Interview With Wesley Chu

Wes Chu's novel, The Lives of Tao, has been one of my favorite debuts of the year. Chu delivers a thrilling concoction of science fiction, spy thriller, and buddy comedy that is sure to connect with readers across multiple genres. Wes was kind enough to agree to an interview and answered questions about Lives of Tao, the upcoming sequel and his experiences as a debut author. I hope you find his answers as enjoyable as I did. Wes was a pleasure to work with and I am certain he will have a long and fruitful career if his first novel is any indication. So with great pleasure, I give you Wes Chu.

 

52 Reviews: Though I’m sure you’ve answered this question in countless interviews, can you tell us a little about the genesis of The Lives of Tao? And how did it change from inception to final product?

Wesley Chu: The Lives of Tao started off as an alternate history book that not so much changed history, but changed the reasoning behind why things happened in our past. I always found the why of something happening much more interesting than the how. Having the Quasing war allowed me to create an entirely new narrative.

While world building though, I made a few interesting rules that changed the story.

1.     I decided that the Quasings inhabiting the hosts couldn’t control them. They could only speak with them.

2.     The Quasing couldn’t leave the host until the host died.

Suddenly, the story became less about the aliens changing the world (though still a great backdrop to the story) and more about two personalities stuck with each other trying to make things work out (and not get killed in the process). Suddenly, the relationship that grew between Roen and Tao became the most interesting part of the story.

52 Reviews: I like to think of The Lives of Tao as a genre bender, mashing up science fiction tropes with those of spy thrillers. Chuck crossed with Invasion of the Body Snatchers, if you will. Was the decision to cross genre lines your intention from the very beginning or was it something that developed naturally over the course of writing the novel?

Wesley Chu: It definitely was a natural progression as I fleshed out the characters and plot. I really didn’t think about genres that much. I knew having aliens automatically put it in the Sci-Fi category, so I just shrugged and went with it. The Lives of Tao has been called urban fantasy, a comedy, and a science thriller. My agent has even categorized me as a romance (bromance) writer. I’m all right with all those classifications.

52 Reviews: Your choice of protagonist is an intriguing one. Roen Tan seems to be emblematic of a generation of adults who work soul crushing jobs, not because there are no other options but because they lack the ability to take a risk to change their lives into something different and more fulfilling. Was this an attempt at social commentary, a reflection on your own personal journey, or simply a gold mine for humor?

Wesley Chu: Yeesh. I’ll take all of the above. I admit to be a closet political activist who doesn’t have the balls to actually run for office or try to make a difference. Let’s face it, there are only so many fights one can get involved in on the Huffington Post comment boards before one want to put a fist through your computer.

As for it being a personal journey, I was talked out of becoming an English major by my English Professor father. He basically told me that if I did follow in his footsteps, my “life will suffer.” I took the practical route and studied computer science, and have been trying to get back on this path ever since. It only took about twenty years, but hell, better late than never. In the end, having the corporate career I had afforded me some luxuries (like being unemployed) that I probably would have struggled with if I tried to become a novelist straight out of college.

52 Reviews: One of the things I liked best about The Lives of Tao was the banter between Roen and just about every supporting character in the book. Humor is notoriously difficult for many writers, what advice would you offer to those that struggle with this aspect of fiction?

Wesley Chu: Writing’s not exactly the most social endeavor. Novelists spend their days mostly alone sitting in front of a computer. If it wasn’t for my dog, Eva Da Terrordale, my ass would never see the sun. Humor is one of the most difficult human interactions to nail in a book. I believe that’s why it is underrepresented in SFF.

To do humor well requires a lot of practice socializing with others. Talk to people. Hang out with different sorts of folks. Be stupid and have no shame. Humor is all about timing, and to get a good grasp of that timing, you have to hang out with a lot of people. For me, a lot of the responses Roen had in the book are how I would have reacted honestly with my friends. Yes, I lead a pretty stupid life sometimes.

52 Reviews: Was your decision to turn one of the supporting cast members into a Prophus bearing agent at the conclusion an attempt to demonstrate the hero’s journey from a very different point of view in the sequel, or do you have more sinister plans in mind?

Wesley Chu: What happened at the end of Lives was a setup for the second book. The focus in Deaths will be a little different from Lives. Lives was all about coming-of-age. Deaths will be about consequences.

Let’s just say the complexity of the story is tripled in the sequel. And yes, things do get more sinister, but not the way you think. Let’s just say their five hundred plus year old war might finally be coming to the end. For everyone.

52 Reviews: What can you tell us about the sequel to The Lives of Tao that is dropping later this year? Are there plans for even more novels featuring Roen, Tao and Company?

Wesley Chu: I can tell you The Deaths of Tao is dropping Oct 29, 2013. The ante’s been upped. The new villain, Enzo, is nuttier than Sean and even more deadly. Jill gets more involved in the story and she’s not quite as nice as she was in Lives. That’s all I can say.

As for the third book, that’ll depend on the hive mind and the readers. So, let’s make it happen!

52 Reviews: What is the biggest lesson you learned with Lives? How did it impact the writing of Deaths? And did Deaths teach you something new?

Wesley Chu: The biggest lesson I learned from writing Lives was that there’s a life outside of writing. When I began to write, I quit martial arts, stopped hanging out with friends, and essentially became a hermit. Seasons passed, friends got married and had kids, Duke Nukem actually came out, and people actually paid to become virtual farmers! Uh…wut? So yeah, have a life outside of writing.

I carried that lesson over to Deaths by getting a dog and trying to actually see my friends once in a while, though all I did when I saw them was answer the question, “dude, what happened to you the past five years?”

52 Reviews: The Lives of Tao appears to be widely well received, what has been the most surprising and rewarding aspects of your time as a debut novelist?

Wesley Chu: What I enjoyed the most about the entire experience was meeting and hanging out with all these other writers. Like I said earlier, writing is a pretty damn lonely career. I spent the better part of a decade wandering from café to café in Chicago. I was like a transient tourist going from coffee shop to coffee shop.

Once I went to my first convention and met all these great people that loved books as much as I did and understood me, I was hooked. Or as I often like to say, I felt like a hobbit returning back to the shire.

52 Reviews: The use of the Prophus to tie the events of real world history into the narrative world of the novel was one of my favorite aspects of the book? Is there a chance that we might see a more detailed account of the Prophus and Genjix in a historical setting? 

Wesley Chu: I originally had a completely separate plot line with Tao in the historical settings. My editor felt that the second plot slowed the story a bit too much and asked to reduce them to the historicals at the beginning of every chapter. Not gonna lie; cutting out the 20k+ worth of words hurt, but the robot masterminds were wise. It did speed up the story.

I do plan to release the full historical chapters as either short stories or on my website sometime in the future. Stay tuned.

Interview with M.L. Brennan: Iron Night and Beyond

M.L. Brennan is fast becoming one my favorite interview subjects. Her approach to world building and character is always fascinating and she has a way of explaining concepts that boils things down so well, I always find myself amazed that I didn't see it for myself. On top of all of that she's a class act. a laugh riot, and a real pleasure to work with. With an author some compulsively likable, it's no wonder that her American Vampire series has become one of my favorite new series. In our interview we touch on vampire family dynamics, the mating habits of elves, Vampire Batman and meerkats. I hope you enjoy the conversation half as much as I did. 

Interview with Myke Cole

I've been meaning to interview Myke Cole for a long time. I've been fortunate enough to have him write a guest post during my Spec. Fic 101 series and he took part in an excellent round table that just never managed to find its way to completion, so I was pleased that he agreed to be interviewed about his newest release Breach Zone. We ran the gamut from questions about his process, the genesis of his excellent series, talent versus doing the work, and influences as wide as comics, history and film, This interview turned out to be one my favorites and Myke brings his usual brand of plain talk and straight answers to the table. If you haven't read his work, I can't recommend it highly enough. If you have, then I hope that this interview will shed some light on the story behind the story and the man behind the Britton, Bookbinder, Harlequin, and Scylla.

Interview with Will McIntosh

I loved Will McIntosh's science fiction take on the romantic comedy, Love Minus Eighty and Will was kind enough to take the time to do an interview. We discussed everything from the genesis of this fantastic novel, to world building, internet dating and upcoming projects. It was very enlightening to get a look into the writing process behind one of the best novels I've read this year. Rather than waste time with a lengthy preamble, I'll just get one with the main attraction. I hope you all enjoy our conversation as much as I did.


52 Reviews: Tell us about your process for beginning Love Minus Eighty? I'm aware that you wrote a short story that touches on the Bridecicle program. How did the reception of that story influence the eventual novel and how did your take on the longer work change with more space to tell a more involved tale?

Interview with Tad Williams

Tad Williams was the first professional to ever ask me if I'd like a review copy. I was hardly getting started, and was astonished when I received Tad's message. That book was The Dirty Streets of Heaven. I was too green and intimidated to ask for an interview that time around, but after reviewing Happy Hour in Hell, I found I had a lot to say about some of the criticism I read. So I thought, I'd ask for an interview and ask Tad about some of those topics. I was ecstatic when he agreed and then intimidated as I wrote the questions. I've done plenty of interviews, but this one was the first with an author I read as a teenager. Just another awesome perk of screaming my opinions into space. Tad was gracious enough to answer my sometimes rambling questions and I hope you enjoy the results. 

Interview with M.L. Brennan

After my review of M.L. Brennan's Generation V, I was fortunate to enough to be granted an interview. The result is a fascinating look at the process of writing a vampire novel that doesn't sparkle, but shines with originality in a sub-genre that is all too rife with cliche. I found Brennan's answers to be surprising forthright and often out and out surprising. Hopefully you'll find them as enlightening as I did. 

52 Reviews: Tell us a little about the genesis of Generation V? Did the story idea come to you fully formed, or did it change significantly over time?

M.L. Brennan: This was definitely a story that developed. I began by thinking about vampires -- now, I really like vampires in fantasy, but when you look at them from the perspective of how they would fit into a real world ecosystem, they would be more devastating than rabbits in Australia. They live forever, they don't age, they can make more vampires with just a few drops of blood -- it's a population nightmare waiting to happen. So I was thinking about how I would adjust vampires to make them make sense -- how would they work? How would the population maintain a balance with their food supply (that is, humans)? I decided that my vampires would need to be born rather than turned, which meant that they needed to be a species, and that made me think about what a vampire family would be like.

Interview with Jay Posey

Jay Posey's debut novel, Three, was a pleasant surprise for me as a reader. I was surprised by how what appeared to be a by-the-numbers tale transformed into a compelling meditation on self isolation and the bonding of a surrogate father and a troubled child. Posey's approach to world building was refreshingly minimal and his bleak prose reminded me of Cormac McCarthy. With that said, I approached this interview with far more relish than I had originally expected when I agreed to do so before reading the novel. There were a few hiccups in getting the interview in (though not due to any lack of response of Jay's) and given the rapid turn around from Jay, I can't say I am anything but impressed with the answers. I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I did. 

52 Reviews: What can you tell us about the genesis of Three? Did the idea come to you fully formed or was there a germinating process? How different is the finished product from what you initially envisioned?

Jay Posey: I had the seed of the idea for a good couple of years before I ever found the setting that I was happy with for the story.  But once I found the world for it, I think that had inevitable impact on how the story itself developed.  I knew I wanted to explore a story about surrogate fatherhood, but when I wrote that first scene that introduced Cass, she instantly became a crucial third piece to the story puzzle.  In the very earliest days of conception, I’d actually expected Cass to die in that opening scene, leaving Three with Wren.  But she had other ideas, and I’m really glad she did.

It’s kind of strange, because in some ways Three is exactly the story I wanted to tell.  I was really pleased with the characters and the relationships that developed over the course of the book.  But there are plenty of things that surprised me about how it turned out.  Some of the settings felt a lot more like I was discovering them than creating them, like Greenstone and the Strand, and several of the characters had much deeper histories than I was expecting, like jCharles and Mol, or Dagon.  So from that standpoint, I think the world turned out to be much larger and deeper than I had anticipated when I started out.

52 Reviews: I see from you author bio that you have worked extensively in the video game industry. How has that professional experience deepened your understanding of story mechanics, and was it difficult to make the leap into prose? 

Jay Posey: Working in games has definitely forced me to work very hard at understanding the fundamentals of storytelling.  In a lot of ways, storytelling in games is almost fractal … you can have a story line that you expect players to take 12 hours to get through, but then that story can be broken down into, say, four hour arcs, which can each be broken into one hour missions, each broken into fifteen-minute segments, each broken into five-minute game play loops.  Working to understand story beats and how to play with pacing, and trying to deliver satisfying beginning-middle-end experiences repeatedly gave me a lot of practice with the fundamentals.

It actually wasn’t too tough to transfer those skills over to the prose world.  There’s a ton of writing for games that doesn’t ever actually show up in the finished product … documents about character backgrounds or world events, for example.  When you’re creating a video game world, you’re often working with a lot of other creative individuals who want to understand, say, the political motivations and level of professional training of the enemies you face, so you end up writing a lot of that background material that influences the game without necessarily ever showing up where a player can see it.

I think in a lot of ways, it was really freeing to write a novel, since I had a lot more control over the story and world than I do in my day job.

52 Reviews: One of the hallmarks of speculative fiction is world building, and authors often spend copious amounts of time detailing all of the things that make their settings different from the real world. In Three you use a very sparse almost minimalist approach to world building, providing very little detail about how the world came to be in its current state. What led you to this decision and should readers expect more of the same in future volumes?

Jay Posey: There were a couple of reasons for that.  The biggest reason was because I really wanted to keep the story small and focused on the characters.  I knew the story I wanted to tell, and I tried to give people all the information they needed to understand that story without getting bogged down in trying to explain the state of the world. 

On another level, though, I genuinely wasn’t sure how much people were going to be interested in the world itself, and I didn’t want to give people a huge info dump about things they might not care about at all.  Moving forward through the series, I’ll definitely be answering more questions about the world, though I suspect there’s a good chance I’ll leave a few gaps for readers to answer for themselves.

52 Reviews: One of the larger themes of the novel seems to be the loss of humanity through isolation. Three begins to see himself in a completely light once he allows himself to be drawn into the problems of Cass and Wren. What in your own experience contributed to the overall character arc of your protagonist?

Jay Posey: I think a lot of this came out of my own personal journey.  I’m highly introverted by nature, and I was very much a nerd growing up (and continue to be), so I think I got used to feeling out of place.  There have been times in my life where I just found it a lot easier to do my best not to get noticed, and to try to do everything on my own so I didn’t have to rely on others.  I think there’s a natural tendency for all of us to do that at some point, particularly after we’ve been hurt by someone we trusted.  There’s a temptation there to withdraw and try to avoid letting anyone get too close.

When I became a father, though, I think it helped me realize how important it is to stay connected, how much we really need other people to help us be our best, and how to try to operate beyond ourselves.  My children have taught me a lot about myself, and I think have really brought me a lot of healing over some things I’d come to believe about myself.

  

52 Reviews: Another aspect of Three that I found fascinating was your use of technology in such a way that it was less of an outside force and more of an internal part of everyone's make up. The fact that your protagonist's lack of this bio-tech was what made him such an effective hero, seems to be a veiled statement about our growing dependence on gizmos and gadgets. Was that an intentional statement or something that grew organically in the telling of the tale? 

Jay Posey: It was an intentional decision once I’d settled on the setting I wanted to use for the story, but it’s really an essential part of the character.  It’s not really an attempt at an anti-tech morality tale or anything, because I love technology and think there’s a lot of awesome stuff going on out in the world.  But I definitely think a lot about the implications of how much we’ve let technology into our everyday lives, and how that can be potentially used against us.  It really had more to do with the nature of the character though, about how Three built his entire life around this idea of being entirely untraceable.

But I might have a little bit of the tinfoil hat thing going on.  I like to think I have a healthy skepticism, but I’m sure all paranoids think that about themselves. 

52 Reviews: I was really impressed by your handling of Wren. Writing children is incredibly difficult and few author's show the level of authenticity in their portrayal of the very young that I found in your handling of Wren. What was your approach to this very crucial character? What challenges and rewards did you experience in writing a character of such a tender age?

Jay Posey: Wren was really tough for me, though it probably helps that I have children around his age.  I think writing him came from a combination of observing my own children, and reflecting on the memories I had of my own childhood.  There were some moments that I was able to draw on myself, like when your parents are trying to pretend like everything’s fine, but there’s clearly something wrong … and sometimes knowing your parents aren’t telling you everything is scarier in its own way than whatever the something wrong might be. 

I think too I tried to keep in mind that kids are usually a lot more aware of what’s going on than we as adults tend to give them credit for, and so I tried to make sure I treated Wren with respect.  I think the biggest reward was getting to the end of the book and feeling pretty content with the way he’s portrayed and the way his relationship develops with Three.

  

52 Reviews: I found the descriptive passages in Three to be full of an elegant bleakness. While you certainly gave enough information for readers to get the gist of the setting, I found my own internal imaginings taking up the space between the sparse details you provided. How important do you think the symbiosis between the reader and the work is to making novels of this style successful?

Jay Posey: I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear you say that.  I think it’s absolutely critical that readers are able to fill in those gaps in ways they find satisfying.  It can be scary as a writer to think someone might be picturing a scene differently than the way you do, but I think it can be a more fulfilling experience for the reader when they can contribute to their own experience that way.

I think that’s one thing that working in games has taught me.  Working in video games, you’re so often surrounded by incredibly gifted creative individuals, and I’ve had numerous experiences where I’ve written a scene, or a character, or whatever, and then handed it off to a concept artist, and what they’ve come back with is not at all what I was imagining, but it’s about ten thousand times better, and I find that once I’ve seen it, I can’t imagine it being any other way. 

It really helped me realize that I as a writer don’t have to make sure you as a reader are seeing the exact same picture that I’m seeing, as long as the essentials are there.  And I think that personalization for the reader is incredibly powerful.  It’s one of the reasons I try to avoid answering the question of who I would cast for Three in a movie … I know what he looks like to me, but I don’t want to rob anyone else of what they think he looks like.

52 Reviews: I found the action sequences in three, particularly when the protagonists battle wave after wave of the Weir, to have very much the feel of video game action sequences. Was the cinematic aspect of writing for a visual medium such as video games instrumental in helping you learn how to construct such compelling cinematic set pieces?

Jay Posey: Definitely.  I also have some experience with screenwriting, so having written for primarily visual media has had a profound impact on how I approach prose writing.  I don’t think I was necessarily picturing a gameplay moment, but I undoubtedly was reaching back to that writing experience to find my way in those scenes.

 52 Reviews: I found your decision to leave so many questions unanswered throughout the narrative to be a interesting choice. Was it nerve wracking to know that you may have unintentionally alienated some of your potential audience by taking a 'more questions than answers approach'? 

Jay Posey: I honestly didn’t give it a whole lot of thought while I was writing the novel, though that might be because I wasn’t sure anyone else would ever read it.  I knew the story I wanted to tell, and I wanted to keep it as streamlined as I could.  A lot of the people who read the early manuscript commented on how much more they wanted to know about the world, but they also tended to agree that they didn’t necessarily need to know those answers to be able to enjoy the story, which made me feel like I’d hit my target on that.

Of course, I definitely didn’t have any desire or intention to frustrate anyone, and I really want everyone to like everything I do, so I always feel sad inside whenever I see someone commenting on how they were upset by how little the book explains.  But ultimately, I feel comfortable with where the novel is.  I think I would’ve been sadder if I had added in a bunch of backstory and heard people say I over-explained and the world is boring and dumb.  At least now if people say it’s boring and dumb I can say it’s because they didn’t imagine it better.

  

52 Reviews: What can we expect from the coming sequel to your excellent debut? What lessons did you learn from writing Three that helped in the process of crafting the next volume, and has the sequel provided even more education for the what comes next? 

JP: Well, without giving too much away, I’ll say the sequel continues the story of a few returning characters and builds on the events of Three, while also introducing several new characters.  I’m hoping to give readers more of a look at the world, and I’m really trying to give each book in the series its own personality, without straying too far from what people might come to expect.  I’m not sure if that’s actually a useful answer or not.

Honestly, Book Two has been much more painful than I was expecting.  I thought having written Book One that I was an Old Pro now and that I’d be able to sit down and knock out Book Two at a leisurely pace while sipping sweet tea.  But I think each book is probably its own beast that needs to be slain in its own special way, once you discern its predictable pattern and find its weak point.  That might be my background in video games talking though. 

I think the biggest takeaway from Book One has been that I can in fact actually finish a long form novel and not expire in the process.  And also that I can trust my creativity to see me through to the end, even if sometimes it seems like I’ve written myself into a corner.  As much trouble as Book Two has given me at times, it’s definitely unfolded some moments that will contribute to future endeavors, so I’m grateful for the adventure, even if some of it has seemed occasionally unpleasant.

Each stop on this Blog Tour of Three by Jay Posey has a unique question.  Be sure to enter your answers into the giveaway by dropping by My Shelf Confessions  and enter your answers in the rafflecopter widget! You can answer as many or as few as you like as each answered question gets you an extra entry!

Here's the questions for my stop: Question #6 - In what kind of world setting does Three take place?"

Interview with Zachary Jernigan

I have a confession to make. For such a small novel (less than 300 pages), No Return was an absolute chore to read. It wasn't that I didn't identify with the characters, the setting, or the plot. But at points I felt that I needed to force myself to turn just one more page, for reasons that I couldn't articulate. But if I could slog through the utter dreck and blatant cultural appropriation of Stormdancer, I felt that I owed Jernigan my attention through the end of the novel, so I soldiered on. Somewhere in the last third of the novel, things got easier and the pages turned quicker, though not at my usual rapid pace. But I started enjoying it more and more. Then I wrote my review and realized that I liked No Return a lot more than I'd realized. Then I did this interview and realized the reason I'd plodded through the earlier sections of the novel. I was absorbing the dense philosophical questions peppered throughout the novel. I can honestly say it has been a rare book that's made me think this much. As a result, this interview is my absolute favorite of the ones I have been privileged to take part in. Enjoy.

52 Reviews: No Return is a complex mash up of sci fi and fantasy elements with gods, ghosts, monks, space faring mages, clockwork men, and more. Was this smorgasbord intentional or did certain elements just fall into place during the writing process? If so, can you give me an example? 

Zachary Jernigan: Well, that's a tough question to answer, kind of like when someone asks if you're a pantser or a plotter (to which the answer is "both").

I certainly planned on putting most of those elements in there from the get-go, but a few took me by surprise, which was awesome. Discovering new narrative elements is one the rare joys of writing. (I
do mean rare, by the way. Writing is not a hobby I enjoy, but a sort of activity I feel compelled to do for my health, like exercising – that is, if I exercised…) It’s such a thrill to feel a new idea taking root, growing up from your subconscious.

The first example that comes to mind in this regard is Fyra, Churls’s daughter. I knew that Churls had a daughter –largely because, unrepentant geek that I am, I’d made character profile sheets like I was playing the D&D campaign to end all D&D campaigns – but I hadn’t planned on her having anything to do with the narrative, much less be a ghost who plays a fairly active role. Ultimately, fleshing out her relationship with Churls turned out to be one of the most rewarding things about writing the novel.

52 Reviews: One of the themes of No Return seems to be an escape from poor choices or traumas from the past. Churls, Vedas and to a lesser extent Berun are fleeing something in the past. While I don't think this theme is the most prevalent of the novel, it certainly is universal. Did you intentionally build in this commonality in to the trio to make their eventual bonds more believable? 

Zachary Jernigan: This theme was certainly less planned than the rest of the novel, but in retrospect it was probably inevitable. I'm intimately acquainted with making mistakes (as are we all) and the deleterious effects of feeling too much guilt for having made those mistakes.

A lot of this has to do with my upbringing (again, a universal). My parents converted to Mormonism when I was barely out of diapers (I'll let you guess when that was) and I left the church when I was in my late teens. This indoctrination into a faith for the better part of my developmental years, followed by the rejection of that same faith during a very tumultuous time in my life, set me up in many ways to live a life of feeling conflicted over the past.

Though we are as alike in personality (and appearance) as could be, Vedas is the character in NO RETURN that most closely mirrors this conflicted feeling. I think it's fairly obvious on analysis that he is a stand-in for the author -- though his guilt is more warranted, I'd like to think. Like me, he wants to communicate his feelings and thus exorcise them. He wants to know he is a good person and begin to act
and feel in accordance with his morals.

The companions I created for him, Churls and Manshep, are there in great part to help him come to terms with himself. Of course, they are also characters in their own right -- characters that I, in all honesty, grew to like a great deal more than Vedas -- and therefore have their own concerns, which are often complementary to Vedas. My hope is that their bonds seem more real because of this shared bond between them, but it's unlikely that I was so calculating in my desire. I'm not known for my great forethought.

52 Reviews: One of my favorite aspects of your writing is the dichotomy of how you handle violence and sex. It's rate for me to find myself so simultaneously discomforted and enthralled. What informs your handling of these two topics in such a way that they become almost reflections of each other? 

Zachary Jernigan: Thanks! Being discomforted and enthralled is a good place to be, in a lot of ways. I definitely did shoot for that co-mingling of emotions in NO RETURN, so it's nice to hear when I achieve the effect for a reader. And while I wasn't really aware that I handled the topics of sex and violence in a way that causes them to reflect one another, I'm certainly happy to hear that I did -- though it does cause me to
scramble for an explanation as to how I achieved an effect I just learned about.

Taking a stab at it, I'd say it has something to do with how I (and by extension, the theoretical reader that sits on my shoulder ) respond to such scenes. If written with some energy, depictions of both
violence and sex can make your heart race and your face crease in a wince. Both are visceral, basically, an appeal to the baser of our urges. This isn't to say that they hold any less intellectual value than other scenes or expositions, of course, but at their best they are felt more on a gut level.

I guess that it simply makes sense to me to pair one with the other. While I don't think in very clinical terms while I'm writing, I think a lot of positive effect can be achieved by arranging fiction into "set pieces" that both balance the story and propel it forward. I don't want tame fiction, and thus sex and violence seem like good poles from which to hang a narrative.

Obviously, I can't expect everyone to go along with that ride. For one, I don't kid myself that I'm a good enough writer to convince everyone to go along with my madness. For two, I know that many people
don't want to read so much sex and violence, even if it is written well. And that's cool with me; I know that my book isn't for everyone.

52 Reviews: One cannot talk about the convergence of sex and violence without mentioning the rape scene between Pol and Ebn. I read in another interview that this scene was the bit of the novel that you were most proud. Can you talk a little more about that? Was the choice to have a female character as the aggressor a conscious reversal of expectations? Or a more subtle form of commentary about rape culture perhaps?

Zachary Jernigan: I am very proud of that scene, yes, though I no longer know if it's what I'm proudest of. Time and introspection changes a lot of things, and after a recent conversation with my younger brother I'm seeing other parts of the book in a more favorable light than I once did.

Regardless, the scene you refer to is the one I struggled with the most, and that says something (to me, anyway). Saying it was hard to write is an understatement: my ex-girlfriend claims I was a wreck during the week it took to get it to paper.  I'd never attempted to write a rape scene; I don't like dwelling on such thoughts. (Point in fact, not less than a year before I'd made an argument with a friend of mine as to why rape scenes are never necessary in fiction. A lot can change in a year, I guess.) Even when such content is treated maturely -- or perhaps especially when it's treated maturely -- it proves a trial to even read, much less write.

As to why I wrote it... Well, it'd be rather pompous of me to say it had to be written, wouldn't it? And yet a great many scenes feel that way when I look back on them. Despite being pretty happy with the way her chapters came out, Ebn ultimately morphed into the character I liked least. She's contemptible, dangerous criminal, as her ultimate action proves. I really didn't intend any commentary by having a female rape a man -- horribly, she just seemed like the kind of individual to take advantage of someone that way.

On a broader level, however, I can't deny that putting a rape scene in my book was a calculated move, a response to what I see as a problematic (and rather long-lasting) trend in genre fiction. I don't suppose it's a revelation to anyone to point out how prevalent rape is in a certain variety of fantasy fiction. Many of the scenes in these books are, in my opinion, very lazy character building -- not to mention icky on a variety of levels. I wanted a rape scene that felt natural to the character, a result of forces I'd described affecting her. Also, I wanted it to not be salacious -- I wanted it brutal and uncompromising.

Who knows if I got any of that right? Not me. But I hope I did.

52 Reviews: Brutal and uncompromising are both words I would also use to describe your action sequences, especially the fight scenes. As a martial arts instructor, I had pictures of a fantasy Bloodsport when I read about the tournament that is in many ways the climax of the novel. And, boy was I wrong! The sparse brutality and matter of fact-ness of those scenes impressed me far more than the expected cinematic set-pieces ever could have. What was your process in deciding to fore go the sweeping action for a more somber and stark character driven approach?

Zachary Jernigan: Those words are appreciated: I'm glad that method impressed you more than the expected approach, which I very consciously avoided. I'm tired of the extended fight scene, frankly, for both narrative reasons as well as logistical reasons. Two evenly matched people who are trying to incapacitate (or kill) one another are not interesting in extending the fight. They want it over. I want the reader to feel what an actual combatant in that situation likely feels, not what popular entertainment informs them a combatant feels.

Of course, it may seem funny to talk about realism in a novel like mine, but I sincerely believe that in order for the reader to suspend disbelief enough to buy the overall lie of a wild story (complete with alchemical astronauts and a dude made of brass marbles) they must first be able to believe in the reality for the characters. To extend a fight scene into an unrealistic spectacle makes it more likely that the reader will take other factors less seriously.

A lot of people have responded that they wanted these scenes extended. I understand that -- I anticipated it -- but I couldn't make myself do it. No matter how uppity such a statement sounds, it would be a betrayal of my ethic.

52 Reviews: Based on what I've read in other interviews it's fairly obvious that Vedas serves as a kind of mirror for your own, for lack of a better yet, spiritual journey. Was this aspect of your own life experience intended to be a way to work through that process again in a fictional sandbox or was it designed as a method to share your observations on religion and its overall impact on both the worshiper and on society as a whole?

Zachary Jernigan: His journey does definitely mirror my own, though it's not a one-for-one comparison. I went from being a (rather casual) believer in the religion of my parents to being a (rather outspoken) critic of religion, whereas Vedas is fighting a very specific battle against a world gone mad as a result of knowing that "god" exists. The weird thing is that while I intended his narrative to parallel my own I certainly didn't know how much it would illuminate my own experiences. I've called writing No Return an exorcism of sorts, and it's true: there are many features of my upbringing -- which, lest you think otherwise, was very loving and supportive (my mom's my biggest fan) -- that I hadn't quite internalized until I wrote the book.

What conclusions, in the main, did I draw?

Well, I realized how unhealthy it was for me to focus so much on physical perfection and immortality. I'm not close to perfect in any of the metrics that one might use to judge perfection, and I'm sure as hell not going to live forever, yet for years I've fantasized about an undying body. If you know anything of Mormon theology, it's not difficult to understand where this obsession with becoming a godlike creature comes from. Though Vedas symbolizes this a bit -- specifically where he worries over the loss of his muscle mass on the long road from Golna to Danoor -- it is the god Adrash that really allowed me to explore the theme.

Second, I realized how much anger I felt at the abuse of power that occurs in religious institutions, at how often those in leadership positions (which can often simply be the heads of families) bend people toward violence and intolerance. This is no news to anyone, of course, but writing the novel helped me understand that it isn't faith itself that really grinds my gears (though faith does indeed bother me); it is the use of myths (or I should say what I consider to be myths) to coerce others away from compassion. 

Vedas's realization is ultimately humanistic, as opposed to a complete indictment of faith.

Now, do I intend for all readers to take this away when they read the book? No, of course not. Hell, I didn't write enough in the book to lead people to those conclusions. At least I hope I didn't. I don't want to write a tract. Though I consider myself to have written Moral Fiction, in that the characters (well, the admirable ones) question their actions and seek to be better people, I'd hate the thought that a religious or spiritual person would think that I'm writing a book to denounce their beliefs.

52 Reviews: It recently struck me that there are perhaps three analogs to "god" in No Return. We have Adrash, the aloof and capricious force of destruction observing from his stellar perch, Berun's creator who exacts a terrible control over his constructed creation, and Fyra, a childish being of unknown power trying her best to do the right thing. It's pretty obvious which god like being most readers would prefer. Was this trinity of "pseudo deities" meant to reflect the many ways we are compelled and controlled by what we choose to believe in?

Zachary Jernigan: Good Lord, you know I never thought of it that way! This is why being interviewed is so cool: I get to see how another person looks at something I did and then evaluate that view for myself. And now that you've pointed it out, there definitely is validity in that interpretation. I did intend for each of those characters -- Adrash, Ortur Omali, and Fyra -- to act as immensely powerful coercive elements (physically, intellectually, and emotionally). They exert their near-inexorable influence, but each can conceivably be defeated. 

They are not, in other words, all-powerful -- as in the Christian or Muslim conceptions of God -- and resemble more the gods of the Indian or Greek pantheon. (Of course, I'm being somewhat liberal with my terms here, especially when referring to the Indian "pantheon," but hopefully the point is clear.) What's odd is that in writing No Return I consciously chose to draw from my religious studies education (I received a BA in the subject in 2005) and my reading of authors like Roger Zelazny and Samuel Delany -- authors who, early in their careers, attempted to expand upon and create their own mythologies by way of fiction -- and yet I don't think I realized until just now how greatly those features influenced me.

This is the way with writing fiction, I've found. There's just as much blindness in what the author does as there is awareness.

As to the whether or not the "trinity of pseudo deities" (a term which I'll steal, thank you very much!) are meant to reflect how we are compelled and controlled by our beliefs... I think it's a fair assumption to say that, yes, they do symbolize that to a extent. Nonetheless, I think it'd be a far more comprehensive statement to say that they reflect how our families exert their influence. Parental figures, in particular, are an unavoidable force of influence -- even when they are wise and loving as my parents were, it can be a struggle to define yourself as an independent being.

52 Reviews: Even with Vedas being an intended analog for the author, and the perhaps unintentional main protagonist, I found myself more drawn to Churls as the more relatable character. I've read that you also found this to be true in the course of writing. What can you tell us about writing compelling and strong female characters, while there is such a ground swell of criticism regarding equal and honest portrayals of women in genre fiction? 

Zachary Jernigan: I'm really glad to hear that, because I'm singularly proud of the way I wrote Churls. I go back and forth in my estimation of my own work, but I rarely feel that positive about any element for long -- that is, except Churls. She's the one constant, and it's validation of a very satisfying kind when I hear that her character struck a positive chord. A great part of the reason for this is the groundswell of criticism you refer to.

It's justified to levy the finger at genre publishing, which I do think remains a Boys' Club in many ways. The reasons for this are many, of course, but I think it's got a lot to do with how quickly the reading demographic has changed. I don't know if you've noticed, but female geeks are now at the forefront of geekdom, asserting themselves and being generally awesome, and that has produced a defensive response from the Old Guard. (The recent SFWA controversy is one of the signs of this.) The Old Guard -- which is not solely represented by Old White Guys (TM), by the way; it is more a mindset led by a demographic -- still exerts a powerful psychic influence on the publishing world.

The result is that it's still very possible to get away with writing Women-By-Numbers. And that has to change. The genre community should become so used to realistic representations of women that they throw down any book that panders to ridiculous and harmfully gendered stereotypes.

For me -- especially me, a Privileged White Dude (TM) through and through -- that means that I can't rest on my laurels. I have to try to do justice to what I observe in life: that women, 90% of the time or more, are indistinguishable from men. They are regular, the complete opposite of abnormal, in no way an OTHER, and should be written from that standpoint. 

I'm not saying, just to be thorough, that there is nothing unique in being female. Churls is a mother, a thing a man cannot by biology (and etymology) be, and I let this fact inform/gender her narrative, because motherhood too is part of life. In most ways, however, I feel like I could have changed her sex or gender-identity after the writing of the novel and still ended up with a believable character.

At least, I hope that's the case.

52 Reviews: Speaking of Privileged White Dudes, I count a supreme lack of them in No Return. Was this a statement you were trying to make, an exercise in writing the other, or sheer random happenstance? Reading an electronic copy of the novel left me with no biographical info, so I just assumed you couldn't possibly be a Privileged White Dude. My surprise upon realizing that you had fooled me so deftly actually added to my esteem for the story. Is simply writing all characters from the standpoint of "they're all just people" really as simple as you made it look? 

Zachary Jernigan: Ha! I take that as a compliment, but no, I'm as privileged as they come. Though my skin tone and features sometimes confuse people (I've been mistaken for Arab on more than a few occasions, and many people just think I'm a confusing mishmash of races), I'm quite white. My family's firmly middle-upper-middle-class. My parents paid for college, and they helped me buy a car when I was sixteen. I'm a born-and-bred US citizen. It doesn't get much more privileged than me.

Of course, my parents were not raised in well-off families -- not by a long shot. When he was a child, for a brief period my father's family lived in a two bedroom house with seventeen people. They picked cotton and took baths in tubs outside. My mother's family was only slightly more privileged. Their humble beginnings, I hope, have informed my own development in positive ways, keeping me from taking everything for granted. I know they made me less materialistic, which in turn informs my fiction.

As for the first question, I am making a statement, sure (BORING RICH PEOPLE ARE BORING AND WE SHOULD STOP WRITING ABOUT THEM SO MUCH or something), but it's got more to do with lack of interest than anything else. I have little desire to write at length about the ultra-privileged. It's depressing to me, and I suppose some of the reason for that is because I've already lived that life. I know the deleterious effect it has on a person's character to be born into such an advantageous situation.

As for the second question -- I do think writing all characters from the standpoint of "they're all just people" is simple. In theory, anyway. The world is so vastly complex, and everything about writing is very hard for me, so it's tough to separate the act of writing from my intent. I do now, at the very least, that attempting to write "as the Other" is likely to blow up in my face. It's got to begin with the realization that most of my concerns are universal, mirrored in others.

Sure, I run the risk of making my characters too white, too bourgeoisie... but I'd rather do that than exotify anyone.

52 Reviews: Now for my last question. It's no secret that your personal stance on religion and spirituality is a negative one. Those views are  easily apparent in the novel, though I never found them on the least bit inflammatory or preachy. However I felt that Fyra's very presence in the story, especially considering her pivotal role, may hint at a deeply buried hope that perhaps there is something larger than us that is there to help rather than influence and coerce. Was that just a bone thrown into the stew for balance or is this nothing more than a subtle coincidence of interpretation?

Zachary Jernigan: Wow. Not to be a public kiss up, but that's a brilliant question. I've noticed my answers have gotten longer over time, and this one will likely be the lengthiest one.

I'm glad you found those views to not be inflammatory or preachy. I didn't intend the book as a denouncement of religion, but given my anti-religious stance (which I should clarify is not an anti-religious people stance; I am a humanist and thus value all people in their expressions of rationality and compassion) I can understand how it may read as one. I can only control my intentions, not the way it actually reads to the majority of readers.

Fyra may indeed represent -- in fact, I can go so far as to say she very probably does represent -- a hope that there is a helping hand out there. I won't deny, to anyone, that I'm hoping for a continuation of this life. I can't do as Richard Dawkins advises and be "thankful that I have a life, and forsake my vain and presumptuous desire for a second one." It may be the thing that keeps me from being an unqualified atheist (I self-identify as an agnostic atheist, in order to reflect my refusal to state my beliefs as fact), but it is what it is: I want there to be a benevolent presence.

Do I believe it likely that there is a benevolent presence watching over us? No, not by a long shot. But I love my family. I love life, despite years of experiencing my own OCD-related depression. I want all of our lives -- everyone's, even the evil folks' -- to go on and on and on, so that we may continue progressing as individuals. So that we can be a species in ever greater communion.

And so... Fyra. Yes. The more I write about it, the surer I am that you've struck gold on this one, Matt. She is an ambassador of the dead, who in the world of my novel live on after life. She fights her own people (the dead) in order to talk to her mother, to continue having that link to the physical world -- to experience love. There is a message in this, if only for me. There is a knowledge that love dies that I must overcome -- it is an awareness I can't escape, and so I write about it. 

I remember having a nightmare, many years ago, in which I died saving my little brother. I returned to my family and tried in vain to talk to them. I watched them crying over my death, and I was unable to do anything. I think, in the midst of that dream, I felt more sadness than I've ever experienced. I can't cope with thoughts such as those, of making my family sad, and so I want to live forever, in order to keep expressing my love and support. They need me, just like I need them.

Fyra, like every other character in the novel, is me. ... Gooodness, I hope that statement makes sense to whoever's reading this. Sometimes my own thoughts on what motivates me are unformed until I express them.

Anyway, thank you immensely for the opportunity to answer these questions, Matt! I hope you enjoyed this interaction as much as I did.

***

To conclude, I'd like to thank Zach for doing this interview. He was an absolute joy to correspond with and I look forward to following his career in the future and I'm fairly certain you'll see him at 52 Reviews in the future. If you haven't read No Return yet, do yourself a favor and do so. You won't be disappointed.

Interview with Chuck Wendig

Chuck Wendig is a new discovery for me. I planted my flag in his upcoming novel The Blue Blazes not too long ago. Long story short, I loved it and I immediately went looking for more of Chuck's particular brand of word salad. I found his blog, the excellent Terrible Minds, followed him on Twitter, and picked up another of his novels for my "to read" pile. Then I asked him to answer a few questions for me. Those questions are below, I hope you enjoy the answers.

52 Reviews: Robert Jackson Bennett talks a lot about the Big Ideas that drive his stories. What central theme or idea is at the heart of The Blue Blazes, and was this something that informed the writing from the beginning of your writing process, or did it develop more organically?

Wendig: I like to think that at the heart of many of my tales is family. What family means. How a family is ruined, and how it puts itself back together. The Blue Blazes, like with many of my stories, features a truly fucked up family: Mookie Pearl and his estranged daughter, Nora, who just so happens to be trying to steal a slice of his criminal operations right out from under his nose.

Family is fascinating. We all have it. And each of our version is a thing that is often equal parts love and dysfunction, and so I think one of the powers of fiction is to stick a thumb into that particular sponge-cake and see how it feels.

52 Reviews: I would agree that my favorite part of The Blue Blazes is the family drama between Mookie and Nora. What I found equally fascinating was the way you interposed the wholly non-existent character of Mookie's ex-wife into the tableau. While we know next to nothing about her role in the relationship between these two principals, she still manages to exert an almost tidal pull on them both. Mookie's arc with the ghost of his marriage is much more visible, but the reader can't help but wonder how she may have shaped Nora's character and choices. Was it your intention from the start to create this Unholy Trinity of Father, Daughter and Holy Ghost?

Wendig: Not an intention in the religious sense, but in a lot of my books you'll find that one parent is distant or estranged somehow -- Miriam Black's mother has been off the radar for years, her father long gone. Atlanta Burns is without a father. In my upcoming YA book, Under the Empyrean Sky, Cael McAvoy has both parents, but his mother is sick and bedridden with tumors. And here in The Blue Blazes we have the absent father -- Mookie Pearl -- actually being the protagonist of the book, and Nora, the poor daughter, becomes (in part) the antagonist. The disturbed, imperfect trinity is key, I think.

52 Reviews: Wendig does YA. I can't decide if I shudder with fear or quiver with excitement at that prospect. As someone who has only recently started reading your work, which of your other works would you recommend to someone who enjoyed The Blue Blazes and why? And just to get this out of the way early, are there plans for more novels featuring Mookie and Company?

Wendig: I'd like to think that anybody who likes The Blue Blazes will like anything I do because I try to inform all the work with my voice and whatever motifs and themes that obsess me and ALSO BECAUSE I HAVE THIS GUN POINTED AT THIS PONY.

But, really, if folks are looking for a next place to jump from The Blue Blazes, they might want to check out Blackbirds and Mockingbird, the first two Miriam Black books. Also by Angry Robot.

As to whether or not there will be more TBB -- well, hopefully. I have two more books planned to make it a trilogy. If Angry Robot says they want more, then the world gets more. If not -- well, maybe I'll still write them some day.

52 Reviews: As an author who has a very distinct voice, what would you recommend to aspiring writers who are struggling to find their own voice? Are there specific exercises you used or was your experience more organic?

Wendig: Here's how this works, I think:

Every author decides to go on a grand adventure one day, and that grand adventure is to find her voice. She leaves the comfort of her own wordsmithy and she traipses through many fictional worlds written by many writers and along the way she pokes through their writings to see if her voice is in there somewhere. She takes what she reads and she mimics their voices, taking little pieces of other authors with her in her mind and on the page.

Is her voice cynical? Optimistic? Short and curt, or long and breezy? She doesn't know and so she reads and she writes and she lives life in an effort to find out.

This adventure takes as long as it takes, but one day the author tires of it and she comes home, empty-handed, still uncertain what her voice looks like or sounds like.

And there, at home, she discovers her voice is waiting. In fact, it's been there all along.

Your voice is how you write when you're not trying to find your voice. Your voice is the way you write, the way you talk. Your voice is who you are, what you believe, what themes you knowingly and unknowingly embrace. Your voice is you. Search for it and you won't find it. Stop looking and it'll find you.

So, no exercises really teach you voice, I don't think, save perhaps for the exercise of simply writing.

52 Reviews: Speaking of 'simply writing' do you prescribe to the notion that success as a writer is more a measure of effort and dedication than actual talent? Creativity, in and of itself, seems to be pretty easy to come by while the tenacity to commit to the act of actually creating seems to be much more scarce.


Wendig: Talent is a function of excess desire. You really, really want something bad enough, you tend to manifest a "talent" for it. While I'm sure there's some argument to be made for the expression of genetics, I think mostly it's just -- if you really like architecture and have the desire to create architecture, you're probably going to manifest the "talent" as an architect.

Dedication and effort then turn that desire and talent into craft and creation. At least, in a perfect world

52 Reviews: If I can dig into your writing process a bit, could you tell us a little about the genesis of The Blue Blazes? Did you start with character, plot, or world building? Is your starting point the same for each novel, or does it change from project to project?

Wendig: The genesis for the book is remarkably ludicrous, but perhaps shows how long a story can gestate:

When I was a Wee Tiny Human, somewhere around 8-10 years old, I used to press my thumbs against my eyelids so I could see colors in the dark of my eye. Like, I dunno, elementary school hallucinogens or something. It's like, they tell you not to look at the sun and what do you do, first thing? Go and look at the sun like a dummy. Because all children are stupid.

One time I did it and received the most marvelous colors and then, just after and not coincidentally, I saw a lion in my backyard. I grew up in Pennsylvania so the likelihood of this being a lion -- in this case, a lion reclining as if after a glorious meal -- was nil. And yet it was so crisp, so clear, I was at the time convinced it was real, missing the connection that maybe, just maybe, I'd invoked the lion as a vision by thumbing myself in the eyes like a stupid person.

Years later, that story reoccurred to me as an adult and I thought, there's something there, yeah? Something about the eyes, something about the blue blazes seen behind the dark of the lid, something about how it reveals things you don't want to or don't expect to see.

And even there the story lived with me for the last six, seven years. Slowly growing. There came a point in the last couple years where the most excellent Robin Laws was editing an anthology called The New Hero, Volume One, and he wanted a story of an iconic hero -- iconic meaning a hero that changes the world but is not in turn changed himself. I came up with Mookie Pearl, bad dude with a heart of gold, head-breaker, knee-cracker, goblin-masher, a man with a tricksy daughter, a man with an impeccable taste in charcuterie, a man ultimately alone. From there I envisioned a whole novel with him at its fore -- and so, THE BLUE BLAZES was born.

52 Reviews: With Mookie serving as the rock that all the other players in the novel break themselves against, was it much more important to show character growth in the supporting cast?

Wendig: I'm less concerned with growth and more concerned with depth -- and, to a lesser extent, change. At the bare minimum, supporting characters need to be compelling in their own ways. Supporting characters don't know they're supporting characters. They're the main characters of their own lives.

52 Reviews: One of the things that I noticed in The Blue Blazes was that the end of one of the principle character's arc was heavily foreshadowed and telegraphed without diminishing the reveal at all. How do you strike a balance between revealing too much through foreshadowing and being so vague that most readers miss the anticipation and the payoff?

Wendig: A great deal of writing is drunkenly threading a needle. Thankfully, for during those times you prick your finger like a fool you have power of editing and rewriting to pull back on the obvious and push forward on the all-too-subtle.

Writing is one of the only jobs where you get a nearly endless amount of do-overs and take-backs.

52 Reviews: Editing and rewriting are often the bane of the aspiring author. Some can never seem to finish a project due to the need to get things 'just so', while others are daunted by the task after putting so much on the page. What approach do you take to editing and what advice would you give to those who are facing this issue their own writing?

Wendig: The worst advice is also the most tried and true: just do it.

For those looking for more nuanced advice, I offer that one approaches editing the way one approaches eating an elephant: one bite at a time. Editing a particularly troublesome novel feels dire because it's OH SO MUCH, a big bloated behemoth of problems and errors and plot tangles. But it's like cleaning a messy kitchen: it all starts with one dish. You move one dish, then another, then another, eventually you start to see it get cleaned up.

In terms of editing, I write in the mornings, and edit in the afternoons. That way I can work on two projects separately.

Oh! One more little piece of advice for editing: give yourself as much time away from the thing as possible. The ideal scenario is coming back to it like someone else wrote it. When we edit too soon we're filled with love for things that don't work and hate for things that do. Have to get our head clear and come at it as objectively as possible.

52 Reviews: The Blue Blazes is what I would consider a genre bender of a novel in that it takes elements from more than one genre and performs a sort of mystic authorial origami on it, with the resulting work being more than the sum of its parts. With that in mind, what do you think about the genre system as a whole? Is it an important tool for getting the right books into the hands of the people who are apt to enjoy them, or is it a limiting system of pigeon holing that authors are forced to abide by due to editorial or consumer fiat?

Wendig: The genre system is theoretically useful to the audience -- I mean, hey, if I want an epic fantasy, I can go to that shelf. But it's also hopelessly restrictive and what happens is, some authors get stuck on a given shelf and can never leave. (This is why author "branding" can be dangerous -- let's remember that a brand is the symbol a cattleman burns into the hide of his steers to signify ownership.)

Authors of my age, I think, were raised on a steady diet of pop culture from across a variety of genres -- my mother will read anything with the words "Robert" and "Ludlum" on it, but people my age often read widely beyond a single genre. And that shows in our writing, too -- we blend and mix and mash it all up in some new pulp slurry.

I suspect that one possible future is that authors become their own genres. Hell, Stephen King is his own genre. He's not a horror writer anymore. He's just… Stephen King. Doesn't matter what genre his novels are, his voice, his style, they're his own.

52 Reviews: For my last question, I'd like to try something I started in my last interview. Let's call it a Writer's Soapbox. Here's your chance to pontificate on your topic of choice, promote an upcoming project, or give the alchemical formula of Patrick Rothfuss' beard shampoo. The floor is yours, do your worst.

Wendig: *dons self-promotional cap*

*which is actually just a beanie with a propeller on it shut up*

I'm a lucky little writer-monkey because, by some weird confluence of fortune and hard work I have four novels coming out in the next couple months. So, I'm going to gesticulate wildly and froth a little at the mouth and point at those.

Because I'm wearing my beanie, you see.

So, let us begin.

First up: Gods & Monsters: Unclean Spirits. The gods fell to Earth. One man wants revenge on them for taking his family away from him. It involves various divine wangs and vaginas. No, really.

Next: The Blue Blazes. Which we have in part already talked about but hey, I'll entice with: mystical drugs! goblins! roller derby girl gangs! the criminal underworld! the mythic underworld! subterranean zombie town! charcuterie! family betrayal!

Then: Under the Empyrean Sky, which is my young adult novel in a sunny dustbowl cornpunk future where a scrappy scavenger named Cael finds a secret forbidden garden in a world where their floating Empyrean overlords only allow them to grow a bloodthirsty variant of corn. It's got young love and adventure and piss-blizzards and motorvators and an agricultural pro-farmer pro-food message nestled in all the trappings. John Hornor Jacobs called it Of Mice and Men meets Star Wars, which I quite like.

Finally! Beyond Dinocalypse, book two of the Spirit of the Century trilogy. Pulp heroes. Two-fisted jet-pack action. An apocalypse of psychic hive-mind dinosaurs. PROFESSORIAL APES IN KILTS.

*removes beanie*

I feel so dirty.