Book Brouhaha

First, tell us a little about your writing journey. Hello, nice to be here. Thank you for allowing me the space for an interview. My own writing journey began shortly after learning how to write in grade school and watching a lot of 70s television and reading comic books. I created my own SNL skits, fake news, adventures, after discovering an old typewriter of my mother's. From there I studied creative writing as an undergrad and then received an MFA in Fiction from Bowling Green State University. This gave me time to write, and that is key. When working full or part time at a job that pays the bills, writing is given short shrift, but I always tried to make time for it. Usually this meant a lot of 6am wake-up calls before heading to open a bookstore. I worked in three bookstores over the past 30 years, all independent, and becoming an author has always been in my dreams. I believe working behind the scenes of the book business has helped form a stronger mindset going into the bus...

Thanks for agreeing to interview, Daniel. I love your concept! I think people often forget that some of the most memorable short stories are, in fact, children's stories. Why don't you familiarize us a bit with The Kingdom of Patria? Last summer I started a company, Trojan Tub Entertainment, which publishes and promotes my humorous Kingdom of Patria stories for middle grade readers. What is the Kingdom of Patria? Well, you've heard of the U.S. Government's mysterious Area 51? Have you ever wondered about Area 1? For 3,000 years a tiny, unknown kingdom has existed in the remote woods of what we know as northern Indiana. The kingdom was founded by a hearty bandy of refugees from the Trojan War who sailed across the Atlantic in a reconfigured Trojan Horse. Good thing they packed extra sandwiches! In the first book in the Patria series, Stout Hearts & Whizzing Biscuits, Oliver Stoop, age 11, moves with his family to a remote piece of land in the country, and soon...

Welcome to Book Brouhaha! Why don't you start out by introducing yourself and telling us a little about "Wool." Thanks for having me, Alain! I suppose I'm just this normal guy who just wrote a little story called Wool. It's about a group of people who live underground. When their society turns on itself, it threatens all of mankind. In a way, it poses the conundrum of every revolution: How do you destroy an unjust social structure without the collateral damage being worse than the injustices were? I suppose the most interesting thing about me, personally, is that I lived on a sailboat while I was in college. This led to a career as a yacht captain, which sent me all over the Caribbean and the East Coast. I didn't start writing in earnest until my wife dragged me away from the sea and into the mountains. I've always loved the short form. I've been told that it isn't as marketable, even though science fiction has a long and glorious history of c...

First, tell us a little about your writing journey. Would you consider yourself to be a "short story author" rather than a "novelist"? I have three collections of short stories published. Two from Eraserhead Press and one from Spout Press. I have been writing shorts since childhood. In college I had some shorts published, which attracted the attention of my first book publisher. That first book then attracted the attention of my second publisher. I mainly concentrate on short form because that's all I have time for, and it's the easiest for me. Also, to me long work feels bloated with a lot of useless background filler and could use trimming. Short form gets to the point without messing around and wasting time. There's a lot of power concentrated in the short form. Also, I tend to generate a lot of ideas, so short form allows me to implement them with a minimal expenditure of time.  I've been working on longer stories though, expanding my tale...

First, tell us a little about your writing journey. Where to begin? I guess the journey spans many years. From early childhood, we always had books around the house, so I picked up the habit of reading, which I think is critical for anyone going on to write. I read most of the classics, but my first love was the Famous Five Stories. Of course, as you go through life, interests and reading habits change and I gravitated towards the thriller genre. I have always had a fertile imagination as a child and used to love English lessons when we were given short essays to write. I hope my sister doesn’t mind me saying, but when I was thirteen and she was at Grammar school, she couldn’t craft stories to save her life. When she was given homework, I used to make up her stories for her and she would write them out in her own hand to correct the Grammar. As a team, we always achieved top marks. Trust me, that experience taught me the value of editorial input. Even now, I wouldn’t publish anyth...

First, tell us a little about your writing journey. Would you consider yourself to be a "short story author" rather than a "novelist"? Both actually - and an occasional poet, too. I started writing short stories after a few abortive attempts at novels and plays in my teens. However, while all my pals at the university creative writing workshop were writing flash fiction pieces whittled down to the absolute minimum, my stories tended to run several pages. The professor never quite knew what to do with me, especially since I insisted on writing genre, too. Eventually I gravitated towards novelettes and novellas, which - as you know – are next to impossible to sell. Though I still wrote short stories, too, because I had started to sell them. Then I started and finished a novel, took a break from fiction writing to finish my MA degree and started another novel afterwards. However, I found that I missed the change of pace and quicker gratification offered by shor...

How did you become interested in short stories? For me, I wanted to practice writing shorter, self-contained stories, so I looked into and researched the concepts that it takes to write an effective story in so few words. I've since fallen in love with this seemingly 'new' way of thinking when it comes to writing, and I am working on producing my own collection of short stories very soon. I am currently in the process of releasing a novella in the spring 2011, and afterwards, I will look at releasing more shorter, self-contained works. As an author, do you think writing short stories is worthwhile?  Why? Because I'm new to the game, I can't really say that for certain at this time. I think any form of writing can be a worthwhile endeavor if it's done right. Telling a good short story can be just as powerful as telling a good novel-sized story. What I like about shorter stories is that you can produce many of them in a shorter period of time. I think if you h...

How did you become interested in short stories? I became a short-story writer more or less by happenstance, which is how I would guess most people stumble into it. To make a long story short, I spent a summer working on an oil rig, felt very isolated, and began posting on a popular internet forum to unwind. The owner of the forum took notice that people seemed to respond well to my stuff and offered me a chance to post short-stories on a website. Over time, I ended up building a small following. Unfortunately, I found I could no longer continue at that specific venue and left. It was doubly unfortunate because almost no one who read me knew where I'd gone. I did, however, manage to retain a couple hundred core readers who wanted new stuff. So, instead of writing a novel or anything long form, I kept shoveling coal on the fire. I kept putting out new stories for the readers I had left, and expanded organically from there. I'm proud to say I'm back up to more or less w...

How did you become interested in short stories? A teacher in the 4th grade got me into writing short stories.  So I guess I was an early convert to the short story form.  I love reading them and have since I was little, so I guess it is only natural that I write them, too. As an author, do you think writing short stories is worthwhile?  Why? Yes. Very, very worthwhile.  Short stories are tougher to write then they look, but the rewards are also better in terms of craft and experimentation.  I can take a technique or an idea and explore it in a short story while only investing a relatively (compared to a novel) small amount of time and effort.  Short stories give me room to play and try out ideas and characters that aren't right for a longer piece.    What types of short story promotion have worked for you? Selling to magazines seems to be the best route, but I'm not sure you'd call that promotion exactly.  I think the low price (.99 ce...

How did you become interested in short stories? I’ve always liked short stories since I first read Poe. As an author, do you think writing short stories is worthwhile? Why? I write short stories as a break from my larger works or when I feel the need to put something down on paper as a result of something I've seen or heard that affected me. What types of short story promotion have worked for you? I've used my short stories as a means to promote my name recognition, not as an income generator. His First Kill is available free on Smashwords, and I have done well with it. I’ve recently made my two other shorts free, since I’m interested in reaching new readers more than making any money on them. The titles of these two stories is: A Whale Of A Myth and A Memorable Weekend. Do you consider 99 cents to be a fair price for a standalone short story? Why or why not? I think it’s fair, but there seems to be resistance to paying...

How did you become interested in short stories? Short stories scared me when I was younger. Not the stories themselves, really. The *writing* of short stories scared me. How was I suppose to get these big ideas in my head into a little short story? I didn't know. =) In 2006, though, I realized that if I wanted to improve as a writer, I needed a faster turnaround for feedback than I was getting from novels. My first real novel took a long time to finish, and I could see how much I had improved as a writer by comparing the last few chapters with the first few. Short stories seemed a good way to write something to completion, and then get it judged (by me, by my wife, by anyone who happened by my blog at the time). As I wrote short story after short story that year, I fell in love with the format. I also learned a lot about writing. =) I've continued to write short stories ever since (though not at the same rate). As an author, do you think writing short stories is worthwh...

How did you become interested in short stories? Much as I love writing novels, short stories are always great because it gives a chance to write something smaller in scale. It's so easy to get involved in the idea of writing full-length novels, when short stories are a great art of their own, with their own styles and disciplines. If anything, they're more of a challenge than a novel, because they need to be so much more focussed and snappier - and that's a fantastic challenge to undertake. As an author, do you think writing short stories is worthwhile?  Why? Of course I do! It all depends on the story. Some of them need to be long, and take several hundred pages to tell. But what about the shorter ones? What's the point in massively fleshing out and padding something that works perfectly well as it is, without being really long? If a story wants to be a short story, then that's what it should be. What types of short story promotion have worked for you? I...

How did you become interested in short stories? In school, the assignments were always to write short stories or poetry in the creative writing classes. We also read a lot of short stories. There just isn't time to assign a whole novel in a semester. So I started writing short stories out of necessity -- it was the assignment. But I fell in love with the craft. I love reading them because I can start and finish reading a short story in one sitting. I love writing them because, as the writer, I find them challenging, intensely focused, and extremely engaging. As an author, do you think writing short stories is worthwhile?  Why? Yes. Absolutely. I think there's art in the brevity of a short story. It's Hemingway's iceberg principle (all that stuff unrevealed that's under the surface -- the stuff you know is there and you still have to watch out for). I've said this before, but one of my favorite writing rules is by William Strunk. I'll regurgitate the whole...

How did you become interested in short stories? I am self-taught reader and started with a cookbook, of all things, at the age of 3. (Aside: probably the first and last time I picked one up!) I then progressed onto a steady diet of Andersen, Grimm and Greek myths. Nothing has ever captured my imagination like those tales of old, so when I started writing as an adult, I couldn't help but want to imitate that which captured my imagination as a child.  As an author, do you think writing short stories is worthwhile?  Why? Absolutely. As traditionally published books increase in length, so the attention span of the younger (and in some cases older) generations wane. The old cliche 'time is money' has also never been more relevant. A reader's time is incredibly precious. As a writer, I believe the only way to address the growing disinterest in reading is to find a formula where x+y=z, where x is something worthwhile to say, y is how long it takes for a writer to say it, and ...

How did you become interested in short stories?   I started writing short stories both as a learning experience (I'm originally a native Spanish speaker) and as a mean to pass time (I live in a tropical rainforest: plenty lonely and BORING).  I suddenly discovered I had the knack to write and I haven't stopped ever since.   As an author, do you think writing short stories is worthwhile?  Why?   Yes, it is. I love the ability to communicate something in 3000 words or less. I'm usually too elaborate in my descriptions and I find it quite challenging to limit myself to the aforementioned word limit. It's very rewarding.   What types of short story promotion have worked for you?   The funny stuff is that I use my short stories to hook my readers into my longer works. Whenever I sell a copy of Cuentos, my short story collection, I almost always get a follow up sale of my other books.   What types of short story promotion have not worked f...

How did you become interested in short stories? I wrote short stories before undertaking a novel.  For several years, I wrote primarily short humor -- satirical pieces.  I guess they'd be considered nonfiction, but barely.  Short fiction was the next logical step, and I really enjoyed the freedom it gave me.  Because I love the Caribbean, I began using it as a setting for a lot of the stories. As an author, do you think writing short stories is worthwhile?  Why? For the pleasure, yes.  For publishing, it's certainly become tougher through the years.  I was lucky enough to sell stories to a few pretty good markets.  American Way and Hemispheres, two inflight magazines, published several.  Neither uses fiction anymore. W hat types of short story promotion have worked for you? The only promotion I've done for my short stories, beyond marketing to magazines, is for my collection, Calypso: stor...