S.G. Browne

Today it’s my pleasure to welcome author and novelist Steve Hockensmith to the inaugural entry of my Author Q&A series. Of course for it to be a series, I need to do this on a monthly basis or something. Great. Now I’ve just committed myself to something else.

Steve Hockensmith is the author of seven novels, including the New York Times bestseller Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls and the Edgar, Shamus and Anthony Award finalist Holmes on the Range. He is widely admired within the writing community for his lion-like mane of thick, dark hair. His posture, on the other hand, is shockingly bad. Every once in a while, he updates the blog you can find here.

I met Steve at ZomBcon in Seattle last October during a signing at the Barnes & Noble booth. I told him why I thought zombies were so popular right now and he told me he liked what I said so much that he was going to claim my ideas as his own. We’ve hated each other ever since.

Where do you get your ideas?

From my brain. Specifically, the frontal lobe. What’s not so easy sometimes is finding them in there and dragging them out. I do a lot of research before I start work on a novel, then I lock myself in a room for two weeks and think. And think. And think some more. Sometimes I yell, too. Things like “Why doesn’t this make sense yet?” Or “What happens next, dammit? What happens next?” Or simply “AAARRRRGGGHHH!!!” Eventually, I manage to squeeze enough ideas out of my head to fill a book. Or so I like to think.

What’s your daily writing ritual?

I wish I had one. I have kids, though, and my wife has a work schedule that varies day to day and week to week. So nothing’s consistent. In a perfect world, my daily ritual would look like this: I arise at 9; go back to bed until 10; drink coffee and reply to e-mails till 11; eat lunch and surf the Internet until noon; write until 5; hang out with my family until 9; go for a run until 10; read until 11; drink bourbon and watch old movies until midnight; sleep until 9; repeat. Wanna guess how close that is to my real life?

What’s the first story you ever had published?

Well, if we’re going to be sticklers here, I don’t even remember what it was called: I was first published in a literary journal when I was a sophomore or junior in college. The story was about a guy who decides to go to work naked, but no one notices. My first paid story was called “Arnold the Conqueror,” and it appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact in 1997. So I guess I can pretend I’ve been a professional for 14 years. Woo-hoo!

What started you off on the path of being a writer?

Reading. Then discovering that I actually enjoyed writing assignments in grade school. I think I started creating my own magazines and comic books around sixth or seventh grade. From then on, writing just seemed like my thing, and I always assumed it would be my career one day. Looking back, I almost wish I could tell myself “Hey! Dummy! Those ‘computer’ thingies people keep talking about? Learn how to use ’em!” But I guess things worked out O.K.

Are you a plotter or a pantser?

I’m a plotter writing-wise and a pantser in my day-to-day life. Meaning I outline everything, but I do so while wearing pants. Usually sweatpants. Sometimes jeans. Khakis every once in a while. But very rarely shorts, for some reason.

What’s your favorite word?

No contest: lugubrious. It’s so fun to say. Try it. Lugubrious. Lugubrious. Lugubrious. It’s especially satisfying if you stretch out the second u. Lou-gooooooooo-bree-ous. You can’t say it that way without feeling like Vincent Price. I also like the word because it encapsulates an approach to art that I like to make fun of, but that’s a whole other conversation.

What’s your biggest fear?

I’d say failure and death run pretty much neck and neck these days. I think my fear of failure might diminish over time, though. As a writer, I’ve failed a thousand times already, with more failures to come. All writers fail, in big and small ways. It’s part of the gig. Death, on the other hand, doesn’t strike me as the kind of thing you get used to through repetition…although, come to think of it, once you’ve experienced it the thought of going through it again isn’t likely to bother you.

Who’s your favorite author?

It’s the classic old story for me: I stumbled across Slaughterhouse-Five in my high school library, and nothing was ever the same. I don’t think Vonnegut would have much use for what I do, to be honest, and I certainly don’t sound like him. But I like to think that his outlook on life and writing is in there, in some way, if you look for it.

What music inspires you?

I can’t listen to most music while I write. Even instrumental stuff is too distracting if it has a melody. So when I need to crank something up to cancel out the sound of a 5-year-old having a tantrum downstairs, I turn to “New Age” music. There’s one CD in particular — Oneness by David and Steve Gordon — that I listen to again and again and again. It’s perfect because it’s basically just waves of sound, and I can completely block it out of my consciousness and focus on my own words. I have used music to try to get in the mood for writing, though. Bernard Herrmann is my go-to guy when I’m thinking about something dark or creepy. But if I put on his score for Citizen Kane or Vertigo or whatever while I was trying to write, I know what would happen: I’d stop hearing words and start hearing music.

If you were a comic book superhero, what would be your superpower?

I would be Dismissiveman, able to dodge any question at will.

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Well, thanks for answering these questions, Steve. And remember, if you want to keep up with all of Steve’s shenanigans and writings, you can follow him at www.stevehockensmith.com.

I’m not a big fan of long chapters.

I prefer my chapters short and manageable. Chapters that give me some dialogue, some action, some character building, some plot movement, and don’t screw around with excessive description or weighty exposition or ten-page flashbacks.

Call me a product of Hollywood movies.

Plus short chapters give me a definite place to stop. With long chapters I always feel like I’m being forced to keep reading to the end when sometimes I just want to roll over and go to sleep. At least give me a break in the middle of the chapter, a space or a line of asterisks or some fancy little symbol so I don’t have to pick up the book mid-scene and try to remember where I stopped and what was going on. It’s like stopping in the middle of a conversation while you’re at a bar and trying to remember what you were talking about before you did another shot of Jagermeister.

Writing a chapter is like giving a speech. You really only have 3-5 minutes before people lose their interest. But because I’m being generous, let’s say you’ve got 10-15 minutes. Tops. After that, eyes are turning glassy and people are wondering where to take their next vacation and what to have for dinner and and how to kill their boss without going to jail.

Book chapters should be governed by the same rules. 10-15 pages, max. You exceed that and I’m flipping forward, wondering how much longer it’s going to take me to finish this damn chapter so I can feel like I have a sense of closure.

Yes, I’m a little bit obsessive compulsive. But so are you. Admit it.

Right now I’m reading Look at Me by Jennifer Egan, which at 415 pages and 20 chapters averages nearly 21 pages per chapter. To make matters worse, the book is written in 10-point Times Roman so there’s more than 400 words per page. Come on! That’s a good 100 words per page more than Carl Hiaasen’s Star Island, which is written in 12-point Times Roman and, at 354 pages and 31 chapters, comes in at a much more reasonable 11.4 pages per chapter.

Bing, bang, boom.

In this age where e-mails and text messages and Facebook status updates have replaced hand-written letters and phone calls and actual conversations, where in another generation Twitter will have made it impossible for anyone to have any kind of interaction that’s longer than 140 characters, I think short chapters are definitely going to be in demand.

Fortunately I’m already ahead of the game, as Breathers, with 310 pages and 58 chapters, comes in at 5.3 pages per chapter (PPC), while Fated (352 pages and 54 chapters) has a PPC of 6.5.

Ka-ching!

After going through a random sampling on my bookshelf, I discovered that the majority of my favorite novels have short chapters, with The Great Gatsby being one exception to the rule with a PPC of 20. And nearly every novel written by Chuck Palahniuk, Christopher Moore, and Kurt Vonnegut comes in with a PPC of less than 10.

True, Slaughterhouse Five has only 10 chapters and a PPC of just over 20, but each chapter is broken up into as many as 80 separate sections and some of the chapters even have pictures. Bonus! So it’s still technically in the club. And then there’s Cat’s Cradle with 191 pages and 127 chapters for a PPC of 1.5, which is by far the lowest PPC of any novel I’ve ever read and sets the bar for ADD readers and Twitter-philes.

Can I have a hallelujah?

Conversely, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has nearly 35 pages per chapter for the entire trilogy, which probably explains why I never made it past The Fellowship of the Ring. You ask me, it needed more pictures.

Here are some other notable books I own and their PPC quotient (based on the copies on my shelf):

• The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger (214 pages / 26 chapters / 8.2 ppc)

• Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk (218 pages / 31 chapters / 7.0 ppc)

• Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov (309 pages / 36 chapters / 8.6 ppc)

• The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler (231 pages / 32 chapters / 7.2 ppc)

• Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro (288 pages / 23 chapters / 12.5 ppc)

• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (143 pages / 35 chapters / 4.1 ppc)

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain (322 pages / 43 chapters / 7.5 ppc)

• High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (323 pages / 35 chapters / 9.2 ppc)

• The Stand, Stephen King (817 pages / 66 chapters / 12.4 ppc) *The original version, not the complete and uncut version, which has a PPC of 14.8

So where do you sit? Long chapters? Short chapters? Tequila shots instead of Jagermeister? Have at it. Or not. It’s a free country.

For the past month I’ve been working on a collection of short stories that I plan on releasing as an e-book sometime later this year. Some of the stories were written between 1997-2004 and some of them have appeared in anthologies and collections, but never before have they been collected together. And several of them are brand spanking new.

The collection will include the following:

“A Zombie’s Lament” – My two-thousand-word short story about a newly reanimated corpse that was the genesis of Breathers.

“Shooting Monkeys in a Barrel” – One of my newest creations, a cautionary tale about what happens to a writer when he purchases words from a drug dealer.

“Dream Girls” – A futuristic story about sexual obsession, extraterrestrial intelligence,the death of Marilyn Monroe, and the assassination of JFK.

“Softland” – A family of luck poachers living in central California deal with the consequences of their actions. This story spawned my next novel, Lucky Bastard.

“The Sodom and Gomorrah Shore” – The Seven Deadly Sins in the original reality television show, set back during the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. This one was written after Fated.

“Zombie Gigolo” – The shortest story in the collection, this took third place in the Gross Out Contest at the 2008 World Horror Convention.

There are four other stories, including “Dr. Lullaby” and “My Ego is Bigger than Yours,” both of which are sneak peeks of two novels I’m currently writing. The collection will also include an introduction and author notes for each story so you get some kind of background information on how the stories came to be written.

I’m excited to have the chance to share these with everyone, so I’ll keep you posted as to when you can expect the collection to be available. And thanks for reading!

This blog post is inspired by my friend and fellow writer, Steve Hockensmith, who posted a list of 50 Dos and Don’ts for Wannabee Writers. I’m not quite as ambitious as Steve, so my list is a little shorter. And it’s not nearly as amusing. But I hope it’s just as helpful.

DO write every day. Ideally at the same time. Preferably without distraction. Half an hour. An hour. Fifteen minutes. Whatever works with your schedule. Just pick a time and develop a habit and stick with it.

DON’T worry about your word count, especially when you first start out. If you don’t write much of anything and just sit there and stare at your computer, it’s okay. The practice is what matters. Eventually the words will come.

DO some writing exercises if you can’t think of anything to write. Pick a scene and write the same scene from different points of view: first person, second person, third person limited, third person omniscient. Or pick a scene and write it in different tenses. Anything to help stimulate your mind and challenge you to write something you might not be comfortable doing.

DON’T pay attention to how much other people are writing. It doesn’t matter if all of your writer friends on Twitter are pumping out 2000, 3000, or 4000 words a day. Just focus on what you can control and don’t compare yourself to others. After all, it’s about quality, not quantity.

DO carry a journal with you in your purse or backpack. Yes, that’s right. I said a journal. An actual book of blank pages that you write in using something that’s called a pen. It helps you to keep in touch with the physical process of writing. And it’s easier to write an idea down in a notebook than waiting to fire up your laptop.

DON’T check your Facebook profile or your Twitter account or your e-mail during your dedicated writing time. Staying disconnected from the Internet will allow you to stay connected to your writing.

DO read as much as you can. Novels, short stories, magazines. Read humor, romance, horror, mystery, suspense, non-fiction, memoir, poetry. Don’t get stuck reading the same thing over and over, even if it’s what you’re writing. A well-rounded reader is a well-rounded writer.

DON’T expect that you can learn how to write by reading a bunch of books on how to write. The best way to learn how to write is to write.

DO pay attention to song lyrics and movies and appreciate why you like them. It’s all writing, even if it’s in a different form. A writer can find inspiration in all sorts of places that aren’t the printed word.

DON’T pay attention to what other people say you should be writing.

DO write something that speaks to you. Something that makes you laugh or cry or get chills down your spine. Something that resonates with you. Because if it doesn’t resonate with you, chances are it’s not going to resonate with anyone else.

DON’T try to get it absolutely perfect the first time. That’s what rewrites are for. If you spend all of your time rewriting your first chapter, you’ll never get the second chapter written. Or the third.

DO get feedback from a writers group or a couple of trusted friends or colleagues. Family members are okay, too, but only if they’re going to give you an honest critique. Criticism is only helpful if it’s constructive.

DON’T try to please everyone who gives you feedback. Writing is subjective and everyone is going to have their own reaction to what you’ve written. Use what suggestions help to improve the story you want to tell and throw the rest of them out.

DO realize that once you send your novel out into the world, it doesn’t belong to you anymore. It belongs to everyone who reads it and not everyone is going to like it. Accept that fact and deal with it and learn how to not take anything personally.

DON’T forget that you’re supposed to be writing every day.

I recently watched half a dozen episodes of the reality television series Jersey Shore in the name of research. Since I don’t watch much TV, and rarely, if ever, watch reality TV, I felt it was imperative to get some insight into the dynamic for the short story I’m writing about the Seven Deadly Sins living together in a reality TV type environment.

I have to admit, while the first three episodes of Jersey Shore were for research, the last three episodes were because I couldn’t look away. Fortunately, I haven’t given into the temptation to do more research by watching Keeping Up With the Kardashians.

When it comes to research, I tend to be more of an armchair researcher rather than going out into the field, using the world at my proverbial fingertips to help add details to my writing. These details, I feel, help to enhance the mythologies and universes I create and ground them in a sense of reality.

While writing Breathers, for instance, I added a good deal of information as to what happens to the human body when it decomposes and what cadavers are used for when donated to medical science. Most of this information I found in STIFF: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. Had it not been for that book, I wouldn’t have known that a cadaver head is about the same size and weight as a roaster chicken or that when maggots feast on subcutaneous fat it sounds like Rice Krispies.

In addition to the various aspects of human decomposition that helped to give Breathers it’s somewhat dark tone, I also researched wine, recipes, reality television, granaries, the SPCA, the Sistine Chapel, Social Security numbers, and how to apply makeup. All of this was accomplished by using the Internet, though I did visit the Soquel Cemetery to add atmosphere to those scenes. And all of the headstones I mention truly exist there.

As for Fated, the time I spent in Manhattan definitely helped to add some details to the scenes that took place there, details I otherwise would have missed. Like being able to hear the traffic on the Hudson River Parkway while sitting on the promenade beneath the cherry blossom trees. Or that there were cherry blossom trees to sit under. However, I never set foot in Scandal’s in Queens to get a lap dance or had a drink at Iggy’s on the Upper East Side.

Since Fate has been around since the dawn of man, I wanted to include his personal relationship with humans over the millennia.  So I did a fair amount of research on world history, using details about Henry VIII, the sinking of the Titanic, Neolithic man, the Renaissance, the Hindenburg, Moses, the birth of the Roman Empire, and the Black Death, among others. This helped to add a realistic element to my supernatural universe.

I also researched the ingredients of crystal methamphetamine, celebrity deaths in Los Angeles, shopping malls, world population, the Greek Gods, New York City real estate, strip Scrabble, BDSM, the Daytona Beach Dog Track, and the fact that in the state of Minnesota it’s illegal to have sex with a bird.

Oh the things you can learn on the Internet.