Author Interview: Steven H. Wilson / Part One
It was October 1995 at Farpoint, an annual SF media convention in Maryland. There was a writing contest. The winning entry was to be printed in the convention's program book. I submitted my first EVER Star Trek fan fiction short called A Passion for Peace wherein Kirk and crew rescue a Romulan defector near the beginning of their five year mission. Her tale of a peace movement on Romulus leads Spock to begin pondering the idea of a reunification of Romulans and Vulcans.
I did not win and I was, of course, disappointed...until I ran into Steven H. Wilson, co-founder of Farpoint, fellow fan fiction author, and writer for DC Comics Star Trek and Warlord issues. He assured me that I had been a top contestant. He told me to keep writing.
So I did. And over the years, Steve and I remained in contact and saw one another at the conventions. He has never been anything less than encouraging and as a writer, Steven has shown talent and temerity, drive and genius. He is the creator of the Parsec and Mark Time award winning podcast site, Prometheus Radio Theatre which delivers original SF, Fantasy, and Horror audio shows and books and has amassed a large following.
Steven's publishing imprint, Firebringer Press, has released three novels including my own, Testing the Prisoner. And you can expect a lot more. In February 2011, his Farpoint convention celebrated its 18th year.
His boundless energy never ceases to amaze me and I'm deeply grateful for our lasting, growing friendship. Please welcome, Steven H. Wilson!
1. First, tell us where we can find you online such as blogs, websites, Facebook, etc.
I’m on Facebook as steven.h.wilson and Twitter as StevenHWilson
My websites are http://prometheusradiotheatre.com and http://firebringerpress.com
2. What inspired you to write fiction? Further, why start with Star Trek fan fiction?
Everyone has a story to tell. Some of us tell them around the water cooler, just gossiping about our lives. Some of us focus on the funny stuff, being a standup comedian or merely the class clown. A few if us take our stories and throw them onto a much bigger canvas, and those people are the fiction-makers. Fabulists, if you want to be pretentious. I guess I’ve always been one of those people, because I was always grabbed by stories that contained fantastic elements – stories that weren’t as boring as real life seemed to be.
Stories that need that kind of canvas have to be planned out, they have to be written down. You can’t just swap them at the water cooler. And so those of us who want to tell those stories write.
I wanted to tell the kinds of stories I enjoyed – outer space, super-heroes, future settings, gods and monsters. And I wanted to my stories to include concepts and ideas I was intrigued by – political, religious, moral and philosophical ideas. Star Trek tackled those issues in a very comfortable universe. It built a playground you wanted to play on with all the coolest playground touches.
Writing Trek – or any fan fiction -- lets you dive in and try your hand at the whole process of story creation without having to take on the daunting task of building a universe and creating characters out of whole cloth. Having gained that experience, (assuming you’re going to actually become an independent author) you can take off the training wheels and create your people and your places, knowing you’ve got the technique of telling the story down.
3. W hich authors influenced you early on and which emerged since then that have captured your attention?
Biggest influences would be Robert A Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke and David Gerrold. Gerrold because he wrote books about writing that actually teach the process. And, of course, the host of classic Trek writers.
I also read a lot of comics, and, being the age I am, couldn’t help but be influenced by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum and John Byrne’s X-Men. And Steve Englehart is, for me, the god of graphic storytelling. If you read my work, you can’t miss Steve’s influence on me, in that my stories are very character-driven and I respect my characters. You’ll rarely, if ever, see the shock-and-awe-sudden-death-everything-you-knew-is-wrong crap in my stories, as you won’t in his. I just consider that bad storytelling. Of course, millions of comics fans disagree with me, or Marvel wouldn’t be in business any more, or maybe Englehart would be its editor in chief.
Since I stopped being young? I like Joss Whedon, when he’s on his game. (Joss, unfortunately, will practice that shock-and-awe stuff. He creates characters you can’t help but love, then tortures them. That can be hard to take.) JMS has done some excellent stuff, though I never got into Babylon 5. L. Neil Smith, Michael Flynn, and Allen Steele are current authors I really like. And I’m a huge fan of Alan Dean Foster’s Flinx and Pip series.
4. How did your work with DC Comics come about?
Two words: Bob Greenberger. I had met Bob a couple of times at cons, and so one year at ClipperCon in Baltimore I grabbed him and said, “I wanna write for comics.” He said “Kid, everyone wants to write for comics! But if you send me some story pitches that have a beginning, middle and end, you’re already in the top five per cent.” So I did, and Bob said something like, “Damn, your pitches have all three – beginning, middle and end!” So he assigned me to do his 1987 Bonus Book program, where I wrote the first story Rob Liefeld ever drew for comics. Bob showed my work to other editors after that, and I didn’t really grab anyone’s attention. It was the 80s, and DC already had plans for every character and experienced writers lined up to write all of them. But, whenever he had an opening in his schedule, Bob called me. I did eventually work for other DC editors, and got a good deal of praise for my work. But it’s a very competitive business.
5. Tell us how Prometheus Radio Theatre and The Arbiter Chronicles began and your personal fascination for the medium of audio.
My fascination for audio probably stems partly from the era in which I was born, that being before VCRs were available for home use. I couldn’t get enough of my favorite TV shows, so I recorded them on audio. Also, I have an uncle who’s a huge fan of comics and old-time radio, and he played me a lot of the old shows, which I just loved.
About ten years ago, radio drama got a little bit of a boost when John DeLancie and Leonard Nimoy produced some great SF material, and the Kennedy Center did a live It’s A Wonderful Life show with Bill Pullman. Those made me say, “I can do that!” And so, at Farpoint 2000, with a hole in the schedule and plots of a bunch of unsold novels and tv scripts scattered about my office, I decided to try writing a radio show. It was the first episode of what later became the Arbiter Chronicle. I used characters I’d created in my fan fic days, and about whom I’d written one short, unpublished novel, which later became Taken Liberty. In plotting that novel, I’d done a lot of groundwork for an original universe, with a fairly developed future history. That made it easy to build a dramatic series. And, the radio show being a success with the audience, I decided to write more and to publish the novel.
6. What prompted you to start Firebringer Press to publish your printed works as opposed to seeking an agent with the aim of publishing through one of the big houses?
Ultimately, it comes down to the answer to one question: Do you want to tell your story, or do you want to be a bestseller? Few people get to do both. If you’re going to hit it big (and only guaranteed smash authors are selling to publishers these days), you’re going to have to tell someone else’s story, not yours.
I’d been circulating my short fiction about twenty years to the handful of paid outlets that exist for SF. No nibbles. Several editors had been very encouraging about my writing, but they’d only signed complimentary letters, not checks. So I felt I’d established that I was never going to sell fiction to Big Publishing. Looking around, I saw a lot of other much-published authors who were accepting that they weren’t going to be making any more sales either. The industry has just changed drastically, and you’re either Dan Brown or you’re not selling fiction.
So I never even considered shopping Taken Liberty to an agent or publisher. I didn’t think someone with my minimal pro credits would even get their attention, trying to sell a whole book. And I’d decided I wanted my work in the hands of an audience, not a tired editorial assistant who’d already read enough literary excrement the day (s)he picked up my manuscript.
Along came my friend Don Sakers, who kindly told me all the ins and outs of setting up a micro-press. I sounded do-able for someone who had the stamina to jump all the hoops, and I figured I had that. So I started my own imprint.
Tune in tomorrow for part two where Steve discusses his latest novel and future projects, his enduring relationship with SF fandom, and the Farpoint conventon that he co-founded 18 years ago.
Related links:
Steven H. Wilson on Goodreads
Steven H. Wilson on Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki
Farpoint
BaltiCon
