Carl Alves's Blog, page 10
September 26, 2019
Houdini vs Rasputin by C Michael Forsyth
This was the second novel that I’ve read from C Michael Forsyth involving Houdini and a historical figure (the other being Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) and I absolutely loved it. Forsyth has a great formula of mixing Harry Houdini with a famous person, putting them into an adventure, and spinning a fun yarn, and this novel followed that formula quite well.
I have to admit that I did not know a whole lot about Rasputin prior to reading this novel. I generally knew that he was a Machiavellian character who was involved with the Russian aristocracy, but after reading this novel I came to the realization that he was a total monster. He was an evil, power hungry person who manipulated people for his own nefarious purposes. The novel is an adventure story with lots of twists and turns. There’s also a fair bit of drama and political intrigue. One of the things I really enjoyed was how Forsyth incorporated historical events and characters into his tale. Tsar Nicholas, Lenin, and even Joseph Stalin figure heavily into the story. Houdini is a character that’s easy to root for, and this time his wife, Bess, plays a major role in the story as well.
If you haven’t read C Michael Forsyth yet you are missing out. This is a great starting point and a novel that I would highly recommend.
I have to admit that I did not know a whole lot about Rasputin prior to reading this novel. I generally knew that he was a Machiavellian character who was involved with the Russian aristocracy, but after reading this novel I came to the realization that he was a total monster. He was an evil, power hungry person who manipulated people for his own nefarious purposes. The novel is an adventure story with lots of twists and turns. There’s also a fair bit of drama and political intrigue. One of the things I really enjoyed was how Forsyth incorporated historical events and characters into his tale. Tsar Nicholas, Lenin, and even Joseph Stalin figure heavily into the story. Houdini is a character that’s easy to root for, and this time his wife, Bess, plays a major role in the story as well.
If you haven’t read C Michael Forsyth yet you are missing out. This is a great starting point and a novel that I would highly recommend.
September 8, 2019
A Hero's Throne by Ross Lawhead
This novel is the sequel to The Realms Thereunder and takes place immediately after that novel is completed. Nidergard has fallen. Daniel and Freya, along with a group of people, must awaken the knights that have been sleeping for centuries to take back Nidergard. Meanwhile, Alex the detective and Ecgbryt are going through tunnels all over Europe to rouse the knights.
The first novel in the series was thoroughly enjoyable. And although this was also a very good novel, I think it falls just a bit short of the first. What set that one apart from this was the switching back from past to present to tell the story in the first book. I generally don’t like long flashbacks, it was done very effectively in the last novel. The story telling was also a bit tighter. What worked well was the coming together of the characters. In general, the characterization is one of the real strengths of the series. The characters are memorable and well written. The incorporation of the setting was also exceptional.
It seemed as if the author was thorough in his research, and that shined throughout the novel. This novel has an epic fantasy feel to it, but with a modern setting. The meshing of the modern and the ancient was especially interesting. This was a fun sequel and I look forward to completing the series.
The first novel in the series was thoroughly enjoyable. And although this was also a very good novel, I think it falls just a bit short of the first. What set that one apart from this was the switching back from past to present to tell the story in the first book. I generally don’t like long flashbacks, it was done very effectively in the last novel. The story telling was also a bit tighter. What worked well was the coming together of the characters. In general, the characterization is one of the real strengths of the series. The characters are memorable and well written. The incorporation of the setting was also exceptional.
It seemed as if the author was thorough in his research, and that shined throughout the novel. This novel has an epic fantasy feel to it, but with a modern setting. The meshing of the modern and the ancient was especially interesting. This was a fun sequel and I look forward to completing the series.
September 4, 2019
10 Questions with Ross Lawhead
1. The Realms Thereunder is steeped in Celtic lore. What type of research did you do for this series?
There’s a hint of Celtic in there, but mostly it’s Anglo-Saxon lore that I used, especially for the names, and Old English is what some of the characters will break out in, every once in a while. The titles were also taken from the G. K. Chesterton long poem The Ballad of the White Horse, which is all about King Alfred’s fight to regain his kingdom from the invading Norse armies. So it’s more post-Roman Britain I was looking to, not pre-Roman.
And for that I went pretty deep, but kept mostly to the primary sources, which is mostly poetry. I was able to take some adult learning classes to help teach myself how to translate from original sources and understand the context that they were written in. Luckily, at the time, I was living in Oxford, England, so I had access to world-class professors through the University’s Continuing Education department. I was also able to build a sizeable library very quickly and cheaply by going around to the secondhand bookstores in town, which are full of academic works that would be impossible to find elsewhere.
2. What’s the greatest moment in your writing career?
There have been a bunch of great moments. I think that publishing the !Hero graphic novel just edges into the greatest of them all, purely by virtue of the fact that it was the first thing I did that was published by a real publisher.
3. You have written novels, graphic novels, and poetry. What is your favorite medium to tell stories?
That’s a tricky question. I love using different media to tell different stories because of their various inherent strengths. The ideas I have for stories usually break up very clearly into, “This is a novel,” or, “This is a poem.” All in all, each one of them scratches the itch for me. I do think it’s a shame that we live in a time where 18,000 line poems are not considered marketable because I’d love to write a book-length poem. People have done it, and I always like to track those efforts, but it’s not like there’s a section at the bookstore you can go to for those. On the other hand, I am so glad that Graphic Fiction has really come into its own during my lifetime. When I was a teenager you could pretty much only get superhero stuff and I was crying out for different types of stories than ones that were broken down into 22 page chapters and punctuated by people hitting each other. But now, in just the last ten years, it’s become a tremendously diverse landscape, and one that I plan to dive into again very soon.
4. What are the positive and negative aspects of being an author and the son of a prolific writer such as your father, Stephen Lawhead?
I can really only think of the positive aspects. Growing up our dinner table conversations were often about books we’d read, movies we’d seen, and the criticisms we had about them, or about grammar and word use. I also observed his work ethic, which is highly disciplined. Instead of waiting for lightening to strike, or for the muse the descend on him, he just went into his office every day and made it happen. Some days were hard, some days were easier, but he always did a full day’s work. I think that’s the most valuable thing I learned from him.
When I was asked to collaborate with him it was great to have him alongside to really mentor me. Now that I’m writing professionally on my own, my dad and I will still call each other and discuss plot and character problems that we’re having, or even throw about ideas for our next projects.
If there is a negative aspect, I think it’s that publishers commonly think that I’m an extra Stephen Lawhead, and that the assumption is that I’ll write for the same market and all his readers will flock to me as well. And while it’s true that there’s some synergy at work there, I always notice the point at which they get frustrated when they discover that we are, in fact, two different writers.
5. What current writing projects are you working on?
I’ve got a few things making the rounds, but publishing is a notoriously slow-moving industry, and once you lose momentum with a publisher, it can be real hard to get the wheels turning for you again. And the industry operates in cycles regarding various appetites. So while I’m always working on something, nothing is moving for me professionally at the moment. I’ve got three completed novels in my drawer that have been stymied at the various agent/editor/marketing department stages, and that can be a little frustrating. I’m not going to give up on writing novels ever, but I feel like stretching into something else for a while.
So I’m going to try to break the logjam with something completely new and out-of-the-box. I’ve started working on a project that circumvents the usual channels and will be free-to-read, with an option to buy later on. It’s a few months too early to say anything more than that, I’m afraid, but watch this space. I’ll be making announcements on the socials.
6. How do you think the Marvel comics franchise compares with the Star Wars franchise?
It’s really interesting to compare the two because the Marvel Cinematic Universe is for us now what the Star Wars universe was for us back in the 70s and 80s. By that I mean it’s place where adults can feel like kids again and kids become inspired enough to feel like they can take over the world. Movies that deal with dark elements, but are ultimately about hope, goodness, and sacrifice.
But something changed when Disney bought Star Wars. I really feel like Star Wars has lost their way. And it’s not just because it’s Disney, because after all, Disney owns Marvel as well, but the movies are not about being inspiring any more, and not about having fun. They seem to have some other agenda which even they can’t articulate. And there seems to be a real schizophrenic mindset around who these movies are actually intended for. You can’t take a ten-year-old to these movies—they’d get traumatised by Rogue One and just plain bored by The Last Jedi. But they can watch the Rebels cartoon. And an adult who does want to explore the nature of good and evil as presented by The Last Jedi isn’t going to find anything in Force Awakens to interest them. Then, after being told, relentlessly (almost spitefully) to “let the past die”, why give us the nostalgia-driven reference-fest called Solo? It’s common practice to blame us Star Wars fans for attacking the franchise, but we’re really trying to defend it. The moviemakers seem hellbent on alienating any sort of core viewer. Speaking as someone who came to love the franchise during the dark ages of the 90s, it actually feels like a personal attack. Also mystifying, especially to the “let the past die” mindset, is the decision to kill three out of four new characters introduced. Think about it. I mean, really think about it. The old characters are dying at a much slower rate that the new ones. Tell Snoke, Holdo, Beckett, Vos, Phasma, and the entire cast of Rogue One to “let the past die”. Samuel Johnson is credited with saying “Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.” That sums up how I feel about Star Wars right now.
Now look at Marvel. Fun movies in which the main character has a strong emotional drive, with discoveries and revelations that are earned through basic storytelling principles. They are good stories told well and don’t habitually go in for a surprise reveal, or a reliance on past successes to keep momentum. We’re what, edging up to 25 movies into the franchise and it still feels like they’re breaking new ground. Look at Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Captain Marvel, and the upcoming Avengers: Endgame. They are all on-brand, but have a completely different vibe from each other and all the movies that came before. Now, I’m not saying that everyone has to love these movies—if superheroes aren’t your game… well, my condolences on the current state of Hollywood—but you can’t deny that they’re nailing it. And the stories tell us that there’s hope for success, even in the darkest times, and that true redemption and change comes through personal sacrifice. Plus, the characters in the movies actually do something. They actually, you know, help people out. It’s such a basic thing to show, but Star Wars seems to have difficulty grasping that lately. And so does DC. Wonder Woman is the only movie I’ve seen of theirs where one of their heroes decides to do something heroic of their own volition, and not under apparent duress.
7. What role does setting play in The Ancient Earth series?
It was intended to play a large one, but I’m not sure how successfully that came across. I’m a writer who looks back on his past work and can only see the flaws. I think I wish I leant harder into the setting side of things. But readers have different tolerances for descriptions and I got feedback from both sides saying that my descriptions were beautiful and imaginative, and others that they were too long and held up the story.
To me the setting was always important because I really tried to tie the motifs of place and belonging into the themes. In many places it’s a discussion about who we are as inhabitants of a land and what makes us feel we own a place, when really we’ve fetched up there often by chance or by someone else’s decision. It’s a discussion that’s a lot more relevant today than when I wrote it just a few years ago, and came from my impressions as I started to look more and more into the Anglo-Saxon world. Here is a land that is the same as the land we’re living on, but one that is 1,000 years in the past. And because of that removal, it is strange to us, and beautiful because of that strangeness. And now we’re claiming that it’s ours, even though we’re mostly descendants from a different place.
So I decided to make that metaphor a reality for the story. My characters literally go underneath the country to discover the past that is figuratively buried beneath them.
8. What made you start writing?
I think it’s more a case that nothing has ever made me stop writing. But at the same time I always describe my drive to write as an undiagnosed psychosis. I have to do it in order to stay sane and relaxed. People who know me well can tell when I’ve missed a few days of writing—I get all jittery and distracted. I would write even if I never published anything ever again. It’s just what I do.
9. What are the most important aspects of world building in fantasy?
I don’t know if I’m qualified to say, after only taking one stab at it. I would say that the world building has to have ties to reality. For me, I used the touchstone of history and myth. I never made anything new, I only borrowed things that were very, very old. We’ve all seen it go wrong when people let whimsy override logic and just let anything happen for any reason, without consequence for the other whimsicalities that they’ve introduced. Someone has a blue dragon for no reason except that the author wants a blue dragon and no time was taken to really think through the implications of what it would mean for anyone to have a blue dragon and how that would affect the world around them. It can quickly devolve into a world where anything can happen, and if anything can happen then it isn’t a surprise that anything does happen and the conflict loses all its drive and the characters are no longer in tension with the created world.
10. If Hollywood was making a film adaptation of The Realms Thereunder, and the director asked you to cast the role of Daniel Tully and Freya Reynolds, who would you choose?
It would have to be unknowns, no question. But for Swidgar I always imagined a kind of Liam Neeson type. For Ecgbryt I’d want a John Rhys Davies type. Timothy West would be a great Ealdstan, and Modwyn would need to be a British actress whose earned a real gravitas; I think Hayley Atwell or Rachel Weiss would be perfect.
There’s a hint of Celtic in there, but mostly it’s Anglo-Saxon lore that I used, especially for the names, and Old English is what some of the characters will break out in, every once in a while. The titles were also taken from the G. K. Chesterton long poem The Ballad of the White Horse, which is all about King Alfred’s fight to regain his kingdom from the invading Norse armies. So it’s more post-Roman Britain I was looking to, not pre-Roman.
And for that I went pretty deep, but kept mostly to the primary sources, which is mostly poetry. I was able to take some adult learning classes to help teach myself how to translate from original sources and understand the context that they were written in. Luckily, at the time, I was living in Oxford, England, so I had access to world-class professors through the University’s Continuing Education department. I was also able to build a sizeable library very quickly and cheaply by going around to the secondhand bookstores in town, which are full of academic works that would be impossible to find elsewhere.
2. What’s the greatest moment in your writing career?
There have been a bunch of great moments. I think that publishing the !Hero graphic novel just edges into the greatest of them all, purely by virtue of the fact that it was the first thing I did that was published by a real publisher.
3. You have written novels, graphic novels, and poetry. What is your favorite medium to tell stories?
That’s a tricky question. I love using different media to tell different stories because of their various inherent strengths. The ideas I have for stories usually break up very clearly into, “This is a novel,” or, “This is a poem.” All in all, each one of them scratches the itch for me. I do think it’s a shame that we live in a time where 18,000 line poems are not considered marketable because I’d love to write a book-length poem. People have done it, and I always like to track those efforts, but it’s not like there’s a section at the bookstore you can go to for those. On the other hand, I am so glad that Graphic Fiction has really come into its own during my lifetime. When I was a teenager you could pretty much only get superhero stuff and I was crying out for different types of stories than ones that were broken down into 22 page chapters and punctuated by people hitting each other. But now, in just the last ten years, it’s become a tremendously diverse landscape, and one that I plan to dive into again very soon.
4. What are the positive and negative aspects of being an author and the son of a prolific writer such as your father, Stephen Lawhead?
I can really only think of the positive aspects. Growing up our dinner table conversations were often about books we’d read, movies we’d seen, and the criticisms we had about them, or about grammar and word use. I also observed his work ethic, which is highly disciplined. Instead of waiting for lightening to strike, or for the muse the descend on him, he just went into his office every day and made it happen. Some days were hard, some days were easier, but he always did a full day’s work. I think that’s the most valuable thing I learned from him.
When I was asked to collaborate with him it was great to have him alongside to really mentor me. Now that I’m writing professionally on my own, my dad and I will still call each other and discuss plot and character problems that we’re having, or even throw about ideas for our next projects.
If there is a negative aspect, I think it’s that publishers commonly think that I’m an extra Stephen Lawhead, and that the assumption is that I’ll write for the same market and all his readers will flock to me as well. And while it’s true that there’s some synergy at work there, I always notice the point at which they get frustrated when they discover that we are, in fact, two different writers.
5. What current writing projects are you working on?
I’ve got a few things making the rounds, but publishing is a notoriously slow-moving industry, and once you lose momentum with a publisher, it can be real hard to get the wheels turning for you again. And the industry operates in cycles regarding various appetites. So while I’m always working on something, nothing is moving for me professionally at the moment. I’ve got three completed novels in my drawer that have been stymied at the various agent/editor/marketing department stages, and that can be a little frustrating. I’m not going to give up on writing novels ever, but I feel like stretching into something else for a while.
So I’m going to try to break the logjam with something completely new and out-of-the-box. I’ve started working on a project that circumvents the usual channels and will be free-to-read, with an option to buy later on. It’s a few months too early to say anything more than that, I’m afraid, but watch this space. I’ll be making announcements on the socials.
6. How do you think the Marvel comics franchise compares with the Star Wars franchise?
It’s really interesting to compare the two because the Marvel Cinematic Universe is for us now what the Star Wars universe was for us back in the 70s and 80s. By that I mean it’s place where adults can feel like kids again and kids become inspired enough to feel like they can take over the world. Movies that deal with dark elements, but are ultimately about hope, goodness, and sacrifice.
But something changed when Disney bought Star Wars. I really feel like Star Wars has lost their way. And it’s not just because it’s Disney, because after all, Disney owns Marvel as well, but the movies are not about being inspiring any more, and not about having fun. They seem to have some other agenda which even they can’t articulate. And there seems to be a real schizophrenic mindset around who these movies are actually intended for. You can’t take a ten-year-old to these movies—they’d get traumatised by Rogue One and just plain bored by The Last Jedi. But they can watch the Rebels cartoon. And an adult who does want to explore the nature of good and evil as presented by The Last Jedi isn’t going to find anything in Force Awakens to interest them. Then, after being told, relentlessly (almost spitefully) to “let the past die”, why give us the nostalgia-driven reference-fest called Solo? It’s common practice to blame us Star Wars fans for attacking the franchise, but we’re really trying to defend it. The moviemakers seem hellbent on alienating any sort of core viewer. Speaking as someone who came to love the franchise during the dark ages of the 90s, it actually feels like a personal attack. Also mystifying, especially to the “let the past die” mindset, is the decision to kill three out of four new characters introduced. Think about it. I mean, really think about it. The old characters are dying at a much slower rate that the new ones. Tell Snoke, Holdo, Beckett, Vos, Phasma, and the entire cast of Rogue One to “let the past die”. Samuel Johnson is credited with saying “Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.” That sums up how I feel about Star Wars right now.
Now look at Marvel. Fun movies in which the main character has a strong emotional drive, with discoveries and revelations that are earned through basic storytelling principles. They are good stories told well and don’t habitually go in for a surprise reveal, or a reliance on past successes to keep momentum. We’re what, edging up to 25 movies into the franchise and it still feels like they’re breaking new ground. Look at Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Captain Marvel, and the upcoming Avengers: Endgame. They are all on-brand, but have a completely different vibe from each other and all the movies that came before. Now, I’m not saying that everyone has to love these movies—if superheroes aren’t your game… well, my condolences on the current state of Hollywood—but you can’t deny that they’re nailing it. And the stories tell us that there’s hope for success, even in the darkest times, and that true redemption and change comes through personal sacrifice. Plus, the characters in the movies actually do something. They actually, you know, help people out. It’s such a basic thing to show, but Star Wars seems to have difficulty grasping that lately. And so does DC. Wonder Woman is the only movie I’ve seen of theirs where one of their heroes decides to do something heroic of their own volition, and not under apparent duress.
7. What role does setting play in The Ancient Earth series?
It was intended to play a large one, but I’m not sure how successfully that came across. I’m a writer who looks back on his past work and can only see the flaws. I think I wish I leant harder into the setting side of things. But readers have different tolerances for descriptions and I got feedback from both sides saying that my descriptions were beautiful and imaginative, and others that they were too long and held up the story.
To me the setting was always important because I really tried to tie the motifs of place and belonging into the themes. In many places it’s a discussion about who we are as inhabitants of a land and what makes us feel we own a place, when really we’ve fetched up there often by chance or by someone else’s decision. It’s a discussion that’s a lot more relevant today than when I wrote it just a few years ago, and came from my impressions as I started to look more and more into the Anglo-Saxon world. Here is a land that is the same as the land we’re living on, but one that is 1,000 years in the past. And because of that removal, it is strange to us, and beautiful because of that strangeness. And now we’re claiming that it’s ours, even though we’re mostly descendants from a different place.
So I decided to make that metaphor a reality for the story. My characters literally go underneath the country to discover the past that is figuratively buried beneath them.
8. What made you start writing?
I think it’s more a case that nothing has ever made me stop writing. But at the same time I always describe my drive to write as an undiagnosed psychosis. I have to do it in order to stay sane and relaxed. People who know me well can tell when I’ve missed a few days of writing—I get all jittery and distracted. I would write even if I never published anything ever again. It’s just what I do.
9. What are the most important aspects of world building in fantasy?
I don’t know if I’m qualified to say, after only taking one stab at it. I would say that the world building has to have ties to reality. For me, I used the touchstone of history and myth. I never made anything new, I only borrowed things that were very, very old. We’ve all seen it go wrong when people let whimsy override logic and just let anything happen for any reason, without consequence for the other whimsicalities that they’ve introduced. Someone has a blue dragon for no reason except that the author wants a blue dragon and no time was taken to really think through the implications of what it would mean for anyone to have a blue dragon and how that would affect the world around them. It can quickly devolve into a world where anything can happen, and if anything can happen then it isn’t a surprise that anything does happen and the conflict loses all its drive and the characters are no longer in tension with the created world.
10. If Hollywood was making a film adaptation of The Realms Thereunder, and the director asked you to cast the role of Daniel Tully and Freya Reynolds, who would you choose?
It would have to be unknowns, no question. But for Swidgar I always imagined a kind of Liam Neeson type. For Ecgbryt I’d want a John Rhys Davies type. Timothy West would be a great Ealdstan, and Modwyn would need to be a British actress whose earned a real gravitas; I think Hayley Atwell or Rachel Weiss would be perfect.
August 16, 2019
The Realms Thereunder by Ross Lawhead
This novel toggles between past and present. In the past, the story’s protagonists, Daniel and Freya, went missing during a school trip. They appear a month later after going to one of the many worlds in the multiverse. They find themselves part of an eternal struggle where a group of knights are being guarded as they are in a deep sleep and will only rise when they are needed, which is just in time for an apocalyptic battle between good and evil. Daniel and Freya, being the only mortals in this realm, are tasked with an important mission. In present time, they are being drawn back in to the ongoing conflict.
I enjoyed the story’s setting in modern day UK and a realm that borrows from ancient England. The story is steeped in Celtic and Anglo-Saxon lore, and I liked the whole vibe of the story (the flow, the style, and those intangibles that can make or break a story). There was strong world building in this novel, and the mission in the past part of the story with the main characters and the knights who befriend them was fascinating. The flashbacks resonated more strongly than the present setting, but the going back and forth between past and present made for interesting story telling. Generally speaking, the characterization was quite strong, although I enjoyed the side characters like Alex, Ecgybryt, Swidgar, and Ealdstan more than the two main protagonists. The prose was professional, and the storytelling technique was admirable. All in all, this was a fun, enjoyable novel. There was good build up, and I’m looking forward to reading the other books in the trilogy.
I enjoyed the story’s setting in modern day UK and a realm that borrows from ancient England. The story is steeped in Celtic and Anglo-Saxon lore, and I liked the whole vibe of the story (the flow, the style, and those intangibles that can make or break a story). There was strong world building in this novel, and the mission in the past part of the story with the main characters and the knights who befriend them was fascinating. The flashbacks resonated more strongly than the present setting, but the going back and forth between past and present made for interesting story telling. Generally speaking, the characterization was quite strong, although I enjoyed the side characters like Alex, Ecgybryt, Swidgar, and Ealdstan more than the two main protagonists. The prose was professional, and the storytelling technique was admirable. All in all, this was a fun, enjoyable novel. There was good build up, and I’m looking forward to reading the other books in the trilogy.
August 11, 2019
Dirty Deeds by Armand Rosamilia
I loved the opening line in this novel. It set the tone for the rest of it, and was absolutely perfect. It was truly one of the best opening lines of any novel I’ve ever read. All right, enough about the first sentence. The rest of the novel was an intriguing, enjoyable read. James Gaffney represents himself as a truly despicable person to his clients. For an exorbitant fee, he will kill your child. In reality, he abducts them and places them with another family. Almost from the beginning of the novel, things unravel for James. He had an FBI agent on his tail, someone hacking his information, a Mafia boss pissed at him because his dead son is no longer dead. Through it all, James has to navigate these hurdles, keep himself alive, and try to do the right thing along the way based on his own moral code.
I really enjoyed the casual writing style employed in this novel. It had an easy going feel to it, and the protagonist narrated in a self-deprecating style. He’s not really a tough guy that one would expect for this type of role. He’s not a good fighter, and doesn’t even carry a gun, although it would probably be a good idea to do so given all of the people trying to kill him. The novel has many twists and turns. The characterization is strong. I guess the one thing that bothered me is that there were people willing to pay lots of money to have their children killed. As a parent, it seems inconceivable. I get that parents kill children, but it seems hard to imagine hiring a hitman to kill them. At any rate, this was a top notch thriller that I would recommend reading.
I really enjoyed the casual writing style employed in this novel. It had an easy going feel to it, and the protagonist narrated in a self-deprecating style. He’s not really a tough guy that one would expect for this type of role. He’s not a good fighter, and doesn’t even carry a gun, although it would probably be a good idea to do so given all of the people trying to kill him. The novel has many twists and turns. The characterization is strong. I guess the one thing that bothered me is that there were people willing to pay lots of money to have their children killed. As a parent, it seems inconceivable. I get that parents kill children, but it seems hard to imagine hiring a hitman to kill them. At any rate, this was a top notch thriller that I would recommend reading.
July 31, 2019
10 Questions with James Dorr
1. What’s the greatest moment in your writing career?
Connections with readers are always great, but this time it was with a publisher. I had sold one or two stories to Max Booth III in his capacity as an editor for other publishers, but now he was starting his own imprint and he approached me, asking if I would like to submit what would be Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing’s first fiction collection. I would have virtually complete control (the only constraint being it had to come to at least 60,000 words) and the result was THE TEARS OF ISIS, certainly I think my best collection, and one that went on to be a 2013 Stoker® Award nominee. So while I’ve had another book since, the novel-in-stories TOMBS: A CHRONICLE OF LATTER-DAY TIMES OF EARTH (Elder Signs Press, 2017), the trust that Max bestowed on me -- not to mention its subsequent validation -- will always make TEARS extra special to me.
2. How do you approach writing poetry different than you would writing a short story or novel?
I’ve written a few long poems that had to be planned out like a story, but even then I’ve felt freer to use non-linear narrative structures. In general, though, I’m more apt to have a view of a poem as a whole in mind at the start, whereas with prose fiction it’s more a process of construction, putting together the various elements -- character, scene, plot, mood -- until the final work seems complete.
3. If you could pick one other author to collaborate with on a novel or story, living or dead, who would it be?
I think Edgar Allan Poe would be amazing fun, just find out how he got his ideas.
4. Of all the jobs you have held, what is the strangest and/or most interesting?
Co-editing an underground newspaper when I was in college (this was quite a few years back) was one. Any editorial job can be wacky enough, but you also met such interesting people.
5. Is there an overall theme to your writing?
That’s hard to say, but one that recurs has to do with people’s beliefs: myths, legends, folklore, as well as varying interpretations of here-and-now events. In TOMBS, for instance, set in a dying Earth and, hence, an increasingly death-centric society, certain common beliefs keep coming up about souls and fate and the possibility of love persisting even beyond death.
6. What made you want to start writing horror?
I started off writing science fiction, but became more and more interested in people’s reactions to wondrous events than just in the events themselves. Horror, in that it puts its characters under the greatest amount of stress, testing character to the extreme while still allowing that sense of wonder, seemed to offer a natural area for me to go to.
7. What type of scenes do you most enjoy writing?
Whatever I’m stoked on at the moment, although for satisfaction afterward those that reveal character more deeply. In a flash piece called “Casket Girls,” for instance, in DAILY SCIENCE FICTION a few years ago, I say of the main character, “she felt sorry for the girl she had left in the harbor [that is, dead] behind her, no doubt a good girl who deserved better treatment.” The “she” is a vampire, but in that one line presumably one that has a conscience, a trait perhaps not expected in vampires. But then I also enjoy, at times, detailed descriptive passages about a setting or a place if I can write them in a way that shows the “character” of that location, hopefully that makes the reader feel a part of it.
8. What do you feel is the ideal length for horror fiction: a short story, a novella, or a novel?
“As long as it needs to be, and not a word more.” Well, okay, but it does depend on what I’m writing at the moment and what I want it to achieve. Edgar Allan Poe stated in his essay, “The Poetic Principle,” that the “degree of excitement which would entitle a poem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a composition of any great length. After the lapse of half an hour, at the very utmost, it flags – fails – a revulsion ensues – and the poem is, in effect, and in fact, no longer such.” He repeats this of literature in general in “The Philosophy of Composition,” of works “too long to be read in one sitting,” that artistic unity is lost, a longer work thus operating more as a succession of short works. So, insofar as I believe horror at its best, of all genres, involves an intensity – an “excitement” – of emotion as well as intellect, I would go with the short story as the ideal form.
9. Is there any subject that is off limits for you as a writer?
It’s hard to be absolute, but I would say I’m not fond of torture porn. I think there’s a line separating horror, as literature, from sadism; that horror concentrates on people and how they’re affected and not just voyeuristic descriptions of gore and pain.
10. If you could create a Mount Rushmore of the greatest horror authors, which four writers would you choose?
Edgar Allan Poe for juxtapositions of beauty and fear, of love and death throughout his work; Bram Stoker for use of the science of his day and a starkly realistic way of telling in his masterpiece, DRACULA; H.P. Lovecraft for his introduction of the “cosmic”; and Euripides (with fellow tragedians Aeschylus and Sophocles shadowed behind him) for having joined history, myth, and the gods with human emotion.
BIOGRAPHY AND LINKS
James Dorr is an Indiana, USA short story writer and poet, specializing in dark fantasy and horror, with forays into mystery and science fiction. His The Tears of Isis was a 2013 Bram Stoker Award® finalist for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection, while other books include Strange Mistresses: Tales of Wonder and Romance, Darker Loves: Tales of Mystery and Regret, and his all poetry Vamps (A Retrospective), as well as Tombs: A Chronicle of Latter-Day Times of Earth, a novel-in-stories from Elder Signs Press in 2017. An Active member of SFWA and HWA, Dorr has more that 500 individual fiction and poetry appearances in books and journals from Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine to Yellow Bat Review.
Social Media:
Blog: http://jamesdorrwriter.wordpress.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/james.dorr.9
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/James-Dorr/e/B0...
Book Links:
The Tears of Isis: https://www.amazon.com/Tears-Isis-Jam...
Tombs: A Chronicle of Latter-Day Times of Earth: https://www.amazon.com/Tombs-Chronicl...
Connections with readers are always great, but this time it was with a publisher. I had sold one or two stories to Max Booth III in his capacity as an editor for other publishers, but now he was starting his own imprint and he approached me, asking if I would like to submit what would be Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing’s first fiction collection. I would have virtually complete control (the only constraint being it had to come to at least 60,000 words) and the result was THE TEARS OF ISIS, certainly I think my best collection, and one that went on to be a 2013 Stoker® Award nominee. So while I’ve had another book since, the novel-in-stories TOMBS: A CHRONICLE OF LATTER-DAY TIMES OF EARTH (Elder Signs Press, 2017), the trust that Max bestowed on me -- not to mention its subsequent validation -- will always make TEARS extra special to me.
2. How do you approach writing poetry different than you would writing a short story or novel?
I’ve written a few long poems that had to be planned out like a story, but even then I’ve felt freer to use non-linear narrative structures. In general, though, I’m more apt to have a view of a poem as a whole in mind at the start, whereas with prose fiction it’s more a process of construction, putting together the various elements -- character, scene, plot, mood -- until the final work seems complete.
3. If you could pick one other author to collaborate with on a novel or story, living or dead, who would it be?
I think Edgar Allan Poe would be amazing fun, just find out how he got his ideas.
4. Of all the jobs you have held, what is the strangest and/or most interesting?
Co-editing an underground newspaper when I was in college (this was quite a few years back) was one. Any editorial job can be wacky enough, but you also met such interesting people.
5. Is there an overall theme to your writing?
That’s hard to say, but one that recurs has to do with people’s beliefs: myths, legends, folklore, as well as varying interpretations of here-and-now events. In TOMBS, for instance, set in a dying Earth and, hence, an increasingly death-centric society, certain common beliefs keep coming up about souls and fate and the possibility of love persisting even beyond death.
6. What made you want to start writing horror?
I started off writing science fiction, but became more and more interested in people’s reactions to wondrous events than just in the events themselves. Horror, in that it puts its characters under the greatest amount of stress, testing character to the extreme while still allowing that sense of wonder, seemed to offer a natural area for me to go to.
7. What type of scenes do you most enjoy writing?
Whatever I’m stoked on at the moment, although for satisfaction afterward those that reveal character more deeply. In a flash piece called “Casket Girls,” for instance, in DAILY SCIENCE FICTION a few years ago, I say of the main character, “she felt sorry for the girl she had left in the harbor [that is, dead] behind her, no doubt a good girl who deserved better treatment.” The “she” is a vampire, but in that one line presumably one that has a conscience, a trait perhaps not expected in vampires. But then I also enjoy, at times, detailed descriptive passages about a setting or a place if I can write them in a way that shows the “character” of that location, hopefully that makes the reader feel a part of it.
8. What do you feel is the ideal length for horror fiction: a short story, a novella, or a novel?
“As long as it needs to be, and not a word more.” Well, okay, but it does depend on what I’m writing at the moment and what I want it to achieve. Edgar Allan Poe stated in his essay, “The Poetic Principle,” that the “degree of excitement which would entitle a poem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a composition of any great length. After the lapse of half an hour, at the very utmost, it flags – fails – a revulsion ensues – and the poem is, in effect, and in fact, no longer such.” He repeats this of literature in general in “The Philosophy of Composition,” of works “too long to be read in one sitting,” that artistic unity is lost, a longer work thus operating more as a succession of short works. So, insofar as I believe horror at its best, of all genres, involves an intensity – an “excitement” – of emotion as well as intellect, I would go with the short story as the ideal form.
9. Is there any subject that is off limits for you as a writer?
It’s hard to be absolute, but I would say I’m not fond of torture porn. I think there’s a line separating horror, as literature, from sadism; that horror concentrates on people and how they’re affected and not just voyeuristic descriptions of gore and pain.
10. If you could create a Mount Rushmore of the greatest horror authors, which four writers would you choose?
Edgar Allan Poe for juxtapositions of beauty and fear, of love and death throughout his work; Bram Stoker for use of the science of his day and a starkly realistic way of telling in his masterpiece, DRACULA; H.P. Lovecraft for his introduction of the “cosmic”; and Euripides (with fellow tragedians Aeschylus and Sophocles shadowed behind him) for having joined history, myth, and the gods with human emotion.
BIOGRAPHY AND LINKS
James Dorr is an Indiana, USA short story writer and poet, specializing in dark fantasy and horror, with forays into mystery and science fiction. His The Tears of Isis was a 2013 Bram Stoker Award® finalist for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection, while other books include Strange Mistresses: Tales of Wonder and Romance, Darker Loves: Tales of Mystery and Regret, and his all poetry Vamps (A Retrospective), as well as Tombs: A Chronicle of Latter-Day Times of Earth, a novel-in-stories from Elder Signs Press in 2017. An Active member of SFWA and HWA, Dorr has more that 500 individual fiction and poetry appearances in books and journals from Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine to Yellow Bat Review.
Social Media:
Blog: http://jamesdorrwriter.wordpress.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/james.dorr.9
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/James-Dorr/e/B0...
Book Links:
The Tears of Isis: https://www.amazon.com/Tears-Isis-Jam...
Tombs: A Chronicle of Latter-Day Times of Earth: https://www.amazon.com/Tombs-Chronicl...
July 14, 2019
10 Questions with LD Colter
1. What’s the greatest moment in your writing career?
I’ve learned that writing career graphs more often look like a mountain range than a rocket launch, so any high point in my journey is very validating. It’s still early in my career, but I’ve had the honor to win two writing awards so far and one of those came with the added bonus of meeting and spending time learning from one of my literary heroes, Tim Powers.
2. Out of all of the jobs you have ever had, what is the strangest or most interesting one that you have held?
Wow. That’s a tough one. I’ve done a lot of jobs that fall into the category of strange, interesting, or both at once. I think one of the ones that falls under ‘both’ would have to be my first ambulance job. I’d just turned 18 and had left college after the first year (I graduated high school at 16) because I decided I wanted to be working in emergency medicine right then rather than wait 8 years to get an MD. In the 1970s we didn’t have paramedics where I lived, even though it was a city of about 200,000 people. The two EMT outfits in town were -- let’s say -- interesting back then, and I got hired at one with nothing but an advanced first aid card. I started working right away but was put into the next EMT class two nights a week while I worked. So at 18 and with my brand-spankin' new advanced first aid card, I began working 24-hour ambulance shifts, sleeping in a dorm with the guys. And because new hires started out in the back of the ambulance with the patients and more experienced workers drove (to protect the equipment, I assume), I also jumped straight into patient care. I’d left college but I still got quite an education, and I’ll bet I saw things most 18-year-olds don’t see. A year or so later, I moved to San Diego where I became a paramedic and continued the adventure.
3. What current writing projects are you working on?
My hope is that my novel “While Gods Sleep” (published 2018) will be the first in a series of stand-alone books based in different mythologies, starting with Greek mythology. The next book (working title “A Stranger Path”) is based on Maya mythology and religion and is already written. Hopefully, I’ll be getting the next book in the series underway soon, and I’m looking into Slavic paganism/myth for inspiration. I also hope at some point to get back to an idea I have for another epic fantasy, but contemporary fantasy holds a strong pull for me right now.
4. Do you often use your home state of Colorado as a setting for your stories?
I did in my first novel, A Borrowed Hell, but so far that’s been the exception. As my other books have been a secondary-world fantasy (definitely no Colorado locales in that one), one that begins in 1958 Athens before descending into the underworlds, and one that takes place in Guatemala, Colorado hasn’t played a part again yet. That’s a great thing about fantasy, though, it can take you anywhere.
5, How has your life changed since the release of your debut novel, A Borrowed Hell?
After many years of writing novels, three of my books came out quite close together between December 2016 and September 2018, sort of like an ice dam breaking. But that first book getting published and being well-received was very affirming. It let me know that, yes, I can write things that readers enjoy and I do have the potential to turn this from an activity I pursue in my free-time into the career I hope it will become.
6. What made you start writing?
Genetics, I suspect. I grew up knowing that my maternal grandfather (a doctor and Church of England minister) won an award for a novel he wrote and that my brother wrote non-fiction. It wasn’t until I was partway through my first novel, though, that I found out my aunt had published two books, my brother secretly wrote fiction as well as non-fiction, and my mother had written stories off and on much of her life (she’s since been published as well). I am, however, the lone speculative fiction writer of the family.
7. Is there any subject that is off limits for you as a writer?
I feel that the entertainment industry as a whole has the ability to influence the thoughts and actions of certain consumers, especially those young enough to still be finding their moral compass and those of any age whose moral compass is compromised for whatever reason. While A Borrowed Hell deals with neglect and emotional trauma in my protagonist’s past, I can’t see myself ever writing graphic animal or child abuse as a plot device and risking putting a specific idea in someone’s head. I know there are scads of books (and movies, of course) out there that don’t shy away from this, from literary to murder mystery to horror and everything in between, but for me, it’s a line I don’t expect to cross.
8. What is your best quality as a writer?
My best personal quality as a writer? I think I’d say it’s persistence, something anyone choosing this path needs in plenty. My best quality in my writing? I’ve received nice comments on my worldbuilding in the past, but I like to think that I continually improve all the technical aspects of my storytelling from book to book.
9. Which person do you most admire?
That’s another tough one to answer. There are people I admire for both their genius and for facing adversity, like Stephen Hawking and Srinivasa Ramanujan; athletes who are so far ahead of the pack that they have few equals in physical ability or courage, like Reinhold Messner and Alex Honnold; and political leaders who work for peace and change. I admire people who dedicate their lives to advocating for animals and young children. I admire pretty much anyone -- including people I know personally and who’ll never be publicly recognized -- who are kinder or more giving or more talented than I’ll ever be.
10. If you could pick one other author to collaborate with on a novel or story, living or dead, who would it be?
I’m not a swooner or screamer, but I might do both if I were ever offered an opportunity to collaborate with Neil Gaiman, the author who has most influenced my writing and storytelling.
I’ve learned that writing career graphs more often look like a mountain range than a rocket launch, so any high point in my journey is very validating. It’s still early in my career, but I’ve had the honor to win two writing awards so far and one of those came with the added bonus of meeting and spending time learning from one of my literary heroes, Tim Powers.
2. Out of all of the jobs you have ever had, what is the strangest or most interesting one that you have held?
Wow. That’s a tough one. I’ve done a lot of jobs that fall into the category of strange, interesting, or both at once. I think one of the ones that falls under ‘both’ would have to be my first ambulance job. I’d just turned 18 and had left college after the first year (I graduated high school at 16) because I decided I wanted to be working in emergency medicine right then rather than wait 8 years to get an MD. In the 1970s we didn’t have paramedics where I lived, even though it was a city of about 200,000 people. The two EMT outfits in town were -- let’s say -- interesting back then, and I got hired at one with nothing but an advanced first aid card. I started working right away but was put into the next EMT class two nights a week while I worked. So at 18 and with my brand-spankin' new advanced first aid card, I began working 24-hour ambulance shifts, sleeping in a dorm with the guys. And because new hires started out in the back of the ambulance with the patients and more experienced workers drove (to protect the equipment, I assume), I also jumped straight into patient care. I’d left college but I still got quite an education, and I’ll bet I saw things most 18-year-olds don’t see. A year or so later, I moved to San Diego where I became a paramedic and continued the adventure.
3. What current writing projects are you working on?
My hope is that my novel “While Gods Sleep” (published 2018) will be the first in a series of stand-alone books based in different mythologies, starting with Greek mythology. The next book (working title “A Stranger Path”) is based on Maya mythology and religion and is already written. Hopefully, I’ll be getting the next book in the series underway soon, and I’m looking into Slavic paganism/myth for inspiration. I also hope at some point to get back to an idea I have for another epic fantasy, but contemporary fantasy holds a strong pull for me right now.
4. Do you often use your home state of Colorado as a setting for your stories?
I did in my first novel, A Borrowed Hell, but so far that’s been the exception. As my other books have been a secondary-world fantasy (definitely no Colorado locales in that one), one that begins in 1958 Athens before descending into the underworlds, and one that takes place in Guatemala, Colorado hasn’t played a part again yet. That’s a great thing about fantasy, though, it can take you anywhere.
5, How has your life changed since the release of your debut novel, A Borrowed Hell?
After many years of writing novels, three of my books came out quite close together between December 2016 and September 2018, sort of like an ice dam breaking. But that first book getting published and being well-received was very affirming. It let me know that, yes, I can write things that readers enjoy and I do have the potential to turn this from an activity I pursue in my free-time into the career I hope it will become.
6. What made you start writing?
Genetics, I suspect. I grew up knowing that my maternal grandfather (a doctor and Church of England minister) won an award for a novel he wrote and that my brother wrote non-fiction. It wasn’t until I was partway through my first novel, though, that I found out my aunt had published two books, my brother secretly wrote fiction as well as non-fiction, and my mother had written stories off and on much of her life (she’s since been published as well). I am, however, the lone speculative fiction writer of the family.
7. Is there any subject that is off limits for you as a writer?
I feel that the entertainment industry as a whole has the ability to influence the thoughts and actions of certain consumers, especially those young enough to still be finding their moral compass and those of any age whose moral compass is compromised for whatever reason. While A Borrowed Hell deals with neglect and emotional trauma in my protagonist’s past, I can’t see myself ever writing graphic animal or child abuse as a plot device and risking putting a specific idea in someone’s head. I know there are scads of books (and movies, of course) out there that don’t shy away from this, from literary to murder mystery to horror and everything in between, but for me, it’s a line I don’t expect to cross.
8. What is your best quality as a writer?
My best personal quality as a writer? I think I’d say it’s persistence, something anyone choosing this path needs in plenty. My best quality in my writing? I’ve received nice comments on my worldbuilding in the past, but I like to think that I continually improve all the technical aspects of my storytelling from book to book.
9. Which person do you most admire?
That’s another tough one to answer. There are people I admire for both their genius and for facing adversity, like Stephen Hawking and Srinivasa Ramanujan; athletes who are so far ahead of the pack that they have few equals in physical ability or courage, like Reinhold Messner and Alex Honnold; and political leaders who work for peace and change. I admire people who dedicate their lives to advocating for animals and young children. I admire pretty much anyone -- including people I know personally and who’ll never be publicly recognized -- who are kinder or more giving or more talented than I’ll ever be.
10. If you could pick one other author to collaborate with on a novel or story, living or dead, who would it be?
I’m not a swooner or screamer, but I might do both if I were ever offered an opportunity to collaborate with Neil Gaiman, the author who has most influenced my writing and storytelling.
July 11, 2019
10 Questions with Matthew Quinn
1. Who has been your biggest influence as a writer?
Not completely sure. Some people have compared my work to Stephen King and my first finished novel Battle for the Wastelands (as yet unsold) was inspired by reading The Dark Tower series. However, I didn't read any King until high school, although I did start reading Dean Koontz (Phantoms, Twilight Eyes, Watchers) in middle school.
One big influence on my writing is James R. Tuck, author of the Deacon Chalk urban fantasy series and a fellow member of a now-defunct writing group. He taught me how to tighten up my prose by eliminating speech tags (you can use the blocking to make it clear who's talking), which has been a major help. He also blurbed The Thing in the Woods, my first published novel. He's awesome.
2. What’s the difference in your approach to fiction writing and the writing you do for magazines/newspapers/blogs?
Journalistic writing, whether it's for a newspaper, magazine, or blog, is much more dependent on other people to get stuff done. You've got to interview people to get the necessary information and then contact them again for follow-up questions, people who might be difficult to find, have busy schedules, or not want to talk with you. There's also more deadline pressure.
Meanwhile, creative writing is much less dependent on other people. Even if you need information, a reliable website, the almighty Wikipedia, YouTube, or the public library is a much easier go-to source than trying to interview somebody.
Consequently, although I learned how to write clean copy quickly (and lots of it) as a journalist, I can be more relaxed as a fiction writer. That has its pluses and minuses--I can take my time to get things right, but at the same time more lenient deadlines allow for dawdling.
3. If you could only read one book for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Terms of Enlistment by Marko Kloos. The book is incredibly absorbing and even though I've read it at least twice, it's never boring.
4. How did you get involved with the Myopia film podcast?
Podcaster-in-chief Nic is one of my oldest friends--we were both in Boy Scout Troop 1011 in Marietta, GA in middle and high school--and he's a major film enthusiast. This is a passion project of his, and I'm always willing to help out. Plus the concept is interesting in and of itself. When I was a freshman at the University of Georgia in early 2004 (I was one of the first people back from Christmas break and there weren't a lot of other students around), I rented the childhood classic Dragonslayer from Blockbuster (RIP) to see if it was as good as I remembered. Back in 2010-2012 I re-watched on my own a few additional movies I hadn't seen in years to see if they were still good. Secret of the NIMH still held up, as did, dare I say it, the 1998 American Godzilla. The podcasting project put this into overdrive--I've seen dozens of childhood or teen classics, some of which were still good (Deep Rising), some less so (The Last Starfighter and the British werewolf movie Dog Soldiers), and some which were most definitely not (Spawn's incredible badness has become a podcast running joke).
5. Is there an overall theme to your writing?
Not that I can think of. I reject the idea that "all art is political," but if you conflate "political" and "reflective of the authors' values," there are many times where that adage is more applicable than I'd like. Both The Thing in the Woods and my upcoming novella Little People, Big Guns (Deadite Press) are critical of bigotry, are pro-guns/self-defense, and are also pro-Christian despite the violent content. You can also see this in "Coil Gun" and "Picking Up Plans in Palma," which were written and published much earlier.
6. What was your favorite movie from your childhood?
I've seen so many I'm not completely sure. I do remember really loving the first Matrix film when it came out and then really loving the first Lord of the Rings film when it came out not long after. When I was a little-little kid I liked the 1980s Transformers: The Movie, although I would probably consider it incredibly cheesy now.
7. What type of scenes do you most enjoy writing?
Action scenes. I've been told I'm very good at writing them and unless the blocking gets complicated, I can write them very quickly. I also like atmosphere-building description. For example, I enjoyed writing the scene in Thing where Atlanta-transplant James drives to the "pipe farm" (a neighborhood where the foundations for the houses were laid but the houses themselves never finished--this happens when the developer runs out of money and it happened a lot during the Great Recession) for the ATV race. That scene allowed me to write a bunch of creepy similes and metaphors in order to make the reader uneasy even before James and small-town blowhard Bill encounter the Thing.
8. Why did you self-ban yourself from posting in the alternate history forum?
Although it was a great place to network (I found my cover artist Alex Claw there), learn, and engage in interesting intellectual exercises and was a source of creative inspiration--my Digital Science Fiction short stories "Coil Gun" and "Picking Up Plans in Palma" both take place in a world I created and refined on the forum--it was a major time sink. Especially when controversial political topics came up. When I finally decided to ask the admin team to ban me back in 2015, I was just starting out as a high-school teacher and I didn't have a lot of time. However valuable the site was to me in the past (and it still is--I check the public forums for cool scenarios to post on my blog), getting sucked into prolonged discussions isn't a good use of my time. Maybe I'll go back someday when I have more free time and the Internet isn't so polarized and cranky, but not anytime soon.
9. Is there any subject that is off limits for you as a writer?
I'm not comfortable writing graphic sex--when sexual content is required it's typically before-and-after. I am also not interested in depicting animal abuse. If they'd included certain scenes from the book It in the film--Patrick Hockstetter suffocating animals in a refrigerator and Henry Bowers poisoning the dog--I would not have seen the movie.
10. If you could invite five people to a dinner party (alive or dead, real or fictional) who would you invite?
This is not a definitive list, but given how Thing, the sequel The Atlanta Incursion I've submitted already, and the third book The Walking Worm I've just started are Lovecraftian in nature, the following could be a very interesting dinner party. Stephen King, Ramsay Campbell, and to a lesser degree Dean Koontz have taken a lot of Lovecraft's themes and imagery and run with them. I would like to see how they'd interact with H.P. Lovecraft himself and August Derleth, who founded Arkham House Publishing to continue Lovecraft's literary legacy.
Not completely sure. Some people have compared my work to Stephen King and my first finished novel Battle for the Wastelands (as yet unsold) was inspired by reading The Dark Tower series. However, I didn't read any King until high school, although I did start reading Dean Koontz (Phantoms, Twilight Eyes, Watchers) in middle school.
One big influence on my writing is James R. Tuck, author of the Deacon Chalk urban fantasy series and a fellow member of a now-defunct writing group. He taught me how to tighten up my prose by eliminating speech tags (you can use the blocking to make it clear who's talking), which has been a major help. He also blurbed The Thing in the Woods, my first published novel. He's awesome.
2. What’s the difference in your approach to fiction writing and the writing you do for magazines/newspapers/blogs?
Journalistic writing, whether it's for a newspaper, magazine, or blog, is much more dependent on other people to get stuff done. You've got to interview people to get the necessary information and then contact them again for follow-up questions, people who might be difficult to find, have busy schedules, or not want to talk with you. There's also more deadline pressure.
Meanwhile, creative writing is much less dependent on other people. Even if you need information, a reliable website, the almighty Wikipedia, YouTube, or the public library is a much easier go-to source than trying to interview somebody.
Consequently, although I learned how to write clean copy quickly (and lots of it) as a journalist, I can be more relaxed as a fiction writer. That has its pluses and minuses--I can take my time to get things right, but at the same time more lenient deadlines allow for dawdling.
3. If you could only read one book for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Terms of Enlistment by Marko Kloos. The book is incredibly absorbing and even though I've read it at least twice, it's never boring.
4. How did you get involved with the Myopia film podcast?
Podcaster-in-chief Nic is one of my oldest friends--we were both in Boy Scout Troop 1011 in Marietta, GA in middle and high school--and he's a major film enthusiast. This is a passion project of his, and I'm always willing to help out. Plus the concept is interesting in and of itself. When I was a freshman at the University of Georgia in early 2004 (I was one of the first people back from Christmas break and there weren't a lot of other students around), I rented the childhood classic Dragonslayer from Blockbuster (RIP) to see if it was as good as I remembered. Back in 2010-2012 I re-watched on my own a few additional movies I hadn't seen in years to see if they were still good. Secret of the NIMH still held up, as did, dare I say it, the 1998 American Godzilla. The podcasting project put this into overdrive--I've seen dozens of childhood or teen classics, some of which were still good (Deep Rising), some less so (The Last Starfighter and the British werewolf movie Dog Soldiers), and some which were most definitely not (Spawn's incredible badness has become a podcast running joke).
5. Is there an overall theme to your writing?
Not that I can think of. I reject the idea that "all art is political," but if you conflate "political" and "reflective of the authors' values," there are many times where that adage is more applicable than I'd like. Both The Thing in the Woods and my upcoming novella Little People, Big Guns (Deadite Press) are critical of bigotry, are pro-guns/self-defense, and are also pro-Christian despite the violent content. You can also see this in "Coil Gun" and "Picking Up Plans in Palma," which were written and published much earlier.
6. What was your favorite movie from your childhood?
I've seen so many I'm not completely sure. I do remember really loving the first Matrix film when it came out and then really loving the first Lord of the Rings film when it came out not long after. When I was a little-little kid I liked the 1980s Transformers: The Movie, although I would probably consider it incredibly cheesy now.
7. What type of scenes do you most enjoy writing?
Action scenes. I've been told I'm very good at writing them and unless the blocking gets complicated, I can write them very quickly. I also like atmosphere-building description. For example, I enjoyed writing the scene in Thing where Atlanta-transplant James drives to the "pipe farm" (a neighborhood where the foundations for the houses were laid but the houses themselves never finished--this happens when the developer runs out of money and it happened a lot during the Great Recession) for the ATV race. That scene allowed me to write a bunch of creepy similes and metaphors in order to make the reader uneasy even before James and small-town blowhard Bill encounter the Thing.
8. Why did you self-ban yourself from posting in the alternate history forum?
Although it was a great place to network (I found my cover artist Alex Claw there), learn, and engage in interesting intellectual exercises and was a source of creative inspiration--my Digital Science Fiction short stories "Coil Gun" and "Picking Up Plans in Palma" both take place in a world I created and refined on the forum--it was a major time sink. Especially when controversial political topics came up. When I finally decided to ask the admin team to ban me back in 2015, I was just starting out as a high-school teacher and I didn't have a lot of time. However valuable the site was to me in the past (and it still is--I check the public forums for cool scenarios to post on my blog), getting sucked into prolonged discussions isn't a good use of my time. Maybe I'll go back someday when I have more free time and the Internet isn't so polarized and cranky, but not anytime soon.
9. Is there any subject that is off limits for you as a writer?
I'm not comfortable writing graphic sex--when sexual content is required it's typically before-and-after. I am also not interested in depicting animal abuse. If they'd included certain scenes from the book It in the film--Patrick Hockstetter suffocating animals in a refrigerator and Henry Bowers poisoning the dog--I would not have seen the movie.
10. If you could invite five people to a dinner party (alive or dead, real or fictional) who would you invite?
This is not a definitive list, but given how Thing, the sequel The Atlanta Incursion I've submitted already, and the third book The Walking Worm I've just started are Lovecraftian in nature, the following could be a very interesting dinner party. Stephen King, Ramsay Campbell, and to a lesser degree Dean Koontz have taken a lot of Lovecraft's themes and imagery and run with them. I would like to see how they'd interact with H.P. Lovecraft himself and August Derleth, who founded Arkham House Publishing to continue Lovecraft's literary legacy.
July 7, 2019
10 Questions with Jay Caselberg
1. If you could only read one book for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Hum. That’s difficult. There are so many to choose from, but one for the rest of my life? Finnegan’s Wake probably. Trying to find meanings would probably occupy me unendingly.
2. Of all of the places you have lived in or visited, what is your favorite place?
At last count I have visited, lived in or worked in 72 countries, and of course countless many more than that if you count cities. Each has particular charms. I am quite comfortable where I live now, in Germany. It offers many advantages, but it’s different living somewhere and visiting it. I am still always drawn back to Sydney. There’s so much beauty there. For sheer awesomeness though, it has to be Angkor Watt. One of these days I’ll go back.
3. Who is your favorite writer?
So many to choose from, so little time. I don’t have a clear favorite per se. Gene Wolfe is a master craftsman. James Lee Burke for his crime touching on Magic Realism and his sheer descriptive prose and characterization. Very fond of David Mitchell too. Hopefully we’ll see something new from him again soon.
4. What is your favorite genre to write in?
I don’t have a favorite. The story tends to dictate. I’m a lover of Noir, so a few of my tales have a Noir sensibility. I like crime, so that creeps in. Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, they are all there or blendings of them. Generally there’s a dark edge to the fiction, but that’s just what’s in the back of my head.
5. What current writing projects are you working on?
Any short story or poem that bites me along the way, but right now I have a couple of projects underway. One is a future noir space opera-ish kind of thing. The other is something pretty dark. I’ve realized that quite a few of my tales are ghost stories. Well, this is novel length, and it’s kind of a ghost story, but kind of not.
6. What made you start writing?
I am not really sure. I read a lot as a kid. We moved around a lot, so many of my relationships growing up were transitory, so books became the constant friends. Maybe I just realized I wanted to do that too. Give that opportunity to people. Later, and this was part of my teaching career as well, it was wanting to be able to play with people’s heads. That’s still there….
7. What is your best quality as a writer?
I’m maybe not the best judge of that. I am told it’s atmosphere and characterization. I’m not sure any writer can reasonably assess their own work. There’s stories I love that people hate. There’s stories that I think are okay, that people love. It’s also different at novel and short fiction length. But all in all, I’m going to stick with those two.
8. Which person do you most admire?
That’s really, really difficult to answer. Not sure that I think of people in terms of admiration. I may admire an achievement, or a creation or an act, but that doesn’t necessarily lead to admiration of the person. Does that make me a misanthrope? Maybe.
9. How do you define success as a writer?
Readers.
10. If you could invite five people to a dinner party (alive or dead, real or fictional) who would you invite?
Hmm. Interesting. Is it prompted by their characters or their foodiness? Hard to say which. Probably the polymath Einstein (as much for his movie work as for his brain). Marilyn Monroe (as much for her brain as her presence) Franz Kafka (cos you have to have a little weirdness at the table) Xenobia (Gotta love a strong woman) and Hannibal Lecter (because at least he’d appreciate the food and wine)
Hum. That’s difficult. There are so many to choose from, but one for the rest of my life? Finnegan’s Wake probably. Trying to find meanings would probably occupy me unendingly.
2. Of all of the places you have lived in or visited, what is your favorite place?
At last count I have visited, lived in or worked in 72 countries, and of course countless many more than that if you count cities. Each has particular charms. I am quite comfortable where I live now, in Germany. It offers many advantages, but it’s different living somewhere and visiting it. I am still always drawn back to Sydney. There’s so much beauty there. For sheer awesomeness though, it has to be Angkor Watt. One of these days I’ll go back.
3. Who is your favorite writer?
So many to choose from, so little time. I don’t have a clear favorite per se. Gene Wolfe is a master craftsman. James Lee Burke for his crime touching on Magic Realism and his sheer descriptive prose and characterization. Very fond of David Mitchell too. Hopefully we’ll see something new from him again soon.
4. What is your favorite genre to write in?
I don’t have a favorite. The story tends to dictate. I’m a lover of Noir, so a few of my tales have a Noir sensibility. I like crime, so that creeps in. Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, they are all there or blendings of them. Generally there’s a dark edge to the fiction, but that’s just what’s in the back of my head.
5. What current writing projects are you working on?
Any short story or poem that bites me along the way, but right now I have a couple of projects underway. One is a future noir space opera-ish kind of thing. The other is something pretty dark. I’ve realized that quite a few of my tales are ghost stories. Well, this is novel length, and it’s kind of a ghost story, but kind of not.
6. What made you start writing?
I am not really sure. I read a lot as a kid. We moved around a lot, so many of my relationships growing up were transitory, so books became the constant friends. Maybe I just realized I wanted to do that too. Give that opportunity to people. Later, and this was part of my teaching career as well, it was wanting to be able to play with people’s heads. That’s still there….
7. What is your best quality as a writer?
I’m maybe not the best judge of that. I am told it’s atmosphere and characterization. I’m not sure any writer can reasonably assess their own work. There’s stories I love that people hate. There’s stories that I think are okay, that people love. It’s also different at novel and short fiction length. But all in all, I’m going to stick with those two.
8. Which person do you most admire?
That’s really, really difficult to answer. Not sure that I think of people in terms of admiration. I may admire an achievement, or a creation or an act, but that doesn’t necessarily lead to admiration of the person. Does that make me a misanthrope? Maybe.
9. How do you define success as a writer?
Readers.
10. If you could invite five people to a dinner party (alive or dead, real or fictional) who would you invite?
Hmm. Interesting. Is it prompted by their characters or their foodiness? Hard to say which. Probably the polymath Einstein (as much for his movie work as for his brain). Marilyn Monroe (as much for her brain as her presence) Franz Kafka (cos you have to have a little weirdness at the table) Xenobia (Gotta love a strong woman) and Hannibal Lecter (because at least he’d appreciate the food and wine)
July 4, 2019
10 Questions with Martin Shoemaker
1. Who has been your biggest influence as a writer?
The list is long; but if I have to choose only one, I would choose Jack McDevitt. After years of being so busy with work that I had little time to read for pleasure, A Talent for War rekindled my love for good old science fiction. And book after book, Jack has inspired me. And answered fan mail, inspiring me more.
Plus Jack started his career late in life, making his first sale at age 46. That convinced me that it wasn’t too late for me, leading to my first sale at 48. Jack gave me a cover quote for my novel, and I couldn’t be prouder.
2. What was it like having lunch with Buzz Aldrin?
Heh. It was intimidating. I honestly didn’t recognize him. Our table at the ISDC luncheon was full of professionals in the space industry. They engaged in a lively debate about the best way to get to space; and there was one gentleman, very opinionated, who received a strange deference from the rest. Even when they clearly disagreed with him, they couched it very politely and carefully.
Then during the salad course, I leaned over my plate at one point to make sure I didn’t spill. I tilted my head sideways, and out of the corner of my eye, I caught his nametag: “Buzz”.
And I can tell you exactly what went through my head at that moment: Don’t drop the fork do NOT drop the fork oh PLEASE DON’T DROP THE FORK!
3. What current writing projects are you working on?
I have promised Baen a story set in the Today I Am Carey universe for their web site. I’m working on edits for my next novel, tentatively titled Mutiny on the Aldrin Express (coming in September from 47North). And I’m 50,000 words into Ulla: Martian Song Book 1, a revision/sequel to War of the Worlds.
4. What’s more difficult, writing programming code or writing fiction?
That’s a great question. I’m going to say fiction. With programming, there are rules and tests to help you know when it’s right. With fiction, you just cross your fingers and send it out.
(All right, sometimes it seems like programmers do the same thing…)
5. Is there an overall theme to your writing?
Every story’s different, of course; but if I have a recurring theme, it’s identity. Who are you, and how do you find your place in life?
6. What is the genesis of your Blue Collar Space series?
It actually started as a role-playing game campaign. We never played it, but I drew up incredibly detailed maps of the Corporation of Tycho Under, and I wrote a history for it and other Lunar cities. When I sat down to write a story, I “borrowed” that setting. Then I wrote more Tycho Under stories. Then when I started writing other stories in the near future, it was just easier to reuse the same setting and add to it.
7. What is your greatest accomplishment as a writer?
Readers telling me that when they read “Today I Am Paul”, they can feel that I understand them. Especially readers who identify with the character of Susan. When I wrote the story, I feared that I was kind of harsh with Susan; but readers tell me that Susan feels what they feel, and they thank me for understanding.
8. How do you define success as a writer?
I’m tempted by the flip answer: “I’ll tell you when I get there.” But a more serious answer is what I often advise friends when they’re struggling with their writing careers. I call it the Five Years Ago You theory: if you could go back five years ago and show yourself where you are today, would Five Years Ago You be excited or disappointed? If the answer is “excited”, that’s success.
And that also means that success if a moving target. Five Years Ago Martin is pretty happy with where I am right now; but Today Martin has lots of new goals!
9. Which person do you most admire?
There’s a doctor I know. For confidentiality reasons, he uses a pseudonym online, so I won’t identify him. He does psychological and medical care for really sick kids. Often terminal cases. He has to care for them and their parents in the worst situations I can imagine. He finds ways to keep their spirits up, to ease their pain, to console their grief. He watches little kids die, and then he goes out and does it again the next day because they need him.
I get tears just thinking about it. He’s stronger than I could ever be. Him and all the caregivers out there who fight battles they cannot win, but who refuse to give up. I admire them, and I’m glad they’re out there.
10. If you could create a Mount Rushmore of the greatest science fiction authors, which four writers would you choose?
Only four? Grumble, grumble…
Let me start by taking the question very literally, meaning only science fiction authors. That means I’ll leave Tolkien off the list, even though I’ve read Lord of the Rings over twenty times.
First I’ll have to go with Robert A. Heinlein, for more titles than I have time to list here, so I’ll just hit two. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is so revolutionary (pun unintentional). It’s my go-to vision of life on a colony. And “Requiem”, sequel to “The Man Who Sold the Moon”, is a perfect gem of a story.
Second I’ll say Harlan Ellison, who was the finest stylist I’ve ever read. There have been times when I was reluctant to pick up an Ellison book because I knew I wouldn’t be able to put it down until it was done.
Third I’m going to cheat: Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in collaboration. Together they’re just about the perfect writer.
And fourth I’m back to Jack McDevitt, for all the reasons I stated earlier.
The list is long; but if I have to choose only one, I would choose Jack McDevitt. After years of being so busy with work that I had little time to read for pleasure, A Talent for War rekindled my love for good old science fiction. And book after book, Jack has inspired me. And answered fan mail, inspiring me more.
Plus Jack started his career late in life, making his first sale at age 46. That convinced me that it wasn’t too late for me, leading to my first sale at 48. Jack gave me a cover quote for my novel, and I couldn’t be prouder.
2. What was it like having lunch with Buzz Aldrin?
Heh. It was intimidating. I honestly didn’t recognize him. Our table at the ISDC luncheon was full of professionals in the space industry. They engaged in a lively debate about the best way to get to space; and there was one gentleman, very opinionated, who received a strange deference from the rest. Even when they clearly disagreed with him, they couched it very politely and carefully.
Then during the salad course, I leaned over my plate at one point to make sure I didn’t spill. I tilted my head sideways, and out of the corner of my eye, I caught his nametag: “Buzz”.
And I can tell you exactly what went through my head at that moment: Don’t drop the fork do NOT drop the fork oh PLEASE DON’T DROP THE FORK!
3. What current writing projects are you working on?
I have promised Baen a story set in the Today I Am Carey universe for their web site. I’m working on edits for my next novel, tentatively titled Mutiny on the Aldrin Express (coming in September from 47North). And I’m 50,000 words into Ulla: Martian Song Book 1, a revision/sequel to War of the Worlds.
4. What’s more difficult, writing programming code or writing fiction?
That’s a great question. I’m going to say fiction. With programming, there are rules and tests to help you know when it’s right. With fiction, you just cross your fingers and send it out.
(All right, sometimes it seems like programmers do the same thing…)
5. Is there an overall theme to your writing?
Every story’s different, of course; but if I have a recurring theme, it’s identity. Who are you, and how do you find your place in life?
6. What is the genesis of your Blue Collar Space series?
It actually started as a role-playing game campaign. We never played it, but I drew up incredibly detailed maps of the Corporation of Tycho Under, and I wrote a history for it and other Lunar cities. When I sat down to write a story, I “borrowed” that setting. Then I wrote more Tycho Under stories. Then when I started writing other stories in the near future, it was just easier to reuse the same setting and add to it.
7. What is your greatest accomplishment as a writer?
Readers telling me that when they read “Today I Am Paul”, they can feel that I understand them. Especially readers who identify with the character of Susan. When I wrote the story, I feared that I was kind of harsh with Susan; but readers tell me that Susan feels what they feel, and they thank me for understanding.
8. How do you define success as a writer?
I’m tempted by the flip answer: “I’ll tell you when I get there.” But a more serious answer is what I often advise friends when they’re struggling with their writing careers. I call it the Five Years Ago You theory: if you could go back five years ago and show yourself where you are today, would Five Years Ago You be excited or disappointed? If the answer is “excited”, that’s success.
And that also means that success if a moving target. Five Years Ago Martin is pretty happy with where I am right now; but Today Martin has lots of new goals!
9. Which person do you most admire?
There’s a doctor I know. For confidentiality reasons, he uses a pseudonym online, so I won’t identify him. He does psychological and medical care for really sick kids. Often terminal cases. He has to care for them and their parents in the worst situations I can imagine. He finds ways to keep their spirits up, to ease their pain, to console their grief. He watches little kids die, and then he goes out and does it again the next day because they need him.
I get tears just thinking about it. He’s stronger than I could ever be. Him and all the caregivers out there who fight battles they cannot win, but who refuse to give up. I admire them, and I’m glad they’re out there.
10. If you could create a Mount Rushmore of the greatest science fiction authors, which four writers would you choose?
Only four? Grumble, grumble…
Let me start by taking the question very literally, meaning only science fiction authors. That means I’ll leave Tolkien off the list, even though I’ve read Lord of the Rings over twenty times.
First I’ll have to go with Robert A. Heinlein, for more titles than I have time to list here, so I’ll just hit two. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is so revolutionary (pun unintentional). It’s my go-to vision of life on a colony. And “Requiem”, sequel to “The Man Who Sold the Moon”, is a perfect gem of a story.
Second I’ll say Harlan Ellison, who was the finest stylist I’ve ever read. There have been times when I was reluctant to pick up an Ellison book because I knew I wouldn’t be able to put it down until it was done.
Third I’m going to cheat: Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in collaboration. Together they’re just about the perfect writer.
And fourth I’m back to Jack McDevitt, for all the reasons I stated earlier.
