Allow us to present our newest episode of Inside The Writers’ Studio, Writer Stereotypes:

Q&A

INSIDE THE WRITERS’ STUDIO: After two novels, why short stories?

CRAIG LANCASTER: It wasn’t a deliberate choice; they’re simply what started coming out of my fingers after I delivered my second novel, “The Summer Son,” to my publisher. I’d written two novels in quick succession and wasn’t ready to launch into another one, but the compulsion to write was still there. I was also going through a pretty dramatic, turbulent time in my personal life — my wife and I were on the brink of divorce (we ended up repairing things) — and that certainly had something to do with the kinds of stories I ended up writing. All of them deal, in some way, with the idea of separation — not just in a marital sense, but also from ideas, rules, fears, etc.

IWS: How do you feel about writing novels as compared to how you feel about writing short stories?

CL: I can’t deny that the feeling of accomplishment with a novel is greater; it’s simply a more difficult thing to do well, given the size of the story and the many ways it can go wrong. But I wouldn’t go so far as to call short stories easy. To work an entire arc — and to give the reader reason to care about the characters — in a smaller space takes skill and deliberation.

Stephen King, who writes terrific short stories, once described them as palate cleansers between novels. I don’t know that they were that, exactly, for me, but now that the collection is done, I’m back to tackling novels. Still, I can’t imagine not writing the shorter form, too. I enjoy it.

IWS: What themes do you tend to gravitate toward in your short fiction?

CL: The same ones I gravitate toward in my long-form fiction: relationships, family dynamics, the search for peace among restless people, that sort of thing. I’m enormously impressed by writers who can create imaginary worlds, or blend magical realism with everyday life, but my brain simply doesn’t work that way. I spend much of my life trying to figure out the human condition. And that’s where my writing goes.

IWS: Is it discouraging at all to write in a form not generally interesting to readers who aren’t writers themselves? (This is to say that people don’t typically buy short fiction collections by authors who aren’t very well known – which suggests that the short story form, in general, doesn’t interest people by itself.)

CL: “Discouraging” isn’t the word I’d use; it’s the way things are, and I’ve always known that. I’m more discouraged by things that are screwed up and yet have the potential to be more promising, like the political climate right now.

I knew when I pitched the stories to my publisher that they’d probably be turned down; collections simply don’t balance on the P&L sheet, and my writing isn’t sufficiently literary for the likes of Graywolf Press, which really does a nice job with collections. So I hired the best editor I know, Jim Thomsen, and prepared the stories for publication through the little press I run out of my living room, Missouri Breaks Press, which has already published two other well-received books (Carol Buchanan’s “Gold Under Ice” and Ed Kemmick’s “The Big Sky, By and By”).

Given the state of trade publishing in general, I was more than happy to go this route. I imagine my career will be an amalgamation of traditionally published books, magazine pieces and targeted self-publishing. So it fits.

IWS: Have you considered selling the stories as individual pieces for Kindle rather than as a collection?

CL: Three of the pieces — “This Is Butte. You Have Ten Minutes,” “Alyssa Alights” and “Star of the North” — were originally bundled together as an e-book (which I took down after I pulled together the full collection), and it sold decently with almost no promotion by me. The problem I run into when I think about releasing stories piecemeal is price: The e-book version of the collection is priced at $3.99, which I think is a competitive price point that might also attract some people who haven’t read anything by me before. If you’re going to sell 10 stories for the price of a cup of coffee, what’s the rate for one? I don’t know.

IWS: What’s your favorite story in the collection, and why?

CL: I have a deep attachment to all of them, of course, but I’d have to say “This Is Butte. You Have Ten Minutes.” Writing that story was one of the rare times I felt completely sure-footed, and when I was finished, I knew I had something good. It’s also the story with the most direct inspiration: A year ago, I hopped a Greyhound bus for Missoula because my wife needed our SUV to move out of our house. I was in this horrible trough emotionally, and yet I was also strongly attenuated to the motley gaggle of fellow riders. In the story, a man deeply disengaged from his life climbs aboard a bus after his car breaks down. I was fascinated by the idea of this guy, surrounded by people and yet with no intimacy at all. That’s how I felt.

IWS: What do you focus on most when writing? That is, what’s most important to you to lend your craft to when writing?

CL: As to the first part, it depends on the story. This collection is bookended by two stories that illustrate this. The first and longest, “Somebody Has to Lose,” took several weeks to finish. The last, “Comfort and Joy,” was written in a single day (with revisions stretching over a couple more days).

When I write a first draft, I generally work quickly, and I’ve become fairly adept at building a good, solid structure. I think I have a good sense for flow, and my writing style is spare and direct. But for me, the best stuff happens in the revision stage. I love, love, love to rewrite, and I’m the luckiest guy in the world because of that.

IWS: Thanks, Craig!

And now: How YOU lucky readers can get your free download of Quantum Physics and the Art of Departure (OFFER ENDS SEPT. 30, 2011).

From the author himself:
So, you want a copy, right? Here’s what you do:

Go to this link: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/81312
Select the format you want.
Go to checkout.
Enter this coupon code: EY63S
Commence downloading and reading.

If you don’t have a Smashwords account, you’ll have to sign up for one. But don’t let that dissuade you. It, too, is free, and there are a lot of good e-book bargains on that site. It’s a panoply of reading pleasure for the story enthusiast.

Please pass this along to your friends with e-readers. The offer is good until Sept. 30, and I’d love to see as many free copies as possible sent out into the world. After you read the book, if you’re so inclined, please offer up a review at Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble or Goodreads or LibraryThing, if you frequent those places. Or tell a friend.

But that obviously doesn’t stop quality self-published work from entering the marketplace, and from quality authors. In fact, more and more established authors (for example, NYT bestselling author James C. Moore, who self-published his Sci-Fi/Mystery novel In the Time of Man using Kindle’s DTP service) seem to be joining the masses of lesser-known authors who couldn’t find a home with a publisher because their work either didn’t fit into a genre mold or would be difficult to market.

David Raterman, who has written books for National Geographic and Knopf/Random House (and who also worked two years for CARE in ex-Soviet Tajikistan), is yet another writer who decided to self-publish after trying to do it the old fashioned way. He recently released his debut thriller novel, The River Panj, in an e-version for Kindle, Nook, Smashwords, and the Sony e-reader, and as a trade paperback through CreateSpace.

Here are excerpts from a couple of rejections he received from editors before finally deciding to release it himself (he shares these rejections on his website):

The vividness of Raterman’s descriptions are stunning and I can certainly see what it is that has you so enthusiastic about his work. However, I am concerned that the book’s subject—while timely—has fiction readers a bit weary and unless it is covered by an established name in the marketplace, will have a hard time breaking out commercially.

It’s an exciting, adrenaline-fueled read, and interest in and awareness of the area of the world at the heart of this story have never been higher. But, ultimately, as intriguing as Central Asia is, I think it makes for a tough setting.

I’m always up for a page-turner, and not only can David deliver the fun, but his writing possesses a certain level of political sophistication that’s rare in these types of novels. As promising as it is, though, I am going to pass. For me it’s really a question of positioning—while it has its strengths, I’m just not convinced it will break out beyond its core audience. Alas, something we need for our select number of fiction titles here.

I learned about David Raterman when I received an email newsletter announcing the release of The River Panj. I thought, “Who is this man and how did he get my email address?” So I visited his website.

The first author who surprised me by self-publishing was James C. Moore. One would think an Emmy Award-winning former news correspondent and co-author of a book like Bush’s Brain would have no problem selling his exceptional fiction. I figured it was a fluke. Bad luck. Bad timing.

But then I visited David Raterman’s website and saw that it was clearly happening again, to yet another writer one would assume would have no problem selling his work to a publisher. There were three things I wanted to know about: David Raterman, The River Panj, and why on earth he would have to self-publish it. So, I emailed a reply to his newsletter and asked if he would be willing to be interviewed.

He said yes. By the time I sent him my first set of questions via email, I’d received a second newsletter, which read, in part,

As we reach the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and football season kicks in, I’d like to share news about my book. “The River Panj” is the first thriller to open in Afghanistan on Sept. 11, 2001, and it shows a completely new image of Americans. On sale since Aug. 3, it’s already listed as #11 at Amazon for “Afghanistan.”

Our interview follows.

KT: Marketing something around 9/11 is difficult. There’s a thin line to tread: the date is relevant to the work, but using that day, one that means so many things to so many people, could make them think you’re using a tragedy to sell a book. How do you reconcile the two sides of the line?

DAVID RATERMAN: I’m extremely sensitive about using 9/11 as the backdrop of my story but to not exploit it. In fact, my story has no scenes at the World Trade Center or Pentagon or on Flight 93. But fiction writers are told to “write what you know.” And I knew that part of the world. I worked for almost a year at a prosthetics workshop in ex-Soviet Armenia. Our staff fabricated artificial limbs for soldiers and war victims. After that, I worked two years for CARE in ex-Soviet Tajikistan, which was struggling out of a civil war that was similar to Afghanistan’s (i.e., Muslim fundamentalists fighting to take over). In fact, thousands of our food recipients were Afghan refugees. And I was on the border twice during Taliban-Northern Alliance battles that were clearly audible (but we didn’t see them).

Warfare is part of humanity, as is storytelling. There were a handful of Americans in Afghanistan on 9/11 and I felt it would make for a fascinating literary subject.

We’ve already had many books, TV shows and films connected to Pearl Harbor and other tragic events in America. And there have been many books, TV shows and films featuring 9/11 in one way or another, so mine is not groundbreaking from that standpoint. I started writing this novel a few years ago and it’s purely coincidental that I’m doing any marketing at all right now—I published the ebook last month and the print book this week. Only recently did the designer create my book cover and a line editor checked the manuscript for grammar.

KT: How much of a challenge was it to try to encompass the complex reality of the reactions and behaviors of Afghans on 9/11 after they’d heard about what happened?

DR: Most of the Afghans in my story are very isolated, almost illiterate, terrorists so they gloat about the attacks on America. But people shouldn’t think I’ve stereotyped Muslims because I do have very intelligent and compassionate Tajiks, including my American protagonist’s fiancée who is a doctor right out of medical school. But, since I’m writing in the thriller genre, I need good bad guys and I wasn’t going to sugarcoat the terrorists’ reactions to the attacks. I also have innocent Afghans caught up in the madness of their country’s eternal warfare. Their plight is truly sad. Part of me wants to let all of the idiots fight themselves into extinction, but they need to leave the innocent people alone.

KT: Why did you choose Sept. 11 as the story’s start point?

DR: From 1997 to 1999 I worked in Tajikistan for CARE, which is based in Atlanta. And my boss became deputy country director of the UN’s World Food Programme in Afghanistan, working in Kabul from 1999 to Sept. 13, 2001 (when he got on the first flight he could). Because we didn’t have a US Embassy in Afghanistan, there were very Americans working there—maybe 100 working for aid agencies.

Writing my first novel, which I had long wanted to do, I was looking for an opening that tied together my personal knowledge—Tajiks are the main ethnic group in both Tajikistan and Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance—with a subject that would be completely unique and relevant to American readers. So it opens with emergency relief on 9/11 in Afghanistan.

KT: On your website, you write, “I wanted to go farther,” when comparing your approach to that of other authors who had written about relief workers. What do you mean, “go farther”?

DR: “Emergency relief” conjures up danger and compassion, which are powerful ingredients for a thriller. But it had been only superficially covered. The catalyst for the plot in Brad Thor’s bestseller “The Apostle” (2009) is an American physician being kidnapped in Afghanistan while working for CARE. Then Thor’s hero goes in search-and-rescue-mode. That’s great—awesome actually, because I loved the book. But the physician’s work activities are only superficially shown, and for only a few pages. I felt many readers would like to know more about characters like this, and I was the one to provide those details. In my experience, about 1/3 of the Americans working in relief are ex-military, 1/3 have a religious calling, and 1/3 want to see the world while having adventures. Of course there’s overlap. It’s a fascinating mix of people.

KT: Is it the work itself or the deeper reasons people choose the work and how it contributes to their (fictional) characters that was more compelling for you to communicate?

DR: I’m really pleased to shed light on the emergency relief/humanitarian aid industry. But also compelling to me are the characters. My protagonist Derek is an ex-Notre Dame football player who thought he’d play in the NFL, “but then he lost it all.” Readers find out what happened. I enjoyed putting his character together.

Another American character is a born-again Christian (from Colorado) who is doing volunteer work in his golden years “to make up for all the bad he did.” And another is an old draft-dodging hippie (from Connecticut) who embarked on a life of foreign relief work. Derek’s best friend works for Doctors Without Borders. After university, he served in the British Army as second lieutenant.

KT: I found this line from review on your website particularly … chilling: “David Raterman knows his stuff, because he’s walked the dusty roads of Central Asia and he’s looked al-Qaida mujahedeen in the eyes and lived to tell about it.” Can you tell me a little bit about that?

DR: It was serious in Tajikistan from 1997, when the peace accords were signed, until 1999 when I left. Several of my friends were kidnapped and/or killed, including a UN bodyguard (an ex-New York cop) being shot in the head, a young French woman with an aid agency being blown up by a hand grenade, and four unarmed UN military observers being executed on the side of a road. Also a few of my Tajik and Russian colleagues were kidnapped and beaten by criminals or authorities, including our handyman Ayub. His son had gone AWOL from the Tajik army for the third time because his officers beat him so much. So the son’s officers tracked down Ayub and beat him, after kidnapping Ayub’s wife. They said they would kill Ayub if his son didn’t show up in three days. On the third day, I was driven to talk with those officers. Scary stuff.

Probably the scariest incident was when my Russian girlfriend (now wife) flew into Tajikistan’s capital to visit me from Moscow. A three-day battle was taking place with government troops firing tank and artillery rounds from the airport tarmac to a hill where Islamic militants fired back. I didn’t think Aeroflot would land the plane, but sure enough they did. When she got off the plane she asked what the noise was and I shouted in Russian, “Get in the car! It’s artillery!” Driving off the tarmac, she asked if she could take photos of wounded soldiers walking away from the battle, five feet from our car. “Don’t even make eye contact,” I said. Still can’t believe Aeroflot let that plane arrive. I guess they needed the revenue.

KT: What was it like to talk with the officers about Ayub? That is, where did you meet with them and what were your surroundings like, how did they behave toward you, and what was it like to be in their presence?

DR: It was extremely tense. Driving to the meeting at Ayub’s rundown concrete apartment complex, we had no idea how drunk they might be, even during the day, or whacked out on something like heroin.

They did not want to deal with an American because they look up to us culturally and financially since we had so much aid in their country, and because they knew they were in the wrong with Ayub’s son. But they refused to budge, unless receiving $300 in US bills. We returned to CARE’s office where our administrators advanced Ayub his next two months of salary, which totaled $300. Ayub paid the officers and days later all was good. A father’s love …

KT: In The River Panj, the protagonist’s girlfriend and colleague are kidnapped, and the protagonist is later kidnapped, himself. Will readers get a sense of what the kidnapping experience is like beyond what we’ve seen on TV or heard about in the news? If so, how did you create that realism?

DR: Yes, my details are very raw, very real. I myself was beaten for 45 minutes by drunk military policemen in an ex-Soviet republic (Armenia) so I know what fear is—I thought I would die. I remember looking at the two MPs eyes each time they hit me. That was a powerful image I’ve kept.

And one time in the Moscow airport, I was locked up for 24 hours for not having proper documents, which was a lie by the customs officials. I wasn’t too worried for my life, because I had access to a phone and called the US Consulate, but it still was intense and the whole time I wasn’t sure if they’d come in and hit me or do whatever.

Looking into the faces of people as they do evil to you is good fortune for developing writers..

And, as mentioned, I knew a few people in Tajikistan who were kidnapped so I spoke with them.

KT: It sounds like you’ve had a number of real-life dramatic experiences in your life, so why not write a memoir? Why fiction?

DR: I have a collection of travel stories that one day I may see about publishing. As it is, several were published independently. The reality is that, unless you are already famous, it’s hard to sell your memoirs. Plus I personally wouldn’t write memoirs because I’m not one for pontificating. Why fiction? Because it’s fun to ask, “What if…?”

KT: The reviews of your novel are good, and you’re an established writer, so how is it that The River Panj is self-published? How is it that you weren’t able to place it with a publisher?

DR: I went the agent route, and after getting about a dozen rejections he dropped me. That was frustrating, especially since I’d heard that so many novelists get scores of rejections before getting published. But he’s a huge agent, maybe too big for me at this point in my career.

Editors at publishing houses want to know that your book will sell. That’s why Snooki and Pamela Anderson have published novels but some strong literary and genre novels have not been published. It’s the chicken-or-the-egg. How can a novelist get book-buying fans without getting published, but how does the novelist get published without fans? (Hint: star in a reality TV show first!)

A few rejections did mention that Americans have reader fatigue when it comes to 9/11, and I do get that. But the vast majority of 9/11 books are nonfiction, and fiction is a completely different animal. It enables the author, and reader, to imagine scenarios instead of dwelling on what already happened. Regardless, mine does not have one scene in New York, Washington, DC or Flight 93. Mine’s set in Afghanistan and neighboring Tajikistan, with a secondary storyline in South Florida and Chicago.

Although I self-published, the novel is on par with what would have been released by a traditional publisher. The big differences are that instead of their designers creating my book cover and their editor(s) editing my book, I had to hire people. Fortunately I found a great designer and great editor named Ian Harper. A well-renowned freelance editor, Ian cleans up manuscripts before authors give them to their editors, whether the author is new or on his or her 15th book.

KT: How do you think your self-publishing experience might have been different if you hadn’t been able to hire an exceptional cover designer and well known freelance editor? Would you still have done it, or would you have tried to find another agent?

DR: I’m very well networked among writers, editors and designers so it was easy to find ones. Yes, I would have self-published even if I had to draw stick figures on the cover. “An emergency relief thriller” represents such a powerful theme, plus I had invested so much time into it, that I would have been derelict to not give it some sunlight.

KT: The River Panj is the first in a series. Are you already working on the next, and if so, what is it about?

DR: Yes, and top secret!

Buy The River Panj

Paperback ($10.99): www.createspace.com/3667626

Ebook ($2.99): http://www.amazon.com/The-River-Panj-ebook/dp/B005FFO394/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312386650&sr=1-3

Also available at iTunes ($2.99) for iPads and iPhones.

For more info … www.DavidRaterman.com

Blackmail Bride is her eleventh published book, her first ebook venture.  She has high hopes of its success, and is already working on a follow-up story Red Habiscus, a romance story set in Malaysia, and featuring bomohs, Malaysian witchdoctors, and murder.

________________________________________

PAPER RATS: What’s the name of the street you live on? (Please include a photograph of what it looks like outside your door with your responses. Most of us can’t picture Malaysia, never mind find it on a map.)

Normanda Whyte: I live in Subang Jaya, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia.  This is my street:

RATS: Blackmail Bride is your 12th book (correct?), and your first ebook. Who published your earlier books, and who published Blackmail Bride?

Whyte: 11th book, and first e-book.  14 years ago I wrote some How To computer books for managers that were published by Addison-Wesley Longmans (International) and Pelanduk (a Malaysian company).

In the last year I’ve published Katz Tales with Marshall Cavendish  and Logomania with MPH, a Malaysian publisher and bookshop chain.  Both are compendiums of 2 of my newspaper columns.

Katz Tales is about my cats, Au, Scoop, and Target.  Logomania traces the history of common expressions, and gives pointers on how to use them in everyday conversation.

This year I’m publishing a second Logomania book with MPH as well as Mystery of the Demon Caves, a story for teens, with Horizon, a Singapore publisher.

RATS: Have you noticed a difference in sales since deciding to sell your work in an electronic format?

Whyte: Not yet because it’s only been a few weeks.  However, I have high hopes!

RATS: How long has it been available as an ebook, and is it also available in paperback?

Whyte: Blackmail Bride has been on sale since early December 2010.  It is not available in paperback.

RATS: Ebook sales are staggeringly high in the US. How is the ebook market in Malaysia? Do many people there own e-reading devices?

Whyte: eBooks are not taking off here yet, mostly because readers are not generally available, and are very expensive.  Also, we can’t buy ebooks from Amazon or Barnes & Noble even if we do get friends to send us a Kindle or Nook.   Those companies only sell ebooks to a few countries, and Malaysia is not included.

10% of the sales from Blackmail Bride go to Friends Furry Farm, a no kill animal shelter in Malaysia.

Ink-Slinger, the company publishing Blackmail Bride, sells worldwide and in every format from Kindle to Apple iPad and iPhone, Barnes & Noble Nook and Sony eReader and PDF.   I’m hoping that this flexibility will appeal to everyone, from Americans to Zimbabweans.

RATS: What inspired Blackmail Bride, and who would you say most influences
your fiction writing?

Whyte: I wrote my first romance to amuse a friend, Christine, who was dying from uterine cancer.  I wrote her half a chapter a day, just to make her laugh at what we called My Art.  I’ve moved house about 10 times since then and lost that story.

However, 15 years later I thought it would be fun to try again.  Now I’m hooked!  I just love writing romance.  It’s so soothing – like eating chocolates in the bath.

My favourite romance writers are Georgette Heyer, Daphne Du Maurier, Mary Stewart and Mary Renault.  I know I’m not in their league but I hope to entertain my readers.

RATS: What’s your favorite line from Blackmail Bride, and why is it your
favorite?

Whyte: “The bad thing about being crazy,” she said to Terror who was watching with interest. “Is that you don’t know anymore what’s sane and what isn’t.”

This is from one of Lucy’s conversation with Terror, the Labrador.  I like the way she talks to him because she is so natural and unconstrained.  I find talking to pets wonderfully therapeutic too, so in this way Lucy is very much like me.

RATS: What’s the one thing you believe readers will appreciate most about
Blackmail Bride?

Whyte: It is upbeat and it has a happy ending!

RATS: Did you base the male character, Jack, off of anyone you know? (If
not, how did you shape him?)

Whyte: All the characters are entirely fictional.  When I started Blackmail Bride I wanted a heroine who gets herself out of a typical domestic abuse situation.  As soon as I got the first words down, Lucy and the other characters just came to life and ran away with the plot.  Really, the story wrote itself.

RATS: Who has been abusing Lucy so mercilessly that she has to have a
protector to save herself?

Whyte: Her former husband, Malcolm.  I won’t spoil the story for you, but all the events that pushed Lucy into this situation have happened in real life – to people I know!  Not to me, so please don’t think this is in any way autobiographical.

RATS: What’s your favorite of Lucy’s traits?

Whyte: Her resilience.  Lucy keeps her inner strength no matter what happens to her.

RATS: What’s been the response to Blackmail Bride in Malaysia?

Whyte: It’s early days yet but my first feedback came from my friend Cathy who said, “You didn’t base those sex scenes on personal experience, did you?  Please tell me no!  I can’t look you or your husband in the face ever again if you say yes!”

As she said this really loudly in the local pub at Happy Hour, it got Blackmail Bride instant attention!

RATS: Where is the story set?

Whyte: Scotland.  Although I changed the names, I visualised Loch Lomand, one of my favourite places, as I wrote it.

RATS: Do the characters or their experiences offer readers insight into a
different/unique culture/point of view, or is it more universal?

Whyte: Lucy’s situation is a classic case of spousal abuse.  Her experience is pretty much the same as it might be in Spain or Malaysia so I’d say it’s universal.

BUT: the next book, Black Magic and Mayhem at the Red Hibiscus is set in Sarawak, Borneo so that one will have the unique cultural input!

__________________________

More about the author:

Normanda Whyte was born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.  Since then she’s lived in Scotland, Spain, Indonesia and Malaysia.  She read psychology at Stirling University but that hasn’t helped her gain the upper hand in her dealings with her cat companions, Au and Target.  She began writing fulltime about 14 years ago when her husband got a job in Sarawak.  She considers herself extremely lucky to be able to make a career out of a hobby.  Blackmail Bride is her 11^th book and her first romance.

April Hamilton and Zoe Winters are two writers who were at the forefront of the “Indie Author” movement. April is the founder of Publetariat, “an online community and news hub built specifically for indie authors and small, independent imprints.” Zoe produces a humorous animated YouTube series called Zoe Who?, which seeks to combat the stigma that still surrounds self-publishing.

In addition to their own works of fiction, April and Zoe have each published informative guides for writers who are considering self-publishing: April’s is called The Indie Author Guide: Self-Publishing Strategies Anyone Can Use and Zoe’s is Smart Self-Publishing: Becoming an Indie Author (click on the pictures for links to purchase). Today, Inside The Writers’ Studio talks to April and Zoe about their books, about the conflict between the traditional and indie publishing worlds, and about what makes a good self-publisher.

PAPER RATS: When did you start writing your book, and how long did it take?

APRIL HAMILTON: The Indie Author Guide began life as a series of free how-to guides I wrote and offered for free on my website. As I kept cranking them out, it wasn’t long before I realized I had more than enough material for a book and decided to collect everything I’d already written, plus a lot of new material, and publish it as a book. All told, it probably took me about five months to author the material and one more month to deal with editing, formatting and publishing.

ZOE WINTERS: I really don’t track that sort of thing. Becoming an Indie Author had been a concept for awhile. Then when I took a break from the Internet in October, I decided to get serious about finishing and editing it. Because it spanned a bit of time and sat unworked on for awhile, I don’t really know how long it took. I’m like that about most books. I don’t clock them. They just take as long as they take. I don’t even know how long Blood Lust or any of the novellas took. Time becomes sort of meaningless when you’re on your own schedule.

RATS: Where do you live?

APRIL: I live in Los Angeles, California.

ZOE: Planet Earth. Though there have been rumors I live elsewhere.

RATS: What would you say is the primary focus of your book?

APRIL: The main thrust of The Indie Author Guide is to provide clear, detailed, plain English, step-by-step directions in self-publishing and author platform/book promotion tasks. If I’ve succeeded with this book, anyone with a modicum of computer skills and a willingness to learn can use its content to self-publish in print and ebook formats, and then go on to develop or optimize an author platform and book promotion strategy. The Indie Author Guide is all about empowering individual authors and micro-imprints to tackle publishing and book promotion by providing them with the specific information and instructions they need.

ZOE: Attitude. I give a lot of tips and how-to, but the main focus, besides stripping away all the extra fat to basically say: “okay, this is what you REALLY need to know to get started. Here’s my process…” was the concept of having the right attitude. A lot of the book had personal experiences of mine along the way as well as a lot of troubleshooting and mistakes I’ve made. A lot of it is about this idea that you don’t have to be perfect to do well. You’re going to make some mistakes, everybody does. It’s what you do with them that makes a difference.

RATS: Please share the chapter titles that appear in your book.

APRIL: Indie Authorship: An Introduction; Getting Organized; Creating Your Brand; Publishing Options; DIY Formatting For POD; Editing And Revising; Designing Your Own Book Cover; Publishing Through A POD Print Services Provider; Publishing In Ebook Formats; Author Platform; Promotion; Making The Transition From Indie To Mainstream; Appendix A: Worksheets; Appendix B: An HTML Primer. There’s also a companion website for the book, at http://www.indieauthorguide.com.

ZOE: Starting With the Right Attitude; Success Predictors in Indie Authors; Branding Decisions and The Format Option You Might Not Know About Print, Ebook, and Audio; Best Laid Plans; Setting up your business and marketing plan; Editing; Cover art; Formatting for Print and E; Registering your Copyright; Publishing Steps; A big-picture look at the writing and publishing process; The Hard Part; Marketing and platform-building basics; Troubleshooting and Caveats.

RATS: What was it that finally got you to the point where you decided, “That’s it. I’m writing a book about this”?

APRIL: When I had four guides written I drafted a list of the additional topics I wanted to cover. Since the list called for about eight more guides, and those I’d already released had been very well received, I looked at my existing and planned guides and said to myself, “This is a book.”

ZOE: I just kept getting emails: “Zoe, how do you do this… Zoe, how do you do that?” And I thought… “It would be really nice if I didn’t have to answer all these same emails over and over.” (though sometimes I still do, so… um. yeah. lol)

But I was also frustrated with the fact that people LOVE to make self-publishing seem SO complicated. I’m not saying it’s a stroll in the park, but it’s also not like walking barefoot 10 miles to and from school, uphill both ways, in a blizzard. I’m just saying. I wanted to strip all the extra crap so people had a bird’s eye view of this stuff. A lot of how-to books are considered better the longer they are. But actually that’s not true. The longer it is, the more tips you get, and the less a beginner has any idea what’s important and what is just padding to make the book seem more knowledgeable. So often a beginner is no better off than when they started reading. Because it’s impossible to equally apply 700 different tips.

RATS: For some reason, there seems to be a conflict between the traditional publishing world and the indie/self-publishing world. What do you think it is that causes this?

APRIL: First of all, I’d say this problem is diminishing very, very quickly. Now that so many authors who were previously published (and published to great success) through mainstream publishers are choosing the indie path, it’s becoming more and more clear to authors and aspiring authors everywhere that self-pub is a viable, and sometimes smarter, alternative to mainstream pub. Secondly, I’ve found the bias to exist almost exclusively among authors, aspiring authors and some literary agents—publishing houses themselves are only too happy to pick up the rights to an indie book that’s “broken out” to become a big hit.   As for why the bias still exists in these certain circles, I’m not sure there’s a single reason. I think some traditionally-published authors and literary agents may feel self-pubbers’ books are inferior because they assume self-pub books are never subjected to any kind of rigorous review or professional editing process, as the mainstream-published authors’ books are. Of course, this is not necessarily true, as savvy indie authors know their books need to compete toe-to-toe with mainstream books; hiring out for professional cover design, editing, and even interior layout and design are becoming more and more the norm.   A refrain I’ve often heard from anti-self-pub aspiring authors is that the indie authors are trying to cut to the front of the literary line, and are unwilling to pay their dues. Perhaps this is because so many aspiring authors have spent literally decades plodding along the traditional publishing path, and they’ve come to feel there’s some value inherent in that experience.

ZOE: I think indie authors in general, have just been pooped on for so long that they feel like a discriminated-against minority. And there is some truth to that. Hell, there are STILL people who will take issue with the label “indie author”. They want you to call yourself “self-published” because it has more stigma. It sounds crappier. It’s like “Shut up, slave! How dare you have self-esteem.”

Many people who are set on traditional publishing as ‘the proper way’ to publish, think indie authors are lazy, stupid, delusional, untalented, impatient, and on and on and on. There is very little (though this is changing) recognition that there are some VERY good qualities and things to admire in serious indie authors. We are entrepreneurs. We are business people. We are not wired to work for others. That isn’t a slam on traditional publishing. But not all of us are meant to answer to a boss every day. And though most writers wouldn’t consider themselves “employed”, when you have to answer to a publisher about everything and have little control over the end product… that’s kind of like employed.

But there is a corollary where self-employment in general isn’t respected or understood by most of the population because most people are naturally followers. That’s not a judgment call, just a statistical reality. You go to college where you’re being prepared for a “career” and everyone says you gotta have college to make anything of yourself, blah blah blah. But what they don’t tell you in college is that 85% of the wealth is made by entrepreneurs, many of them self-made and without formal educations. (Which isn’t the same thing as UN-educated.) Basically, Fortune favors the brave.

RATS: What is the first piece of advice you would offer someone interested in self-publishing?

APRIL: My book is primarily aimed at authors and would-be authors who intend to take an entrepreneurial approach their publishing endeavor: they understand that in publishing a book, they’re launching a small business, and they plan to treat their book projects as such.   Job one is to identify your goals, and that means digging a bit deeper than just, “I want my book to be a success.” “Success” means different things to different people, and different things for different books. With respect to The Indie Author Guide, my idea of success for the book has to do with garnering with widest possible exposure and acceptance, worldwide. I’m trying to get good information out there to any would-be indie author who wants it. Financial goals for the book are secondary to me. For some authors, winning over a modest but very enthusiastic readership is the crux of the dream. For others it really does come down to money, and that’s legitimate, too. But if you don’t take the time to figure out what your goals are for a given book, you can’t develop an effective publishing and promotion strategy. It’s like trying to build a house with no blueprints.   Job two is to get educated. If you’re going to self-publish well, you need to learn some new skills and perfect existing ones. You need to bone up on the overall publishing and book distribution process. You need to know when it’s okay to do something yourself and when it’s smarter to hire a pro. You need to not only identify your target audience, you need to learn where and how to reach them. Being an indie author also means acting as your own publisher, and that is not a casual or simple undertaking.

ZOE: Have realistic expectations. Which is hard to do because until you get in there, you don’t know what’s going to be realistic “for you”. And starting slow doesn’t mean you can’t do well later. But, for example, I was making less than $200 a month the first 17 months I was self-publishing. So… it is not overnight. But that’s ME. Amanda Hocking was making over $10k a month after 6 months. It varies wildly. So I think it’s important for indies to believe in themselves and be solid in their goals but at the same time not invest too much in early results because you don’t really know how things will start out or what you’ll need to tweak along the way.

RATS: Have you received emails or other messages from people who have used your books as guides?

APRIL: The feedback I hear most often is some variation on one of two themes: “I thought self-publishing would be too expensive/hard/confusing until I read your book,” and “This is the first book about self-publishing I’ve found that says exactly what to do and specifically how to do it in clear language, all the others are either too general or too technical.”

ZOE: The response has been really positive. I’ve had a lot of people tell me they appreciated that the voice was very conversational and “real” like we were chatting over coffee, and that the steps all felt “doable”.

RATS: What is the best example of what NOT to do?

APRIL: I advise all indie authors and would-be indie authors against working with vanity or subsidy presses which require a substantial investment of funds up front and offer their services in the form of ‘publishing packages’. With Print on Demand technologies so readily available there’s no good reason for most authors to order a minimum print run of their books up front, and that’s what’s generally required by vanity and subsidy presses. There’s also no good reason for an author who intends to self-publish to sign away any of his or her intellectual property rights, and that’s another requirement when you’re dealing with a vanity or subsidy press. As for those ‘packages’, they typically consist of a bundle of services that includes numerous items the author could do him- or herself at a fraction of the cost the press is charging—or even totally for free—, as well as at least a few items the author doesn’t actually need.   To be clear, I’m not saying all vanity and subsidy presses are rip-off artists, many are completely legitimate and really do want to help their clients succeed. I’m just saying that from a financial and business perspective, they’re not a good idea for the great majority of authors.

ZOE: Don’t do your own cover. Don’t do your own editing. These are areas that you may “think” you’re brilliant or competent at, but with very rare exceptions, probably not. Everyone thinks they are the exception, here. And you might be. You could be some publishing and writing savant, I don’t know, I’m not magic. But, assume you aren’t and get help. It’s safer and raises your odds of success.

RATS: What is the most admirable trait in a self-publisher?

APRIL: All the most successful indie authors have an entrepreneurial spirit. They are go-getters who enjoy mastering new skills and have a positive, but realistic outlook about their publishing projects.

ZOE: The same trait that is most admirable in any author, tenacity.

RATS: What is the least admirable trait?

APRIL: A dated mindset about what it means to be a successful author will kill many an indie book long before it’s published. The era of the solitary loner, cloistered away somewhere with a typewriter or word processor, is over. Authors and would-be authors’ whose prevailing attitude is, “I’m a writer and that means all I have to do is write,” are not cut out for the indie path. Virtually all authors are now on the hook for their own book promotion and author platform, but this is doubly true of indie authors since they don’t have the backing of a publishing house. Writing an excellent book is pointless if there’s no plan of attack for bringing that book to a readership.

ZOE: Arrogance. It won’t serve you, because in the beginning you’ll just look crazy. And if you ever become successful, you’ll just look ungracious. Better to smile and nod a lot. (Preaching to myself as well, because I’m sure I’ve had my moments.)

Their friendship was forged in the world of daily newspapers, where Craig Lancaster works as a chief copy editor at the Billings (Mont.) Gazette and Jim Thomsen, until recently, held a similar job at the Kitsap (Wash.) Sun.

When it comes to books and writing, they are literary wingmen – good friends who push each other to do better work and who share occasional miseries and successes. Below, Jim pitches some questions to Craig, the author of 600 Hours of Edward and the recently released The Summer Son, about writing and publishing. Sit back and take in the conversation.

JIM THOMSEN: What in your personal history fed into “The Summer Son”?

CRAIG LANCASTER: A lifetime of struggling to understand and get close to a distant father, certainly. This is where I always have to include a disclaimer: Anyone who thinks that I’m Mitch Quillen, the story’s protagonist, or my dad is Jim Quillen, Mitch’s father, is heading down the wrong road. Their issues and protracted distances from each other are much more violent and severe than anything I’ve experienced with my own father, which is what makes their story one worth turning into a novel and ours mostly fodder for quiet reflection.

That said, it’s undeniable that I brought things and places I know into the narrative. Jim is an itinerant well digger; so was my dad. Mitch spends the summer of 1979 in Milford, Utah; so did I. But those really are surface details, chosen because I happen to be familiar with them.Where the story goes, the secrets it unravels, the collision of violence and innocence — it’s all fiction.

JIM: Your stories are about the West, but less the Louis L’Amour, cattle-range, Clint Eastwood West than a West that has room for Target stores AND tumbleweeds. How well do these Wests work together, both in your fiction and in the Billings you observe today?

CRAIG: They have to work together, and for any writer working in the West who chooses to write about a contemporary time, there’s no ignoring the fact that Costco, to use just one example, affects those of us in the urban areas and the folks who live in more traditional Western settings. Seriously, if you go to the Billings Costco on a Saturday and look at the license plates in the parking lot, you quickly realize that good chunks of northern Wyoming and eastern Montana have come to the big city to load up on provisions. And what about those odious bull testicles that hang from the trailer hitches of some trucks out here? Those things have to come from somewhere. A city, I’ll bet.

Billings has long had a less-than-stellar image in some other parts of the state, a view I don’t happen to endorse, being a happy resident of the place. I recall reading Ivan Doig’s “The Whistling Season” and one of the characters referring to Billings as the place where the banks and the car lots are. Well, it’s hard to argue with that. But there’s also much to recommend it. I’m quite at home here.

I think part of the reason I’ve been able to be fluent in the suburbs and the earthier locales is that my childhood straddled the two. Nine months a year, I lived with my mother and stepfather and siblings in a garden-variety North Texas suburb, complete with themed subdivisions and fast-food restaurant rows. Once summer came around, I’d decamp for Montpelier, Idaho, or Baggs, Wyoming, or Sidney, Montana — wherever my dad happened to be working. I’d contend that beyond the cosmetic details, life in all those places has more in common with the ‘burbs than it has differences. People work. They raise their kids. They look for something to do on Friday night. They try to get ahead. They go to church. They live. They die.

JIM: Obviously, you can’t write worrying about who your audience is or how they’ll receive what you write, but do you believe that there is room in Montana for works of fiction that aren’t patriarchal ranch sagas set on horseback? That allow for fast food and suburban living?

CRAIG: Certainly. It’s been happening for a long time. Kevin Canty’s most recent novel, “Everything,” is a brilliant portrait of life in Missoula now. Larry Watson has plumbed those themes many times. In the wider West, scores of writers — Annie Proulx, Alyson Hagy, Kent Haruf, Sherman Alexie, Benjamin Percy, Jim Lynch, C.J. Box, Craig Johnson, to name a very few — are putting out fantastic books that reflect a more modern view of the West. That’s not to denigrate a good horse opera at all; there’s room for the many, many facets of Western life.

In a recent New York Times profile, Thomas McGuane said he used to bemoan the fact that he hadn’t read a book set in Montana that included a pizza delivery. This is a bit audacious, but I mailed him a copy of my first novel, “600 Hours of Edward,” in which that pedestrian event actually occurs.

JIM: “The Summer Son,” at heart, is about a father and sin separated for decades by secrets and stubborn pride and hair-trigger sensitivities. Play armchair shrink for a moment. Why can’t people just talk their shit out? Why do people tell themselves, and each other, that it is actually better not to?

CRAIG: I’ll give you an answer from my experience as a guy who didn’t have a substantive conversation with my father about his life until I was in my thirties: When one party has gone deep into adulthood without a decent model of love and kindness, who grew up having the shit beat out of him by those who were supposed to nurture him, those scars radiate to everyone who tries to get close. I lived in fear of what my father’s reaction to those conversations might be — not so much that he would become violent with me, because he never did, but that asking him to relive those memories might wound him somehow. The problem was, by stifling my natural curiosity, I didn’t deal very well with his inadequate parenting when I was too young to understand what contributed to it. Fortunately, I have a wonderful mother and a stepfather who showered me with love and encouragement, and I can thank them for raising me to be a reasonably decent man. But I still wanted that validation from my dad, and it was only after I stopped holding him to a standard he couldn’t meet that we began to make some inroads to each other.

One of our big breakthroughs came about a decade ago, when I unraveled the mystery of what happened to his father, who dropped out of his life for good when Dad was about seventeen. Thanks to some Internet sleuthing, I tracked Fred Lancaster to his resting place on a hill in Madras, Oregon, and even came into some contact with people who knew him in his later years. I was able to bring Dad some answers, some pictures of his own father, and perhaps some closure. Dad’s not effusive enough to show it, but I think that moved him, that I would go to those lengths to understand him. Since then, he’s begun to open up about things.

JIM: You were fully prepared to self-publish “The Summer Son,” as you originally did your debut novel, “600 Hours Of Edward,” when AmazonEncore came calling. Knowing you well enough to know that you wouldn’t just grab on to any traditional-publishing deal — that you don’t see such deals as validating you as a writer — I know you wouldn’t have signed on with the world’s biggest mover of books if you didn’t feel it was the right fit. In a time of shrinking advances, shrinking royalties, shrinking print runs and shrinking faith in traditional publishing, why was this the right move for you?

CRAIG: The things I look hardest at, in terms of book commerce,are marketing and distribution, because even with social networking and the democracy of e-books, these are the hardest things for a lone author to mount.I can find good editing, good design, good book-building, but my get-out-the-word skills are passable, at best. With AmazonEncore, ciphering out marketing and distribution was a pretty simple equation. It’s part of an organization that has more data on consumer behavior than perhaps anyone else in the world. Add to that the fact that Encore is publishing some tremendously interesting titles and making a name as an author-friendly place, and I didn’t have to spend much time deciding whether to cast my lot there. And now that I’ve experienced the care that went into this book and held it in my hands, I think Encore has trumped me even on the elements that I thought I had under control.

I made a similar decision, on a different scale, with my first book. I’d found some minor success lugging it around in the back of my car, but turning it over to the folks at Riverbend Publishing gave it a reach here in my home region that I simply could not have replicated. Would it have been a Montana Honor Book and a High Plains Book Award winner when I was its sole champion? Perhaps. But I kind of doubt it. In both cases, I’m confident I made the right decision for me and for my book.

JIM: You’ve been an unusual success story so far because you’ve had two publishing contracts without the services of a literary agent. I gather that this wasn’t by design, so talk about how this came to be — and how you’d like ideally to proceed in the future.

CRAIG: Well, it’s damned hard to get a literary agent, even for established authors. And I didn’t spring into this thing as a guy with a lot of patience, although I’m slowly learning that life will be easier for me if I develop a bit of it. I had a few nibbles and kind encouragement with “Edward,” but I didn’t find an agent. With “The Summer Son,” I didn’t even look for one. While I’m not an adherent to Ayn Rand, I will admit to a bit of a Roarkian streak that mostly serves me well. I simply decided, well, the hell with it, I’m going to do what I do, and if I do it well enough, representation will work itself out. Eventually. Maybe.

Now, this is important: I am not one of those strident I-don’t-need-an-agent types. I’ve met a few of those, and often they’re similar in stripe to the I-don’t-need-an-editor types who proliferate in the publishing dystopia we seem to be entering. Those people, in my opinion, are delusional. I have a pretty clear-eyed view of the considerable benefits that a good agent delivers, and nothing would please me more than finding a partner as I continue on what I expect to be a long career. But there was no way I was going to put two good novels in the trunk simply because I couldn’t find an agent.

JIM: We’ve talked a lot privately about promotional strategies for authors on shoestring budgets. Can you share some of your observations and experiences about what’s worked best — and what hasn’t been so effective?

CRAIG: It’s a wired world, but one of the beautiful things about the book business is that it’s still built on relationships. It’s wonderfully, charmingly low-tech in that way. I’ve certainly cultivated some readers through being available online, but I don’t think my shilling had much to do with it. I’m a human first, whether it’s on someone’s Facebook page or at the library in front of a group of engaged readers. You connect with them, learn a little something about them, share a little something about yourself, and you see the extrapolatory effect as they become advocates for you and your work.

Almost everything I’ve done of a promotional nature has included something in the way of a personal touch. The earliest pre-orders of “The Summer Son” came with a little bonus book called “I Gotta Tell Facebook About This” that was basically a distillation of the wackiest stuff I’ve posted online. I once received an order for “600 Hours of Edward” through my website, and less than 20 minutes later, I was on the guy’s doorstep, handing him his book. He’ll remember that, and I’ll remember him. This stuff is important.

As my first book gained some traction here in my hometown, book clubs started inviting me to come and break bread with them and talk about the book. I absolutely love those invitations. It increases the value of the experience for the people who were kind enough to read my book, and it certainly gives me a terrific sense of validation and some cool new friends.

As far as what hasn’t been effective, I hate to say this because I absolutely love getting editorial reviews, but I haven’t received a published review yet that created a noticeable spike in sales. Word of mouth is the coin of the realm.

JIM: Talk about the community of writers, readers and book-industry people that an author must gather to be as successful as possible. What do you ask of them, and what do you volunteer in return? How does one go about building this village?

CRAIG: You are much more qualified to answer this than I am, as you’re the king of gathering in friends from across the industry. I think it goes back to what I said about relationships:

Readers are the lifeline; without them, there is no reason to do the work. And the energy generated by really connecting with folks who are passionate about your work specifically and books in general is drug-like in its potency.

Other writers can commiserate with you, give you advice, create huge breaks for you (I am a Jonathan Evison fan for life for the unbidden kindnesses he’s shown me), show you how to conduct yourself. I’ve been awed by the generosity of some of the people I’ve met, and it has solidified my resolve to be as helpful as I can to anyone who approaches me. On the flip side, I’ve been crushed by the cruelty of a couple of people I’ve met — an extreme minority, thank goodness — but, then, there are lessons in that, too.

Finally, a word of advice to anyone who expects to sell books in bookstores: Know your booksellers. Become their friends. You should do this first because they are, across the board, fabulously interesting people with a boundless love of books. You should do this second because a bookseller who puts your book in his/her customers’ hands is a godsend. So write a kick-ass book and make some kick-ass connections.

JIM: Given the unorthodox way you broke into this racket, what advice would you have for writers hoping to fast-track their way to publication? What would you urge them NOT to do?

CRAIG: The term “fast-track” kind of gives me the heebie-jeebies. I know that’s odd to say, given the speed with which I wrote, sold and published my first two novels, but bear with me. This is a fascinating time in publishing, in that the ability to quickly get an e-book on the market has created something of a gold rush among prospective authors. Certainly, if you read the blog of someone like J.A. Konrath, the attraction of rushing a book into the marketplace is powerful. That guy is making money hand over fist, and so are a lot of other people.

But here’s the danger: If you’re in love with the idea of being published but not so much with doing the hard work of publishing a good book, you’re doing yourself and your prospective readers a real disservice. Konrath, for one, talks about publishing almost exclusively in numbers: how much he’s making, how quickly he can write a book, how many books he can write in a year. There’s a seduction in those words, and they perhaps unintentionally reduce book writing to something no more magical than the mass production of widgets. I’ve never found it to be that pedestrian, and if it ever felt that way to me, I’d probably quit. So while coveting publication and all the trappings that come with it, prospective authors should never lose sight of this: It’s all pretty pointless if you’re not writing a good book.

JIM: One of the hard realities of being a published author today is that one can’t expect to be successful just writing books — one must also write short stories, novellas, essays, reviews and journalistic articles, among other forms of writerly achievement, to keep the checks coming and their name constantly out in front. Talk about what you’ve seen others do that you’ve admired, and what you’re doing.

CRAIG: I’m not sure it’s just today. Most of the writers I know, even the ones who are unqualified successes, do other things to move the financial chains, whether it’s teaching in an MFA program, setting up writers’ workshops, manning the night shift at a convenience store or, like me, toiling on the copy desk of a newspaper. I admire and envy the writers who have steady gigs teaching in writing programs; I think that would be a marvelous way to keep one’s head in the game, help shape up-and-coming voices and maintain a creative edge on one’s own projects.

What I’m doing these days is writing a lot of short stories and really being attuned to ideas that lend themselves to the shorter form. The way things are looking now, I’ll probably have a collection of stories to pitch before I’ll have Novel No. 3 ready to go. And the nice thing about short stories is that they can be sold to literary journals first, generating a little coin before being gathered up into a bundle. Despite my art-for-art’s-sake answer to the previous question, I like coin as much as the next guy. Maybe even a little more.

JIM: Ready for a drink yet? What’ll you have?

CRAIG: Yes, please. The polite drinker in me would like a Jack and Coke. The rest of me, the one trying to cut some pounds, would prefer some Crystal Light. Raspberry, if you don’t mind.

__________

You can enter to win a signed copy of Craig Lancaster’s new novel, The Summer Son, simply by leaving a comment below. The winner will be chosen randomly tomorrow, Wednesday February 2, by noon EST.

PAPER RATS: Where do you live, and what do you think of where you live?

HEALY: I’ve lived in the same house for twelve years. It’s too small for my family but we can’t afford to move anywhere else, so we manage. The neighborhood has aged well (we were the fifth family to move into this suburb when it was brand new), with trees now taller than the surrounding houses.and lots of mature landscaping. Unfortunately, there are lots of foreclosed-upon houses here too. It’s a bedroom community twenty minutes away from downtown Denver.

RATS: Does where you live inspire your writing (if so, how)?

HEALY: No, my neighborhood is pretty uninspiring.

RATS: How many hours a day would you say you write?

HEALY: On a good day, I can get two hours worth of work in over the course of the 18 or so hours that I’m awake. The key is to not try to do it all at once. On an average day, maybe half that.

I tend to have a lot more average days than good days.

RATS: You work (full time?) and you have a wife and (how many?) kids, and you’re doing online action scene critiques – when do you find the time to write?

HEALY: Whenever I can. I bought a BlackBerry smartphone in 2009 with a full keyboard with the intent to use it for writing on the go, since calling my handwriting execrable would be charitable at best. I’ve found it an invaluable tool, and I can pull it out to thumb down a sentence or two as the mood strikes me. Something I’ve discovered about myself when writing this way is that I tend to function like a DVD player with a Pause function enabled: I can come back to something I’ve started writing minutes, hours, or even days later and my train of thought picks up where I left off. This technique more than anything has allowed me to produce the volume of work that I do. When I finished my 2010 NaNoWriMo novel, I literally picked up my prior project the very next day and was back to work full steam on it.

My three kids are generally in bed by 9 PM, and I’m usually up another 2-3 hours after that, during which time I often manage to get some work done.

The main reason I have so much time to write is because of the things I don’t do. I don’t watch much TV. Most days I don’t even turn it on and just use the DVR to catch up on the few shows I like to keep track of. I will admit to watching hockey regularly, but everybody needs a vice. I also don’t play games on Facebook and spend very little time on our game consoles.

RATS: What did you read when you were a kid?

HEALY: Books, mostly. Cereal boxes. Newspapers. Anything with words on it. I loved science-y fiction and have fond recollections of series like Alvin Fernald: Boy Genius, Danny Dunn, Tom Swift, Jr., and The Mad Scientists Club. I still have the very first comic book I ever bought with my own money: Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew #12, from 1983.

RATS: What sort of writer would you call yourself? Why did you gravitate to that?

HEALY: In the past I might have said Sci-Fi, but that seems too limiting especially of late, when I’ve been experimenting with so many other genres, so I’ll say Speculative Fiction. That covers hard sci-fi, fantasy, steampunk, cyberpunk, superhero, and urban fantasy, all of which I’ve written over the past several years.

RATS: You’re submitting to ABNA. What are you submitting?

HEALY: I’m submitting a manuscript I wrote over the summer of 2009, called Blackout: A Just Cause Novel. It takes place during a 21-hour stretch of time during the New York City Blackout of ’77, following the lives of four different super-powered characters whose storylines all weave together: A murder mystery, a love story, a descent into psychosis, and a crisis of faith all come together against the backdrop of a rioting city trying to destroy itself.

RATS: Did you win NaNo 2010, and what are you doing with the project you worked on during November?

HEALY: I did win, stretching my winning streak to seven consecutive wins. The project, called Rooftops, is currently steeping in a folder on my hard drive while I work on other projects. I anticipate returning to it with fresh perspective for revision and rewrites starting in February.

RATS: What is your favorite thing about Inside the Writers’ Studio?

HEALY: The wackiness. As a longtime author of a webcomic that people tell me is funny, I approve of anyone willing to poke fun at stereotypes. I have yet to see a Paper Rats Production that doesn’t make me laugh out loud.

————————————————————————————————–

Ian Thomas Healy is a prolific writer who dabbles in many different speculative genres.  His superhero novel Deep Six: A Just Cause Novel was a Top 100 Semi-finalist in the 2008 Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel Award. His goal is to become as integral to the genre of superhero fiction as William Gibson was to cyberpunk and Anne Rice was to urban fantasy. He lives in Colorado with his wife, three children, and a plethora of housepets.  When not writing, which is rare, he likes to take road trip, enjoys watching football and hockey, and listening to or playing music.

LINKS:

Ian’s Weblog
The Adventures of the S-Team
Action!

and the forthcoming novel

However, that he plans to donate 100% of the proceeds to Feeding America, whose 200+ food banks distribute to all fifty states, wasn’t enough for us. When we learned of his plan to write some short fiction, he hadn’t yet begun “Comfort and Joy,” and we were more than happy to catch him early enough to challenge him to find a way to incorporate a few random words.

The words: snowman, hot chocolate, and jingle balls.

LANCASTER: I thought my “Jingle Balls” solution might have been a little reach, but I was 12 years old once, and it’s something I might have come up with.

He managed to write the (approx.) 5,500-word story in just 24 hours.

LANCASTER: The idea has been bouncing around in my head for a while, and it’s easily adaptable to a holiday angle. Short-story productivity, for me, comes and goes, and for whatever reason, I’ve been in a fertile period. I’ll sit down in the next couple of days and knock it out. The funny thing is, I’ve never really written fiction on a deadline, but I have one now: I’ve pledged to send this story to the in-boxes of donors by Dec. 15.

He made good on his pledge; “Comfort and Joy” is available at Amazon and Smashwords right now (click a link to buy a copy – you can always come back here when you’re done), and it will stay there indefinitely with the proceeds continuing to benefit Feeding America. And, as promised, it’s only $1. “But why not charge more to give more?” we wondered.

LANCASTER: Two reasons. The first is the greater-volume-at-a-lower-price idea. The second is that I hope this isn’t the be-all, end-all of people’s giving. A few folks have written to me and said, “I want to give more than a buck,” and my response has been this: “Send me a buck. Send your local food bank, or some other charity there at home, as much as you feel like you can give.”

INSIDE THE WRITERS’ STUDIO: What made you choose this particular charity?

LANCASTER: I’ve been reading a lot about how stressed food banks are. Times are hard, and charitable giving is down. And since (I hope) donations will be coming in from all over, it didn’t seem quite right to roll whatever money is generated toward the food bank where I live, though it certainly could use the help. So I figured that Feeding America, with its national focus, made sense.

One of the things that put this at the top of my mind was seeing a plea from my friend Carol Buchanan on Facebook that people not buy her books as gifts but instead donate to their local food bank. She said she’d eat whether the books are bought or not. Others — many, many others — are not so fortunate.

This effort is nothing like the NPR fundraising drive—there’s no dollar amount in mind, no set goal (“I have no expectation here,” Lancaster says. “If it’s five bucks, it’s five bucks.”), but he does hope to turn this into an annual effort, one that involves more writers contributing to a holiday-themed anthology.

LANCASTER: Say, 15 or 20 holiday-themed stories, from a wide variety of genres, all with the aim of putting some food on the tables of people who badly need it. Wheels are already turning for next year: an anthology, from writers across the traditional and indie spectrums. Zombie Christmas, romance Christmas, bizarro, whatever. I think if I were to get people on board in, say, July, we’d be able to offer all kinds of options: individual stories, the entire collection, e-book, short POD run.

IWS: Do you think you might choose different charities in the future?

LANCASTER: I haven’t even thought about that. I’m pretty passionate about food banks. They’re chronically understocked, and it’s one form of charity that is completely without political overtones.

IWS: Have you ever donated to/worked in/needed a food bank?

LANCASTER: I’ve pulled a few shifts stacking boxes and such, and I’m a reliable bring-a-canned-good-to-whatever-event guy, but I’ve never done it on a consistent basis. One of the things I hope to do, beyond the holiday season, is become a lot more involved with that sort of thing on a local level.

IWS: That sounds like a perfect New Year’s resolution. Speaking of the new year—your upcoming novel, The Summer Son, will be released in January. Tell us about it.

LANCASTER: It’s a multi-decade father-and-son story. Mitch Quillen and his father, Jim, have been largely estranged for nearly 30 years, and the breach stems from a violent summer when Mitch was 11 years old. In the present day, they’ve been thrown together again and they try to work through the distance between them. All the while, Mitch is reliving that long-ago summer in the form of a note to his wife, whom he’s kept away from that part of his life, in an effort to reconcile his own failing relationship with her. It’s a story about the things we experience and how those things shape us — and how those same things get interpreted in different ways by other people who were there.

IWS: Final question. Fruitcake: yay or nay?

LANCASTER: You know, I’d love to say yay, just to be the contrary bastard I tend to be. But I cannot. Fruitcake is a nay. It’s a nay to the 100th power. It’s a nay that pushes at the outer edges of the space-time continuum. It’s the nay that keeps on giving. Let’s face it: Fruitcake sucks.

We’d like to thank everyone who agreed to share this interview on their own sites.  – Kris & Kel