What part of modern society do you like the best?
Running water. Incandescent lights come in a close second. If you’ve ever tried to read by candlelight or torch light, you know that I’m talking about. The gods only know how many people went blind from doing that. But if I had to choose, I’d take the running water. Living in a world of chamber pots is dehumanizing. I don’t even like thinking about it.
What environment do you prefer to write in?
I work by artificial light, usually with some wordless music playing in the background, more as white noise, though I prefer music you could actually listen to, so that when I pull up out of a zone, the music isn’t just mindless, repetitive crap. My neighbors all think I’m a vampire, because I’ve got all the windows blacked out. I make it a point to collect the mail while the sun is still up, just to avoid trouble.
I don’t like any external noise or distractions. People who can write in a Starbucks are just sick.
Do you have any advice for writers of speculative fiction?
Consume copious amounts of psychedelic drugs, then immerse yourself in demonic texts. The Necronomicon, certainly, but also Daniel, Revelation, and some of the newer prophets – the White album, the Left Behind series, Stephen King…. You people are far too repressed and literal minded. Science has blinded you to the supernatural.
Did you find it difficult to adjust your writing style to modern tastes?
The only difficulty, really, was keeping my writing out of the hands of others while I was still a child. I wrote in Phoenician at first, but as with any language, word order and syntax are different, so eventually I was forced to switch.
Unfortunately, one day my fourth grade teacher stuck her nose where it didn’t belong, reading one of my notebooks, where I dramatized the Old Testament passage, “You must wait thirty days before you go into the captured virgin for the first time.”
Being under psychiatric observation was tedious, but it meant I could write whatever I wanted in the guise of “therapy.” Modern medicine can be quite wonderful at times!
Do you have any suggestions for writers facing writer’s block?
I always begin by praying to Thoth. He’s Egyptian, but he’s not bigoted in any way.
Beyond that, it depends. If I’m not sure what should happen next in a story, it usually means the conflict isn’t intense or immediate enough. Or it might mean that my character lacks a strong enough motivation, goal, or drive. In either case, the solution really requires fixing what has already been written, more than writing something new.
If you’ve set up a conundrum and then discover you don’t know how to resolve it, that’s actually a wonderful problem, provided you’re not on a deadline. It means you’ve really challenged yourself and your protagonist.
To resolve that sort of problem, you pick a solution that you know won’t work, and you write it out and force it to work. Then, you try a different solution that you know won’t work, and you write that out…. This is how you prime your subconscious to give you the one solution that will work. Usually, it seems obvious once you see it.
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Genre - Erotic Fantasy
Rating – NC17
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Quality Reads UK Book Club Disclosure: Author interview / guest post has been submitted by the author and previously used on other sites.
Thanks for hosting the interview.
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