An Interview with Ryan Skeffington
Ryan Skeffington had a unique journey leading him to the world of storytelling. His professional background is entrenched in the oil and gas industry, but he has always been drawn to the arts. His desire to create drives him to continuously try new things.
Ryan draws inspiration from the imagery and stories in music, visual media, and the written word. He explores the world by trying new things, which has led him down the rabbit hole of woodworking, photography, startups, golf, and most recently writing, where he has found his voice. Through his writing, Ryan aims to transport readers to fantastical worlds that explore the human experience.
I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Ryan Skeffington about his debut science fiction novel, Lost Souls, his approach to writing, and his future plans.
[GdM] Thanks so much for taking the time to do this interview with Grimdark Magazine. Your novel, Lost Souls, is truly a breathtaking debut. Could you tell us about your history as a writer? Who are some of your inspirations?
[RS] It’s an absolute joy to be included, thank you for having me. I would say my history is pretty sparse compared to most other authors that you’ve read or interviewed. Lost Souls is my first ever attempt at writing a piece of fiction. To set the stage, I’ve been a closeted creative my entire life with sports and academics taking the lead in most of my childhood. After school I explored multiple creative avenues that would allow me to express myself, and ultimately, writing is going to be the one that sticks. It’s perfect blend of structure, creativity, skill building, and a hobby that has measurable progress when you put forth effort. It took many years, but I’m stoked to have found an outlet that is so rewarding.
For my inspirations I’ve come to appreciate other artforms on a deeper level now that I create with intent. In the past I would consume the media and then move onto the next thing. I appreciated them for how they made me feel, but now I look behind the curtain. After understanding the depth of it all, I focus on musical lyrics, dialogue in television, and cinematic scene setting in films. The strongest inspirations for me are Gladiator, Halo, and the band Parkway Drive, which you’ve noticed in your read through!
[GdM] The chapters in Lost Souls are named sequentially after songs from the “Deep Blue” album by Australian metalcore band Parkway Drive. Was “Deep Blue” a direct inspiration for Lost Souls? Could you tell us more about this inspiration and how you incorporated themes from “Deep Blue” into your work?
[RS] “Deep Blue” was one of the first pieces of creative media that I studied with any depth. I read a rhetorical analysis and thematic breakdown online and was blown away. What I had previously thought of as thirteen really good songs was a rich, and in-depth story about the struggles of one man, that paralleled humanity to a good extent.
While the characters and worldbuilding of Lost Souls weren’t a direct reflection of the album, the main character’s plot and arc most definitely are. For those that listen to the songs in the album, they’ll find that the main character, Maximus, follows a parallel path to the unnamed pov in “Deep Blue”. From my understanding of this album and my translation to character, I tried to incorporate the recapturing of an individual’s agency in an overpowering world. Ultimately leading to, when you have that agency and the responsibility of power, will you make better decisions?
I love being able to gush about Parkway, and the foundational theme of the world came from another song of theirs, “Dark Days” that asks the question, “What will you tell your children when they ask you, ‘What went wrong?’” Lost Souls, outside of the main POV, tries to explore the consequences of not leaving a world better than you found it. The lyrical nods at the beginning of each chapter serve as a forewarning to the reader, so don’t overlook the details.
[GdM] Much of Lost Souls revolves around xantium, a fictitious extraterrestrial metal with profound implications for the future of humanity. What was your process like for developing the scientific and engineering aspects of your book? Was there any direct influence from your career in the oil and gas industry?
[RS] Xantium was an absolute treat to create. My thought process around introducing a fictitious resource was “how can I blend hard sci-fi and magic”? In hard sci-fi, you have the constraints of the real world, and all modifications to the world need to fall in line within the expected constraints of reality. I wanted to apply those same constraints to my world to hopefully establish a sense of realism. I built constraints around the ore such that, if we discovered xantium today, the things that occur in Lost Souls could theoretically happen in our world.
There are two branches to the world building of xantium: resource and catalyst.
The resource component was inspired by my background in engineering, and my career in understanding energy and how it advances the quality of life for those that have cheap and abundant energy.
The catalyst component is all thanks to my wife. She has a master’s degree that focuses on the human body, while I peaked with the grade of 89 in 9th grade biology. I would sit with her and repeatedly ask her questions about body modification, automated process like respiration and the Krebs cycle, and all of the technical terminology that I would have never even considered to google. She is the reason the word ‘nephron’ is in the novel, and it’s better for it.
Because I was able to utilize xantium on both a grand world building scale and on a micro-biologic, character focused scale, I believe it lends itself to having a basis in realism. When something new is discovered, it’s the creativity of man that creates the branches from the trunk of its discovery. I only hope my characters emulated this creativity in the story.
[GdM] As the lead protagonist of Lost Souls, Maximus has more than a few surprises in store for the reader. Could you tell us about how you developed Maximus as a character?
[RS] Because I was laying the foundation of my writing craft while drafting, I didn’t have a lot of experience with character creation, so I started with the one that I knew best, me. Engineer who was bored at work was the canvas that I started with. Then I put that character in this new world that I created. I started to ask myself how would this character have grown up and what would the ensuing traits be?
There is a quote that I really love that I apply to character sculpting, “What would I put a person through to get them to have the traits I want them to have? If I wanted them to be patient, I wouldn’t give them everything immediately. If I wanted them to be resilient, I wouldn’t give them an easy life.”
Starting from this framework I asked, “What would he ‘know’ having grown up in the upper end of a caste system? How would he treat people in a cruel world when he was raised by a kind man?”
Lastly, I wanted to incorporate, and share with the world, the relationship I have with my father. There are moments in the story that I pulled from my life that I needed to share, because man my dad was cool. The honor of being able to share a fraction of that relationship through the eyes of Maximus made it all worth it.
[GdM] Your writing in Lost Souls is very well polished, especially for a debut novel. What was your writing and editing process like? Are you a planner or a “pantser”?
[RS] The reason Lost Souls has any level of quality is because I leaned on others for guidance and critique. My very first draft was written as if the POV was a movie camera that followed around the characters in a scene. There was head hopping, past and present tense, shifting from 1st to 3rd perspective, and a little omniscient for good measure. Ryan Patrick, author of Lag Delay and The Martian Incident, was my first beta reader and man did he sit me down and set me straight. There was so much work to be done. I edited the story a cumulative twelve passes during the entire process because it needed that much work.
If you’re reading this and thinking of writing a story, please do it. There is no way that your first draft could be worse than my first draft. I made every single mistake in the book. I might’ve even invented some new mistakes.
After cleaning up my technique I moved to the more traditional editing process where I had a developmental editor (someone who critiques the structure of the novel), another round of beta reading, and then I finished it off with a line editor (someone who edits your sentence level structure).
For my writing I love, love, love to outline. Some might call my outlines zero drafts. After my research and high-level plot and character outlines, I create a chapter by chapter, scene by scene, outline that goes in depth. I outline the characters in the scene, what the setting looks like, what they’re trying to accomplish, and what problems they’ll face, sometimes interjecting proposed dialogue if I think of something quippy.
My main reason for doing this is that it allows me to marinate on my story before I start writing and ‘commit’ to the story. I daydream and add ideas into the outline quite often and because the outline is more shorthand/chicken scratch typing I feel free to make sweeping changes. Once there is prose on the page, I’m more hesitant to make sweeping changes. It hurts!
[GdM] What are your thoughts on the current state of publishing in the science fiction genre? How do you think indie publishing will influence the future of the genre?
[RS] Because I am only self-published and didn’t even query, I have limited, outside only perspective on the industry. Because Amazon and Ingram have made it so easy to publish, removing the largest barrier to entry, the number of participants in the ecosystem has drastically increased meaning you get a higher level of saturation of stories.
The double edge sword is that you get to participate more easily, but it doesn’t mean you’ll have default success on the click of the ‘publish’ button. Inferring from my personal technical background, industry/tribal knowledge will always have value and allow for precise execution and the best possible path forward. That doesn’t mean that indies don’t stand a chance!
There are two key tools for indie success that I can see. Social media and the avoidance of parasocial relationships. Social media has made it possible for an individual to have a marketing arm. Attention is no longer on billboards, commercials, or newspapers, but the digital platforms the consumers interact with on a daily basis. This is incredibly powerful but requires a lot of work! Next is the ability to form meaningful relationships with fans. Instead of a best-selling author only engaging at a meet & greet, they can participate in discussions and relationship building on a more frequent basis. Twitter, Facebook, and Discord are all platforms that allow connection to prosper.
The ability for indie authors to succeed in this fierce market signal to me that creativity will no longer be gate kept. The weird, outlandish, nontraditional stories people have been writing for ages may find new audiences. These edge cases, that previously were uneconomic, could find their footing with a rabid, niche audience and create something new in the mainstream! I have high hopes for my fellow indie authors out there!
[GdM] What advice do you have for new authors based on your own experience with self-publishing?
[RS] Do it. Try it. Fail at it. Keep at it. Fail some more. Delete what you don’t like. Try again. You can do it. There is an infinite number of ways to make art. Your way, your voice, is worthy of being seen and heard.
More personally, I found that I place a lot of emotional weight on how others have perceived the story. I would caution against the habit of checking Goodreads or the Amazon sales page. Leave F5 season to sports. (Maybe 1/10th of you will have gotten that, and its okay if you didn’t)
Make the art for the love of making it.
I’ll keep my day job.
[GdM] Could you tell us more about your background as an entrepreneur? How has your experience creating new startups affected your approach to writing and publishing your work?
[RS] Combining my creative juices with my experience during my MBA led me to try and tackle entrepreneurship. Once I graduated, I founded a startup and began working as a consultant in the evenings after work. (I don’t recommend this.)
In the world of a startup if you aren’t the one moving the company forward, no one else is. Unlike my day job, the work/customers didn’t automatically just appear in my inbox for me to do. If only it worked like that.
Same thing goes for writing and publishing a novel. If you’re not planning (for my planners) no one else is. If you don’t leave foreshadowing elements no one else does. You do the planning, you put prose on paper, you do the structural edit, you hire the other editors, you are the art director for the cover, you do the formatting of the word doc, you do the pricing model, you do the marketing.
As a self-published author you’re the CEO of your startup. If its going to be out in the world its going to be because you willed it to happen.
Working in consulting taught me the value of communicating so that other people could understand. It didn’t matter if my presentation was perfect. If the audience didn’t get the takeaways that I wanted them to understand, then I failed at effectively communicating. When writing a novel one of the most difficult parts was getting everything in my head onto the pages in a way that allowed my vision to translate to the reader’s imagination.
[GdM] Your Twitter biography mentions that you might run for governor of Oklahoma in 2030. Is this meant facetiously, or do you have serious political ambitions in the Sooner State?
[RS] Politics was always a bad word growing up.
“Politicians are nothing but liars, cheaters, and crooks.”
“Well why don’t good people run?”
“It just doesn’t work like that?”
I wish it did.
This was a conversation I had multiple times growing up. Now that I’ve reached the point of paying taxes, understanding policy, and living the consequences of bad governance I replay that conversation over and over again. There’s a lot of hopeful ego in the idea that maybe I could make a difference, I want to make a difference.
Then it hit me out of the blue one day. There will always be a governor of each state. They’re a human being, no different than me. Everyday we read or watch stories about heroes saving the day in fiction. Some may consider it childish naivety to want to be a hero, but I’d rather try than sit back and just keep complaining.
[GdM] Thanks again for taking the time to do this interview with Grimdark Magazine. What can readers expect next from Ryan Skeffington, either as part of the Infinite Existence series or beyond?
[RS] I’m elbows deep in editing Eternal Dreams, the sequel to Lost Souls. I hope to deliver a story that captured the brilliant moments of the first while improving on its very apparent flaws. The cover art will come out later this summer and I hope for a release by the end of the year! The conclusion of the trilogy is being plotted, and I am so excited for a roller coaster of an ending.
Beyond that, I hope to maintain the same love I have for writing right now, many years into the future. Thank you so very much for having me and I wish you, and Grimdark Magazine all the success in the world.
This interview was originally published in Grimdark Magazine #39.
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