’t feed one another so much as relieve one another. After I’ve spent half a year writing a script it’s a nice change to focus on songs or novels.
TH: What brought you back to L.A.?
JK: The lure of a television career and the need to expose my kids to more culture than they were getting on a mountain top.
TH: Is it fair to say that many of the turning points of your career have come because you were in the right place at the right time? In retrospect, are there any near misses?
JK: Hollywood success is largely a combination of being in the right place at the right time, and then being able to take advantage of it because you have the chops. Lots of near misses. One of the disheartening things about Hollywood is the sense that you’re always at least metaphorically waiting by the phone hoping you won’t miss that ring that might be THE RING. That waiting can steal your life.
TH: What can readers expect to see from you in the near future? What are you working on?
JK: A reincarnation thriller novel, a heist screenplay, a Community Film Studio feature film, a new CD of children’s folk music early next year, the release on October 2 of World Enough, and Time, and the release a year from now of its sequel, Time’s Dark Laughter. All books and music available on my website, www.JamesKahnWordsAndMusic.com.
September 20, 2012
Author Interview Series #65 – Nick Mamatas
A couple of years ago I was attending the World Fantasy Convention, and at such events, amidst streams of late-night alcohol springs, a person can chance to meet quite a number of interesting people. Why do you think I go to conventions?
At just such a party I encountered Nick Mamatas, discovered his first published novel, Move Under Ground, was Cthulhu meets Kerouac, and I was intrigued. From there, it’s obvious that he is a busy guy. Aside from two novels, he has also edited or co-edited Clarkesworld magazine and several anthologies. His book Starve Better is a collection of witty, pull-no-punches essays that aspiring writers would do well to read.
TH: What is The Story of Nick? Is it a novel? A Lovecraftian noir thriller?
NM: Imagine a Charles Bukowski novel without any of the drinking or sex. Mostly it’s that.
TH: When did you know that you wanted to be a writer? How did you know?
NM: “Always.” Not really always. I wanted to live in outer space. I wanted to stay three years old forever and be an ice cream man. I wanted to get into movies, and I worked as a gaffer for a while, and a floor manager for a video production company. Finally, I wanted to work from home, and writers do that. I also liked the idea of getting checks in the mail, sometimes unexpectedly. But I certainly imagined being a writer a lot when I was a kid.
TH: How would you describe your body of work thus far?
NM: Formally, I’m very interested in point of view, and often play with unusual POVs: first-person plural, first-person omniscience, alternating POVs from the same person in different timelines, that sort of thing. Thematically, I’m interested in exploring the idea of freedom and its limits.
TH: Every writer has things they would like to accomplish, e.g. first sale, next sale, first novel sale, first bestseller, etc. What accomplishment are you striving for right now?
NM: Is that how writers think? “Next sale”, “first bestseller”? The poor things! I want to write things, whether books or stories or articles or turns of phrase that people will talk about for a long time. Unfortunately, it requires a long time to know whether I’ve done it. My cousin told me yesterday that when she was in Penn Station in Manhattan, heading home to Long Island, she saw an Au Bon Pain cashier reading a hardcover copy of Move Under Ground, a book that is now just over eight years old. Alexandra mentioned that I was her cousin, and she got a free coffee out of it. So maybe I am succeeding.
TH: Do you have any writing stuck away somewhere that will never see the light of day, but nevertheless helped you build your skill to publishable? What does that look like?
NM: I did write a first novel, but I lost it. I forgot its name, actually, but it was on the tip of my tongue even as I put my fingers to the keyboard to type the title. Anyway, it did help me realize that I could write 80,000 words in a row, which is funny, as I’ve not done that since. All my novels tend to be in the 50-70,000 word range.
TH: What about the writing process most appeals to you? What is the most fun?
NM: Sometimes I amuse myself when I am writing X and realize that I can do X+1 in a paragraph. I like that. The most fun is finishing, and then quickly placing a piece with a publisher. Overnight or even several hour acceptances have happened a few times now, and it certainly beats waiting six months to a year.
TH: Have your reached the point at which you realized that you had “made it” as a writer and author? If so, can you describe the milestone or circumstances where you had that realization? Do you recall how that felt? If not, what is the milestone you’re seeking?
NM: Does anyone ever do this? Stephen King, who is one of the most popular writers of the past forty years, spent the last ten of them making financial and aesthetic decisions designed to get his stuff published in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, and even Paris Review. He wanted the respect of the literary establishment, which he had never received. He still appears to be annoyed by old slights and old wounds.
There are also, of course, any number of acclaimed, serious writers who are continually frustrated by the small size of their audiences. Who thinks they’ve “made it”? I’ve never met anyone like that.
TH: Some say that professional writers have to look at themselves as a business, a branded commodity. Do you take that approach?
NM: Nope. Sounds tedious. The only reason to attempt full-time writing is so to avoid the tyranny of bosses. Turning myself into a brand would eliminate my one boss by replacing her with 50,000 bosses, all of whom want more more more of the same. The goal of humanity is to escape slavery. We should get to work on achieving that.
TH: What are the most effective ways you have found to promote yourself?
NM: Truth be told, the big secret is just to get a publisher in a position to get one’s book in stores. If you have small publishers, like I do, you have to find the audience one at a time, with crazy ideas. Luckily, my books tend to be full of crazy ideas, so people talk about them. People like to read my blog and Twitter feed, but few people buy my books because of them.
TH: What are some of your craziest ideas for building an audience?
NM: I suppose the craziest idea is just being myself online, instead of working to build a brand. I will say that my interest in short fiction stems partially from the fact that building the audience for this or that story isn’t my problem—that’s the issue for the magazine or anthology publisher who runs my piece. I find publicity pretty boring, honestly. Did you ever buy a book based on a bookmark you were handed at a convention or conference?
That said, I did design a specialty cocktail at Worldcon for my new book Bullettime, but that was mostly just to take a part in the ChiZine Publications party. It was $70 worth of booze—it takes a lot of dough to make a drink taste just like cough syrup—and the CZP table at Worldcon didn’t even have enough copies of Bullettime to earn me $70 in royalties if they sold them all at the con, but it was still fun. Having fun and spending too much money; are those crazy ideas?
TH: Is it important for unpublished writers or new authors to attend events like the World Science Fiction and World Fantasy Conventions? Why or why not?
NM: Nope, if one doesn’t like cons one shouldn’t attend. Any advantage to con-going is contingent on enjoying the company. There are plenty of ways to meet agents and editors—most genre fandoms haven’t created a con circuit and those writers do fine, after all. I do like cons, I guess. I like going out to eat and having someone else make my bed, anyway. So I go.
If you do like cons, it’s easy to make friends and friends often share opportunities with one another. If you can stay away from the energy drains of fandom politics, daydreamers, schemers, and creepers, con-going can be a fruitful experience.
TH: Can you recall a moment when a two or more influences or inspirations came together and smacked you with a cool idea?
NM: That’s how I do all my work, actually. One is never enough. I just handed in a story for a Clark Ashton Smith-themed anthology, and when poking around the source material, saw a way to introduce Homer into the setting, so did so. Same with Bullettime—I wanted to do something about school shootings, but introduced Eris, the idea of the Ylem as a place beyond space-time, etc. When I have an idea for something, I always immediately seek out a second idea to add to it.
TH: Your book Starve Better has been said to shatter wannbe writers’ illusions. What illusions?
NM: Some of the basic homogeneous advice given out to a non-homogeneous population: write every day; show, don’t tell; writing short stories is good practice for writing novels, that sort of thing. Those pieces of advice are true for some writers, but not all. Ultimately, we can only know what works for one particular writer after it has worked! So, writers should keep that mind, rather than trying to force themselves into a particular round hole.
TH: What are ways that you have found to balance the necessities of paying the bills and writing things that you find most rewarding? Thoughts on commercialism vs. creativity?
NM: Definitely getting a day job, albeit a day job in publishing. Working full-time freelance was very difficult, primarily because cash flow is so unpredictable. Every month was a race for the rent, and often one was at a mercy of the mailroom. Did the check go out Friday morning or Friday afternoon. With a life on the edge, that makes all the difference. In freelancing, fast money often takes priority over good money, which over the long term can really grind a body down.
There is a problem with trying to write commercially—everyone does it. So, let’s say there are only 10,000 people who want to read some non-commercial fantasy novel. Well, we can probably find those 10,000, and there might only be two or three writers capable of writing good non-commercial fantasy. Now let’s say that there are one hundred thousand people who want to read commercial fantasy, and twenty very good commercial fantasists to choose from. They won’t split the audience evenly, so you’ll have a few winners and a fair number of losers. And those hundred thousand have plenty of other choices—video games, movies, etc.—from which they can get similar experiences. Of course, the upside potential is generally much higher with commercial work, but there are many substitute products to compete against.
So writers may as well write whatever they like.
TH: What can readers expect to see from you in the near future? What are you working on?
NM: Well, I have a new novel called Bullettime that’s been out for just under a month now. Next year I have two books coming out—a zombie novel called The Last Weekend, and a crime novel of sorts called Love is the Law. I’m also probably going to do a little gift book for Quirk’s _____ Every Man Should Know line. I did Insults Every Man Should Know for them two years ago, so they want another one on a different topic.
My agent keeps bugging me to do a YA novel, so I did just write two chapters of one and sent it on to her. If there’s interest, I suppose I might finish it.
TH: What is the most memorable moment (good, bad, or other) you have had in your life as an author?
NM: When I moved back to California, I was asked to be a part of the SF in SF (Science Fiction in San Francisco) reading series. Two friends of mine came to hear me read, which was nice, and they brought along a friend of theirs. And then I married her. So there’s that.
September 19, 2012
Hijacking Faith – Guest Post by Betsy Dornbusch
By now lots of people know about Mitt Romney’s Gaffe. Well, the whole campaign has pretty much been one big Gaffe, right? But if any missed the latest, this is the money quote from a secret recording at a fundraiser with millionaires:
“There are 47% of the people who will vote for the president no matter what… These are people who pay no income tax. My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
This quote, nor Mr. Romney’s way of thinking, doesn’t shock me. I suppose it should. I kind of wish it did, that I cared enough about politics to get all up in arms about it.
That Mr. Romney is well-traveled and well-heeled but so willfully and narcissistically ignorant of humankind, including his own countrymen, should shock me too. But I have a tough time getting shocked these days. His determination to be an ignorant asshole, using death, misunderstood cultural offense, and violent protest to further his goal of being elected is disheartening, but unsurprising.
Really, one wonders why Mr. Romney wants to be President. It certainly isn’t out of any ingrained desire to serve.
Which brings me to the bit that does shock and piss me off: out of the other side of his mouth Mr. Romney claims to be a faithful Christian. He is a perfect example of an elitist evangelical—the sort who “knows” what’s best for everyone. I fear he’s translated the Christian idea that without acceptance of Christ some people won’t be saved into “some people aren’t worth saving.”
With my tendency to classify Mormons and other “new faiths” as evangelical, and my opinion of evangelicals as reformationists of a faith that was doing just fine, thank you very much, I believe such groups often drift further from core teachings of Christ.* Also, it seems to me, the newer a group, the more self-centered, hypocritical, and vocal its members seem to be. Not only that, but less is spoken of the true tenants of Christ (peace, love, faith, aid) than efforts at social control by way of humanized, unspiritual “rules.” It really becomes a question of Who are you trying to convince?
To me, Mr. Romney exemplifies by action the worst sort of Christian, and I’m horrified people might think my faith resembles his. Christ would never hold the views of disregarding half of His nation for any reason, certainly not for being poor. Christ would never take advantage of others’ hatred and death to further His own goals. Christ expected those of wealth to be fair and forgiving to those who aren’t, while Mr. Romney plays a great Unmerciful Servant, especially considering he was forgiven a great debt by the nation he derides as half full of lazy moochers, as well as destroyed several companies, and several thousand jobs along the way.
Most of all, though, Christ was about peace. What peace did Mr. Romney hope to achieve by incorrectly attributing diplomatic efforts on the part of the ambassador and people directly involved with the protests against the anti-Islam film to President Obama?
Mr. Romney fits the elitist evangelical mold perfectly: self-centered, hypocritical, and vocal. With those deficiencies, he is doing his best to pervert and hijack the Presidency. His parallel perversion and hijacking of Christianity may be easy for some to disregard, but for those of us of faith, it’s more frightening and offensive than dirty politics. The more Mr. Romney talks, the more I wonder Who are you trying to convince? Few things make me worry more than when I ask that question of people in power.
*Full disclosure: my current reformed Anglican denomination, split from the Catholic church 450 years ago by a certain Henry VIII for personal and political reasons, and established in the US in 1607, was pretty damned vocal in its time, though I think we’ve quieted some since. Plus, I grew up American Methodist. Also quite vocal and insistent early on, thanks to Mr. Wesley.
Betsy Dornbusch is a writer and editor. Her short fiction has appeared in print and online venues such as Sinister Tales, Big Pulp, Story Portal, and Spinetingler, as well as the anthologies Tasty Little Tales and Deadly by the Dozen. She’s been an editor with the ezine Electric Spec for six years and regularly speaks at fan conventions and writers’ conferences. She’s the sole proprietor of Sex Scenes at Starbucks where you can believe most of what she writes. In her free time, she snowboards, air jams at punk rock concerts, and has just started following Rockies baseball, of all things.
September 6, 2012
Author Interviews Revisited – Jack Ketchum
I first became aware of the name Jack Ketchum whilst reading On Writing Horror, a collection of essays and articles by everyone who’s anyone in the horror genre. (Previous interviewees Joe Lansdale, Jeanne Cavelos, Ramsey Campbell, and Richard Dansky also have essays in this book.) Jack’s essay, “Splat Goes the Hero: Visceral Horror” was one of those that opened my eyes to what good horror fiction is. It’s not just splattering viscera; it’s making the reader care whether a character’s viscera is about to be splattered.
If there is any writing advice that I have completely embraced, it is this quote from film director Akira Kurosawa: “The role of the artist is to not look away.”
This applies to all writing. If you’re going to be a fiction writer, you have to go into that place you find yourself most resisting. This is especially true of horror fiction. It doesn’t necessarily mean putting the darkest splatter directly in the camera lens; it means having the guts to look the blackness square in the face, and forcing the reader to go along with you.
When I got around to reading Jack Ketchum’s novel, The Girl Next Door, I finished it in a single day, and that’s a rare occurrence for me. This book snatched me up and made me look in a way that no book ever had.
I had the good fortune to attend the Odyssey Writing Workshop, and one of the guest lecturers was none other than Jack Ketchum. He said one other thing that I also completely embraced:
“In your writing, examine love always, and binding.”
I’ll leave it to you to chew on that, but don’t crunch the bones.
TH: You’re perhaps best known for being a writer who pulls no punches, both among fans and among other horror writers. Speaking personally, I can count on two or three fingers the horror novels that were like a kick in the gut (and I’ve read a bunch), and The Girl Next Door ranks among those. You had a fairly long run in the publishing industry. Can you give a brief arc of your career as a novelist?
JK: My first novel, OFF SEASON, was published in 1981. Ballantine felt they had something sensational on their hands and took the almost unprecedented step of printing, binding and cover-designing a special edition just for their distributors, creating point-of-purchase displays and
banners for a planned first edition of 400,000 copies — all of which went down the toilet when the distributors hated the book almost to a man for its extreme violence. Though the book pretty much sold out by word of mouth alone they really wanted no part of me after that and their second book, HIDE AND SEEK, went out in an edition one-tenth that size. I switched from them to Warner Books and then to Berkley and still couldn’t get out of 40,000-copy hell until Stephen King lent his name and blurb to JOYRIDE aka ROAD KILL (British title) and wrote the introduction to the first hardcover limited edition of THE GIRL NEXT DOOR. That was when people really seemed to start noticing me on a wider scale even though Steve told me that horror writers and genre readers had been noticing me ever since the first book — that OFF SEASON and the subsequent novels had been pretty influential. From there on it’s been a slow but steady rise in sales in the small press, then with Leisure in mass-market paperback, and in Europe and Japan. As of this year every one of my major titles will be in print in some form here in the U.S. — with the single exception of THE CROSSINGS, which I hope soon to remedy. This from a guy who couldn’t keep his first half-dozen novels on the shelves for more than three months at a time. I’m pretty pleased.
TH: You quote Akira Kurosawa in your essay in the book On Writing Horror, “The role of the artist is to not look away.”� Your novels explore some of the darkest corners of the human existence, so they tend to generate a certain amount of controversy. How do you handle that controversy?
JK: A certain amount of controversy is good — not just in terms of sales but in knowing you’ve stirred the pot, shaken something up, given somebody a dose of hard reality as you see it. I could do without the occasional death-threat. Those I just try to ignore.
TH: You have had death threats? Is it more common among writers who work in horror to have pen names, perhaps because of this?
JK: Most horror writers don’t use pen names. Edward Lee and I are the only ones I know of. Evan Hunter used Ed McBain but I doubt it had anything to do with death threats, and I picked my own before I knew of any hostility out there. And I know the same is true of Lee. Screw death-threats. Somebody shoots me, my books sell better. I win.
TH: When did you know that you wanted to be a writer? How did you know?
JK: Wow, really early on. I was making up stories with my toy soldiers and cowboys and knights and dinosaurs when I was just a little kid. Then I started writing poems and short stories when I was probably about ten or eleven. My mom was my first — and at that point, only — reader. Later I graduated to teachers and teenage girls and a piece in the local paper. By then I was permanently hooked.
TH: A lot of established writers seem to have a stack of writing somewhere that will never a see the light of day. I’m talking about stuff that perhaps helped you learn and develop your craft, like the five novels the author had to write before he could get to the good one. Do you have anything like this?
JK: I have a handful of one-act plays, essays and stories that I’ve held on to for some reason. And a longish children’s book called THE SANDCASTLE which got me my first agent and which I still may want to try to publish one day. The only novel I wrote before OFF SEASON was a long autobiographical thing I don’t even recall the name of, which I wrote just after college — I wanted to be Henry Miller but I wasn’t. I was me, but I didn’t know that yet. It deeply sucked. But I must have reworked the damn thing a dozen times. Finally all copies went into the fireplace at my parents’ house. I felt free as a bird.
TH: I review submissions and critique stories for a couple of online venues, and one of the biggest problems I see with inexperienced writers is a lack of understanding of basic drama. Stories have to be dramatic (or at least show an immediate conflict), and I have read dozens that just aren’t. Did you find that your background in theater arts gave you an immediate leg up when you started writing fiction and plays? Or was there an epiphany of some sort later on where everything came together? If so, what was the immediate benefit of theater training in making the jump?
JK: Everything you do in the arts feeds into everything else. You sing a song, you tell a story, there’s an arc to the character. You paint, you get a sense of figure and ground, nuance and shading. So that yes, doing theatre helped. Especially in the writing of dialogue. I’d been in plays by Pinter and Brecht and Peter Wiess and utter dogs by other writers. So I learned the difference between good drama and bad, between a voice that sings and one that just sits there.
TH: Of course, most writers want to have bestsellers or make some sort of artistic or literary impact, and you’ve certainly made a name for yourself over the years with a reputation for being on the gouging edge of horror fiction, with various awards and recent films appearing based on your work. Is there some unrealized accomplishment that you’re striving for in the near future?
JK: I’d like to write something that ends war, abolishes poverty, saves the planet, puts an end to organized religion and puts all the sociopathic killers, brokers, bankers, oilmen and crooked politicians behind bars. But I guess there’s not much hope of that.
TH: What are some of the things that have most inspired you recently?
JK: I’ve been reading about ancient Egypt and the Old West. I dare you to connect the two…
TH: A lot of genre writers might be hungry to know more about the process by which you built a readership. You’ve mentioned in the past that you learned everything you need to know about marketing whilst working at the Scott Meredith Agency. Presumably you have applied this knowledge toward marketing to fans, as well as publishers. What are the most successful ways you have used to promote yourself and your work? Are there any promising marketing avenues that you might yet explore ?
JK: I didn’t learn much about marketing to readers at Scott Meredith, only marketing to publishers and of course, learning to make a solid contract. I knew nothing about self-promotion when I started and it was only after I’d written three or four novels that at some point Edward Lee said to me, “Hey, there’s this thing called horror conventions out there, we should go to one!” Since then I’ve gone to many, meeting the readers, signing books, doing panel discussions or talks about the books or about writing in general. I think it helps a lot when you’ve got some visibility, when a reader in the New York or Boston or Toronto area or wherever can come see a favorite writer face-to-face. The same with readings — I’m actually doing one tonight as a matter of fact. Then, over the past few years I’ve had an official website at http://jackketchum.net which you can visit to get up to date info on what’s going on with me and my stuff. I comes complete with a message board which I visit about once a week to reply to questions and interact with folks — and over the past year or so I’ve had a MySpace page as well. I can get to over 2,000 “friends” instantly with an announcement. All this helps.
TH: Was there a point at which you realized that you had “made it” as a writer and author? If so, can you describe the milestone or circumstances? Do you recall how that felt?
JK: “Making it” for me has really only meant being able to earn a living as a full-time writer. As such it was a gradual thing, the money and recognition accruing slowly. But there are probably three milestones. Number one? When I sold my first piece of fiction — to Swank Magazine — back in 1976. That was a hallelujah moment for sure! I actually threw the check in the air! Second would be the sale of my first novel, OFF SEASON. That phone call from Judy-Lynn del Rey at Ballantine books was memorable as hell. I’d submitted the book as an ex-agent, not as the actual writer. “I have to confess, Judy, Jack Ketchum’s really me,” I said. She didn’t blink an eye. “Good,” she said. “We can make the deal that much easer.” Can you see me grinning at that one? Third — and maybe this is really when I knew I’d arrived — was reading Stephen King’s long introduction to the hardcover limited of THE GIRL NEXT DOOR. I couldn’t believe he’d said such wonderful things about the book and about my work in general. When I called to thank him I said, “You know, you’ve made my little niche in history. Even if my own books disappear forever, somebody studying you a hundred years from now is going to say, who the hell is this Jack Ketchum guy? I better look him up.”
TH: How important is it for beginning writers to build a network of relationships with other authors, some possibly more established? Have you formed many close relationships with other authors in general?
JK: I’ve formed a number of close relationships with other writers, but only after doing a whole lot of writing. You want the respect of your peers, you’d better have something to offer. You can’t network your way into respect. So for beginning writers, my advice is to forget about other writers. Make yourself into a good one first. The rest is naturally going to follow.
TH: How long did it take from the first novel sale to self-sufficient writing career?
JK: I had a self-sufficient writing career even before the first novel, writing for the men’s mags and the rock ‘n roll magazines and whatnot. I was lucky. I knew a lot of editors. The money was small but I always got by.
TH: Some say that professional writers have to look at themselves as a business, a branded commodity. Do you take that approach?
JK: “Branded commodity.” Makes me think of cattle. If you don’t treat professional writing as a business to some degree you’re gonna find yourself constantly broke or near-broke, because money is in fact changing hands for your stuff and you need to keep an eye on it. On the other hand I don’t want people to run out and buy “another Ketchum book” because they’re expecting more of the same. Chances are they won’t get it. I’m all over the place as a writer and hope to continue same. RED, for instance, is a far cry from OFF SEASON. COVER’S a far cry from THE GIRL NEXT DOOR. And none of these would prepare you for THE TRANSFORMED MOUSE or my next book, a small collection of memoir called BOOK OF SOULS. I like to keep surprising myself with something fresh.
TH: What can readers expect to see from you in the near future? What are you working on?
JK: Well, as I said, BOOK OF SOULS will be out soon. Leisure’s next release from me, in June, will be a new longish novella called OLD FLAMES, paired with RIGHT TO LIFE — which has never been released in mass-market before. Right now I’m working on a screenplay and the background story for the launch of a graphic novel, neither of which I’m allowed to talk about yet. Such secrecy!
TH: What is the most memorable moment (good, bad, or other) you have had in your life as an author?
JK: Probably it was sitting at a table with Peter Straub and Evan Hunter, among others, at the 2003 National Book Awards — in my first tux since leaving high school — and hearing Stephen King say the following….”There’s another writer here tonight who writes under the name of Jack Ketchum and he has also written what may be the best book of his career, a long novella called The Crossings. Have you read it? Have any of the judges read it? And yet Jack Ketchum’s first novel, Off Season, published in 1980, set off a furor in my supposed field, that of horror, that was unequaled until the advent of Clive Barker. It is not too much to say that these two gentlemen remade the face of American popular fiction, and yet very few people here will have an idea of who I’m talking about or have read the work.”
There’s only one word for what I felt hearing that. Stunned. It’s always good to know you’re appreciated, especially by a colleague you respect wholeheartedly, especially if that colleague is someone who has brought you as many hours of reading pleasure as Stephen King has brought to me. I already knew he liked my stuff. But nothing could have prepared me for that sucker-punch! My girlfriend pointed out to me that my mouth was open. I closed it. Peter turned and smiled and said, “that’s Steve.”
Tags: Jack Ketchum, horror, writer, author, writing, horror fiction, The Girl Next Door, Stephen King, Red, Off Season, HWA, genre fiction
New Giveaways for Fall
Hey, folks! Check out the new book giveaways on Goodreads. Both end on September 19!
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Heart of the Ronin
by Travis Heermann
Giveaway ends September 19, 2012.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Rogues of the Black Fury
by Travis Heermann
Giveaway ends September 19, 2012.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
September 5, 2012
Author Interview Series Redux
Having just returned from World Con, I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of writing as a career, what it takes to create one, build one, sustain one.
One cannot attend an event like World Con (or World Fantasy, for that matter) and not find that one is up to one’s waggling fanboy eyebrows in the likes of George R.R. Martin, John Scalzi, Robert Silverberg, Ellen Datlow, and many other luminaries of the speculative fiction field.
I used theWesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction for my university SF literature class in the spring, and I found it to be an amazing anthology, filled with some of the greatest stories from Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter” in the 1840s up to Ted Chiang’s amazing story “Exhalation.” I joked to friends that I should have brought the anthology with me and enacted a scavenger hunt for autographs, because practically every author who is still among the living in that anthology wasatWorld Con.
But one cannot rub elbows with brilliance and talent, and not wonder how they got there, not wonder how to get there oneself. There’s nothing quite like hanging out with a bunch of best-sellers, Hugo and Nebula winners to stoke artistic insecurities. “Oh, god, I’ll never be able to write like George R. R. Martin!”
Then I remembered that I have a wealth of that information already available right here. Several years ago, I began an author interview series that led to some fascinating conversations with authors I have long admired. So I thought, let’s reprint those and let other writers weren’t around these parts in 2008 perhaps gain some insights.
So let it be written, so let it be done.
Starting this week, I’ll be reprinted some of those old interviews. We’ll begin with the highlights and see what folks have to say. If time permits, we might even work in some fresh interviews.
September 4, 2012
New Ronin Giveaway
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Goodreads Book Giveaway
Heart of the Ronin
by Travis Heermann
Giveaway ends September 19, 2012.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
New Rogues Giveaway
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Rogues of the Black Fury
by Travis Heermann
Giveaway ends September 19, 2012.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
August 29, 2012
New Blog Theme Unleashed!
Okay, so it’s not that big of a deal. But allow me to introduce my new blog, Ronin Writer. Check it out and let me know what you think; I’d love to get some feedback.
So what does the “ronin” thing mean? Ronin is a Japanese word that means masterless samurai. They were independent warriors, either cast adrift on the waves of the world by their lords or by the cruel hand of fate. They were outcasts, but powerful outcasts, because they were still warriors, and thus, dangerous. You won’t find many real weapons around these parts, except for words, although I do love me a well-made katana…
I’ve been working on this project for the last week or so, and the change is two-fold.
1. Super-cool new design, yes? The next minor improvement will be thumbnails of my book trailers in the sidebar.
2. A slight shift in focus from when I launched Blogging the Muse way back in 2006. Back then it was about movies and writing, and then it evolved into the writing life as I launched the Author Interview Series, wherein I interviewed over sixty authors, all at wildly different stages of their career, from first-time novelists to old-time pros like Ramsey Cambpell, Jack Ketchum, and Joe R. Lansdale. All of those interviews are still here, and one of the improvements I am considering is making them more easily accessible without having to use the Search feature.
