“What do you fear” Wednesday welcomes Sean Sweeney

Phobia Friday welcomes Mike Cooley Phobia Friday welcomes Sarah Buchheit

“What do you fear” Wednesday welcomes Sean Sweeney

For this WDYF Wednesday, I’d like to welcome the prolific and genre-spanning Sean Sweeney.

1. Tell me more about how you got started as a writer and why you decided to move into fiction alongside working as a sports journalist?

We need to go back through the mists of time in order to answer this question. Pardon me for a second. (Shakes everyone’s monitors as we go back to the 1990s—Good Lord, I was a skinny bastard.) I was a sophomore in high school when I got my start writing sports for my local paper. I was about 16 ½ when I had talked to one of the reporters there and let him know I was interested in helping them out. I took to it like a duck, and I wrote for them for six years until I moved to radio news, which was the best civics lesson I could have ever taken in my life. I moved out of the business for a couple of years, moving into sales. One of my sales jobs was as a bookseller for WaldenBooks at the then-Searstown Mall. This was in the Christmas season for 2001. At the time, local author R.A. (Bob) Salvatore was in the process of promoting his new hardcover, Sea of Swords. We had something like three stacks of the books, set up like towers of paving stones in the front of the store. I can still see it. He came in and signed them all, as well as our back stock (signed books make EXCELLENT Christmas/Hanukkah presents, by the way). As he signed, he and I talked about writing and his work in the Star Wars Expanded Universe; this was in the lead-up to Episode 2 coming out about five or six months later, and he wrote the novel version of the movie. I had dabbled in some Star Wars stories in the previous years after reading Kevin J. Anderson’s SW anthologies—we call that fan fic now—and I really wanted to write a Star Wars novel; I still do, in fact. He told me that in order to do that, I needed to develop my own characters and create my own storylines. About 13 months later, I started writing the first draft of a fantasy story about a dwarf king and his halfling sidekick.

I continued to write fiction when I got back into sportswriting in 2004, and sometime during 2004 I really had no idea where I wanted to take that fantasy story that I had begun some 16 months prior. I had taken the MS off the shelf after my father died and wrote chapter five at the cottage of my best friend’s family in Maine, all in a couple of nights before I had to come back to Massachusetts for the burial. Listening to Bob speak about how writer’s block doesn’t exist inspired me to finish that novel, as well as come up with a whole backstory, which I will explain later. By the time 2005 rolled around, I was stringing for another newspaper and writing around games, and when 2006 came around, I was working full time for another paper, covering sports and writing fiction at night and in the morning, 1,000 words at a time before making the drive to work or crashing for the night. So for the past six or seven years of fiction writing, I’ve been able to condition myself to write X amount of words before going to a game, and if I so desire, write afterward.

2. What do you fear? Tell me about your own phobias.

Is there enough room on the Internet to discuss this, G.R.? My biggest fear was realized in 2003, when I lost my dad. I was 26 and really wasn’t ready to lead my family; still not ready nearly nine full years later, to be honest. Now that it’s just mom and I, I have the fear of losing her, too, but don’t tell her that; she’ll get all weepy and mental and I don’t need that. There’s also the phobia of being alone for the rest of my life, but I think I may have cured that recently. I hope. I’ve been rather giddy lately because of her.

I also hate snakes. With a passion. I can’t even watch Harry Potter without cringing. I can read it just fine, but watching it, oy. Fetal (or foetal, for my English-based readers) position and everything.

3. What was the inspiration behind the AGENT series and Jaclyn Johnson as a character?

Excellent question that I love answering. Let’s go back to January 2010. Actually, even further back to November 2009. I had just finished writing the first draft to Zombie Showdown, and I was asleep. Unconscious thought prevailed, and I had a dream about this leggy blonde walking down the street toward this building. She had on eyeglasses with telemetry data flickering inside the lenses, and she was walking as if she was the cat’s meow. Little did I know at the time that inside her blouse she had enough C4 and a gun to take over a small city. As I had pictured her, she had to blow up the building for reasons that really escape me, then run out of there and walk, as calm and cool as you please, to a modeling job, shucking off her jacket and blouse, right down to her bra. At that point, she was an antagonist character. She was unnamed at this point, too.

I know a few blondes, but one with whom I went to high school made the character come alive, in a sense. Back in 1991, my friend Jackie was a little shy preppy girl of 14 who had the body type of the character in my mind. So I talked with her about this character and I told her that I was considering naming her Jaclyn. In looking for a last name, she suggested Johnson, because it’s the last name of her faaaaaaaaavorite wrestler, The Rock (Dwayne Johnson). I don’t think she thought I was serious at the time, but I let the character fester over the next couple of months. I didn’t have anything on paper yet. Just this character flitting about in my mind. We get to January 2010, and Steven Savile, one of my best mates in publishing, was about to release his debut thriller, Silver. We were talking about what my next project would be, and he suggested I write a thriller. I told him about Jaclyn. Over the next couple of days I came up with a small plotline involving Jaclyn as an American counterterrorism agent flying to London to assist MI5 in helping to defend the Olympics against terror plots. At that time, Rogue Agent was born, and the series has just developed from there; a little later in the year, I wanted to really introduce Jaclyn earlier than anticipated, so I proceeded to write Model Agent, set in my hometown of Boston, and released that in February 2011. Since then, I’ve written Double Agent, set in Las Vegas, and last week I started writing Federal Agent, set in Atlanta.

4. What do you think it is about the secret agent as a modern pop culture icon that makes people keep coming back for more?

You know, it’s something that drives me crazy. Why? Why do people like those types of characters, such as Jaclyn or a James Bond 007 character, or Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp character? I think it’s because some people have this desire to be the hero, or in Jaclyn’s case, the heroine who dash off to exotic locales, kick ass, and still look good doing it after it’s all said and done. Think about it: Why would any guy want to be James Bond? Well, let’s figure it out. He beds gorgeous women, sometimes two or three, during the course of his movies; go back and watch The World Is Not Enough: he beds MI6’s staff doctor, Elektra King, and Christmas Jones, all in one two-hour span. I think in Jaclyn’s case, she’s the type of character that turns the head of both sexes—the guys want to bed her, while the women are instantly jealous of her. And she doesn’t give a shit. There are a lot of people with insecurities and wish they could just tell the world to feck off and not worry about what others say. Jaclyn is like this.

5. You have written in a number of other genres including science-fiction, fantasy and horror – do you think diversity is important for a writer? What are your thoughts on the freedom we now have available thanks the self-publishing option?

For me, it is important. I write based on what my muse tells me to write. And she is a jealous bitch, let’s say that. Then again, I also have a philosophy about that, that if a reader likes your work enough, they’ll pick up your other work to see what else you’ve done. For example, when I started, I wanted to be a fantasy author. Then I wrote a sports time travel novel, focusing on baseball. I went back to fantasy, then tried my hand at a sci-fi space opera-type book. More fantasy, finishing my second trilogy. Now I’ve moved on to thrillers and mystery, and I even tried my hand at romance. I’ve also written two children’s books and a YA novel. I just can’t wait to see if I get into paranormal romance.

As for self-publishing, I think it’s fantastic that as authors we now have this option. I don’t have to make changes to a story if I don’t believe the story would benefit from such changes. My story is my story, take it or leave it. And of course the economics of the whole self-publishing side is just a boon, the fact that if you sell your ebook on Kindle or Nook for $2.99, you’re making between $1.94 and $2.06 American, depending on the platform, really makes it easy to budget for three months down the road.

6. You wrote a story based upon Coulrophobia, the fear of clowns, for the Dark Continents anthology Phobophobia – can you tell me more about the inspiration behind this story?

With pleasure. I was excited when Dean asked me to be a part of this project. I believe Steve had recommended me for the project, and Dean and I conversed about it. It probably took me about five minutes to say yes, then a couple of days to write the story. I was excited because this story would put me in front of a whole new audience, perhaps some who have never before read my work. What I wanted to do with The Clown Cemetery is to show what I feel are my two best writing attributes: action and humo(u)r. I wanted to put readers on the edge of their seats with my action, the makeshift sword out of a Ferris wheel retaining bar swinging about, and I wanted to entertain them and give them a chuckle here and there. That’s what I always aim to do with my stories: leave their hearts a little lighter and get a good tale weaved in. I saw one of the first reviews online had mentioned all the stories in time, and with my story being the letter C, I was in the first bunch and the reviewer said that my story continued the vein of the story previous, so I’d say I left a good impression with him.

7. With Zombie Showdown, you added your own take on this very popular sub-genre – why do you think the zombie is the classic monster currently gripping the imagination of a lot of readers?

I think it’s because a zombie is easy for a reader to picture in the reader’s mind: a slow-walking, mumbling, eyes rolled into the back of the head, soulless being that doesn’t care who or what you are, he or she wants to eat you and turn you into one of them. I wanted to write something that my cousin, then 13, would read. I told him that I was going to write about zombies, and he thought that was pretty cool; when I told him he would be the star of the book along with his sister, he was impressed. I told the kids there would be gun play and regular teenage emotions; in one scene, I had Rachel, who was then 11, behead a zombie baby, and I knew it was something that wouldn’t sit right with her, but I did it anyway. Author’s privilege.

8. Can you tell me more about Obloeron and whether we will be seeing a follow-up to The Rise of the Dark Falcon? Were you inspired to write the prequel series by the way George Lucas has structure his Star Wars universe at all?

Writing the stories the way I did was completely unintentional. After I resumed work on the first book following my burst of inspiration from Bob, I had a little bit of an epiphany. When the dwarf king and his halfling companion and the rest of the dwarf army met the human captain, the dwarf recognized the sword that the man carried. That got me thinking, and all of a sudden, the concept for the prequels came to mind. But that was still a few years away; I wanted to complete my trilogy, and that took me the entire breadth of 2005 to do, I believe.

The prequels, due to my full-time sportswriting commitments, left me X amount of time to write, so I tried to write about 1,000 words when I woke up, and 1,000 words when I got home. That way, I had the manuscripts done in a couple of months, but I did them a year or so apart. It involved a lot of sacrifice and a lot of missed sleep. The second book in the prequel series, The Shadow Looms, is ready to go; I just need my cover art and I’ll be sorted. Then it’ll be a wait for Krampel’s Revenge, the third book.

9. What made you decide you wanted to throw together your experience as a sports journalist with the thriller genre in Royal Switch?

That’s the whole “write what you know” thing. I know sports. I know them quite well. I’ve been writing sports for over half of my life, so it’s something that comes pretty natural to me. One of my dreams is (was? I don’t think so any longer, unless it’s MLS soccer or Premier League football) to have a pro sports beat, either for a newspaper or a news wire. So I created this character who followed along the trials and tribulations of a Major League Baseball franchise for a newspaper. And I wanted to write something kind of outlandish for the first half of the story: this Russian gazillionaire in the vein of George Steinbrenner of the New York Yankees or Roman Abramovich of Chelsea F.C., an owner who wants to win at any cost, including a skyrocketing payroll (Did someone mention Alex Rodriguez? Did someone mention Ashley Cole? And if you think I mention these names for the Google hits, well, you know me too well). As the story goes on, the reporter, being a remarkable observer of details, catches on and tries to uncover the B.S. going on in the locker room. A reporter—at least in the United States; I know that in England a sportswriter’s access to the locker room and athletes is limited—is supposed to be the conduit between the team and the supporters, and in this case, the writer knows there will be some fallout from what he writes.

10. So what does 2012 hold for Sean Sweeney? Any last words?

I think I’ve said quite a bit up there, didn’t I? Well, a few weeks ago, I released my 14th novel, Cold Altar, which is a new mystery series starring PI Alex Bourque. I also wrote my second children’s “novel,” so that may be out in a few months. I’m in the process of writing the first draft to Federal Agent, which I hope will be done by the start of August, freeing that month up for a vacation/holiday. I have a few other stories that I want to write in the last few months of 2012 after my holiday, and that should take me up and through Christmas. Federal Agent will be out in November 2012. Then get started on the next Alex Bourque in mid-January 2013, and the fifth Jaclyn Johnson in mid-March. Never a dull moment at Casa Sweeney.

Thank you, Sean!