travisheermann.com

Pat Kapera has been a familiar figure around the gaming industry for some years. His biggest splash to date has been the Spycraft Role-Playing Game, a high-tech, James Bond-meets-Man from U.N.C.L.E-meets-Mission: Impossible espionage game. He has also worked on some of the most prominent licensed properties in the hobby gaming industry, including the Battlestar Galactica RPG. The hobby gaming market is a HUGE potential market for fledgling writers, as a many of the game companies are actively looking for talented, creative writers. It’s a great place to get some experience and writing credits. The downside is that pay rates are commensurate with the level of experience they’re looking for–2-3 cents a word in many cases. Unless of course you manage to start and run your own game company, like Pat Kapera. He’s made a go of it with a hot property, and is a darn fine fellow with whom to sit down and have a beer.

TH: Can you give a brief arc of your career as a writer/author?

PK: Well, gravity can be a harsh mistress, especially when you’re carrying around the mass I am, so I’m not sure if I’d call it an arc. Maybe a pond skip, or a tractor pull.

I fell into writing, actually - started out thinking I’d avoid growing up as long as I could before settling into whatever middle class job best suited my talents at the moment and kept me out of prison longest.Then I befriended a small inky fellow named Jim Pinto, whom I later caught at the Alderac Entertainment Group booth at a local con. Assuming he was trying to steal something, I alerted AEG’s head mistress on site, Maureen Yates, and much to my surprise she informed me they’d hired him as the editor of Shadis Magazine. (She apologized, of course, but explained that due to California labor law it would be too expensive to take the offer back.)

I figured that if they hired Jim they’d hire anyone, so I asked whether they had any spots open for someone with RPG experience (playing, not writing - remember, I was still a professional slacker at this point). Lo and behold, they were looking for an editing intern and she brought me on under DJ Trindle. I worked on a few books, each time doing a little more, and by the time my internship was over I’d scored a cover credit on Way of the Lion for Legend of the Five Rings. They brought me on full-time after that - again, I blame some fluke of the California labor laws - and I spent the next eight years working on pretty much everything they made.
During the last few years that I was there I decided to carve out my own little corner of things with Spycraft, which is still a big chunk of what I do today. Spycraft opened a lot of doors for me and let me work on a ton of exciting new projects, like the Stargate SG-1 roleplaying game, which I co-developed with the amazingly talented Rob Vaux.

I left AEG in 2005 and set up shop with my two co-designers on Spycraft’s second edition, Alex Flagg and Scott Gearin. We formed Crafty Games (www.crafty-games.com), which is the new home for Spycraft and many of our other endeavors. I’m also freelancing, with gigs like the Battlestar Galactica RPG and some other stuff I can’t talk about quite yet.

Boy that was long-winded! Guess *that’s* what keeps all this mass aloft.

TH: What is The Story of Pat? Is it a novel? A short story? A poem? A limerick?

PK: I’d like it to be a great and expansive TV series bible, with lots of carefully constructed character arcs and big, WOW-ZINGER cliffhangers. Sometimes it actually feels like that. Other times it feels like a phone number drunkenly scrawled on the back of a cocktail napkin - so full of promise, if only I could make out the last digit…

TH: When did you know that you wanted to be a writer? How did you know?

PK: The first time I saw my work in print. No joke. I’d dreamed of being a writer before that, of course - who doesn’t? - but it was the physical reality of it that finally sank in and took hold.

TH: A lot of established writers seem to have a stack of writing somewhere that will never a see the light of day. I’m talking about stuff that perhaps helped you learn and develop your craft, like the five novels the author had to write before he could get to the good one. Do you have anything like this?

PK: Like anyone I’ve written my fair share of stuff that’s never been published but my abrupt start didn’t really allow for much material without a predetermined home. In that way my career’s been more like that of a journalist than a writer - my successes and failures have all been fairly public. I appreciate that, actually. I think it brings me closer to the audience and invests them more heavily in my work.

TH: Of course, most writers want to have bestsellers or make some sort of artistic or literary impact. Is there some unrealized accomplishment that you’re striving for in the near future?

PK: I want to live comfortably - not extravagantly, just comfortably - working with people I respect and admire on things that I love. Half of that statement’s already true, so I consider myself a pretty lucky man.

TH: What are some of the things that inspire you?

PK: Everything inspires: music, places, people, feelings, things I watch and read. Every writer should develop the discipline to watch the world with a scavenger’s eyes because everything’s worth re-using eventually.

TH: What are the most successful ways you have used to promote yourself and your work? Are there any promising marketing avenues that you might yet explore?

PK: Be approachable and talk to everyone. I spent a goodly chunk of my first few years as a writer just getting to know people, and I still try to get out there as much as I possibly can. There is no better promotional tool than you, and you should use and abuse that tool for all it’s worth.

I’m always on the lookout for new ways to promote. It comes naturally, as I spent a few years at AEG wearing a marketing hat. Plus, I’ve seen more than a few projects fail not because they were bad but because no one knew they existed. Sadly, though, I don’t think there’s a “magic bullet.” Sure, folks occasionally stumble on a brilliant scheme for a particular product but ultimately promotion’s all about diligent elbow grease. Learn to spot the opportunities and seize them when they show up. Like this one, for example: www.crafty-games.com.

TH: Have your reached the point at which you realized that you had “made it” as a writer and author? If so, can you describe the milestone or circumstances? Do you recall how that felt?

PK: I think I’ve achieved a certain moderate success in the hobby gaming market but there are still quite a few avenues for me to explore, so I wouldn’t say I’ve “made it,” no. If I had to pick a single highlight thus far, I’d say it was the AEG dinner at the GAMA trade show where we premiered Spycraft’s first edition. AEG put on a great spread that night, with hundreds of books set out at the tables, one to a guest. It was a sea of silver across the entire hall.

I remember DJ saying, “This is all for you.” I don’t think I’ve ever stood prouder.

TH: Some say that professional writers have to look at themselves as a business, a branded commodity. Do you take that approach?

PK: Not all the time but I see the value in it. Especially in this age, when the cult of personality is so pervasive, I think it’s critical for anyone selling their services to take stock of their perceived value as a name. That’s true in any profession, obviously, but even more so for writers and other entertainers who attract and nurture fans. As we all know, fans will make up their minds and proselytize whether you want them to or not. You might as well get involved in the process.

TH: What can readers expect to see from you in the near future? What are you working on?

PK: Right now Crafty Games is dancing around the 800-lb. gorilla’s feet with Fantasy Craft, a traditional adventure gaming toolset. This fall we’ll be putting out Ten Thousand Bullets, a street noir opus by Alex Flagg. Both use our in-house system and will be supported by a range of PDF products.

I’m also wrapping up the long-gestating World on Fire series (our current espionage setting), which was the only thing I left unfinished at AEG. Crafty inherited it when we broke away from the company and it’s had something of a turbulent life since, so it’s exciting to finally get all that material in players’ hands.
On the freelance front I’m going to be editing the Colonial Military book for Battlestar Galactica, and I’m hoping I can follow up with some other ideas I’ve had for the line. Jamie Chambers and his crew have been really open to new ideas, and I love working with MWP (Margaret Weis Productions).

Beyond that… We’ll see. I try not to plan *too* far out, as it kills your ability to adapt to new opportunities - and there are always new opportunities.

TH: What is the most memorable moment (good, bad, or other) you have had in your life as an author?

PK: I don’t know that I could narrow it down to just one actually. Professional writing has changed my life in so many ways and provided me with so many incredible experiences. I’ve visited other countries and met people who I know will remain close friends forever. I’ve been privileged to work with wildly talented folks on projects that a lot of aspiring writers never dream of tackling.

Most memorable… Outside the launch of Spycraft, it might be a tie between all the times someone whose work I’ve read and loved for years, or whose career I’ve followed since well before I started at AEG, took the time to chat with me. My earliest of these memories was Peter Adkison, who went out of his way to invite me to one of his parties at my very first GenCon (about a week after I was hired at AEG). Another was Tracy Hickman, who randomly invited Kevin Wilson (the other father of Spycraft) and I to lunch a few years later. That’s one of the things I love about the hobby gaming market so much - it’s filled with genuinely good people.

As a fellow resident of Nebraska (how few of us there are), I first encountered Robert Reed some years ago at a local science-fiction convention. He has built an extensive and award-winning body of work as a science-fiction author, primarily along hard-sf lines. In spite of a tremendously busy writing schedule, he still finds time to attend and support the local cons. If there’s a magazine that publishes science-fiction, it’s a good bet you’ll find Robert Reed stories.

TH: Can you tell me a little bit about your writing career? Credits, general work, accomplishments, etc.

RR: I have been a professional writer for a little more than two decades, and in that time I’ve published eleven novels and probably more than 170 works of shorter fiction. My work has been lucky enough to be nominated for the Hugo Award seven times, plus a Nebula and a World Fantasy Award. During the Reagan administration, I was the first winner of the L. Ron Hubbard Writers-of-the-Future Award. Last year, my story, “The Billion Eves”, won a Hugo as the best novella of 2006. Perhaps I’m best known for a series of stories and novels about a giant starship, the enigmatic Great Ship, and its hidden world, Marrow.

TH: What is The Story of Bob? Is it a novel? A short story? A poem? A limerick?

RR: I’ve managed some fine little stories and worthy novels, or at least that’s what I tell myself. But my best work is usually about 25,000 words long, and it feels much like a compressed novel—a lot happens, much time and great distances are crossed, and at the end of the story, my devoted readers come away wishing that it didn’t end.

TH: It’s said nowadays that novellas are the most difficult form to market because print markets are on the downturn and there just isn’t the page space to print a 25k piece. Perhaps this isn’t true after one has been nominated for a Hugo Award seven times. Do you find that novellas are a more difficult market than short stories and novels?

RR: I don’t know when selling these odd ducks was easy. No magazine can afford to publish more than one or two of them per issue, and that’s both a shame and an opportunity. Sell a novella and you gain instant attention, if only because you’re the biggest bird in your neighborhood. I do enjoy an advantage or two, what with being a SF writer with a good track history. But I get rejected too, and I’m sure that there have been incidents where a 5,000 word tale on the same subject would have been taken without hesitation. As for the vagaries of novel sales…well, my experience is that big books exist in an entirely different ecosystem. With more than a thousand titles a year, or something like that, the new writer might have better luck in finding a market. And then later, when he or she doesn’t garner enormous sales figures, the easy market dries up. Hence, writers sometimes reinvent themselves later under a new name.

TH: Is there something in particular that attracts you to this length?

RR: In a novella, a whole lot of crap can happen, and you can build momentum and suspense and leave room for a surprise or three. Stories are cut down to the most essential elements, and novels (this might be an unfair generalization on my part) are big fat clumsy efforts where the reader can snooze for a couple chapters and miss nothing of consequence. Hence my love for the middle way.

TH: When did you know that you wanted to be a writer? How did you know?

RR: I wrote when I was a young teen, but I didn’t put an eye on the available markets until I was seventeen. The next ten years felt like a self-centered experiment in personal abuse. I quite write, at least once intending never to try it again. There were days when I hoped that I could move on, finding an ordinary happy life. But I kept tinkering with stories, and then I started to sell. Yet even the early years of success felt like an in indulgence. I can’t point to a moment or incident that made me see that this business, this putting down words on paper, was what I would do for the rest of my lucid life. But apparently, that is my calling.

TH: Do you have a stack of less than stellar writing stuck away somewhere? I’m talking about stuff that perhaps helped you learn and develop your craft, but will never see the light of day. Most established writers seem to have something like this, like the five novels he or she had to write before they could get to the good one. Describe yours.

RR: I’ve got a stack of early promise buried somewhere. I never reread my old work, although I seem to remember enough that I can occasionally still steal the better ideas for current projects. “A Billion Eves” was a dramatic retooling of something strange but immature: The idea that a young man who could move matter to an alternate universe would gladly steal away a house full of sorority girls, colonizing an empty earth with himself as the only male.

TH: I sift through the slush and critique a lot of short fiction for a couple of online venues, and I see a lot of stuff where the writer simply does not have a grasp of basic story structure and character. Was there a point where you had an epiphany, where suddenly some major cornerstone of publishable writing fell into place for you? Or has it been more of an ephemeral/incremental evolution, an organic process?

RR: A thousand little epiphanies, and when I look back, I can’t remember most of them.

TH: Of course, most writers want to have a bestseller or make some sort of artistic or literary impact. You’ve already won some of the most prestigious awards in science-fiction, but do you have an immediate close-range goal or a writing dream that hasn’t yet been achieved? Is there some accomplishment that you’re striving for in the near future?

RR: Some years ago, two different friends, acting independently, insisted on giving me the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator. There are questions about how robust the test is at determining anything about personalities. Fill out the questionnaire on two different occasions, and maybe your category changes. But to friends and others, I always seemed wired in peculiar ways, and they wanted answers. Both times, I turned out the same: INTJ. (Intuitive, iNtroverted, Thinking, Judging.) My label was “The Scientist.” I like to play with my own work, and I don’t relish applause, and I’m not all that social, and what matters most is my next project, and I have this powerful indifference to what the world thinks about my work. That’s not to say that I’m without feelings and can’t be stung by criticism. But generally, I don’t lie awake at night wondering if anybody will remember me when I’m gone. They won’t. I can’t change that. I just want to have fun with my work for as long as I can. What matters most is my next works, nothing else.

By the way, I have a friend who also tested out as INTJ. We Scientists are supposed to be compatible with a type called The Journalist. She married a reporter for the local paper, and so did I. Is that coincidence, or is the grand scheme of the universe being unveiled?

TH: What are some of the things that most inspire you?

RR: Writing for me is reading on steroids. I love building a new story because I often grow so involved with the characters—a blessing that rarely hits me when I read other people’s work. I live for those rare and delicious moments when the words on the page take off and I am the bystander, watching as the tale shows me what will happen next.

TH: What are the most successful ways you have used to promote yourself and your work?

RR: I’ve done a few local readings and signings, but in general, they are useless sinkholes of time. In any one location, SF fans are demographically thin. The best promotion—besides writing well and getting lucky in selling to a publishing house with PR resources and the willingness to use them—has been going to conventions where I can be seen and talked to and people get interested enough in my work to seek it out in the dealer room. Although in the last couple years, I’d guess that my web page, www.robertreedwriter.com, is probably an even better means of getting my words out to the world at large.

TH: Do you have some promotional ideas or avenues in mind that you haven’t tried yet?

RR: I’m thinking of flying into Pakistan and capturing bin Laden. That or dating Britney. That’s how you get attention for yourself in our age.

TH: Some say that professional writers have to look at themselves as a business, a branded commodity. Have you reached that point? How do you handle the financial side of writing?

RR: I’m cheap and I remain organized enough to pay taxes. Those are my main attributes. I know writers who are very, very good at being businessmen and businesswomen, but while I can both recognize and applaud their talents, I am not wired that way.

TH: What can readers expect to see from you in the near future? What are you working on?

RR: I always have stories in the works. I just finished a quickly written but surprisingly competent novella for a SF Book Club original anthology. “Alone” is the story’s name, and it will help define what my Great Ship is and why it matters to humanity and the universe at large.

TH: What is the most memorable moment (good, bad, or other) you have had in your writing life?

RR: I could mention half a hundred moments while writing that are blessings to me. This story, that scene…the stuff that makes me glad to be a good typist who knows when to get out of the way of the story. But for no particular reason, I’ll share an incident at one of my earlier autographing sessions. It was the first time that I had an actual line waiting for my arrival—a big surprise, not unpleasant in and of itself. But the quirky memorable incident involved a young man who waited patiently for his turn, and then he kneeled in front of my table, and with an impressed and very serious manner asked, “So what kind of childhood did you have, anyway?”

I’m still not sure what to make of that question. I can see implications, good and bad, and that’s why it sticks in my skull.

I first heard of Greg Van Eekhout on the podcast Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing.  Turned out that by that time that he’d already been nominated for a Nebula award and had a couple of dozen short fiction sales in publications like Asimov’s and Year’s Best Fantasy.  His first novel, Norse Code, is forthcoming next year from Bantam Dell.

He offers some valuable insights into what it takes to make the jump from amateur to pro, the things that separate the wannabes from the pros.

TH: What was your biggest personal hurdle in making the jump from unpublished writer to published author?  How did you overcome it?

GVE: The hurdle was making myself write lots. Lots and lots, and then lots more. I had to stop approaching writing like a sometime hobby and give it the time and respect it deserves. I’m not a binge writer. I can’t wait for inspiration to strike. I know some very successful writers who are like that, but I’m not one of them. I have to write consistently, almost every day, and once I realized that, my output dramatically increased, and having stories to sell is what enabled me to get published.

TH: Was there a moment of epiphany when you realized what the great writers were doing?  A moment when you grasped “it” (”it” being that ephemeral something that separates publishable writers from unpublishable ones)?

GVE: Great writers have distinct voices, brilliant skills that they use in the service of delivering a pleasurable reading experience, and they have something to say that’s worth saying. But what is “it” that they’re doing? I don’t know. I think you can learn to be publishable, but you can’t learn to be great. You can aim for greatness, but greatness is what happens when hard work intersects with brilliant talent. Writing is hard, so great writers leave me awe-struck.

TH: Can you give a brief arc of your career as a writer/author?

GVE: Yikes, doesn’t an arc usually describe a downward trajectory? I hope I’m still trending upward!
I started submitting stories when I was in college, mostly little splatterpunk horror stories that I’d send to small-press magazines. Typically, they’d accept my work and then I’d never hear from them again, nor would anybody else.  I’m sure I killed at least half a dozen magazines that way. I started selling science fiction and fantasy shorts about seven or eight years ago at a modest but consistent rate of a few per year to so-called pro markets, zines, anthologies, and podcasts.

And this year I sold my first novel to Bantam Dell. It’ll be out sometime around summer 2009.

TH: So what can you tell us about your Bantam/Dell novel?

GVE: Norse Code takes place in Los Angeles and a bunch of locations from Norse mythology. You’ve got your Ragnarok, the end of the world. And you’ve got your Norse gods, most of whom know they’re going to die, but some of whom know they’re set to inherit a new, green world after everything else is destroyed. So, this latter group of gods gets tired of waiting around for Ragnarok and decides to be proactive and get the end of the world underway. That’s the situation that one of the minor Norse gods, Hermod, and his companions, a modern-day valkyrie and her Viking thug, find themselves in.

TH: What is The Story of Greg?  Is it a novel?  A short story?  A poem?  A limerick?

GVE: It’s a very messy rough draft.

I’m actually a little uncomfortable with the idea of a real, human life being a story, because fiction tends to impose a structure and a shape on the lives of characters that I don’t see existing in real life. So, in that sense, fiction has a way of distorting the truth about what a human life is. At the same time, as a reader and a writer, I crave that structure, and I think portraying lives within fictional constraints has value. It’s another way of seeing things, of  getting to some truths about human nature. I haven’t yet reconciled this distortion vs. truth dichotomy.

So, yeah, my story is a rough draft that could probably benefit from a critique workshop or two.

TH: When did you know that you wanted to be a writer?  How did you know?

GVE: I didn’t decide that I wanted to be a writer until high school. Before that, I entertained myself with a lot of proto-storytelling activities, usually involving a mix of drawing and writing: world-building, drawing maps, creating characters, writing up starship crew manifests. But I wasn’t thinking, “These are activities that will prepare me to be a writer.” I was just having fun.

Gradually, as I started to get positive feedback on creative writing assignments in school, I started to think a little more seriously about writing as a career. The turning point was somewhere in college when I realized that if I wanted to be a writer, I needed to stop just thinking and talking about writing. I needed to write and submit stories. That’s when I realized that I didn’t want to be a writer, but that I *was* a writer.

TH: A lot of established writers seem to have a stack of writing somewhere that will never a see the light of day, like the five novels the author had to write before he could get to the good one. Do you have anything like this?

GVE: I have a pretty substantial collection of rejection letters, a lot of them for stories that I’m happy to let sit in the proverbial trunk. But as for novels, I sold the second book I wrote, so I guess I’m doing my learning out in public.

TH: Of course, most writers want to have bestsellers or make some sort of artistic or literary impact. Is there some unrealized accomplishment that you’re striving for in the near future?

GVE: I want to write for the business woman stuck in the middle coach seat of a 12-hour nonstop whose choices are to either escape by reading a potboiler or escape by trying to get sucked down the vacuum toilet. I would also like my books to be considered classics worth reading 6000 years from now. In the shorter term, if I come to be considered a reliable source of quality, intelligent entertainment, I’ll be very happy.

TH: What are some of the things that inspire you?

GVE: Travel. Specifically, road trips. I love rolling through unfamiliar places where I’d never find myself other than for the fact that they exist between where I came from and where I’m going. Last year my girlfriend and I took a rather epic trip from Arizona, where we lived at the time, to Ohio, where I spent a week at a writers’ workshop while my girlfriend tooled around on her own, and then back to Arizona. I love soaking in geography and dilapidated buildings and especially weird roadside tourist attractions. Moving through those kinds of settings while feeling unstuck in time really gets the story-making parts of my brain working.

TH: Some people find that writers conferences and workshops can change one’s life as a writer and kick the butt into high gear.  Was that your experience in Ohio?

GVE: Absolutely. Blue Heaven’s been extraordinarily valuable. I had doubts that I could ever finish Norse Code, much less get an agent and sell it. But my fellow worskhoppers not only gave me great feedback that helped me improve the book, they also gave me the encouragement I needed to keep hammering away. Also, they’re great role models. I thought I had strong work ethic, but after seeing how some of them approached work, I realized I needed to step up my game. And they’re just bunches of fun to hang out with.

TH: What are the most successful ways you have used to promote yourself and your work? Are there any promising marketing avenues that you might yet explore?

GVE: I know having a blog and doing interviews like this are promotion and marketing activities, but I don’t think I have a marketing bone in my body. I’m not against it. My mind just doesn’t work that way. I like writing about my life and work in my blog, and I’m always happy to mention publications and such. But whenever I start to approach things as deliberate marketing, I start to feel like I need to take an antihistamine.

On the other hand, up until now all my published work has been short fiction, and short stories don’t lend themselves as easily to promotion as books. So maybe my entire approach will change once my novel comes out.

TH: Have your reached the point at which you realized that you had “made it” as a writer and author?  If so, can you describe the milestone or circumstances?  Do you recall how that felt?

GVE: No. Never. Not even close. Even if I publish 100 books and they’re best-sellers and they win awards and school kids are forced to write term papers about them, I won’t be satisfied. The great writers are *so* great, and even just the good writers I admire are very, very good. I don’t think in terms of making it. I think in terms of working, always trying to get better, and hoping to make incrementally more money with every book so that I can afford to spend my waking hours writing while keeping myself in beer and snacks.

TH: Some say that professional writers have to look at themselves as a business, a branded commodity.  Do you take that approach?

GVE: Nothing against writers who look at themselves that way, but if I wanted to think in terms of branded commodities, I’d have probably become a brand manager for Proctor and Gamble and enjoyed a respectable career. I’m definitely not Chips Ahoy. I’m a homemade plate of cookies.

TH: What kind of cookies?

GVE: What do you want? I’m willing to pander.

TH: What can readers expect to see from you in the near future?  What are you working on?

GVE: Norse Code, my contemporary fantasy novel about Norse gods and the end of the world, comes out in summer ‘09. I’m days away from finishing the first draft of a YA book about the survivors of Atlantis washing up on a weird beach town in central California. And then I’m planning to start work on a series of books about an alternative version of Los Angeles run by bone-eating sorcerers. The first volume is called The Osteomancer’s Son, based on my short story of the same name. If all goes according to plan, that should keep me busy for a few years, anyway.

TH: What is the most memorable moment (good, bad, or other) you have had in your life as an author?

GVE: You know, the momentous moments never seem momentous as they’re happening. My first professional story sale was something I’d been looking forward to for a long time, and when it happened I was certainly happy and pleased, but it was kind of like, “Okay, cool! Now what?”  Same thing with my first book sale. Not that these events don’t have enormous impact on my life. I guess I kind of look at my writing career as a bunch of amazing things spread out over long periods of time.

I first became aware of Dru Pagliassotti when I had my first short story publication in The Harrow, a monthly online journal for horror and dark fantasy. She’s been the editor at that fine publication for some years. Her name is so distinctive that I recognized it immediately when I saw her first novel, Clockwork Heart, on the shelf in Border’s. The book has been called steampunk, urban fantasy, fantasy romance. By all accounts, it’s hard to classify, but it’s getting good reviews. She’s also one of the editors of two horror anthologies, Fear of the Unknown and Midnight Lullabies.

All that and she’s a university professor.

TH: When did you know that you wanted to be a writer? How did you know?

DP: I don’t remember a time in which I *didn’t* want to be a writer. I’ve always loved books, to the point at which my teachers suspected something was wrong with me because I’d rather sit in a corner reading than play with the other kids. …I still do. And I’ve always wanted to write a book of my own.

TH: Can you give a brief arc of your career as a writer/author?

DP: I haven’t published enough for my career to be said to have an “arc.” With any luck, I’m still standing on an upward slope.

If you want a longer answer — although I’ve wanted to publish a novel all my life, I was distracted first by grad school and then by the demands of my new job. It was only after I felt comfortable as a professor that I began to concentrate on getting my fiction published. I’d been editing The Harrow for years, so I put my experience on the other side of the slush pile to work for me. I began receiving a few acceptance letters in 2003, and it’s been slow but steady since then.

TH: What has been the biggest reward, and the biggest tribulation, of your work on The Harrow?

DP: The biggest reward of working on The Harrow comes when a writer emails me and says, “thanks, this is my first publication!” That’s as much of a thrill for me as it is for the writer, I think. I love to think The Harrow is helping writers break into the field. That’s our mission, after all!

The Harrow’s also helped me deal with rejection slips better. You can’t spend years writing rejections and still take them personally. In all the years I worked on fiction, I never sent out a rejection thinking, “this author is a talentless hack!” Rejection’s always about the story, not the person.

The biggest tribulation is how much time it takes. I’m lucky to have a great staff right now that’s taken a lot of the work off my shoulders, but there’s still a lot of time involved in putting out a monthly webzine and the occasional anthology. I regularly wonder if The Harrow is worth it — usually right around the end of the month when the next issue needs to be completed — and so far the answer’s always been “yes.”

TH: Do you have any plans or thoughts to make a print anthology of stories from The Harrow?

DP: We’ve put out two anthologies so far, Fear of the Unknown from Echelon Press and Midnight Lullabies from The Harrow Press. We have plans for a third, but it’s been sidelined until the anthology editor and I can get our acts together. That time thing, you know!

Our anthologies have all been collections of new stories and poems. I don’t think we’ll ever anthologize works we’ve previously published, because they’re available online in The Harrow’s archive.

TH: Have your reached the point at which you realized that you had ³made it² as a writer and author? If so, can you describe the milestone or circumstances? Do you recall how that felt?

DP: The popular view of “made it” means becoming a commercial or critical success. From that perspective, no, I haven’t made it. However, at a personal level, yes, I believe I’ve made it — getting a novel published realizes a dream I’ve held since childhood. How many people can say they’ve attained a childhood dream? I’m deeply satisfied and grateful to have reached this point.

TH: What is The Story of Dru? Is it a novel? A short story? A poem? A limerick?

DP: Sometimes I suspect my story is a bad joke. In more optimistic moments I hope it’s a koan — difficult to understand but spiritually useful in the end.

TH: A lot of established writers seem to have a stack of writing somewhere that will never a see the light of day, like the five novels the author had to write before he could get to the good one. Do you have anything like this?

DP: Of course! I have several digital folders of unfinished work and “needs complete overhaul before it can be treated seriously” early stories and novels. However, most of my high-school writing was banged out on an old Smith Corona, and those stacks of slick, erasable paper have long since vanished in the wake of multiple moves, keeping the world safe from my juvenilia.

TH: Of course, most writers want to have bestsellers or make some sort of artistic or literary impact. Is there some unrealized accomplishment that you¹re striving for in the near future?

DP: I’d like to write for The Weekly World News.

TH: So do you have plans to put your stamp on the Bat Boy and Baboon Girl mythos in The Weekly World News? What attracts you to what is probably the most lurid of all the tabloids?

DP: How could anyone not love The Weekly World News? Weird facts, strange fiction, and lots of PhotoShop — WWN is what happened to the pulps. And you can pick up a copy with your groceries.

I’m particularly fond of the aliens-in-government stories, although a piece about a hunter who shot an angel sat on my office door for a few days (”I thought it was a bird!”). Have I mentioned that I teach at a religiously affiliated university? I recently read that the alien Bible has just been translated — they follow the teachings of Oprah. I’m confident I could contribute to the WWN’s further investigation of aliens and religion.

TH: What are some of the things that inspire you?

DP: I find travel and new experiences inspirational because they expose me to different ways of life and thought; I enjoy reading detailed social histories for the same reason. It would be all too easy for me to think that my life as a white, middle-class, highly educated American is normal, because I’m in a demographic celebrated as normal by the ubiquitous U.S. media. From a global perspective, however, I’m living a very anomalous lifestyle, and going abroad gives me glimpses of other possibilities and perspectives that find their way into my fiction.

I also appreciate reading about and talking to people who are pursuing creative, meaningful lives doing what they love, especially the ones who are coloring outside the lines. They challenge our cultural messages of what we “should” do or be, and they show us alternative ways of making a living and defining success. I think that’s inspiring, but it’s also a little intimidating.

TH: Ray Bradbury recommends feeding one’s Muse with a plethora of life experience, and travel or living abroad is certainly included among those most powerful of life experiences. Do you find that your travel experiences show up in your fiction?

DP: In subtle ways, yes — settings, smells, clothing, weather. And I suspect my love for travel comes through in Taya’s character in Clockwork Heart. More directly, I’ve been reading a lot about India this last year, and another prof and I took a class of students there for three weeks in January. As a result, I’ve been toying with a fantasy novel that draws on various regions of India as its background culture. Most fantasies are set in quasi-European cultures, but I enjoy fantasies that explore other settings, so I’d like to try one, myself. We’ll see….

TH: Some say that professional writers have to look at themselves as a business, a branded commodity. Do you take that approach?

DP: What an unfortunate brand name: Pagliassotti. Hard to spell and hard to pronounce. I’m sure a marketing expert would advise me to change my name to the single word “Dru,” so readers would have some hope of remembering it when they’re in the bookstore….

To be honest, I don’t like the branding/business approach to life. It’s an offshoot of our cultural obsession with money and consumerism, and as an advocate of voluntary simplicity, I find myself in a constant struggle to resist that mindset. If I were to speak as an academic, I’d now lapse into dire warnings about subject positions, media messages, and the ideological naturalization of consumerism. Suffice to say that while I understand the reasoning behind that approach, I find it distasteful.

TH: What are the most successful ways you have used to promote yourself and your work? Are there any promising marketing avenues that you might yet explore?

DP: I’m an introvert, so I’m not very good at marketing. However, I enjoy writing and have experience with regular columns (I used to be the guide to roleplaying games for About.Com), so when Clockwork Heart was accepted, I bowed to the inevitable and set up the finger-tangling DruPagliassotti.Com as my official blog. I write about whatever’s on my mind or happens to catch my eye. Lately I’ve been posting a lot about voluntary simplicity and anti-consumerism. Hey, maybe my “brand” will end up being resistance to branding….

Three teams of multimedia students at California Lutheran University created book promotion videos for Clockwork Heart, which I think is utterly fantastic. The videos aren’t online yet, but they will be, and I hope they’ll interest more readers in my book.

I’ve reluctantly arranged my first book signing at Borders in Thousand Oaks on June 7. I’m not convinced that book signings are great marketing strategies, especially for new writers, but I figure it’s a sort of rite of passage I’m obliged to go through.

But when it comes right down to it, I expect most casual readers buy a new book because they read a review about it, heard a friend recommend it, or are attracted by its cover and description. Juno Books sent out dozens of copies of Clockwork Heart to reviewers, and those reviews have helped spread my novel’s title across the web. Readers who comment they enjoyed the book or who tell their friends about it have also been a great marketing help. And finally, forget that old saying “don’t judge a book by its cover” — everyone does. So I’m grateful that artist Timothy Lantz created such an incredible cover for Clockwork Heart. Everyone comments on it, and I’m sure it’s prompted all sorts of bookstore patrons to pause and pick up the book. Design is part of marketing, too!

TH: What can readers expect to see from you in the near future? What are you working on?

DP: At the moment I’m working on a novel that’s grittier and gorier than Clockwork Heart. It’s a dark political fantasy about a city in the throes of a bloody revolution, and it features necromancers, ghouls, executions, riots, conspiracy, and murder. All three viewpoint characters are torn between the demands of duty and their personal beliefs, and they all find themselves in way over their heads. Right now I’m struggling my way through the final chapters … the end of a story is the hardest part to write. You need to wrap everything up in a way that’s both logical and satisfying, and that’s not always easy.

Award-winning Kevin J. Anderson kicked his writing career into high gear working on some of the biggest properties in the SF field, Star Wars, the X-Files, and Dune, which are probably the places most people have seen his books. I first encountered his work in the Star Wars Jedi Academy trilogy. But he created an impressive body of original work both before and after those series, and in recent years, he has branched out into film production and comics.

And with all that work in hand, soaring among the stratosphere of SF-dom, he still took the time to answer a few questions for Blogging the Muse. What a guy! If you would like to read more about him after the interview, check out his websites, www.wordfire.com and www.dunenovels.com .

TH: You’ve had a lot of success with Star Wars and Dune novels in recent years, but can you give a brief arc of your career as a writer/author?

KJA: I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a kid, and I began sending my stories to magazines when I was 12 years old. I finally got a few things published in small magazines, then a first novel (RESURRECTION, INC., nominated for the Bram Stoker Award), then several more novels, and after I had established myself as a successful author in my own right, I was asked to write STAR WARS books, which I loved. I kept writing original novels during all the years I worked for Lucasfilm, was nominated for the Nebula Award on one, sold another to Universal Studios, but the SW work also vastly increased my audience. Chris Carter at the X-FILES read and enjoyed my SW work, and he asked me to write the XF novels for him. I also got into writing comics, launched my own novel series, then partnered with Brian Herbert to carry on the DUNE series. My “Saga of Seven Suns” series has been a great international success, my DUNE books with Brian keep doing very well and the two of us have just become co-producers on Paramount’s new DUNE film. Brian and I have just agreed to do three more DUNE novels, and we’ve sold an original SF series, HELLHOLE, and I’m working on a fantasy series, TERRA INCOGNITA, about sailing ships and sea monsters. I’ve done two novels for DC Comics and HarperCollins, THE LAST DAYS OF KRYPTON and the forthcoming FIRST ENCOUNTER about the first meeting of Batman and Superman in the 1950s.

Career arc? I worked hard for my dream job, and now I’m doing my dream job.

TH: What are the pros and cons of working in someone else’s universe, like Star Wars and the X-files?

KJA: Wow, that’s a few articles’ worth right there. In short, you do have the constraints of working with already-established characters in a well-defined fictional universe. Sometimes the licensor is very easy to work with and they respect you as a creative professional; other times they are very difficult and rigid and don’t understand writers at all. However, my Star Wars, X-Files, and Dune work has earned me a very large and loyal audience who have followed me to my original fiction. But I was already a devoted fan of those universes, so I loved working in them.

TH: What did you do prior to diving into writing full time?

KJA: I was a technical writer for a large research laboratory, working with scientists to do technical papers and presentations.

TH: What is The Story of Kevin? Is it a novel? A short story? A poem? A limerick?

KJA: It’s a thick novel with lots of different plot threads. (And a very charming and heroic main character <g>)

TH: When did you know that you wanted to be a writer? How did you know?

KJA: After I saw the film of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS when I was 5, I was so captivated by the imaginative story, I started making up my own stories. I wrote them down from the time I was 8 years old. The stories kept coming to me, and I would watch my favorite TV shows and make up further adventures of the characters. (I think I wrote several hundred Star Trek adventures in high school.) There’s never been any doubt in my mind.

TH: A lot of established writers seem to have a stack of writing somewhere that will never a see the light of day, like the five novels the author had to write before he could get to the good one. Do you have anything like this?

KJA: I’ve got some, but I did manage to get a lot of it published in small press markets when I was clawing my way out of the slushpile. Of course, now when I see some of those old stories in magazines I cringe.

TH: I sift through the slush and critique a lot of short fiction for a couple of online venues, and I see a lot of stuff that simply is not publishable. Was there a point where you had an epiphany, where suddenly some major cornerstone of publishable writing fell into place for you? Or has it been more of an ephemeral/incremental evolution, an organic process?

KJA: I had 80 rejections before I had anything accepted, and even then it was still a long, gradual process. I’ve written hundreds of short stories, and a hundred novels. I think all that practice and training finally sank in.

TH: Of course, most writers want to have bestsellers or make some sort of artistic or literary impact. Is there some unrealized accomplishment that you’re striving for in the near future?

KJA: I’m very satisfied with my work and my career. I am writing original novels that I love, and DUNE novels that I love. I have a wonderful wife (married almost 18 years), and I live in the beautiful state of Colorado. So, I’m content with where I am. Been a long road to get here — 25 years since my first publication — but my main goal is just to keep doing better and expanding my craft as a writer.

TH: What is the biggest challenge that comes with working your dream job?

KJA: Trying to deal with all the distractions. As I get more successful, it seems that the days become a bigger and bigger avalanche of interruptions, phone calls, e-mails, visitors, travel obligations, promotional requirements. Sometimes it seems as if I never have a few uninterrupted hours of writing time.

TH: What are some of the things that inspire you?

KJA: I like to learn new things, see new things, have new experiences. I do most of my writing when I’m out hiking or mountain climbing, and I love the wilderness. Moab, Utah is one of my favorite places in the world.

TH: What are the most successful ways you have used to promote yourself and your work? Are there any promising marketing avenues that you might yet explore?

KJA: There are so many opportunities now, the only big question is the lack of time and energy. I do have a lot of book deadlines and that’s my main priority, but of course I want them to sell well, too. I do a lot of interviews, blogs, book signings, conventions, a newsletter. It’s awfully hard to rise above the noise, with so many other books clamoring for attention.

TH: Have your reached the point at which you realized that you had “made it” as a writer and author? If so, can you describe the milestone or circumstances? Do you recall how that felt?

KJA: Going full time was a big step, and even after 11 bestsellers and about 20 published novels, it was still a risk. We made sure we had a year’s worth of expenses in the bank before we took the leap. But I never want to let myself be satisfied — I want to keep pushing myself to be more ambitious, more intense, more thoughtful in each book. My “Saga of Seven Suns” was my masterpiece, I think…and now I just have to do better next time.

TH: Some say that professional writers have to look at themselves as a business, a branded commodity. Do you take that approach?

KJA: I think you have to treat it as a business, definitely. It’s really quite complicated and risky, because the biggest problem is cash flow — I can have 6-9 months go by without receiving any payment at all, and virtually all publishers take FOREVER to pay (though I always turn in my books on time). As a writer, you have to know the tax laws, what you can deduct and what constitutes a “business” activity.

As for being a “branded commodity”, I think that suggests a writer produces the same sort of thing every time. And some of them do, but I tend to do a lot of different books.

TH: What can readers expect to see from you in the near future? What are you working on?

KJA: The last book in my “Seven Suns” epic comes out in July — I worked eight years on that series, and I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. Brian Herbert and I have PAUL OF DUNE out in September, and all our test readers seem to think it’s one of our very best in the series. Rebecca Moesta and I have just finished our CRYSTAL DOORS trilogy, a young adult fantasy series, and I’m writing my TERRA INCOGNITA series right now.

TH: What is the most memorable moment (good, bad, or other) you have had in your life as an author?

KJA: I found it very moving when a mother brought her young son to one of my signings. She introduced him, told me he was severely dyslexic and that his teachers had given up trying to teach him how to read. But the kid decided he *wanted* to read my STAR WARS books, and so he taught himself how to read so he could read JEDI SEARCH, and now he’s an avid reader. That’s what it’s really about.

I must admit that I hadn’t heard of Michael Mehas before we discussed doing an interview, but I had heard of the legal case in which he was involved–the story of Jesse James Hollywood, the youngest person ever to make the FBI’s Most Wanted list, who now sits on death row for his crimes. The story of this young man formed the basis for Michael Mehas’s book Stolen Boy, and for the feature film Alpha Dog. It’s a story of suburban middle-class kids gone bad, descending into a world of drugs and sex and ultimately murder.

Michael made the transition from practicing attorney to full-time writer, and that kind of leap mystifies some and inspires others. So without further ado…

TH: Can you give a brief arc of your career as a writer/author?

MM: I wrote a lot as a practicing attorney for years before making the transition into screenwriting and journalism. I started off doing a few celebrity interviews for magazines like Hello and Hola and Okay. I’ve rewritten other people’s messes in Hollywood. And I also worked with writer/director Nick Cassavetes in writing the screenplay for last year’s most controversial film, Alpha Dog, starring Justin Timberlake, Bruce Willis, and Sharon Stone. And that led to my present novel, Stolen Boy, which is based on the youngest man ever on the FBI’s Most Wanted List, and has won several awards.

TH: What is The Story of Michael? Is it a novel? A short story? A poem? A limerick?

MM: I’m an incomplete novel. No, you know what? In fact, I’m actually in the process of a page one rewrite. I used to be this whole other person, completely different than I am now. I went through this crazy consciousness transformation while working on this book and film project. And then the craziness of my legal involvement regarding the kid who’s story we were doing. I had to become a different person because I needed to recreate the reality that I was experiencing. So I began anew. Which is what we need to do if we’re going to survive in this world. And the truth is I like this draft of me much better.

TH: When did you know that you wanted to be a writer? How did you know?

MM: I was probably about seventeen when I first started giving it any real thought or effort. But back then I had more important things to consider. Like girls and partying. I was in Hollywood High School, and that’s what you did back then. And if anything, I thought myself more like the leading man in those days. So acting definitely stood out above writing. And so did athletics. I played baseball, football, basketball, and I ran track. The writing didn’t really sink in for me until I went to college and became slightly more serious about things.

I remember having a conversation one day with my buddy Nick Cassavetes. And he always talked about how the writer had so much more control of things in the business than the actor did. And it made a lot of sense. Since I was a terrible actor anyway, and I was inflicted with white-man’s disease on the basketball court, I launched myself into the intermittent obscurity of being a writer.

TH: A lot of established writers seem to have a stack of writing somewhere that will never see the light of day, like the five novels the author had to write before he could get to the good one. Do you have anything like this?

MM: Oh, of course I do. I have stacks of boxes of it. I call in my “Inventory.” And you know what? I keep it in boxes and take it with me wherever I move. And I’ve done that for all these years, because, I think eventually I’ll get it produced. Or in the case of books, published. So hold on to those old writings. You just never know.

TH: What do you have hiding in your ‘Inventory’ that you would most like to see published or produced? Is there an unpublished work that you’re really proud of?

MM: My favorite closet piece is a delicious screenplay I wrote several years ago, called Twice Sacrificed. It’s an intense little ride through the misty world of family jealousy and sacrifice. It’s the story of a young man who is freed from prison with the opportunity to investigate who really killed the fifteen-year-old girlfriend he was convicted of murdering eighteen years earlier. This leads him to discover the dark secrets of his family’s past; secrets that could now cost him his freedom as well as his life.

TH: I enjoy writing screenplays because their abbreviated style makes it easier to tell the story faster. Twenty-thousand words as opposed to a hundred thousand. In which medium are you more comfortable working, screenplays or novels? Why?

MM: Novels. To me, screenplay writing is the most difficult kind of writing there is. It’s a very limited medium for the writer. First of all, you only have a hundred pages to tell an entire story in vivid living detail. And that’s not easy. Not for a medium that’s designed to tell a story through images. You have to be quick in moving the story through a screenplay, yet there needs to be the right balance of character development. And therein lies the major problem. Screenplays aren’t really designed to track the character’s inner workings as deeply as the novel allows you to do.

That’s what a novel is. A story told through the character’s interior thought processes. Where the movie relies on images to tell its story from. Same thing for a play, which is a dialogue driven medium. That’s why, generally speaking, you hear people, who’ve seen the movie and then read the book adapted from that movie, always say how the book was much better than the movie. And why is that? Because they really identified with one or more of the characters involved in the story’s telling. The book had the opportunity and the pages to take the reader deeper into the emotional experience of being human. Which is what characters in novels are supposed to do. That’s why the novel, in my humble opinion, is the greatest storytelling medium of all. If it’s done right, by the end of the story’s telling, you’ve laughed and you’ve cried. And you’ve learned enough about humanity to change as a human being. Great stories can do that. So can movies that are done well. But it all starts with the writing. The writer must understand what it is like to change, and then create a character who experiences the human drama of forced change so that the reader may identify with it.

TH: Of course, most writers want to have bestsellers or make some sort of artistic or literary impact. Is there some unrealized accomplishment that you’re striving for in the near future?

MM: I have to admit that I have three intense goals that still elude me. I want to see Stolen Boy on the New York Times, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble bestseller lists. When I reach those goals, I’ll consider myself a marketable author. Oh yeah, and I’d like to sell more copies than Grisham. That’s not asking for too much, is it?

TH: What are some of the things that inspire you?

MM: Rainy days at the cement factory. A mad bull right behind me. A beautiful, naked woman and a set of handcuffs. A politician who doesn’t lie. And a lot of beauty. Stories of beauty and the magic of kindness always inspire me. That’s what life really should be about. What can we do to inspire kindness from everyone at all times? Can you imagine what life would be like under those circumstances…? Me either.

TH: What are the most successful ways you have used to promote yourself and your work? Are there any promising marketing avenues that you might yet explore?

MM: It is all a battle. The marketing aspect of the game was somewhat of a surprise to me once I got the book written. I knew there’d be plenty of buzz out there due to the movie and the nature of the true crime and my involvement with it. But I really had no idea of all the intense work I was going to have to put into it. But the key to me at this point is the Internet. Web coverage and news coverage on the Web pose permanent coverage of you and your work. And it expands. And the use of a Web site and Weblog can be critical to this exposure. I’ve gone on a Virtual Book Tour and a Video Book Trailer Tour and I’ve been blessed with my share of hard news coverage. So for my set of circumstances, the Web has more permanency than TV and radio as a general rule. Unless you wrote The Secret. Then you can be on Oprah and any TV show you want.

TH: Have you reached the point at which you realized that you had “made it” as a writer and author? If so, can you describe the milestone or circumstances? Do you recall how that felt?

MM: I’m not sure I’ll ever feel as though I “made it” because I’m always intensely striving for something new. But, there was a point to where I felt my book was going to be a success in the marketplace. Sales combined with media coverage and potential future media coverage went along with little stories of people who either knew my name or had heard of Stolen Boy. Someone on an airplane with a copy of my book. Or other people who’ve seen my story in the paper and others who heard me speak on the radio. I even recently received a letter from this sweet little sixth grader who had read my book and needed to contact the author as a school assignment. That was probably the coolest thing of all. Of the millions of books out there, she chose my book for her school project.

TH: I critique a lot of short fiction in a couple of online venues, and in your very last comment, you’ve hit upon something that a lot of beginning writers in any genre just haven’t gotten yet. Writing stories is all about the characters how and why they change, or don’t change as the case may be, not about the ‘cool idea.’ Was there a point where you had an epiphany, where suddenly some major cornerstone of publishable writing fell into place? Or has it been more of an ephemeral/incremental evolution?

MM: Writing is like life itself. People who don’t change will die. It’s that simple. Living is about changing according to our surroundings. We interact with the world around us. If we don’t, our surroundings will destroy us. And it’s the same with our characters. And this all became abundantly clear to me during the process of putting this life-changing story together.

I had to work on three different stories to begin with. The 239-page factual chronology I put together of the true crime itself based on my research, that both Alpha Dog and Stolen Boy were based upon. Then the story I helped Nick Cassavetes develop, and he told through his screenplay and his direction of the movie. And then the story I put together for my book. Three very different tellings based on the same set of facts. It was during this process that I finally discovered the true rhythmic essence of storytelling. Which gets us back to what we were talking about before: the give and take we experience in life. I like to call it the Yin and Yang of story. It’s like cause and effect in real life. It’s the character reacting to the stimuli around her. And in the novel, it’s the character falling back into deep reflection after being stunned by some major event in her story. That emotional and intellectual response she experiences while trying to decide what to do next toward accomplishing her story’s quest. Then, when she figures it out, she’s off again to another scene. And she’s changed as a person. And she goes after her new goal with a different kind of energy because, if drawn well, she’s a different person than she was before the last catastrophe struck her. And this will change again when she’s forced to respond to even more strenuous conflict, which she again will emotionally and analytically respond to. And she’ll be forced to make a decision. And she’ll come up with a new goal. And then something else will force her to act. And she’ll cause the forces around her to react to her actions. And it’s this back-and-forth rhythm that has to first be developed and then meticulously refined through the rewriting process. That’s what writing’s about. The character battles through conflict which forces her to experience change. Change in the state of the character’s affairs. And, with her internal reactions, hopefully, change in the character’s state of mind.

TH: Some say that professional writers have to look at themselves as a business, a branded commodity. Do you take that approach?

MM: I try not to. To me, writing is a very intimate experience between the writer and those she wants to read her book. The reader doesn’t see a branded commodity on the jacket cover of your book. She sees you. Your name is on it. You have to build a certain trust and relationship with your reader before they’ll even buy your book. So I take more of a humanistic approach to what I do. I’m all about relationships that are mutually beneficial.

TH: What can readers expect to see from you in the near future? What are you working on?

MM: I’m about to embark on a wild children’s spiritual adventure. Sort of a Harry Potter meets Raiders of the Lost Arc meets Celestine Prophecies. It’s a blockbuster. Unless, of course, somebody decides to pay me a lot of money to write a sequel to Stolen Boy maybe with a kind of a package deal for a television mini-series. I’d certainly have to listen to that.

TH: What is the most memorable moment (good, bad, or other) you have had in your life as an author?

MM: It was probably seeing my book in print for the first time. There was my name. And my picture. I was a published author. Now all I had to do was figure out how to sell a million copies.

TH: Is there anything else you would like to talk about that I haven’t mentioned?

MM: Nah. Maybe just the fact that we all could use to put more energy into spreading the joys from the heart to everyone around us. If we do that – we can change the world. We can change ourselves. We can change the reality that surrounds us. And we as writers sort of owe this to ourselves and to those who follow us. Besides, change is what makes characters so fascinating in story. We have to live it to be able to write about it.

This week in the author interview series we meet Daniel Arenson. Like many writers out there, he’s made that quantum jump to published novelist, but only very recently. With a number of poems and short fiction sales, his first novel Firefly Island has been released in library edition hardcover by Five Star Publishing. One of the things that I find most interesting about this interview series is how certain elements are held in common by all the authors, while at the same time varying in numerous ways. I’ll leave it to you to figure out what those are, but suffice it to say that writers are our own breed, but we come in a lot of shapes and colors. Perhaps this is precisely what I’m trying to get to the root of.

TH: Can you tell me a little bit about your writing career? Credits, general work, accomplishments, etc.

DA: I sold my first short story ten years ago, when I was eighteen years old. It was to an ezine called Exodus. They paid me $30. This is a huge moment when you’re eighteen. I’ve been occasionally selling stories and poems since. You can read most of them for free on my website, www.DanielArenson.com. Around the same time I sold that first story, I started to write my fantasy novel FIREFLY ISLAND. It took a few years to write, a few years to revise and sell, a year to see print. It was ten years from initial concept to publication. Moving from stories and poems to novels is a big change. When you write and sell a story, it’s done. Novels live on; you keep promoting and breathing them, trying to keep them in print for as long as possible. Luckily FIREFLY ISLAND is still out there doing its thing.

TH: What is The Story of Daniel? Is it a novel? A short story? A poem? A limerick?

DA: Vonnegut jokingly claimed that HOCUS POCUS was written on napkins, candy wrappers, business cards, and the like, all bundled up and numbered. I think the Story of Daniel would be something like that, a bunch of anecdotes and tidbits of life in a bundle.

TH: When did you know that you wanted to be a writer? How did you know?

DA: I still don’t know that I want to be a writer. Writing is hard. Novelists in particular work endless hours and get paid next to nothing. Few people, I think, want to be writers; writing is more of a compulsion. Novelists ultimately have a need to create something that can live independently of them, maybe even outlive them. Before I wrote, I painted. Painting and writing are just different ways of telling stories. But my name looks bigger on a book cover than my signature on a painting.

TH: How do you find that the creative process compares between writing and painting?

DA: In the past couple of years, I’ve been attempting abstract watercolours, which involve a lot of discovery throughout the process. I sometimes start with an idea, play around with it, see where it goes, and often develop new ideas along the way. Paintings are similar to poems, in that sense. Raw images and emotions, a glimpse that hints at a story beneath a surface. When it comes to novels, that’s less like an abstract painting, and more like a detailed portrait. When you paint something realistic and detailed, you’ll probably work with layers. You’ll start with a sketch, fill in some basic colours, paint a background, add more details, and keep adding layers across the canvas, gradually bringing it to life. With a novel, things are similar. I also start with a sketch–an outline. I then quickly hammer out a rough draft and go over it multiple times, with each “layer” adding more detail and polish.

TH: Do you have a stack of crap-writing stuck away somewhere? I’m talking about stuff that helped you learn and develop your craft, like the five novels he or she had to write before they could get to the good one. Describe yours.

DA: When I was fourteen, I started to write a story about castles. It was the first or second story I ever attempted. I kept typing, and it grew and grew, and soon hit five hundred pages. At that point, I was still introducing the characters and storyline, and ran out of steam. Seriously, it was horrible. An unintentional comedy. I think my grandmother had a copy buried in her basement at some point, but I’m hoping it got lost when she moved. I really do. I write better now. Honestly.

TH: Of course, most writers want to have a bestseller or make some sort of artistic or literary impact, but do you have an immediate close-range goal? Is there some accomplishment that you’re striving for in the near future?

DA: I’d like to have a novel published in paperback in the near future. FIREFLY ISLAND is currently available in hardcover. It’s a beautiful hardcover, nicely printed, nice cover art. It looks great on a bookshelf. If and when I can get a book out in paperback, that’ll be a new world; a book to take to the beach or cottage. I don’t have any crazy goals like to outsell Harry Potter, as nice as that would be. I’m taking baby steps. I have my first novel out and it’s been selling. Next step is moving to paperback. After that, I’m hoping to just keep writing and selling books. I have a million ideas and I’d like to keep writing so long as people keep reading.

TH: What are some of the things that most inspire you?

DA: Music, for emotion. History, for plots. Nature, for descriptions. Hot wings and cold beer on a summer patio, just because they’re good.

TH: I also plumb the history books for story ideas for my novels. Is there a particular era or place’s history that most attracts you?

DA: There’s some 1812 in FIREFLY ISLAND. When the main character leads a campaign of scorched earth across her kingdom, that was inspired by the Russians burning their countryside as the French invaded. I was born in Israel, so I’m also interested in the history of the ancient Middle East. When you live in Israel, you can drive around and see — within an hour — Crusader forts from around 1000 AD, Roman aqueducts from the year 0, and biblical ruins from 1000 BC. WW2 is another interesting era. My grandfather fought in the war and told me stories about the time. While not everything here made it into FIREFLY ISLAND (or other stories I’ve written), it’s given me an understanding of how history works, which is key if you’re writing epic fantasy about wars and nations.

TH: What kind of music do you typically listen to when you’re writing? Do you use music to guide you into a mood or make the music follow you?

DA: When I’m writing at home, I tend to turn on the classic rock radio station. I usually write the first draft at the coffee shop in a notebook. I don’t bring an MP3 player, so I let the ambiance serve as my music. It works.

TH: What are the most successful ways you have used to promote yourself and your work?

DA: With FIREFLY ISLAND, the best promotion was getting reviews in big places. Reviews in Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal probably sold more copies than anything else. I also promote my book on my website, www.DanielArenson.com. I make sure that my website, though, has lots of content beyond just FIREFLY ISLAND stuff. I want to give people a reason to visit and learn something, not just see ads for my book. The most popular section on my website is where I give writing tips to new writers.

TH: Do you have some promotional ideas or avenues in mind that you haven’t tried yet?

DA: When FIREFLY ISLAND was published, I printed thousands of promotional bookmarks. I still have a bunch. I keep having to think of creative ways to distribute them. Maybe I’ll rent a plane, drop a bunch from the sky, and hope that the wind doesn’t blow them all into a lake.

TH: What was your biggest personal hurdle in making the jump from unpublished writer to published author? How did you overcome it?

DA: The big challenge remains the same, ten years since I sold my first story: the crazy competition. Editors are flooded with towers of manuscripts every day. They can buy only a small fraction of a percent of these manuscripts. Granted, it gets a _bit_ easier once you have some credits, but not by much. You just have to keep at it: keep writing, keep improving, and keep submitting those manuscripts.

TH: Some say that professional writers have to look at themselves as a business, a branded commodity. Have you reached that point? How do you handle the financial side of writing?

DA: There’s that side to it, but creative writing is not strictly a business. When you treat something as a business, you’re doing it first and foremost for the money. I don’t see creative writing that way. Technical writing (which I’ve done), maybe. With fiction, things are different.

I don’t write fiction for financial reward. When you calculate how many hours it takes to write a novel, and look at an average advance a novelist earns, that works out to be far less than minimum wage — more like a quarter an hour. There’s only a handful of novelists who earn substantial amounts of money from their books. The rest support themselves with other methods. They teach on the side, or write non-fiction, or work in an office during the day.

Writing is more like a hobby (or addiction?), even if you’re successful and earning some money from it. Most novelists who write full time have a family member support them, or a sizeable inheritance, or they live on a farm and grow their own vegetables. There are those select few who make a living from writing novels, but then, there are also a select few people who win the lottery.

Of course, we also live in a world where rent, mortgage, and bills ask for money every month. When you’re a novelist, you never know when the next check is coming, or what size it would be. I treat writing and work as separate entities. While it’s a business in some ways, creative writing is first and foremost an art.

TH: What can readers expect to see from you in the near future? What are you working on?

DA: I’m working on a new fantasy novel. It’ll be a while before you see it. In the meantime, I have a new short story coming out in an anthology soon. The story is called “Return to Ravenworld”, and it’s a dark fantasy. I don’t have the date for when the anthology is being released, but I’ll post a notice on DanielArenson.com once I know.

TH: What is the most memorable moment (good, bad, or other) you have had in your writing life?

DA: Other than this interview? The best moments are when readers email me to say they like my book. When critics like your book, that’s nice, but they were paid to read it. When a family member or friend likes the book, that’s also nice, but they _have_ to like it. When a complete stranger takes the time to read my book and email me about it, that’s when I feel that I’ve done a good job.

TH: Is there anything else you would like to talk about that I haven’t mentioned?

DA: Buy FIREFLY ISLAND. Seriously, go now and buy it. Okay, you don’t have to. But if you’re curious about the book, you can read the first chapter at www.DanielArenson.com.