The Writer As Eternal Student

For the next roundtable let's talk about how writers are eternal students (though usually on self-study courses). 

The first side of that coin is that we can only write what we know. How has that been evident in your work? Are there topics/interests/specifics that you find your work covering over and over again?

Bobby Nash: I always take the “write what you know” advice to be the beginning of the journey. I didn’t know much about FBI agents or serial killers when I wrote Evil Ways, but I knew about the relationship between two brothers so that’s the foundation for the story. If the relationship between them is solid, the rest I can build on from there. I’ve had demeaning day jobs. I can use that as a basis for a story or character, even if it's not the same job, I can extrapolate from real life to make the story feel real. If I took “write what you know” literally, my stories would be very boring.

Ef Deal: I write steampunk, which has the advantage of being set in history. There's a lot to know about history, and the information is readily available. My plots involve an element of social conflict, an historical setting including historical figures and events, scientific dvelopments of the time period (1840s), and paranormal features as they were understood at the time. Research is essential to nail down all of those elements in such a way as to find a nexus where they present a plausible plot for me to pursue. I like to get down to the personal level, so I often read journals of the time, memoirs of the historical figures, newspaper articles. These often give me significant lines of description or dialogue. When I saw Eugene Delacroix's comment about the Paris-Orleans railway being "a blessing to my rheumatic bones," for example, I knew that line had to be in the book and that the story would begin there. In researching conditions for child laborers in the coal industry, I learned of the disaster that drowned 30-some kids, and I learned their names so at least one would be immortalized.

Paul Landri: Buckle up because this is a long one! 

One of the best compliments I’ve gotten so far for the first book in the Crimson Howl series came from an up-and-coming comic book writer friend of mine named Patrick Reilly (he’s got an anthology series coming out later this year everyone should check out,) who told me that I write “white rage” very well. Now, I don’t normally talk politics but art has been and always will be political by its very nature.

I am not an angry white man in the sense that I feel my privilege is being eroded by outside influences. I am angry at the injustice I see all around me perpetuated by thoughtless and ignorant men who feel like the march of progress is somehow an affront to their identities. In Howl book 1 I wanted to channel that feeling because I grew up around this type of thinking. The Jersey Shore where I lived, Atlantic Highlands, is a pretty blue-collar area despite its status as a tourist town. Lots of fishermen and old salts who’d spend their late afternoons and evenings at the local watering hole lamenting about how the good days were behind them. These were people from an older, less tolerant generation who had no filter and didn’t care, after a few Miller Lites, who knew their opinions. Of course, this was constantly brushed off because they were “from another generation” (as if that was any excuse!) So when I came up with the character of Arnold Grant, the titular character of the Crimson Howl series, I wanted to see how a character with superpowers from a “different” generation would exist in the modern era. I came up with the idea of the Crimson Howl as a character in 2014. Two years before the MAGA movement usurped the Republican party and transformed it into something unrecognizable. I like to joke (although it’s becoming much less funny as time goes on,) that the Crimson Howl was MAGA before MAGA was MAGA.

I have a degree in history from Monmouth University. My senior thesis was on propaganda during World War 2 in America. You can read it at the Guggenheim Library in West Long Branch if you’d like. I found the subject fascinating (and got an A on it, to boot!) and wanted to incorporate as much of my WW2 knowledge and nostalgia into the book as possible. When creating the world for Return of the Crimson Howl I had to marry my love of Golden Age comic books with my fascination with World War 2. How to do that, though? Well, the answer is simple: make superheroing a part of the New Deal. I don’t seem to recall if this had been done before, but it definitely worked in my narrative. I currently work with the estate of Joe Simon, who along with Jack Kirby created Captain America. My work has a heavily anti-fascist bend that I’m very proud of.

Despite also being very anti-mafia in real life, I find mafia stories fascinating because it’s a shared part of my Italian-American heritage for better or worse. I’m a big fan of Mario Puzo and wanted to honor his style when I wrote the origin chapter of Rudyard Sinclair, our magical/mystical character named The Swami (He’s on the front cover of Return of the Crimson Howl, done up in full color by Terrific Ted Hammond). In that chapter I got to bring the knowledge of the mob I learned while living out in Nevada and bring it into the story in a fun way. It’s always great to name-drop Kefauver and the hearings that helped destroy the prestige of the Italian mafia.

Lance Stahlberg: If I only wrote what I knew, my books would be pretty boring. I do not live an exciting life. I go out of my way to make sure that not every character has all of my interests and such. Though of course there are elements of me in each of them. I know Chicago, but I've only set one of my books there.

Sean Taylor: A lot of what I write about, particularly as side details or symbols or theme, comes from the things I value as a human being, things that are crucial to me. You'll see bits and bobs of religious imagery, social justice, and religious and cultural deconstruction in my work. Those are the "true" things that are part of me that I know that tend to make it into my work. The rest of it is usually just details and research. 

The other side of that coin is to learn more. So let's talk about research. How important is research and learning new things (to become new topics/interests/specifics) to write about in your work?

Bobby Nash: I love research. I have learned so much in this job. Some stuff I never even thought I cared to know. There are many kinds of research. Looking up on the internet and reading books is one. My favorite type of research is going out and actually talking with people who do the job you’re researching. Most people are more than happy to talk to you about what they do. I have met some amazing people this way. Traveling to real places where I can see it, feel it, experience it, firsthand is also fun. Plus, it gets me out of the house, which is also nice.

Lance Stahlberg: You want to research enough to fake it convincingly. Too much research becomes an excuse to not write. Not enough research makes your work unreadable to much of your audience because gaffs jar them out of the story.

Rachel Burda Taylor: One of the more interesting things I've done, is spent the last 15 years listening to pop-psychology podcasts. I feel like it's given me a much better understanding of human nature and human behavior that then comes out in my books. (Also, helps my own mental health...)

Sean Taylor: Perhaps the riskiest research I did for my work was when I was writing the Gene Simmons Dominatrix comic for IDW. I remember finding images that I didn't have names for and leaving a note for the artist that went: "He's strapped to this, whatever it's called."

But, outside of that, the most fun I had with research was looking into M-theory and String-theory for a horror tale that combined magic and science (and an alternative universe Barbara Steele) 

Paul Landri: I like to write my stories first and sort of fill in the blanks later when it comes to research. I draw upon what I know, sure, but if there is something I don’t have a complete grasp on, I will give it a cursory glance to move the story along and then fill it in more when the bulk of the writing is done. In Book 3 of the Crimson Howl series My main characters are hiding out in a town called Brattleboro in Vermont. It is to this day, one of my absolute favorite places. I had to take a few artistic liberties with some of the geography (mount Wantastiquet, which is actually in New Hampshire and where I asked my wife to marry me at the summit, is in New Hampshire right on the southernmost border, but in the book, it’s in Vermont,) and had to do some research about the town history to ensure that the reader feels like the town is “lived in”. For our next book we’re moving from Superheroes to Samurai so there’s going to be a lot of research on the Warring States Period since it’s so foreign to us. After that one it’ll be back to what I know when we’re writing about the height of the mafia during prohibition (they’ll be fighting vampires on top of Prohibition Agents and each other so keep your eyes peeled for that one!)

Ef Deal: Another advantage of research is that I meet interesting people. I needed to know how far my MC had to maneuver her submersible boat from a huge deflagration and still survive it. I found a book on just that subject, and I contacted the author to help me with the math. She was delighted to help.

As for new topics, of course. Each novel features a different aspect of the supernatural, so I had to do a lot of research about what was believed in that time period. Before Dracula, there was no "canon" about what a vampire was, could do, or even wanted. There were no werewolves tied to moon cycles until just before my setting, so I decided to go with a lycanthrope separate from a werewolf. And the word "zombie" we have today didn't have an "e" on the end of it, but my research turned up the key ingredients of a bokor's zombi dust, and it is the essential element of Book 4.

Finally, flipping that coin is a cycle, and for some a never-ending cycle, of writing what we know, learning new things, and then incorporating them into your writing. Is that something you do consciously or is it more a process that simply happens because of the nature of the craft for you? How so?

Rachel Burda Taylor: For me, learning is both intentional and subconscious. It comes out in my writing on both levels.

Paul Landri: I believe, for me, it’s something I do consciously because I get very excited when I learn something new. For example: Two years ago, I finally sat down and read The Lord of the Rings and I’m sure glad I did! It’s become a new obsession! One of the things I loved about it was the songs and I felt I wanted to honor that in my writing, but how the heck do you do that in a Superhero story, Paul? Well, you make one of your characters a low-key amazing singer and make a scene where he gets to sing, of course. It may not make it into the final draft of Crimson Howl 3 but it was nice to be able to do that. I live in Atlanta and will probably incorporate the rich Civil Rights history of this wonderful city into a story at some point. Perhaps in a Crimson Howl Anthology series or a new story altogether.

Sean Taylor: For me it's a never-ending cycle of natural learning and intentional learning. I often know just enough about something to be interested in it for a story and then have to dive down the rabbit hole to get the details I need to write about it convincingly. Not only that, the more I learn in general (for example, my current Master's course in the Science of Reading, the more that tends to work into my stories as well because it has become a part of me.

Ef Deal: My world is fully realized in my head, so ongoing research is the only way I can flesh it out on the page for readers to immerse themselves.

Lance Stahlberg: It's a little bit of both. For Prodigal, I needed a military special forces unit, so I gave them thinly veiled names and called them Posse Squadron. Both it and my new urban fantasy, Nevermore Casefiles, take a whole lot of my real-life drama that I threw into a blender with genre tropes to create the background drama of an action-adventure. Some of it was unconscious, like the villains in Nevermore and another urban fantasy novella, Honor Among Thieves.

Bobby Nash: I’m always learning new things, not just research of topics, but writing tips and tricks, marketing ideas, and the like. For me, writing has been a learning experience. I’m still learning as I go. That’s part of the fun.