Interviews

Joel Arnold, Jeani Rector, Mark Rigney, Savannah Schroll Guz, Jeffery Scott Sims

Joel Arnold Interview - 8/26/08

SW & W - Wicked Wire has great, and sometimes terrifying imagery and I really think readers will love it once they get a look at the October Issue. As a Writer, do you see events actually happening as you create a story?
 

J. Arnold - Thanks.  Yes, I usually visualize what's going on as I write it.  Sometimes I start with a particular image -- in this case a guy walking on this razor sharp wire, and the story evolves around that.  So I had that image, then had to figure out why he was up there, who this guy was, and just what kind of a place this was.
 

***

SW & W - As a Writer myself, I've had moments where I'm reading over a passage from a story I've written and say to myself, 'you nailed it!' I started reading Wicked Wire as an Editor, but finished as a Reader, walking away with that feeling, that you 'nailed it.' Have you ever experienced that feeling with your own work?
 

J. Arnold - Well, I have experienced that feeling, but often, when I do feel like I nailed it, the story actually turns out not to have been that great -- at least when I read it a while later. And other stories that I didn't feel like I particularly nailed, turned out to be ones I get more positive feedback from.  So my radar seems to be a little off.  Same when I'm trying to drive someplace -- I'll turn in the wrong direction.  My wife calls it my 'anti-choice'.  Go figure.
 

***

SW & W - Where do you write, and what tools of the trade do you use? Do you have a writing room where you complete your first drafts with pen and paper or are you the kind of writer that's more comfortable setting in a coffee shop, with a latte and your laptop? Do you write on a schedule or just when the inspiration hits you?

J. Arnold - I write wherever I can.  Usually write it out on a notepad for the first draft, then edit it as I'm typing it up on the laptop.  Then I'll print it out, go through it with a red pen, correct it on the laptop, print it out, etc, etc, until everything flows right.  I go through at least four or five drafts, often more.  As far as keeping a schedule, I'm not very good at that.  However I don't sit around waiting for inspiration, either.  I believe that the more you make yourself write, the more inspiration will strike.  Get the pen moving across the paper (or get to typing) and that will often get the juices flowing -- just the physical act of it.  I do try to write at least a few times a week.  Ideally, I'd like to write every day, but I still am not as disciplined as I'd like to be.

***

SW & W - This may tie in with the previous question, but I noticed you don't have your own website to promote your work. Are there plans for a "www.joelarnold.com" in your future? A place to chronicle your work and keep readers updated on what you're doing? With work appearing in over five dozen publications, it would be an extensive site and I'm sure our Readers would enjoy being able to find your next published work.
 

J. Arnold - Ugh.  I know I should get a website, or at least do the Live Journal thing.  I'm a little behind the times!  Let's just say, I hope to have something like that up within the year.
 

***

SW & W - What's next for Joel Arnold? Do you have plans for a novel? Maybe a short story collection?
 

J. Arnold - Ha!  Too many plans, too little time.  Actually, I do have a short story collection coming out from Sams Dot Publishing in February, 2009.  It's a collection of sci-fi/horror.  I've also written a YA novel (suspense) a mid-grade novel (historical fiction) and an adult novel (horror) which my agent is sending around.  Meanwhile, I've been working on a non-fiction book proposal about autism (which my son has) as well as writing a few articles for American Road Magazine, and I've always got a few short stories in some stage of development.

 

***

Savannah Schroll Guz Interview - 11/23/08

SW & W - Your writing has very strong characterization.  You've seemed to have mastered at an early age the art of not only conveying to your readers what's going on, but also of what your characters are feeling, which is different from what they're thinking.  Did you pick this up from writers you admire or does it just come naturally to you?  What Writers have had the most impact on your writing?

S. Schroll Guz - Thank you! Joyce Carol Oates has been an enormous influence. I remember, even in my late teens, being completely spellbound by her short stories, which I would read after my mother was done with them. The Seduction and Other Stories and The Wheel of Love were the first JCO books I read. I always teach “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” in my English courses, specifically because of its leisurely movement towards horror and the insertion of the surreal Arnold Friend into the experience of entirely plausible character, Connie. Writer Richard Ford has also been someone whose ability to characterize people and their desires and shortcomings deeply interests me. He lays out his character’s motivations and feelings with such subtlety. He is a kind of humanist philosopher in his approach to everyday experience and disappointment. And also, last but definitely not least, is E.L. Doctorow. His book, Ragtime, is positively cinematic. I think, in many ways, having read these writers, I (and maybe this is my imagination!) started to incorporate some amalgam of their narrative voice into my internal monologues, which often play while I’m watching people standing in line at the bank, pumping gas, buying groceries. And I so enjoy watching people and what their body language tells me about their identity, even their internal clockwork.

***

SW & W - You're the first writer to create a story specifically for Strange, Weird, and Wonderful Magazine.  With "The Corpus Lupi Experiment," was it harder to create a work of your own, from a prompt?  Do you feel you work better under a deadline?

S. Schroll Guz - For me, deadlines are wonderful. I definitely work more efficiently when I know I need to produce. It keeps me focused, and I turn the character over in my head, look at all his/her sides and angles with greater concentration. I’ve been “almost done” with a novel for the past six months and because my interests tend to wander to other characters and situations, my poor protagonist has been temporarily suspended in time. What is so wonderful about prompts is that many of the variables are defined, and there are predetermined complexities, yet there is enormous room for visualization and further revelation..

***

SW & W - Everyone wants to know how, when, and where a creative person does what they do, when they are creating a new work.  What's your writing routine?

S. Schroll Guz - I actually find that I’m more creative when I’m living in the country, where there are wider spaces and fewer external distractions. I do prefer to write in one place, a bedroom I converted into an office with purple walls, my desk and computer, rows (okay, and piles) of books, and a sofa, on which our dogs snore the afternoon away. Another necessity for me is a keyboard. I find I need to hear that clicking--it's a sign of productivity to my mind. And while I can write longhand, I'm much more efficient if I have an immediate ability the edit. Coffee is absolutely necessary. It both keeps me awake and allows me to do something while I'm contemplating narrative path or word choice. I try to write at least once a day--even if it's simply blogging. I find, though, that I'm an afternoon writer.

***

SW & W - You have a collection of 21 short stories entitled American Soma from So New Media due sometime in 2009.  What can readers expect from this collection that you weren't able to convey in your first collection, The Famous & The Anonymous from Better Non Sequitur? How do you feel you've grown as a writer since the first collection in 2004?

S. Schroll Guz - Approximately half the stories in American Soma were written shortly after The Famous & The Anonymous was released. Therefore, some were written in the same spirit as F&A. For example, there is an exploration of Princess Diana's last hour of life (and her passage into the spirit world) in "An August Night in Paris" and a delving into the spiritually numbing world of Anna Nicole in "Not Very Far from the Tree". The other half of the stories were written within the last two years, and take a more suspicious approach to governmental interventions and the evironmental issues. The title story "American Soma" is about a federal conspiracy to drug the population through the food supply. "Evolution" deals with the slow weakening of the Y chronosome due to chemicals that have leeched into the water table. "Postmodern Colonialism" treats the subject of our tendency to 'invade' a country via commercial means. And "Edgar Boone & the Angel of Death" deals with the hoarding of water by the powerful, and how one hoarder, a former oil man named Edgar Boone, unwittingly ends up as the figurative apocalyptic horseman, 'Famine'. I think that since The Famous and the Anonymous, I've become much more politically aware, and somewhat influenced by comic books--V for Vendetta, which was written in the spirit of Orwell's 1984 is one work I've been very aware of. I have begun to find graphic novel story lines to be very inspiring because they deal with plausible issues, albeit in sometimes implausible ways. But the writers and artists get those issues and abstract ideas out for public inspection.
 

***

SW & W - What else are you working on?

S. Schroll Guz - Currently, I am working on a novel, whose working title is Charlotte's Nexus,  which deals with genetic experimentation during the Holocaust, the paranormal, and how the spirit of a little Polish girl achieves revenge. I hope to have it finished by Christmas. 

***

Mark Rigney Interview - 3/17/09

SW & W - According to your web site, www.markrigney.net, you’re a journalist, novelist, short story writer, non-fiction writer, screenwriter, playwright, poet, epistolary ruminator, and yes, even a blogger.  Of the creative forms you dabble in, which fits you best?  And will you ever settle into one creative form or another?

M. Rigney - I’d better take a fresh look at my website; I certainly never intended to take credit for all that.

Denials and dissembling first:

I’m not a poet, at least not in the sense of making the active effort to become one.  What poetry I have written has either been quietly put aside, or has, in snippets, appeared in one of my plays (Most of my “play poetry” appears in Lines in the Sand, which is somewhat unnerving, because that play has been performed, which means that a fair number of people have actually heard my poems read aloud.  Douglas Adams and his bull-heaeded Vogons suddenly spring, unbidden, to mind.)

Nor am I a journalist, although I have published some parenting articles and did once write a column for Columbus, Ohio’s local north side rag when in high school.  I have those articles somewhere.  The only one I remember involved being marooned in a massive pothole on East North Broadway, and being rescued by a scruffy pigeon named Sidney.  What this had to do with my high school, which was supposed to be the focus of my column, was and is quite beyond me.

I don’t claim to be a novelist in the strict sense, because I have yet to strong-arm anyone into publishing my novels.  Perhaps that will change soon––I’m very excited about In the Wink of a Stone God’s Eye, which is currently entered in a novel contest––but until that happy eventuality, I will only claim to be a person who has written a novel.  And won second place once for doing so.  But, in this pyramid scheme of a society (and perhaps all societies are essentially based on the pyramid), second place counts for nothing.  It’s not even worth putting on my c.v.   I mention it here only to clear my good name.

In the same vein, I don’t claim to be a screenwriter except that I did once get a graduate degree in film.  Ancient history, truly.  I may one day write another screenplay, but it seems to be an arena for which I have no particular talent.  Could be that I don’t do well writing glib teen sex comedies, or perhaps it’s some greater, more profound failing.  I doubt I shall ever know.

In the realm of self-identification, I tend to say I’m a playwright.  This seems particularly true at the moment, since my work is being performed in a couple of venues, and I seem to be a finalist in at least two other competitions with production as the hoped-for result.  (Please visit my website to see if you’re near a current production: www.markrigney.net)  Now, I must get on my soap-box (there, I’m up) and bellow the following: I don’t EVER want to be told I’m a finalist or a semi-finalist or that I’ve “made the first round of cuts” or anything like that.  Back when I was a very green writer, I suppose this was helpful news in that it reassured me that I was swimming in the right pond, but my and large, all this does now is infuriate me, in part because it increases the sting when I don’t actually win––which happens a lot.  I’m the guy who constantly finishes second, or seventh out of a possible six projects, etc.  You want publishing horror stories?  I’ve got ‘em.  But time is pressing.  Perhaps one day over dinner, or better yet, around a campfire, we can sit down and I’ll tell you in horrific detail all the gruesome near-misses of my erstwhile career.

I also self-identify as a short story writer, as an at-home father (I have two sons), and as a beer can collector.  Empties only, please.  Until last summer, I identified as an Ultimate player.  (Ultimate is a field sport played with a flying disc, often mislabeled a Frisbee, and you run your socks off to play it well.  Alas, I ran my knees off also, and it’s doubtful that I’ll be able to play a serious tournament ever again.  I have yet to make peace with this, since for twenty years, Ultimate and training for it took up at least fifty percent of my spare waking hours.)  Finally, when presented with gorgeous lighting or curious subjects, I think of myself as a photographer.  If I die young, I’ll blame my demise on dektol and stop bath fumes unintentionally inhaled in dark rooms dating back to my fourth grade year.

Will I settle into one form?  Of course not.  Why should I?  When a creative flash occurs––the germ for some future project––I would hate to be relegated, a priori, to sticking it into one particular box.  The form should fit the project, not the other way around.  Some ideas make great stories but lousy plays, while for others, the opposite is true.  Knowing the best soil in which to plant a germinating idea is at least half the battle when starting something fresh.

***

SW & W - “Karen Addy's Cat Flap” struck me as a classic weird tale for today's modern reader.  Even before finishing it, I knew it would be perfect for Strange, Weird, and Wonderful Magazine. What inspired such a tale?  And is there really a Catface out there somewhere?

M. Rigney - Let’s start with the low-hanging fruit: No, there is no Catface roaming the earth.  So far as I know.  The name derives from trying to think like my (then) three-year-old when applying names to pets.

Karen Addy is my pseudonym for my former next-door neighbor.  She and I both lived then in a small city that I will not, for her sake, name just now.  I don’t recall her real surname; I’m not sure I ever knew it, but her first name was Dawn.  Her home, unlike all the others on the street, seemed quite literally to be falling down from within.  Perhaps in this regard, life mirrored art, or at least architecture, for Dawn’s personal life was clearly just as dilapidated.  She really did have two children, apparently by two different fathers, and one of them did tend to yell at her less than the other.  All yelling aside, Dawn was a slob par excellence.  She once threw a large load of dirty diapers into a topless trash barrel that sat between our two properties, and when some curious omnivore tipped the can over to get a closer whiff, those diapers got strewn over a fairly wide area, including much of my semi-forested back yard.  I asked her––very gently, I thought, since I was not unsympathetic to her ongoing daily traumas––to deal with the mess she’d made and pick up the trash.  For two months, she did nothing.  I called the health department.  They paid her a visit.  She cleaned up the diapers.

The water company also paid her a visit, and quite literally dug up her driveway (lucky for her it was gravel) to reach an unbelievably buried shut-off valve.  And they really did leave that crater for the better part of two weeks.  Whether they shut off her water supply, I do not know, but by that stage, she seemed to be down to one boyfriend rather than two, and the daily dose of yelling had subsided to something approaching a vanishing point.

Just before leaving the small city of ______, I attempted to put Dawn’s life under the brutal lens of fiction.  The plot, such as it was, had Karen attempting to take out her frustrations in life by sending vitriolic, bile-laden postcards to George W. Bush, who was President at the time.  Of course the Secret Service takes issue with the regularity of her threats, and orders her to desist.  She does not.  Then one night, George calls up.  He tells her he makes a regular habit of reading his hate mail, to keep him on the straight and narrow.  The phone call proves to be cathartic for Karen, who packs her girls into the van and drives away, leaving behind a lot of subterranean worms and other bugs to slowly tear out the house’s foundations from below. 

All of this sounds vaguely story-like in the retelling, but the truth is that this piece was didactic in the extreme: It was me taking the Bill Cosby-esque approach that everybody ought to haul themselves up by their bootstraps, to both make and insist on a better life.  The Cosby Formula has its charms (as do the even older standbys of Good Old American Know-How and Republicanism in general) but posturing and sermonizing of this sort have no place in serious, honest fiction, and it took me a good three years (and quite a few rejections) to realize that every time I sent it out, I chucked egg on my face.

So I shelved the story and moved on.

Then one day, I saw a pet door and wondered idly (such things are always idle, coming as they do in idle moments) what would happen if a pet went through it and didn’t reach the same location to which the door generally otherwise opened.  (Now, to prove to you that I am a writer, I have just re-crafted that last sentence, which formerly ended in a preposition.  I could not leave it dangling there, afraid and alone, because I am currently re-reading E. Nesbit, and she would be appalled.  Then again rules were made, like pet doors, to be broken, and I refuse to apologize.  With all due respect, of course, to the excellent Ms. Nesbit, R.I.P.)  

Anyway.

From there, I grafted this “weird” pet-door idea onto the more literary minutiae of Karen Addy’s shabby life.  The results are before you.

I might also note the attraction of writing about someone who does not have many, or even any, economic advantages.  Fantasy and sci-fi, also horror, are notable for avoiding the sorts of characters who people the work of John Steinbeck or Langston Hughes.  It’s not there aren’t poor people presented––look at Keith Roberts’ wonderful “Timothy,” for example––but their poverty is typically incidental, not integral to the plot.  With Karen, her pennilessness drives her every move; it’s the engine at the heart of the story.  True, heroic or epic fantasy, such as Elizabeth Moon’s very high-minded trilogy, The Deed of Paksennarion, often centers on a farmer’s child (the Everyman of Sam Gamgee, as it were) but again, the focus is on great adventures in far-off lands, so that poverty itself, its insidious constancy, takes a back seat and is generally abandoned in favor of the riches of a successful quest.  Not so Karen.  And in the end, “Karen Addy’s Cat Flap” seems to me to be the opposite of didactic in that Karen, by story’s end, isn’t going anywhere, not up, not down, not no place.  She settles.  Literally and figuratively.  She has a better house, yes, and a modicum of stability, but her one adventure is already behind her.

Unless, as I sometimes do, I read the story’s final line to mean that Catface is once again on the prowl in “foreign lands.”

If that’s the case, then I’ve created a mini-series.  Look for it as a DVD box set at a Borders near you.

***

SW & W - Others writers always want to know how their peers do it.  What does your writing process consist of from Idea to Finished Work?

M. Rigney - John Updike, also R.I.P., was once approached by Barnaby Conrad, who asked him to share any writing secrets he had for inclusion in what later came to be called Snoopy’s Guide to the Writing Life, an illustrated diversion edited by Conrad and Charles Schulz’s son, Monte.  Updike refused to share, saying something to the effect that he didn’t know any secrets, and that if he did, he certainly wouldn’t tell anyone.  This is a third-hand story, but instructive in its way, and I feel strongly that the moral to be learned is this: Don’t be like John Updike.

I’ve had the privilege of teaching two college-level writing classes, and the first thing I tell new students, right after saying “Hello, my name is Mark,” is that the only difference between writers and non-writers is that writers write.

As to the other favorite question of “What do you write about?” my answer, not at all flip, is that I write about those aspects of life that get under my skin and keep me up at night.  I write about what bothers me.  And, despite the excellent advice of Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels, I am rarely content to scribe a piece that settles for pure entertainment value.  I require, of myself and others, meat on the bone.  (Thank you, Gimli.)  Laughs are terrific, but laughs with context and content, ah, yes.  Now we’re talking about a meal.

I mostly write in order, from start to finish.  Sometimes I begin a story and have a draft done in three days or so.  At other moments, as with a piece I’m working on now, it can take months.  I cast around, write a few lines, suss out the direction, make sure the truth of it all is still intact.  (The advice Pete Seeger’s father gave him was that the truth is like a rabbit in the brush; you know it’s in there but you can’t quite get hold of it.) 

Writing out of order has its charms, especially with conversational snippets or a scene from a play, but perhaps the most important thing is to be unafraid of putting something aside.  You can always come back, if it nags at you, pesters and whines and demands attention.  I don’t believe in writer’s block.  Writer’s block is just your subconscious informing your more conscious, rational self, that you’re at work on the wrong project.  Or that it’s the correct project, but the wrong time.

Thanks to this hard-won piece of self-knowledge, I tend to work on several pieces at once, and on several types of work: Long form, short form, prose and play.  That way, whatever my mood

––whatever I bring to my musty writer’s garret on that particular day––I have something live to offer.

I edit.  Lots.  I spend more time on the work after it is supposedly complete, after having typed “The End,” than on getting to that point.  Nothing goes out before I read it aloud.  If prose is any good, it can stand the test of broadcast.  Speak it, sing it to the heavens!  If the words aren’t working, they’ll let you know in short order.

Reading aloud is not such a good test of structure or overall impact.  Repeated rounds of editing, however, do reveal nuances and flaws, and as you comb through the work again and again and again (and again), the architecture of it all does become more apparent.  I tend to make my editing specific.  On a first pass, I look for outright mistakes.  On a second, perhaps my focus is the particular diction of a given character.  On a third, maybe it’s time to make certain I’ve remembered to incorporate a sense of smell––something I still tend to forget.  (Writing should involve all of our senses; we must engage a reader’s whole self if we wish to provide real vividness.)  And so on.  When I can’t think of anything more to grapple with, anything further that demands a round of editing, it’s time to read the whole again (aloud) and be done.

Of course, this leaves out the real problem of being an at-home Dad and a writer.  I also have to cook, clean, and fetch the groceries.  Help with homework.  Mow.  Fix the bent gutter.  Attend the pre-school play (an experience and duty quite beyond surreal).  So the real process of all this comes down, most days, to discipline and time management.  Fact: If I don’t get some good writing time in at least every few days, I can get downright crotchety.  It’s not an attractive characteristic, but I doubt that any writer ever gets anywhere if they aren’t at least partially compulsive.

***

SW & W - What writers do you enjoy reading?  Does any of their work have an impact on your own?

M. Rigney - Everything I read has an impact, in the same way that the accents I hear around me affect how I speak.  When in New York for more than a few days, I sound like a New Yorker.  When in England, a Brit.  In deepest Appalachia, a coal miner’s son, and in Hyde Park, I start sounding as urban as urban can be.  Bottom line is, I’m a sponge.  Most writers probably are, which presents a danger.  Yes, any aspiring writer should read widely, but when working on a particular piece, especially one possessed of a stylized tone, narrowing the field is important.  Read only what amplifies and inspires the work at hand.

Writers whom I revere or at least admire include John Gardner, John McPhee, Alice Sheldon (a.k.a. James Tiptree, Jr., etc.), A.A. Milne, Lewis Carroll, Z.Z. Packer, Michael Byers, T.H. White (who authored my favorite book of all time, The Once and Future King), Robertson Davies, Adrienne Rich, Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, William Golding, Karen Joy Fowler, Laird Barron, Josh Rountree…and Shakespeare, I suppose, though he seems too obvious to mention. 

I note that an artificial division is creeping into this section, whereby “writers” are different and separate from “playwrights.”  This seems to me to be muddle-headed, but having passed so far already down this slippery slope, I shall continue.  Playwrights whom I admire and seek out include August Wilson, Lanford Wilson (no relation), Henrik Ibsen, Gina Gionfriddo, Sarah Ruhl, Itamar Moses, Tom Stoppard, Athol Fugard, Alan Bennett, Alan Ayckbourn (heresy, I know), and probably a thousand others that aren’t springing to my lips.  Shakespeare, yes––him, too.  Measure for Measure ought to be performed far more often than it is.

How do I know that Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice is a great play?  Or Itamar Moses’ Bach at Leipzig?  Simply because they leap off the page.  It’s not a formula, and they’re not great simply because I say they’re great.  It’s just a fact.  Remember the Supreme Court’s majority opinion on what constitutes pornography: “We Know It When We See It.”  To the dismay of social conservatives everywhere, the same holds true for art.  Always has, always will.  Luckily, good writing continues to speak for itself.  Loudly.

Getting back to my first point, that we writers (we humans) are imitative, and that it is important, therefore, to read what fits the work at hand, one must be careful not to stand too much in thrall of other artists.  For example, much as I adore the bile and structure of Ayckbourn’s The Revenger’s Comedies or the single-mindedness of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, it would be a mistake to allow those works to inform too specifically what I’m working on for myself at any given moment.  Those pieces set the bar, they force me to do my best, but they must not become a goal unto themselves.  I just saw a production of Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile, which feels very much like Mr. Martin trying to tell the world that he’s a smart guy, that he wants to be Tom Stoppard––the Stoppard who gave us The Real Thing and Arcadia and Coast of Utopia. I don’t care if Steve Martin is smart––in fact, I’ll take it as a given, just as I always assume that the audiences for my plays are always smarter than I am myself.  All I ask of Mr. Martin is that he does his best work and to be, as he does it, himself.  Picasso errs and seems to me to become a Stoppard imitation because it addresses the lowest common denominator first, littering the opening of the play with puns and sex jokes, then going for the jugular of the mind, a kind of intellectual tickling of the profound and abstract.  Stoppard starts from the opposite premise, demanding that everyone in the theater sit up and take note from the get-go; it addresses us as intellectual partners.  Then he really gets us on his side by adding––later––the carnality and sex jokes.  (Okay, this isn’t quite true.  Arcadia opens with a precocious thirteen-year-old girl asking her tutor, “Septimus, what is carnal embrace?” only to be told it’s how you hug a side of beef.  But then we launch into a discussion of heat mapping and thermodynamics, not to mention formal gardening, and we remain there for the duration, even when the sex jokes reappear.)

But let’s face it, Steve Martin is good at physical comedy.  When he sets out to prove he’s “more than that,” we despise him for it.  (This isn’t all his fault, of course; we the public have typecast him, at our expense.)  The moral (as the Duchess might have said to Alice) is simple: Be yourself.  Write to and for yourself.  If what comes out appeals to others, consider yourself fortunate and blessed.  Then do what you can to expand, flex your wings, shatter your own limitations––but never do so in the service of someone else’s work.  That’s like writing explicitly for a market niche: Even if you succeed at some material, basic level, the results are soulless, enervating, and historically irrelevant.

Back to impact: There are far too many books on Writing.  Writing, that is, beyond the basics of punctuation and grammar, an endlessly complex field that for my money is best handled by the The Bedford Handbook for Writers.  As to the rest––that vast muddy wasteland of writerly advice––one can write from the left side of the brain or from the right, one can follow the artist’s way or the stinky cheese man’s way, but the only consistently challenging and demanding mentor that I’ve ever encountered remains John Gardner, whose The Art of Fiction seems to me to be all that’s required.  Gardner, trained as a classicist, had a tremendous breadth of knowledge to bring to the task of writing, and his incisive acumen lets no one off the hook, himself included.  His expectations were almost impossibly high––indeed, I think that in his own story-telling, he rarely lived up to his own injunctions––but to have such a demanding teacher is invaluable.  If there’s one book that continues to inspire me, The Art of Fiction is it.

Not that David Lodge’s The Art of Fiction isn’t also very valuable.  It is.  It’s also quite different, a tome that uses excerpts of established authors to divine fiction’s toolbox.

My father, a mechanical engineer and tribologist, may one day write a book entitled The Art of Friction.  Believe it or not, I’ve only just thought of this.

But we must return to Gardner, who, like Lodge, understood how little the fictional wheel needs to be reinvented.  Prose fiction may be a newfangled form compared to theater, but its many practitioners are not to be underestimated, and there ain’t much that hasn’t already been tried––tossing the odd “ain’t” into an otherwise perfectly good sentence, for example.  Speaking now for myself, need I look farther than Rudyard Kipling for a fresh and creative voice?  Those Just So Stories aren’t merely kiddie lit, they’re a wellspring of vital, efficient story-telling.  And where would we be without Tolstoy, who either never met an editor in his life or trampled them into dust with his mighty wanderings, and made art regardless?

Okay, sure, Kipling is old-fashioned.  Most British writers of that era suffer from similar faults of easy and perceived superiority, Nesbitt among them.  H. Rider Haggard was worse.  The sun never set on his version of the British Empire, and generally never rose elsewhere.  As an adventure writer, he was phenomenal.  As a chronicler of humanity, he falls short; racism as antique and ingrained and systemic as his bleeds over into the tale-telling, polluting it almost beyond readability.

Then again, many writers are worth grappling with even when they stink up at least one of the joints that holds their work together.  Consider Michael Moorcock, whose prose––well, let’s just say that reading Moorcock aloud is like chewing on rock salt.  But his stories!  Such invention, such loss and grief.  It’s pulp, sure––perhaps forever held below the realm of true art––but there’s an engine at work, a siege engine of suspense and plot and forward motion.  Those stories of the Champion Eternal live on long after the bitter taste of rock salt departs.

Heroes, after all, are important.  Just ask Joseph Campbell.  Elric and Von Bek and company don’t inspire me to swing a sword.  How could that possibly be relevant to my life?  Instead, at present, they inspire me to push and cajole my city’s moribund bus system into the twenty-first century.  Everyone needs heroes and role models. I see no reason why mine can’t be imaginary.

But I digress…

 ***

SW & W - Why bother with fiction and playwriting at all in an age when you can buy an X-Box and wreak lifelike havoc without ever cracking a book?

M. Rigney - The million dollar question.  It’s one that our species will have to answer in the long term––and one whose eventual answer will give us much to answer for.  Roger Waters (remember Pink Floyd?) once penned a difficult, grim ode to humanity entitled Amused to Death, and I feel he was prescient.  Our great hurdles are not how to wean ourselves from gasoline or how to stop the buildup of various vapors and gasses in the upper atmosphere, but how to use our time and our minds ethically and responsibly.  If we did so consistently, surely we could figure a way through the conundrums of global warming and urban sprawl and kids on crack.  Or not.  We could also keep on playing endless games and attending endless moronic movies, averting our eyes whenever we encounter an idea or problem too sincere and painful to risk staring it in the face.

How should we citizens of the world balance our time between leisure (so easy!) and work––and in referencing work, what sort of work should that be?  If part of being an adult is “giving back,” how to do so while still balancing the demands of personal space, family obligation, and the equally important but often ignored demands of sex, celebration and/or worship?

Given all that, how dare I or anyone write at all?

At its best, fiction elevates.  It holds the mirror not only to ourselves but to a range of experience and emotion broader than ourselves.  It asks of us––no, demands––compassion, and in so doing, it requires of us maturity and consideration and contemplation and all those elusive, shiny-bright skills that make us human rather than dumb-struck stones.

Fantasy, horror, science fiction, literary fiction, tall tales, meta-fiction, epistolary novels––all of these and more share the basic trait of promise.  They promise the ability to move us, to make our living experience greater than we ever thought possible.  Think of it: With fiction (and with plays) we can live more than one life at a time.  How better to learn and process?  And how better to fully participate in this work than to take up the pen (or word processor) and begin the delicate task of transposing one’s thoughts into written form?

Benjamin Disraeli said, “When I want to read a book, I write one.”  I understand him, I truly do.

In the sixties, long-haired middle- and upper-class white kids went around announcing they were going to “Tune in, turn on and drop out.”  Depending on their meaning, this could be considered reprehensible or entirely appropriate.  For myself, I defeat the X-box and anything else that sucks the mind so completely simply by continuing to labor on, quietly, at my keyboard, in the hopes that what I conjure onto the page might move someone other than myself.  To move them, perhaps, back to a world of heart and soul, of books and letters, of experience deeply experienced.

“Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”  Sure, but it’s not potential immortality that keeps me writing.  It’s the chance to live more lives than anyone other than a multiply reincarnated Hindu has a right to.  It’s the chance to live out my hopes and wishes and dreams on a daily basis.

I think that’s what Karen Addy wants, too.

***

Jeffery Scott Sims Interview - 6/20/09

SW & W - What made you first pick up the writing habit? Was it reading the works of others, following in the steps of a family member or friend, or did you simply have an idea that wouldn't go away?

J S Sims - Scarcely had I learned to read than I discovered a taste for genre fiction-- mainly SF at that early stage, most importantly the works of Wells-- and it wasn't long after beginning to read it that I began to try my hand at writing it. By the fifth grade I was turning out strange short stories as gifts for my friends. During my adolescence and teens I continued to sporadically produce fiction, often in the guise of school projects. It was only with the arrival of adulthood, however, that I came to take writing seriously, meaning with publication in mind. It was only at that time that one might speak of my "writing habit". In college, while studying anthropology and working on my thesis, I did a lot of scholastic writing, which pleased me, but did not quite satisfy. Fiction I had to work around duty. I told myself that one day I would devote more time to writing for pleasure. It took some years to reach that point, but it did happen, and I've been writing steadily ever since. I strongly doubt that I will ever stop.

***

SW & W - The Return of Vanek is classic science fiction, along the lines of some of the great tales I've read in Asimov's, Analog, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Who are some of the writers that have had an impact on your work?

J S Sims - Oh my goodness! I've read all of those too, and a bunch more. During my early teens I picked up cheap copies of all the magazines from school sales, and long before then I was raiding the library for any fantastic tales I could get my hands on. The earliest one I remember is _Ark of Venus_, a juvenile SF novel by Clyde B. Clason. I'm pretty sure that was in the third grade. Right about then-- certainly within the year-- I discovered H.G. Wells, reading in rapid succession _The War of the Worlds_, _The First Men In the Moon_, and _The Time Machine_. I was counted a smart kid, but the latter book was just a little bit over my head at the time. So it began, and that trickle grew into a raging torrent, and the flood is still rushing. I've probably sampled just about every classic science fiction author of consequence. Asimov, Heinlein, Van Vogt, and the rest who wrote the pulps; later those who filled the teeming anthologies of the '50s through the '70s; from these I learned. From them, too, I branched out by my late teens, when I began to veer sharply toward fantasy and Lovecraftian horror. I read Tolkein, of course, and Lovecraft, and then more of that ilk. I now possess a competent grounding in fantastic literature of many varieties. "The Return of Vanek" is good old SF, and one must look to those greats of yesteryear for influences, which aren't hard to find; just consult the table of contents in the unbeatable 1946 collection _Adventures In Time and Space_. Most of my stories, however, fall into the categories of fantasy or horror, and there one must look to a different set of leading giants: Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, M.R. James, William Hope Hodgson, and E.R. Eddison spring to mind. Whatever their apparent impact, they are definitely my favorites, which must count for something.

***

SW & W - Many of our readers are writers themselves, and writers always want to know what works for their peers. What's your writing schedule, routine, and location? Do you just write when the feeling hits, or do you have a certain word count or number of pages you attempt to complete everyday?

J S Sims - I'm a part-time writer; not by choice, but that's the way it works out, so I make the best of it. I have to write around my responsibilities and my circumstances. To do good work I require absolute quiet and solitude. Fortunately I am able to find both without great effort. I live in the Phoenix area of Arizona, a bustling place, yet with nearby desert wilderness. I normally drive out on a free morning, very early, to the White Tanks Mountain Park, there, amidst starkly beautiful landscapes, to bang away on my portable computer until the battery dies, which terminates the session. If I'm really on a roll, I may return in the afternoon for another round. That routine suits me fine. I only wish I could do it every day. Necessarily that feeling to write has to "hit", as you say, and while I do have off days and periods of sluggish inspiration, I can usually count on some source to provide the motivation for a story, be it a plot germ borrowed from my voluminous reading, or a glimpse of unique scenery, or a gripping dream. Many of my tales are set in Arizona, where I've made my home for many years. This state offers plenty of locales for weirdness: ghost towns, deep canyons, curious rock formations. I'm a big dreamer, and I write them all down, so whenever I come up with a humdinger, I begin generating story frameworks that hopefully incorporate the bizarre images I see in sleep.

***

SW & W - What do you think is the greatest difficulty facing the would-be writer?

J S Sims - If my experience is any guide, lack of perseverance. I say that because I tried for many years to break into the paying markets, with no success. Throughout my life my writing abilities were constantly praised (as school newspaper editor, as composition class whiz, etc.), until I wanted to make those abilities pay, at which point the possibilities seemed to dry up. You know what, though? I didn't quit. Over a period of years I must have sent in hundreds of submissions, all of them coming back... and then one didn't. The magazine bought it. Suddenly I started selling, and I've been going ever since. I don't know what happened-- it isn't that my writing enormously improved, because I'm just as likely to sell an old story as a new-- but I know this: if along the way I'd given up, as I could have justified on practical grounds, I would never have known what I was capable of doing. I'm thankful that I continued to write, even if I often told myself it was solely for my own amusement. So I say keep writing, for the sheer enjoyment of it, trusting that sooner or later it will pay off. It just might, if you don't give up.

***

SW & W - As far as your writing goes, what are you up to these days?

J S Sims - I continue to write one-off stories in all the big categories-- science fiction, horror, and fantasy-- but certain elements have come to dominate my tales. Most of them now focus on three main areas: 1) stories of the ancient and fabulous empire of Dyrezan, abode of powerful and scheming wizards; 2) the adventures of Jacob Bleek, an ominous medieval sorcerer of vast ability who wanders the world in a dark quest for arcane wisdom and power; 3) modern tales of Professor Anton Vorchek, investigator of strange mysteries, and the hero of "The Return of Vanek". Vorchek, often accompanied by his beautiful but hard-boiled assistant Theresa Delaney, has proven to be my most popular creation, appearing in about half of my published stories. He is a dedicated researcher, his endeavors inspired solely by the lust for knowledge. He can be an extremely useful fellow when lurid horrors stalk abroad, but his private goals can be problematic, and it is not always wise to turn one's back on him. I am currently working on a novel length tale starring Vorchek and combining all three of these facets, tentatively entitled _The Journey Through the Black Book_.

***

Jeani Rector Interview - 08/21/09

SW & W - The Bus Station, which you wrote specifically for our readers, was your first story created from a prompt, I believe.  What was different about your process in creating it, compared to your normal writing process when working with your own ideas?

J Rector - It was an exciting challenge! I really wanted to be a part of Strange Weird and Wonderful because it is such a good magazine. So I said to myself, "Self, I am going to make this happen." :)

But I have to admit that this was an entirely different approach for me. I usually get into a "mood" and just start typing, and then the story writes itself through my fingers.  However, that leads to a lot of bad stories!  Not every one is a success. I am highly critical of my own work and I have a "good story" file and a "bad story" file.  I have no idea as to why I keep the bad story file, but I never send those out to magazines (and I'm sure the magazines appreciate that very much, ha ha).

With the prompt, I had to gradually weave in the idea of a bus station, without just throwing it out there. In other words, I had to make the idea flow and not be forced. The first version I submitted to DL didn't cut it, but with his help and suggestions, I went at it again.  We both liked the end result.

So, this is a vital thing for all writers:  Never feel offended. Constructive criticism is meant to help, not hinder. The goal for all writers should be to produce the best product possible. I thank god for editors every day.  Sometimes we are too close to our own stories; we feel we own it and it's our baby. But editors are unbiased and are usually very good at what they do.  I listen to editors, and am ALWAYS glad I did.

***

SW & W - After reading my review of Around a Dark Corner, the readers of Strange, Weird, and Wonderful Magazine already had an idea of your style and experience as a writer.  What new information do you feel they will learn about you from reading The Bus Station?

J Rector - That I can paint with words, and I usually look from my characters' points of view.  I am not one to write slasher stories or gore for gore's sake. I prefer a plot and gothic atmosphere. I have had people tell me that most of my stories are strangely uplifting. That is because I do like good to win over evil, and I love for protagonists to succeed through their own efforts. The Bus Stop does not have a happy ending, but I believe it has a just one. I generally don't let bad guys get away at the end.

But in my book Around a Dark Corner, I have a story where a young woman is caught in circumstances beyond her control: the bubonic plague in 1348 England. The reader gets to follow Elissa as she learns how to adapt in an unstable world, and how she struggles not only to survive the plague, but to find internal serenity in a world of external chaos.  See what I mean about happy endings?  This is not to say there is not horror in my stories, there is, but I believe in the human spirit's ability to overcome extreme obstacles.

***

SW & W - We always ask our writers where they do what they do.  What does your writing area look like at home?  Do you write on a schedule or anytime an idea hits you?

J Rector - I don't think it is where I write so much as to WHEN. When the urge to create hits me, it becomes an obsession. I have to put ideas down NOW.  That is why I have about twenty story "beginnings" of about two pages apiece. Later when I have an urge to create, I'll skim through the story beginnings, choose one that catches my fancy, and finish the story.

So, more advice (bear with me now!): when you have an idea, write it down on something immediately, even if it is a scrap of paper while you're riding on a bus (no pun intended) or a train. Because creativity spurts can be fleeting.  Or maybe I just forget more than other people do!

***

SW & W - Now that you've had two short story collections published, Around a Dark Corner and Open Grave, what's next for you?  The imagery of your stories, makes them perfect candidates for television and movies.  any chance we'll be seeing A Medieval Tale of Plague on the SyFy Channel or Under The House in a theater anytime soon?

J Rector - Not sure. I have had some screenwriters take a look at Around a Dark Corner, no word yet. I am also friends with Tim Meuiner who hosts the Sacramento Horror Film Festival every October.  I am going to bring a few copies of Around a Dark Corner with me this year to Tim's Fest. One never knows what tomorrow may bring.

A Medieval Tale of Plague is actually an excerpt from a full length novel.  The novel is titled We All Fall Down and it was the first thing I ever published back in 2001.  A history professor in Arkansas asked me for two copies of that book about a year and a half ago, and suddenly We All Fall Down has had a resurgence in Arkansas. Maybe he told his students about it. I can tell you, Arkansas really digs the bubonic plague!  ha ha.  Anyway, if anyone wants to read the "long version" of Elissa Hasting's ordeal in 1348 England, then We All Fall Down is for you.

***

SW & W - "What's a nice girl like you doing writing stories like that?"  With that smile of yours, you don't look like a horror queen? 

J Rector - Just goes to show you that sweet can go hand in hand with spunk!  :)

***