A Word Please: Conversations With 24 Authors

by Darcia Helle

  Do you have a favorite book and/or author? What is your favorite genre to read?

  Favourite book – The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie: mythic, multi-layered and ridiculously clever. Favourite author – Douglas Adams, in whom creativity and humour ran amok. Favourite fiction to read – magical realism. Favourite non-fiction to read – musicians’ autobiographies.

  What are you working on now? Is there a new book in the works?

  I’m working on a new novel, a dark mystery set on the Isle of Lewis (in Scotland’s remote Outer Hebrides). The story incorporates science, religion, philosophy, folklore and black-metal excess, manifested through the beliefs and actions of characters, the more eccentric of whom are a joy to write. Also, a follow up to Metallic Dreams is underway. I hadn’t planned on writing a successor, but the characters started doing things in my head, often at inopportune moments. So, as their humble scribe, it is my job to document their (dirty) deeds. In addition to those two pieces of long fiction, there are a couple of short stories in the works: one revolves around the Scottish witch trials and executions; the other is a revamped version of Revelation Was Wrong, my tale of an unlikely prophet.

  If you could spend 24 hours with any rock musician, dead or alive, who would you choose and why?

  The choice is between Bon Scott and Phil Lynott. Phil often visits my dreams. Bon doesn’t. So I’ll choose Bon. Not only was he the voice in my favourite band of all time (his incarnation of AC/DC), he was the rarest of things: a universally loved human. Playful, funny, generous and wild, he loved life to the limit and beyond. Born in Forfar, Scotland (not far from me), Bon moved to Australia as a child. I’d love to hear his stories of Rosie (the gigantic Tasmanian woman who inspired the song Whole Lotta Rosie) and life on the road with the greatest line-up of the greatest band of all time. I’d play him a rousing version of AC/DC’s Touch Too Much on guitar, as both a tribute and an artistic statement (Bon’s life – or, more accurately, death – imitated art: a touch too much alcohol killed him). If Bon sang along on that track, I’d ask him to accompany me on Little Evils for the Greater Good…his gravel-gargling voice taking care of vocal duties while I crank out monstrous riffs on guitar. You can bet I’d record that version on audio and video! It would be equal parts humbling and amazing to spend time with the most charismatic frontman ever to walk a stage. How would we fill the rest of the 24 hours? I’d let Mr Ronald Belford Scott decide. I suspect that he’d choose to drink copious amounts of alcohol then find some west-of-Scotland Rosies (which, due to the notoriously high-fat Scottish diet, are in plentiful supply) ripe for the plunder. Of course, I’d go along for the ride. After all, who am I to argue with an icon?

  Tell us about the best live show you’ve seen. Who performed and what made it stand out for you?

  Tough question. I’ve been at hundreds of gigs, most of which were excellent. Taking all factors into account, the Glasgow date of Rush’s Snakes and Arrows tour was the best gig I’ve experienced: immaculate musical execution; uncanny chemistry between band members; perfect choice of songs; funny animated movies featuring cartoon versions of band members; a light show to rival Pink Floyd’s; a set that lasted well over three hours, offering fans serious value for money. The total package.

  If your life had a theme song, what would it be? Please share a bit of the lyrics and what they mean to you.

  I’m tempted to say Sex Farm by Spinal Tap, but I don’t want to encourage Scottish stereotypes. Seriously, though, it’d be I Believe by Joe Satriani. ‘I read the stories, see the photographs…world’s in a crazy space. I’ve got to hold on to my dreams…there’s just no other place.’ That seemingly simple lyric communicates the importance of maintaining inner purity and integrity even when the outer world is going to Hell in a handbasket. That’s a powerful message, and one that resonates completely with me. Now more than ever, in a world where mass murder is committed for oil and profit, it’s important to have a strong inner compass and a sense of compassion for other sentient beings. The chorus of I Believe includes the lines, ‘I believe we can change anything. I believe we can rise above it.’ This theme of transcendence strikes a chord in my soul. We have the power to overcome the cruelty, prejudice and inhumanity that are all too prevalent across the globe. By challenging injustice, each person can play a role in righting humankind’s wrongs. Hundreds of billions are spent each year on the manufacture of bombs, with new conflicts manufactured out of thin air (or thinly spun fictions) in order to keep War Inc in business. Whichever way you look at that situation, it’s literally insane. It’s time for a change. Time for folk to wake up and make that change happen.

  Some things about Mark Rice:

 

  - born in Glasgow, Scotland

  - BA (HONS) in Sports Studies from Heriot-Watt University

  - various postgraduate qualifications spanning sports, personal training, marketing and creative writing

  - had the shortest-lived newspaper column in history (fired after one edition…for having the audacity to ask for wages)

  - edited, compiled, contributed to and published the anthology A Blended Bouquet in 2009

  - story on The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy published in The Book That Changed My Life, Luath Press, 2010

  - researcher for The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, Earth Edition (BBC online)

  - chairperson of Writers Inc, a writers’ group based in East Kilbride, Scotland

  Mark Rice on Amazon

  Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/metallicdreams

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SparkMacDubh

  Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Metallic_Dreams or @Metallic_Dreams

  MySpace: https://www.myspace.com/metallicdreams

  Lulu: https://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/metallic-dreams/18670088

  Lair of the White Wyrm by Lea Ryan

  Sometimes when you run from your problems, they follow you.

 

  Eric Duncan wants nothing more than to be an ordinary, sane guy. He believes he can escape his troubled past by leaving home. However, the voice in his head, that of his dead friend Benjamin, fights him every step of the way.

  Eric finds his new home is a place filled with secrets far darker than his own. A monster prowls the grounds, and it wants to keep him close.

  He will discover that his inner demons aren’t the only things he should fear. In order to confront the wyrm and survive, he must also face the worst parts of himself.

  Our conversation:

  What inspired you to write this specific story?

  Lair of the White Wyrm was inspired by Bram Stoker’s final novel. I read it last year after downloading it from Project Gutenberg. I really loved the premise. Lady Arabella is this creature who has two forms – a reptile called a “worm” (Stoker’s spelling) and a human woman. I thought she was an interesting character because she lived a dual existence. When she wasn’t a carnivorous reptile, she appeared almost normal and was driven by human desires, specifically when it came to her obsession with Edgar Caswall.

  I loved your array of characters. Each has a unique personality and all are multi-dimensional. How do you go about creating them?

  Thank you! I try to make them as vivid as possible. I usually work out who I want the characters to be before I start writing the story. I can hear their voices in my head, which probably sounds crazy. If they have memories they need to share, I sometimes come up with those later.

  Dialog is really important to me. I try to develop speech patterns for the characters. For instance, Chelsea speaks quickly, sometimes without really thinking or listening. She’s high energy, and I tried to convey that through what she said and how she reacted to certain things.

  While we have closure at the end, you’ve also left an opening for a possible sequel. Do you have future plans for Eric?

  I don’t have a sequel planned, but I did intentionally leave it open, just in case. I get attached to my characters, so I like to have the
option of circling back around to them.

  Do you outline? Or do you get an idea and run blindly?

  I plan meticulously. I use outlines and worksheets. For Lair of the White Wyrm, I also had a sketchbook page with a map I drew of the property and a diagram of the tower with each floor labeled with its respective resident. It’s the only way I can keep track of stuff like that. I need to get my thoughts in order and be able to refer back to those thoughts often or I lose track of where I am and what I should be doing.

  What is your writing environment like? Messy or neat? Noisy or quiet?

  My writing environment is reasonably neat. I take my writing stuff to the day job and work on lunch breaks, so I try to keep everything compact and mobile. I also work in different areas of the house, my recliner or the bedroom.

  I need my work environment to be somewhat quiet when I’m really deep in a story. However, if I can’t find quiet, I can substitute instrumental music on headphones and that does the trick.

  As a reader, what draws you to the paranormal? And as a writer?

  As a reader, the paranormal makes things interesting. Regular life gets boring sometimes. I think of books as a way to escape, both the reading and the writing of them. As a writer, I like being able to make anything happen. Maybe it’s a control thing. Incorporating the paranormal into a book is like filling your world with magic.

  Do you have a favorite book? Favorite author?

  My favorite book of the moment is American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I read it last year. It was deeply creative and vividly written. I read that HBO is developing a series based on it, so I’m really excited about that.

  My favorite author is Stephen King. He’s brilliant – his descriptions and people and his crazy stories. His imagination seems endless. I would like to meet him at some point.

  Aside from writing and reading, what are your favorite pastimes?

  I draw. I do my own book covers and trailers. I did some illustrations for an earlier version of Destined for Darkness. Those are up on my website if anyone wants to look at them.

  I also play video games. We have an Xbox, Playstation 3 and wii. The Playstation is my fave. I’ve been a playstation girl for as long as there have been playstations.

  Rock or country?

  Ooh, rock. My current audio obsession is the Black Keys. I saw them in concert last summer. A-mazing. I would definitely go again. They are very talented.

  Give us one word or phrase that describes you.

  Persistent. If I really want something, I’ll get it eventually. Getting there might take a while, but I get there.

  About the Author:

  Lea Ryan was born and raised in Indiana. She currently lives there with her husband, two kids, two cats and a dog. Her specialty is fiction about the paranormal. She is the author of two fantasy novels – Babylon Dragon and Destined for Darkness, some short stories and a novella entitled What the Dead Fear. She also blogs about life, writing, books, and movies at https://Lea-Ryan.blogspot.com

 

  You can also find Lea in the following places:

 

  Lea Ryan on Amazon

  Website: https://www.LeaRyan.com

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/LeaRyan1 or @LeaRyan1

  Facing The Son by M L Rudolph

  American Matt Reiser travels to The Ivory Coast on a mission to locate his estranged son. His only guide is a three-year old postal address. Fighting cultural vertigo and disorientation at the Abidjan airport, Matt relies on a glib and persistent limo driver who speaks just enough English to gain his trust.

  The next morning, Matt wakes up drugged, robbed, and dropped into a grim city slum. Without ID, without money, and with no idea where to turn, Matt forges unlikely alliances that take him on a perilous journey out of the city and through the backcountry, where he fights on to continue his search for his son.

  When he finds him, the struggle really begins.

  Our conversation:

  Matt is an average guy who’d never traveled, and suddenly he’s traipsing through African villages in search of his son. This plot has many layers, with tremendous emotional depth. What inspired the story?

  Ouch. Right to the heart of the matter.

  All of us have parents. Some of us have children. Some of us have terrific problem-free relationships with our family. Some of us struggle to achieve that sort of balance.

  The story is fiction. The characters are developed to carry the story. But the emotions are real, and many of them are mine. When I struggled with a painful family situation some years ago, I turned to the blank page to analyze and understand the pain, and to a great degree the composition of Matt Reiser’s tale was therapeutic. (Though the family situation is unchanged.)

  Also, whenever I met someone new and we swapped backgrounds, my years working in West Africa seemed to spark all kinds of interest. People responded to my stories. And I didn’t mind expanding on my tales to keep people’s attention. So when I needed a background for a family saga, why not West Africa? I enjoyed digging into my old materials, into my old memories, and researching the area for the story.

  The story takes place in Africa in the late 1970s. You paint a vivid portrait of the various African countries. I felt like I was there with the characters. Only someone familiar with the areas could have transported me so easily. I read that you had traveled extensively in West Africa. Did you immerse yourself in the native culture, as Matt reluctantly did? What was the experience like for you?

  Unlike Matt, I never ran into any troubles in West Africa though I traveled alone most of the time. I developed great admiration and respect for the people, both expats and natives, that I got to know. And I maintain a keen interest in that part of the world.

  That said, I’m by no means an expert in West African lore. I realized how little I knew when I got into the thick of writing this story. I read about fifty books of fiction and non-fiction while I was creating the early drafts. I needed to keep reading in order to have any level of confidence to write about the area. Even though I spent three years, on and off, traveling there, three years is no more than an introduction to cultures as rich as these. And I know there is so much more I could have inserted about the peoples and their lives. But to be true to Matt’s story, I had to be careful not to take local side journeys just to show off my reading. I got pretty ruthless in the editing and if something didn’t pertain to Matt and his trip, out it went. I did try though to include enough cultural and historical background so the reader might share my enthusiasm. If anyone wants more, she can always grab one of the many great works coming out of Africa today by major talents who do much better work than I do.

  Jean-Louis, a native African, has a lot of negative feelings on the French and their treatment of Africa. Are his sentiments typical of the African people at that time?

  Jean-Louis is not meant to be typical. He is a character with father issues that align with historical and cultural issues. I wasn’t in Africa at the time of independence and I’m sure feelings ran pretty high on both sides. The French did abandon their former colonies in pretty ruthless fashion. De Gaulle never expected the votes for independence to go against him. When they did, well, bah. Let them fend for themselves, was the first reaction. Jean-Louis allows expression of that part of the history.

  The following generation would have only known boom – until the bust – but during the boom, independence was pretty fine for many people. Jean-Louis is one of those men drawn to the city for work education, income, who found himself there when the boom began. He lived a life completely different from what he knew as a child, in good ways and in bad.

  Your characters are well-developed and multidimensional. They felt real and I easily got swept up in their world. How do you go about developing your characters?

  How to create characters from scratch and make someone care about them? I’m glad you were swept away. That’s a real compliment.

  We all have multidimensional lives. We play many role
s in the course of any given day, sometimes in the course of an hour. As I started with the characters it seemed natural that they too would have all these different roles, all these different demands on their time and on their emotions. With each scene, each character would reveal more about his or her past, and with each scene, we would get to know them better through their interactions with other people, through the choices they make, and through how other characters perceive them.

  One more thing. I revised over and over again. With each revision the characters came into better focus, how they would act in a given situation became clearer, and it became easier to let the characters do the talking. I know that sounds like a silly cliché, but I learned through this process that a character will eventually flesh out, and trying to make one act out of character simply will not work. Your fingers won’t go there. Your instinct will tell you no. And if you don’t listen to your instinct, your readers will tell you no.

  Describe your writing environment. Neat or messy? Silence or noise?

  Rough draft stage: ideas all over the place. Messy brainstorming. Notes on legal pads. Texts, emails, and voice messages to self. Breaks during the process to outline, but the outline is descriptive not prescriptive.