Barkeep49
02-14-2007, 11:36 AM
I'm tackling these in the order they were posted. Some questions have
been omitted because they were repeats or I handled them to my satisfaction in the process of answering related ones.
What's your opinion on Sir Francis Drake?
Our highly apocryphal family history has it that Sir Francis Drake is actually one of my distant ancestors. On the possibility that this is correct, I'm going to have to give a generally positive assessment of FD's career as a sailor and (in the view of some sources) a buccaneer. I'm all about the pirates.
Assmaster?
Heh. I wondered if this one would come up. I actually acquired the moniker "assmaster" after a day spent in the chat Lougne over at the FOBL from our beloved RyanS. Somehow, the topic of user titles came up and I winsomely mentioned that I'd love the title "assmaster". The next time I logged into FOFC, Ryan had made it happen.
Am i the only one who has never heared of Drake before?
Erm, apparently not. Though the club might just include you, HA and Daddy Torgo.
Does no mean no?
No. Er, yes. No. Definitely.
I see you joined in 2001. What brought you to FOFC?
Back in the late 1980's, I became fixated on a baseball text sim called "Major League Manager" (produced by a now defunct company called Spinnaker Software). I played the hell out of that game, though it was mostly just historical replay and there wasn't a career mode. Hell, I didn't even know that career mode sports simulations existed. I just replayed the 1988 season over and over and over again, collecting a binder full of statistical printouts (which I still have somewhere). Anyway, the game lived on a 3.5 floppy and as floppies are wont to do, this one eventually wore out and I went on-line looking for a replacement game. One search led to another, and I eventually learned about FOF2K1, which led me here. Blind awe of Quiksand and Morgado's analysis of the FOF2K1 engine kept me here initially, and after that, I just never left.
What do you do for a living?
I'm a computer programmer and web developer for the Office of the Registrar at Indiana University. It isn't tremendously exciting, but I seem to be pretty good at it, and they pay me more than my English degree really warrants.
You're from IN, what do you think of sports in IN? Are you a Colts fan? Pacers? What do you think of the Indy 500?
I'm a huge Colts fan. I love the Hoosiers, though I did my best to lose track of them during the Mike Davis era. Davis's idea of "defense" were an abomination to the game. With regards to the Pacers, I haven't followed the NBA since Reggie Miller retired...well, since he *should* have retired, which was about three years before he actually did.
And the Indy 500 -- believe it or not, I live less than an hour from the
speedway and I've never been there, nor have I ever watched the race in its entirety on television. My oldest son is a big NASCAR fan (from his mother and step-father), so the Brickyard race gets more attention around my house than the IRL.
Do you play any sports?
I played basketball in high school, though only through my Freshman year. I realized around that time that I'd rather write about basketball than play it competitively, so I joined the school newspaper instead. Since then, I've played some co-ed softball in beer leagues and coached little league baseball, but I was never much of an athlete, so that's probably best for everyone involved.
What is your favorite sport and team?
Baseball. I *love* baseball. I love the feel of the game and the way it exists outside of time and human circumstance. I love early morning practices in the summer and games played at night under the lights. I love dazzling glove work and subtle infield shifts. I love gritty catchers and pitchers riding that edge between control and disaster when they're just about out of gas. Just a brilliant, brilliant game.
Strangely enough, I live and die with the Red Sox. I got hooked on a young stud pitcher named Roger Clemens in the ALCS vs the California Angels in 1986 and then had my heart ripped out in Game 6 of the World Series. Dwight Evans was my hero. I spent almost five seasons expecting Tim Naehring to become my idol. I once believed that Mike Boddicker and a washed up Frank Viola would save the world. I still believe that Dan Duquette's middle name is "motherfucker", and I cried when they traded Nomar.
Have you published anymore novels since From the Hands of Hostile Gods?
Not yet, though mostly for lack of trying. I love writing. I suck at submitting.
Are you working on another book now?
Not at the moment. I wrapped up a novel toward the middle of last year and just haven't started anything meaningful since. Live intervenes. More on that later.
Have/Do you write short stories as well?
I've written a few, but nothing that I'm particularly enamored with. I tend to have large ideas and need lots of space in which to flesh them out. Short stories and novels are really completely different disciplines, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for people who can do both well, or for those who truly love the short story genre.
Have you ever written a story based on the question "Sex or pie"?
No, but that question has plagued me for much of my adult life. I still
contend that most rational men would say "pie". The fact that the polls don't back me up on this indicates an incredible dearth of rational men in this country.
What other text sims do you play? What are your favorites?
I've played the hell out of every iteration of OOTP since version two...or maybe it was version three. I'd have to look at the CD I got back then. Though the franchise has it's problems, I'm not particularly critical of it. OOTP does what I want a career baseball sim to do, and for the most part, it does those things well. The areas where there tend to be problems are with the sorts of things I tend to not care so much about, so that's largely a moot discussion for me. At the end of the day, I play text sims because the games tell me stories as they go about their business. I can't tell you how many times I've gone about household chores fake interviewing myself as the GM of the Boston Red Sox after a particularly gutty win or shocking defeat. I've fallen asleep talking to imaginary players about our diminished expectations
of their role on next year's team because some young stud is ready to come
up from Triple A. A text sim's ability to facilitate that kind of fantasy interaction with myself in a pseudo-realistic way is all that I've ever wanted out of a game. OOTP does this. FOF does it, too. I've dabbled with Puresim, and while there are things that I love about it, in general I find the interface clunky and the immersion factor less satisfying.
what did you think of "The Drake" on Seinfeld?
I was Drake long before he was, and the fact that he's more popular at it sticks in my craw a little bit. Thanks for pouring salt in that particular wound. ;)
Would you rather punch Hell Atlantic in the mouth, or whack
him over the head with a cardboard tube?
Here's the thing about HA: love him or hate him, he's consistently himself. When he opens his mouth (so to speak), you know what you're going to get. In a weird way, I repect that sort of consistency and blunt honesty about what he's feeling on any given topic. Of course, that also means that I frequently ignore him because I have a pretty good idea of what he's going to say, and he really only gets it back when he goes all foot-stompy.
Also, why does Dante's traveler in the Divine Comedy, upon reaching
the earthly Paradise, quote Dido's speech to her sister from Book IV of the
Aeneid? That doesn't really make any sense to me - it seems wildly inappropriate.
It makes more sense in Italian?
Are you married? Kids?
I'm currently working on my second marriage. The first lasted a bit over two years. We were 18, she was pregnant. A bad combination. My current marriage has lasted thirteen years, and has recently become rather unpleasant (as will be discussed later). I've got three boys: Thomas (15), Jesse (12), Ethan (8).
What do you like to do in your spare time other than write?
I play video games: Civ 3 or 4, RPG's and text sims are my poisons. As
a writer, you'd probably expect me to say that I spend a huge amount of time reading, but I really don't compared to video games, and the reading that I do is frequently research for whatever project I'm getting ready to tackle. I don't read anything *but* non-fiction when I'm writing. I'm also becoming increasingly convinced (largely due to the influence of the Gothic series, Morrowind and now Oblivion) that the future of mass audience fiction is video game scripts. Movies and the episodic nature of television don't really allow enough space to do what a novel does, but I really feel like the gaming format does, especially with the current state of the technology. Ultimately, writing isn't about the words on the page, but about telling stories that are important to the writer -- stories that communicate something essential about the human condition in a non-passive sort of way. Video games have the potential to be that sort of medium.
If you could have dinner with any two people from history, who would you pick and why?
Valentinus, the Gnostic theologian and St. Peter the Apostle. I have great admiration for Valentinus's theological structures and unique interpretation of the divine history. I'd love to see Peter tackle them over a plate of steamed trout with his characteristic blunt enthusiasm.
As a lawyer, I am curious--did you have any problems with the legal aspects of getting a book published? Is this one of those things that seemed a lot more complicated than it had to be? Did your agent/publisher take care of all that, and you not have to really deal with it?
I dealt with this myself. The contract from my small publisher was pretty straightforward and built on the model contract put together by the SFWA (Science Fiction Writer's Association of America). I had a couple of my lawyer buddies look it over just to make sure that it was a straightforward as it seemed, but that was really the extent of it. There's so little money in small press fiction that it really amounts to haggling over pennies.
Now, if I was offered a multi-book deal by a major publisher, I'd be foolish not to retain the services of an agent and hand all of that over to him/her. For the most part, given that I'm still something of a novice, the contracts are mostly boilerplate documents anyway. Stephen King gets to mostly name his own terms. The rest of us take what we're given and say, "Thank you, sir! May I have another!"
Also, do you have the movie/royalty/other rights to the book, or is that something that only "established" authors get?
The only rights I leased out were for paperback print and electronic editions. Those terms expire every three years and then the rights revert back to me. I haven't optioned any of the other rights, but they're available cheap(!) if anyone is interested. :)
Basically, I am curious as to how the business/money side of publishing
works for up and coming authors.
In the small pond (where I certainly am), writer's write the books and mail them off, hoping someone will be willing to take the financial gamble to publish the book. Small publishers aren't going to have a huge budget for marketing and promotion, so you get to set up most (if not all) of your own signings, author talks, etc. Travel expenses are out of your own pocket.
Bottom line is that once you've got the product, it really is just like any other business. You're only going to be as successful as you make yourself. Ninety-nine percent of the time, if you just write it and release it into the ether (i.e., leave everything to the publisher), you're not going to see much return because no one will have heard of your product.
What do you think is the biggest mistake most aspiring writers make?
1. They talk about writing more than they actually write.
2. They don't open their work up to the right sorts of criticism.
3. They spend more time worrying about how they're writing than about the mechanics of whether or not they're telling a story that complete strangers will want to read and whether or not they're telling it in the most compelling way.
4. They don't research the business side of things.
5. They post their stuff on the internet. Most publishers consider posting as "publishing", and you essentially forfeit your most valuable rights. Now, if you just want to be read and don't care about making any money (or building a career), that's not really a mistake. Again, this goes back to researching the business side. Guys like Cory Doctorow know what they're doing in this regard, but I'm not yet convinced that the Creative Commons license is really a sustainable idea for the future of fiction.
You've provided helpful feedback to Todd regarding his wife's
onset of bipolar disorder. To the extent that you feel comfortable discussing the issue, can you describe your experiences in dealing with this issue in your own household?
Echoing what dawgfan mentioned, I just wanted to know how long you had to deal with the wife bipolar condition? Has it been something that you know about prior to marriage or was it something discovered much later?
I'm going to touch on this with a great deal of brevity, because in many ways, the situation is still too fresh and painful for an appropriately distant evaluation. My wife and I have been married for thirteen years. In that time, she's lost her father and her grandmother, had three miscarriages and nearly watched her husband die. We declared bankruptcy in 2004, partially due to 100k in medical bills, partially due to my wife's bipolar spending sprees. Stress is a huge trigger for manic episodes, and we've had a great deal of stress. In the past, this manifested as irrational rages, fits of screaming, accusations of
infidelity and various other...I'll call them "irritations". At times, she was extraordinarily difficult to live with because her life was frequently an irrational and disorganized mess, a leaping from crisis to crisis that was often dizzying. In late 2005, she finally decided that it was time to seek professional help, as she seemed to be spiraling into a numbing depression. She was treated with an assortment of anti-depressants that, it turned out, only aggravated her bipolar disorder.
Things came to a head in September of last year when I found out that she'd been having an affair with my best friend of twenty years. She had no explanation for it. She couldn't explain why it had happened or what she was thinking. Her own actions didn't make sense to her, and in fact, she had large stretches of what she calls "lost time" where she knows that she was having an affair, but doesn't know why she was doing it or even what she was doing. She has almost no memory of the last two years of our life. At the worst point, I had to physically restrain her for more than hour while she tried to slit her wrists in the bathroom. I'd like to think that I was doing the honorable thing, but the truth is that I really didn't give a shit if she lived or died at that point in time. It was only when faced with the dissolution of our marriage that
she finally decided to be completely honest with her therapist. The bipolar diagnosis followed pretty quickly on the heels of that. For the record, my wife is Bipolar 2 with some Obsessive/Compulsive and Schizophrenic features thrown in for good measure. We've been dealing with this reality for five months, and she's doing great on her new medication so far.
So here we are. I've been betrayed in the deepest way that a man can be
betrayed, and the support system that I should have been able to rely on
was an integral part of the betrayal. More than once in the last few months, I've put a shotgun in my mouth because I didn't feel like I could handle the pain any longer. Part of that was realizing that it wasn't really even fair of me to be so brutally angry with my wife, because the things she had done that had hurt me so deeply had been done while she was, in essence, insane. They were done by a "her" that wasn't "her" in the sense that I knew her, and no one regretted what she had done more than she did.
I can't sit here and say that I know what all of this means yet. I can't tell you that I'm better for having gone through it or that I know what the future holds for us. I love my wife more than I could ever express. But I also hate her, even if it's just a little bit. I'm terrified of her, because I know that if she could hurt me that badly once, she's just one manic episode away from doing it again. What I do know is that I've survived it, and I'm changed for having survived it. I haven't yet measured the extent of those changes, and I'm not sure that I want to. I'm nostalgic for a past that we shared, but that I also know never existed. I'm nostalgic for the sense that it was the two of us against the world, that I could trust her utterly. I'm nostalgic for the innocence and goodness that was there, but will never be again.
But I love her, whatever that means. And for today, that's enough.
*shurg*
How did you end up in Bloomington, and how do you like it there?
I was actually raised about 20 miles west of Bloomington and then ended up going to college at IU when they offered me the most attractive scholarship package. In the half a dozen years between high school and college graduation, the rest of my family moved away. I stayed mostly because I'm extremely prone to entropy. Plus, my wife's family is from the area, so it was important to her that we stay. But I like Bloomington. It's like a big city (culturally) without all of the people.
If you weren't living in Bloomington, are there any other cities or
areas you'd really want to move to?
I harbor a long standing dream of one day living in Vermont or New Hampshire. I have no idea why, other than that the idea has always felt romantic to me.
What is your favorite restaurant in Bloomington?
I love Nick's on Kirkwood. It's the perfect cross between hopping college hangout and greasy spoon.
What are your feelings on the relationship between the college students and the townies?
Since I've been both a townie and a student, I've always been a bit confused by the apparent animosity. In fact, I think that Breaking Away greatly exaggerates an animosity that doesn't (or at least doesn't any longer) exist. The days where state college kids were socially, culturally or financially elite are long gone. Most kids now are struggling to pay their rent and keep up with their work just like the rest of us, so we have a great deal of common ground. In Bloomington, you have the added benefit that so many students stay in town after graduation because of the great family environment, there isn't a tremendous educational divide between students and townies.
Have you ever been to the Little 500.
Not since I was in high school. These days, I leave work early and clear out of town for Little 500 weekend. Who wants to deal with all of that traffic?
What is your favorite city park in B-ton?
I'm fond of People's Park, though it's a stretch to call it a park at all. I spent way too many hours there in my youth and have been known to pass a quiet lunch hour there on a warm spring day. I can't tell you how much I miss the days when Kirkwood was "weird" and Spaceport was the place to be on Friday nights. Maybe I'm just getting old, but it seems so much more bland now than it used to be. Starbucks moving in was really the last straw for me. But in general, since I don't live in Bloomington proper, I don't get out to the parks much.
I'm guessing from these questions that you're either a student or a Btown native, yes?
What is your opinion of Bobby night as a coach and as a person?
Bobby Knight is a big, raging dickhead who desperately needs someone to
keep him on a short leash so that he doesn't destroy the people around him. That said, he's still a great basketball coach. There are few things in sports as beautiful as a well executed motion offense. I would have been perfectly happy had he ended his career at IU, though I would have been equally happy never to have met him in person.
You mentioned that you had some brain inflammation that didn't cause any serious damage, but yet you have little memory of the time period. What procedures did you have to go through to recover and how did this affect the family?
In December of 2002, I developed a case of acute spinal meningitis that I managed to ignore long enough for it to advance to an encephalitis of unknown origin. The only reason I received medical assistance was because the swelling in my brain finally became severe enough that I became delusional. I have a vague recollection of my wife telling me to put my shoes on because she needed to take me to the doctor...and then waking up in the hospital five days later. That space is filled only by a long dream in which a bunch of firemen sat on top of me while I was trying to watch the College National Championship football game on television. I couldn't see the score and no one would tell me who won.
In the meantime, I apparently was being wrestled into submission by a dozen paramedics and police officers (all guys I went to high school with, as it turned out. They tell me to this day that even though they successfully got me out of my house and into the ambulance, I was far and away the winner of the fight.). I sent a really nice fruit/nuts/chocolate basket to both the police department and the paramedics when I got out of the hospital three weeks later.
Because I was so combative due to my delusions, the doctors put me in a medically induced coma for five days while they ran a bunch of tests. I continued to not get any better, so they actually sat my wife down and
gave her the "he probably isn't going to make it, and even if he does, he'll likely have the mentality of a ten year old" speech. They pumped me full of a bunch of steroids, anti-virals, anti-biotics and other meds to keep me down without killing me and to make me forget all of the things they were doing to me. (You'll have to forgive me -- I used to know the names of all these medications, but I really don't remember them anymore.) In the end, they decided to just ease off and see what was going on. I woke up.
I spent a full week in the Bloomington Hospital, then was transferred up
to the IU Medical Center for further study and analysis. No one ever figured out what caused the infection, though apparently the CDC was quite interested at the time. What I do remember is this: I watched a ton of SportsCenter, and it was a good thing that it was on so many times a day, because from one episode to the next, I'd forget what they'd reported on during the last one, so it was all new to me. I couldn't write my own name. Hell, I couldn't even hold a pencil for the first several days. I started working my mind back into shape by getting one of those kids activity books (crosswords, mazes, word searches) and worked at it relentlessly until I could write again and speak coherently. The rest of the time, I studied the neurological exams that the docs gave me four or five times a day and practiced the exercises when they weren't around. I knew from the decorations in the hall that Christmas was coming up, and I wanted to be home for the Holidays.
I was discharged the day before Christmas. I had a fever of like 102 and could barely stand up. I'd been heaving my guts up all day because I'd had to drink a double dose of dye before an MRI (or something) the night before -- I took one dose and then they missed my appointment window, so I had to do it again. I covered this by cranking the thermostat in my room up to 90 degrees so I could explain my sweats to the neurologist. I'd managed to acquire a reputation as a model patient with the nurses, so by then, they were letting me take my own temperature (partly because one of my mental workouts was converting the Celsius temperature to Farenheit in my head -- they knew I was doing this, so they let me keep my own chart).
I was a very, very *bad* patient. :)
Anyway, they sent me home with a pict line for IV anti-virals as a precaution, and other than every-other-day visits with a home health nurse for the next month, my communication with the medical establishment ceased at that point. I went back to work in the middle of January and just sort of toughed things out until they weren't tough anymore. I had to re-learn most of the things I knew about programming. I ended up with a lower tolerance for anxiety and stress, and more of a tendency to express my emotions verbally. I have more difficulty reading for long periods at a time than I used to have, and to some extent, it's easier to immerse myself in games and on-line
activities than it is to deal with more intensive activities. People tell me that I'm friendlier, more talkative, funnier and generally more outgoing than I was before the encephalitis. I've been accused of having no internal monologue as a result of my experience. If it crosses my mind, no matter how inappropriate it might seem, chances are I'm going to say it. I'm also pretty sure my penis is 3/4 of an inch longer, but maybe I'm just imagining that.
All in all, I think I got off pretty lucky. More than one doctor on my case told me that it was a small miracle I ended up with nothing worse than a little bruising on my brain and no long term lesions or scarring.
Anyway, I learned my lesson: when your body starts going numb for days at a time, your neck and head ache so badly that you want to scream, you
start passing out for no particular reason and you start routinely having difficulty remembering how to do even the most menial of tasks (like figuring out how to turn your computer on), the answer is *not* to go to bed and sleep it off. You should probably go to the doctor.
The really funny bit to me, of course, is that I wrote _From the Hands of Hostile Gods_ in early 2002, before I had encephalitis. I did a ton of research into meningitis and encephalitis to get some of the story details right. When I started exhibiting those same symptoms less than six months later, it never crossed my mind. Go figure.
What made you choose to get a B.A. in English? Did you choose this
degree because you always had a dream of becoming a writer?
Yup. I knew that an English degree would teach me how to critically deconstruct literature from a thematic perspective. Knowing what your story is about is almost as important as knowing how it's about it.
Of course, as a science fiction writer, I probably should have majored in one of the hard sciences, but I find math icky, so those were all straight out.
How old are you?
I'll be 36 in March of 2007. My twelve year old and I have the same birthday (March 19).
Was you book inspired by events that occurred in your life?
Actually, my book was inspired by two things:
1. I'd been reading some articles about Mars exploration that really caught my fancy.
2. I really wanted to shag this woman I worked with. All literature is masturbation fantasy. The skill is occluding this fact from the reader.
Do you feel that much more research is involved in writing a science fiction novel?
Not at all. The great thing about science fiction is that a little knowledge goes a long way. In many cases, since you're setting the parameters of your universe, you can fudge the details (for things like, oh, faster than light travel, artificial gravity, etc.), or you can offer them as "givens" without any technical explanation and the reader will suspend disbelief and just accept them. I'd find it incredibly more daunting to write a novel set in 1992 Atlanta, because there are a ton more people who lived in 1992 Atlanta than have lived in the future, and a ton more people who know something about Atlanta than have a decent working knowledge of applied physics. The key to good science fiction is verisimilitude rather than stone cold accuracy. Let the story do the work and try not to mess it up by getting so technical that you make obvious mistakes.
The one thing that I had admired is the fact that you actually finished a novel. I think there are a few people on this board that has done so. How hard was it to complete the first one and how rewarding was it to see it in print?
_From the Hands of Hostile Gods_ was actually one of my easier novels
to write. I think it took me all of three months from first draft to final edit. I'm not a typical writer in that I don't write every day. I write in spurts, meaning that I'm very project driven. I may go six months without writing anything but message board posts, computer code and Really Bad Poetry(tm). During that time, I'm reading and bashing ideas together and trying to find something that catches my fancy. When the work finally begins, I'll spend a couple of frustrating weeks writing a couple thousand words a day and then throwing those fits and starts away while I try to figure out how to get into this story that's bouncing around in my head. Usually, I've just got the bare bones of it. I don't outline, and I try not to think too far ahead. I like my
stories to unfold as I write them. If I know how it's going to end before I get there, I tend to get bored and lose focus -- not a luxury I'd have if I was a full-time novelist, of course, but since I'm not, it works for me. Many times, if I *do* think I know where it's going, the story changes and makes all of the cool things I thought I was doing obsolete. That's just part of the fun.
But I've never had any problem producing text. I wrote my first 100 page (handwritten, anyway) novel when I was 10. By the time I was in high school, I was working on what would become a 2000 page fantasy epic
(all copies of which, fortunately, have been lost). If I have one great weakness as a writer these days, it's that it takes me 100,000 words just to get started (the average length of a mass market paperback). My last novel topped out at 250K. At 2,500 words a day/five days a week, that's a pretty significant time investment for just the first draft. I'm also one of those guys who just writes the first draft straight through (unless I have to go back and actually change the storyline to address an event that pops up later). Then I go through it with a red pen and a stack of post-it notes, looking for plot problems, thematic issues, narrative logic, etc. Big picture stuff. That usually takes me 4-6 weeks (including data entry time). Then I go through it again on screen fine tuning the language. That can take another 4-6 weeks.
Then I get sick of it and put it away for about a month. Then I go through it again. For however long a given novel takes me, it's what I live and breathe from start to finish. It's always on my mind. I'm always making notes, scribbling on envelopes, rehearsing plot points and mentally talking to the characters to figure out who they are, how they sound, what their motivations are, what they think. It's part interview, part interrogation, part uncovering secrets they don't want me to know, but ultimately, it's all about getting their story *right*, because even when I'm done with the novel and have put it away, they're still the ones who have to live with the consequences. So to speak.
The worst thing I ever did in my life was kill the woman Ray Marlowe loved, and though it was necessary, I grieve that decision to this day. You don't know Ray Marlowe, of course, he only exists in my head and in a manuscript on my hard drive, and he is one of the coolest guys I have ever known.
Do you read heavily in the genre that you had written in? And what other genres do you read?
I read more science fiction than anything else, but I'm not as well versed in the genre as I would like to be. I read Neal Stephenson because he's a stylistic genius. I read Cory Doctorow because he's got fantastic ideas. I read Robert Charles Wilson because he never forgets that the story is about people rather than technology. I read Tim Powers because he marries the weird and the mundane better than any writer alive. I also keep my eye on Singularity and Post-Human literature because that's a particular interest of mine (though I have to admit that I've never gotten Vernor Vinge).
Outside of SF, I read supernatural fiction (think Umberto Eco's _Foucalt's Pendulum_, not _The Da Vinci Code_, which made me want to slam my face into a wall because of how blatantly it ripped off _Holy Blood, Holy Grail_.) I have a soft spot for Stephen King, Stephen R. Donaldson, H.P. Lovecraft and Arthur Conan Doyle. I also read waaaaay too much Gnostic scholarship, Kabbalah literature and books about the 19th century Western Mystical tradition (Blavatsky, Regardie, Crowley, etc.).
And as a father do you feel you are doing a good job?
I don't think any father ever thinks he's doing a good enough job. I let them play too many video games, I think, but since they're all straight A students and haven't robbed any liquor stores yet, I guess I'm doing okay. And when I say "I", I mean my wife/the homework fairy, of course. When we had kids, my wife really wanted to be a stay-at-home mom for as long as we could afford it. That means my laptop is three years old and I've been driving my truck for close to ten years, but it was one of the best decisions we ever made. I'm grateful that it was something she wanted to do.
If you can take two snapshots of the best and worst times of your life,
what would the images look like?
Best: The first time my wife told me she loved me.
Worst: Any day in the last six months.
Both prominently figure my wife. I guess that's not surprising.
How did you end up with a job as a database analyst after graduating
from college with a degree in English?
Like most English majors, I came out of college with the skills to be a secretary, which I did for about two years. During that time, I was so mind numbingly bored by my work that I began to acquire programming skills just to keep myself occupied. By the time a programming/analyst position opened up, I'd made myself invaluable by slowly assuming the entire workload of the guy I replaced (he retired). It wasn't what I ever thought I'd be doing, and it isn't something I'm particularly interested in, but as a science fiction writer, having a knowledge of programming has its utilities.
Would people think you are a techie or a technophobe if they were to
enter your household?
I'm a definite techie. Another part of my secretarial experience was acquiring all of the technical support knowledge I could. Our big tech support guy was nearing retirement as well, so I was prepared to take over his job if the programming one fell through. :)
Do you have any family events (immediate family or the family in which
you were raised) that you think about from time to time, whether it is bad or good?
When I was ten years old, I set my neighborhood on fire. A friend and I were playing in the woods. It was November and getting chilly, but we didn't want to go inside, so we decided we'd build a fire to keep warm. We knew enough not to build our fire right on the ground, so we dug up a nice piece of particle board as our fire base. Yeah, that went about as well as you might expect.
When it became apparent that things were getting out of control, we did what most ten year olds do...we ran home to hide under our beds. I did stop long enough to tell my mom that I thought there was something on fire in the woods. She called the fire department. They showed up and battled the blaze for about three hours, narrowly stopping it right at the edge of our neighborhood. Shortly afterward, a fireman knocked on the door. He told my mother that it was a good thing I'd been so quick on my feet and gotten her to call 911 or the whole neighborhood might have gone up.
To this day, my mother doesn't know the truth.
What profession would you love to do for the rest of your life if you
were given the chance?
Oh, I'd be a writer. In a heartbeat.
What other talents are people unaware of?
I have an enormous...wait, that isn't really a talent, is it?
How did you and your wife meet?
*cough* She was my babysitter. I *told* my ex-wife that hiring her was
a bad idea.
In your life, who do you consider your "true" friends?
The guys in the FOBL. I've never met any of them face to face, but they've been there for me through the darkest parts of my life. Oh, and none of them have fucked my wife.
Do you consider yourself to be religious, spiritual, agnostic or
atheist? Any events shaped these beliefs or was it something you grew
up with?
My father is a minister. I'm both genetically and environmentally pre-disposed toward Christianity. I spent a long time trying to get away from it -- not because I didn't believe it, but because it didn't seem to have any vitality in day-to-day living. I learned subsequently that the vitality of faith is something that can only be appreciated with age and experience. Faith only means as much as it costs.
How much do you really love Firefox?
If Peyton Manning was Firefox, Tom Brady would be just another quarterback from Michigan.
Do you have any brothers or sisters?
One older sister who is a special education teacher. Two younger brothers: one is a captain in the Air Force, currently stationed in Baghdad. The other is a minister in Orlando, FL.
How close are you with your mother? Your father?
My family was and remains extremely close. We moved around a ton when I
was growing up, and so never forged strong relationships with our communities or our extended family. It was just the six of us. That's never really gone away, and in fact, I'm still weirded out by the level of contact I have with my wife's extended family. Aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces -- why should I have to care what's going on with their lives? :)
Would it be safe to say that you are an "ass" man when it comes to women?
I'd say that I'm actually a boob man, but the truth is that I'm a "total package" man. There aren't any particular features that admire in isolation. I'm much more interested in how the entire package on a given woman works together to produce an attraction.
I do tend to gravitate toward short women, though. I have no idea why. I'm 6'2". My wife is 5'1". Anything over 5'5" is getting too tall for me (unless, you know, we're talking about Nicole Kidman). Which is strange given that my mom is 5'7".
Could you make a sci-fi story that exaggerates/embellishes the
terpkrisitin curse or terpkristinitis? And please don't copy the movie
"Unbreakable".
With her assorted wrist/hand issues, we'd have much more fun with terpkristin was a guy. You know that, right?
Did you receive any rejection letters prior to Silver Lake Publishing?
Dozens. And I've received dozens since. That's just part of the business.
Where does your family like to go whenever you have the free time?
We like to stay home. My perfect vacation: staying at home for a couple of weeks, playing with the kids, swimming as a family in our big-assed pond and roasting hot dogs and marshmallows at the end of the day.
Do you find yourself daydreaming fictional worlds at the workplace?
When I'm not rigorously involved in a logical puzzle or surfing the internet, I actually do. Shhh. Here's a secret: for as long as I can remember, I've put myself to sleep at night by imagining fictional worlds and the fictional people who populate them. These are stories I never bother to write down, but some of those story arcs have lasted months at a time. If you could hear my thoughts while I'm doing this, they'd sound exactly like my novels. I'm just speaking them to myself rather than writing them out.
Do you think you manage your time effectively?
I'd say that I do. I'm very project and goal oriented. I was one of those annoying students in college who would go home and write a term paper the day it was assigned so I wouldn't have to worry about it between the assignment and the due date. The truth is that I have trouble screwing around if I know I've got things to do.
Introvert or Extrovert in person?
Extremely introverted until I get to know someone (though that's changed
a bit in the post-encephalitis world). I'm the sort of person who will carry on an e-mail conversation with you for two months before I actually say anything to you in person. To that extent, the internet is the greatest thing that ever happened as far as I'm concerned.
Who have been inspirations in your life?
My father. If I become half the man he is, I will be proud of the life I lived.
What are your musical tastes?
Hair Metal, Warm-and-Fuzzy Punk (Bowling for Soup, Blink 182), anything that sounds like Guns and Roses, and Christian Alternative (Jars of Clay, Caedmon's Call, etc.) Anything that doesn't twang.
What type of environment is required for you to write?
A computer, a pair of headphones (with or without music) and the kitchen table. That's all I need. On the other hand, I also like to have a block of at least a couple hours to work with. More than four hours tends to wear me out, but I can be solidly productive with two or three. My wife will tell you, though, that there's no use in talking to me during that time period, because I won't hear a word that you say (even if I respond coherently) and I won't remember anything we talked about later.
I seem to be psychologically incapable of writing while I'm at work, even if I've got the time (which I frequently do since my job is project oriented rather than time clock oriented).
How do you maintain the discipline necessary to write a
novel?
As I've mentioned, I'm only disciplined in that when I'm writing, I'm *writing*. I think that's less discipline than allowing myself to become totally immersed in the universe I'm creating. I wish I wrote more, but the truth is that I'm incredibly lazy.
How easy is it for you to rewrite? Are you prone to getting attached to your words?
I think every writer gets attached to their first draft. I get overly attached to notes and snippets of conversation that I write on envelopes that don't quite fit by the time I get to wedging them into the manuscript. Sometimes I'll write a scene six or seven times trying to make those things fit in a way that seems natural, but ultimately, you can always tell when you've tried too hard. Usually, it's a shift in tone or mood that seems to come out of nowhere. Once you realize what you've done and how it's changed the narrative dynamic, it becomes easier to cut that stuff out. Plus, I've usually got so many more
words at the end than I want, it's easy to chop them out. Anything over 200K makes you start to feel guilty and self-indulgent. Honestly, though, rewriting is my favorite part. It's feeling like you're being productive every day without having to face the terror of the blank page -- which is one of the reasons that I never stop writing at the bottom of a page. I try to stop writing halfway down so that I feel like I'm building on something rather than starting fresh.
What's your favorite word that rhymes with Drake?
Bukake? Oh wait, that doesn't rhyme. :)
If there was one thing we could know about you that we
don't already know, what would it be?
I love kittens, puppies and cows. Since my wife won't let me raise cattle, I've compensated by acquiring three dogs and eleven cats.
Slim competition. It's the only league I've ever been in. But it's still the greatest. Plus, it's the only league that would have me, given that I have no internal monologue.
[quote]What cool smoking tricks can you do?
The French inhale -- which looks mighty impressive until you've seen my wife smoke a cigarette with her...never mind.
Do you still try and pretend that shit on your face is a beard?
I did until yesterday, but then I shaved it off. I'll be pretending again by the middle of next week.
You have to have sex with one of the following three or you will die:
fritz, subby, louie andersen? Who and why
Subby, because he's the easiest target. I have a terrible fear of rejection.
How many times in your life have you spanked it to Eyes Wide Shut?
Most gratifying non-Kidman scene?
1. At least a dozen times.
2. There are non-Kidman scenes?!
Days of Thunder Nicole Kidman or Bewitched Nicole Kidman? Why?
Bewitched. Both are horrible, horrible movies, but at least in Bewitched, Nicole Kidman says "Darren" over and over again. Just thinking about her saying my name still gives me a shiver in my timbers.
Have you ever shaved, cut or otherwise manicured your pubus? If so, why?
Vasectomy, 1998. The hair growing back was worse than the surgery.
Tell us about the genocide you have single-handedly perpetrated on the
feral cat community.
I've probably killed more cats than most people. Part of being a responsible pet owner (especially when you keep breeder cats to control the mouse population) means being prepared to put down sick and malformed kittens when insufficient genetic diversity has tainted the pool. I'm a stomper, not a drowner.
How many relay races have you watched in your life? I lost my copy of your book...can I get another one?
1. Counting the Olympics? Too many.
2. PM me.
I'm someone that one day wants to write a fiction story. Novel, short story, screenplay, whatever. But I have no clue where to begin. Seeing as how you are a writer, what steps would you give to someone like me as advice?
1. Character comes first. Know who you're writing about.
2. Opening situation comes next.
3. Put the character you know in the situation you don't and just let him be himself. Interesting things will happen.
4. Realize that where you start writing my be 20, 50 or 100 pages before the story that's worth telling actually starts.
5. Ultimately, there aren't any shortcuts. You just have to sit down and gut it out until you lose yourself in it, even realizing that most of the initial work you're going to do is crap.
6. Resist the urge to edit. Just write. You can edit later, and editing in the early stages often leads to paralysis.
How do you feel about your FTB thread being jacked by a
boxed Hell Atlantic?
He actually did me a big favor. There have been a bunch of really great
questions that might not have ever popped up if HA hadn't been such an
ass.
Do you have to go through any type of preperation/ritual before you begin to write?
Not other than reading, reading and more reading of scientific articles, news stories and websites until I feel comfortable enough with a topic to tackle it.
What has been your experience working with a small publisher?
The personal attention is great. Knowing that your publisher believes as much in your novel as you do is great (after all, it's their money on the line). On the other hand, I'm not sure that's worth giving up the marketing budget, the sales force and the advance on royalties that you'd get from a major publisher. Maybe I'll feel differently if I ever get to work with a major publisher.
That said, I'm eternally grateful to Silver Lake for giving me a shot.
What is one thing that drives you up the wall?
"Should of" rather than "should have". That drives me crazy.
Has there ever been a fictional story that caused you to cry?
"A Small Good Thing" by Raymond Carver. Possibly the most powerful short story ever written.
What books would you recommend to other writers?
_Self-Editing for Fiction Writers_ by Renni Brown and Dave King
_The Elements of Style_
_On Writing_ by Stephen King
Because you were an English major, did you often find yourself editing as you were writing or do you write whatever comes to your mind and edit it later disregarding grammar, punctuation, etc?
Unless I'm dealing with structural problems (or in very rare cases, a pivotal scene that I know right away that I didn't carry off right), I refuse to edit until the first draft is done. I like to edit too much, and it's easy to talk myself into the delusion that I'm working if I allow myself to slip into editor mode. Editing is the enemy of productive writing...until it's time to edit, then it's the soul of writing.
If you met someone you hadn't seen in decades, would they be surprised with the path you took with your life?
Nah. Even when I was in high school, everyone knew that I wanted to be a writer. I won a ton of journalism awards (though I was never strongly interested in journalism). If anything, they'd be surprised that I'm *not* a full-time writer by now. I know I am...except for the fact that it's practically impossible to make a living as a full-time writer unless you're a journalist.
What type of software do you use to write with and do you use any additional software to help you flesh out your stories?
The only software I use for writing is the text editor Ultra-Edit. I started using it as my programming software (it's really just a glorified text editor), and just fell in love with it. I think it's because it defaults to Courier, which is what I'm used to looking at in manuscript format.
My novel organizational "software" is post-it notes and scribbled envelopes crammed into a manila folder along with scientific articles printed off the web. You'd be amazed how often inspiration strikes while you're driving 45 minutes to work. :)
What do you think of Neal Stephenson - brilliant visionary
or over-complicated bloviating gasbag?
Neal Stephenson is a god. I love him. I love his prose. I want to have his children.
That said, I got 500 pages into _Quicksilver_ before I gnawed my own arm
off to get away from it. I live in mortal fear of the day I decide to pick it up again.
Is there a song you never tire of?
Currently, it's "Oh My God" by Jars of Clay. Overall, it would have to be "One" by U2.
I love U2. Have I mentioned that?
What is your fondest childhood memory?
Dairy Queen with my family for Peanut Buster Parfaits after church on Sunday night. There's a reason for this, something I've realized as I've gotten older and my kids have grown. My dad was a pastor all the time I was growing up. I sat in church on Sunday (and Wednesday and Thursday) and got to hear whatever was on his mind. Whatever he was mulling over all week long was spoken from the pulpit on Sunday morning. Even better, the man he spoke about being on Sunday was the man I saw walking, talking and working out his faith Monday through Saturday. I didn't have to figure out what my dad believed, he told me and then he showed me, and when he messed up, he apologized to me for not living up to the standards he believed in. Sometimes, I look around at my kids and I have this awareness that they don't know anything about me. They don't know what's important to me, because I don't tell them about it. I don't sit them down for an hour two or three days a week and talk to them about the things I believe or the questions I wrestle with. Because my father did what he did professionally, I received the gift of a dazzling transparency into who he is that I think most people don't ever get to see. Hanging out with my family, basking in the glow of my dad's joy after delivering a Sunday sermon (and getting those concerns/fears/questions out in the open) reminds me of all the good things about my childhood.
Fill in the blank: It was a dark and stormy night _________
Oh, no. If Snoopy couldn't beat that one, I'm not going to fall into that trap. I bow before the master.
What do you do in your spare time?
I have a "Honey, Do" list longer than my arm. :P
Which actor do you most resemble?
None that I'm aware of, but my younger brother bears a striking resemblance to Matt Damon. Unfortunately, I don't look like him.
Best vacation you've ever taken.
In January of 2005, I spent two weeks in Europe with my brothers. We hit Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany and Austria on a massive road trip. I saw things that I never expected to see in real life, but what I remember most is hanging out in small restaurants and drinking wine, beer and espresso and just being grown up with my brothers. I've had some great family vacations, but when you're toting your wife and kids around, there's a level of stress and responsibility that goes along with it. (What if the car breaks down? Where are the kids? Why do you want to go to an aquarium?) All of that goes out the window when it's just a bunch of guys together. You don't have to worry about making everything go okay, because you know that if things go slantwise, you'll be able to fix it. It might be uncomfortable. You might end up sleeping in the car on the side of the road during a snowstorm, but it'll all turn out okay in the end.
If you won $20 million dollars in the lottery, what would you do with the money?
I'd start my own SF publishing imprint so *I* could be one of the people breaking writers' hearts. :)
Oh, and I'd buy Red Sox season tickets.
Whew. I think that's all of them. Thanks for sticking with me to the
end. I realize that there's a bunch here, probably more than you could
have ever wanted. Thanks for listening.
D.
been omitted because they were repeats or I handled them to my satisfaction in the process of answering related ones.
What's your opinion on Sir Francis Drake?
Our highly apocryphal family history has it that Sir Francis Drake is actually one of my distant ancestors. On the possibility that this is correct, I'm going to have to give a generally positive assessment of FD's career as a sailor and (in the view of some sources) a buccaneer. I'm all about the pirates.
Assmaster?
Heh. I wondered if this one would come up. I actually acquired the moniker "assmaster" after a day spent in the chat Lougne over at the FOBL from our beloved RyanS. Somehow, the topic of user titles came up and I winsomely mentioned that I'd love the title "assmaster". The next time I logged into FOFC, Ryan had made it happen.
Am i the only one who has never heared of Drake before?
Erm, apparently not. Though the club might just include you, HA and Daddy Torgo.
Does no mean no?
No. Er, yes. No. Definitely.
I see you joined in 2001. What brought you to FOFC?
Back in the late 1980's, I became fixated on a baseball text sim called "Major League Manager" (produced by a now defunct company called Spinnaker Software). I played the hell out of that game, though it was mostly just historical replay and there wasn't a career mode. Hell, I didn't even know that career mode sports simulations existed. I just replayed the 1988 season over and over and over again, collecting a binder full of statistical printouts (which I still have somewhere). Anyway, the game lived on a 3.5 floppy and as floppies are wont to do, this one eventually wore out and I went on-line looking for a replacement game. One search led to another, and I eventually learned about FOF2K1, which led me here. Blind awe of Quiksand and Morgado's analysis of the FOF2K1 engine kept me here initially, and after that, I just never left.
What do you do for a living?
I'm a computer programmer and web developer for the Office of the Registrar at Indiana University. It isn't tremendously exciting, but I seem to be pretty good at it, and they pay me more than my English degree really warrants.
You're from IN, what do you think of sports in IN? Are you a Colts fan? Pacers? What do you think of the Indy 500?
I'm a huge Colts fan. I love the Hoosiers, though I did my best to lose track of them during the Mike Davis era. Davis's idea of "defense" were an abomination to the game. With regards to the Pacers, I haven't followed the NBA since Reggie Miller retired...well, since he *should* have retired, which was about three years before he actually did.
And the Indy 500 -- believe it or not, I live less than an hour from the
speedway and I've never been there, nor have I ever watched the race in its entirety on television. My oldest son is a big NASCAR fan (from his mother and step-father), so the Brickyard race gets more attention around my house than the IRL.
Do you play any sports?
I played basketball in high school, though only through my Freshman year. I realized around that time that I'd rather write about basketball than play it competitively, so I joined the school newspaper instead. Since then, I've played some co-ed softball in beer leagues and coached little league baseball, but I was never much of an athlete, so that's probably best for everyone involved.
What is your favorite sport and team?
Baseball. I *love* baseball. I love the feel of the game and the way it exists outside of time and human circumstance. I love early morning practices in the summer and games played at night under the lights. I love dazzling glove work and subtle infield shifts. I love gritty catchers and pitchers riding that edge between control and disaster when they're just about out of gas. Just a brilliant, brilliant game.
Strangely enough, I live and die with the Red Sox. I got hooked on a young stud pitcher named Roger Clemens in the ALCS vs the California Angels in 1986 and then had my heart ripped out in Game 6 of the World Series. Dwight Evans was my hero. I spent almost five seasons expecting Tim Naehring to become my idol. I once believed that Mike Boddicker and a washed up Frank Viola would save the world. I still believe that Dan Duquette's middle name is "motherfucker", and I cried when they traded Nomar.
Have you published anymore novels since From the Hands of Hostile Gods?
Not yet, though mostly for lack of trying. I love writing. I suck at submitting.
Are you working on another book now?
Not at the moment. I wrapped up a novel toward the middle of last year and just haven't started anything meaningful since. Live intervenes. More on that later.
Have/Do you write short stories as well?
I've written a few, but nothing that I'm particularly enamored with. I tend to have large ideas and need lots of space in which to flesh them out. Short stories and novels are really completely different disciplines, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for people who can do both well, or for those who truly love the short story genre.
Have you ever written a story based on the question "Sex or pie"?
No, but that question has plagued me for much of my adult life. I still
contend that most rational men would say "pie". The fact that the polls don't back me up on this indicates an incredible dearth of rational men in this country.
What other text sims do you play? What are your favorites?
I've played the hell out of every iteration of OOTP since version two...or maybe it was version three. I'd have to look at the CD I got back then. Though the franchise has it's problems, I'm not particularly critical of it. OOTP does what I want a career baseball sim to do, and for the most part, it does those things well. The areas where there tend to be problems are with the sorts of things I tend to not care so much about, so that's largely a moot discussion for me. At the end of the day, I play text sims because the games tell me stories as they go about their business. I can't tell you how many times I've gone about household chores fake interviewing myself as the GM of the Boston Red Sox after a particularly gutty win or shocking defeat. I've fallen asleep talking to imaginary players about our diminished expectations
of their role on next year's team because some young stud is ready to come
up from Triple A. A text sim's ability to facilitate that kind of fantasy interaction with myself in a pseudo-realistic way is all that I've ever wanted out of a game. OOTP does this. FOF does it, too. I've dabbled with Puresim, and while there are things that I love about it, in general I find the interface clunky and the immersion factor less satisfying.
what did you think of "The Drake" on Seinfeld?
I was Drake long before he was, and the fact that he's more popular at it sticks in my craw a little bit. Thanks for pouring salt in that particular wound. ;)
Would you rather punch Hell Atlantic in the mouth, or whack
him over the head with a cardboard tube?
Here's the thing about HA: love him or hate him, he's consistently himself. When he opens his mouth (so to speak), you know what you're going to get. In a weird way, I repect that sort of consistency and blunt honesty about what he's feeling on any given topic. Of course, that also means that I frequently ignore him because I have a pretty good idea of what he's going to say, and he really only gets it back when he goes all foot-stompy.
Also, why does Dante's traveler in the Divine Comedy, upon reaching
the earthly Paradise, quote Dido's speech to her sister from Book IV of the
Aeneid? That doesn't really make any sense to me - it seems wildly inappropriate.
It makes more sense in Italian?
Are you married? Kids?
I'm currently working on my second marriage. The first lasted a bit over two years. We were 18, she was pregnant. A bad combination. My current marriage has lasted thirteen years, and has recently become rather unpleasant (as will be discussed later). I've got three boys: Thomas (15), Jesse (12), Ethan (8).
What do you like to do in your spare time other than write?
I play video games: Civ 3 or 4, RPG's and text sims are my poisons. As
a writer, you'd probably expect me to say that I spend a huge amount of time reading, but I really don't compared to video games, and the reading that I do is frequently research for whatever project I'm getting ready to tackle. I don't read anything *but* non-fiction when I'm writing. I'm also becoming increasingly convinced (largely due to the influence of the Gothic series, Morrowind and now Oblivion) that the future of mass audience fiction is video game scripts. Movies and the episodic nature of television don't really allow enough space to do what a novel does, but I really feel like the gaming format does, especially with the current state of the technology. Ultimately, writing isn't about the words on the page, but about telling stories that are important to the writer -- stories that communicate something essential about the human condition in a non-passive sort of way. Video games have the potential to be that sort of medium.
If you could have dinner with any two people from history, who would you pick and why?
Valentinus, the Gnostic theologian and St. Peter the Apostle. I have great admiration for Valentinus's theological structures and unique interpretation of the divine history. I'd love to see Peter tackle them over a plate of steamed trout with his characteristic blunt enthusiasm.
As a lawyer, I am curious--did you have any problems with the legal aspects of getting a book published? Is this one of those things that seemed a lot more complicated than it had to be? Did your agent/publisher take care of all that, and you not have to really deal with it?
I dealt with this myself. The contract from my small publisher was pretty straightforward and built on the model contract put together by the SFWA (Science Fiction Writer's Association of America). I had a couple of my lawyer buddies look it over just to make sure that it was a straightforward as it seemed, but that was really the extent of it. There's so little money in small press fiction that it really amounts to haggling over pennies.
Now, if I was offered a multi-book deal by a major publisher, I'd be foolish not to retain the services of an agent and hand all of that over to him/her. For the most part, given that I'm still something of a novice, the contracts are mostly boilerplate documents anyway. Stephen King gets to mostly name his own terms. The rest of us take what we're given and say, "Thank you, sir! May I have another!"
Also, do you have the movie/royalty/other rights to the book, or is that something that only "established" authors get?
The only rights I leased out were for paperback print and electronic editions. Those terms expire every three years and then the rights revert back to me. I haven't optioned any of the other rights, but they're available cheap(!) if anyone is interested. :)
Basically, I am curious as to how the business/money side of publishing
works for up and coming authors.
In the small pond (where I certainly am), writer's write the books and mail them off, hoping someone will be willing to take the financial gamble to publish the book. Small publishers aren't going to have a huge budget for marketing and promotion, so you get to set up most (if not all) of your own signings, author talks, etc. Travel expenses are out of your own pocket.
Bottom line is that once you've got the product, it really is just like any other business. You're only going to be as successful as you make yourself. Ninety-nine percent of the time, if you just write it and release it into the ether (i.e., leave everything to the publisher), you're not going to see much return because no one will have heard of your product.
What do you think is the biggest mistake most aspiring writers make?
1. They talk about writing more than they actually write.
2. They don't open their work up to the right sorts of criticism.
3. They spend more time worrying about how they're writing than about the mechanics of whether or not they're telling a story that complete strangers will want to read and whether or not they're telling it in the most compelling way.
4. They don't research the business side of things.
5. They post their stuff on the internet. Most publishers consider posting as "publishing", and you essentially forfeit your most valuable rights. Now, if you just want to be read and don't care about making any money (or building a career), that's not really a mistake. Again, this goes back to researching the business side. Guys like Cory Doctorow know what they're doing in this regard, but I'm not yet convinced that the Creative Commons license is really a sustainable idea for the future of fiction.
You've provided helpful feedback to Todd regarding his wife's
onset of bipolar disorder. To the extent that you feel comfortable discussing the issue, can you describe your experiences in dealing with this issue in your own household?
Echoing what dawgfan mentioned, I just wanted to know how long you had to deal with the wife bipolar condition? Has it been something that you know about prior to marriage or was it something discovered much later?
I'm going to touch on this with a great deal of brevity, because in many ways, the situation is still too fresh and painful for an appropriately distant evaluation. My wife and I have been married for thirteen years. In that time, she's lost her father and her grandmother, had three miscarriages and nearly watched her husband die. We declared bankruptcy in 2004, partially due to 100k in medical bills, partially due to my wife's bipolar spending sprees. Stress is a huge trigger for manic episodes, and we've had a great deal of stress. In the past, this manifested as irrational rages, fits of screaming, accusations of
infidelity and various other...I'll call them "irritations". At times, she was extraordinarily difficult to live with because her life was frequently an irrational and disorganized mess, a leaping from crisis to crisis that was often dizzying. In late 2005, she finally decided that it was time to seek professional help, as she seemed to be spiraling into a numbing depression. She was treated with an assortment of anti-depressants that, it turned out, only aggravated her bipolar disorder.
Things came to a head in September of last year when I found out that she'd been having an affair with my best friend of twenty years. She had no explanation for it. She couldn't explain why it had happened or what she was thinking. Her own actions didn't make sense to her, and in fact, she had large stretches of what she calls "lost time" where she knows that she was having an affair, but doesn't know why she was doing it or even what she was doing. She has almost no memory of the last two years of our life. At the worst point, I had to physically restrain her for more than hour while she tried to slit her wrists in the bathroom. I'd like to think that I was doing the honorable thing, but the truth is that I really didn't give a shit if she lived or died at that point in time. It was only when faced with the dissolution of our marriage that
she finally decided to be completely honest with her therapist. The bipolar diagnosis followed pretty quickly on the heels of that. For the record, my wife is Bipolar 2 with some Obsessive/Compulsive and Schizophrenic features thrown in for good measure. We've been dealing with this reality for five months, and she's doing great on her new medication so far.
So here we are. I've been betrayed in the deepest way that a man can be
betrayed, and the support system that I should have been able to rely on
was an integral part of the betrayal. More than once in the last few months, I've put a shotgun in my mouth because I didn't feel like I could handle the pain any longer. Part of that was realizing that it wasn't really even fair of me to be so brutally angry with my wife, because the things she had done that had hurt me so deeply had been done while she was, in essence, insane. They were done by a "her" that wasn't "her" in the sense that I knew her, and no one regretted what she had done more than she did.
I can't sit here and say that I know what all of this means yet. I can't tell you that I'm better for having gone through it or that I know what the future holds for us. I love my wife more than I could ever express. But I also hate her, even if it's just a little bit. I'm terrified of her, because I know that if she could hurt me that badly once, she's just one manic episode away from doing it again. What I do know is that I've survived it, and I'm changed for having survived it. I haven't yet measured the extent of those changes, and I'm not sure that I want to. I'm nostalgic for a past that we shared, but that I also know never existed. I'm nostalgic for the sense that it was the two of us against the world, that I could trust her utterly. I'm nostalgic for the innocence and goodness that was there, but will never be again.
But I love her, whatever that means. And for today, that's enough.
*shurg*
How did you end up in Bloomington, and how do you like it there?
I was actually raised about 20 miles west of Bloomington and then ended up going to college at IU when they offered me the most attractive scholarship package. In the half a dozen years between high school and college graduation, the rest of my family moved away. I stayed mostly because I'm extremely prone to entropy. Plus, my wife's family is from the area, so it was important to her that we stay. But I like Bloomington. It's like a big city (culturally) without all of the people.
If you weren't living in Bloomington, are there any other cities or
areas you'd really want to move to?
I harbor a long standing dream of one day living in Vermont or New Hampshire. I have no idea why, other than that the idea has always felt romantic to me.
What is your favorite restaurant in Bloomington?
I love Nick's on Kirkwood. It's the perfect cross between hopping college hangout and greasy spoon.
What are your feelings on the relationship between the college students and the townies?
Since I've been both a townie and a student, I've always been a bit confused by the apparent animosity. In fact, I think that Breaking Away greatly exaggerates an animosity that doesn't (or at least doesn't any longer) exist. The days where state college kids were socially, culturally or financially elite are long gone. Most kids now are struggling to pay their rent and keep up with their work just like the rest of us, so we have a great deal of common ground. In Bloomington, you have the added benefit that so many students stay in town after graduation because of the great family environment, there isn't a tremendous educational divide between students and townies.
Have you ever been to the Little 500.
Not since I was in high school. These days, I leave work early and clear out of town for Little 500 weekend. Who wants to deal with all of that traffic?
What is your favorite city park in B-ton?
I'm fond of People's Park, though it's a stretch to call it a park at all. I spent way too many hours there in my youth and have been known to pass a quiet lunch hour there on a warm spring day. I can't tell you how much I miss the days when Kirkwood was "weird" and Spaceport was the place to be on Friday nights. Maybe I'm just getting old, but it seems so much more bland now than it used to be. Starbucks moving in was really the last straw for me. But in general, since I don't live in Bloomington proper, I don't get out to the parks much.
I'm guessing from these questions that you're either a student or a Btown native, yes?
What is your opinion of Bobby night as a coach and as a person?
Bobby Knight is a big, raging dickhead who desperately needs someone to
keep him on a short leash so that he doesn't destroy the people around him. That said, he's still a great basketball coach. There are few things in sports as beautiful as a well executed motion offense. I would have been perfectly happy had he ended his career at IU, though I would have been equally happy never to have met him in person.
You mentioned that you had some brain inflammation that didn't cause any serious damage, but yet you have little memory of the time period. What procedures did you have to go through to recover and how did this affect the family?
In December of 2002, I developed a case of acute spinal meningitis that I managed to ignore long enough for it to advance to an encephalitis of unknown origin. The only reason I received medical assistance was because the swelling in my brain finally became severe enough that I became delusional. I have a vague recollection of my wife telling me to put my shoes on because she needed to take me to the doctor...and then waking up in the hospital five days later. That space is filled only by a long dream in which a bunch of firemen sat on top of me while I was trying to watch the College National Championship football game on television. I couldn't see the score and no one would tell me who won.
In the meantime, I apparently was being wrestled into submission by a dozen paramedics and police officers (all guys I went to high school with, as it turned out. They tell me to this day that even though they successfully got me out of my house and into the ambulance, I was far and away the winner of the fight.). I sent a really nice fruit/nuts/chocolate basket to both the police department and the paramedics when I got out of the hospital three weeks later.
Because I was so combative due to my delusions, the doctors put me in a medically induced coma for five days while they ran a bunch of tests. I continued to not get any better, so they actually sat my wife down and
gave her the "he probably isn't going to make it, and even if he does, he'll likely have the mentality of a ten year old" speech. They pumped me full of a bunch of steroids, anti-virals, anti-biotics and other meds to keep me down without killing me and to make me forget all of the things they were doing to me. (You'll have to forgive me -- I used to know the names of all these medications, but I really don't remember them anymore.) In the end, they decided to just ease off and see what was going on. I woke up.
I spent a full week in the Bloomington Hospital, then was transferred up
to the IU Medical Center for further study and analysis. No one ever figured out what caused the infection, though apparently the CDC was quite interested at the time. What I do remember is this: I watched a ton of SportsCenter, and it was a good thing that it was on so many times a day, because from one episode to the next, I'd forget what they'd reported on during the last one, so it was all new to me. I couldn't write my own name. Hell, I couldn't even hold a pencil for the first several days. I started working my mind back into shape by getting one of those kids activity books (crosswords, mazes, word searches) and worked at it relentlessly until I could write again and speak coherently. The rest of the time, I studied the neurological exams that the docs gave me four or five times a day and practiced the exercises when they weren't around. I knew from the decorations in the hall that Christmas was coming up, and I wanted to be home for the Holidays.
I was discharged the day before Christmas. I had a fever of like 102 and could barely stand up. I'd been heaving my guts up all day because I'd had to drink a double dose of dye before an MRI (or something) the night before -- I took one dose and then they missed my appointment window, so I had to do it again. I covered this by cranking the thermostat in my room up to 90 degrees so I could explain my sweats to the neurologist. I'd managed to acquire a reputation as a model patient with the nurses, so by then, they were letting me take my own temperature (partly because one of my mental workouts was converting the Celsius temperature to Farenheit in my head -- they knew I was doing this, so they let me keep my own chart).
I was a very, very *bad* patient. :)
Anyway, they sent me home with a pict line for IV anti-virals as a precaution, and other than every-other-day visits with a home health nurse for the next month, my communication with the medical establishment ceased at that point. I went back to work in the middle of January and just sort of toughed things out until they weren't tough anymore. I had to re-learn most of the things I knew about programming. I ended up with a lower tolerance for anxiety and stress, and more of a tendency to express my emotions verbally. I have more difficulty reading for long periods at a time than I used to have, and to some extent, it's easier to immerse myself in games and on-line
activities than it is to deal with more intensive activities. People tell me that I'm friendlier, more talkative, funnier and generally more outgoing than I was before the encephalitis. I've been accused of having no internal monologue as a result of my experience. If it crosses my mind, no matter how inappropriate it might seem, chances are I'm going to say it. I'm also pretty sure my penis is 3/4 of an inch longer, but maybe I'm just imagining that.
All in all, I think I got off pretty lucky. More than one doctor on my case told me that it was a small miracle I ended up with nothing worse than a little bruising on my brain and no long term lesions or scarring.
Anyway, I learned my lesson: when your body starts going numb for days at a time, your neck and head ache so badly that you want to scream, you
start passing out for no particular reason and you start routinely having difficulty remembering how to do even the most menial of tasks (like figuring out how to turn your computer on), the answer is *not* to go to bed and sleep it off. You should probably go to the doctor.
The really funny bit to me, of course, is that I wrote _From the Hands of Hostile Gods_ in early 2002, before I had encephalitis. I did a ton of research into meningitis and encephalitis to get some of the story details right. When I started exhibiting those same symptoms less than six months later, it never crossed my mind. Go figure.
What made you choose to get a B.A. in English? Did you choose this
degree because you always had a dream of becoming a writer?
Yup. I knew that an English degree would teach me how to critically deconstruct literature from a thematic perspective. Knowing what your story is about is almost as important as knowing how it's about it.
Of course, as a science fiction writer, I probably should have majored in one of the hard sciences, but I find math icky, so those were all straight out.
How old are you?
I'll be 36 in March of 2007. My twelve year old and I have the same birthday (March 19).
Was you book inspired by events that occurred in your life?
Actually, my book was inspired by two things:
1. I'd been reading some articles about Mars exploration that really caught my fancy.
2. I really wanted to shag this woman I worked with. All literature is masturbation fantasy. The skill is occluding this fact from the reader.
Do you feel that much more research is involved in writing a science fiction novel?
Not at all. The great thing about science fiction is that a little knowledge goes a long way. In many cases, since you're setting the parameters of your universe, you can fudge the details (for things like, oh, faster than light travel, artificial gravity, etc.), or you can offer them as "givens" without any technical explanation and the reader will suspend disbelief and just accept them. I'd find it incredibly more daunting to write a novel set in 1992 Atlanta, because there are a ton more people who lived in 1992 Atlanta than have lived in the future, and a ton more people who know something about Atlanta than have a decent working knowledge of applied physics. The key to good science fiction is verisimilitude rather than stone cold accuracy. Let the story do the work and try not to mess it up by getting so technical that you make obvious mistakes.
The one thing that I had admired is the fact that you actually finished a novel. I think there are a few people on this board that has done so. How hard was it to complete the first one and how rewarding was it to see it in print?
_From the Hands of Hostile Gods_ was actually one of my easier novels
to write. I think it took me all of three months from first draft to final edit. I'm not a typical writer in that I don't write every day. I write in spurts, meaning that I'm very project driven. I may go six months without writing anything but message board posts, computer code and Really Bad Poetry(tm). During that time, I'm reading and bashing ideas together and trying to find something that catches my fancy. When the work finally begins, I'll spend a couple of frustrating weeks writing a couple thousand words a day and then throwing those fits and starts away while I try to figure out how to get into this story that's bouncing around in my head. Usually, I've just got the bare bones of it. I don't outline, and I try not to think too far ahead. I like my
stories to unfold as I write them. If I know how it's going to end before I get there, I tend to get bored and lose focus -- not a luxury I'd have if I was a full-time novelist, of course, but since I'm not, it works for me. Many times, if I *do* think I know where it's going, the story changes and makes all of the cool things I thought I was doing obsolete. That's just part of the fun.
But I've never had any problem producing text. I wrote my first 100 page (handwritten, anyway) novel when I was 10. By the time I was in high school, I was working on what would become a 2000 page fantasy epic
(all copies of which, fortunately, have been lost). If I have one great weakness as a writer these days, it's that it takes me 100,000 words just to get started (the average length of a mass market paperback). My last novel topped out at 250K. At 2,500 words a day/five days a week, that's a pretty significant time investment for just the first draft. I'm also one of those guys who just writes the first draft straight through (unless I have to go back and actually change the storyline to address an event that pops up later). Then I go through it with a red pen and a stack of post-it notes, looking for plot problems, thematic issues, narrative logic, etc. Big picture stuff. That usually takes me 4-6 weeks (including data entry time). Then I go through it again on screen fine tuning the language. That can take another 4-6 weeks.
Then I get sick of it and put it away for about a month. Then I go through it again. For however long a given novel takes me, it's what I live and breathe from start to finish. It's always on my mind. I'm always making notes, scribbling on envelopes, rehearsing plot points and mentally talking to the characters to figure out who they are, how they sound, what their motivations are, what they think. It's part interview, part interrogation, part uncovering secrets they don't want me to know, but ultimately, it's all about getting their story *right*, because even when I'm done with the novel and have put it away, they're still the ones who have to live with the consequences. So to speak.
The worst thing I ever did in my life was kill the woman Ray Marlowe loved, and though it was necessary, I grieve that decision to this day. You don't know Ray Marlowe, of course, he only exists in my head and in a manuscript on my hard drive, and he is one of the coolest guys I have ever known.
Do you read heavily in the genre that you had written in? And what other genres do you read?
I read more science fiction than anything else, but I'm not as well versed in the genre as I would like to be. I read Neal Stephenson because he's a stylistic genius. I read Cory Doctorow because he's got fantastic ideas. I read Robert Charles Wilson because he never forgets that the story is about people rather than technology. I read Tim Powers because he marries the weird and the mundane better than any writer alive. I also keep my eye on Singularity and Post-Human literature because that's a particular interest of mine (though I have to admit that I've never gotten Vernor Vinge).
Outside of SF, I read supernatural fiction (think Umberto Eco's _Foucalt's Pendulum_, not _The Da Vinci Code_, which made me want to slam my face into a wall because of how blatantly it ripped off _Holy Blood, Holy Grail_.) I have a soft spot for Stephen King, Stephen R. Donaldson, H.P. Lovecraft and Arthur Conan Doyle. I also read waaaaay too much Gnostic scholarship, Kabbalah literature and books about the 19th century Western Mystical tradition (Blavatsky, Regardie, Crowley, etc.).
And as a father do you feel you are doing a good job?
I don't think any father ever thinks he's doing a good enough job. I let them play too many video games, I think, but since they're all straight A students and haven't robbed any liquor stores yet, I guess I'm doing okay. And when I say "I", I mean my wife/the homework fairy, of course. When we had kids, my wife really wanted to be a stay-at-home mom for as long as we could afford it. That means my laptop is three years old and I've been driving my truck for close to ten years, but it was one of the best decisions we ever made. I'm grateful that it was something she wanted to do.
If you can take two snapshots of the best and worst times of your life,
what would the images look like?
Best: The first time my wife told me she loved me.
Worst: Any day in the last six months.
Both prominently figure my wife. I guess that's not surprising.
How did you end up with a job as a database analyst after graduating
from college with a degree in English?
Like most English majors, I came out of college with the skills to be a secretary, which I did for about two years. During that time, I was so mind numbingly bored by my work that I began to acquire programming skills just to keep myself occupied. By the time a programming/analyst position opened up, I'd made myself invaluable by slowly assuming the entire workload of the guy I replaced (he retired). It wasn't what I ever thought I'd be doing, and it isn't something I'm particularly interested in, but as a science fiction writer, having a knowledge of programming has its utilities.
Would people think you are a techie or a technophobe if they were to
enter your household?
I'm a definite techie. Another part of my secretarial experience was acquiring all of the technical support knowledge I could. Our big tech support guy was nearing retirement as well, so I was prepared to take over his job if the programming one fell through. :)
Do you have any family events (immediate family or the family in which
you were raised) that you think about from time to time, whether it is bad or good?
When I was ten years old, I set my neighborhood on fire. A friend and I were playing in the woods. It was November and getting chilly, but we didn't want to go inside, so we decided we'd build a fire to keep warm. We knew enough not to build our fire right on the ground, so we dug up a nice piece of particle board as our fire base. Yeah, that went about as well as you might expect.
When it became apparent that things were getting out of control, we did what most ten year olds do...we ran home to hide under our beds. I did stop long enough to tell my mom that I thought there was something on fire in the woods. She called the fire department. They showed up and battled the blaze for about three hours, narrowly stopping it right at the edge of our neighborhood. Shortly afterward, a fireman knocked on the door. He told my mother that it was a good thing I'd been so quick on my feet and gotten her to call 911 or the whole neighborhood might have gone up.
To this day, my mother doesn't know the truth.
What profession would you love to do for the rest of your life if you
were given the chance?
Oh, I'd be a writer. In a heartbeat.
What other talents are people unaware of?
I have an enormous...wait, that isn't really a talent, is it?
How did you and your wife meet?
*cough* She was my babysitter. I *told* my ex-wife that hiring her was
a bad idea.
In your life, who do you consider your "true" friends?
The guys in the FOBL. I've never met any of them face to face, but they've been there for me through the darkest parts of my life. Oh, and none of them have fucked my wife.
Do you consider yourself to be religious, spiritual, agnostic or
atheist? Any events shaped these beliefs or was it something you grew
up with?
My father is a minister. I'm both genetically and environmentally pre-disposed toward Christianity. I spent a long time trying to get away from it -- not because I didn't believe it, but because it didn't seem to have any vitality in day-to-day living. I learned subsequently that the vitality of faith is something that can only be appreciated with age and experience. Faith only means as much as it costs.
How much do you really love Firefox?
If Peyton Manning was Firefox, Tom Brady would be just another quarterback from Michigan.
Do you have any brothers or sisters?
One older sister who is a special education teacher. Two younger brothers: one is a captain in the Air Force, currently stationed in Baghdad. The other is a minister in Orlando, FL.
How close are you with your mother? Your father?
My family was and remains extremely close. We moved around a ton when I
was growing up, and so never forged strong relationships with our communities or our extended family. It was just the six of us. That's never really gone away, and in fact, I'm still weirded out by the level of contact I have with my wife's extended family. Aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces -- why should I have to care what's going on with their lives? :)
Would it be safe to say that you are an "ass" man when it comes to women?
I'd say that I'm actually a boob man, but the truth is that I'm a "total package" man. There aren't any particular features that admire in isolation. I'm much more interested in how the entire package on a given woman works together to produce an attraction.
I do tend to gravitate toward short women, though. I have no idea why. I'm 6'2". My wife is 5'1". Anything over 5'5" is getting too tall for me (unless, you know, we're talking about Nicole Kidman). Which is strange given that my mom is 5'7".
Could you make a sci-fi story that exaggerates/embellishes the
terpkrisitin curse or terpkristinitis? And please don't copy the movie
"Unbreakable".
With her assorted wrist/hand issues, we'd have much more fun with terpkristin was a guy. You know that, right?
Did you receive any rejection letters prior to Silver Lake Publishing?
Dozens. And I've received dozens since. That's just part of the business.
Where does your family like to go whenever you have the free time?
We like to stay home. My perfect vacation: staying at home for a couple of weeks, playing with the kids, swimming as a family in our big-assed pond and roasting hot dogs and marshmallows at the end of the day.
Do you find yourself daydreaming fictional worlds at the workplace?
When I'm not rigorously involved in a logical puzzle or surfing the internet, I actually do. Shhh. Here's a secret: for as long as I can remember, I've put myself to sleep at night by imagining fictional worlds and the fictional people who populate them. These are stories I never bother to write down, but some of those story arcs have lasted months at a time. If you could hear my thoughts while I'm doing this, they'd sound exactly like my novels. I'm just speaking them to myself rather than writing them out.
Do you think you manage your time effectively?
I'd say that I do. I'm very project and goal oriented. I was one of those annoying students in college who would go home and write a term paper the day it was assigned so I wouldn't have to worry about it between the assignment and the due date. The truth is that I have trouble screwing around if I know I've got things to do.
Introvert or Extrovert in person?
Extremely introverted until I get to know someone (though that's changed
a bit in the post-encephalitis world). I'm the sort of person who will carry on an e-mail conversation with you for two months before I actually say anything to you in person. To that extent, the internet is the greatest thing that ever happened as far as I'm concerned.
Who have been inspirations in your life?
My father. If I become half the man he is, I will be proud of the life I lived.
What are your musical tastes?
Hair Metal, Warm-and-Fuzzy Punk (Bowling for Soup, Blink 182), anything that sounds like Guns and Roses, and Christian Alternative (Jars of Clay, Caedmon's Call, etc.) Anything that doesn't twang.
What type of environment is required for you to write?
A computer, a pair of headphones (with or without music) and the kitchen table. That's all I need. On the other hand, I also like to have a block of at least a couple hours to work with. More than four hours tends to wear me out, but I can be solidly productive with two or three. My wife will tell you, though, that there's no use in talking to me during that time period, because I won't hear a word that you say (even if I respond coherently) and I won't remember anything we talked about later.
I seem to be psychologically incapable of writing while I'm at work, even if I've got the time (which I frequently do since my job is project oriented rather than time clock oriented).
How do you maintain the discipline necessary to write a
novel?
As I've mentioned, I'm only disciplined in that when I'm writing, I'm *writing*. I think that's less discipline than allowing myself to become totally immersed in the universe I'm creating. I wish I wrote more, but the truth is that I'm incredibly lazy.
How easy is it for you to rewrite? Are you prone to getting attached to your words?
I think every writer gets attached to their first draft. I get overly attached to notes and snippets of conversation that I write on envelopes that don't quite fit by the time I get to wedging them into the manuscript. Sometimes I'll write a scene six or seven times trying to make those things fit in a way that seems natural, but ultimately, you can always tell when you've tried too hard. Usually, it's a shift in tone or mood that seems to come out of nowhere. Once you realize what you've done and how it's changed the narrative dynamic, it becomes easier to cut that stuff out. Plus, I've usually got so many more
words at the end than I want, it's easy to chop them out. Anything over 200K makes you start to feel guilty and self-indulgent. Honestly, though, rewriting is my favorite part. It's feeling like you're being productive every day without having to face the terror of the blank page -- which is one of the reasons that I never stop writing at the bottom of a page. I try to stop writing halfway down so that I feel like I'm building on something rather than starting fresh.
What's your favorite word that rhymes with Drake?
Bukake? Oh wait, that doesn't rhyme. :)
If there was one thing we could know about you that we
don't already know, what would it be?
I love kittens, puppies and cows. Since my wife won't let me raise cattle, I've compensated by acquiring three dogs and eleven cats.
Slim competition. It's the only league I've ever been in. But it's still the greatest. Plus, it's the only league that would have me, given that I have no internal monologue.
[quote]What cool smoking tricks can you do?
The French inhale -- which looks mighty impressive until you've seen my wife smoke a cigarette with her...never mind.
Do you still try and pretend that shit on your face is a beard?
I did until yesterday, but then I shaved it off. I'll be pretending again by the middle of next week.
You have to have sex with one of the following three or you will die:
fritz, subby, louie andersen? Who and why
Subby, because he's the easiest target. I have a terrible fear of rejection.
How many times in your life have you spanked it to Eyes Wide Shut?
Most gratifying non-Kidman scene?
1. At least a dozen times.
2. There are non-Kidman scenes?!
Days of Thunder Nicole Kidman or Bewitched Nicole Kidman? Why?
Bewitched. Both are horrible, horrible movies, but at least in Bewitched, Nicole Kidman says "Darren" over and over again. Just thinking about her saying my name still gives me a shiver in my timbers.
Have you ever shaved, cut or otherwise manicured your pubus? If so, why?
Vasectomy, 1998. The hair growing back was worse than the surgery.
Tell us about the genocide you have single-handedly perpetrated on the
feral cat community.
I've probably killed more cats than most people. Part of being a responsible pet owner (especially when you keep breeder cats to control the mouse population) means being prepared to put down sick and malformed kittens when insufficient genetic diversity has tainted the pool. I'm a stomper, not a drowner.
How many relay races have you watched in your life? I lost my copy of your book...can I get another one?
1. Counting the Olympics? Too many.
2. PM me.
I'm someone that one day wants to write a fiction story. Novel, short story, screenplay, whatever. But I have no clue where to begin. Seeing as how you are a writer, what steps would you give to someone like me as advice?
1. Character comes first. Know who you're writing about.
2. Opening situation comes next.
3. Put the character you know in the situation you don't and just let him be himself. Interesting things will happen.
4. Realize that where you start writing my be 20, 50 or 100 pages before the story that's worth telling actually starts.
5. Ultimately, there aren't any shortcuts. You just have to sit down and gut it out until you lose yourself in it, even realizing that most of the initial work you're going to do is crap.
6. Resist the urge to edit. Just write. You can edit later, and editing in the early stages often leads to paralysis.
How do you feel about your FTB thread being jacked by a
boxed Hell Atlantic?
He actually did me a big favor. There have been a bunch of really great
questions that might not have ever popped up if HA hadn't been such an
ass.
Do you have to go through any type of preperation/ritual before you begin to write?
Not other than reading, reading and more reading of scientific articles, news stories and websites until I feel comfortable enough with a topic to tackle it.
What has been your experience working with a small publisher?
The personal attention is great. Knowing that your publisher believes as much in your novel as you do is great (after all, it's their money on the line). On the other hand, I'm not sure that's worth giving up the marketing budget, the sales force and the advance on royalties that you'd get from a major publisher. Maybe I'll feel differently if I ever get to work with a major publisher.
That said, I'm eternally grateful to Silver Lake for giving me a shot.
What is one thing that drives you up the wall?
"Should of" rather than "should have". That drives me crazy.
Has there ever been a fictional story that caused you to cry?
"A Small Good Thing" by Raymond Carver. Possibly the most powerful short story ever written.
What books would you recommend to other writers?
_Self-Editing for Fiction Writers_ by Renni Brown and Dave King
_The Elements of Style_
_On Writing_ by Stephen King
Because you were an English major, did you often find yourself editing as you were writing or do you write whatever comes to your mind and edit it later disregarding grammar, punctuation, etc?
Unless I'm dealing with structural problems (or in very rare cases, a pivotal scene that I know right away that I didn't carry off right), I refuse to edit until the first draft is done. I like to edit too much, and it's easy to talk myself into the delusion that I'm working if I allow myself to slip into editor mode. Editing is the enemy of productive writing...until it's time to edit, then it's the soul of writing.
If you met someone you hadn't seen in decades, would they be surprised with the path you took with your life?
Nah. Even when I was in high school, everyone knew that I wanted to be a writer. I won a ton of journalism awards (though I was never strongly interested in journalism). If anything, they'd be surprised that I'm *not* a full-time writer by now. I know I am...except for the fact that it's practically impossible to make a living as a full-time writer unless you're a journalist.
What type of software do you use to write with and do you use any additional software to help you flesh out your stories?
The only software I use for writing is the text editor Ultra-Edit. I started using it as my programming software (it's really just a glorified text editor), and just fell in love with it. I think it's because it defaults to Courier, which is what I'm used to looking at in manuscript format.
My novel organizational "software" is post-it notes and scribbled envelopes crammed into a manila folder along with scientific articles printed off the web. You'd be amazed how often inspiration strikes while you're driving 45 minutes to work. :)
What do you think of Neal Stephenson - brilliant visionary
or over-complicated bloviating gasbag?
Neal Stephenson is a god. I love him. I love his prose. I want to have his children.
That said, I got 500 pages into _Quicksilver_ before I gnawed my own arm
off to get away from it. I live in mortal fear of the day I decide to pick it up again.
Is there a song you never tire of?
Currently, it's "Oh My God" by Jars of Clay. Overall, it would have to be "One" by U2.
I love U2. Have I mentioned that?
What is your fondest childhood memory?
Dairy Queen with my family for Peanut Buster Parfaits after church on Sunday night. There's a reason for this, something I've realized as I've gotten older and my kids have grown. My dad was a pastor all the time I was growing up. I sat in church on Sunday (and Wednesday and Thursday) and got to hear whatever was on his mind. Whatever he was mulling over all week long was spoken from the pulpit on Sunday morning. Even better, the man he spoke about being on Sunday was the man I saw walking, talking and working out his faith Monday through Saturday. I didn't have to figure out what my dad believed, he told me and then he showed me, and when he messed up, he apologized to me for not living up to the standards he believed in. Sometimes, I look around at my kids and I have this awareness that they don't know anything about me. They don't know what's important to me, because I don't tell them about it. I don't sit them down for an hour two or three days a week and talk to them about the things I believe or the questions I wrestle with. Because my father did what he did professionally, I received the gift of a dazzling transparency into who he is that I think most people don't ever get to see. Hanging out with my family, basking in the glow of my dad's joy after delivering a Sunday sermon (and getting those concerns/fears/questions out in the open) reminds me of all the good things about my childhood.
Fill in the blank: It was a dark and stormy night _________
Oh, no. If Snoopy couldn't beat that one, I'm not going to fall into that trap. I bow before the master.
What do you do in your spare time?
I have a "Honey, Do" list longer than my arm. :P
Which actor do you most resemble?
None that I'm aware of, but my younger brother bears a striking resemblance to Matt Damon. Unfortunately, I don't look like him.
Best vacation you've ever taken.
In January of 2005, I spent two weeks in Europe with my brothers. We hit Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany and Austria on a massive road trip. I saw things that I never expected to see in real life, but what I remember most is hanging out in small restaurants and drinking wine, beer and espresso and just being grown up with my brothers. I've had some great family vacations, but when you're toting your wife and kids around, there's a level of stress and responsibility that goes along with it. (What if the car breaks down? Where are the kids? Why do you want to go to an aquarium?) All of that goes out the window when it's just a bunch of guys together. You don't have to worry about making everything go okay, because you know that if things go slantwise, you'll be able to fix it. It might be uncomfortable. You might end up sleeping in the car on the side of the road during a snowstorm, but it'll all turn out okay in the end.
If you won $20 million dollars in the lottery, what would you do with the money?
I'd start my own SF publishing imprint so *I* could be one of the people breaking writers' hearts. :)
Oh, and I'd buy Red Sox season tickets.
Whew. I think that's all of them. Thanks for sticking with me to the
end. I realize that there's a bunch here, probably more than you could
have ever wanted. Thanks for listening.
D.