Harding McFadden is a Pennsylvania-based scribbler. He is the writer of two Young Adult adventure books,
The Great First Impressions Trip and
The Children's War (with Chester Haas), a collection of his short fiction,
The Judas Hymn, and is a regular contributor to
The Libertarian Enterprise online magazine. When not writing, he is reading, and spending as much time as possible with his long-suffering family.
Tell us a bit about your latest work.
Tons of short stories. I mean tons. Much as I enjoy the heartburn-inducing loveliness of writing a book, even a short one, I find that I’m most at home working on shorter stuff. As such, I’ve got about a half dozen things outlined and ready to be written, to submit with fingers crossed to various anthologies and magazines, as well as another dozen or so either getting written or on the back burner for when my brain is ready to kick them out. Whatever the case or genre, I have a great, good time getting words down on paper.
What happened in your life that prompted you to become a writer?
No specific thing that I can recall. I guess I’ve always enjoyed telling stories. When I was a kid, my cousin took my to the local comic shop and I picked some stuff up, and just fell in. It started me on the road to reading just about anything that could keep my interest. Eventually, I decided to give it a try. My first story was a dreadful little thing called Iron Wreckage, a horrible mess with dragons and knights and robots and God only knows what else. I hope I’ve gotten better since then, but I’ll leave it up to the folks who read my stuff to be the judges. At this point, I write things that I hope my kids will enjoy. They’ve been kind so far, but smart tikes that they are, they’ll move on from my stuff in favor of better horizons.
What inspires you to write?
Life. Everything that I see or experience or read about gets hodgepodged in my head until its well blended and ready for me to write it. There are scenes in some of my stories that, while they didn’t come exactly from reality, were still influenced by that reality. In the book The Great First Impressions Trip, there’s a death scene that was very hard to write. I’ve never been in the exact situation as the witness in that scene, but as the words were coming out of me I couldn’t shake the feelings that had engulfed me at the death of a particularly close relative. As such, trying to reread the scene now, it chokes me up.
What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your work?
Faith. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Fighting for what you feel is right, regardless of odds and repercussions. I saw an interview with Bob Dylan years ago where he said that all his songs are protest songs. I feel pretty much the same way. I have a defined sense of right and wrong, and addressing both is a very big motivating factor in most things that I write. I try to be a nice guy, and in general I try not to let my stuff get bogged down in preaching, but anyone who’s read my longer stuff knows where I stand on things.
What would be your dream project?
I don’t have an answer for this. Anything that I write and don’t hate is a dream come true. I suppose a dream project would be something that could be seen only in retrospect: something that I write, that one of my kids thinks is the greatest thing ever written. That’d be beyond cool.
What writers have influenced your style and technique?
Heinlein, first and foremost. His work did more than change my take on storytelling, it changed my life, set it on a path that I’ve tried never to diverge from. Bradbury would be another. I’ve been accused of writing with flowery prose. I don’t see it, but whatever. If it’s true, it’s because of the countless hours that I’ve spent, and still spend, reading Bradbury’s beautiful, poetic words. Add to that personal giants like L. Neil Smith, Victor Koman, Herman Wouk, and recent discoveries like Bill Webb, and you can get a feel for where my brain’s at. And I’d be crap if I didn’t add Chuck Dixon and Mike Baron to this list. I’ve never read any other writers whose sole goal seems to be pure entertainment. Every word is a joy. Second to none.
If you have any former project to do over to make it better, which one would it be, and what would you do?
Sad to admit it, but the first book,
The Children’s War. I still like it, and I’m proud that we managed to get it done, but there are a lot of places where I look at it, and think, “Wow, I could have done that better.” That being said, I still enjoy it, but I’m my own worst critic: all I see are the worts. Something that I did manage to change for the better would be a short story, “Casual Blasphemies,” published in The Idolaters of Cthulhu a few years back. The thing was written in a rush, so there was no time to revise or smooth out. When I read it in the collection, I was practically reading it for the first time. It trucked along just fine, until a paragraph in the center ruined it for me. Before and after that paragraph the story was quiet, kind of subtle. I still enjoy the atmosphere. But that one paragraph was too graphic for the story it was in, and as such ticked me off. When I was putting together the collection of my shorter stuff,
The Judas Hymn, I chucked the paragraph and put in something quieter. Managed to save the whole story for me, even if it did drop about 100 words from the manuscript.
Where would you rank writing on the "Is it an art or it is a science continuum?" Why?
Neither, and both. Saying that it’s an art feels like making it something mystical or magical; likewise saying that it’s a science is just too dry. In truth, it’s a job. Whether you’re selling or not, you’re writing to get a point across. You sit down at your typewriter or computer or pad of paper, and you empty your mind out on it. Take it seriously, by all means, but don’t attempt to make it into something God-like, or make yourself out to be the Einstein of fiction. Do your job, do it well, but never make the mistake of thinking that you’ll be that one in a hundred million folks whose words can change someone’s world. You’re a guide: be a good one.
What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?
Getting it done. I write a bit every day. Hardly ever more than 1,000 words a day, but at least that many. If I try to force it, everything turns to crap. To avoid this, I’ll think about what I want to write for hours, getting my thousand-sh words down in my head to just about what I want, then typing them up. If I get more than that, the more’s the better. Sometimes things explode unexpectedly. A few weeks back, I managed to get a short story that I’d co-written with my oldest into the upcoming issue of Airship 27’s Mystery Man (& Women). There were many technical delays, so much so that I was finishing the thing up months after I’d wanted. Though in those months, I’d managed to flesh out the story in my head to the point of knocking out the final 10,000 words in about two days. I haven’t been that productive since I was 18, and a terrible, hallucinatory flue allowed me to get 20,000 words in two days. Unsellable garbage, but it was there.
How do your writer friends help you become a better writer? Or do they not?
Honestly, I’ve only got one friend who’s also a writer: Chester Haas, who wrote The Children’s War with me. We ship stories back and forth, but that’s about it. Facebook and other social media outlets have allowed me to come into contact with other folks that I read, but that’s different. With them, it’s more along the lines of reading something they’ve written, and thinking to myself, “Dang, that was good!” Then I get back to my own stuff, and hope that someone, somewhere will have the same kind of reaction that I just did, only about my words.
What does literary success look like to you?
Being able to live comfortably off my writing income. That’s it. No world fame or large contracts, or anything like that. Just making enough cash from what I write to sustain comfortably. That’d be nice.
Any other upcoming projects you would like to plug?
Sure: as previously stated, I’ve got a new short coming out in Mystery Men (& Women) #7. I’m more excited about it than about anything other than that first sale. It’s my daughter’s first published story, and I can’t wait to see the look on her face when she gets to hold a copy in her hands. I couldn’t be prouder.
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