More with Matt Jorgenson, Writer (part three)

matt with motorcyleQ. Where/when do you first discover your characters?

Initially I don’t think of them as characters. It’s kind of like arranging furniture. I need something tall here, wide there, elegant there. I often just plop them in for the energy they lend to the development of the story. When I’m unable to sit at my laptop and write I will often sketch out backstories for some of the characters with pen and paper based on what seems reasonable according to how they act/function in the story and then weave those details back in later.

Q. What inspired your story/stories?

I suppose most of my stories are inspired by a frustration with the status quo and comfort zones. Particularly when there is needless pain or discomfort. A little orderliness and predictability can be nice, sure. What breaks my heart is watching and listening to people take a rote approach to life that’s making them miserable. Whether it’s their job, their relationship, their sexuality, drug of choice, inherited system of morality, or favorite hockey team… hanging on to some inherited or cultural obligation that blocks a person off from experiencing all that’s great with the world as they tick closer to death is truly tragic. Continue reading “More with Matt Jorgenson, Writer (part three)”

Interview with author, Matt Jorgenson (part two)

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Q. Do you have a set time each day to write or do you write only when you are feeling creative?

As far as I can tell I have three basic modes; burn, churn, and incubate. I’m good at writing thousands of words per day when I’m off and running on a new project. I’ll work 3-5 hours per day when I’m burning. I start early because I have to make time for family obligations during the day. And, when I’m burning, I will stay up as late as it takes to hit whatever daily word count I’ve set for myself. Staying up late makes the next day HARD which is why I try to start early. It also kicks the creative process in gear and it’s easier to drop a few hundred words here and there if my creativity is already up and running, just idling patiently as I do dishes or help a kid with homework.
Incubation is a mode I inhabit either between projects or when I’m letting a project with some serious meat on it “cook” for a bit. I do very little project oriented writing when I’m in this mode. I’ll draft clever bits for social media or play with words in my journal just to keep a handle on my craft. However, when I’m incubating I become a voracious consumer of content and information produced by others. I’ll binge watch Netflix, re-watch favorite movies, read both fiction and non-fiction books, listen to dozens of podcasts while out walking the dog, find new situations to get involved in, go on adventures. Modify my meditation routines. Clean the house. Host parties. Continue reading “Interview with author, Matt Jorgenson (part two)”

An Interview with Author, Matt Jorgenson

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAMatt Jorgenson – the author of Extraordinary Ostriches, Possible Particles and the Bifurcated Homunculus, The Hermaphroditic Shaman and the Missing Bottle of Ketchup, and Coagulation – A Clot of Stories.  The titles alone should intrigue any reader but what really fascinated this blogger  was that Matt has hung canvas on his wall, at home, so visitors can express their artistic bent while there.

Q.  Matt, where do you write?

MJ. I do the bulk of my writing at home with my laptop. There’s a chair in the den/dining room I use when settling in for a long session. There’s a pub table in the kitchen I switch to when I’m on a roll and family obligations need to be juggled. It’s good to switch back and forth between the two as it’s easy to stand up and work at the pub table. I do little isometric exercises to stave off the aches and pains of prolonged sitting and get my blood pumping. When traveling or trying to break through a tough plot point I will break out a legal pad and a pen and write long hand. Cars, hotels, the basements of extended family members, and bars are some of my favorite places for this approach.

Q. Do you have any special rituals when you sit down to write?

MJ. Big glass of ice water. Hot coffee. Wordless music, typically EDM or House. Since I tend to write fast-paced, intense stories I find that a high level of beats-per-minute in the ambient music Continue reading “An Interview with Author, Matt Jorgenson”

More with best selling author, Julia London (part 3)

Julia in Ireland
Julia in Ireland

Q. and the all important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like?

(con’t. from Part 2)  JL.  From there, the manuscript is improved over and over again with subsequent rounds of editing by me, by an editor’s notes, by copy editors who catch inconsistencies that, unbelievably, neither me or a developmental editor caught. So the finished book has been massaged and manipulated many times over. At least in my experience.

Q. How has your life experiences influenced your writing/stories?

JL. Just living life informs the writing. I meant what I said about having to be in the world to understand it. It would be very easy to never leave my house, to sit in front of a computer all day. But I won’t allow myself to do that. I have an active lifestyle, I travel, I have an extended family I love and that has been dysfunctional from time to time. Continue reading “More with best selling author, Julia London (part 3)”

A Chat with Author, Julia London (part 2)

working on the train
working on the train

TS.  My kind of interview…one sprinkled with terrific tongue-in-cheek humor.

Q. Who is your muse at the moment?

JL. My muse is a sloven blob, and she wants to eat chocolate and float in the pool and watch Real Housewives of Name Your City. She’s not much help, to be honest. I kick her out, and then she lurks around the windows, peering in, shouting things I can’t really hear. But every once in awhile, she comes up with a gem. Just every once in awhile. For the most part, she does not earn her keep around here.

Q. When did you begin to write seriously?

JL. I have always written. I have had many jobs that required good, technical writing skills. But somewhere along the way I was bored with my jobs in public administration. I had never aspired to be a fiction writer, but one day I picked up an Iris Johansen book at a garage sale. I really love historical fiction at the time. I didn’t recognize the book as a romance because I never read with any eye toward genre. I just read books that appealed to me and never thought about their category. The Johansen book really appealed to me because of the guy on the back cover, LOL. It was a great read, and an easy read after a stressful day at work. I read more books like the Iris Johansen book, and I began to think I could actually do this. Turns out, I could.

Q. How long after that were you published?

JL. Very quickly. I wrote a book and learned how to construct a novel, how to build an arc of a story into it. So then I wrote a shorter, better one, which became my first book, The Devil’s Love. I was extremely lucky that the first book I wrote and sent to an agent caught her eye. Continue reading “A Chat with Author, Julia London (part 2)”

Interview with Julia London, best selling author of Regency Romances

Julia.London.203,200_I confess!  I read them along with several million other women.  I love the regency period when men were gentlemen and women were ladies, in the drawing room.   Subtle, and full of innuendo, I like something left to my own imagination. And Julia London delivers!  Now I landed an interview with one of my favorites.

Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing? (please provide a photo/s of your shed, room, closet, barn….) Or tell us about your ‘dream’ work space.

JL. This is my current office, however I’ve just invested in a treadmill desk and am about to change the London.3way I spend my day, as in upright and not hunched over. But where is that sucker going to go? I haven’t figured that out yet.

Q. Do you have any special rituals when you sit down to write? (a neat work space, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)

JL. I can’t sit down and write until I’ve exercised in some way. I have a variety of activities to start the day: either taking my dog out for a jog (rather, he trots happily along, while I wheeze through a jog), yoga, biking or Pilates. It clears my head and gets the creative juices flowing. I’ve worked out a lot of plots while sweating profusely.

Q. Could you tell us something about yourself that we might not already know?

JL. I majored in political science with an emphasis on Middle Eastern Studies. Mainly because I paid my own way through college with a patchwork of jobs and scholarships. The best was a National Defense Education Act scholarship for which all I had to do was study a critical language for three years. The deal was that if the country needed your language skills within some specified time frame after graduation, they could call on you. So I studied Arabic (I know, right?) and took some classes in Middle Eastern religion, economics, and culture. I should point out that I have forgotten most of it. As it turned out, there wasn’t a big call for that expertise. Continue reading “Interview with Julia London, best selling author of Regency Romances”

Chuck Dixon Interview (part 3)

a.comicbookstore.BBTWhen I achieved doing this interview, I won’t lie.  I wanted to run into Stuart’s comic book store and yell, ‘I’m interviewing Chuck Dixon!’ For those of you who have no idea who Stuart is…well you are not living to your full capacity if you’re not watching, The Big Bang Theory’.
Chuck was so generous with his answers so let’s sit back and enjoy the final part.
Q. What makes a writer great?

CD. If a writer’s work can survive a few generations past his initial readership. History is filled with writers who were considered white hot in their era and forgotten only a few years past their death and never re-discovered.

Q. and the all important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like for you?

CD. Everyone works differently. No writer’s approach is the same as another….. Continue reading “Chuck Dixon Interview (part 3)”

More With Chuck Dixon, Comic Book Icon (part 2)

a.Dixon.comic.book-dixonDixon:  ‘I’m strictly a writer. I write the scripts that the artist works from. It’s a format much like a screenplay, broken down panel-by-panel with descriptions of what should appear in each panel. And all the dialogue and captions in place. I wrote quite a few Simpsons comic book stories over a ten year period.’

Q. Was that a challenge to switch to a novel format and ‘point-of-view’?

CD. Mostly it was the intimidation factor. In comics, my chosen medium, the bench for writing talent is pretty thin. But in prose fiction I’m up against thousands of years of awesome writing. I mean, who the hell do I think I am going to work in the same shop as Alexander Dumas or Jane Austen?

And now I have to actually write descriptive text that evokes images in the minds of casual readers. In comics my descriptions are utilitarian. I simply tell the artist what needs to be in the panel. It’s not artful in any way. In prose fiction I need to be more subtle; more circumspect. More of a wordsmith which is something I have never considered myself to be. But pacing, plotting, characterization and all the rest are the same for comics as they are for prose. Continue reading “More With Chuck Dixon, Comic Book Icon (part 2)”

Interview | Chuck Dixon, Legendary Comic Book Writer

TS:  What Julia Childs was to cuisine, what Stirling Moss was to racing, what John Glenn was to space, ChuckDixon.new.photo Chuck Dixon is to the comic book and animated TV world. Chuck Dixon is a veteran comic book writer with thousands of titles to his name including a record run on Batman at DC. Much to his fans’ delight Chuck has recently moved into the genre of true crime fiction. I’ll be honest with my readers, I hadn’t read a comic book since Archie and Veronica. While doing my research for this interview, wherever I went in the comic book world, to this day, the aficionados told me I was in the presence of royalty. Today we’re going to read about Chuck’s writing process, where he finds the characters for his stories and what led him to murder mysteries.

Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing? (please provide a photo/s of your shed, room, closet, barn….) Or tell us about your ‘dream’ work space.

CD. I work in what is described by realtors as a “home office.” It’s basically a cubby hole filled with books and toys. It’s where I work since moving to Florida. My dream work space was the office I had up north; a big addition to the house with built in bookshelves and lots of room for artwork on the walls.

Q. Do you have any special rituals when you sit down to write? (a neat work space, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)

CD Does checking emails count? A neat work space is NOT a priority. All I require is enough desk space for my keyboard. A mug of mate or tea is nice.

Q. Could you tell us something about yourself that we might not already know?

CD. When I was a kid I found the metal-munching mice in the Bullwinkle cartoons frightening. For some reason the idea of a huge robotic mouse climbing to the top of the house to eat our TV antenna unsettled me.
Q. You are such an icon in the comic book and animated TV world. What inspired you to switch from that genre to writing fiction?

CD. I simply got tired of waiting for someone else to give me permission to write. The possibilities offered by digital publishing are endless. Why go through the painful, tedious, and often fruitless, process of pitches and development when I can simply go from idea to finished product on my own? I turned to prose because of the massive production expenses involved with doing comics. My only investment is my time. And, truth to tell, there are a lot more people who read prose than read comics. I’m reaching readers now that I never could have reached writing comic books.

Stay tuned!  Part two and three are scheduled for Sept 28th and Oct.3
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS featuring INTERVIEWS with  best-selling AUTHORS!      Grant Blackwood (Tom Clancy) in Sept. and Julia London in October and Matt Jorgenson later this winter. Coming in December!  My review of a new release by Dean Koontz, 
Ashley Bell.

To receive a free audio book and my  blog, blogs, blogger, writer, author, playwright, books, plays,fiction  sign up on the home page and enter your email address.  I love comments!  Take the time to write one at the bottom of the post.

 

 

A Day In The Life Of A Writer

anxnst.mouseIt’s time once again to share with other writers, my hopes, my fears, my successes, my setbacks. My days as a writer look very much like a pizza loaded with toppings.

My time at my keyboard, has been filled feverishly working with an editor on The Art of Murder because a publisher is sniffing around my campfire.  That is to say, the senior editor for a publishing co. said my mystery series had ‘tremendous potential‘ but wasn’t quite there yet.  Now we wait and see if my editor and I were able to do what they needed in order to offer me a contract.

Yes, even though I am moderately successful as an indie author, I am still chasing a traditional publisher when I stumble across one.  Continue reading “A Day In The Life Of A Writer”