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Writing Tips

Write Advice | How to Revise a Draft Without Going Crazy by Dinty Moore

Working one-on-one with first- time memoirists and novelists at various summer writing work- shops over the past many years, I often find myself needing to de- liver the hard news. Perhaps the most difficult lesson I have to pass along is this: Once you are done writing your book, you aren’t really done writing your book. When I say this, foreheads inevitably furrow. Faces fall. Being reminded of just how much effort is required even after you’ve put a period on the final sentence of the final chapter of a multi-year project can be deeply discouraging. Because yes, revision does take effort and time. It needn’t, however, be painful. The blank page is a frightening void. An early draft, however, filled with words — all pointing in the right direction, but in need of some tender loving care — can be exhilarating. Words are like clay: You can push them around and make all manner of shapes with them. And clay reminds us of childhood. And childhood re- minds us of the time when we were the most playful, most creative, and least haunted by voices telling us we can’t do things well enough.
In other words, you can approach revision with your head low and your shoulders tensed, thinking, “Boy my sentences are so sloppy and wordy, and everything seems slow. All in all, I’m a pathetic failure.” Or you can approach revision thinking, “Hey, here’s my chance to get it right. Let’s play around.” Too many areas of life don’t afford you a second chance, but writing does, and you should see that as a good thing. So, here’s my advice:
FIRST: GO BACK TO THE BEGINNING Once you’ve found an ending to your novel or memoir, look back at your opening impulse. These two moments should be connected, either by a direct line of action and reaction running through the entire book, or through the cur- rent of emotion. Sometimes these two moments may also be linked by setting, by imagery, or through a recurrent metaphor. There is no steadfast rule, except that if the be- ginning and ending don’t feel coupled in any significant way, you need to rethink plot and structure. Remind yourself that a book begins with a question: “How will she overcome this unforeseen challenge?” or “Will this experience change him in some significant way?” The ending doesn’t always answer the question fully, but it should connect, and though the beginning doesn’t ask the question explicitly, it should plant the seed.
THEN: EVERYTHING IN THE MIDDLE Yes, everything. Locate the emotional undercurrent of your book — what I like to call the Invisible Magnetic River — and review every word, image, metaphor, scene, character, and chapter. Look for scenes, even those you labored over for days that may no longer have any utility to the story, or images and metaphors that — though not poorly shaped — don’t fit the overall flow. Though it is heartbreaking to delete twenty pages of honest effort, this momentary agony is far more desirable than settling for a book that limps or sputters somewhere midway. FINALLY: THE SENTENCE LEVEL This part is the most fun for me, honestly, though perhaps I have an odd sense of what is enjoy- able. I love reading the manuscript through from beginning to end, every sentence, one at a time, OUT LOUD.
Listening to each sentence, feeling it inside of my mouth as I speak it, identifying words I use too often, finding phrases that fall flat, is an opportunity I don’t have in every- day life, in spoken conversation. Getting it right just feels good. Often I improve a sentence by speaking it out loud, then trying another pattern, substituting an- other word, and then speaking the revised sentence out loud. My ear is frequently more helpful than my brain in identifying simple awkwardness and in recognizing the more vexing problem of sentences that sound good but say little. Of course, there are days that re- writing can be a slog, just as writ- ing can be. There are moments in revision that I think I’ll never find the solution, moments of despair and discouragement. But overall the process is invigorating, and when working well, invigorating for both my prose and my story. The difference, in my mind, be- tween writers who are successful in finding an audience and those who struggle, is when and where in the revision process a writer throws in the towel and settles for “good enough.”
Learn to be just a bit tougher on your own work than the toughest editor you can imagine, and you just might find that agents and editors suddenly love your book.
Writing Tips

Write Advice | Research, But Not Too Soon by Julia Glass

When I teach, I like debunking the mythical dictates carved in the Styrofoam pillars supporting the shrine built to deify the Real Writer. (Picture the Lincoln Memorial, but it’s Ernest Hemingway up on that throne, fountain pen clenched in a fist as big as a Thanksgiving turkey.) There’s a reason, I point out, that novelists do not have to pass exams to practice their trade. Architects and sea captains, sure. Surgeons, you bet. Why not novelists? Simple: Our form of malpractice won’t kill anybody. The worst we can do is bore you silly, fail to suspend your disbelief, make you waste a little money. So we get to do this thing we do by whatever rules and rituals we devise. Prominent among those dictates (close on the heels of Write every day) is Write what you know. Which holds true, admittedly, to the extent that every journey begins at home. But I like Grace Paley’s retort: “We don’t write about what we know; we write about what we don’t know about what we know.” Write what you want to know, and start out pretending you know a lot more than you do. Surmise, invent, and bluff your way through it as far as you can. Flex your imagination. Why else are you here? One of the ancillary pleasures in writing fiction, however, is finding out stuff; “real” stuff; stuff you never knew before; stuff you need to know if the story you’re telling is to hold up as true. Curiosity is the apprentice to your imagination. Yet I have found that the longer I can put off my research, the stronger and tighter my stories are. This is personal, of course; maybe you, setting out to write the great modern Western, need to pack up and live as a Wyoming cowhand before you can write a single word. Herman Melville went on an honest-to-God whaling voyage — no luxury cruise — before sitting down to write Moby-Dick. I hasten to add that I am not writing historical fiction, so the broad context of my work is the world we live in now; nevertheless, I delve deeply into my characters’ personal histories, which means I’m facing history with a capital H. I may need to find out about, for instance, the rationing of farm equipment during World War II. (Wars of the last century have influenced the lives of my fictional people as dramatically as they have the lives of actual people.) I won’t deny that laziness factors into my method. Years ago, I loved nothing more than a good excuse to roam the library stacks. Now, even heading down screen to Safari seems like a chore when all I want to do is hang around with my characters, eavesdrop on their secrets, and get them in trouble just to find out how they’ll endure (or not). In every story, I challenge myself to create characters outside my know-it-all zone, but never arbitrarily. Though I may not understand why, I will have felt a deep curiosity to inhabit the psyche of a wildlife biologist, a pastry chef, a Guatemalan gardener, an elderly widower, a music critic, the devout Catholic mother of two gay sons, a cancer patient, a cellist, a lonely film star, an insolent young man bent on what he sees as constructive anarchy. To know their passions, preoccupations, and afflictions, I have researched the infrastructure of wedding cakes, the culture of a 1960s summer camp for teenage musicians, the pathology and treatment of AIDS in the 1980s, the training of Border collies, the politics of water rights in the Southwest, the conservation of grizzly bears — but I began by writing from instinct and hearsay. The problem with doing research too soon is this: If I uncover too much captivating knowledge in advance, I cannot resist including it, nor can I tell when it dilutes or distracts from the story I’m trying to tell. If, on the other hand, I must pack it into the brimming suitcase of an existing story, only the pertinent details will fit. (The vast lore I uncovered on the variously eccentric traditions surrounding wedding confections was hard to leave behind, but because I was working to authenticate an existing scene, the narrative had only so much give.) The story must be the boss of the research, not the other way around. I like doing my research live, using people as sources whenever I can. And sometimes those people find me. Years ago, while struggling to craft a character living with the after-effects of head trauma, after reading medical journals had left me more confused than informed, I was called for jury duty — where I happened to meet a stranger who In every story, I challenge myself to create characters outside my know-it-all zone, but never arbitrarily. had gone through an experience parallel to that of my character. I conducted some enormously fruitful “research” over lunch breaks from the courthouse. Inevitably, you miss things. If you’re lucky, people who read your work early on catch those gaffes before it’s too late: the clam sauce with onions, the cello seated behind the flute; an idiom or a gadget or a popular song deployed before its time. Sometimes, however, alternative facts wind up in print. In Three Junes, I began by using memory and guesswork to describe the surroundings of a Scottish country home, an essential setting, knowing I’d fine-tune the details later. Several drafts later, I consulted a guide to British birding, overwriting my placeholder blue jays, robins, and cardinals with yellowhammers, chiffchaffs, and collared doves. Botanically, however, it turns out I wasn’t so thorough. There I was, out on tour, closing my book after reading to a small audience, when a hand shot up, emphatically. “Excuse me,” said my questioner, “but please see page 117. It isn’t possible, you realize, for the women’s final at Wimbledon to fall within the month of June. And, on page 47, can you tell me what a dogwood tree is doing in Scotland? Dogwoods grow only in North America.” He was holding a copy of my book sprouting a thicket of Post-Its. He was my first of a certain kind of reader. I want to hug and slug these people at the very same time. They are, after all, devoted to the truth. Okay, so he had me on Wimbledon — a necessary torquing of reality that I had hoped no one would notice. “But as for the dogwood,” I said, keeping my cool, “there were these American houseguests who, wanting to make a memorable impression on their Scottish hosts, and knowing how much they cherished their garden, smuggled a dogwood sapling in their luggage as a house present. The climate proved perfectly hospitable. The guests were invited back. Next time, they brought a pair of blue jays.”
Writing Tips

Write Advice | Making History: Characters in Narrative Nonfiction by Gary Krist

History that downplays individual experience — that focuses exclusively on movements, economic forces, social developments, and the like — can be worthwhile and enlightening, but it’s never going to make very compelling reading for non-specialists. People are interested in people, so they like to see how the larger forces of history shape — and are shaped by — recognizable, specific persons with stories all their own. As a narrative historian, I therefore face a lot of the same challenges that a novelist does. I’ve got to find characters whose life histories will allow me to express what needs expressing, and who are in and of themselves fascinating to read about.

As a former fiction writer (or, as Walter Isaacson teasingly called me in the New York Times a few years ago, a “lapsed novelist”), I’ve seen the task from both perspectives, and I can tell you that the narrative historian has, in some ways, the harder job. Yes, we don’t face the yawning terror of the totally blank page every morning (that daily existential crisis), but we also don’t have the luxury of creating elements from whole cloth to add dimension to a dullish character or enliven a lagging plot. We can only draw on the raw material offered up by the historical record. Of course, many popular historians of the past had no qualms about inventing freely — details, dialogue, scenes — whenever the historical record was lacking, but the new school of narrative history insists on higher standards of scholarship. In other words, we can’t just make it up.

So when deciding on what characters to focus on in my books, I look for people who (A), were at the center of the important issues of the day, (B), were complex and interesting in their own right, and (C), were also well documented in the historical record. That last criterion is important. Memoirs, letters, newspaper interviews, diaries — any kind of account in which a participant in the drama tells what happened in human, on-the-ground terms — are critical for me, since they give me the concrete details I need to bring people and events to life. (Incidentally, since a lot of my main characters are colorful types who frequently wound up in court, transcripts of trial testimony have been particularly useful.)

Naturally, all of these documents can be as unreliable as any other sources in the record. Accounts are only as trustworthy as the people who give them, after all, so I find myself constantly having to judge how much to believe in any given source. Often I’ll talk about this decision-making process in the end-notes to my books, which I see as a kind of running commentary on how I used the historical record to create the book, for those who are interested in seeing how the sausage is made.

The three criteria I mentioned were important considerations when I chose the main characters around whom to base The Mirage Factory. William Mulholland, D.W. Griffith, and Aimee Semple McPherson were all central to the story I wanted to tell, representing the three forces — which you might shorthand as Water, Celluloid, and Spirituality — that allowed Los Angeles to grow up in a place where no big city has any right to be. They’re also intriguing, multidimensional people with character flaws as big as their talents. And they were all extremely well documented in the historical record. All three wrote autobiographies of a sort (although Mulholland’s was very short). Each left behind a fairly comprehensive archive. And as highly visible public figures, they were covered extensively (in McPherson’s case, one might say “obsessively”) by the local press in their lifetimes.

So narrative historians have definite limits on what they can do, particularly when telling stories that involve people for whom the historical record is skimpy or incomplete. That’s why I sometimes have to take a pass on a book idea that might seem irresistible at first glance. If the material isn’t there to give the characters and events the kind of texture and dimension required, the idea won’t work, no matter how interesting the story may be in outline. Fortunately, though — thanks to the hard work of archivists who keep developing more sophisticated ways of cataloguing and searching their collections — the amount of raw material available just keeps growing. It’s up to the narrative historian to choose wisely. 

Writing Tips

Write Advice | How to Strike the Right Balance of Fact and Fiction in Historical Fiction by Fiona Davis

I love it when readers say to me, “After I finished your novel, I went straight to Google to figure out what was true and what was made up!” That’s exactly why historical fiction is my favorite genre: In a good story, I become immersed in a different time period with people I’d never meet otherwise, who are living through situations that are unimaginable today. After I’ve turned the last page, I’m eager to discover the nuggets of truth buried within the work of fiction. My fictional characters are built around the framework of historical fact. Once I have an idea for a setting for my book — The Doll- house is set in the Barbizon Hotel for Women and The Address takes place in the Dakota apartment house — I do a deep dive into the research of the time period (1950s for The Dollhouse and 1880s for The Address, although they both feature contemporary plotlines as well). I read everything I can from that era, including newspapers, magazines, fiction, and nonfiction. I also interview experts, like architectural historians who specialize in the Gilded Age, or women who lived in the Barbizon Hotel for Women in the ’50s and ’60s. That’s when the ideas start to pop. While researching The Dollhouse, I learned that when the Barbizon Hotel for Women was turned into luxury condos, a dozen or so long- time residents were moved into rent-controlled apartments on the same floor. Great set-up for a book, I thought. I read a harrowing newspaper article from the 1950s about the rising heroin epidemic, which was often blamed on bebop jazz musicians. What a great contrast to the rarified world of the hotel, with its guests in pearls and white gloves, right? So in my plot, I sent one of my characters downtown, where she got mixed up with some seedy characters. I used the same approach while working on The Address. I discovered that in the 1930s, a “lady managerette” ran the Dakota. That gave me the idea for one of my characters: a housekeeper named Sara Smythe who gets an unexpected promotion early in the novel. In general, the characters in my stories are all fictional. That gives me room to play around with them, get them into and out of trouble, and not feel constrained by a true historical figure. Exceptions do occur, though. Nelly Bly, a fabulous reporter from the 1880s, makes a quick appearance in The Address. As a former journalist, I couldn’t resist. And both buildings were touched by famous, tragic figures. Sylvia Plath stayed at the Barbizon Hotel in 1953 and wrote about it in The Bell Jar, and John Lennon was murdered outside the Dakota in 1980. In both those cases, I felt it was important to mention the association, but not linger there. For example, I set the modern-day timeline of The Address in 1985, when Strawberry Fields first opened, as a way to respectfully touch upon the tragedy without making it a major part of the story. A couple of times I’ve had to slightly fudge dates of real events in order to make the story work. When that happens, I mention it in the author’s note at the end, where I also list many of the resources I relied upon. My hope is that readers will continue on in their journey to learn more about the past, and enjoy it as much as I did.
Writing Tips

Mark Twain’s Nonfiction by Richard Russo

The novelist William Dean Howells once famously remarked that his friend Mark Twain was not a writer who performed so much as a performer who wrote. Perhaps surprisingly, this astute observation also holds true in Twain’s nonfiction, a form that would seem to put less of a premium on both invention and performance. To read the passages from The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, A Tramp Abroad, and Life on the Mississippi collected in this volume is to understand that Twain didn’t lose much sleep over the idiosyncratic demands of fiction versus nonfiction. Both offered numerous and varied opportunities to an inspired, indeed unparalleled, bullshitter. To be sure, many of the set pieces that are included in the Everyman’s Library volume of The Complete Short Stories — “Buck Fanshaw’s Funeral,” “The Story of the Old Ram”—turn up in this volume as well. Classifying Twain’s work into fiction or nonfiction is something we do for our own convenience; his convenience was to ignore ours.
So, are the events chronicled in Roughing It — which details Twain’s journey by stagecoach to the Nevada territory, his stint there as a silver miner, and his apprenticeship to the newspaper trade — true? Once asked that same question about one of his own stories, David Sedaris replied, “They’re true enough,” and it’s easy to imagine Twain saying the same thing about his youthful adventures in the American West. We know he traveled to Europe and the Holy Land as a correspondent, so it’s not unreasonable to suppose that at least some of what he reports in The Innocents Abroad actually happened. I suspect, however, that the literally true parts are those he wasn’t able to improve on through embellishment or outright invention. For Twain, “truth” was not just elastic but indeed designed to be stretched. He learned this lesson early on, writing for western newspapers. He explains the job to great comic effect in Roughing It, where, as a cub reporter, he wrote a story about a wagon full of immigrants attacked by Indians. At first, fearing that other reporters might recount the same story, he sticks pretty close to the facts, despite his conviction that the story could be improved upon by straying from them. Later, though, when he learns that the owner of the wagon meant to continue his journey the following morning (leaving no one to contradict Twain’s account), all bets are off . His next draft describes an Indian fight that “to this day has no parallel in history.” This is Twain we’re talking about, so it’s likely that he also exaggerated the extent of his exaggerations, but still. Buoyed by praise from the paper’s editor, he expresses a willingness to murder every immigrant on the plains with his pen if “the interests of the paper demanded it.” Thus the low bar of truth is established: true enough. For him. For his editor. For the paper’s readership.
ONCE ASKED THAT SAME QUESTION ABOUT ONE OF HIS OWN STORIES, DAVID SEDARIS REPLIED, “THEY’RE TRUE ENOUGH.”
His approach to fiction was basically the same. At the beginning of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck says that readers may have heard of him if they’ve read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which “was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There were things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.” That first assertion, it’s worth remembering, was both the truth and a lie. The book was actually “made” by Samuel Clemens, and the parts Mr. Clemens “stretched” were the parts that needed stretching, beginning with his own identity as Mark Twain. Again, Twain is not so much a writer, at least as the term is used today, as a storyteller whose primary duties are to the narrative and its audience. No story is likely to be instructive if it isn’t entertaining, and the best way to gauge whether it’s working or not is to watch it land with an actual audience, a lesson Twain learned long before he gave his first public lecture.
In A Tramp Abroad he recounts his first ride on a Mississippi steamboat as a ten-year-old boy. Falling asleep, he has a terrifying dream that the boat is ablaze, and he rushes into the ladies’ salon, still under the nightmare’s influence, screaming “Fire!” The ladies there knew better, of course, and they advised him to return to his cabin and dress, lest he catch cold. It’s a revealing memory. The humiliation of his story playing so badly, his audience rejecting both the tale and the teller, is still fresh in Twain’s mind twenty-five years later as he’s writing Tramp. Just as telling is the reason he recalls the episode in the first place. He’s in Germany watching a production of King Lear, where the actor playing the title role “raged and wept and howled” across the stage. Twain admires the performance but feels sorry for the actor, who has to wait until the end of the act for his applause.
Writers, by contrast, are used to silence. Their applause, if they’re lucky enough to get any, comes long after their “performance” has concluded, in the form of reviews. True, authors who publish serially may to some degree interact with their audience. When readers loved Sam Weller in an early installment of The Pickwick Papers, Dickens was happy to expand his role as the novel progressed, but that’s hardly akin to telling the same stories on stage night after night, as Twain did on his public speaking tours. Each audience provided him with valuable insight into what worked and why, allowing him to revise the material accordingly. His first public lecture triumph near the end of Roughing It is described almost completely in terms of the crowd’s appreciation. The audience is with him from the start, he tells us, even the jokes he’d judged to be inferior faring “royally.” Near the end, though, the material grows more somber and serious, and Twain tells us that the “absorbed hush” that fell over the audience “gratified me more than any applause.” Indeed, he’s so pleased by the reaction that he can’t help but smile, which the crowd took as a cue to laugh, thus ruining the moment.
Later in life, Twain’s relationship with his audience would grow more complex. In Life on the Mississippi, he admits that being a river pilot was the best job he ever had, because the steamboat pilot has no master, whereas writers were “manacled servants of the public.” That said, no writer ever courted his audience more assiduously nor drew more confidence and pleasure from public adulation (Twain courted honorary degrees, too, and shamelessly.) Indeed, one suspects that it was from his audience, as much as the work itself, that Twain derived his sense of accomplishment and well-being.
WRITERS, BY CONTRAST, ARE USED TO SILENCE. THEIR APPLAUSE, IF THEY’RE LUCKY ENOUGH TO GET ANY, COMES LONG AFTER THEIR “PERFORMANCE” HAS CONCLUDED, IN THE FORM OF REVIEWS.
It’s worth pointing out that the world has changed since Twain left it, and our attitudes towards “truth” and “fiction” have become more rigorous and stern. Mislabel your novel as a memoir (or allow your publisher to do so) and you’ll likely find yourself in a world of hurt. Twain was no great fan of fraud and deception, but like Melville he understood that the world was steeped in both, and moreover he harbored more than a little admiration and affection for its charlatans. Reading Huckleberry Finn I often wonder if I judge the King and the Duke more harshly than their creator intended. At the very least Twain would’ve understood that people who get conned are often complicit in their own deception. Just as important, he would have recognized the paradox inherent in labeling some stories “made up” ( fiction) and others “true” (nonfiction). Interestingly, audience often plays a role here, too. When you claim that a story is invented — especially one as elaborate as Twain’s were — people will naturally suspect you of telling the truth (Come on! You couldn’t have made that up!). Conversely, when you claim to be telling the truth, those same folks shift gears and suspect you of lying (Surely you embellished this!). Storytelling thrives in this fundamental para- dox and often resists any attempts at clarification.
“Mark Twain’s Nonfiction” first appeared as the introduction to Mark Twain’s Collected Nonfiction: Volume 2 (Everyman’s Library, 2016) Explore Richard Russo’s latest books:  
Interviews

Chuck Wendig talks Star Wars, Slasher flicks, and Your New Favorite Sandwich

This interview was done at New York Comic Con 2018. We caught up with Chuck Wendig, author of the Star Wars Aftermath Trilogy, to chat about Star Wars, Cantina Bartenders, and, of course, sandwiches. Keith Rice: Can you share what you are working on now with us? Chuck Wendig: Sure, sure. I have a stand-alone in 2019, in July, with Del Rey – who published me for Star Wars. I guess we can call it a sci-fi/horror epic kind of thing. Think of it as a little bit of Stephen King, a little bit of Station Eleven, a little bit of The Stand, with a vein of Michael Crichton throughout. KR: You’re speaking my language. CW: Good, good! It’s epic. It’s a big book. I think in manuscript form, it’s almost 1200 pages. It’s called Wanderers, and I am very excited about that. Then this weekend [October 6th, 2018], I have the premiere of “You Might Be the Killer” on Syfy which I wrote with Sam Sykes. We randomly tweeted back and forth this slasher/serial killer story, we improved it and it got optioned for film. So, the lead characters are Sam and Chuck and Chuck is being played by Alyson Hannigan – of all the things in the world.  That’s happening, just proving that 2018 is truly the dumbest timeline. KR: You wrapped up the Aftermath Trilogy last year, how would you describe the series for readers who haven’t picked up it yet? CW: Aftermath is a new trilogy set between the end of Return of the Jedi and the beginning of The Force Awakens. It takes us up to and includes the Battle of Jakku. And it’s about that sort of slow collapse of the Empire and the rise of the new Republic. And it sort of has a vibe in there that speaks to the Nazi hunters after World War II who tracked down all the Nazi war criminals across world. There is a group that takes on the task of finding some of the fallen Imperials and they get caught up in all of the dynamics with the new Republic and falling Empire. KR: What was it like taking on such a pivotal time in the Star Wars universe? CW: Awesome. It was amazing. It was great. I really don’t know what to say beyond that.  Like I have no complaints other than the surprise that they let me do it. KR: What was the process like coming into something as well-established as Star Wars? CW: It wasn’t just that Star Wars is so well-established because in some ways it wasn’t, and that sounds strange given what we know about Star Wars. But Star Wars, after it was picked up by Disney, was a cleaner slate than it was five years previously. So, that actually allowed me more freedom in many ways than if we had been constrained by 100, 200, 500 books and other properties. The TV shows, films, and one or two books were able to kind of inform what we did. But of course the other trick was because we were building into The Force Awakens, there were issues there with secrecy about what they could tell and what they couldn’t tell. For instance, we had the character of Temmin Wexley in Aftermath who eventually becomes Snap Wexley – Snap being a nickname – in The Force Awakens.  It was sort of like playing chess with someone that you can’t see. So, you’re always trying to figure out what you’re allowed to do and what you’re not allowed to do, so it’s kind of a neat process of discovery. KR: What made you want to take on the Cantina Bartender for A Certain Point of View? CW: I was always fascinated because we didn’t really get a good sense of why droids were a problem until the “Clone Wars” – you know the films and the “Clone Wars” show. This guy seem to hate them; he was very mad at droids. So, I thought this is a good opportunity to connect those two eras, but obviously there is some grave distrust with droids that has been sewn across the galaxy and this guy is real salty about it. KR: So you’ve been crazy busy since the debut of your first novel. Between novels, comics, your blog, sandwich making … CW: Yeah, sandwich making, that’s really taking over [laughs]. KR: How do you balance everything? CW: I am fortunate in that this is my full time job, so all of my time is there to devote. I mean, outside of like my son and my wife and whisk(e)y, and also sandwiches. I have a lot of time to devote to doing this stuff. Mostly it’s just trying to strategize going forward, having a long plan forward and a long tail behind that sort of keeps me going. KR: So mostly it’s just … CW: Having time to strategize, going forward, and having a long plan forward and a long tail behind me and that sort of keeps me going. KR: Okay, so I have ask how did the Wendigo come about? CW: There was an article in the New York Times that I think was just like “bleh.”  You know the New York Times will do things like “Wow, let’s make guacamole out of peas,” and everyone’s like “bleh.” And I’m on board with the “bleh,” but I also feel like you should keep an open mind about things. They were like “a new, cool sandwich is this old sandwich with peanut butter and pickles.”  I mean, my grandmother used to eat this sandwich. And then I was like “that sounds sort of disgusting.” But, then I thought, “well, maybe it’s not, though.”  When you think about Thai food it has that sort of sourness and then the peanut sauce. Eh, yeah, I thought it could kind of work. So, I try it and it was delicious. Then I was discussing it with other people, and they were asking “what if mayo was involved” because mayo is food lube. Really its only function is helping food slide down your gullet.  Peanut butter can be a little forbidding, so I added the mayo.  Then I was like, “well, this does need bacon because why not.” It really becomes almost like a Thai sandwich. You got all these taste factors going into it. Really, you know, that’s where it was. I put it out there and people were like “you’re disgusting” and I‘m like “well, try it” and they’re like “well, that’s disgustingly delicious!” Yep. Check out Chuck Wendig’s Wanderers, out in July 2019!  Keith Rice is a West Virginia native and a freelance writer residing in Philadelphia with his lovely, if oft exasperated wife and three cats. Keith fosters an enthusiastic appreciation for beer and scotch, collects comics, and most importantly is an avid reader and movie lover. Oh, he’s a pretty big fan of sci-fi and fantasy as well. Drop him a line @Keith_Rice1.
Interviews

Sylvain Neuvel talks about the Themis Trilogy, Favorite Books, and Writing His Own Language

This interview was done at New York Comic Con 2018. We caught up with Sylvain Neuvel to discuss the Themis Trilogy, alien languages, and a bit of cosplay.         Keith Rice:  All right, so Only Human came out in May and it closes out the Themis Files trilogy.  How does it feel to be done? Sylvain Neuvel:  Weird.  It’s very weird.  Finishing that book was an emotional moment.  There was  a lot of crying involved in the last chapters, just knowing that I might never see these characters again. And it’s kind of stupid, because they were there, they will always be there.  They’re in the books, they exist.  But it was strange, and also Sleeping Giants was my first novel, so I’ve spent my entire writing career in that universe.  Getting out of it is a scary thing, though it’s also exciting. KR:  Did you envision the story as trilogy when you started or did that come about – – SN:  Well, originally, I thought it might be more of an open series, but It’s a rarer thing in publishing nowadays to have just a like a real open-ended series like, say, James Bond. KR:  Sure. SN:  And so, well, quickly I figured out it would be a trilogy and I kind of knew how I wanted it to end, so I went for it. KR:  Given that do you plan to go back into the world of Themis Files at any point? Is that something you’ve thought about? SN:  I would love to someday.  There are other things I want to do.  I’m working on something now and so it’s nice to take a break and just let the story do its thing.  I’m not there [on revisiting Themis Files].  But if people want it, if there’s a demand for it, I’d love to come back to it someday. KR:  How would you describe the Themis Files to readers that haven’t had a chance to pick it up yet? SN:  It’s a strange one to describe.  It’s science fiction but it’s also very grounded, it happens here, and the format is, I think, as important to the experience as the story itself.  It’s told in the form of interviews, between a mysterious interviewer and the main characters of the book.  So, it’s pretty much three books of nothing but dialogue. It’s a very different reading experience than what most people would be used to.  In terms of story it’s like everything I do, it is grounded in science fiction. Book one is a search for giant metal body parts buried underground by an unknown civilization thousands of years ago.  And it has a lot to do with first contact, but it’s also an exploration of what it means to be human.  Human nature in general, or what makes you you and not me, and identity, and other themes that are very human.  So, even though there is alien life involved, it’s very much about us and not them. KR:  Your take on aliens was one of the more fascinating aspects for me.  They aren’t that different from us. SN:  No. KR:  What led you to that? SN:  Well, there’s advantages in making aliens closer to us, there’s a reason why, you know, every alien on a TV show, you know has at least two arms and legs, because we can hire an actor to do it.  This particular case I wanted them to be among us.  So, they had to be hiding in plain sight, it’s kind of difficult if you’re a giant amoeba or big blob of goo. KR:  And I know you’re a linguist as well.  Do you have any plans to dive into a language for any of your books? SN:  Well, Only Human does have some alien language bits in there. KR:  True, but I meant on a larger, or I guess more Tolkien-esque scale? SN:  Actually, I did write grammar and a lexicon. KR:  Oh? SN:  Well, I know that I’m a freak and I couldn’t just improvise those like ten lines [laughs].  So, I pretty much wrote the whole language just so I could put those two lines in the book.  Someday I’d like to share that lexicon and grammar with the world. For example, they could read the dedication at the end of the trilogy, which is in the language. KR:  I know you’re a big cosplay fan and we are at NYCC. SN:  Yeah. KR:  What’s your favorite or your best costume?  One that you’ve put together? SN:  That I made? I will say my Grandizer robot costume.  It was super fun. KR:  I imagine the proportions were a bit tricky on that one. SN:  Yeah, I mean, I made a Vader costume that I spent about a year on, but with Vader you have a costuming group, you can go with references online, you can know which actual parts of what were used to make it.  It gets tons of references, so you know things basically down to the millimeter. With Grandizer you’re looking at an anime made in the 70’s.  If you look at the show, in one scene, you’ll have say, seven spikes on his fist, and in another scene you’ll have nine and in another there’ll be three.  Because the guys drawing it, they’re just going super-fast. Plus there were a lot of technical challenges.  He has a tiny head, so, I managed to get the proportions better.  I realized that with a head so little my costume shoulders are about at my chin level, and I see through the mouth of the robot so the head can be higher, and it makes it more proportional, plus I have to build it from scratch.  There’s no references, no nothing. So, it was a lot molding, and sculpting, and fiberglass.  It was a lot of fun to make. KR:  Sounds like it. SN:  Yeah. KR: I’m going to put you on the spot just a little bit.  If you had to recommend three novels , three books, for fans of the Themis Files what would they be? SN:  Well if you’re in it for the giant robots, Mecha Samurai Empire by Peter Teiryas just came out and it’s actually pretty fantastic.  It’s book two of a series, but it’s more of a standalone novel. If you’re in it for the science, because there’s a lot of it in the Themis Files, I really like the The Flicker Men by Ted Kosmatka. It’s based on a simple sci-fi premise, but I really wish I’d come up with it.  I was jealous of the idea.  It’s a great, great book.  Similarly, Quantum Night by Robert Sawyer is another book with tons of science. Sawyer sort of researches everything.  He has a bibliography at the end if you want further reading on brainwaves and all sorts of interesting things.   The Gone World, by Tom Sweterlitsch, it’s a great book. It’s really a great book.  I was kind of wary at first because it involves time travel and it’s not usually my favorite, but it’s so well done, I think everyone should read it.   Check out Sylvain Neuvel’s Only Human! Keith Rice is a West Virginia native and a freelance writer residing in Philadelphia with his lovely, if oft exasperated wife and three cats. Keith fosters an enthusiastic appreciation for beer and scotch, collects comics, and most importantly is an avid reader and movie lover. Oh, he’s a pretty big fan of sci-fi and fantasy as well. Drop him a line @Keith_Rice1.
Interviews

Seanan McGuire talks October Daye, and Her Creepiest Halloween Story

This interview was done at New York Comic Con 2018. We sat down for a quick chat with Seanan McGuire about her October Daye Series, Thylacine’s, and the Halloween when she formed the basis for an actual local legend.       Keith Rice:  The October Daye series is sitting at, like, 12 volumes now. Right? Seanan McGuire:  Right.  13 will come out next year. KR:  Great.  Okay. So, how would you describe it for readers who haven’t had the chance to pick it up yet? SM:  October Daye is what happens when you give a trained folklorist an urban fantasy series and no hard limits. KR:  What was your inspiration for Toby Daye, for the character? SM:  So, the very first book in the October Daye series, Rosemary and Rue, starts out with Toby being turned into a fish and left in a pond at the Japanese Tea Gardens in San Francisco for 14 years.  And that inspiration for that was that I got stuck on top of one of the moon bridges in the Japanese Tea Gardens. They are basically direct, straight up and down circles and I climbed one like a fool and then could not get down and was just watching this one very large Calico koi swim back and forth and thinking, gosh, that fish must have a very peaceful life.  It’s not afraid it’s going to die on top of this bridge.  It can do whatever it wants.  Wouldn’t it suck if that fish used to be a person?  And the whole series kind of unspooled from that point of how miserable can I make this fish that is way too happy when I am frightened. KR:  So, October Daye, the InCryptid series, they all fall pretty broadly under urban fantasy. SM:  Really broadly, yeah. KR:  What draws you to that niche of writing fantasy? SM:  As I mentioned, I am a trained folklorist.  I went to the University of California Berkeley–Go Bears–for a folklore degree.  And fairytales, if you look at them in the context of the time when they were first being told, are the urban fantasy of their day.  When Little Red Riding Hood was a new story that people hadn’t heard before, you probably did have a grandparent or other relative who lived on the other side of a big forest.  You probably had heard of people walking into those woods alone and getting savaged by wolves or bears or something else that lived there.  It was an immediacy in the same way that Charlene Harris’s vampire books have an immediacy because there were these vampires.  They might be living next door.  There are these wolves.  They might be living in the forest between you and your grandma. So, I just really like fairytales and wanted to write today’s fairytales. KR:  So, your first novel was published in 2009 and you’ve been going at a dizzy pace ever since.  How do you juggle your long running series, your music, sleep? SM:  I don’t sleep much.  When “Hamilton” was big, literally every single person I have ever met in more than an immediate and casual sense, sent me a copy of “Nonstop” because they thought that was very funny.  And that I hadn’t heard it 90 times by that point.  It helps that when I was making choices about my life, I said I am a better aunty than I would be a mom.  I don’t want children of my own.  So, I have cats but no kids.  I also am not married at this time.  I think it’s absolutely possible to maintain my level of output with children, but you have to have a spouse that’ll be up for at least 50% of the child-rearing duties.  So, there are juggling acts I don’t have to perform.  And that’s not better or worse than anyone else’s choices.  That’s just–you don’t want to leave me alone with the baby.  I would do something silly like assume it was a cat and just leave it on the floor with a bowl of Captain Crunch while I went off to write a novel.  I don’t sleep enough.  I get yelled at a lot for not sleeping.  I don’t play enough Overwatch, but I do my best. KR:  I know you love travel. SM:  I do.  Well, love is a strong word sometimes. KR:  What’s the one place you want to visit and haven’t had the chance? SM:  I have not yet been to Tokyo which is a little silly when you consider that Tokyo contains everything I love.  It has a Disneyland that I haven’t been to.  It has Pokémon Centers and I own so many Pokémon plush that my friends joke that going into my bedroom is like stepping into the tall grass.  It has entire stores devoted to fancy dolls and I’m a fancy doll collector.  So, Tokyo is really on the big bucket list.  Second on the list is wherever in Australia I can actually finally find a live Thylacine to prove that they are still out there. KR:  Okay.  So, last question.  We’re coming up on Halloween.  What’s your all-time favorite horror story? SM:   My all-time favorite horror story?  My all-time favorite horror story is actually the one I pulled off accidentally.  I grew up very, very poor. I grew up so far below the poverty line that you couldn’t see it on a clear day.  And this meant that Halloween was serious business because for Halloween I could get candy the same as the kids whose parents could afford to buy them candy.  And this means I planned for Halloween like I was planning the siege of a small fictional nation.  I drew up maps.  I would actually and creepily – and I acknowledge as an adult that this was a creepy thing for child-me to do – I would sit in the grocery store and watch to see who bought the good candy and see if I recognize them as the parents of any of my classmates, so that I could prioritize their neighborhoods. I would generally leave the house about six p.m. and stay out until all the pumpkins were off.  And my mother was very distracted.  I had two sisters, one 6 years younger and one 7 years younger.  So, by the time I was nine my mother was not keeping a very close eye on what I did. So, the Halloween when I was 11, I got this long white, nightgown from the Goodwill.  I painted every exposed inch of my body with talcum powder and then went over that with craft glitter.  And it turns out that while I did not quite glow in the dark. I came very, very close to glowing in the dark.  This was not good enough for me, so I mixed up some fake blood and pretty much painted myself in fake blood from the knee down and from the wrist down.  And I had flip-flops on, so it looked like I was barefoot.  So, you have this glowing white, blood-dripping figure.  And that might still have been okay except for the part where to get from the last good neighborhood, which was Bel Air Heights, back to the neighborhood where I live, which was Maclear Courts, I decided it would be a really good idea to walk through the dry storm culverts because it hadn’t rained in a while.  And that would cut off four or five blocks of my trip and a good deal of traffic. So, I went under the road, walked through the storm culvert and then popped up as if from the ground on the side of the creek that faced the Court.  And the man who had been coming around the curve up the street, saw me suddenly appear with no warning whatsoever, not looking like a small child trick or treating, but looking like the dead person from the culvert.  And he crashed his car into a tree.  And it was in the papers the next day.  This man was contesting a drunk driving charge because he hadn’t been driving drunk.  He literally saw a ghost come out of the storm culvert.  And that is my favorite horror story because the kids in that neighborhood still tell it, like there’s a whole urban legend now that this one storm drain is haunted by the ghost of a girl who was killed by a car.  I’m like, no, it’s haunted by a candy hungry 11-year-old and a five dollar nightgown from Goodwill.   Check out Seanan McGuire’s Night and Silence!  Keith Rice is a West Virginia native and a freelance writer residing in Philadelphia with his lovely, if oft exasperated wife and three cats. Keith fosters an enthusiastic appreciation for beer and scotch, collects comics, and most importantly is an avid reader and movie lover. Oh, he’s a pretty big fan of sci-fi and fantasy as well. Drop him a line @Keith_Rice1.
Interviews

Author Peter Tieryas talks Mecha Samurai Empire and Alternate History

This interview was done at New York Comic Con 2018. We sat down with Peter Tieryas to talk about Mecha Samurai Empire, alternate history, and what to eat when fighting Nazis.       Keith Rice:  So Mecha Samurai Empire just came out, what can you tell us about it? Peter Tieryas:  So, it is a book about giant Mechas fighting big Nazi monsters.  And it’s a very personal story in that it’s about being Asian-American, and sort of growing up in a place where, literally, on the other side of the continent there is a group of people who want to see their destruction solely based on their ethnicity.  Anyone who doesn’t fit the Aryan Nazi mold should be eliminated.  How do you grow up in that world, right?  Like, what is your view of the world when you’re acutely aware of your race.  And that became the central metaphor.  The best alternate history gives us a different context and a different view of our own world. There’s a lot of entertainment, there’s a lot of action, but also, hopefully there are deeper questions about identity, about ethnicity, and about diversity.  It’s also loosely inspired by Man in the High Castle. KR:  Okay, so this is set in the world of The United States of Japan? PT:  Yep. KR:  What led you to expand on that world? PT:  When I wrote The United States of Japan, I had a deep desire to sort of explore World War II from the Asian side. Growing up I heard all these stories about World War II from the Asian side.  Just really fascinating things.  And when I came to America there was nothing about this perspective, just no information available. It was always focused on more of the European side, you know?  Like what happened with the Nazis, and General Eisenhower and Hitler. I kind of challenge people, how many generals do you know on the Asian side?  Who were fighting the Chinese, who were fighting for the Philippines, right?  Even on the American side, for the average person, there’s very little actually known about World War II.  What battles do you know about? I had this desire to tell a story about that.  So when I wrote it, it was very structured.  It takes place over a couple of days it’s a roller coaster.  You just start and it keeps on going.  But when I was finished, I kind of wanted to know more about the world.  What happens after those days are, right?  What do people eat, how do people hang out, what’s day-to-day life in that alternate history like?  That reminded me – that’s what I really wanted to know about in  Man in the High Castle as well.  What is this world about? Mecha Samurai Empire initially began as an attempt to just explore the world and see what it’s about.  The very first thing I wrote was the alternate history Pledge of Allegiance, which is like, “I pledge Allegiance to the United States of Japan, and to the Empire for…”  When I first wrote that, it kind of became a guiding philosophy for me.  So, you’ll see, it’s like America, and it’ll feel very familiar, but at the last minute there’ll be a little twist and where you’re like, “Whoa, this is a completely different world.”  They completely distorted or misinterpreted, or reinterpreted what we view as certain ideas and philosophies. That, to me, was really fascinating. So, for example, one idea that came up is that they look at The Great Gatsby, which was written in the twenties, and it was an indictment of that era, right. But in normal history, after World War II there was the boom, and everything recovered and America became a behemoth.  In the alternate history of The United States of Japan, America lost, so there was never that boom.  So, they look at Fitzgerald as almost a prophet of the end of the America.  It’s stuff like that, those weird little details. KR:  Okay, so there are a lot of moving parts under the hood here.  You’ve got alternate history, there’s gaming, there’s mecha. What were your biggest influences coming into this story? PT:  There’s a bunch, but I think the biggest from a story-telling perspective was Hideo Kujima.  He did Metal Gear Solid, Zone of the Enders, but what fascinated me about Metal Gear, was that despite the title, it’s not really about metal gear.  It’s about the people involved, and how they’re going to use metal gear.  That, to me, was really  important when I was writing about the mechas.  When you watch a really good mecha movie, if it’s just about the action, the first minute is really exciting.  Then after a while you start going, “Oh, I’m used to this.”  And it almost becomes boring.  It’s like mecha porn.  Or you just become so inured to it. What really differentiates it is if you care about the characters.  And I think with Metal Gear, you go find a boss and the boss has this very strong personality and you remember their personality as you’re fighting them. In the same way I wanted these characters to be memorable.  So that’s where I spent a lot of time – just really focusing on the character interactions.  What does each battle mean? The way they fight, how does that represent who they are? I also took a little bit of inspiration from “Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!” – the original game- because each of those characters had so much personality.  So, there’s a character named Honda.  He has big bushy eyebrows that he moves.  And for people who know “Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!!” they know when he does the his hurricane charge, he actually takes four steps.  So, they actually analyze this mecha data, and they realize, “Oh, every time he does that charge he takes four steps,” They use that to beat him.  And in a little ironic twist, the “Punch Out” referee is Mario, right, he’s Italian.  in the Axis world, Germany and Japan are at odds with each other, but Italy always plays the peacemaker.  In the mecha tournaments, there’s an Italian guy who’s the peacemaker. That’s a nod to Mario and “Punch Out”.  From a literary perspective, obviously Phillip K. Dick, that just goes without saying.  Cordwainer Smith is another one, I just love his storytelling.  Rieko Kodama is another.  She did “Phantasy Star II.” It was one of my very first exposure to science fiction, through that video game.  Where it’s actually about a Utopia that’s really cool and amazing, and then the whole Utopia starts falling apart, and then you find out at the end that humans are the bad guys. KR:  Right. PT:  That’s one of the very few instances – in a movie, book, or whatever – that I can remember, where the villains are ultimately humans. KR:  Are you planning to explore more of Mac’s story, or moving on to something else within the world of United states of Japan?  PT:  Yeah, so I actually turned in the first draft of the next book to my editor.  It’s a completely different story, completely new characters.  It is following the aftermath of the Berkeley massacre, and the whole battle.  It’s basically a revolution takes place within the United States of Japan. KR:  What three books would you recommend for fans of Mecha Samurai Empire?  PT:  I would say Sleeping Giants is a big one.  I really like the works by Project Itoh.  He did the adaptation of “Metal Gear Solid IV”, but also Project Harmony and Genocidal Organ. Those are just really great.  But between those three, maybe I’d say Genocidal Organ. It really stands out.  And then, while I don’t know if it is necessarily connected to the United States of Japan and Mecha Samurai Empire but, Cameron Hurley’s work. I really love her work, Apocalypse Nyx is great. And then obviously Man in the High Castle, but, you know, that goes without saying. KR: I’m going out on a limb and assuming you’re a gamer. PT:  Yep. KR:  What are you playing right now? PT:  We recently had a baby, so I’ve had to stop.  But the last game that I played was “Spec Ops: The Line.”.  That was an intense experience.  That was, just, like, wow, you know?  Just the world-building and everything. KR:  And that twist is just killer. PT:  Yeah, yeah.  I think I finished it the week before our baby came.  “Persona V” was the big one I played before that.  That just took forever but I really wanted to enjoy it. I actually played through with my wife.  I was very influenced by “Persona”.  What I love about the world-building in “Persona” is that you have to save the world and everything’s going to chaos, but you can also go find a really good ramen, or you can go on a date at a carnival. I love that.  So, in Mecha Samurai Empire, there are food excursions.  Sure, there are Nazis, but you still have to eat, right?   Check out Peter Tieryas’ Mecha Samurai Empire!  Keith Rice is a West Virginia native and a freelance writer residing in Philadelphia with his lovely, if oft exasperated wife and three cats. Keith fosters an enthusiastic appreciation for beer and scotch, collects comics, and most importantly is an avid reader and movie lover. Oh, he’s a pretty big fan of sci-fi and fantasy as well. Drop him a line @Keith_Rice1.
Interviews

Mur Lafferty Chats about the Not-So-Complicated-Motivations of Han Solo, Her Favorite Recent Star Wars Characters, and Podcasting

This interview was done at New York Comic Con 2018 and has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. We sat down with Mur Lafferty for a quick chat about Solo: A Star Wars Story, what it was like writing a film novelization, and the not-so-complex motivations of Han Solo.     Keith Rice: Okay, so Solo: A Star Wars Story, was that your first novelization of a film? Mur Lafferty:  Yes, yes it was. KR: What was the process like? ML:  Well I was flown out to San Francisco to Lucasfilm, I had basically the day with the script and then I went home and started writing.  I came up with a couple of additional scene ideas, and those had to be cleared through Lucasfilm. There was a delay on the deadline of the book which was great for me because I got to see the movie and was able to then tweak whatever I had gotten maybe a little wrong, which helped, because there were a couple of things I’d read in the script that I couldn’t quite picture. It was pretty amazing. KR: Can you talk a little bit about some of the new content you explored? ML:  (SPOILER ALERT – Skip this section if you haven’t seen “Solo”) The movie starts out with Han Solo running away from a deal gone bad.  So, I decided I wanted to write that deal.  Backup, say, fifteen minutes, and that’s when the story starts.  We see Han Solo trying to cheat the people he’s selling the coaxium to so he can steal some of it for himself.  Of course that goes very poorly and then he steals the speeder. I also expanded the scene of him at the academy, working with the Navy.  And probably my favorite scene that I added was L3 merging with the Millennium Falcon from her point of view.  Finally, I threw in this crazy idea to put an epilogue in there about what happened to all the coaxium they stole, where Enfys Nest took it, and Lucasfilm actually approved it, which shocked me to my core! I’m like, okay.  I asked for all of this, all the toys in the world, and they delivered. KR: So, you added canon, basically. That’s amazing. ML:  Yeah, so I got to write the epilogue with Saw Gerrera and Jyn and Enfys Nest. KR: What I does it feel like taking on an iconic characters like Hans Solo? ML:  It was intimidating, but he’s –  I mean, let’s be honest, he’s not a complicated character as an adult, and so he’s not a complicated character as a young man.  He’s, you know… “I’m gonna try to ride my bike down this hill, okay the brakes failed, so lets make the best of it, and turn when we need to turn and okay, we’re going faster now, I just want to try not to crash.”  I mean, that’s pretty much how he approached everything in his life.  And so, just making that a little more naive and a little bit more willing—and removing some of the bitterness of his adult life—that’s how I wrote it. KR: How do you find a balance between your podcasting and your writing? ML:  I usually do not podcast as much as I intend to. So, writing is the priority.  And luckily because the shows are about writing, my listeners understand.  Because when I tell them I actually have a book due and podcasts aren’t going to be coming as often, they understand because they’re writers, or they want to be.  Honestly, podcasting doesn’t take that much time.  It’s all the other things, procrastination, or the things that demand you time from home, or deciding that ten minor emails are more important that your daily writing or something. That’s what I struggle with.  It’s not a time thing, it’s a priorities thing. If I can dedicate an hour or two hours a week to podcasting I’d be fine. It’s just finding those two hours among the maelstrom of procrastination and stuff that is my constant struggle. KR: If you could take on another Star Wars character, who would you want to write? ML:  Completely different from Solo?  Gosh, so many. KR: Who’s your top three? ML:  I really want to write some young Finn stories.  I want to know, I mean, something had to happen in his youth that gave that spark of, “I got to get out of here,” kind of thing.  Gosh, I don’t know.  Everyone I think of has already been done by very good authors, and, you know, Leia’s one of my favorite characters of all time but there’s been a lot of stuff told about her. KR: Yeah. ML:  I guess I’m just going towards the newer ones.  I have to say, Enfys Nest, I love her. I think that there are so many stories you can tell about her.  And I think are a lot of stories you could tell about Qi’ra, after she went to take on the Crimson Dawn.  I think a lot of people – I’m going on a tangent here – I think a lot of people were very confused by Qi’ra’s actions. I heard somebody say she was betraying Han.  And I didn’t see that at all. She never ever, ever, said she would go with him.  She never promised anything.  He just assumed and went off on his own little fantasy world. But I would love to follow her and see a little bit more of her reasoning behind things. I guess my top three would be Enfys Nest, Qi’ra and Finn. KR:  What’s your current favorite podcast? ML:  I’m not listening to podcasts right now. I feel awful, I feel awful. KR:  No, don’t. ML:  There’s so many amazing podcasts I hear about now, but I usually use my audio time to listen to books. KR:  How about this.  If you had to pick a podcast to introduce someone to podcasts, what would you recommend?  ML:  Let’s see.  A friend of mine, Rob Walsh, who now works at Libsyn, Liberated Syndication, one of the first podcast hosts, he did a podcasts called podCast 411, where he’d talk about all the news in podcasting.  And that was pretty cool to watch.  For children’s podcasting one of the first people who did that was Grant Baciocco, was Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd.  He took, just, a very small scripted radio show-type format and made it for kids.  It was very funny and really clever.  Gosh, and you know for fiction, Scott Sigler I believe is still doing a lot of fiction and a lot of keeping up with everything.  He’s putting out a lot of content as well as his books. Check out Mur Lafferty’s Solo!  Keith Rice is a West Virginia native and a freelance writer residing in Philadelphia with his lovely, if oft exasperated wife and three cats. Keith fosters an enthusiastic appreciation for beer and scotch, collects comics, and most importantly is an avid reader and movie lover. Oh, he’s a pretty big fan of sci-fi and fantasy as well. Drop him a line @Keith_Rice1.