Author Interview with Pearson Moore

Name: Pearson Moore Author of: Deneb*Interviewer comments are in bold.

1.      What inspired you to write your first book? Stories have always been a place for me to become immersed in another world. The greatest thrill in my life is the moment when I can plunge a circle of friends into such a strange new place. I wanted to sustain this thrill, to tell a story that took hours or days, not short minutes. When I figured out how to do it, by creating memorable characters who could act as guides through fascinating worlds, I wrote my first novel, Cartier’s Ring. With Deneb, my 18th volume, I ramped it up, bringing in dozens of characters and a storyline that appeals at several different levels: action/adventure, unusual character development, epic story, strange world, and deep symbolism. 2. How do you come up with ideas for your book? It’s not so much an idea as a problem. I try to come up with problems that require input from several characters with mixed or complementary skill sets, with different kinds of drawbacks or imperfections, so they really don’t know how they’re going to solve the problem. It’s not like I know, either! But when I bring together characters with diverse backgrounds, invariably two or three of them have abilities or ideas I wouldn’t have considered, and then we’re on our way to figuring out how to address the problem. 3. In which genres do you write? Denebis a traditional ‘hard’ science fiction epic, meaning that all the stuff that happens in the novel is explainable through science or reasonable extrapolations from scientific principles. But I enjoy writing in several genres. Cartier’s Ring, for instance, is historical fiction, while my best known books, such as LOST Humanity and LOST Identity, are nonfiction works providing commentary on television series like Lost, Game of Thrones, and Breaking Bad.
What I most enjoy, regardless of the genre I’m writing, is to approach ideas in ways readers don’t expect. The intention is to force readers to think about ideas they’ve never considered, or to confront ideas in completely new ways. I’ve always thought that in expanding our perspective we enjoy a fictional world far more than we would when everything is familiar and comfortable and predictable. In Deneb, for example, I take away the familiar concept of woman/man pair bonding. Women and men still have sexual relations, of course, but there is no courtship, no romantic love, no dating—in fact no marriages—no mothers and fathers as such. How would a society function without pair bonding or marriage? Is this anything that could work? Why would people build such a culture? This is just one of the interesting problems Deneb tackles. 4. Are experiences based on someone you know, or events in your own life? I try to bring actual experience and real-life quirks to my characters. When I began writing essays and short stories I often created characters similar in many ways to friends and acquaintances. But in my novels I find myself thinking of basic character traits and histories and I allow the characters to work out the details for themselves. Each character is her own person, with her own backstory, her own way of doing things. While they’re not based on people I know, I think they are real in their own way, in a sense that carries far more integrity than if I forced a character to conform to a set of behaviors defining a particular person. They’re real people, and far more real than if I had attempted to mold them into individuals they are not and should not try to be.
I understand what you mean about molding them into individuals they are not meant to be. Occasionally I will write a scene where a character is doing some thing they would never do. Then I have to rewrite that scene. 5. Which books have most influenced your life? Most of your readers, I imagine, have heard of Isaac Asimov. He was my favorite author in my teenage years. But I have read many writers now. Probably Ken Follett has influenced me more than any other writer, though Pierre Berton writes history with a novelist’s flair, and I have read nearly two dozen of his thick tomes. I enjoy Tolkien, except for The Silmarillion (I tried to read it!). I like thinking about the world of Westeros somewhat more than reading about it (Martin’s prose style tends to drive me up the wall) and I tried to bring something of the complexity of A Song of Ice and Fire to my seven-culture world in Deneb. 6. Which writer do you consider a mentor? I try to emulate the format, not so much the style, of Ken Follett. It seems to me Follett has developed a consistent way of inviting readers into his worlds. He connects with me far more than other writers, and I try to immerse readers based on what I’ve learned from him.
World building is such an important part of fiction writing. I have read so many novels that have fallen flat because the world isn't developed. Even if you setting is Earth, you still need to describe the character's setting, because that is their world. 7. Which books are you reading now? I always have several books going. I’m reading El laberinto de la soledadby Octavio Paz, The Barbarous Yearsby Bernard Bailyn, The Third Chimpanzeeby Jared Diamond, Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America by Peter Andreas, and Néandertal: Le Cristal de Chasse by Emmanuel Roudier 8. Which new authors have grasped your interest and why? Steven Barnes is by no means a ‘new author’ but he’s new to me. His Great Sky Woman, I think, is going to be considered a classic of early human prehistoric fiction. Shadow Valley is next on my to-read list. 9. If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything in your latest book? No, I wouldn’t change one word. I struggle with my novels not for weeks or months but for years. I submit them for rigorous critiques and beta-reading; Deneb, for instance, was critiqued over 130 times. So I write the first draft and give it to the critters. They tear it apart and hand it back to me, usually in tatters and shreds, and then I have to put it back together again. I come back with a second draft and it goes back into the human shredding machine. When you do that a few times you end up with a pretty strong story. It’s never perfect, but it’s as good as that particular story can be. Then it gets polished, edited, proofread a half dozen times, and finally submitted to my publisher. 10. Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing? Everything is a challenge! If I didn’t find this whole business at the very edge of my capacities I suppose I would quit doing it and go do something else. 11. Who is your favorite author and what is it that really strikes you about their work? Ken Follett, for me, is the definitive master of the thriller and, with The Pillars of the Earth, historical fiction as well. But I read a lot of history, too, and there I believe Pierre Berton has no equal. As far as emotional connection, probably the best writer is Thomas Merton. It’s hard not to become personally involved in his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain. 12. What was the hardest part of writing your book? All of it is challenging, but one of the additional difficulties of an epic like Deneb, a story sprawled out across a quarter million words, is that there are so many details to remember and propagate through the story. It weighed me down after a while, to the point that in addition to having an outline I had to create a detailed spreadsheet to keep track of everything. Readers don’t have to do that—unless they’re trying to piece together the conlang (constructed language, called Tasblish) I created for the novel. 13. Did you learn anything from writing your book and what was it? I give several hundred hours of research to every book I write. For DenebI spent several thousand hours in research, so I learned thousands of things, especially about Neanderthal and Cro Magnon cultures. For instance, most of the dark hand outlines that often appear next to animal figures in prehistoric cave paintings are the outlines of women’s hands, not men’s. That was a shock to me, since I always thought those hands represented the artists who created the animal figures, and I assumed those to be the work of male hunters. I had to throw out the hunter idea and replace it with the theory that the animals were painted by female shamans. I was also surprised to learn that most Europeans and Asians carry somewhere between one and four percent Neanderthal genes in our DNA; all of us descend from Neanderthals. Fascinating!
I'm assuming you are talking abut the Lascaux Caves? They used to be a tourist site, until scientists realized that the exposure to our air and pollution was actually destroying all of the artwork. They have since been replicated and the original caves are sealed. 14. Do you have any advice for other writers? Don’t write. If you’re not committed to reading and writing all the time, for many, many years before you publish your first work, don’t write. Writing is lonely, thankless, hard work, and it’s not for everybody. Writing with such depth and imagination that people feel good about paying for the privilege of reading your stories is not a skill one is born with or can develop in weeks or months. As with any endeavor requiring expertise, you’re going to have to put in at least 10,000 hours—roughly two million words—before you’re ready to publish. Yes, you can publish before that. But be prepared for a lot of one-star reviews of what readers will tell you is low-quality material.
If you insist on plowing ahead, I feel you cannot write unless you have demonstrated mastery of the language. If you don’t know the subjunctive mood from a subordinate clause—if you don’t understand the rudiments of your language—you have no business pretending to have a flair for wordsmithing. Language contains every tool and weapon in the writer’s arsenal. Before you begin those long 10,000 hours, then, you need to have complete facility with the English language, including grammar, spelling, usage, and syntax.
I personally do not completely agree with opinion, writing is as much about learning and improving same a any profession. There can always be improvement. Always, but if you have the drive to continue to always learn, always improve, The thing's mentioned in the previous paragraph can always be learned and relearned. Authors keep book on grammar on their shelves for a reason -because even they are not master. There are some rules that are not hard and fast either, our languages are always changing. Part of writing is being a word connoisseur, you have to develop your tastes. You do this be reading, researching, and writing.
My other thought is if someone tells you can't, do it because you can.   15. Do you have anything specific that you want to say to your readers? Be involved! If you enjoy my stories, tell me. If you have questions or ideas, tell me. If a story moved you, brought tears to your eyes or a snarl to your lips, let me know. Reading and writing and discussing, to my mind, are the same activity. 17. Do you ever experience writer's block? I suppose there are moments when I am less expressive than I’d like to be, but more often than not my shortcomings present themselves as an over-abundant eagerness to write. I tend to write more than I should! 18. What do you do to overcome writer’s block? Write. And if I suffer from insomnia I sleep it off. How can I do it? Maybe because I have an iron will. Yessir, I can resist anything. Well, I can resist anything except temptation. And I have the patience of a saint—except when I’m in a hurry :) 19. Do you write an outline before every book you write? Most of my books start as an outline. I did some stream-of-consciousness work in LOST Humanity. 20. Have you ever hated something you wrote? Of course—but I never publish anything unless at least a dozen people tell me it’s ready for publication. Having a work exhaustively critiqued is not much fun, but it’s a whole lot better than being told—after publication—that the novel I slaved over for two years is no good! 21. What was you favorite book or series as a child? The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov. Dracula by Bram Stoker was another favorite. 22. What is your favorite television series? LOST. It’s the best thing ever written for television.
I never have watched LOST. Mostly because you have to watch every single episode in order for anything to make sense, at least that's what I've been told. 23. Do you have any unique talents or hobbies? Nothing unique, no, although I sometimes acquire unique insightsinto problems. I am a professional chemist with expertise in pharmaceutical purification process design from biological matrices. I used to race bicycles; the hill climb and the double century (200 miles in a single ride) were my specialties. I read widely, I speak several languages. Somehow I have managed to fit into my schedule every episode of Survivorthat has ever aired. 24. Have you found that one of your books has sold better than the others? Why do you think that is? My best selling book by far is LOST Humanity. It is the #1 bestselling ebook ever written about LOST and for 15 weeks in 2011 and 2012 it was the #1 bestselling paperback on the series, too. Why do I think that is? Somehow I connected with both the show and with fans of the show. I still don’t know how! 25. How can we contact you or find out more about your books? You can find me at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Pearson-Moore/e/B004SAVKKM/
I’m at Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pearson.moore.7
And I have an author page at Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4772196.Pearson_Moore 26. What can we expect from you in the future? I’m working on three projects: A companion book called Breaking Blue for all five seasons of Breaking Bad, a single-culture prequel to Deneb, and a cultural history of the United States from 1607 to 1890 called Patriot Cause: The Roots of Independency and Incivility in America.
Breaking Blue is a color-based discussion of Breaking Bad, looking at the symbolic meaning of Walter’s white underwear, Heisenberg’s black pork pie hat, Marie’s fascination with everything purple, and the boldest colors in the series: yellow, orange, and blue.
I’m most excited about the Deneb prequel treating early Tasfit (Neanderthal) culture. The last 15 years have seen an explosion of new information about Neanderthals, to the point that most pre-2005 theories about the species have to be thrown out. The new research is leading to revolutionary ideas, and I hope to bring the full force of these radical new concepts and findings to the pages of my book. Even the title of the book reflects the excitement—so much so that the publisher has asked me not to reveal the title. I can’t say I’ve ever experienced a prohibition like that before!
Patriot Cause: The Roots of Independency and Incivility in America, 1607 to 1890 is literally and figuratively revolutionary in its treatment of subject matter all of us believe we understand. In fact, though, recent scholarship allows for the sober proposal of a disquieting thesis: The guiding force of the American Revolution was not Enlightenment philosophy but economic practicality, boiling down to virtually unfettered opportunity and the fabled mindset we call ‘rugged individualism’, but also culturally codified and expected greed, deceit, and selfishness. I think anyone with even a mild interest in history will find this study absorbing and thought provoking in its rejection of just about every philosophy-based theory of the Revolution. This analysis sees Samuel Adams and Thomas Paine, among others, as the real heroes but casts major players like George Washington and John Hancock as mediocre contributors who did little to advance the new country’s cause. Others, like Thomas Jefferson and his nemesis, John Adams, helped to craft the new myth of American identity that allowed the country to survive its self-destructive years immediately following the revolution. I’ve been working on this immense history for several years, and hope to present it for publication late in 2014.