Tell us a bit about your latest work.
My upcoming book Showtime is a suspense thriller about a college student who learns that his grandparents’ television allows him to travel to the past. Once he makes that discovery, he uses it to travel back in time to try and stop the perpetrator of the talent show massacre that claimed his grandmother's life. So, you know, it’s a real feel-good story.
What happened in your life that prompted you to become a writer?
I went to a career advisor and said, “What career can I try that’s incredibly difficult, solitary, and leaves my financial future uncertain?” And voila! I became a writer.
Kidding.
I started writing fiction in high school and later focused on it in college where I earned my BA in English Language and Literature. I wrote my first novel that summer, teaching myself as I went, and have been writing since.
What inspires you to write?
All types of storytelling. Movies, TV, books. Any time a story is being told well, it starts the creative juices flowing and amplifies my own desire to write and create.
What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your work?
I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of people being the real monsters. Ghosts and demons and zombies make good antagonists and are scary in their own right, but there’s something extra creepy and unsettling about the idea of someone who can put on a pleasant, charming face for people they know, and swap it out for a deviant, malevolent one when they’re alone. The duality of that is pretty chilling. It’s something that tends to find its way into my writing a lot.
Showtime especially deals with the idea of how the past—through thoughts, experiences, and conflicts—can cause horrors in the present. If people did a better job at communicating with each other in the real world, so much unnecessary conflict and horror could be avoided. Unfortunately, my characters tend not to realize that until it’s too late.
What would be your dream project?
It doesn’t take much! Anytime someone is offering to pay me for something I’ve written, that’s enough for me. But I do think it would be fun to write for TV. I chatted with Dennis Lehane a few years ago when he was part of the writers’ room for the adaptation of Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes, and it seemed like it’s a grind but an enjoyable process. Gillian Flynn has also done pretty well making the jump from author to screenwriter so it seems like a natural progression.
What writers have influenced your style and technique?
As a kid, I used to hate reading until I found books that interested me. I clearly remember asking the elementary school librarian, “Do you have any Stephen King?” (Spoiler alert: she did not), and have been reading him since, so he has been a large presence in my literary life. He taught me how to create three-dimensional characters and that the best, most interesting ones are often the messiest. People in real life aren’t perfect, so why should your characters be? Perfect is boring…and unattainable. Characters need to act and sound like real people or it’s not going to ring true to the reader. You could have the most ingenious plot but if your readers don't care about the characters involved, it doesn't matter.
Michael Koryta does a killer job writing books with kick-ass characterization and plots that keep you turning the pages. He’s a writer who doesn't waste his words. Each sentence has a clear purpose, the prose is tight, and everything in the book needs to be there, so his writing is a great reminder to write with purpose and start reeling things in if the thread starts rolling away from you.
If you have any former project to do over to make it better, which one would it be, and what would you do?
I wrote my first novel during the summer after college graduation. It's called Dark Chambers and is about a series of disappearances in a small town inspired by my hometown of Dundalk, Maryland. It got some good feedback from agents but the consensus seemed to be that the villain’s involvement and motivation could’ve been stronger. Looking back, I can't disagree. I know what I want to do with it do deepen it and make the reveals and villain more robust, so I'm hoping to revisit it one day.
Where would you rank writing on the "Is it an art or it is a science continuum?" Why?
Writing is as much art as painting or sculpture. It takes time, practice, skill, and you’ve got to put in the work if you want to get anything out of it. There’s plenty of creativity involved in crafting plot, developing characters, and maintaining suspense, but then there’s also the technical side that’s just as important—structuring on a macro and micro level, making sure everything flows, and crispness of prose. If you don’t do it right, the book’s not going to land as well. So I’d say that writing is both art and science—the novel skeleton is the science, and how you fill it out is the art. You can’t have one without the other.
What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?
Sometimes I’ll reach a crucial part in a manuscript where a Big Decision has to be made on my part. For example, is a character going to live or die? How is the rest of the story going to be affected if they die midway through instead of at the end? I can usually see how both would work towards the story, but choosing which path to go down and committing to it can be intimidating since there are dozens of different directions the plot can branch off into with each minute change.
On a macro level, it's always a bit nerve-wracking when embarking on a new project, thinking, “Can I really do this again?” So when you get in the groove and realize that what you’re writing isn’t completely horrible (and that you're actually going to finish it), that's always pleasant.
How do your writer friends help you become a better writer? Or do they not?
Writer friends and acquaintances are great to have because they’re the only people who are really going to understand the writing process—the joy, the frustrations, all of it. I think there’s a common guilty thought among writers that you have to write every day for a certain amount of time to prove to yourself that you deserve to be successful. Every writer works at a different pace, has different goals and different things going on at home. No one is the same. So talking to other writer friends and having that sense of camaraderie and understanding definitely helps to build you up and motivate you and let you off the hook on those days when you’re not feeling particularly productive.
What does literary success look like to you?
I don't think you need to be a New York Times bestseller to be successful. If I’m able to make a living solely from writing, that’s enough for me. On the other hand, when you have a reader who tells you that you made them think or feel something with your words, I'd call that a success for sure.
Any other upcoming projects you would like to plug?
The next book is done and ready to go. It's called Monsters and is absolutely the most horror-centric thing I've written. It's about a first-grade teacher who witnesses the death of her student and is convinced she's being harassed by the dead student's mother... until she starts to see a tall, horned figure in her bedroom. As you can imagine, things go downhill pretty quickly, and Terra starts to question her own sanity as she’s forced to reconcile the horrors she sees while knowing that they can’t possibly be real…or can they?
After that, I've got the next two books planned out so I've got enough work for the next few years to keep me busy!
You and pre-order Showtime here: https://www.inkshares.com/books/showtime
