Written Author Interview
Tell me about yourself. What do you like to do outside of writing. What is a day in the life like for you?
I’m an avid rock climber, though I’m content with staying inside the climbing gym. I try and watch about 100 new movies a year, reviewing at least a good portion of them for our channel. Outside of that, I’m a die-hard Chess player! It’s a time-consuming addiction I have to stave off when developing my next project.
What inspired your first novel? What was the thing that got you into writing in the first place?
My friend and I watched and commentated on every single Universal Monster movie for our channel, developing a small following in the process. On rare occasions, the studio would cross their characters over into each other’s movies (this is 70 years before the MCU ever existed). The crossovers had the potential to be unbelievably strong, character-driven, epic in scale, and full of monsters of all varieties interacting with each other. None of this came to fruition with any of them… So I made it happen. I made the story that should’ve existed for the past hundred years, and it’s immensely satisfying.
How do you come up with characters? Are they spontaneous or meticulously planned?
It depends! Sometimes I’m writing a story with a certain set of characters, and while developing it, there’s a really great opportunity to introduce someone new who’ll have a profound impact on where the story is heading. Sometimes I’ll have an idea in my head for a character and base the entire story around them. As long as all of the characters serve a purpose in the narrative and have some semblance of an arc, then I have full reign to dream up as many as I can handle!
What are some of your favorite genres to read? Are there any books you’d recommend to first time readers or people looking for something new?
Favorite to read: Horror, sci-fi, mostly short fiction.
Recommendation: It really depends on the person, but a book everyone should read at least once is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. There was nothing like it before it existed.
What’s the most difficult thing about being a writer?
Finishing the first draft!!! I remind myself every day how bad writers in the publishing industry, in Hollywood, and in many other professions sell their work every single day because they’re able to finish them. It’s impossible to do anything creatively if you can’t even be bothered to see your own ideas come to fruition.
What is your process to completing a novel from outline to final product?
Some people plan, and some people just write and see where it takes them. For me, it’s
a combination of both: I’ll draft out an idea, maybe a few pages, then start work on Chapter 1 and see how far that takes me. When I feel like I’ve lost direction, or I don’t like where the story’s taking me, I’ll go back and plan it out again. Each process informs the other until you have a fully-functioning story by the end of it.
What’s the most unhinged thing you’ve written in your novel? Don’t worry, we don’t judge here.
The Devil’s League, Chapter 15, the last three pages. If you’ve read the book up to that point, it’s impossible not to be immensely satisfied by the end of it… I’ve had people literally create and send me memes based on this chapter!
What’s one thing about being a writer that absolutely drives you up the wall?
Writing a chapter, taking a break, coming back to it, revising it, going to sleep, coming back the next day, hating the entire chapter, deleting huge parts of it, Ctrl-Z because you actually liked some of what you deleted, rewriting it, deleting parts of it again, scrapping the whole thing and writing a new chapter in its place before stopping yourself, then taking parts of what you’ve deleted and amalgamating them together into a better version of both chapters… Hating that too…
What does being a successful writer look like for you? What type of life do you want to live as a writer?
For me, I define success as people enjoying what I write. Sure, I’d love money, I’d love to be able to support myself with this full-time, but I’d rather write a really good, satisfying book that turns a tiny profit as opposed to a best-seller with a one-star rating. That’s why these things take time, and usually two years will pass between my projects. I’m really dedicated to making my work the best it can possibly be before it’s published.
Describe your writing journey. If you had to write a story centered around it, do you think you could pull it off?
Probably not, but only because “Guy Spends Years of Spare Time Typing into a Google Doc Until He Emails a Publisher” won’t exactly fly off the bookshelves.
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The Devil’s League: https://a.co/d/9YoiYpt
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