2nd author-guy interview

what follows is my 2nd self-interview. since there are still no magazines, etc., jumping at the opportunity to do one, i ask myself a bunch of questions found at random via google, in the interest of saving future wikipedia curators time.

What is the first book that made you cry?

Magic, by William Goldman.

Does writing energize or exhaust you?

It depends on how long the session is. If I only have a little while, it’s exhausting. You have to get yourself back into it, back into the character and the scene, and then it’s hard to have to stop. If I have a couple of hours or more, it kind of creates its own energy, and I lose track of time as I slip into the book.

What are common traps for aspiring writers?

Falling in love with particular characters, scenes, or conversations that don’t move the plot along. It clouds your mind and your judgement. The law of writing is, if it doesn’t serve the plot, they have to die, or it all becomes self-indulgence.

Have you ever gotten reader’s block?

Sometimes, with John Irving or John LeCarre. Some of their books take a long time to get into. The payoff in their stories is always worth it, but sometimes I don’t feel like making the climb.

Do you try more to be original or to deliver to readers what they want?

I don’t have the skills to do either, yet. For me, it’s just about learning the process and trying to tell each story in a clear and understandable way. You have to learn to stretch canvas before you learn to paint.

Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly?

Yes. Read Isaac Asimov. Great plots, interesting characters, terrific craftsmanship, but every bit of emotion seems to be observed, rather than felt.

Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book?

In my head, every book takes place in the same world, on the same timeline. A lot of things happen in PoHo, which is a fictionalized version of my hometown. The character interactions between books have been slight, so far, but that’s changing.

If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?

Get off your butt and write. Write more, even when you hate it. It gets better the longer you keep at it, and you can always fix it in the editing stages.

How did publishing your first book change your process of writing?

I learned a lot about editing and marketing. The first, that it takes so long, and it’s the hardest part, killing all of the bits you love, but can’t use. The second, that there’s so much to know, so much work to be done, and what works constantly changes.

What authors did you dislike at first but grew into?

John LeCarre. Tim Dorsey. Hunter Thompson.

How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have?

Half-finished? Only 1 or 2. But I have bits and pieces – sometimes lots of bits and pieces, in physical file folders and in Google Drive, – for about 80 more.

What does literary success look like to you?

Having regular readers... people who look forward to the next thing that I publish.

What’s the best way to market your books?

For me, reading everything that Amazon says about it, then doing it. The rest is all the quality of your work.

What kind of research do you do, and how long do you spend researching before beginning a book?

It depends on the book. For ‘Rest Stop’, I read a lot about all of the bizarre behaviors that parasites can cause, and some more about serial killers – the different types. Daryl Gladring is miles away from Harvey Lee.

Do you view writing as a kind of spiritual practice?

No. For me, that’s writing music.

What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex?

The little, everyday crap that women have to deal with. Is that man checking me out in a creepy way? What do I do if he approaches me? Do I have a tampon if I need one? Am I being talked down to? How do I brush off this guy in a way that won’t potentially put me in danger or cost me my job? How does this outfit make me look? Women have to think about a lot more than men do, and most of it has to do with external threats and internal self-doubt.

How do you select the names of your characters?

I figure out who the character is – what they’re willing to do, what they want, and how they look. Once I have that, I can usually tell what their voice sounds like. From there, their name just comes. They tell me their names.

Do you hide any secrets in your books that only a few people will find?

No. That seems silly. Maybe even destructive. Writing is about communication. I don’t play favorites. You buy the ticket, you get the whole ride.

What was your hardest scene to write?

Trying to describe the monster in the finale of ‘Frost Flowers’. I rewrote it so many times, and each time my editor/muse sent it back, and told me that no one would understand it. It turns out that describing an interdimensional entity that can only partially be seen in the dimension is hard – so hard that I just had to do it again in ‘Crayon Sugarsweet and the Spooky Thing’.

Do you Google yourself?

No. Who has time? Why - what does it say? Does it say I’m cute?

What one thing would you give up to become a better writer?

Doritos. Every flavor. This is serious.

What is your favorite childhood book?

‘Journey to the Mushroom Planet’. When I was a little older, Susan Cooper’s ‘The Dark Is Rising’.

What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?

I haven’t gotten to the artistic part yet. For me, editing. I have a tough time knowing when to stop.

keeping track of chapters in longer works

one of the best pieces of advice i've ever gotten about writing a longer work is to plot out each character separately from beginning to end. along with helping you decide who interacts with who and when, it helps you to figure out each one's motivation and how they see themselves, others, and the conflict at the center of the story. you can even get daring and write sub-conflicts. you don't even need a fancy tool - a simple spreadsheet will do.

each cell represents either one chapter or event:

• column one contains the name of the character that you're focusing on. 
• the second column is for the day of the week on which the event occurs. 
• the third column is for the number of the chapter in which the event occurs. 
• the fourth column is for the events themselves. 

 write out each character's arc from beginning to end in the fourth column, one short paragraph per major event, one major event per cell. when you're done with that for all of your main characters, arrange the order of the cells so that you don't have a bunch of chapters in a row that are just about one character. (it's kind of like shuffling cards.)

use the second column to keep track of which date or day of the week in which each event occurred (you might even have to have a division between days and nights, here, if a lot happens in a relatively short period of time, and for multiple characters).

number the results in column 3 (the chapter number column, remember?), sort everything by that column (something that excel is perfect for), and read your outline out loud.

if it still makes sense and has a logical flow, you have a working outline. if it doesn't, change the numbers around and resort, even if that means you hack things out. better now than after you've written four chapters that no longer belong in the story.

the snow wight, chapter 1

In the time before men walked alone, sirrah, err the winter that near killed the world, there was a wizard named Pirnha Lo’kresh.

Lo’kresh lived in the middle of a great desert, and it was there that he one day came upon an Ifrit - what some would call a Djinn - and threw himself at its taloned feet.

He told the Ifrit the truth: That he was a poor but devout seeker of knowledge, a pilgrim come to beg at the table of a people who were neither demons nor angels, but with attributes of both, and a greater understanding of the physical world than either. A tribe that had been cruelly denied the favor that Allah gave to the race of Men.

The Djinn, who was named Al-A’amash, threatened to tear Lo’kresh to pieces with his tusks, but then decided that the entertainment of seeing a mere mortal attempt to grasp the secrets of the cosmos would be more diverting, and agreed to take Lo’Kresh on as his pupil.

Under the bemused tutelage of this Son of the Flame, Lo’kresh learned to capture moments in time, even as tree sap imprisons the honeybee and becomes precious amber, and to bend the elements and aethers of reality to his will.

As Lo’kresh pursued this knowledge, he gradually lost interest in the stuff of mortal life, even as he lost track of time’s passage. So it was that he awoke one day to find his body suffering from an unknown number of days without sustenance, drink, or sunlight.

“This will never do,” said Lo’kresh to himself, “for what good is knowledge if I die before I can make use of it? I must acquire a servant to see to my earthly needs, for the mighty Djinn have none, nor any understanding of the necessities of mortal men.”

Full of the secrets that he had acquired, the young wizard decided to set off westward across the desert in search of a suitable caretaker, taking with him only a bag made from the carpet on which he sometimes slept. He waited for a day when Al-A’amash was absent - which happened as often as not - and determined where the nearest slave market lay.

With the first step of his journey, before his slipper touched a grain of sand, Lo’kresh trapped the moment, and so journeyed far beyond the desert in no time at all, coming to Mystras, sister city to fallen Sparta. Here it was still night, and the city slumbered while Pirnha Lo’Kresh wandered its streets in search of the slave market.

Eventually he found that place, and sat upon his bag to await the sunrise and the market’s opening, making himself invisible to passers-by, as the Djinn had taught him.

He saw the shepherd boys driving their families’ sheep to pasture, and the girls sent to carry water. He saw the merchants arrive at their stalls, which ringed the slave market, with carts full of items for sale, which they arranged with practiced hands. Before long the braziers were lit, and all manner of delicious smells danced on the wind - savory lamb and roasted goat meat, chickens, figs and olives, spices and wood smoke, nuts and honey.

Eventually a man came and set to sweeping the dust from the raised wooden platform at the center of the square, a sure sign that the slave traders were en route. A crowd began to gather, eating breakfast from the carts and talking amongst themselves about the weather, trade, politics, and women.

Lo’Kresh ignored them, his mind on other matters. He had no abode, but he had become immune to the elements. A slave would not be.That meant raising a house from the dust - a simple matter, but why raise a house when a palace was just as easy? Besides, cleaning it would give his caretaker something to do besides seeing to it that he ate, drank, and made his ablutions each day. And while Al-A’amash, was a great teacher, the Djinn not as he was, and did not understand his desire for conversation, nor did he understand what the Djinn’s people did in place of it. It would be pleasant to have a… well, not a companion, obviously, but someone with whom he could at least converse about the weather.

She must be intelligent, if not educated, thought Pirnha Lo’Kresh. Diligent in her duties and well-spoken, fastidious and curious about the world. But does such a woman even exist, let alone as a slave?

It was with this thought in the forefront of his mind that Lo’Kresh saw the slavers’ wagons arrive, drawn by ancient horses, full of human cargo. As each drew to a stop behind the selling platform, their masters hopped down and approached their fellows, greeting them and conversing in low tones.

After a time, they drew lots to determine in what order they would ascend the platform to auction their wares. A tall and swarthy fellow in a blue robe went first. His slaves were mostly heavy laborers, great dark men as muscular as bulls, capable of carrying blocks of cut stone to build homes, bridges, and temples. The next, a fellow with an oiled mustache that fell nearly to his sash, sold exotic, beautiful women in every shade, who could serve equally well as handmaidens or courtesans. The third, a bedraggled man in a red silk caftan, sold elderly serving wenches from the west and skinny sailors, wizened by decades of salt and sun.

By now the wizard was getting bored, having seen nothing that drew his attention, let alone his purse, and eventually dozed off. When he awoke, all but one of the slavers had gone, and most of the crowd with them. The sun was directly overhead, but Lo’Kresh had learned to redirect its heat away from his body, and was comfortably cool.

He stretched, yawned, and saw that the remaining slave merchant was having difficulty getting the price that he wanted for his final sale of the day, and Lo’Kresh soon saw why: It was a young woman, great with child. A pregnant slave could mean anywhere from one to three or more additional backs to toil, or to sell at a fat profit. This had not been lost on the slave merchant, but no one in the crowd would even meet his asking price.

Lo’Kresh considered. He had no desire for additional mouths to feed, nor need of money. The mother might die in childbirth, leaving him no better off than he was now. Perhaps it would be best to return another day.

He stood up and prepared to depart, rolling up his square of carpet and tucking it into his pocket as the merchant’s frustrated exhortations utterly failed to sway the crowd.

Suddenly, he heard a woman’s voice call out.

“Master, where are you going? Do you not know that I am meant to go with you, and only you?”

Curious, Lo’Kresh turned back, only to find the woman’s eyes fixed on him. He looked behind himself, but there was no one there. He glanced at his legs, but saw only air, as was natural when one was invisible.

“Do not forsake me, Master,” called the woman. “For it is destiny that has brought us together.”

“Woman, silence your tongue, if you wish to keep it!” hissed the slave trader. He raised his whip.

Lo’Kresh took a large step to the left. The woman’s eyes followed him.

“Yes, Master - I see you,” she said.

The wizard froze the moment, and the sunlight took on a grey cast. He stroked his beard, as he always did when thinking, and strode up to the platform. The woman’s eyes remain fixed on the spot where he had been, the slaver’s whip poised above her back.

Lo’Kresh made a slow circle around her, noting her soft palms, lithe body, and long, well-groomed hair. Clearly, she had not been a slave for long. Her clothing might be cast-offs, but her bearing suggested that she had come from a family of means.

“Wake,” he said, and the woman turned immediately to him.

“Thank you, Master,” she said. Her eyes fell on the slaver. She reached up, took the whip from his hand, and coiled it around the man’s throat, as tightly as she could.

“How is it that you can see me?” said Lo’Kresh, stroking his beard.

The woman faced him, and smiled. “My father was an Ifrit,” she said. “He came to my mother after her family’s caravan died in a sandstorm. I was born the same day. I have no magic, but I can see when it is at work.”

Lo’Kresh thought on this, and nodded. “The Djinn have few women,” he said. “I have heard that some take human females as mates. But where is your father now?”

“Sulaimon, the Great and Terrible, imprisoned him in a brass vessel when he would not speak the name of Allah,” she said. “Sulaimon burned my mother as a witch and cast the vessel into the sea. I have not seen my father since.”

“Is the father of your child also an Ifrit?” said Lo’Kresh.

“No,” she said, smiling bitterly. She nodded at the garotted slaver. “It was this dog.”

“I see,” said Lo’Kresh. “And what will you do when the villagers see that you have murdered your Master?”

“You are my Master.”

“You will be a mother soon. I need a servant, someone who will see to my house and the needs of my physical body.”

“One need not preclude the other, Master.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not. Or I can simply remove the child…”

“No!”

“Why not? You clearly have no love for the father.”

“That does not mean I have no love for my daughter. She is like to be my only child.”

“You know that your child is a girl?”

The woman put a gentle hand over her belly. “I do.”

Pernha considered. If the woman did not perform her tasks well, he could abandon her on a mountaintop, or in the middle of the sea, and procur another. If she did, he would soon have two servants, and the second could take the place of the first when the time came.

“Very well,” he said. “Take my hand.”

The woman did so.

“By what name are you called?” he said.

“Llinuwe, Master.”

“Hm. I do not know this word. What does it mean?”

“Far-seeing.”

“Hm. Hold my hand tightly, Llinuwe, for we stride on the edge of the universe.”