I read Bradbury’s essay “How to Keep and Feed a Muse” when I was fourteen. I forthwith started writing stories and as soon as I learned how to type them up, I started submitting them. I came back to it as an adult and started publishing short stories…then slid into novels rather recently.
What is your favorite moment from working with an editor? An agent?
With my editor, it would have to be when I wrote a chapter in Antiphon and suddenly realized the book was done about three chapters earlier than I thought I would finish. Jen (my wife) was in the hospital for that first week after having twins. I sent Beth (my editor) a note along with the chapter asking if we could have a quick chat because I’d discovered something. She read the chapter and wrote back “Is it because you think you finished the book with this latest chapter?” She had realized the same thing.
And my favorite agent moment is probably Jay Lake and I leading the World Fantasy Saratoga bar in a rousing round of Happy Birthday for our agent, Jennifer Jackson. At one point she climbed onto a chair and blew kisses to the crowd.
What is your favorite cover designed for one of your books?
I’ve been fortunate to have several I’ve really liked. I think it’s another three-way tie between Greg Manchess’s cover for Lamentation and Paul Swenson’s cover for Diving Mimes, Weeping Czars and Other Unusual Suspects and Marc Simonetti’s cover for the French language edition of Canticle.
What advice do you have for aspiring writers wanting to get published?Write a lot. Make friends with other writers. Submit what you write. Write more. Stay the course.
What are you currently working on?
I’m approaching the finish line on the fourth volume of the Psalms of Isaak…Requiem.
Would you consider writing to be a career or a lifestyle? Or something else entirely?
I think it’s a lot of career with a lot of lifestyle thrown in for good measure. It’s work–sometimes painfully hard work–but it’s also a way of life, a way of watching and listening to the world. Potentially, anything I do in a day could end up bent into fiction like a party clown’s balloon. So in a way, I’m always at work.
What would you change about the process of writing and publishing your most recent work if you could?
Well, I’d like to speed up my own production process but it’s been hampered by some pretty tough life changes and events that I suspect would slow most down. The month after my book deal, my Mom died. Six months later, while I was in L.A. signing ARCs, my nephew was killed in Afghanistan. Six months after that, the week before my first novel came out, my Dad died. Six months after that, we had twins. And this past October, my wife’s father died. Which means three of my novels (in a row) have been interrupted now by the death of a loved one. But that’s not something that can be changed, sadly. You just live through it and keep coming back to the keyboard, waiting for the words to rise.
What challenges did you face before and during publishing your first work?
I think writing for publication is a challenging prospect. In the beginning there is a lot of rejection and you have to look pretty hard for the rewards. And there is usually a pretty long learning curve that involves more and more rejection until the skills are in place to write publishable fiction.
How do you deal with negative reviews?
I keep in mind that regardless of how strongly opinionated the reviewer may be, it is ultimately just their opinion. At the end of the day, I write my books for the people who enjoy them.
