An Interview With Author James Hutchings
What books did you love as a child? Why?
When I was very little I apparently made my mom read me comics instead of books. A little later I loved the Narnia series. I didn't get the religious angle until I reread them as an adult.
Who are your favorite authors? How did they influence your writing?
I don't know if they're my favorites, but these are the most influential: JRR Tolkien and Jack Vance for the elaborate dialogue. Robert E Howard for the general atmosphere. Terry Pratchett for the humour. Lord Dunsany for the use of Fame, Time and so on as characters.
When did you decide you wanted to be a writer? Why did you decide to write?
I think I've wanted to do something creative since I was a teenager. But I've tried several different things, such as music and filmmaking, before I finally settled on writing. To be honest, if it turned out that I was actually better at, say, painting than writing, I think I'd be happy to change. So in a sense I still haven't decided.
What are the joys of writing for you?
I like the satisfaction of finishing something (as long as I think it's good). For that reason I prefer writing short pieces to long ones. Often when I'm working on a longer piece I take some 'time off' to do something short.
What are the obstacles of writing? How do you overcome them?
I get discouraged a lot. Usually it's when people don't like something I've written as much as I do, or when I run out of ideas halfway through a story. One thing I do is make a point of writing every day, even when I don't feel like it. This helps get through temporary slumps. I think if you wait for inspiration to strike it never will. Often I start with the attitude that "I'm really tired and I can't think of anything. I'll just write a token amount so I can say I did something today," and actually end up having a good idea and getting a lot done.
I usually have several things that I'm working on at the same time. This helps with running out of ideas, because I can leave what I'm working on and do something else instead. The danger with this is that starting something can be more fun than finishing it, and so you run the risk of having lots of half-written pieces that you never finish.
What is your favorite genre to read in? Write in? Why?
I mostly read (and write) fantasy. It tends to be old stories, and more short stories than novels. I've never read any of the Harry Potter or Game of Thrones series for example. I used to read science fiction, and found fantasy a bit pointless. I think my idea was that science fiction was stuff that could happen, whereas fantasy was stuff that couldn't. Nowadays I feel that having ESP or super-advanced alien technology isn't actually that different to having magic.
What was the inspiration for your book?
Because it's a collection of short pieces, most of which aren't related to each other, it has lots of different inspirations. Some ideas just pop into my head, without me knowing where the idea comes from. Other ideas come from experiences in my life. For example a while ago I found three injured birds in the space of a few weeks. I took all of them to the local vet. As I was carrying one of them, I thought that the woman at reception might wonder where I was finding all these injured birds, and that was the inspiration for my story "Lost, Feral or Stray." I've written a lot about cats, based on having been a cat owner.
Of course other fiction is a big inspiration. In some cases it's obvious. I've done poems directly based on stories by HP Lovecraft and other writers for example. In other cases it's more subtle: for example the city of Teleleli or Telelee is partly based on Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar, partly on Terry Pratchett's Ankh-Morpork, and partly on Port Blacksand in the Fighting Fantasy series. The dialogue in Lord of the Rings had a big influence on how my characters talk.
Do you do research for your writing? If so, how do you go about it (Internet, travel, etc.)?
Most of my stories are set in a made-up world (and the world isn't intended to be based on medieval Europe or any particular period of history). So I don't need to do research. However I do do a kind of research, in that I write down interesting things from history or fiction that I find, usually on Wikipedia. For example, these are curses from the front of two medieval books, that I intend to use one day:
If anyone take away this book, let them die the death; let them be fried in a pan; let the falling sickness and fever seize them; let them be broken on the wheel, and hanged.
Should anyone by craft of any device whatever abstract this book from its owner may their soul suffer, in retribution for what they have done, and may their name be erased from the book of the living and not recorded among the Blessed.
Tell us about your book.
44 stories. 19 poems. No sparkly vampires.
What advice do you have for other writers?
Nowadays anyone can self-publish. If you can make a Word document, you can have an e-book on Smashwords or Amazon. However that means that if your work is no good, no one's going to stop you. I'd recommend that people get onto Critique Circle and/or Scribophile, put their work up, and listen to what people tell you. Don't 'defend' your work against people's 'attacks.' They aren't attacks; they're helping you. I've found that the people who defend their work have a strong tendency to have the worst writing, I suppose because they're not making the changes they need to make.
My next point doesn't matter if you're going to self-publish, but it is important if you want to be published by a regular publisher or if you want to submit stories to magazines. Most places won't publish work that's already been published. And most places count putting a story on the internet as publishing it. In my opinion that's silly, but that's what they do. Scribophile and Critique Circle are exceptions, because Google doesn't index them and you can't see any stories without logging on. However there are writing group websites out there where, if you put a story on the site, that counts as the story being published. That seems like a really terrible way to set things up, but they're out there.
I'd also say that getting a book out isn't the final step. It's just the start of the work of self-promotion. This is true even if you're not self-publishing. I'm told that authors are expected to pretty much arrange their own book signings and so on (if you just want to have a book out to show family and friends then this doesn't matter, of course).
There are a lot of sharks out there, who make their money from authors and not from readers. They will make all sorts of promises about how they're going to promote you and help you, but these are lies. Authors do not pay publishers, ever, and if they're asking you to pay then it's a scam. Of course if you're self-publishing you might end up paying someone to design a cover for you, or you might pay for internet advertising, but those are different things. You might also pay a printer to print your books if you want to get physical books rather than e-books – but in this age of the Kindle and print-on-demand I don't know why you'd want to. Preditors and Editors is a good website to look at, and you can get good advice at the forums of Critique Circle.
Finally, I'd suggest learning to touch-type if you can't already. You're going to be doing a lot of typing, and every hour you spend getting faster at typing will save you ten in the long run.
What is your next project?
I'm working on a verse version of A Princess of Mars. This is a science fiction adventure story, now in the public domain, written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, who's more famous for Tarzan. Disney is also doing a movie of it, called John Carter, but that's not why I chose it. I generally work on several things at the same time, so I'm also in the middle of a few short stories and poems. I've been encouraged to write a novel set in the fantasy city of Telelee, which is the setting of a few of the stories in The New Death and others. I have a lot of background for this world, because I blog every day and most of it is setting detail. I also have a half-finished novel called All-American Detectives, which is a combination of a detective story and a story about superheroes, which I'll probably come back to in the future.
About James Hutchings
James Hutchings lives in Melbourne, Australia. He fights crime as Poetic Justice, but his day job is acting. You might know him by his stage name 'Brad Pitt.' He specializes in short fantasy fiction. His work has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, fiction365 and Enchanted Conversation among other markets. His e-book collection The New Death and others is now available from Amazon and Smashwords. He blogs daily.
Filed under: Guest Authors Tagged: interviews, James Hutchings
