Interview with Chris Redding

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: Chris Redding primarily writes romance fiction. In 2004, Wings Press published her first romantic suspense book titled THE DRINKING GAME. In 2007, Enspiren Press published her next book CORPSE WHISPERER, a paranormal romantic suspense book. Her third is soon to be published. She also teaches courses in writing and is active in the writers’ group “Liberty States Fiction Writers.” Her web page is here.

Chris, When writing romance, what are the key elements that you believe need to be present?

CHRIS REDDING: You must have a hero, a heroine and a happy ending. There must be some reason in the beginning that they cannot be together and both of them must overcome the obstacles by the end of the book for that happily ever after. Both can be flawed, but they can’t be unlikable. They can’t be mean or cruel. Lastly, the motivation for their actions must be clear.

VENTRELLA: Have you had any formal writing training? Do you think that is necessary?

REDDING: I have a BA in Journalism from Penn State though that should not have prepared me for writing fiction! And if it did my professors would be mortified. Other than that I’ve been to conferences and participated in workshops for ten years. Not sure if you’d consider that formal or not. I don’t think you need a degree in writing to write. You do need to be educated about the business of writing. You also need to know about the genre you write in. There are guidelines you must adhere to for each.

VENTRELLA: You have two books published so far, with two different publishers. How did that come about?

REDDING: With smaller publishers coming and going, I did not want to put all my books in the same place. One of my fellow writers in a group I was in at the time raved about Wings. She was so happy there that it was infectious. And they accepted my first book THE DRINKING GAME which came out in 2004. Then a few years later I heard a small Canadian publisher, Enspiren, was looking for submissions. They accepted my second book, CORPSE WHISPERER, which was released in 2007.

VENTRELLA: How did you end up with your current publisher?

REDDING: My next book will be out with LBF books in the Spring of 2010. I pitched INCENDIARY to them in 2008 at a conference I attended. I feel each step has been a step up in terms of my career. That’s why I’ve chosen each publisher.

VENTRELLA: Would you advise beginning writers to contact them, or are they fairly specialized?

REDDING: Enspiren is more a boutique publisher. Wings and LBF Books accept more genres and publish more books each year. They would be more what a new author is looking for.

VENTRELLA: What’s your opinion on self-publishing?

REDDING: I think it has its place. I haven’t read many self-published books so I really can’t speak to their quality or lack of. It just never seemed the way to go for me. I think you must have already established outlets I which to sell your books. I don’t so I never saw it as a good fit.

VENTRELLA: What’s next? What are you working on now?

REDDING: I’m working on a novella about an angel who investigates crimes. It’s for a call for submission by a specific publisher. With my critique group I am working on a romantic comedy I hope to pitch at a conference in March. My edits for Incendiary will arrive at the end of November so all that will be on hold until they get done.

VENTRELLA: Have you ever considered writing in any other genre?

REDDING: I have been approached by a former co-worker to co-write a children’s picture book with her. I’ve also written a book geared towards the early elementary grades. It’s a chapter book about a pencil monster. I haven’t really done anything with it. If you want a short answer, yes, but I read mostly thrillers, mysteries and suspense so I’m most comfortable with those genres.

VENTRELLA: What is your writing style? Do you tend to rely on outlines first or do you just plow right in?

REDDING: I plow right in. A true pantser. The only things I need to start are the names of the characters, the title of the book, and maybe the conflict they have. I trust that the words will be there when I sit down. And they always are. They aren’t always the best words, but that’s what revising is for.

VENTRELLA: What was your biggest mistake so far in trying to make it as an author?

REDDING: I listened to two people at the very beginning and they led me astray. Not on purpose. I think they had the best of intentions, but they didn’t know as much as I thought they did. Neither is published at this point so I was lucky to find some more knowledgeable writers to take advice from.

VENTRELLA: Do you have any specific advice you would give a writer trying to make it in the publishing business that they may not have heard before?

REDDING: Besides being wealthy so you can buy a publisher? Uh, no that won’t work. You need to have a realistic belief in yourself. What do I mean by realistic? I’m 5’ 2” tall. I’d never make it as a professional basketball player. That’s realistic. What I do know, is that any time I needed to write something to test out of a class in school, I succeeded, including freshman English in college. Does that mean I know everything? No, It means I have a good base to build on.

Thanks for having me on your blog, Michael!

Interview with Gail Z. Martin

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: I’m pleased to be interviewing Gail Z. Martin today. Gail is the author of The Chronicles of The Necromancer series. The books are available in your favorite bookstore, as ebooks from my publisher Double Dragon, and will be released as audiobooks by Audible.com soon. She is also host of the Ghost in the Machine Fantasy Podcast, and you can find her on MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. She enjoys attending science fiction/fantasy conventions, Renaissance fairs and living history sites. Her web page is here.

Gail, tell me about your fantasy series The Chronicles of the Necromancer.

GAIL MARTIN: The Chronicles of the Necromancer series includes four books so far: THE SUMMONER, THE BLOOD KING, DARK HAVEN and DARK LADY’S CHOSEN. The story begins when a young man’s family is murdered, and he discovers that he is heir to a very rare type of magic, the ability to intercede between the living and the dead. He needs to learn to control that magic before it destroys him in order to avenge his family. I’ve really written two two-book sets. The Summoner and The Blood King are one story arc, and then a new story arc with the characters picks up in Dark Haven and Dark Lady’s Chosen.

VENTRELLA: Do you have a set number of books planned for this series?

MARTIN: Well, I’ve given my publisher abstracts for about 20 books I’d like to write, so we’ll see! There are two exciting pieces of news about the series. First, DARK LADY’S CHOSEN comes out December 29, and it will launch as a paperback, an ebook and an audiobook. And second, Orbit Books has picked up the next four books. The Fallen Kings Cycle is the name of the new series, and it will pick up after DARK LADY’S CHOSEN. I’m already working on Book One: THE SWORN.

VENTRELLA: Do you plan the entire series in detail or do you do one book at a time?

MARTIN: A little of both. I have a pretty clear idea of the full story arc and the arc for each major character. And I’ve given my publisher abstracts for quite a few other books set in the world of the Winter Kingdoms. And my publisher asks me to turn in a chapter-by-chapter outline before each book. That said, things do arise as I’m writing that often changes the way I saw things unfolding. Usually not a change to the ultimate outcome, but changes in how things go along the way. So the overview and outlines help, but the story develops on its own as we go along.

VENTRELLA: How did you become published? Did you obtain an agent first?

MARTIN: Yes, I did get an agent first. I really didn’t have time to work, write and shop my manuscript, and I knew that fewer and fewer large publishing houses accept unagented submissions. Having an agent has been very important, especially when it comes to negotiating contracts and understanding what options exist. A good agent is also valuable for negotiating translation sales and other contracts, such as ebooks and audiobooks.

VENTRELLA: Do you think you will ever write in another genre?

MARTIN: Well, I have the first book in a new nonfiction series for writers coming out in January, THE THRIFTY AUTHOR’S GUIDE TO LAUNCHING YOUR BOOK WITHOUT LOSING YOUR MIND. It’s a book on book marketing for authors who want to make sure readers find out about their books! And as far as fiction goes, I do have some ideas I’m developing, but they’re not ready for prime time yet!

VENTRELLA: I keep hearing that publishers are not that interested any more in traditional high fantasy. As a writer in that genre myself, I am worried. Do you find this to be the case?

MARTIN: I think the more important question to ask is, “Are readers interested in traditional high fantasy?” From my experience, I would say yes. So long as there are readers who want a certain genre, there will either be publishers who will supply it or authors will meet the demand directly by self-publishing. My bet is that so long as publishers sense there is money to be made in a genre, they will keep publishing it.

VENTRELLA: What’s your opinion on self-publishing? Do you advise new authors to go this route, or is it better to not publish at all than to be self-published?

MARTIN: I think it’s easier to succeed with nonfiction in self-publishing than fiction because most nonfiction authors have the opportunity to sell from the “back of the room” at workshops, speaking engagements, etc. Also, if nonfiction meets a need and creates a benefit, people buy it, regardless of who publishes it. Fiction is a little harder, because it doesn’t have that clear need/benefit link. With fiction, distribution through bookstores and online booksellers is still crucial, and that can be more difficult if you’re self-published.

On the other hand, a good book will find a market. THE SHACK was a self-published book that couldn’t get a publisher until it sold a gazillion copies and then was picked up by a big publishing house. If you decide to self-publish, you’ll have to work twice as hard on distribution, personal appearances, being a vendor at conventions and basic selling. But if you believe in your book, then you do what you have to do to bring it to life. I would probably advise authors to exhaust their options for traditional publishing with large and small publishers before self-publishing fiction, but I’m sure there are other authors who feel differently and that’s OK. Even when you’re traditionally published, there is a lot of work that goes into promoting the book.

VENTRELLA: Gail, you are one of the most active authors when it comes to publicity and promotion, because of your background. While it is clear that published authors must promote themselves, do you think it is appropriate for unpublished authors to maintain a web presence and otherwise promote themselves, and if so, how can that be done tastefully and effectively?

MARTIN: I think part of that depends on your definition of “unpublished.” If you post your short stories on your web site, that is a form of publishing. If you release your book as a podiobook, that’s a form of publishing.

I think you always have to be clear about what it is you’re promoting. Some authors, like J.C. Hutchins, started out by releasing free podiobook versions of their stories and gathered so many readers/listeners that they ended up getting a book contract with a traditional publisher. So think first about what your goal is in promotion yourself and what you have to promote. If you write an entertaining blog, host a good podcast or even create an online serial that gets good buzz, you may attract a publisher.

VENTRELLA: You and I run across each other at conventions often and you attend many more than I do. Please tell us why you think attending these is important, and whether you think they are important even for unpublished authors.

MARTIN: Cons are important because they’re a great way for authors to meet other authors and of course, to meet readers. Today’s readers like to meet the authors of the books they read, just like they enjoy connecting online and on social media. It’s also a great way to attract new readers who may decide to try your books because they liked what you said on a panel, had a good chat with you in the lounge or came to a reading and liked what they heard.

For unpublished authors, cons can be great places to meet published authors and get advice. Lots of cons have writing and publishing tracks where there are panels with editors, agents and publishers, or with authors talking about the business and mechanics of writing. It’s a great free education. I definitely think it’s worth it.

VENTRELLA: What advice do you wish someone had given you when you first began trying to break into the business?

MARTIN: Expect to spend twice as much effort promoting the book as it took to write it. Realize that if you don’t promote the book and you don’t sell well, you don’t get invited to write a second book.

VENTRELLA: Can you think of a personal anecdote about the writing life you’d like to share?

MARTIN: Going on book tour really does require you to check your ego at the door. You spend a lot of time driving around, setting up table displays and schlepping your stuff from store to store. No matter how many big signs in the store have your photo on them, inevitably more than one person will ask you where the bathroom is or where somebody else’s book is shelved because they just assume you work there. Smile. It’s all part of being an author, and it’s worth every moment. But just to be safe, make sure you really can direct people to the bathrooms!

VENTRELLA: You’ve got audio and excerpts from DARK LADY’S CHOSEN online, plus there are other sites participating in your Days of the Dead blog tour. Where can we find all the goodies?

MARTIN: Check out my site at www.ChroniclesOfTheNecromancer.com, for all the downloads and more Days of the Dead stuff. Also, please find me on Twitter.com as GailZMartin and on Facebook and MySpace as well.

Interview with Nebula Award Winning Author James Morrow

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: Years ago, a friend pushed the World Fantasy Award-winning novel TOWING JEHOVAH on me, and it sounded fascinating. Being a typical writer/reader, I always have dozens of books on my “Have to Read and Will Get Around to Some Day” pile. JEHOVAH jumped to the top of the list after I had the pleasure of meeting James Morrow at Worldcon in Montreal a few months ago as we both patiently waited in line for substandard Canadian coffee. It was as good as had been recommended (the book, not the coffee), and now I have the two sequels next in line on my “Have to Read” pile.

James Morrow is a graduate of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania (not necessarily in that order) and has won acclaim for a variety of fantastic novels which weave together religion, politics, and philosophy. A Nebula-award winner, Morrow continues to challenge and entertain. His web page is here.

James, thanks for taking the time! It is obvious that much of your work concerns religion, from the Godhead Trilogy to ONLY BEGOTTEN DAUGHTER. What do you find in this subject that makes it so desirable?

JAMES MORROW: Every day, I wake up and I say to myself, “How extraordinary! Here I am, James Morrow, thrown into a world in which the vast majority of bipedal beings believe in benign supernatural intervention, and I don’t buy one bit of it! What’s going on here? Why am I totally at odds with most of my fellow thinking primates? How could such a large majority of humans, many of them brighter and better traveled than I, subscribe to a world-picture that is manifestly not the case? How can they imagine that the Bible enjoys a divine origin, when so much of it bespeaks our pettiest impulses? How can they not see the bankruptcy of the benevolent-God hypothesis? Why will they not face the probability that all deities are human inventions?

This paradoxical state of affairs variously confounds, amuses, saddens, frustrates, and infuriates me — but mostly it gives me the energy to create my stories and novels. I’ve been accused of writing primarily out of anger, but I believe I’m more bewildered than bitter. My bedrock perplexity seems to make for compelling fictive thought experiments, or so my more sympathetic readers tell me. Evidently God put me here to argue against His existence.

VENTRELLA: Have you faced any censorship or protests because of these works?

MORROW: No serious protests. Occasionally I’ll receive an e-mail from a Christian conservative who, having blundered into my website, is concerned about the status of my salvation. Normally this correspondent will prescribe a verse or two from Saint Paul, but sometimes he’ll glibly inform me that I’m going to Hell.

VENTRELLA: Are you disappointed?

You’ve actually struck a nerve here, Michael. Like all novelists, I’m a bit of a narcissist: I think my readership should be significantly larger. So, yes, I am indeed disappointed that Ralph Reed or the Vatican has not yet come gunning for me.

VENTRELLA: What was interesting to me after reading TOWING JEHOVAH was that the truth of the matter was just accepted; the novel does not disavow the Christian God nor does it satirize Him, but it certainly looks at Him in a new way. Had earlier versions and drafts taken a different approach?

MORROW: I’m glad you found that novel to be relatively nonpolemical. Preaching is the death of fiction. When I embarked on the thought experiment that became TOWING JEHOVAH, I wasn’t sure where I was going, and I was pleased to be surprised by many of the scenes that emerged from my pen. A literal pen: that particular novel was initially written in longhand.

At the start of the project, I didn’t realize TOWING JEHOVAH would give me a chance to satirize my own worldview in the form of the Central Park West Enlightenment League. Nor did I foresee the weirdly reverent tone of the inverse-Eucharist scene, in which the starving supertanker crew survives a famine by eating God’s deconsecrated flesh. And Neil Weisinger’s search for the En sof is also supposed to be taken at face value. I guess you could call TOWING JEHOVAH a novel by an atheist who’s trying to empathize — up to a point — with people of faith.

VENTRELLA: In TOWING JEHOVAH, a message is that “enlightenment” isn’t always truthful. The church wants to hide the truth in its own interest. The atheists, represented by the Central Park West Enlightenment League, also want to hide the truth for their own interest. Deceit is not something to be admired on either side, but in the sequels, the consequences of the truth are severe. Do you believe that it is sometimes better to not know the truth?

MORROW: As an equal opportunity satirist, I wanted to suggest that any group that would style itself the Central Park West Enlightenment League might very well — at the end of the day and faced with an apocalyptic challenge — decline to embrace a body of data that contradicted its worldview. When you’re in the business of fashioning sardonic comedies, nothing is sacred, not even atheism. My sympathies lie almost entirely with my secular brethren, but in a crisis I suspect that most of us would behave as mere feeble and fallible humans, not as courageous avatars of the truth.

Truth is a sticky commodity. The physical sciences long ago figured out that they can get by perfectly well without making grandiose truth claims (merely predictions based on theories), but philosophy and religion and the arts don’t have that option. Like the Ibsen of THE WILD DUCK and the O’Neill of THE ICEMAN COMETH, I can certainly imagine situations where the truth proved fundamentally destructive, and I was indeed playing with that idea in the Godhead Trilogy — though I ultimately come down on the side of truth-telling, as I also did in my novella CITY OF TRUTH.

Offhand, I can think of no greater sin than to consciously lie to a child, which is why I’m impatient with many conservative Christians, whose God is evidently so feeble that He can be sustained only through falsehoods systematically advanced on His behalf — falsehoods about the alleged evangelical foundations of the American republic, falsehoods about Darwin’s theory of natural selection, falsehoods about the blatant anti-Semitism of the Gospels, falsehoods about priestly sexual misconduct, and so on. As the saying goes, you can have your own opinions, but you can’t have your own facts.

VENTRELLA: Was the series planned in advance or did you decide to write the sequels after the first was completed?

MORROW: Based on some preliminary TOWING JEHOVAH chapters and an outline, I managed to convince Harcourt Brace to sign up for the whole trilogy. Needless to day, all three finished manuscripts departed radically from my original plan. BLAMELESS IN ABADDON was initially titled TERRA INCOGNITA, and the outline was more concerned with the trip through God’s brain, with the Trial of the Millennium functioning merely as a denouement. My first sketch for THE ETERNAL FOOTMAN had the characters searching for the Holy Grail. Eventually their quest leads them to a divine bedpan, an idea I rejected as sophomoric even by my standards.

VENTRELLA: What sort of research do you do for your novels, especially when discussing areas in which you may not be trained?

MORROW: For better or worse, the advent of Google has made the task of research 100 percent easier than in days gone by. I say “or worse” because I believe there was something vaguely romantic and even heroic about the novelist’s quest for the sort of quirky facts and period details that can bring a scene to life. But today these gritty particulars are available at the stroke of a key. It feels like cheating.

I like to say, “First I write the novel, then I do the research.” That remark is not entirely facetious. In the case of my novel-in-progress, an epic about the coming of the Darwinian worldview, I’ve already written scenes set at Darwin’s estate and on the Galapagos archipelago. I intend to visit both sites before putting the book to bed: in my experience such on-the-ground investigations can enrich a novel immeasurably — and yet the present drafts are not entirely lacking in credibility, and I could probably get away with simply claiming I’d done the primary research.

VENTRELLA: How did your education affect your writing? (As an aside, do you miss Boston? I went there for law school and loved it…)

MORROW: Boston is a terrific city, commensurate in my affections with New York, Paris, and London. My days at the Harvard Graduate School of Education particularly paid off in my recent novel called THE PHILOSOPHER’S APPRENTICE, in which a philosophy student is hired to implant a conscience in an adolescent clone. When I was at Harvard, everyone was excited about Lawrence Kohlberg’s profile of children’s moral development. I ended up keying Londa Sabacthani’s education to the famous Kohlbergian dilemmas.

VENTRELLA: Do you tend to think of the story first, or a concept that will lead to a story? It seems that much of your work involves interesting questions of religion and philosophy that lead to a “what if?” scenario…

MORROW: Although most novelists, myself included, want to reach the reader at an emotional level, I believe that fiction writing is primarily an intellectual process. When a scene isn’t working, the problem is not that you’re failing to channel some cosmic Muse from a transcendent plane of reality — the problem is that you’re not thinking hard enough.

I couldn’t imagine beginning a novel or short story without an audacious premise in mind. Many writers evidently work in a completely different fashion. They’re happy to start with a memorable character, a vivid setting, a personal theme, or an intriguing initial situation, with the overarching concept emerging only during the composition process.

VENTRELLA: What do you know now about the publishing industry that you wish you had known when you first started out?

MORROW: My career was launched in a fashion that I took to be ideal: hardcover publication by a major New York house — to wit, the edition of THE WINE OF VIOLENCE that issued from Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1981. I gradually came to realize that such an achievement, while not an occasion for sneezes, is by no means synonymous with having a career. I had not found the Holy Grail after all.

It took me awhile to figure this out, but unless the publisher is really behind you, with a fired-up sales force, a serious publicity budget, and a viable marketing strategy, any given novel is likely to die a dog’s death at the box office. Not until TOWING JEHOVAH, my fifth book, did I actually enjoy the services of an in-house publicist.

VENTRELLA: What projects are you currently working on? Give us a teaser!

MORROW: I just finished a short story called “The Vampires of Paradox.” It will appear in IS ANYBODY OUT THERE?, a forthcoming anthology about the Fermi Paradox, edited by Nick Gevers and Marty Halpern. Now I’m free to return to the Darwin project, which I believe will be my best book yet — though I must admit I adopt that attitude towards all my novels: otherwise I would never finish them!

VENTRELLA: What sort of advice would you give an aspiring writer that you wish someone had given you?

MORROW: Try to figure out a way to make fiction writing its own reward. You can’t count on the marketplace or the publishing industry to validate your efforts — but you can learn to take satisfaction in a well-turned phrase, a witty description, a remarkable character, or a puissant idea.

VENTRELLA: What are you most proud of? What would you like to be remembered for?

MORROW: I hope that my posthumous biographer will pay particular attention to BLAMELESS IN ABADDON and THE LAST WITCHFINDER. In those two novels I believe I came fairly close to realizing my artistic ideal — that is, fiction in which the dance of ideas is at once complex and entertaining. Among my shorter efforts, I like to think that people will be reading SHAMBLING TOWARDS HIROSHIMA long after I’ve gone to live with Jesus.

Book signing this weekend

If you’re in the area of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania this weekend, be sure to stop by Wolfgang Books where I’ll be signing copies of ARCH ENEMIES on Saturday, October 24th. Joining me will be A.M.Boyle (TURN OF THE SENTRY).

Interview with author David Wellington

David Wellington is the author of seven novels. His zombie novels MONSTER ISLAND, MONSTER NATION and MONSTER PLANET form a complete trilogy. He has also written a series of vampire novels including (so far) THIRTEEN BULLETS, NINETY-NINE COFFINS, VAMPIRE ZERO and TWENTY THREE HOURS, and in October of 2009 began his new Werewolf series, starting with FROSTBITE. His web page is www.davidwellington.net.

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: Welcome David! You’ve gathered quite an impressive array of degrees from prominent universities having to do with creative writing. How has your education influenced your writing?

DAVID WELLINGTON: Only indirectly, really. The main reason to pursue a graduate degree in Creative Writing is to be surrounded by other writers–you learn a lot more from your fellow students than from the instructors. The focus is on workshops, and I’ve found you can get that from an informal writing group. I suppose there may have been occasions when someone took me more seriously because I had an MFA, but really, the work needs to stand for itself.

VENTRELLA: Do you believe good writers are “born” or is education and training essential?

WELLINGTON: It’s all about hard work, unfortunately. It took me thirty years to get to the point where my work was worth being published. Exceptional talent might cut down on how long it takes–but the only way to improve as a writer is through trial and error. You need to write, a lot, and learn from your mistakes.

VENTRELLA: How did you get your “big break”? Aspiring writers want to know!

WELLINGTON: I tried everything, of course. I tried selling short stories to magazines. I tried submitting manuscripts to publishers, completely unsolicited. Nothing worked. I was actually ready to give up — when a friend of mine suggested that I publish a book on his website. The book happened to be MONSTER ISLAND. He set up a blog for me and I posted a short chapter three times a week. At first it was just for fun — I had no reason to believe it would lead to anything. Then people started reading it. A lot of people. By the time I had a couple of thousand people reading each new post, a publisher came to me with an offer. I used to say I got into publishing through the back door — but I’ve since come to realize there really isn’t a front door. If you want to be published today, you have to get creative. Luckily, if you’re a writer, you’ve already got a well-developed imagination!

VENTRELLA: How did you get involved in the Marvel Zombies series?

WELLINGTON: Marvel actively sought out the authors of zombie novels to come up with some new ideas for the franchise. They approached three of us to each write one issue of Marvel Zombies Return. I absolutely jumped at the chance — I’d been a fan of comics my whole life, and had always dreamed of writing one some day.

VENTRELLA: How does writing for comics differ from writing novels?

WELLINGTON: It’s much more like writing a screenplay. You’re writing something that will never be seen. Your script is going to be interpreted by an artist, so you give up a certain measure of control. You have to trust your artist to interpret your vision. Luckily for me I was matched with Andrea Mutti, whose art really brought my story to life. The guy’s a pro.

VENTRELLA: You have already tackled several classic horror monsters: werewolves, vampires and zombies. All of these takes were fairly unusual in their descrpition of the monsters’ qualites/appearances, yet retaining a lot of the classic elements at the same time. How did you come by that decision?

WELLINGTON: Whenever I start a project, I want to do it my own way. Otherwise where’s the fun? I start with the traditional version, and think about how I can play with it. That way I can add something new, and hopefully something fresh. My zombies don’t just eat brains — they eat anything organic. They peel gum off the street and eat it if there’s nothing else. They’re the ultimate consumers. My vampires were a direct reaction to the romantic vampires you see so often these days. I wanted my vampires to be scary — predators in a world where we would have a very hard time fighting back. And so on.

VENTRELLA: What’s next? Any plans to give us a fresh take on another horror creature?

WELLINGTON: There will be two books in my new werewolf series–FROSTBITE, out now, and OVERWINTER, which will come out next year. I’d like to do a fifth vampire book, to finish the series.

VENTRELLA: The protagonist of your vampire series, Laura Caxton, is lesbian which is quite unusual for mainstream horror. Anything specific that prompted you to that decision?

WELLINGTON: There wasn’t a lot of decision-making involved. When I created Laura, I knew I had a scene where she comes home after a very nasty day at work and gets into bed. I knew there would be someone in the bed waiting for her — when I got to that scene, the other person just happened to be another woman. The character was partly based on my sister, who is gay. Beyond that I gave it very little thought–and nobody ever gave me a hard time about it. My editors never blinked. My readers have accepted it without making a big deal out of it. I was pleasantly surprised by that.

VENTRELLA: What are your favorite books in the horror genre? Favorite horror movies?

WELLINGTON: My favorite books in horror are the classics — Lovecraft, Poe, Arthur Machen. As far as movies go, I like any horror movie that plays with the genre or expands a story in an interesting way. “Near Dark” is a great film, as is “Let the Right One In,” for this reason.

VENTRELLA: Have you ever considered writing in any other genre?

WELLINGTON: When I started publishing, it was with a horror novel. But I’ve never considered myself just a horror writer — I’ve actually written far more science fiction novels than horror novels, they just never got published. I write fantasy, mystery, even literary fiction — whatever idea comes along, I pounce on it.

VENTRELLA: What’s your favorite monster?

WELLINGTON: Frankenstein’s Monster, definitely. There’s something about that character — both in Mary Shelley’s book and in the Universal films — that really speaks to me, an existential loneliness that demands answers. What am I? Why was I created? What am I supposed to do now? The monster asks all these questions, and gets no answers. That’s how I feel every morning when I wake up. Then I eat my cereal and get to work and I feel a lot better.

VENTRELLA: Do you have any specific advice you would give a writer trying to make it in the publishing business that they may not have heard before?

WELLINGTON: Keep writing — it can seem pointless, but it’ll work eventually. Something will catch somebody’s eye. Or you’ll improve as a writer to the point where people can’t ignore you any more. Try to tell stories, rather than creating great art. Keep reading books — every book, good or bad, has something to teach you.

VENTRELLA: What are you most proud of? For What would you like to be remembered?

WELLINGTON: A book that hasn’t been published yet. One I haven’t written yet. Every book I write is better, in some way, than the last. I don’t want to be one of those writers who publishes one good book and then can never catch that fire again. I want to be the guy who’s best work is always his latest one, like Terry Pratchett.

VENTRELLA: What are you working on now that we can look forward to?

WELLINGTON: FROSTBITE, my werewolf book, is out right now–you can get it at Amazon or in any bookstore. There will be a sequel called OVERWINTER, out next year. I hope you’ll like them!

Interview with NY Times Bestselling Author Tad Williams

I first became aware of Tad Williams upon reading the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series in the early 90s and was engrossed with the characters and the great twist at the end. He’s gone on to write further acclaimed New York Times bestselling novels, comic books, and young adult novels, and I’m pleased and honored to be interviewing him today! His webpage is www.Tadwilliams.com.

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: Tad, you have a varied background with which I can identify. There’s nothing wrong with having worked in radio and been in a band, moving from one job to another and finding out what you want to do with life (I did much the same, although fortunately I never had to work in a shoe store). Was writing always in the background for you, just waiting for the will? When did you say to yourself “This is what I want to do in life”?

TAD WILLIAMS: Creative work was always in the background, but writing was only one of the things I pursued. It just happened to be the one that turned into a possible career. If I’d sold a screenplay or got a gig cartooning I might have gone that way instead.

VENTRELLA: Many aspiring writers say to me that they just can’t seem to find the time to write given that they have jobs to do and real life getting in the way. How did you do it?

WILLIAMS: If you can’t find time to write, you’re not a writer. That’s not to be glib, but some people would rather talk about the reasons they can’t do something than just do it. (My son and his homework spring to mind.) You either do it or you don’t. If you don’t write, you’re not a writer.

VENTRELLA: Was TAILCHASER’S SONG the first novel you wrote? How did you grab the attention of editors?

WILLIAMS: Yes, TAILCHASER was my first book. I was a bit naive and didn’t have an agent, but I was fortunate that the book itself caught my editors’ attention. If I had to do it again, I’d be more aware that I was very lucky. I’d probably try to get an agent first.

VENTRELLA: Has the publishing industry changed as dramatically as everyone says since that time?

WILLIAMS: It’s always been a small-margins business, but the advent of electronic media and the internet have really confused things. Nobody knows what publishing’s even going to look like in ten years, but I think it’s likely it will be less vertical — that is, one company buying books, editing books, designing books, printing books, binding books, warehousing books — and more of a collaboration between smaller businesses. Also, electronic media are only going to become a bigger part of the industry.

VENTRELLA: What do you know now about the industry that you wish you had known when you first started out?

WILLIAMS: I wish I had understood the career arc better, and the complexity of the process of publishing a book. I might have paid more attention to deadlines and to thinking long-term about what I wanted to write.

VENTRELLA: Why are the third parts of your books so huge that they have to be released in two volumes? Can’t you stop? (OK, that’s a joke question.)

WILLIAMS: I have an illness, and it’s not nice to make fun of it. Jeez.

VENTRELLA: You currently are working on the SHADOWMARCH series. Do you outline the series completely in advance or prepare something more basic?

WILLIAMS: I like the balance between knowing too much and knowing too little, so I certainly outline, but I leave lots of room for things to change, grow, whatever, as I write the story. That way the story stays fresh, but the fact that there’s structure means it doesn’t meander too badly.

VENTRELLA: Please tell us about SHADOWMARCH!

WILLIAMS: The end is finally in sight for this project, which has moved through three or four media and a couple of decades. It started with a possible tv series or film, then became an internet serial, and I’ve given the story its greatest realization as a series of books, of which I am now writing the ending. It’s a return to epic fantasy, but it also has its own particular twists that separates it from my other books. I’m pleased with what it’s turned into, and think it’s much better and deeper now than it would have been in another medium.

VENTRELLA: Do you see yourself working in other genres in the future?

WILLIAMS: Within reason — I probably won’t be writing any westerns, for instance. But my next set of books will be closer to modern fantasy with a touch of extreme romance (mid-level angel and high-level demon fall painfully in love), so, yeah, I’ll be skipping around like I usually do.

VENTRELLA: How is writing Young Adult series different?

WILLIAMS: Certainly the main difference for me is keeping the complexity down and the action fast-paced. I don’t believe in writing down to an audience, so we haven’t written anything deliberately “young”. The main characters are young, and — as with almost all good YA fiction — they are forced to solve problems the adults should solve but don’t. Other than that, though, it’s a book — all books should be written like something the writer himself or herself would enjoy reading.

VENTRELLA: Since you are using characters created by someone else when writing for comic books, do you feel constrained in any way?

WILLIAMS: I felt very constrained, but most of that was problems in communication with that particular situation. I thought I’d have more leeway than I did, and I thought I’d have more time to try to turn the thing around than I did. That said, when I can afford to do it again I probably will…

VENTRELLA: What are you most proud of? What would you like to be remembered for?

WILLIAMS: I think I’ve always brought something bigger than the genre to my genre fiction — I think of myself as a gateway drug for genre readers, leading them down the slippery slope to real literature. (This doesn’t mean that I don’t think lots of fantasy and science fiction are literature, only that because they’re genres they contain primarily books written for a genre market, ie, tending toward the formulaic.) Of all my books, I think so far the OTHERLAND novels are my signature — the best example of the width of my range.

VENTRELLA: Off topic a bit: What kind of music did you play in your band?

WILLIAMS: The original band was very influenced by folks like Beatles, The Who, the Bonzo Dog Band, David Bowie, Brian Eno, and maybe even the Tubes. (We would have been influenced by They Might Be Giants, but we predated them.)

VENTRELLA: What do you listen to today?

WILLIAMS: I still listen to all that sort of stuff, but also lots of modern stuff, Beck, Radiohead, Sigur Ros, and pretty much anything Damon Albarn does, just to name a few. Robyn Hitchcock. Fountains of Wayne. Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Also some hiphop, some folk, jazz occasionally, lots of classical — you name it, really.

VENTRELLA: You have very good taste in music (because it’s very similar to mine). Add in XTC, Elvis Costello and Sparks and we’d be just fine.

WILLIAMS: I like all those bands very much, Michael. I was caught between “who influenced your band” and “who do you listen to now”, and they all sort of fit into both — well, XTC not so much the former, because we were already writing music when they came out. But Elvis may be my all time favorite artist other than my top three — Beatles, Who, Bowie. (Yes, I love the Stones and the Kinks and Hendrix and a ton of other first-generation guys, but I’d probably have to put Elvis C into the top four.)

Interview with World Fantasy Award winning author Tim Powers

Tim Powers has won the World Fantasy Award twice now, for LAST CALL and DECLARE, the Philip K. Dick award twice for THE ANUBIS GATES and DINNER AT DEVIANT’S PALACE, and has multiple Nebula award nominations.

Tim Powers has always been one of my favorite authors. I look forward to every new release and move it to the top of my “Must Read” pile. My wife likes his work too, and turned him into a piece of dryer lint art which Tim purchased and now has hanging on his wall. (No, I’m serious — check out my wife’s page at www.HeidiHooper.com).

I met Tim at a convention a while ago and now it gives me great pleasure to be interviewing him.

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: Tim, one of my favorite books of yours is the pirate novel ON STRANGER TIDES. Let’s start with the big news then: How did this end up as the fourth Pirates of the Carribean film?

TIM POWERS: Disney optioned the book a couple of years ago for a projected fourth Pirates movie, and now it seems likely that the movie will happen! I imagine it’s the Fountain of Youth element in the book that they mainly want to use, but I haven’t talked to the script writers or anything, so I’m only guessing. In any case, I’m very pleased with this new attention being paid to a book I wrote 23 years ago!

VENTRELLA: Are you worried that the book may change too much upon being transferred into a film with already established characters? Do you have any say in this?

POWERS: No, I have no say in it, and that’s okay with me. I never feel that a movie must accurately reflect a book it’s based on — look at “Bladerunner”, or “To Have and Have Not”! Both were great books made into great movies, and the movies had very little to do with the original books. And obviously this movie can’t be based at all closely on the book, since the movie is using characters that are already separately established. I mainly want to be surprised when I see the movie!

VENTRELLA: Is it true that you get to have a cameo?

POWERS: No, that was an internet rumor. I’ve often said that if anybody were to make a movie of one of my books, I’d have three non-negotiable demands: (1.) That my wife and I get parts as extras in some crowd scene; (2.) That we get a free lunch from the catering truck; and (3.) that we get six of those cool jackets they make for the crew, with the movie logo on the back. This was, though, a joke!

VENTRELLA: Most of your novels follow a technique unusual for other writers, in that you take items from real history and find ways to make them interconnect in magical and fantastic ways that cause a reader to say “Aha! That makes perfect sense now!” when in fact it’s just make believe. How did this style come to being?

POWERS: Back in the mid-’70s, Roger Elwood proposed a series of books in which King Arthur was reincarnated at various points in history to save Western civilization. K. W. Jeter and Ray Nelson and I signed up to write these books, and I drew three places in history: 1529 (the Siege of Vienna), 1650 and 1810. Elwood’s project collapsed, which was just as well, but by then I had noticed the virtues of historical fiction! Such as — you get your exotic world ready-made, with its geography & maps, climate, government, currency, cuisine, mythology –! Even a lot of usable characters and events come with the package, all free. All you’ve got to do is look at the settings and the events and figure out a story that could be woven among them without knocking anything over. Find the inexplicable bits and connect the dots. It’s much easier than making up a consistent other-world, and I like to think it makes the supernatural developments more plausible, since they occur in places and among people that the reader has actually heard of.

VENTRELLA: Do you look for the connection first, or do you read a lot of history and biography and then see what jumps out at you?

POWERS: I approach it sort of like a paranoid detective. I read heaps of biographies and journals and whatnot, and my attention is polarized to look for things that don’t fit — which any biography has. And I ask myself, “Aha! What was really going on there?” And I make it a rule that nothing is a coincidence — if Keats did something on the same day that the King of Prussia did something, they’re secretly connected. And as I look for clues to the secret back-story, I eventually come up with one!

VENTRELLA: Has it ever not worked? Have you ever decided “You know, I’d love to do a book about X” and then after research, determined there wasn’t enough there?

POWERS: Not so far! I think anybody’s biography — Louisa May Alcott, Beatrix Potter — if it was thorough enough, could provide this sort of clues, this sort of evidence of a secret supernatural real story. Of course I’ve got to let the clues dictate it — it might turn out to involve vampires, or ghosts, or werewolves, or anything. If the research is going that way, I let my story go that way too.

VENTRELLA: What do you think of Dan Brown’s work? Do you think he is just copying your style, but not as well?

POWERS: Well I doubt that he’s copying me! That is, I doubt he’s read my books. But if I were ever (per impossibile) to collaborate with him, I’d tell him, “No, our made-up history has to be plausible enough to at least stand up to a quick search in the Encyclopedia Britannica!”

VENTRELLA: What gave you the idea for THREE DAYS TO NEVER?

POWERS: It started with me noticing that, in all the photographs of Albert Einstein, his hair was white after 1928. So I wondered what had happened to him in that year — the biographies said he had some sort of stroke, or heart attack, or seizure, but I thought, “I wonder what really happened?’ So I started reading all the biographies of him, which led me to histories of Israel, and Charlie Chaplin, and Kaballah, and God knows what-all else. And of course at every turn I found odd details that couldn’t entirely be explained. One significant thing was this “maschinchen” or “little machine” that Einstein was working on for years; I eventually concluded that it must have been a time machine.

VENTRELLA: Were you a Chaplin fan before that? Or was it just research that led you to including him in?

POWERS: I wasn’t really a Chaplin fan, before I had to research him! Now I love his movies, especially “City Lights” and “Modern Times” and “The Kid.” Eventually I realized that the reason I had thought I didn’t like Chaplin was because I connected him with people like Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett doing imitations of him. Hardly fair.

VENTRELLA: You’ve commented before that you dislike it when authors try too hard to give messages or when readers try to read too much into the work. Have you been the victim of this, and how do you counter it?

POWERS: If people claim to find themes or messages in my books, that’s okay with me, as long as it’s nothing nasty. There may, for all I know, be themes and messages in them! But certainly I don’t have “things to say” in my stories — any themes that may show up are from my subconscious, not from any deliberate intention of my own.

VENTRELLA: What do you know now about the publishing industry that you wish you had known when you first started out?

POWERS: Oh — hard to say. My first publisher, Laser Books, surprised me by re-writing bits in my books, but nobody’s done that since. Really I haven’t learned anything that would have made me behave differently if I’d known it from the start! I guess I have no real complaints!

VENTRELLA: What sort of advice would you give an aspiring writer that you wish someone had given you?

POWERS: Finish what you start, don’t do dozens of unconnected “Chapter Ones” that extend for only a couple of pages each. That’s kind of obvious, I know, but you specified what I could have benefited from hearing. To aspiring writres in general, I guess I’d say — read a whole lot, and not just in the field you want to write in and not just in the century or centuries you’ve lived in; and try to ditch your reflexive 2009 mind-set when you’re reading the old stuff. Don’t be cynical or ironic or tongue-in-cheek or Post Modern — that is, take your characters and their concerns at least as seriously as you take the elements in your own life. Don’t fret about the fact that your first drafts are dumb; they’re supposed to be. Print your stories out in the correct format and send them to editors — and start with the best publishers and magazines, don’t anticipate disappointment by starting with the lower ranks. Don’t self-publish.

VENTRELLA: And finally, what work would you like most to outlast you? What do you want to be remembered by?

POWERS: Oh gee — I suppose ANUBIS GATES or LAST CALL or DECLARE! I think those are my best. After I’m dead I won’t care, of course, but there’s something charming about the idea of somebody a hundred years from now finding a book of mine in a junk store and enjoying it, and trying to find more!

Interview with Mark Waid

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: I’m very pleased to be interviewing Mark Waid, one of the biggest names in comics today. He’s been an editor with DC and as a freelance writer has become one of the most well-known and prolific writers of quality comics. In 1996, with artist Alex Ross, he released his best-known work, the graphic novel KINGDOM COME, which depicted the fate of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and other heroes as the world around them changed. Its popularity led to him receiving the Comics Buyer’s Guide Award for Favorite Writer in 1997. He has since gone on to fame with the FANTASTIC FOUR and with the re-imagining of Superman’s origins in BIRTHRIGHT. Currently he is an editor-in-chief with Boom! Studios and has been writing for THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, including one of my favorite books in which Spider-Man saves Stephen Colbert. (You can see it on the shelves behind Stephen if you watch the show). His web page is here.

Mark is also the only big name in comics who I’ve known since High School, who was in my Dungeons and Dragons group in college, and who went to my wedding. It’s always great to see a good friend make it big in a job he loves! Mark is a true Superman purist, and I still recall leaving the theater with him after watching “Superman 2″, hearing him curse because “Zod shouldn’t have had that stupid power to point his finger at someone and make them float into the air!”

MARK WAID: It’s true. I’m still traumatized, by the way. At least the recently released Richard Donner cut finally set my mind at ease. But don’t get me started on Superman IV.

VENTRELLA: Mark, writing for graphic novels involves a different type of writing skill than would be needed for a short story or novel, but still requires a mastery of words. What is your creative process?

WAID: As an incredibly general rule, for me, every story springs from images. As I tell young writers who are breaking into comics, you don’t have to tell super-hero stories–comics is a wide medium that covers all genres–but for the love of God, it’s a visual medium, so it’s not the best fit for your J.D. Salinger riff or the extended inner-monologue. The short rule of thumb is that, in comics, you should take advantage of your unlimited visual budget and shouldn’t waste a lot of space on talky plainclothes scenes unless they’re visually interesting in and of themselves. Use the medium to its fullest. Tell a story that couldn’t be told just in dialogue or in prose or in iambic pentameter.

And be aware that comics is a collaborative medium, so don’t fall into the trap of thinking it’s all about dialogue. It ain’t a Mamet play. It’s words and pictures together, in concert.

For me, I’ll start thinking about the characters I’m writing about–whether of my own invention or established characters like Superman or Spider-Man–and, with a very general idea of the sort of story I want to tell or the sorts of character beats I want to hit, I’ll let my mind wander until I hit an idea for a scene that has impact. (“Hmmm…I want to write a story about Spider-Man’s enemy, Electro, having lost all his stolen-but-invested money in the same economic crash that’s recently ruined so many honest lives–and how a very powerful villain who feels he’s been robbed would react to the idea of government bailouts. Huh. I should have him stage a scene at the New York Stock Exchange. He can rant and rave like Rick Santelli, but with electrical bolts coming off of him, stronger and more chaotic as he gets more and more worked up, NYSE monitors exploding around him.”)

Once I come up with three or four of those scenes, I start to knit them together in my head to form a narrative, tossing out (or, more likely, saving in the S.O.S. file [Some Other Story]) the scenes that don’t support the tale.

Then it’s creating a rough outline or beat-sheet for a story, with a 1000-stories-under-my-belt sort of instinctive feel for how many pages to allot each scene (knowing that, in the actual writing, they ALWAYS take up more room than allotted). Then the hard part: typing “Page One, Panel One” and going from there.

But, as I say, it’s about conveying your ideas visually as well as verbally. The entire working process hinges on being able to do that.

VENTRELLA: Do you find yourself limited in that you primarily are writing for established characters?

WAID: Not really. Honestly, there are trade-offs. No, I can’t have Superman or Batman do anything I want them to do given that I don’t own them, but at the same time, having grown up reading the adventures of these established characters as a fan, what they do and don’t do is burned into my DNA. In that sense, I don’t find writing for them any more limiting than I do being behind the wheel of a car that I can’t make fly. It’s not like I drive around feeling “limited.” I just feel like I’m working with a familiar tool and automatically know what it can and can’t do.

On the other hand, when I write my own characters in series that I own, all limitations are off–but that’s as daunting as it is freeing, because there are more decisions to make as a writer, and the freedom that brings is counterbalanced by the sometimes paralyzing number of choices literally at my fingertips.

VENTRELLA: Do space considerations stand in your way?

WAID: Always. Constantly. Always. Always. Oh, God, how I envy screenwriters. You need an extra page, Mr. Movie Writer? Take an extra page. American mainstream comics, on the other hand, are generally about 22 pages long, give or take, and if you’re doing a story that’s in one installment, you have to fit it to that space. If you’re doing a longer story that spans several issues, you still have to construct each individual issue with some sense of climax/resolution or obstacle/victory or what have you in order for the reader to enjoy each issue as it comes. Honestly, most of the storytelling choices I make on a daily basis have less to do with plot and character than then do with trying to figure out how to fit those things into this rigid structure. It’s like writing haiku.

And even if you’re setting out to do a longer-form graphic novel, space is still a consideration. Only so much art will fit on a page. Only so many words will fit comfortably within each panel without crowding out the art. AND your job as a writer is to try to convey information as economically as possible without sacrificing plot or character, so there’s that plate to juggle, too; again, even when you’re working longer-form, real estate is precious. Each panel of a comic story is a “frozen moment,” a snapshot from your story, and only so many can fit.

I go into excruciating detail on these points on my blog, markwaid.com, which is full of craft essays. And because I’m not always sober when I write them, they’re probably more entertaining than this answer has been.

VENTRELLA: Do you ever plan on writing a novel?

WAID: Dear Jesus God, no. Never. I don’t have the attention span for it, I don’t have the linguistic chops, and I don’t have time to teach myself without starving to death. I am endlessly appreciative of writers who have that level of vision or that work ethic, but the few times I’ve tried my hand at prose (a Superman short story and The Flash: The Life of Barry Allen), it nearly killed me.

VENTRELLA: How has being an editor helped your writing?

WAID: Being an editor before I was a full-time writer was the greatest career boon you can envision. At DC, I edited several scripts a month from, eventually, every major and minor writer in the medium at that time, including Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, and others. Reading their scripts and constantly observing how they solved storytelling problems was like boot camp. I learned more in those two years as an editor than I could have in ten years as a writer.

VENTRELLA: What is the biggest mistake you see young writers making? And what was your biggest career mistake?

WAID: Without fail, young writers give me scripts that are far too dense. I’m sorry, but you cannot fit a shot of a baseball stadium interior, a supermarket parking lot crowd of 200, and an establishing shot of downtown Tokyo all on one page and still have room for fourteen captions, six balloons, and three close-ups. They don’t picture in their own heads what they’re describing, or else their heads would explode. Even someone with no art training should be able to realize that you can’t show an Olympic swimming event AND the gold crown on a swimmer’s tooth all in the same image.

My biggest career mistake? How long to you expect me to keep typing here? This could go on a while, but to pick one at random: I should have written less so I could have written it better. Early on, I did the whole panicked-freelancer thing and took on as much work as I could handle only on my very best, most productive weeks–and, in doing so, churned out more than a few clunkers. Looking back, I wish I’d always taken one less assignment than common sense would tell me I could handle. My wallet might not have been as full, but my batting average would be higher because I wouldn’t have been swinging at every pitch.

VENTRELLA: To balance that last question, what was your best career decision?

WAID: Never, ever, ever, ever taking a job for the money. Well, okay, once . Okay, twice. But only twice. And both times, the money was never as much as promised, and both times, I turned out esthetically indefensible work despite how hard I tried to convince myself at the time that it was good. So, lesson learned. Never hack.

VENTRELLA: Since you’ve established quite a name for yourself, do you pitch ideas now or do they come to you?

WAID: The advantage of being Editor-In-Chief at my own comics company is that I have a launch pad for all my new ideas and don’t have to “sell” them to anyone other than the readers. That’s huge for me. And for non-BOOM! Studios projects, I’m lucky enough now that, after all these years, I’m approached on things far more often than I have to do the approaching. But I’ll never take that for granted; the Comics Old Folks’ Home is still full of writers who were kings in their day and now can’t get phone calls returned.

VENTRELLA: How important is finding an agent in your field?

WAID: Almost negligible. Publishers deal with some agents who rep handfuls of artists, mostly overseas guys who need a point man who can speak English, but domestically, it’s not important. It’s good to have a lawyer who can look over contracts for you, but frankly, there’s still not enough money to be made in comics to make an agent career worthwhile.

VENTRELLA: In some ways, you’ve achieved geek power most of us only dream about: to make a very good living doing what you love. (I tried that with LARPing; didn’t work.) What do you think separates the Successful from the Wannabes?

WAID: Like I want to tell all the Wannabes. I don’t need the competition. But seriously…I’ve talked about this a lot in lectures, and I think much of it has to do with fearlessness. The reason so many aspiring creators have so many three-quarters-finished fantasy novels or film scripts perpetually on their hard drives is because they’re stuck on their stories. And the reason they’re stuck, frozen, isn’t because of anything as esoteric as “fear of success”…it’s because they’re afraid of the truth: that they screwed up somewhere earlier in the work, made some choice that didn’t work, and now in order to go forward, they’re gonna have to screw up the courage to tear up the floorboards and “unwrite” days’ or weeks’ worth of work in order to backtrack to the problem. That sucks. That’s the worst part of writing. Anyone who’s ever put together a piece of Ikea furniture and gotten to stage 47 only to realize with a sickening wave of horror that they screwed up stage 3 and have to go back…they know that feeling. It SUCKS. But the successful get out their crowbars and attack the problem. The wannabes are afraid of throwing stuff away.

VENTRELLA: As someone who is going through a vigorous editing process on my second novel, I know exactly what you’re talking about! Huge sections of my first novel were tossed aside before I even submitted it as well. It’s not fun, but necessary.

Of your work, what are you most proud of? What would you like to be remembered for?

WAID: At the moment, I’m proudest of two things. I’m proud of SUPERMAN: BIRTHRIGHT, the graphic-novel that was commissioned by DC as the “definitive” origin of Superman for the 21st century, because it’s just flat-out the best thing I’ve ever written and said everything about Superman I’ve wanted to say for thirty years.

But I’m equally proud of my first issue of FANTASTIC FOUR, because on a pure-craft level, it’s a pretty good capsule of what One Good Stand-Alone Issue Of A Comic Should Read Like.

VENTRELLA: And what would you most like to see buried far away?

WAID: There’s not a landfill big enough. One of the two aforementioned jobs I took for money–1996’s SPIDER-MAN TEAM-UP #1 Co-Starring The X-Men–is still an unreadable mess.

VENTRELLA: Have to ask: Knowing how much you love the original, what do you think of “Superman Returns”? What’s your opinion on the current crop of movies based on comics and graphic novels?

WAID: Being a minority of one, I liked “Superman Returns.” I can see its flaws, but it truly was like Bryan Singer was making a movie specifically for me.

And c’mon…tell me “Iron Man” and “Dark Knight” didn’t raise the bar on comics-based movies! Like any film in any genre, there’ll be good ones and bad ones…but I’m thrilled that, in my lifetime, I get to see comics-sourced movies that are taken “seriously.”

VENTRELLA: Couldn’t agree more on those two; “Dark Knight” being my favorite film last year!

And finally: Did you meet Colbert?

WAID: NO! I was robbed. But it still warms my heart to see that something I wrote is hanging on his wall of fame as it’s in almost every show!

Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

One of my blog readers (Stop laughing! Seriously, I do have some!) said that he appreciated the focus of this blog — helping aspiring writers with advice and examples — but wanted to know more basic information. For instance, he asked, how do I get ideas?

I recall reading somewhere that same question being asked of Isaac Asimov who responded with “How do you not get ideas?”

Most of the times ideas come from a “what if” scenario, especially when you’re writing speculative fiction. Everyone’s played “what if”. My writing has followed that pattern.

I read a lot of fantasy fiction. A common thread in many of these is The Special One who has some prophecy to fulfill and goes through a rigorous training in order to meet their destiny. Think of “Star Wars” for instance. With ARCH ENEMIES, I began with “What if they got the wrong guy? What if he was suddenly thrown into the adventure and didn’t have all those years of training and preparation?”

With THE AXES OF EVIL (the sequel, due out early 2010), I asked “What if he was faced with three prophecies which contradict each other and had to solve all three?”

Those were just the starting points, of course, because then the fun was throwing in the monkey wrenches. I love plot twists and turns and surprising my readers. Usually, that just involves looking at my outline and saying “Things are going smoothly in this part. What can I do to mess it up?”

Basically, the adventure should never be too easy and should never be predictable. I dislike books and movies where I can figure out what’s going to happen next, so I try my best to avoid cliches like the plague. (That was a joke.) My readers have told me that they really like the “Whoa! Wasn’t expecting that!” sections of my books, and the “How the heck is he going to solve this problem?” that isn’t revealed until the very last minute.

Doing that well takes preparation (which I have discussed in an earlier blog entry) because in order to work, all the clues have to be in place. Pulling something out of a hat at the last minute is a cheat and feels like one, especially if you’re writing a book with magic. I’ve seen too many movies and books where the solution is something magical: The “All you had to do was click your heels three times” ending doesn’t reward the hero in the slightest. Take Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” — the hero Prince is fighting the dragon. What an exciting battle! How does he defeat the creature? Oh, the three fairies come in and give him magic. Yawn, boring.

I like my heroes to do something special and unexpected yet completely in character. To be honest, that’s one of the hardest parts of writing, but also the most fun.

In THE AXES OF EVIL, there is a scene where a werewolf who can only be destroyed by a silver dagger through the heart must be killed. There is an elaborate plan laid out in which the the four main characters, armed with two silver daggers, attempt to accomplish this feat. But that’s too easy. Things go awry and soon Terin (the cowardly hero) gets stuck in a room full of werewolves with no weapon whatsoever. “This is great!” I thought. “This is exactly the situation I want.” Of course, it took me another month to think of a solution, but it’s much more satisfying and surprising than if there was just a great battle and the hero managed to stab his enemy.

I was recently given an assignment to write a short story “using pirates and magic.” Arrr! I love pirates! I had no idea for a story, however, so I just began thinking of typical pirate props — parrots, ships, peg legs, treasure maps and the like. Treasure maps led me to “X Marks the Spot” and being the lover of puns I am (oh, you can’t tell that from the two previous book titles?) this quickly became “X Spots the Mark.” What if the treasure map was a fake and the pirate was merely a “mark” for the scam? That began the adventure, but it didn’t lend itself to much of a story — until I brought out my monkey wrench.

Once THE AXES OF EVIL is finished with its editing (that will be the subject of another blog, I promise), I’ll begin work on BLOODSUCKERS: A VAMPIRE RUNS FOR PRESIDENT. The idea for that began when I heard someone refer to Congress as a bunch of bloodsuckers and I thought “Hey! What if….”

Bottom line: My technique is to start with the “What if”, come up with a basic story, and then throw as many unpredictable barriers in the way of my heroes as possible. This does not work for all types of fiction or all types of writers, but seems to keep me happy with my storylines.

Next week: back to interviews!

Interview with Jon F. Merz

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: I’m pleased to be interviewing Jon Merz. Jon has published over a dozen novels including four Lawson Vampire adventures (2002-2003), the Jake Thunder mystery/thriller DANGER-CLOSE (2004), and eight installments in the internationally bestselling adventure series Rogue Angel (2006-present). His latest thriller PARALLAX debuted in March 2009 as an exclusive ebook. His short fiction story “Prisoner 392″ (appeared alongside Stephen King in FROM THE BORDERLANDS, 2004, Warner Books) earned him an Honorable Mention in 2004’s Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror edited by Ellen Datlow. As a producer, Jon has formed New Ronin Productions with longtime friend Jaime Hassett to create television and feature film projects in the New England area. Their first project is THE FIXER, a new supernatural action series based on Jon’s Lawson Vampire novels. That’s Jon there, seated, next to actor Brandon S. Stumpf.

Jon, what happened to your website? When I follow the link from Wikipedia, it leads to one of those spam sites.

JON F. MERZ: Jonfmerz.com was basically hijacked and turned into some European gambling site for some bizarre reason. I’ll need to file a grievance and pay about $1500 in order to get it back, so I just decided to let it go and use jonfmerz.net instead. My website is currently being designed and should be done by the end of the month.

VENTRELLA: How important do you believe a website and blog are to a writer?

MERZ: Vital. Seriously. If you don’t have a blog, a website, and a presence in social media (meaning at the bare minimum Facebook and Twitter) you are killing your career before you even get started. It amazes me to no end that bestselling authors are on twitter, have thousands of followers, but only follow a few people back themselves. They totally miss the idea of social media – that being to develop relationships with your audience.

Facebook has definitely replaced Myspace (thank god) as being the go-to place for a presence. And with Facebook Fan Pages, you can have both a personal profile and a Fan presence out there. Synchronized with Twitter feeds, these sites serve to reinforce your position in the market, help build an actual audience for your work, and even help you secure publishing deals if you can develop a large enough fan base. I’ve seen some writers pull out of social media and say they only want to do one of them, but that’s truly stupid. In order to reap maximum benefits from social media, you need to integrate them so they work together like gears in a cog. One drives audiences to the other and so on and so on. If one piece is missing, the machine falls apart. And quite frankly, in the 21st century, if you are a writer, you must positively be engaged in social media and actually understand it. It’s not enough to hide away in a room tapping away on a keyboard in anonymity. Readers want to know their authors and develop relationships with them. If you aren’t out there, you lose ‘em.

VENTRELLA: Your vampire novel THE FIXER is being made into a TV series, and, from what I understand, you are one of the main producers. How did this come about?

MERZ: I’ve been flirting with Hollywood for years. I’ve been lucky to have some great friends in the industry, but each time I got close to making a deal, the numbers simply weren’t good enough to make me sign away rights. So a few years back, a buddy of mine and I talked about doing it ourselves: we’d form a production company, raise private equity, and do the thing ourselves. And that’s just what we’ve done. Backed by private investors, THE FIXER will be produced with the same (or better) production quality that Hollywood delivers in its television shows. We’re shooting the pilot later this month and from there, an additional twelve episodes for season one. It’s tremendously exciting.

VENTRELLA: What inside scoops can you share with us? Do you have a distribution deal yet?

MERZ: Unfortunately, we can’t release details on this just yet. But soon, I promise!

VENTRELLA: How does writing TV scripts differ from writing novels? Which do you prefer?

MERZ: I’ve always enjoyed challenges, so when it came time to learn how to write scripts, I studied the form for a long time and then started working on my own. Screenwriting or teleplays are obviously a lot more visual given the medium, but I tend to write pretty visually anyway, so the difficulty wasn’t too great. As for which I prefer, it actually depends on the story itself and what medium it’s best suited to. I don’t have a favorite anymore, which I think is probably a relief to both my literary agent and my manager in Hollywood since they both want me writing books and screenplays.

VENTRELLA: As I am now working on my own vampire novel, I keep getting told that the “trend is over”. Do you agree? Or do you think we’ll always have a love for a good vampire story?

MERZ: A love of vampires will always be with us. It’s just a question of what can you do to your spin that makes it new, or at least offers a different perspective. I get exhausted hearing about “new” vampire stories or series that are coming out. But they never explore anything different. It’s always the same old thing: undead, sleep during the daytime, feed at night, woe-is-me I’m immortal. I wish writers would challenge themselves to really explore something new. Something fresh. Vampirism is in itself very primal, but that doesn’t mean the storylines have to be primitive.

VENTRELLA: What trends in the industry are you tired of? What about the publishing industry really ticks you off?

MERZ: Publishing as an industry is broken. It annoys me when people in New York City claiming that it’s not. It is. They’re using an antiquated business model that simply does not work any longer. So change it! What’s the definition of insanity again? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? Please. With all the many forms of content delivery these days, people aren’t just reading a printed book anymore. Publishers need to remember that they aren’t in the book business any longer – they publish content. So figure out how to embrace new delivery technology and build a business around that. Don’t get me wrong: I love books and always will, but printed books are just one faction of how people get their written entertainment these days.

VENTRELLA: Of which book (or series) are you most proud? What would you like to be remembered for?

MERZ: My Lawson Vampire series is dearest to my heart. I’m very proud of the universe I’ve created and THE FIXER TV series will be an extension of that. I’m proudest also (so far) of my short story “Prisoner 392,” which appeared in a great anthology edited by Tom and Elizabeth Monteleone. They’re fantastic editors and it was an honor to appear in Borderlands 5. But I’m also very proud of the work I have yet to release. It keeps me constantly excited.

As for what I’d like to be remembered for…well, perhaps that I was just focused on giving people an escape from their everyday lives. That’s all I’ve ever set out to do as a writer. But as someone who has been around in the industry for a while now, I’d like folks to remember me as someone who threw away the rulebook and the box that everyone else (well except for one or two folks) seems imprisoned by. My mantra has always been pretty simple: why would I muck about in the mud puddle when there’s a huge ocean out there I can swim in?

VENTRELLA: Here’s the question I’ve asked everyone so far: What’s the biggest mistake you have made?

MERZ: The assumption that having an agent would be the gateway to riches. It’s not. I’ve had three agents. The first one sold four books for me but only wanted me writing vampire stories, so I fired her. The second one only sold projects that I’d done all the legwork on – basically bringing the deals already done to him – but I made the mistake of staying in that purgatory for six long years. Finally, on the 3rd try, I got the right agent. He’s fantastic. I’ve heard it said before that a bad agent is worse than no agent, and it’s true. Don’t settle because you think you have to. Look for the right person to represent your work. They need to care about it as much as you do. Make them earn that 15% – they work for you. If you find yourself cringing because you need to write them an email to check up on things and you’re worried about how sarcastic or snarky their response is going to be, don’t be like me and wait six years hoping they’ll get better. Fire them fast and find someone else.

VENTRELLA: And what is the best piece of advice you could give a starting writer (other than “write good books”)?

MERZ: I’ve seen scores of writers try to dissuade people from getting into this business because it’s hard. Yeah, it is. But I wouldn’t dream of discouraging anyone from a challenge. Hell, that’s the problem with our country today – people want it easy, they want it fast, and they want it with no work or effort. But it doesn’t happen that way. I wold always encourage people to dig deep and find the resolve and spirit to soldier on, keep working on their craft and find a way to become successful in this business. We need more people who conquer their challenges and serve as an inspiration to others – show them they can do the same if they’re willing to invest time and effort into something they believe in.

The last thing this country needs is someone else telling people “It’s too hard. Just go work a 9-5 cubicle job.” In this age, where we’re rapidly being out-classed by countries whose citizens struggle and succeed. We need more people in the US who understand that striving to accomplish something isn’t a bad thing – it’s what made us great in the first place. So put away the fear and tell the Negative Nancies to piss off – you’ve got mountains to climb.

VENTRELLA: And finally, isn’t Boston a great place to live? I lived there from 81 to 93 and miss it quite a bit…

MERZ: I think so! Boston’s a great city and the restaurants here are fantastic. Just had a great lunch at my favorite Chinese restaurant yesterday and I’m craving the hot-and-sour soup all over again today!