I've got a special treat for you this month and next month. I'm going to devote Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays to writers from eSpecs Books. They're a great bunch of folks whom you need to get to know.
Next up, David Lee Summers!
Tell us a bit about your latest work.
My latest work is called Breaking the Code. It's set in Gallup, New Mexico right after the start of World War II. Marine recruiters arrive in the town looking to fill their ranks with a secret weapon against the Axis powers—the people who would become known as the Navajo Code Talkers. Unfortunately, not everyone supports the prospect of young native men going off to war.
When one new recruit is found dead, and a rancher's cattle are mutilated, whispers of witchcraft and a skinwalker filter through the town, and interest in enlisting wanes. Is there evil afoot, or is that just what opponents to the cause want everyone to think?
What happened in your life that prompted you to become a writer?
I was a fan of the original Star Trek when I was a kid and one of my favorite episodes was "The Trouble With Tribbles." One Day, I saw a book with that title in my local bookstore and asked my parents to buy it for me. The book was David Gerrold's account of how he wrote and sold the famous episode and the book really gave me my first glimpse of what it meant to be a working writer and I decided right then that it was something I wanted to do.
Later, in high school, I had the good fortune of meeting Ray Bradbury. We had the opportunity to talk and I told him I'd written a few stories and was working on a novel with a friend. He looked me in the eye and said, "Send your stories to a magazine right now!" That sealed the deal. I've been sending stories out for publication ever since then. Perhaps it's no surprise that none of those very first stories sold. Still, Bradbury's belief that I would keep writing and keep trying spurred me on and eventually I did sell some stories. When I made my first professional sale to Realms of Fantasy in 2001, Bradbury wrote me a letter to say it was a fine story and that he was proud that I had persevered.
What inspires you to write?
It probably sounds cliché, but everything around me inspires me to write. I live in the Southwestern United States surrounded by history. Pat Garrett, the man who shot Billy the Kid, is buried in the cemetery behind my house. My commute to work takes me past the strongholds of Cochise and Geronimo as well as the turnoff to Tombstone, Arizona. Researching those stories and connecting new dots is a never-ending source of ideas.
In addition to writing, I'm also an astronomer who works at Kitt Peak National Observatory, which played major roles in the discovery of dark matter, dark energy and numerous planets around other stars. When I turn my mind to more science fictional pursuits, it's easy to be inspired when discoveries are being made around me on an almost daily basis.
What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your work?
A lot of my fiction has what might be described as a retro-futuristic tone. I set many of my speculative stories in the last century or two as a way of exploring how we arrived at the place where we are now. One of my goals is to shine a light on some of the bright spots of the past. It's easy to look back at the past and point fingers at the terrible things like slavery, colonialism, and class inequity. To me, it's more interesting to look at those people who didn't give in to their baser selves and tried to overcome those terrible things. Of course, a person fighting against their baser nature will still create conflict both within themselves and with their neighbors.
In this context, I find culture fascinating, especially in a place like the United States where it doesn't always follow racial or geographic lines and where cultures have a way of melding with one another and reshaping themselves. I can imagine this process becoming even more pronounced if humans actually do move into space. In my futuristic stories, I like looking at how humans use their backgrounds as a way to find solutions to problems.
What would be your dream project?
I get many of my ideas from traveling to new places. I love exploring a place, hearing its stories, eating the food, and delving into the history. With that in mind, my dream project would be to have the time and financial freedom to immerse myself in a new place for an extended time and just see what stories came out of it. I have never been to Europe or Africa. I could see many stories coming from those places. More of a longshot dream would actually be to spend time on the International Space Station, or even travel to Mars and then write stories that came from the experience. Of course, as a science fiction writer, I've trained myself to "experience" many of these things in my imagination and write them down, but I bet I'd find new things to write about if I actually came closer to the real experience.
What writers have influenced your style and technique?
I've already mentioned Ray Bradbury and David Gerrold. Bradbury, especially, taught me the importance of sitting down at the computer and following characters through a situation you created for them until the story is complete. I was also strongly influenced by reading two very different books back to back. One was Robert A. Heinlein's Time Enough for Love, which has an extended sequence about homesteading another world. The other was John Nichols' The Magic Journey, which is a story about a family in New Mexico. These two novels reminded me of the stories my mom's family told of homesteading New Mexico at the beginning of the twentieth century. They helped me see the importance of using experience and the stories I grew up with and heard from people I knew as an inspiration for new stories.
The Australian author A. Bertram Chandler also influenced me. Not only are his space operas great fun, but he showed me the importance of letting characters make mistakes and grow from those mistakes.
If you have any former project to do over to make it better, which one would it be, and what would you do?
As it turns out, I've had the opportunity to do just that. A couple of years ago, the contract for my first novel, The Pirates of Sufiro, came to term and the publisher agreed to revert the rights to me. This was a multi-generation story about characters making a life on a new world. I didn't think I'd taken the time to really delve into the characters and explore their motivations. Too many characters appeared for only a chapter or two and then disappeared. There were too many moments where I told the story in exposition instead of letting the reader experience the story alongside my characters. So, I embarked on a two-year journey to revise the novel and fix as many of those things as I could. I endeavored to give characters more defined arcs within the book. I am under no illusions that I have made the novel perfect, but I do believe I've made it far more satisfying.
If I had another book I'd like to revise, it's my first wild west steampunk novel Owl Dance. Again, I have a few characters I would like to explore a little more in that novel. Also, when I sold the sequel, Lightning Wolves, I had a new editor who really impressed on me the importance of reading stories aloud. When I listened to Owl Dance aloud, I heard many places where I'd clean up little unconscious repetitions and make better word choices.
Where would you rank writing on the "Is it an art or it is a science continuum?" Why?
For me, it's right about the middle of the continuum. The elements of imagination, creating a story that's pleasing to the reader, and creating details that engage the reader are very much an art form. That said, there's a certain science involved in building a story to a climax, good grammar, and doing the research. Being a scientist, I'm well acquainted with how much of science is process. Do research, design an experiment, conduct the experiment, write up the results and send it to a peer-reviewed journal. Writing has some of that same kind of process: Come up with an idea, do the research to back up your idea, write it down, and give it to beta readers for feedback. That said, you have to engage your artistic sensibility to know how much to set a scene, what hints to set up about the ending and when, what descriptions add "color" to a scene as opposed to getting in the way. I find I have to engage my entire brain when I write. I have to analyze my writing when I rewrite, but I analyze it both to see if it conveys all the important story points and is also emotionally pleasing.
What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?
By far the most difficult part of the process for me is sitting down and getting that first draft out of the way. I do enjoy the journey of discovery and I have moments of fun when inspiration strikes me, but I find the blank screen intimidating. I know the process is working as I write and I feel like I'm "watching" the story instead of "seeing" words fill the screen. It feels like magic when that happens and suddenly I see 500 or 1000 words in front of me. Still, there are moments of terror before that happens. On the best days, those moments of terror last just a few seconds before I get into the groove, but there are days when I struggle to get each paragraph down.
When I reach the second draft, the pressure of having something written is gone. I absolutely love reading it back and I have no problem adding details that were in my mind but didn't get down the first time. I love the process of deconstructing the story and moving scenes around until they work well. Sometimes in the second draft, I find I have to write new scenes, but those are somehow never as scary as the initial writing process when facing the blank page.
How do your writer friends help you become a better writer? Or do they not?
My writer friends have absolutely helped me to become a better writer. Although it's sometimes a little intimidating, I'm always grateful for those times when writer friends have taken the time to tell me what they feel works and doesn't work in my writing. Some of my writer friends are also English professors, and I find their advice very helpful. They can explain why things work or don't work.
Writer friends also provide a level of professional support you don't always get from non-writers. They know what it's like to get rejection letters and poor reviews. They can help you work past those difficult moments. They are also a great resource when you're looking for markets to submit to or people you might want to work with if you're self-publishing.
What does literary success look like to you?
To me, the surest sign of literary success is when your characters become household names. Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes, Dorothy Gale, and Tarzan are characters everyone knows because their authors crafted them well and the books they appear in are much loved.
There are certainly other measures of success. Winning a high profile award is one. Having your work published in a magazine and or an anthology alongside authors you admire is another. I've been fortunate enough to achieve that last one more than once.
Any other upcoming projects you would like to plug?
I am releasing a comic book called Guinevere and the Stranger. It tells a story about how Guinevere encountered a vampire after King Arthur's death. The comic is adapted from a chapter of my novel Dragon's Fall: Rise of the Scarlet Order Vampires. For more information about the comic, visit: http://davidleesummers.com/Tales-of-the-Scarlet-Order.html
Also, this month, I'm releasing the 20th-anniversary edition of my novel Children of the Old Stars. It's the sequel to my novel The Pirates of Sufiro. In the novel, a disgraced starship captain, an alien warrior, and a cult leader go on a quest to learn about a mysterious space vessel that destroys everything in its path. You can learn more about this novel at: http://davidleesummers.com/children_old_stars.html
For more information, visit:
You can learn more about Breaking the Code and find a link to an excerpt at: http://davidleesummers.com/Breaking-the-Code.html
My personal website is: http://www.davidleesummers.com
My blog is at: https://davidleesummers.wordpress.com
No comments:
Post a Comment