Catching Up with…Ismael Manzano

This week, I'm catching up with author, Ismael Manzano, whose debut novel, “Soulless”, will be released on March 8, 2016 by Fantasy Works Publishing. Ismael and I first met when I was asked to interview him for the Bronx Chronicle (You can read that interview here) I was so impressed with him and so intrigued with the premise of Soulless that I invited him to talk to me for this blog, an invitation he graciously accepted.

Hi Ismael. Thanks so much for agreeing to chat with me again. Why don’t we begin with you telling us a little about yourself.

I’m a husband to a fellow writer and a father to a hyper little boy, and I’ve aspired to publish my own work since as far back as I can remember, only finding success last year.

I understand your wife is an editor and also a writer. What’s that like—living with being intimately involved with another writer?

It’s been wonderful. Before I met her, I was the only person I knew who was interested in writing, so whenever I showed anyone my work they offered me nothing but praise—more because they were just impressed that I bothered writing anything than because they actually liked what I’d written. Which sounds good on the surface, but none of us are perfect and we need constructive criticism in order to grow.

When my wife began writing as well, it opened up a whole new avenue for me. One in which we could bounce ideas off of each other and critique each other’s work in a safe and honest environment. That I respect her work tremendously also helps because it means I respect her evaluation of my stories. When she says something is good, I believe it, and when she says it needs work, I take a step back and force myself to examine it objectively. I don’t think I would have ever grown as a writer surrounded by people who mean well but don’t understand the craft.

"Soulless” is your first published book, though I know you’ve been writing for a while. What was the key to your success that led to your book getting out to the public?

For me, the key was to never give up. I’ve written plenty of things in my life, some that I thought were really good and some that I thought were really bad in hindsight. Regardless, publishers rejected them. Rather than give up, I moved on to another project or went back to the beginning and took a look at the story anew, hoping to find a way to make it stand out.

I know like me, you I write everywhere and whenever you can. And that can be a challenge. How long did it take you to write “Soulless” start to finish?

"Soulless," start to finish took me about a year. That’s from the concept to the final word, but I’ve written other manuscripts in half that time.

Do you do a lot of research for your writing?

Yes. During my outlining I try to research whatever I think I’ll need to avoid any roadblocks along the way, but I leave room to do more research as I write.

Writers tend to talk a lot about whether they are plotters, those who plan their stories in detail before beginning to write, or pantsters, those who fly by the seat of their pants and write as they go letting the story tell itself. I’m a definite pantster. Which are you—do you create detailed character and plot bibles for your stories?

Actually I do both. It depends on the story. I usually write a moderately detailed outline, but as I go along, I usually find something that needs changing and that in turns changes the direction of the rest of the story. So I don’t try to write an outline so rigid that I can’t make room for changes. For "Soulless," I didn’t need a plot bible, but I had a lot of characterizations written into my master outline.

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