May 2008

World in the Satin Bag

A San Francisco Trip

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This is late in coming, but so be it. I recently went on a lovely, yet strangely difficult trip to San Francisco to meet with Paul Genesse, author of The Golden Cord (you can find the review here and my interview with the author here). So, here’s how it went down:    Figuring out how to get to San Francisco without a car is actually a lot more difficult than you might think. You see, there are plenty of ways to get to San Francisco from the actual Bay Area (i.e. places that actually border the same bay as San Francisco). But when you’re coming from the South Bay, across the Santa Cruz Mountains along the coast it’s a whole different experience. There is only one public bus that goes over the mountains and it doesn’t go to San Francisco, but to San Jose. Then you have to get from San Jose to a train or subway that will take you into San Francisco, which is a problem because there is no direct route from San Jose to San Francisco at all, despite it being relatively close to a variety of methods that can get you there. The only way to get directly to San Francisco from Santa Cruz is via Greyhound, which is fine, except that the Greyhound stops in a lot of rather scary places (such as the not-so-nice part of Oakland) and the types of folks who ride the Greyhound from Santa Cruz aren’t exactly “friendly” looking. Regardless, I didn’t want to take one bus from SC, another from SJ to Fremont, and then get on the rather confusing BART system (i.e. SF’s subway) and end up lost in one of the largest cities in the United States. So I decided to take a Greyhound.    In comes problem #2. The Greyhound only leaves from SC four times during the day and only comes back four times during the day, each trip being about three hours. Those four times, however, are really crappy if you are wanting to meet someone in San Francisco at around one or two in the afternoon and even more crappy when you don’t want to come home at three in the morning because you have class at 8 AM (or only spend two hours in the big city rather than several). So, I made the decision to take a Greyhound there and do the whole BART/Bus thing and take a cab from downtown to home.    Exciting as that may seem, it was actually somewhat terrifying. When I got downtown to climb onto the Greyhound and head out to lovely SF I was bothered by Santa Cruz’s most noticeable and downright irritating of groups: the homeless. I have nothing necessarily against homeless people. I understand that life isn’t easy and sometimes you get a good kick in the butt and you can’t recover. The problem with Santa Cruz isn’t that we have homeless, because most towns/cities have them, but that they all cluster in a part of town that, quite frankly, is meant for tourists and to simply look good for the city. You see, Downtown SC is actually a nice little place. There are an assortment of fascinating stores and restaurants, and it’s built to basically look good. Except for the homeless. Some cities have a lot of pigeons, but Santa Cruz has homeless. They collect on the streets, on the sidewalk, on all the benches where shoppers might want to sit, in corners, in front of doors, in the alleyways, and anywhere else they can get to. And nobody does anything about it. You can’t walk downtown without seeing ten or twenty of them in your immediate vision. It’s sometimes so bad that I don’t even want to go downtown, even though several of my favorite stores are there (Borders and Logos, both fantastic bookstores).    Having said all that I can now explain my first disturbing experience of the day. I got off the bus and was heading for the Greyhound station just on the other side of the metro center when this lady came up to me and started asking me for money. As a rule I don’t carry cash on me, except in this instant because I needed it for all the buses and what not that I would have to take. So I calmly told her I don’t have any cash (technically a lie, but I didn’t really have any cash, since the money I had was, in theory, in use). Then she proceeded to ask me if I was going to the Greyhound, to which I said yes, which prompted her to ask me if I could buy her a ticket, which in turn received my answer of “no, I can’t”. That’s mostly the truth. Yes, I could probably have afforded to buy her the ticket, but I’m also not rich and have to make sure that the money I do spend is on what is most important to me. That might sound selfish, but, you know what, I don’t have a lot of money as it is and I’d rather it went to myself or my immediate family or a close friend first, rather than someone I don’t know and who generally kind of scares me.    So, having averted the homeless lady I headed for the Greyhound where I was confronted with a peculiar group of people: European surfers (and more specifically German and Slavic surfers). Beyond that there isn’t much to say except that I got my ticket, sat down and began to read. When the bus came I got on and found myself a seat amongst the folks who looked like they very well could have been gangsters. I’m talking the scary types, some of which were carrying things with them as if they were their final possessions before going to prison. So I spent most of the trip huddled in a corner praying someone wouldn’t go postal and starting the place up (or steal the bus, for that matter).    After

World in the Satin Bag

What’s Your Writing Style? (another meme)

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Well, I figure memes are of some interest, so here is one and anyone with a blog is hereby tagged. 1. Are you a “pantser” or a “plotter?” It depends on the situation I suppose. Sometimes I plot, and sometimes I don’t. Most of the time I don’t, to be honest. I have a general idea where a story is going, but that’s about all. 2. Detailed character sketches or “their character will be revealed to me as a I write”? The character is revealed to me as I write. I usually have a good idea who the characters are as far as personality goes in my head, though. I think you have to know your characters a little in your head to even write about them. 3. Do you know your characters’ goals, motivations, and conflicts before you start writing or is that something else you discover only after you start writing? It’s a little of both, actually. I knew Carl in The Lies of Venicia was going to be a sort of ruffian with women problems before I really started writing him just as I knew that some of my other characters would have certain goals and conflicts. The only thing I don’t really know are the details of those conflicts, etc. I don’t know why the Elders of Venicia are exterminating entire groups of innocent people under the guise of an “infection”. I have an idea, but there are a lot of factors to take into account. 4. Books on plotting – useful or harmful? Not a clue. I’ve never read a book about plotting. 5. Are you a procrastinator or does the itch to write keep at you until you sit down and work? My problem is less that I procrastinate than my brain can get really fried if too much is going on all at once and by the time I get to writing I just don’t have the drive for it. Yes, I can force myself, but usually that just leads to headaches. I get distracted more often than I procrastinate. I’m a bad person when it comes to arcade games. I have to really hunker down on that part of my life, to be honest. 6. Do you write in short bursts of creative energy, or can you sit down and write for hours at a time? Yes to both. The longer periods are more rare, especially when there are things around me that can pull me out of the groove. I love the longer ones though. They are truly amazing. 7. Are you a morning or afternoon writer? Neither. If I have time to write, I write. Usually my writing time is late morning to early afternoon, but not this quarter. 8. Do you write with music/the noise of children/in a cafe or other public setting, or do you need complete silence to concentrate? I can write in a public setting if it’s noisy, because I can’t make out individual voices. I can write with classical and instrumental music, but not any music with words. Silence is really nice for writing when you’re in a groove though. 9. Computer or longhand? (or typewriter?) Computer. I write longhand if I’m in a place without a computer, though. I prefer computer because I can type faster than I can write by hand. 10. Do you know the ending before you type Chapter One? Sorta. I have an idea what the ending will be like, but I don’t know the real ending. I know that so and so will kill so and so (if a death is the ending), I just don’t know the where, when, how, and why (for the most part, and sometimes it really depends). 11. Does what’s selling in the market influence how and what you write? Yes. But not in the way of themes, just in ideas. I got a lot of ideas from Paul Melko and even from Tobias Buckell. It just happens. They raise an issue and it sparks new ideas in your mind. 12. Editing – love it or hate it? Hate it. Who really likes editing their own work?

World in the Satin Bag

Question About Food

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This might sound like a stupid thing to ask but: can you kill yourself or become really unhealthy if you eat too much fruit? For clarification, I don’t mean eating only fruit, but eating an especially large quantity of fruit. The reason I ask is I am obsessed with fruit. I love it. To death. The only way I could be vegetarian is if I could eat nothing but fruit. As I write this I’m looking at what remains of a package of raspberries, which isn’t much at all to be honest. I do this with just about all berries (blackberries, blueberries, and any other berries I can get my hands on). I also plow through ripe peaches and apricots because they are simply divine. So, seriously, can I kill myself if I eat too much fruit? Or is it okay to eat fruit like candy? (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)

World in the Satin Bag

Rejection: Interstellar Realty

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Well, apparently my humorous SF story about home foreclosure failed to appeal to the judged of Writers of the Future. Oh well. I think it needs a quick edit and then I’ll send it elsewhere. Right now would be fitting for some sort of worldly advice about the world going round and round or something of that nature. Anywho.

World in the Satin Bag

Interview w/ Susan Beth Pfeffer

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Thank again to Susan for doing a second interview. You can find out more about her on her blog and be sure to check out her books on Amazon (Life As We Knew It and the dead & the gone, the latter of which is released on June 1st, for example). Without further ado! Thanks for doing another interview with me, Susan. I think we can skip the simple introductions since I’ve done an interview with you before. So let’s get right to it. Your new book is called The Dead & the Gone, a companion novel to Life As We Knew It. What was the inspiration for writing this second book? I had a wonderful time writing Life As We Knew It and I was eager to write a sequel. However Harcourt, my publisher, wasn’t eager to have one. So one day I thought, well I’ll write a book about a whole different set of characters living through the exact same catastrophe. It won’t be a sequel, but it will be fun. And Harcourt liked the idea also, so I wrote the dead & the gone. What are some challenges in writing a companion novel such as this that ‘retells’ the same even through the eyes of someone else? Were you at all concerned about the book working as well as LAWKI? The biggest challenge was keeping the timelines the same. LAWKI takes place in eastern Pennsylvania, and d&g in New York City, so they’d both have essentially the same weather patterns.There’s a blizzard in LAWKI and a major snow/icestorm in d&g that happen at the same time. I kept my copy of LAWKI by my side so I’d keep the dates straight.I didn’t really worry about whether d&g would work as well as LAWKI, but I had other concerns. My main character is a teenage boy, and I find it much easier to write from a girl’s viewpoint. Alex, in d&g, is a Puerto Rican New Yorker, whose parents are Spanish speaking. So I knew there’d be things Alex would say and think in Spanish, a language which I have no familiarity with. I guess I just like to make things tough on myself!While I was writing LAWKI, I knew it was a very special book, although I’ve been surprised and delighted by how many people love it. the dead & the gone was harder to write, so I think of it as a greater accomplishment. I’m curious to see how people who read d&g without having read LAWKI will respond to it. The books are completely independent of each other. You can read one or the other without missing anything (although I certainly hope if you like one, you’ll read the other). The characters in the books are all Catholic and religion is a very strong theme in the book. Why did you decide to go with a more religiously themed take in comparison to the mostly non-religious feel of the first book? When I did my pre-writing for LAWKI, I decided I wanted the family to be non-religious, so they were. But when I was working on d&g, I wanted the characters to be as different as possible from Miranda and her family. So instead of a rural upper middle class girl from a non-religious family, I created an urban lower middle class boy from a deeply religious family.There were a couple of reasons why I made Alex and his family Catholic, but the biggest one was the strength and power of the Catholic Church in New York City. I could see the Catholic Church knowing what was going on, being in regular communication with whatever remained of the city government. And because of the Church’s strong organization, it could provide a structure for those people who need it. Additionally, one of the key points in the novel is the idea of having faith tested. What about the testing of faith do you think makes it a good personal struggle? (This might seem like a somewhat obvious question, but people think differently about things, so I’m curious). The testing of faith only works as a good personal struggle if the characters have strong religious beliefs to begin with. But if you do, and if your world is disintegrating in front of your very eyes, you have to find a way to reconcile your beliefs with the reality you’re facing. People go through that all the time, with illnesses and personal problems. Different people respond different ways, but it’s an interesting conflict. What made you decide to set this particular book in New York City? Was it easier to write a story in an urban sprawl? I actually considered other cities for d&g. I think I considered Buffalo. But I lived in NYC (a long time ago) and I go there regularly. It’s the city I know best. And it worked out really well, because NYC in some ways becomes a character in the story. Alex and his sisters aren’t alone fighting for survival. So is New York City.There were some aspects of writing about a city that really exists that were tougher than creating a small town in Pennsylvania. My editor lives in NYC, and she actually thought I should be accurate in my descriptions. Humph. If I wanted to be accurate about things, I wouldn’t be ending the world with such gleeful abandon. Rumor has it that you’re working on a third book in the same world. Would you mind talking a little about it for those that don’t read your blog? Are you trying to take a very different direction, stick with a similar theme, etc.? I’ve been working on a possible third (and no doubt final) book, something that takes the LAWKI/d&g world and describes what’s going on five years later. It has a completely different set of characters, but one character from LAWKI and one from d&g show up, so the readers of both books can find out what happened to

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