An interview with author Michael F. Stewart

Today's special guest is Michael F. Stewart, author of an exciting supernatural thriller, 24 Bones. Welcome, Michael! Let the interrogation begin...

1. So, Michael, what’s 24 Bones about?

Every five hundred years the Phoenix returns to its home for rebirth. And every five hundred years the battle between Seth, Osiris, Isis and Horus is fought. The five hundred years is up.

Taggart Quinn is living in Toronto when he gets the call to return as a Companion of Horus. He refuses the call. Samiya Rush was abandoned to the Shemsu Seth as a child to be reared and trained for the coming confrontation in which she is to be Evil’s representative. She’s confused and alone. Two millennia before, the Companions and the Shemsu Seth stripped the Sisters of Isis of their powers – the Sisters want their powers back.

Competing interests, conspiracy, betrayal, and greed lead to humanity hanging in the balance of a final battle fought on Earth’s primordial mound.

2. Do you have a favorite minor character?

If I had to choose I’d pick Faris. Faris is a Watcher, one of those who wish to help the Companions of Horus, but didn’t pass the test to join. He’s pretty bitter about that, and this bitterness grows, ultimately making it difficult for him to love or be loved with disastrous consequences.

3. How would you describe your creative process while writing this book? Was it stream-of-consciousness writing, or did you first write an outline?

My writing usually stems from research. 24 Bones for instance required me to have a fair understanding of Coptic Christianity and Egyptology. This necessitated that I read a lot of the translations of the original documents, such as the Papyrus of Ani and Pyramid Texts. This, combined with travel to Egypt to get a better sense of atmosphere, was the foundation for 24 Bones.

I did the research first and followed the construct of the myths, weaving Coptic Christian beliefs and a healthy dose of Jungian thought into the Egyptian versions. I tend to outline one Act ahead. So by the time I’m done Act 1, I have Act 2 detailed. If my characters are surprising me, I can be fairly confident that I’ll surprise the reader too.

4. Where did your characters come from?

Both Samiya and Taggart evolved, but when I think about it, they are in part who they are because of the situation of their back story. Both have had horrible childhoods, one in the service of evil and torn from her mother’s arms, the other disciplined mercilessly, branded by the Companions and then abused by the church. They change into the sort of people we either hope we never meet or the best of what humanity has to offer.

5. What's inside the mind of the supernatural thriller writer?

At least in my case, it’s an exploration of myth. Myth can come in a lot of forms. I’ve written a book about the MS-13, a brutal gang, but one which has deep ritual and mythology. But religion, whatever your belief, contains an awful lot of humanity. And writing is a way to illuminate the human condition as shown through the arc of your characters.

6. What is the best writing advice you've ever received?

Suspend the belief of your inner circle and follow your natural enthusiasm.

7. Do you have a website/blog where readers can learn more about you and your work?

Yes, ma’am, http://www.michaelfstewart.com/. And here’s one to my publisher Drollerie Press where you can pick up many fine stories: http://www.drolleriepress.com/

8. Anything else you'd like to say about yourself or your work?

My proceeds from 24 Bones will go to help the people of Zimbabwe.

Michael F Stewart is an Ottawa, Canada based author whose latest work is 24 BONES, a supernatural thriller set in present day Cairo, Egypt. In addition, Michael has published THE CALIPHATE under the pseudonym Jack Stewart, and has four graphic novels, which will be published this summer by Oxford Canada Press, and a thriller titled HURAKAN due out with Overmountain Press this fall.

Thank you, Michael, and on behalf of all the authors at The Write Type, I wish you every success. ~Cheryl Kaye Tardif

An interview with fantasy author and escapist Sarah Avery

Today I'm interviewing Sarah Avery, an author who likes to escape into the fantasy realm and write about it too. We all can use a bit of escapism now and then...

1. So, Sarah, tell us--why did you choose to write fantasy?

When I was a kid I was misdiagnosed with a terminal illness. I escaped into books. Mainstream fiction wasn't far enough away, so I lived on science fiction and fantasy.

I realized I could escape into stories of my own, that I could create worlds out of language, worlds in which my own ostensibly impending demise was just not relevant.

2. So you’re writing unapologetic escapism?

To paraphrase Tolkien, anyone who objects to escapism on principle is, at heart, a jailer.

But that’s not the whole story, either. You know that Marianne Moore aphorism about writing imaginary gardens with real toads in them? If your toads aren’t real enough, nobody can escape into your imaginary garden. So an escapist also has to be able to write like a realist.

2. What writers influence you most?

I love the way LeGuin's early Earthsea novels create the feel of an incredibly deep, varied, longstanding civilization in such short, fast-paced books, and I love the way she handles the experience of being a foreigner in The Dispossessed. Making your viewpoint character an outsider is a common quick-and-dirty writing trick for justifying lots of exposition, and you see it all over fantasy and science fiction. You rarely see the outsider protagonist experience wave after wave of culture shock. The quick-and-dirty author tricks that everyone in the genre has to use, LeGuin usually finds ways to transform into opportunities for depth and beauty.

A lot of what I know about dialog, I learned from Joss Whedon, from Firefly and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I love the way Whedon can weave comic, tragic, and shamelessly melodramatic layers of story into a single, completely believable conversation.

3. How does your teaching feed your writing?

I'm a freelance tutor these days, and most of my students are teenage boys. Once they catch on that I'm there to help them, not to judge them, they get very honest about how they read, what they read for fun, and why. They’re a great reality check for me because all my formal training in creative writing was about making beautiful sentences. Beautiful sentences are not enough to make a story. Something has to happen. If you ask my students, preferably something with explosions. Fisticuffs at the very least.

4. What's your writing process like?

Right now, while my son is a toddler, my writing process consists of frantically trying on new writing processes, hoping to find one that’s compatible with parenthood. Before my son was born, I used to crank out over 200,000 words a year—that’s about 600 pages—but I used to do it by settling in at my local Starbucks for a four hour writing session every day.

These days, I’m lucky if I can average 300 words a day—that’s a little over one page. On the other hand, I do write every day, no matter what. The day after my son was born, I wrote.

5. So, what’s this new book of yours?

Atlantis Cranks Need Not Apply is a supernatural comedy about a coven of witches on the Jersey Shore who discover a guy with gills washed up on the beach during hurricane season. It’s a stand-alone story, but follows the same characters as my first book, Closing Arguments, in which a Wiccan personal injury attorney has to rescue his dead occultist parents when they get stuck in the wrong afterlife. The characters in Rugosa Coven are a lot of fun to write—they’re very real Neo-Pagans who live in a magical realist version of New Jersey.

For more information about me and my novels, please visit:
http://drolleriepress.com/sarah-avery/

Sarah Avery is an escaped academic, a grown-up army brat, a writer, an ambivalently entrepreneurial private tutor, a new mother, a longtime wife, an initiated Wiccan priestess, and a committed blogger (http://dr_pretentious.livejournal.com). In addition to the Rugosa Coven novellas available and forthcoming from Drollerie Press, she has stories forthcoming in Black Gate and Jim Baen's Universe.

Thank you, Sarah. It has been great getting to know you and your work. ~ Cheryl Kaye Tardif

Interview with John Rosenman, author of Alien Dreams

Today, I'm interviewing another Drollerie Press author--John Rosenman. John has published eight books: Alien Dreams; Beyond Those Distant Stars; Dax Rigby, War Correspondent; and Speaker of the Shakk. His short fiction has appeared in Weird Tales, Whitley Strieber’s Aliens, Starshore, Hot Blood, The Age of Wonders, etc.

1. Tell us about Alien Dreams, published by Drollerie Press.

It’s my most cosmic novel, with dark, evil, and angelically beautiful aliens. Captain Eric Latimore leads a mission to a distant world where he is transformed into a giant alien in order to save his crew. After he makes love to their lovely queen for 10,000 subjective years, he travels across space to do battle with a godlike Gatekeeper who rules this universe.

2. What’s your most recent publication?

Dax Rigby, War Correspondent (Lyrical Press), is about a young reporter who travels to Arcadia to investigate two warring alien species. There, he falls in love with a beautiful pilot and discovers a deadly conspiracy. He also learns he’s the incarnation of a god, and only he can save billions of lives back on Earth.

3. Tell us about a favorite minor character.

Thaddeus Burke, in Dax Rigby, is a dissolute drunk heavily into pornography who becomes spiritually reborn when the hero brings someone back from the dead. However, he still writes bad poetry, which is unintentionally humorous.

4. What inspires you most to write your novels?

I love to write about people who go to distant worlds and have amazing adventures, especially with bizarre, fantastic aliens. I like to find the humanity in aliens who seem completely different from us. I also write about people transforming into weird or marvelous new forms, or about a messiah who saves humanity.

5. What is your favorite thing about writing?

Getting turned on by doing it. Nothing beats having the words flow and feeling inspired. I also like selling a story, and having readers say they liked it.

6. How do you get ideas?

Sometimes they come from almost NOTHING. One novel came from a single word: Dreamfarer. One time my wife put three bulbs of garlic in my suitcase and I wrote a crazy tale called “Three Pounds of Garlic in a Dead Man’s Hand.” Once I took my son trick or treating and he disappeared briefly behind a trellis, so I wrote a story about a man whose son disappears on Halloween and enters another universe.

7. What are you working on now?

Dark Wizard occurs in San Luis Obispo, CA. The city has strange sights, including Bubblegum Alley with decades of gum on its walls. The main character “woke up” two months ago and doesn’t know who he is, but he can read minds and bring dead people back to life. Then he discovers an alien monster inhabiting his mind and meets a beautiful girl with a dark secret.

8. When did you realize you were a story teller?

It goes back to early childhood when I lay in bed in the dark and listened to scary radio programs like “Lights Out.” Then I’d write stories in crayon.

9. What is the best part of world building for you?

Making it interesting! In A Senseless Act of Beauty, due out from Blade Publishing, I create an African-like world with a vast, underground alien complex. The fun was creating endless new sights and vast rooms with mind-stretching wonders.

10. What is the biggest mistake new writers make?

Quitting because of rejection or flagging motivation. You know, a lot of folks get ideas. The writer is the one who grabs onto them and makes something grow, even if it involves sweat and hard work. Not reading enough good stuff is another problem. It’s hard to make a flower grow in a mental vacuum. Science fiction, for example, is largely a genre of ideas. You need to read it to see which ones have been used before.

You can learn more about John Rosenman at his website: http://www.johnrosenman.com/ and he writes a monthly blog at http://www.storytellersunplugged.com/.

Thank you, John, for sharing your strange new worlds with us. They all sound fascinating and "out of this world". :) ~Cheryl Kaye Tardif, bestselling author of The River

Interview with Meredith Holmes, author of Unseelie

One of my first independent reviewers, Christina Whitcher, is now the PR coordinator for a small speculative fiction publishing company called Drollerie Press, and she recently contacted me about one of her authors. Meredith Holmes lives and writes mostly in Southeast Texas. Unseelie is her first published novel and she hopes there's many more to come.

Today I'm interviewing Meredith about her debut novel, an urban fantasy/romance titled Unseelie.

1. Meredith, welcome to The Write Type. First, how did Unseelie get started?

Unseelie began as an exercise for NaNoWriMo (www.nanowrimo.org). A local shop had a display of greeting cards including one with this absolutely beautiful faerie prince on the front and the image just stuck with me so when it came time for NaNoWriMo, I began by writing about this prince, whom I decided was named Cadfael (from an old word meaning "battle prince"). Alfhild came soon after, and the story just grew around the characters.

2. Did you research mythology and legends before writing Unseelie or did you make a lot of it up as you went?

Most of Unseelie was researched in terms of mythological origins of names (I have a "thing" for names!) and stories about ancient heroes and the like but some of it was made from whole cloth or "inspired" by old legends. Take Jenny Greenteeth, for example: in the legends, she's nothing like the character of the same name in Unseelie outside of a few key similarities. Characters like Alfhild and Cadfael aren't based on any historical or legendary characters pre se but I was definitely inspired by some ancient stories when creating them!

3. Is Unseelie a romance?

Yep, but that's not the sole focus--there's a war, conflict between humans and supernaturals, self-discovery... It's pretty complex!

4. Did your background prepare you for writing or is it something that just "happened"?

I never went to school for creative writing though I did consider it! I was always making up stories about imaginary friends as a kid and later writing them down, at the encouragement of my mother and grandmother. I remember making little books at my grandma's house, stapling them together to "bind" them and giving them to my grandparents for the bookshelf! Writing just grew out of that early fantasy life and the support of my mom and maternal grandmother.

5. What's your next project?

Other than finishing grad school? I have several stories in the works right now but the one in the home-stretch is the first of a trilogy about demons and some pretty ancient alliances that carry into the modern world. It's another supernatural-romance story but much different in tone and characters than Unseelie. It's more of a mystery than not but it's definitely supernatural romance.

6. You work on more than one story at once then?

Definitely. I get ideas and have to start writing them out before I lose them. Some authors keep notebooks of plot ideas or characters, I keep files on my hard drive (backed up to the moon and back--I'm super careful about that!). I have snippets of stories, some all the way up to their fifth and sixth chapter, waiting in the wings. I tend to work on the story whose characters are most insistent on getting written first.

7. How does writing impact your life outside of the process?

Oh, it's pretty much in every aspect of my life. If I'm not doing it, I'm thinking about it and it's become a very big part of my life. It's gone from me poking at a NaNoWriMo story to getting published by Drollerie Press. Unseelie is my first book (I've had short stories in ezines before, and they are now on Drollerie) so of course I was really excited during the entire process. Now that Unseelie is out and available since December on Drollerie's site, Mobipocket and Fictionwise, the excitement is still there but it's getting spread out to my WIPs as well because now I know what it's like!

Links:
http://www.meredithholmes.com/
http://drolleriepress.com/bookshop/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=18_41
Email Meredith at: meri.holmes (at ) gmail (dot) com

Thank you again, Meredith, for sharing your inspiring journey with us. I wish you the best in success! ~Cheryl Kaye Tardif, bestselling author of Whale Song