Category Archives: Author Interview

Author Interview—Amanda Russell

Words can heal, and inspire others. Today let’s meet a writer who crafted poems to help her through a terrible experience, and whose words might lift you from a bad place, or just help you understand life through her insights. I met Amanda Russell at an Afternoon with Authors event at a local bookstore. In her responses to my questions, you’ll learn about travel, grief, book covers, gardening, and more. Here’s her bio:

Bio

Amanda Russell is an editor for The Comstock Review and webmaster for the Fort Worth Poetry Society. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Shore, Gulf Stream Magazine, Pirene’s Fountain and elsewhere. Her poem “The Blizzard of 1888” was a finalist for the 2024 Kowit Poetry Prize, selected by Ellen Bass. Amanda has two poetry chapbooks available.

Interview

Poseidon’s Scribe: How did you get started writing poetry?

Amanda Russell: I don’t know how young I was, but I wrote poems as a young child. Mostly to deal with the changes in family that result from divorce and remarriages. I continually felt lost and out of place as a child, both in the context of my own family and the communities I was nurtured in. I had trouble saying my thoughts out loud and writing came more naturally for me. I kept my poems to myself, but by the age of 14, I knew poetry would be a constant in my life.

P.S.: Who are some of your influences? What are a few of your favorite books or poems? 

A.R.: In 9th grade, my theater teacher gave me a copy of “Letters to a Young Poet” by Rainer Maria Rilke. There, I found my forever writing prompt. Rilke says to put into your poems the images and themes you find in your life and dreams, to approach the world as if seeing it for the first time every time. This is something I go back to anytime I feel like I don’t know what to write. It’s like Jane Hirschfield, Mary Oliver and Ocean Vuong all talk about, paying or investing attention. And I find myself drawn to writing like this.

The first poetry book I bought was Mary Oliver’s Dream Work. Then, Louise Gluck’s The Wild Iris and Stanley Kunitz’s The Wild Braid. My influences continue to broaden the more I read. There’s Jim Harrison and Marie Howe and Li-Young Lee who I love to read. A few of the poetry collections on my top shelf are Ellen Bass’s “The Human Line,” Ocean Vuong’s “Time is a Mother” and Ruth Stone’s “Simplicity.” And I just discovered Blas Falconer, who I am excited to read more from.

I love listening to YouTube poetry readings as well. In fact, that is how I usually discover new poets. One poet will mention another poet, and I go look them up. The journey is delightfully endless.

P.S.: You’ve lived, I believe, in Nebraska, New York, Florida, New Hampshire, and now Texas. Did your poems change character as you moved around? Was one state more conducive to writing poetry than another?

A.R.: I have never actually lived in Florida. But, I did connect with some poets from there during the pandemic through Zoom open mics while I was living in New York. I have lived in all those other places though. I grew up in East Texas, and if I had never moved away, I would not be the person I am and therefore would not be writing the poems I am writing.

Yes, the poems changed with each place! In addition to the changes occurring within me, each new place has different immediate surroundings, sounds, plants and animals. One poem from NH references the blue spruce I saw outside my window each morning on Mill Street, another mentions the neighbor’s dog barking. For east Texas, the red dirt, the pines. For NY, maples and snow. After moving to NH, I remember telling a friend from NY that I met a family of hooded skunks on one of my afternoon walks. He said that proves you are in a different ecosystem, and we got a good laugh. Oh yeah, and basements! That’s a NH reference for me since our rental had one. I experienced seasonal depression up north for so many years that I just thought it was normal. But I don’t get it as much in Texas. In Fort Worth, I find myself referencing trains and mosquitoes.

Also, with each new home, there are new poets. So, in Nebraska I discovered the work of Ted Kooser. In New York, I found a vibrant poetry community and attended their readings regularly. Moving to New Hampshire, I delved into the poetry of Jane Kenyon, even visiting Eagle Pond Farm and interviewing Mary Lyn Ray who knew Jane Kenyon and Donald Hall during their lives. That interview was published by South Florida Poetry Journal in February 2025. Moving back to Texas has been interesting. And I am still finding my way into the poetry community here. So, I hope no one place is better than any other for writing poems. I want to write poems regardless of where I am!

P.S.: I’m so sorry about your devastating miscarriage of twins. Your poetry collection Barren Years resulted from that. Yet others have described the book as consoling and even upbeat. Tell us about the process of writing the poems for that book.

A.R.: The oldest poem in that collection is “Sonogram” which came to me about 8 months after the miscarriage. I hadn’t been able to vocalize what had occurred. I had tried, but there would just be silence. When I wrote that poem, I slammed my notebook shut and threw it across the room. I never intended to share it. After moving to Nebraska, I was determined to gather my poems into some kind of collection. By the time I got to New York, I had whittled the group of 80 poems down to 25. I was still not sure if I would want to publish it. Then, I shared it with a friend. After reading it, she met me at a coffee shop and said, “I didn’t know we had this in common.” She said reading my poems helped her process her grief around the miscarriage she experienced years ago. She encouraged me to publish the poems so other people could read them and feel less alone. Maybe that is how it is consoling.

Miscarriage is not talked about as often or as openly as it needs to be. Because of that, many women go through years in silence thinking that they are alone. Every time I give a reading from Barren Years, people reach out to me afterwards to say, “This happened to me too.” And it’s like sharing a secret. There’s a deep and immediate understanding and healing energy that exchanges, strengthening both people. It’s life-changing to know you are not alone.

Barren Years covers a seven-year span of time and uses gardening as an external mirror for the process of healing though the writing of poetry. There’s many references to conversations. I’d say one of the themes— in addition to love, loss, grief— is communication. One thing about me is that I often get bored reading books, so variety is essential for my engagement. So, I think that’s how a book about a miscarriage can be also about many other things.

P.S.: What common attributes (settings, themes, etc.) tie your poetry together or are you a more eclectic poet?

A.R.: I am disinterested in being a “certain kind” of poet writing a “certain kind” of poem. I am inspired by writing that discovers something. So, in that regard, I am more eclectic and always exploring.

P.S.: Regarding your poetry book Processing, one reviewer described it as brave, resolute, mesmerizing, and miraculous. Another said the poems reflect “deeply aching, beautifully rendered pleasures and pains.” Please tell us your thoughts on the book, and what themes link the included poems together.

A.R.: Processing to me is a book about my experience as a stay-at-home mom. It offers a different perspective than the mainstream idea maybe. For me the experience was lonely and difficult. It was like my life was on halt while I surfed this constant learning curve. And I don’t know how to surf either. And I did not have some huge career ambitions before having kids. I was just a cashier and was trying to write poems every day.

The thing is, I lost my identity when I became a mother. At first it felt natural, even unnoticeable, to let it go. But then, years passed. And I’d forgotten what kind of music I liked to listen to. I wasn’t enjoying my life because I wasn’t living my life.

So, Processing is the collection in which I venture back into the country of myself and find footing. I am looking for and reconnecting with myself. In these poems, I find the courage to speak about both the love and loneliness of motherhood and marriage. In my poems, relationships are important, and there is this sense that I am reaching deeper into my own life to hopefully connect with others as well.

P.S.: I’m intrigued by the covers you’ve chosen for your books. The mostly barren trees and lonely road make sense for Barren Years. However, can you explain the symbolism, if any, in the cover to Processing, with the woman (you) peeking around a door, and a stuffed panda on the ground?

A.R.: Actually, I cut the poem that references the panda from the collection. Like others that didn’t make it, it just was not finished in time and the collection felt solid without it. But, I chose to keep the panda on the cover because I liked him there. My son named him Tao Tao and used to wrestle him after school.

But when I decided to collage part of the inside of the house on the left side of the book, I used a sliver of my son’s room. His lamp, window unit a/c, footstool and panda were all there. I did not stage it. I wanted things to appear as they were.

And, the central image of me looking out the door was my concept photo for the book when I was beginning to write this collection. That’s the front door of our townhouse in Cornwall, NY. I did not have anyone to hold the phone to take the picture, so I used the front camera to make a short video. It was raining. I sat the phone in a pot of spinach and pressed play. That black part in the lower right corner would be green if the cover were in color. It’s a spinach leaf.

So, what you see is a screenshot out of that video. There is a whole story of how we got the image to something usable for the cover.

Also, I debated whether to put my face on the cover of my book. I decided to do it because one of the poems in the book is written in response to an article on mothers and autism and the concept of blame; and the mother in the graphic paired with that article does not have a face. I wanted to in some way put a face on her. It’s not her face, but it’s the only one I have. I decided to put my face on myself in my role, to claim it. I am just wearing whatever I was wearing, the fleece vest is pink and I still wear it often, lol. So in that way, it’s all quite candid.

P.S.: Where do you get the ideas for your poems?

A.R.: I get them from the edges of sleep and what I see as I drive from the gym to work. I get them from whatever pops into my head when I’m in the shower or cooking dinner. From what my kids say and do. It comes from what I long for or need to dig into. I find them in the mailbox or growing in the garden. From what I read. I often write immediately after reading. If I am stuck, I ask my subconscious to work on that while I sleep. I use prompts sometimes with varying results. Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones introduced me to timed writing sessions which I use because I am often pressed for time as a working mother of two school-aged children. I use it all, even tarot cards. Anytime a line arrives, I try to catch it on paper (or audio or email) without judging its potential because that shuts it down.

P.S.: You list gardening as an interest and many of your poems involve plants and the nature of growth. Do you do your gardening when stuck for words and find the solution to writer’s block there, or does gardening provide the initial inspiration for fresh poetry?

A.R.: Yes. Anything to get the blood flowing is often great for generating ideas. I love my garden. I love to sit in it and pretend to be a little plant. I go there for energy and encouragement, for consolation when I am down or company when I am happy. I read a question from Stanley Kunitz’s “The Wild Braid” in which he asks if it is any easier to deal with loss and death in the garden than in the rest of our life. I have pondered that question. I still ponder it. I think we could add to that, transition and blooming, sprouting and thirsting.

P.S.: What are the easiest, and the most difficult, aspects of poetry for you?

A.R.: The easiest part of poetry is reading other people’s poetry. Writing is difficult and full of hope and despair. I write because if I didn’t, I may entirely miss my life. Writing connects me more deeply to my life and the relationships that fill it.

P.S.: You’ve said some poems require little revision, and others take years. How many poems are you working on at any given time?

A.R.: LOL. Yes, I work on several at a time. Actually, I work on all the poems, all the time. There’s a saying that poems are never finished, just abandoned. I am not sure I completely agree with that, but if years later, I see an improvement I could make, I would consider it.

I strive to write poems which were not possible to put into words before they were written. As such, the process is often slow and iterative. Many times, I am trying to write something that I may not learn for several years. Andrea Gibson has a poem called “What do you think about this weather?” in which they use the metaphor of a mother knitting mittens for a child a size (or two) big so they can be worn longer. They say, “I feel that sometimes when I’m writing poems— like they don’t yet fit. Do you ever feel like the best of you is something you’re still hoping to grow into?” So, I approach the poem again and again. It’s not unusual for me to have 40 or even 60 plus revisions on a single poem. Some of those revisions are total rewrites.

I keep writing and rewriting until the poem speaks back to me. Once that happens, the process is that of listening, following, and trusting the poem itself more than “writing.”

Poseidon’s Scribe: What advice can you offer aspiring poets?

Amanda Russell:

  • Read widely. Write as much as you can.
  • Go to open mics in-person or online, listen to other poets, and share your work. Learn about revision.
  • Say Yes to any opportunities you are given.
  • Listen to constructive comments with the aim of learning more about crafting poems that work to their fullest potential.
  • Learn to listen to the poem when it asks you to go places and learn things that you did not anticipate.
  • Surround yourself with the people who encourage and inspire you.
  • Trust your voice. Trust your reader. Trust the process.

And I will end with one of my favorite quotes from Rainer Maria Rilke’s book Letters to a Young Poet, “[T]ry, like some first human being, to say what you see and experience and love and lose. … seek those themes which your own everyday life offers you; describe [them] with loving, quiet, humble sincerity … for to the creator, there is no poverty …” (Rilke Letters to a Young Poet).

Poseidon’s Scribe: Thank you, Amanda. That advice would work for prose writers, too!


Web Presence

Readers can find out more about Amanda Russell at her website, at the Fort Worth Poetry Society website, and on Instagram. A post by Brianne Alcala featured Amanda’s works, and Amanda read and discussed some of her poems on YouTube.

August 9, 2025Permalink Leave a comment

Author Interview—Rob Jolles

Change of pace today. Most often, I interview fiction authors. Today’s guest has done everything but write fiction. Rob Jolles coaches speaking and writing. He’s written several nonfiction books and hundreds of blogposts he calls “Blarticles®.” He hosts podcasts and was kind enough to interview me on his “A Book Finds You” podcast.

Here’s his bio:

Rob Jolles

A sought-after speaker and five-time Bestselling author, Rob Jolles has spent over three decades traveling close to 3 million miles in the air teaching, entertaining, and inspiring audiences worldwide. His books, including How to Change Minds, Customer Centered Selling, Why People Don’t Believe You, How to Run Seminars & Workshops, It’s a Blarticle®! and The Way of the Road Warrior, have been featured in USA Today, Investor’s Business Daily, Harvard Business Review, and Publisher’s Weekly.

Rob is also the host of over 500 podcasts including “A Book Finds You,” and “Pocket Sized Pep Talks,” a podcast he launched over four years ago, and now currently in the top 2% of downloads nationally.

Next, the interview:

Poseidon’s Scribe: Most often, I interview writers, but you’re more than that. You’re a speaker and, through Jolles Associates, Inc., you give talks to businesses and also coach the art of speaking. What got you started doing that?

Rob Jolles: Rather than being a writer who speaks, I’m what I refer to as speaker who writes. I was a trainer for Computer Sciences Corporation, Battelle Memorial Institute, and Xerox, and I loved it, but I dreamed of something more. One day a professional speaker was hired by Xerox and came in to deliver a presentation, and he had one thing I did not have; a book. I watched him carefully, and was the only other speaker on the agenda that day. My feedback scores were significantly higher than his and I thought, “I can do that!” So, 32 years ago I took the leap, and the first thing I knew I needed to do was start writing! Seven books later, I’m still writing. As for coaching others in the art of speaking, when you’ve actually done it for over 40 years, and written about it, it’s a natural fit.

P.S.: You coach people in both speaking and writing, two very different modes of communication. What aspects, if any, do you emphasize with your writing clients that differ from what you tell your speaking clients?

R.J.: It’s an interesting question because I don’t seem them as, “very different modes of communication.” Everyone has their own writing style, but here’s where a business book is a little different from a fictional book. I’ve always believed one of the best compliments you can get from a reader is to hear, “When I was reading your book, it was if you were here talking directly to me.” Of course, there are other significant differences such as the physical nature of speaking, the necessity to hold someone’s interest in your presentation, and the number of activities that support your message in a presentation. However, I coach both types of clients’ needs because both are necessary to make it as a professional speaker.

P.S.: Thank you for interviewing me on your “A Book Finds You!” podcast. How did you get started doing that, and what’s the meaning behind the podcast’s title?

R.J.: I got started podcasting close to six years ago with a business show called “Pocket Sized Pep Talks.” Almost all my guests are business authors and I found myself almost always asking the question, “I’m not going to ask you how you found this book; I want to know how it found you!” I noticed that every time I asked that question my guest’s faces would light up because there was always a story to tell. I approached the Writer’s Center in Bethesda first, because I teach there, but they wanted to go in a different direction with a show that never got off the ground. I then pitched it to the Maryland Writer’s Association, who loved the idea and away we went!

P.S.: You’ve written the book Why People Don’t Believe You…Building Credibility from the Inside Out. Since you asked me this question about my book, it’s my turn. How did your book find you?

R.J.: I do love that question! I had been volunteering for almost a decade for a group called, Career Network Ministry, and noticed an unusual pattern. People were learning elevator pitches, and star stories, but having trouble delivering them in an authentic manner. My working title was a little kinder, “It’s not the Words, it’s the Tune!” but I guess that wasn’t eye-catching enough and my editor changed it. But that book and title found me, and the wonderful people there allowed me to experiment with all kinds of different tactics that found their way into the book.

P.S.: Regarding Why People Don’t Believe You, fiction writers might not think that book would apply to them, since they don’t expect readers to believe their stories. Do you think fiction writers would benefit from this book, and if so, how?

R.J.: Of course fictional readers would benefit. I’m not asking them to believe in the fictional stories they write; I’m asking them to believe in themselves as writers. As a guy who interviews 100’s of fictional writers and poets I can tell you firsthand there’s a lot of imposter syndrome issues with these writers… and all writers for that matter.

P.S.: Another of your books, How to Change Minds: The Art of Influence without Manipulation, features a cat and mouse on the cover. That cover alone likely changes minds from “don’t buy” to “must have.” What is the most important thing fiction writers can do to change readers’ minds from casual perusers to loyal fans?

R.J.: Well, I’m not sure I make the same connection you have here with that cat and mouse, which is one of my favorite reasons for loving that cover. People see what they choose to see. That said, it’s a book that deals with the art of persuasion, and not being ashamed to push for an idea that you truly feel would benefit those you are interfacing with. One way to do this is to learn how to write a hook for the books that are written. I make that a requirement for being on the podcast, “A Book Finds You!” Even with a document that teaches guests how to write a hook, I’ve only had one author out of the 40 I’ve interviewed give me anything close to a hook. I get a synopsis, which I’m sure is interesting to the writer, and tells the reader what the book is about, but doesn’t provide a compelling reason why to read the book, or for my case, listen to the author talk about the book on a podcast.

P.S.: What are the easiest, and the most difficult, aspects of writing for you?

R.J.: The easiest part of writing is trusting my voice and message. I don’t write about things I don’t know about intimately. The hardest part about writing for me is to be patient enough to wait for an idea I’m so attached to, I can’t help but write about it. This is something you can’t wish for, or fake. That book has to find me!

P.S.: Many introverted fiction writers detest the person-to-person marketing aspects—speaking on conference panels, reading to an audience, and book signings. What’s the best piece of advice you could give them about how to engage with a live audience in an effective way?

R.J.: Imagine your book is one of your children. Remember, you’re not fighting for you; you’re fighting for your book. You worked too hard to create that book to not do all you can to give it the best life it could possibly live.

P.S.: You excel in person-to-person communication in several modes (speeches, podcasts, books, Blarticles®, social media, etc.) and for several purposes (persuasion, education, entertainment, etc.). Fiction writers focus on the narrow slice of writing books for entertainment, but you glide across the communication spectrum as if modes and purposes blend together. Do they blend into one for you, or have you mastered the techniques for each separate mode and purpose?

R.J.: Well, some tasks are easier and blend together better than others. For instance, podcasts allow me to not only extend my network, they allow me to, as you say, glide across the communication spectrum. But please note, like many will tell you, it’s not always a lot of fun. I was raised by a Marine, and that meant learning to fight like heck for what you believe in, and never, ever give up. It’s a marathon, and I just take it week by week and do the best I can.

P.S.: What is the next book you’re writing? Would you mind telling us a little about it?

R.J.: It took seven years, but a book found me about four months ago. I’d prefer not to go into much detail here, but I can tell you where it will be found in the bookstore. Business, Self-Help…

Poseidon’s Scribe: What advice can you offer aspiring writers?

Rob Jolles: Whatever dream you have in your mind that involves the joy you might feel from writing a book, the reality is even better. It’s an amazing accomplishment, and one that is deeply personal. We all have our own voice, and it’s a voice you need to believe in. You are good enough to do this. Just remember this, which I keep near where I write: Planning to write is not writing. Thinking about writing is not writing. Talking about writing is not writing. Researching and outlining to write is not writing. None of this is writing. Writing is writing.

Get that outline going, and start. Today.

Poseidon’s Scribe: Thank you, Rob. Great advice!

Readers can find out more about Rob Jolles almost everywhere, but specifically at his website, on LinkedIn, by reading his LinkedIn newsletter, through his “Pocket Sized Pep Talks” podcast, through his “A Book Finds You!” podcast, by reading his BLArticles®, on Facebook, on X, at his Amazon Author Page, on Amazon Music, and at his YouTube channel.

July 28, 2025Permalink Leave a comment

Author Interview—Fabiana Elisa Martínez

Today I interview an author who writes first drafts like nobody else. Read further to hear about her unique process. I met Fabiana Elisa Martínez at an Afternoon with Authors event at a local bookstore. A polyglot, she doubted her writing abilities at first, but started with one-word prompts and crafted stories that have won numerous awards. Here’s her bio:

Fabiana Elisa Martínez

Bio

Fabiana was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She graduated from UCA University in Buenos Aires with a Linguistics and World Literature degree. She is a linguist, a language teacher, and a writer. She speaks five languages: Spanish, English, French, Portuguese, and Italian. She has lived and worked in Dallas, Texas for more than twenty years. She is the author of the short story collection 12 Random Words, her first work of fiction, the short story “Stupidity,” published as an independent book by Pierre Turcotte Editor, the collection of short stories Conquered by Fog, also published by Pierre Turcotte, and the grammar book series Spanish 360 with Fabiana.

12 Random Words, in its three bilingual versions, has won ten awards, and two of its stories were selected to be read in February 2017 as part of the Dallas Museum of Art’s distinguished literary series Arts & Letters Live. The book was also among the six finalists of the Eyelands Book Awards 2022 and won first prize.

Six months after publication, Conquered by Fog became a finalist in the 2023 Global Book Awards, the 2023 Eyelands Book Awards, the Independent Author Network Award, and the Royal Dragon Fly Book Awards.

Her short story “Characters” received the Second Place Award in the Fiction for Adults Category in the 2023 Annual Abilene Writers Guild Contest.

Interview

Poseidon’s Scribe: How did you get started writing? What prompted you?

Fabiana Elisa Martínez: In 2014, invited by a friend who believed in me more than I did, I accepted joining a virtual writing group. I wasn’t sure that I could write fiction in English, or at least quality fiction. Reading is easier; I can read in five languages and always try not to read two books in the same language consecutively. However, I tried, and every month, I wrote a short story based on a random word the group organizer sent.

Magically, some of those stories became a book, my first book, called 12 Random Words. It was published in 2016, and it has been one of the best experiences in my life. Because from the fiction of those stories came an immense number of really beautiful events that enriched my life even more.

P.S.: Who are some of your influences? What are a few of your favorite books? 

F.E.M.: My life is shaped by literature and languages, so for someone who reads every day, it’s quite difficult to choose just a few books or authors that have influenced me, maybe not my writing, but the way I see the world. Of course, I have my favorite writers. I might be a little biased here, but I love Borges, Cortázar, Javier Marías, and Mario Vargas, to mention some titans of the Spanish language. In English, I love Jonathan Coe and Julian Barnes. In French, I admire Michel Houellebecq. In Portuguese, Jorge Amado and Carlos Campaniço. I admire for sure any writer who can make the reader turn pages with passion and curiosity, no matter the genre or subject. Ultimately, there are not as many subjects, but endless ways to discuss the few deep passions that human beings share: love, jealousy, hatred, fear, and rage.

P.S.: Regarding your book 12 Random Words, (with four marvelous story-linked videos on your website), how did that book come to be and what is it about?

F.E.M.: The videos that illustrate my book can be seen on my website and were conceived by my friend, editor, and movie director, Quin Mathews. We traveled all the way to New York City to film them. It was a wonderful adventure and a great way to make literature tangible.

As I mentioned earlier, the 12 stories in the book were inspired by a random word I was given, and I couldn’t dispute it. I leave it to the reader the freedom to connect those stories. Like any short story collection, the stories may be related beyond the writer’s conscious choice. Many times, readers come to me to comment on characters that appear in different stories and seem to them related in some way. I never tell a reader that their perception is incorrect. It’s exactly the opposite; the reader is always right, and I love to listen to the infinite hues and angles through which they can view a story. I believe that is the magic of literature: the solitude of the writer and the boundless interpretations of the readers.

P.S.: Which came first—your writing, or learning five languages? How have each of those abilities affected the other, if at all? (Aside from the fact that you got 12 Random Words published in 3 different languages.)

F.E.M.: Since I grew up in a bilingual family (Spanish at home and Galician at my grandparents’ house), I don’t have a conscious memory of learning a language. In kindergarten, teachers were already speaking English to me. Later in life, I chose to study literature and additional languages in college, which provided me with the opportunity to earn degrees in Latin and Ancient Greek, which opened the doors to other languages. I have been in love with French for many decades. I speak English at home and teach mostly Spanish, but French is the language I consider my private linguistic room. Like Virginia Woolf’s room but made of words. So, when I was initially writing the stories of 12 Random Words in English (and I want to make this very clear: I wrote all those stories in English from scratch, and that’s the only language I have written fiction in so far), it was only logical to make the first book bilingual in English and Spanish. The other two followed along—English and French, and English and Portuguese.

P.S.: For your book Conquered by Fog, what connects the twelve short stories in it? How does the cover image of a female Greco-Roman statue represent them?

F.E.M.: Again, I think these are questions that the readers might answer with a more interesting perspective. From my perspective, the stories reveal different aspects of the human condition at various ages and stages. I think all these characters look for deep connection, understanding, and love, which is what makes us human. My deepest conviction is that we humans are more similar to one another than different from each other: we all yearn to be loved, and we all dread dying alone. The cover of the book is also a picture taken by my friend, Quin Mathews, and it reflects the character of some of the stories, as well as their classical symbolism. It also illustrates the title of the book, which is the same as the title of the very last short story in the collection. But again, readers know better. We should ask them.

P.S.: We heard that you write in the dark. Is that true? How does that work and why do you do it?

F.E.M.: Yes, I have a peculiar ritual. Whenever I start writing a short story, I turn off all the lights. I close all the shutters and switch off every single monitor. I close my eyes and start writing frantically. My brain works in a different dimension at that moment, perhaps closer to a meditative state; I’m not sure. I only open my eyes when I feel that the story has reached a mature stage. Sometimes 40 minutes pass, sometimes an hour, but when I open my eyes, I know I have something of relative value in front of me, something imperfect but solid that needs to be properly corrected. That’s the second stage of my writing, and of course, it is done with the lights on.

P.S.: Some say I’m in the dark about writing, but they mean it figuratively. Moving on. You’ve titled a short story “Stupidity,” and gotten it published as a standalone book. What prompted this story, and what is it about?

F.E.M.: Stupidity was a given word I had to write about many years ago. It tells the story of an older lady who attends the funeral of someone she loved for decades. However, even at funerals, people can uncover new mysteries about those they thought they knew very well. Interesting surprises can emerge even at funerals.

P.S.: Where do you get the ideas for your stories?

F.E.M.: That’s easy. Ideas are everywhere. I feel inside myself, but also listen and observe. I have always thought of writers as very efficient antennas. People who know me are aware that whatever they say, remember, do, or complain about may end up in some of my writings. Ideas are like subjects. They are limited. It’s how we handle dilemmas, temptations, sadness, and passions that matter. So, I’m very fortunate to be surrounded by a constant flow of literary triggers.

P.S.: Two of your other books, Spanish 360 with Fabiana: Transcripts and Exercises – Podcasts 1 to 25 and the companion book for Podcasts 26 to 50 seem designed to teach the Spanish language to English speakers. How do these books differ from other methods of learning Spanish?

F.E.M.: Since my life is a blend of languages and literature, Spanish 360 with Fabiana is a project that aligns with my passion for teaching languages. The two books are transcriptions of our 50 podcasts, which are available for free on most platforms. The advantage of the books is that, in addition to the transcripts of each podcast, there are thousands—literally thousands—of footnotes explaining grammatical aspects not discussed in the podcasts but related to their dialogues and descriptions. Additionally, after each transcription, there are complementary exercises to practice the specific topics covered in each podcast.

P.S.: Reviews of your books on Amazon praise your writing style. One said “she paints with words” and another said of you, “she carries a museum in her head.” Another reviewer wanted to take a highlighter pen to each sentence. How would you describe your writing style and how it differs from other writers?

F.E.M.: Thank you very much for reading those immensely generous reviews. I’m not sure I’m the right person to describe my style, as my perspective is too close to reality. But what I do know is that I don’t want to write in a transparent way; I want to offer the reader some poetic mystery to decipher, not in the sense of a murder mystery but in the way we understand a poem through the magic and rhythm of words, metaphors, alliteration, and images. I don’t want to produce an easy text; I want to give my readers stories that I would love to read, texts that would be completed through the act of reading. Sometimes I worry that some readers don’t want to work too hard, but perhaps those are not the ones I write for. I believe literature is the only admirable lie—the biggest lie that hides the deepest truth.

P.S.: To say you’re an award-winning author is to understate the matter. It takes longer to list your awards than to list your books! Congratulations on winning all of them, by the way. Please choose one and tell us about your experience in winning the award.

F.E.M.: It’s difficult to choose from one of those awards because every one of them has given me in men’s happiness.

One of the best days of my life is not related directly to an award but to an event that felt like it. In February 2017, two stories from 12 Random Words were read at the Dallas Museum of Art by actress Constance Parry at an Arts and Letters Live Event recognizing Texan writers. Not only were my words, forged at home in silence with my cat on my chair, now in the voice of a talented actress, but I was also considered a Texan writer!

However, regarding awards, one that is close to my heart is the Eyelands Book Award, which 12 Random Words received in 2022. This is an international prize awarded in Greece, and the book was selected from among other short story collections by writers I admire. Every time I see that little tree-like, Greek clay sculpture on my desk, I’m reminded of how fortunate I am and how generous the literary world can be.

P.S.: What is your current work in progress? Would you mind telling us a little about it?

F.E.M.: I am working on what I think could be a novel. We will see. I would say that right now, it’s going to be more like a quilt novel or a story divided into short vignettes that will compound a map of a bigger, deeper narration. If you can imagine a Cubist piece of art, one of those paintings by Juan Gris or Georges Braque, it will be something like that, but with words. Like an atomized story shown through all those little shards of moments in time.

Poseidon’s Scribe: What advice can you offer aspiring writers?

Fabiana Elisa Martínez: My advice is very simple, although I am fully aware that I lack the authority to give any advice. However, if you want to write literature, first read a lot, then sit down and write. There’s no better class and no better teacher than a good book and a skilled writer (and sometimes a bad book that teaches you how not to write). There is no powerful writing class that can force you to write what is in your heart. There are no courses or literary gurus. In the end, it is always you and how brave you are in front of the blank page. Sit down and write. You will be surprised.

Poseidon’s Scribe: Thank you, Fabiana. I believe your advice will inspire that kind of bravery in others.

Readers can find out more about Fabiana Elisa Martínez at her website, on Facebook both here and here, on Instagram both here and here, on X, on Goodreads and on her Amazon page.

July 14, 2025Permalink 2 Comments

How You Can Give Better Author Interviews

As an author, you can expect to receive offers from people to interview you. Such interviews can be in person, or remote by phone or email. The offeror might broadcast the interview on TV, radio, podcast, or publish it in print or online in a blogpost. Today I’ll provide guidance about how to make the most of these interviews.

Images of microphone and pen from Pixabay

The Hermit Option

You may refuse interviews, of course. Some authors remain elusive, hidden from the world. They have their reasons, and that’s fine. I’m not aiming this post at them.

My Experience

I’ve been interviewed six times, which isn’t bad. But I’ve conducted almost seventy interviews of authors, editors, and poets. I’ve done all of these through email and posted them on this website. Just search for ‘author interview’ to find them.

Purpose

You’re trying to entice people to buy your books. Simple as that. All other reasons for the interview remain subordinate to that prime purpose. Make every sentence of every answer support that goal. What follows are my tips for giving author interviews with the aim of selling books.

  • Author Photo

Unless the interview gets broadcast on TV or radio, the interviewer may ask you for an author photo. Use a photo taken recently enough that your appearance hasn’t changed much. Choose a photo that portrays you in a good light.

  • Taglines

When answering a general question about one of your books, like “what is it about?” use a pre-prepared tagline. I alluded to this in a previous blogpost. You should craft brief taglines about each of your books, and practice saying them until you can do so in a natural way without stumbling.

  • The Comedian Mindset

This tip applies more to written interviews where you have time to polish your answers. Though you should strive for honesty, you’re not undergoing a police interrogation. You’re trying to sell books, so reject the first answer you think of and go for the unexpected.

When I advise you to think like a comedian, I don’t necessarily mean to go for laughs. Comedians become skilled at considering several responses to a question and selecting the one they judge funniest. You should select the response you judge will attract people to your book. Consider the odd, the quirky, the answer with a punch or a twist.

  • Well-Edited Answers

Again, this applies to written interviews where you’ve got time to hone your answers. Don’t just jot down answers and click ‘Send.’ If you’ve used misspellings, poor grammar, incorrect references, or awkward sentences in your answers to an interview, why would readers want to read your books?

  • Brevity

I’ve saved the most important tip for last. In any interview, short answers beat long ones. Think like a poet—not to rhyme, but to pack a lot of thought into few words. Write your autobiography some another time.

With those tips in mind, you’ll do well on your future interviews, especially if you’re fortunate enough to be interviewed by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 23, 2024Permalink

Author Interview – Mike Baldwin

Today’s interview features a writer skilled in many forms of the literary art, and all his writing will make you think. He’s written mysteries, thrillers, plays, young adult books, children’s books, science fiction, short stories, novels, and poetry. (I guess it would have been easier to list what he hasn’t written.)  Here’s his bio:

Michael Baldwin is a native of Fort Worth, Texas. He holds a BA in Political Science and Master’s degrees in Information Science and Public Administration. Mike is now retired from a career as a library administrator and professor of American Government. He may be a descendant of the Lakota mystic warrior, Crazy Horse, and will be glad to elaborate over a couple of beers. In addition to writing in multiple genres, Mike provides seminars on creativity based on neuroscience.

Baldwin has published two adventure novels: Murder Music and Neanderthal Gita. His lifelong interest in science caused him to publish five volumes of science-based science-fiction, the Passing Strange series. Also because of his interest in science, Mike published a children’s science adventure book, Space Cat, which takes kids on a tour of the solar system. Baldwin is also known for his award-winning poetry. He has published five books of poetry, three of which have won awards.

Next, the interview:

Poseidon’s Scribe: How did you get started writing? What prompted you? 

Mike Baldwin: I was an avid reader of science fiction in high school. I wanted to try my hand at it and began writing sci-fi short stories at that time and discussing them with friends. I was in the science club at school and built my own Newtonian telescope to do amateur astronomy. Writing about science and exploring ideas thru science fiction just came naturally to me.

P.S.: It’s fascinating that you might be a descendant of Crazy Horse. How much are you willing to elaborate on that without plying you with a couple of beers?

M.B.: As a pre-teen, I found a book in my aunt’s garage titled A Biographical History of North and West Texas. It had an entry about my great grandparents, who migrated to west Texas from Missouri in the late 1800s. It noted that my great grandmother was a Native American woman of Lakota extraction. This was interesting but didn’t mean much to me at the time. As an adult, however, I became interested in my Native American heritage and happened to read Larry McMurtry’s biography of Crazy Horse. CH had a daughter who disappeared as a teenager after Crazy Horse was assassinated. It was rumored she had married a white man and moved south. That included the time period my great grandparents migrated to Texas. So, I claim her and Crazy Horse as my ancestors even tho it can’t be proven definitively. I like to think I received some of Crazy Horse’s mystic qualities of mind.

P.S.: Who are some of your influences? What are a few of your favorite books?

M.B.: As I said, I read science and science-fiction extensively as a boy. I went by bus to the central library almost every Saturday and raided their sci-fi section. Asimov, Heinlein, A.E. Van Vogt, Clifford Simak, Andre Norton, Ray Bradbury, Arthur Clark, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Jules Verne, were among my favorites, but I read them all voraciously. I couldn’t afford to buy the sci-fi magazines, so the library was my treasure place. Little wonder that I later became a librarian.

But I also read real science adventure books avidly. Beebe’s descents into the oceans, Frank Buck’s tales of the African jungles, and many more. As a teen I really liked the sci-fi of E.E. Smith because it was highly imaginative, far reaching in its scope, and had wonderful aliens as well as human heroes (the lensmen). But when I tried to read Smith’s books as an adult, I found them disappointing. The teen mind must be much more forgiving of style and literary quality.

A non-fiction science book I enjoyed as a teen was Worlds In Collision by Emmanuel Velikovsky, which theorized that the Earth and solar system might have been affected by a rogue planet invading the solar system in prehistoric times. It was full of footnotes, including citing Ibid frequently. I had never seen Ibid before and assumed it was a book rather than just designating the same work as previously cited. I asked the school librarian if she had a copy of the Ibid. She had a good laugh before explaining.         

P.S.: Maybe the librarian laughed, but she must also have been impressed. You write a wide variety of things for different audiences. Among your adventure novels, plays, science fiction, children’s books, and poetry, do you have a favorite?

M.B.: I really don’t have a favorite except whichever one I am currently working on. I like them all and am proud of them all. I think they all turned out well. Although I enjoy writing in several genres, the common thread is ideas. All my books are based on ideas I get from my own extensive reading and from the universal subconscious, which is available to anyone. All my books explore one or several major ideas, but also bring in social, political, religious, scientific, and other topics as they fit into the plot (or in the case of poetry, the concept of the poem).

P.S.: Tell us about your Passing Strange series. Are there common threads among the five volumes? Can readers tackle them in any order? Do you plan to write more in this series?

M.B.: When I published the first volume, Passing Strange, I didn’t plan to write a series, but the ideas just kept coming, so the other volumes insisted on being written. There are no continuing or connected stories in the series except there are several stories scattered among them with the character, Zbub. The first story of Zbub has him as a sort of strange, creepy character who is not the real focus of the story. But Zbub wouldn’t let go of my neurons, so I kept writing stories with him as a character, usually just as a means of inciting the action. His character kept becoming more complex and interesting, so I kept writing more of his stories. I think readers will find him likeable and amusing as a trickster who really shakes things up.

After five volumes of Passing Strange stories, I’m taking a pause and am thinking of sequels to Murder Music and Neanderthal Gita which interact with each other. But I am constantly making notes of ideas for more sci-fi stories, so maybe there will be a 6th volume of Passing Strange and probably more Zbub.      

P.S.: Your novel Murder Music contains many strange and delightful aspects, but at one level, it’s a mystery thriller featuring a young woman and her haunted violin. Tell us about Missy McKean—who she is, her personality, and whether someone in real life inspired this character.

M.B.: Yes, as a matter of fact, Missy was inspired by my daughter and her cousin as teens. They were both highly intelligent wild girls who were always getting into some sort of mischief. One was a fine musician and scholar, the other highly scientifically minded who became a doctor and psychiatrist. I had been thinking about writing a novel about musicians for some time because I had been an amateur musician and interested in classical and jazz all my life. But I decided it needed to be an adventure and preferably a mystery that departs from the usual, worn out tropes of the standard mystery. I also had many ideas about unusual mental capabilities I wanted to explore with the book. Then I thought I might as well throw in a metaphysical aspect with the haunted violin. By the way, much of the information about the Guarnerius violin and its owners is historically accurate. Also, the information about Dillon Moonbear being conceived in orbit around the moon and born to a bear was scientifically and historically feasible.

P.S.: It’s fascinating to imagine the implications of a tribe of Neanderthals still existing, hidden, today. Readers can enjoy your approach to that idea in Neanderthal Gita. What prompted you to write this novel?

M.B.: I’ve always been interested in prehistory. My dad studied historical geology in college and often took me out looking for fossils and talking about dinosaurs and early man. Like most people, I thought Neanderthals were more primitive than cro-magnon people (us) who succeeded them. But modern scientific techniques began to find that the Neanderthal were much more complex than we had thought. They had a larger brain capacity than us. They were much more muscular than us but weren’t knuckle draggers. So they may have been superior to us in both intelligence and physical capabilities. I found that there were few novels about Neanderthals, and none that made use of the latest information about them. So I researched Neanderthals extensively and wrote about them imaginatively. I invented a culture for them that was true to what we now know of them. The only liberties I took were to make a tribe of them survive into modern times and have mental telepathy (that extra brain capacity).

P.S.: What are the easiest, and the most difficult, aspects of writing for you?

M.B.: Many writers complain of writer’s block, of fear of the blank page. I’ve never had that problem. In fact, I get more ideas than I’m able to deal with. If I forget to jot down an idea, it may disappear into my forgetter, which is stronger than my rememberer. My main problem is that every time I return to a story or poem I’ve written, even those I consider finished, I want to tinker with it and make changes. All writers do that to an extent, but they should realize that when they look at it again, they are a different person. Their brain has changed significantly, so they (and I) may have a completely different perspective on it. So I have to struggle with myself to let it go.

P.S.: You’ve written several books of poetry, and some have won awards. Congratulations on winning the Edward Eakin Poetry Book Award and the Morris Memorial Chapbook Award. What sort of poetry do you write? Are there common themes or other similarities that mark your poems?

M.B.: Ah, now you’ve hit on a sore subject for me. Most of my poetry is about ideas, as I also said about my fiction. Ideas are or were a major force in poetry, from Donne and Shakespeare to Whitman, Dickenson, Eliot, Pound, and Frost. But in the last ten to fifteen years, poetry has become more interior, more personal, more narcissistic. So I’ve had more trouble getting my poetry accepted for publication in journals, which are mostly managed by young poets of this new poetic trend. This change has been noticed and criticized by several major poetry critics in articles and books, so it’s not just my feeling of sour grapes.

I’ve written poetry based on science (Counting Backward From Infinity), on spirituality (The Quantum Uncertainty of Love), on nature (The Sublime Landscape and Beyond), on Asian Poetry (Birds, Beasts, and Blossoms), on my personal life experiences (Lone Star Heart) and on a mixture of the above (Scapes). 

P.S.: Sorry, I didn’t mean to hit a nerve. Let’s move on. Your children’s book, Space Cat, is a fun and educational romp through the solar system. It’s such a departure from your other books—how did you come to write it?

M.B.: I became interested in doing a children’s book when my grandsons started to read. I greatly enjoyed reading to and with them. Also, that was about the time the Hubble Telescope began producing such gorgeous images of space. I had been an amateur astronomer and interested in science all my life, so a children’s space science book was what came naturally. I decided it needed to provide an exciting adventure as well as scientific information in order to hold kids’ attention and spark their imagination.

P.S.: What is your current work in progress? Would you mind telling us a little about it?

M.B.: I just finished a novel (still tinkering with it of course) for which I’m seeking a publisher. It is a historical literary novel that also has aspects of romance and adventure. It involves four jazz musicians who are in and out of love with each other between 1985 and 2002. They have small adventures and emotional crises at home but also participate in larger events such as the 911 tragedy, the war in the Balkans, and the Afghanistan War. Music, poetry, and romance are the primary themes. Some of the characters from Murder Music and Neanderthal Gita also figure in the story, but not as major characters.

I’m also working on two books of poetry: one about climate change and one about politics and social problems.

Poseidon’s Scribe: What advice can you offer aspiring writers?

Mike Baldwin: Forget about it unless you are a masochist! If you are not completely serious about writing and/or don’t read much, don’t bother to try to become a writer. Starting as a writer is very hard and a long, draining struggle. You should have many years of reading behind you as a basis for knowing what good writing consists of. You have to discipline yourself to sit and write almost every day. Most of what you write the first couple of years will be crap and must be rejected. But as you gain experience, your brain will become more efficient at writing and presenting ideas to you. Even if you become a proficient writer, however, you will find you can’t make a living at it. There is too much competition now because computer technology made it much easier for anyone to write. But the publishing industry has changed to become much more demanding and less supportive for the writer than it was in previous times. Self-publishing makes getting a book before the public easy, but you have to promote it massively and relentlessly to develop a readership and get paid for your stories. So don’t waste your time or torture yourself writing. You stand a better chance becoming a professional athlete than a best-selling author. Just buy my books, kick back, and enjoy a brilliant, enthralling, mind-bending story.  

Poseidon’s Scribe: Thank you, Mike. I agree with and endorse the idea of buying your books. Perhaps would-be writers should embrace the idea of writing for enjoyment rather than making a living from their words.

Readers may find out more about Mike Baldwin at his website, on Facebook, Linked-In, and on Amazon.

March 28, 2024Permalink

Author Interview–Nancy Craig

For the first author interview of this year, I invited Nancy Craig, a writer from one of the critique groups I’m in, and she accepted. Here’s her bio:

I was born in Kansas, the first of two daughters of an Army family. Children of military families are collectively known as ‘brats’. I have lived all my adult life in Texas with the exception of eight months in Stirling, Scotland. I am a graduate of Texas Western College, now known as UTEP (University of Texas at El Paso). I am a retired school teacher, have been married 57 years and have two daughters and five grandchildren. I love gardening, cooking, traveling and writing.

Writing history: First book, The Liar’s Legacy (novella), four children’s books written under general title of Nanny Boo Adventures, The Final Decree. Three more books in line for publishing—Belonging, Achieving, and It Was Never a Dead End.

Awards: In 2020, It Was Never a Dead End received a first-place award in Narrative Nonfiction from the Oklahoma Writers Federation, Inc. (OWFI). In 2023, Belonging received a first-place award from OWFI for in the Unpublished Mainstream Book category. Also in 2023, The Final Decree received a second-place award from OWFI for Unpublished Historical Fiction. I’m a member of the Fort Worth Writers critique group.

Now, on to the interview:

Poseidon’s Scribe: How did you get started writing? What prompted you? 

Nancy Craig: Several things prompted me to start writing.  I had five young grandchildren and wanted to write a book for each. Idleness makes me crazy. I needed projects, something to do after I retired.

P.S.: Who are some of your influences? What are a few of your favorite books? 

N.C.: When teaching a gifted and talented class I gave them an assignment to write an Indian legend. FYI, legends are created to explain things in nature. Their creativity and imagination inspired me.

Favorite books—I tend toward historical fiction and contemporary drama. John Jakes, James Michener, and Diana Gabaldon for the historical fiction, and John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and Terry Hayes for contemporary fiction.

P.S.: You’ve written a series of four children’s books for kids aged five to ten—the Nanny Boo Adventure series (Tadpoles, Picnics and Field Goals, Babysitting, Lifeguards and Yard Sales, Movin’, and Birthdays, Bicycles and Braids). What prompted you to write these, and what kind of a girl is Nanny Boo?

N.C.: Nanny Boo is really me. I chose this character to portray events in my childhood. Also, they present social issues as seen today and a way for a child to handle them.

P.S.: Your first book, The Liar’s Legacy, seems to involve a spoiled woman forced to come to terms with her character flaw. Have I got that right? Please tell us about its main characters, Karen and Sarah.

N.C.: The Liar’s Legacy is about a young, vibrant media personality who is close to self-destruction because of her habitual lying. Karen Powers has alienated her parents, two husbands and her children. Her childhood friend, a lawyer who is defending her in a lawsuit, tells her to get professional help before she is all alone. A mental breakdown forces her children to institutionalize her in a private facility for a brief time. Alone, and now without any financial resources, she finds herself in a state mental hospital where she can no longer talk herself out of therapy. She connects with doctors, finally realizing how her lies have impacted others.

Her recovery comes, but with a price she never expected.

P.S.: What are the easiest, and the most difficult, aspects of writing for you?

N.C.: The easiest aspect of writing is imagining ideas to move a story along. The most difficult is staying on track with those ideas and not going down rabbit holes that gradually take me away from the main plot of the book. My mind seems to expand exponentially and I get off track very easily.

The greatest difficulty is maintaining a single point of view in a scene. I tend to wander into other people’s minds with extreme ease!!

P.S.: The description of your recently-published novel, The Final Decree, sounds like it might be alternate history. Is it? Let us know what it’s about, and why you wrote it.

N.C.: It’s mostly historical fiction, but I changed some things. The Final Decree makes use of several events and royalty to tell the story of a Decree written by King George III granting Scotland independence. History tells us that George had many mental shortcomings and was not an effective ruler. He sends his uncle the Duke of Cumberland to Scotland to proclaim the decree. The Duke becomes incapacitated and cannot complete his task. Fearing the worst, Cumberland goes to see a minister at Paisley Abbey to leave the decree in his safe hands. Copies are made of the decree and its hiding place in the abbey. The duke dies. Several days later a freak accident takes the life of the minister. The decree has been missing and forgotten for 250 years. It resurfaces before the voting on the 2014 referendum to give Scotland its independence. All of Britain learns of the decree’s existence. Questions arise as to its authenticity and legality, leaving both Scotland and Parliament wondering what will happen next.

As to why I wrote it? I hoped it might be an interesting read for Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander fans as we wait for her next book to be published and the TV series next production season.

P.S.: Is there a common attribute that ties your fiction together (genre, character types, settings, themes) or are you a more eclectic author?

N.C.: There is nothing specific that ties my fiction together. I’m willing to experiment with a variety of genre.

P.S.: I had the pleasure of reading an early draft of your upcoming novel, Belonging. Tell my readers about that story, and let us know when we might expect to see it published.

N.C.: Belonging!! I’m ready to take the big step to publish this story. I’m hoping for a date no later than March.

Belonging is the story of Serena Lewis, a widowed teacher with two adolescent children whose home is no longer safe. She petitions the Lincoln Institute for Social Studies and is accepted into their gated, segregated community. The town of Peace, Arkansas has been established to question the wisdom and inflexibility of the 1954 Supreme Court decision which declared separate but equal schools for Blacks are unconstitutional.

It is the institute’s desire to create and maintain a safe, healthy, active community that provides any tool necessary to help its residents become proud, successful, involved citizens.

The Lewis family thrives in the new environment, making friends, developing skills, learning how to be a productive member of the community.

Five years is the maximum stay in Peace. With her son and daughter graduated and gone, Serena moves to Harmony, a nearby community. She takes her skills as a teacher and a dynamic personality to create a new life for herself. All is not as she planned and a person from her past comes back into her life seeking revenge. Friends, both old and new help her to resolve the situation.

Lexie Lewis and her focused lifestyle have landed her a most prestigious position as a journalist. In a speech to the Capitol Press Club in Washington, DC, Lexie offers to share her means to success.  “My Mama is my mentor. She’s always been there, beside me advising, behind me urging me forward and in front of me leading by example. In Peace, you learn the importance of community. When you engage you get something back. You belong. And when you belong you embark on a journey to becoming.”

P.S.: Let’s say you’ve traveled through time and met yourself at a point when you were first thinking of being a writer. What would you tell this younger version of you?

N.C.: I would tell a younger me to write down memories. Keep a journal. You’ve begun the steps to comfortable writing because you write what you know. There’s no research necessary. Someday, kids or grandkids will ask questions about events that happened years ago. With your journal in hand, you’ll have answers that your memory has lost.

P.S.: What can you tell us about your recently finished first draft of your next novel, Achieving? It’s a sequel to Belonging, right?

N.C.: Achieving is complete in its first draft. It continues the story of Lexie Lewis and her journalistic world in Washington, DC, as the managing editor of The King Report, a monthly publication for the Black community. It’s a bumpy ride for Lexie, who is sent back to Peace to write a story about what Federal officials say is domestic terrorism. There are factions who want Peace erased from the Arkansas landscape and will do whatever is necessary to achieve that goal. There are others who work industriously to make the lives of the Peace residents a happy productive experience.

It is also a time of a love interest in Lexie’s life, a person she has known for many years. Happy family times in Peace collide with fear, danger, and even the death of loved ones.

Poseidon’s Scribe: What advice can you offer aspiring writers?

Nancy Craig: My advice to aspiring authors is to read, listen, remember. You were taught writing skills. If you’ve forgotten them, get a refresher course. Sentence structure, punctuation, subject/verb agreement, spelling, and proper use of nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are essential to telling a story and having it understood.

Poseidon’s Scribe: Thank you, Nancy. Best of luck with your upcoming novels.

Readers may keep up with Nancy Craig’s writing career by visiting her pages on Facebook and Amazon, and by reading updates about her on the Fort Worth Writers site.

January 15, 2024Permalink

Author Interview—Christopher M. Geeson

For today’s interview we travel across the pond and talk with a British writer who shares my interests in science fiction, artificial intelligence, and classic SF literature. Christopher M. Geeson’s story “Tyranny Under the Sea” appears in Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne.

Christopher M. Geeson has had several SF stories published, including AI-themed stories in the Flame Tree Press Robots and Artificial Intelligence anthology and The British Fantasy Society Journal—Autumn 2011. His most recent is a story for the collection, Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne. Christopher has also had tales published in Atomic Age Cthulhu, Steampunk Cthulhu, Spawn of War and Deathiness, The Great Escape and Anthology: A Circa Works Collection, all of which are available on Amazon. Christopher works as a tour guide in York, and as a workshop leader in schools, libraries and museums in North Yorkshire, delivering creative workshops for children.

Right then. Let’s get to the interview straightaway.

Poseidon’s Scribe: How did you get started writing fiction?

Christopher M. Geeson: As a child, I made up stories for my toys to act out and my favorite lessons at school were when we were asked to write fiction. There was one lesson when the teacher was punishing people who couldn’t be quiet by making them write a ghost story – some punishment! Naturally, I got into trouble that day. I started writing stories in my spare time as a teenager. When I went to college and university to make films, I realized I was more interested in writing the scripts than in the technical aspects of film production. This led to me writing stories in prose again as an adult and joining various courses – when my writing reached the level where I could get it published.

P.S.: Who are some of your influences? What are a few of your favorite books? 

C.M.G.: I love the SF worlds created by Philip K Dick and—more recently—Chris Beckett. They both often take society’s ills to the next level, in a futuristic setting, seen through the eyes of a recognizable flawed human. I’m also a fan of a good fantasy adventure, whether it’s epic in scope like The Lord of the Rings (my favorite book), or on a smaller scale, such as Treasure Island, or The Dark is Rising.

P.S.: You’ve written stories involving AI for the Robots and Artificial Intelligence anthology and The British Fantasy Society Journal. Tell us the premise for these stories and whether you’re optimistic or pessimistic about AI.

C.M.G.: I wrote “Punchbag”—which was published in The British Fantasy Society Journal—after getting the inspiration on a car journey. I pulled into a supermarket car park and spent the next hour writing the first draft. It’s a very pessimistic story about how humans will use AI for violence and it’s told from the point of view of the AI, who is the victim. It is ultra-violent, but it reflects what I fear humans are basically like. It’s been out for over a decade but I still think of it as one of my favorite pieces of writing and it’s still very relevant. I’d love to see it reprinted and reaching a bigger audience.

The next AI story I wrote (“The Perfect Reflection,” for the Robots and Artificial Intelligence) anthology is also pessimistic, continuing the theme of violence, and also told from an AI point of view. This time, the AI is an observer of human violence. The big question in the story is whether the AI can intervene or not. I’ve been the victim of a couple of random acts of violence and that has clearly fed into my work. I guess I’m more pessimistic about the future of the human race than I am about AI, but I think it’s all wrapped up in one, as humans keep on inventing ways of being nasty to others.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, I’m dismayed that AI is now being used to make music, art and literature. Although I’ve written stories from the point of view of AI, I have no desire to read a story written by one. I’m sure AI could improve our lives in some way – organization, medicine, information, dangerous physical work – but not by replacing creative people. I think this started a while ago though, when CGI started replacing stuntmen, costumes, model work, and special effects in movies. I doubt anyone can even find Pandora’s Box anymore, never mind put the lid back on it.

P.S.: Is there a common attribute that ties your fiction together (genre, character types, settings, themes) or are you a more eclectic author?

C.M.G.: I love thinking of ideas or playing about with “What ifs?”, so my writing is almost always SF or fantasy, as those are the types of stories I love reading, and the things which inspire me. I want to escape and be taken to other worlds by stories and do the same in my writing. A lot of my published work looks at the violent tendencies of humanity and ends up pretty dark. But I have a couple of unpublished children’s fantasy novels that are about adventure, friendship and unification between races. They’re a lot more optimistic and I’d love them to see the light of day sometime!

P.S.: Stories of yours have appeared in Atomic-Age Cthulhu and Steampunk Cthulhu: Mythos Terror in the Age of Steam. What do you find intriguing about the Cthulhu Mythos and how do your stories fit into it?

C.M.G.: I loved that sense of massive cosmic horror and how insignificant humanity was in Lovecraft’s stories. For the steampunk collection, I dived into the American Civil War era – a part of history that’s always fascinated me – and gave it a Mythos twist which shows how futile war is. For the Atomic-Age Cthulhu anthology, I wanted to tap into the paranoia of the McCarthy era, so I stuck a bunch of characters in a nuclear bunker with all their hidden secrets and violent instincts, and let events play out from there, against a Mythos background.

P.S.: If you could visit the fictional world of another author, where would you go and why?

C.M.G.: Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time imagining this sort of thing – and given it a lot more thought than it really justifies! When I was younger, these imaginary journeys were all about adventure and battles, but I’m really the sort of person who would just want a nice quiet visit somewhere, enjoying the sense of wonder. If I went to Middle Earth, I’d want to live in Rivendell or The Shire and spend my time telling stories and creating art and music, far removed from the dangerous world outside.

P.S.: The premise of the anthology Spawn of War and Deathiness sounds intriguing. Tell us about the poem you contributed to that book.

C.M.G.: The premise of my poem, “Motorway Maintenance,” is in its recurring line: “Death drives a black hearse on the motorway” and is about the grim reaper mopping up after road accidents, and meting out justice to those who cause them. I don’t do poetry very often, but I did enjoy playing about with the rules and forms of villanelles for that one.

P.S.: You run creative workshops for children in schools, libraries, and museums. What are these workshops like?

C.M.G.: My main job is as a tour guide in the beautiful historic city of York, and I meet lovely people everyday and tell them stories about York. I have a sideline in running creative activities for children and a big part of that is reusing junk for model-making and art. I love being creative and I want to share that and encourage young people to be creative too, in any way they can, at school or at home – or occasionally also in museums and other heritage sites, where I’ll probably be dressed as a Victorian or a Roman, something like that.

P.S.: Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne contains your story, “Tyranny Under the Sea.” It’s an adventure tale involving Captain Nemo, an underwater city, and a daring escape. How did you come up with the idea for this story?

C.M.G.: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is probably my favorite Verne story, so I knew early on that my submission would be linked to that somehow. I’m also intrigued by the start of Mysterious Island and its Civil War-era setting, because I’ve always been interested in that part of history. (My first published writing was three articles for the American Civil War Society about movies featuring the conflict). From that starting point, it was relatively easy to find clues to Captain Nemo’s views on the war and which side he would aid if he got entangled in it. Things really took off when I got the idea to include 1860s submarines and an underwater city inspired by Fort Sumter, but the key to it all was when I got the idea to tell the story from a slave’s point of view – because that added the emotional heart of the story, as well as the reason for the events which unfold.

P.S.: What is your current work in progress? Would you mind telling us a little about it?

C.M.G.: I’m not a writer who can focus on just one idea at a time because I’m constantly getting ideas and inspiration for different stories and flitting between them. It can take me years from getting an idea, to writing it down, to doing rewrites, to submitting it somewhere and it seeing the light of day. I have a couple of children’s fantasy novels that I need to finish, as well as a couple of short stories that need redrafting. At the moment, I’m going back to one of those children’s fantasy novels and looking at fleshing it out a bit.

Poseidon’s Scribe: What advice can you offer aspiring writers?

Christopher M. Geeson: Well, I think of myself as an aspiring writer, too—I certainly have many aspirations for writing which I haven’t fulfilled yet! But my advice would be to write what you want, not what you think will bring you success or money. Spending time being creative is a reward in itself.

I’ve had a few short stories published and the thing for me which made the difference was going through lots of drafts and listening to constructive feedback. I think my most useful advice would be to find or form a small circle of writers who are at a similar stage and level to you, regardless of genre or style—most of my writing groups have only had one or two of us doing fantasy and SF, but the feedback was still tremendously helpful. Share each other’s work; give and take honest constructive feedback. Keep it professional, rather than close friends or family. Joining a writing course—or several courses—worked for me. I don’t have a writer’s group at the moment but I had small writing circles, like those I’ve mentioned, in the years when I progressed to being a published writer and I found the feedback and contact invaluable.

Poseidon’s Scribe: Thank you, Christopher. I love your suggestion for writers to join or form groups. That’s helped me, too.

Readers interested in Christopher M. Geeson’s work should explore his Amazon page.

July 29, 2023Permalink

Author Interview—Demetri Capetanopoulos

Most authors I interview lead lives far different from mine. In today’s interview, it’s almost like I’m interviewing myself. Like me, Demetri Capetanopoulos received technical training and served as an officer aboard submarines before turning to writing. One of his stories appears in 20,000 Leagues Remembered and another is in Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne.

Like many boys of a certain age, Demetri Capetanopoulos discovered Jules Verne and was captivated—not just by the tales of scientific adventure—but by the example of the power of imagination to shape what might be possible with the creative application of technology. Who can say with surety what influence it had, but he became qualified as a nuclear submarine engineer and deep submersible pilot.

With a career spent in technical realms, Demetri has found in his writing a delightful synthesis of his passion for science, history, and the creative arts, all while rediscovering a boyhood inspiration. Surely Verne would approve. He dedicates his literary labors of love to his son, Leo, and to all those for whom submarine dreams stir the child within.

Let’s dive into the interview:

Poseidon’s Scribe: How did you get started writing? What prompted you?

Demetri Capetanopoulos: I don’t recall a ‘start’ to my writing, it emerged from me at the earliest age. In elementary school it may have been an essay or report for extra credit. In middle school I sought to emulate the short stories that I was consuming—those by Arthur C. Clarke were favorites. By high school I wrote my chapter book—a WWII submarine story—inspired by the type of storytelling I found in Alistair Maclean’s novels, which I was passionate about at the time. As I became busy with a career that produced its own adventures, writing was a way to capture moments and preserve emotions for some later “great American novel.” I also discovered that the ability to write and speak in a way that could move people was intoxicating and the military offered many opportunities to speak in front of an audience. I’ve come to realize that one of the things I enjoy most in writing is tackling challenges—whether it’s the strict format of a screenplay, trying to emulate the style of a particular author, stirring an audience to emotion, or bringing a past reality authentically to life. It’s still the challenge that thrills today which is probably why I seldom write the same type of story or style twice and why constraints inspire me.

P.S.: You just met an interested reader in an elevator who asks, “What sort of stories do you write?” The doors will open soon, so what short answer do you give this reader?

D.C.: Hopefully sticky stories—meaning those that feature some element that sticks in your subconscious and influences your creative engine even when all other details about the story have slipped from memory.

P.S.: Your website, “Precise Imagination,” looks far different from most author’s sites. It seems intended to inspire people to design and build things. Tell us about the purpose and philosophy of the site.

D.C.: It’s not a site intended to explicitly promote my writing, rather it describes my philosophy that I try and bring to all my creative endeavors. I can’t claim to originate it, but it is my synthesis of the ancient Greek musings on excellence and achieving that elusive optimization of both beauty and function. Those elements are as relevant to writing as they are to any creative activity including the building of things.

P.S.: Who are some of your influences? What are a few of your favorite books?

D.C.: I was fortunate to have a solid grounding in the classics—Stevenson, Kipling, Poe, Wells, Twain, Verne, Bradbury and the like. But there came a fateful day when I read Endurance by Alfred Lansing which recounted the true, yet scarcely believable tale of Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition, when I realized within the nooks and crannies of history, non-fiction tales could satisfy every thrill, wonder, and amusement provided by fiction. I have seldom picked up a work of fiction since and so, have come to appreciate the nuanced difference between authors who can competently relate a compelling history and those gifted few who possess “a way with words” that elevates the narrative to something poetic. Fate is the Hunter by Ernest K. Gann is a top-notch example of this non-fiction art in my mind.

P.S.: Your background as a submariner explains much of your fiction. But what led to the non-submarine works Hadley the Lunar Rover, and On Ice?

D.C.: A lifelong passion for space exploration motivated the story about a plucky lunar rover waiting for humans to return to the moon. The sentiment seemed timely and I wanted to challenge my limited drawing skills with a very different artistic style than I used in Ned the Nuclear Submarine (which was deliberately simplistic to make what could be an intimidating subject, more accessible to kids). After my experience living and working at McMurdo Station in Antarctica it seemed obvious to me that fascinating, yet wacky, place was perfect for a screenplay, which I called “On Ice.” Having never written one before, I was drawn to the challenging constraints imposed by both the screenplay format and my own desire for compelling plot drivers grounded in realism (i.e., no aliens/UFO’s, Atlantis under the ice, sea monsters, etc.). I can attest that screenwriting will teach a writer discipline, but for me, when I write any story it is always running in my head as a movie, and I just write down what I am seeing in my mind.

P.S.: The world of submarines and engineering (your background) seems one of logical equations, arcane technical details, and high-tech machinery, while the world of a fiction writer involves deep emotions, the infinite complexities of the human heart, and the often-irrational behavior of flawed characters. How did you manage the transition from one world to another?

D.C.: A truly insightful question. The truth is I have never made a transition—I have lived a life and made a career in highly disciplined, technical realms but always stood somewhat apart from my colleagues as person who saw things slightly differently, processed experiences with perhaps deeper personal reflection, and always injected a bit of dramatic flair and staging to the way I went about my duties. The emotional intelligence, communication skills, and empathy that often exemplify writers turn out to be pretty good leadership traits that can garner success even in a highly technical and structured organization. I suppose in my case it made up for whatever deficiencies I had academically compared to my rather brilliant colleagues.

P.S.: When most people read Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, they skip over the chapters devoted to the design of the Nautilus. Not you. You wrote a detailed, technical manual about how Captain Nemo built it. Tell us about The Design and Construction of the Nautilus and why you wrote it.

D.C.: It was only after I became a nuclear submarine engineer and had occasion to read a modern translation (Naval Institute Press) of the novel that restored much of the previously edited technical discussions did I appreciate that Verne’s conception of the Nautilus was much more specific and realistic than the innumerable later incarnations have suggested. I had gotten professionally interested in early submarine development and wanted to write a book discussing the evolution of the relevant technology and design principles without running afoul of concerns about classified information that my background might prompt. The answer was to use a fictional submarine—Captain Nemo’s Nautilus—to explore the technology of the period that inspired Verne and see how close reasonable extrapolations could have gotten to a workable design. No one with a similar technical background had attempted this before. The closest effort was a piece written by a French nuclear submarine engineer, Jean Gagneux, but he focused on a technical critique of where Verne’s design would fall short. Though the analysis was interesting and completely legitimate, I wanted to take the opposite approach. If at times the book seems overly technical or saturated with detail, my only defense is that nuclear submariners are every bit as critically minded an audience as Verne aficionados and I was keen to avoid being dismissed or laughed at by either.

P.S.: Ned the Nuclear Submarine appears to be unlike any other book on the market—a children’s book, told in rhyme, about a submarine. What inspired it?

D.C.: I think every new parent imagines they will write a children’s book, but it took me until my son was nearly eight years old to complete it! I was determined to do my own illustrations and (against all publishing advice) to do the story in rhyme—because kids like rhyme. They also like to learn how things work and don’t mind when some words or ideas that are over their heads now can be appreciated later, which is why the text is designed to stretch their literacy and the illustrations to expand their minds. But most of all, kids like a good story with compelling characters. In my observation, there are a great many exquisitely crafted children’s books today whose focus is about delivering moral messages that resonate with adults and are pretty thin on character and story. In this case I knew exactly what my target to emulate was: Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel—a classic from 1939 that is still in print today. It offers a very realistic mechanical character that evokes real emotion while facing and ultimately surmounting authentic problems and fears. Just like Ned. I made Ned a submarine because the first rule of writing (and drawing for that matter) is do what you know.

P.S.: For the anthology Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne, you wrote “Rust and Smoke.” In it, you take readers to a setting of stark beauty in two different time periods. Tell us where the story takes place and why you chose that region.

D.C.: In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, the fate of the Nautilus is left unknown, but Jules Verne offers three possible things that could have survived the story and persist in our world today: Captain Nemo’s coral cemetery in the eastern Indian Ocean, the subterranean refueling depot inside one of the Canary Islands, and the unusual iron dinghy that Professor Aronnax, Conceil, and Ned Land use to escape the Nautilus. So, I wrote a very different style of story for each of those loose ends. “Rust and Smoke” takes place in the Lofoten Islands that comprise the northwestern coast of Norway, but the reader is only gradually given the clues to figure this out, in part, to draw out the connection to the famous Maelstrom, which is located in these waters and the serves as the climax for Verne’s novel. I wanted to write a story in modern times that could provide a realistic connection to the events of Verne’s novel, hence the two story lines, set in differing time periods, that work their way toward their mutual resolution of one of the novel’s loose ends (while introducing a beguiling fourth loose end).

P.S.: Your story “Homework Help from No One” appears in 20,000 Leagues Remembered. Tell us about the protagonist, his problem, and the setting.

D.C.: This was the second of my three “loose end” stories (yes, there is an as-yet unpublished third) and the style and tone is intentionally quite different. For this piece, I wanted to write a story of the sort that might once have appeared in Boy’s Life magazine—specifically something in the same vein as the Mad Scientists’ Club stories, which were a favorite of mine growing up. So naturally the protagonist is boy of about the same age, and with the same sort of concerns and impulsiveness that I imaged the target reader might be. Innocently enough, he gets himself in real trouble while simultaneously making an amazing discovery related to the presumably fictional tale of the Nautilus. In keeping with the genre, it requires all his wits and dose of real science to work out the solution, along with a dash of bravado to pull off the surprise ending.

P.S.: Your newest release is a graphic novel called Rage Runs Deep. Tell us about the book and who you think its target audience is.

D.C.: Rage Runs Deeps expands on the snippet of Captain Nemo’s backstory that Verne provides in his subsequent novel, The Mysterious Island, and weaves that tragic narrative into real history much like the movie Forrest Gump. All the people, places, and events that intersect with Prince Dakkar are 100% real and accurate, eventually compelling his construction of the Nautilus and justifying in his own mind, the righteousness of his revenge as Captain Nemo. While it can be enjoyed by readers of all ages as a prequel to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, the story tackles sophisticated issues related to the blowback of imperialism and the extent to which acts of rebellion can be legally and morally justified—issues which continue to remain all-too-relevant today. The graphic novel was a natural format for a work that originated as a screenplay, but it also has the potential to expose a much broader audience to consider such substantive arguments.

P.S.: What is your current work in progress? Would you mind telling us a little about it?

D.C.: I just finished a novel in which the protagonist is a descendant of a famed fictional sea captain, who must manage the new technology of a steam frigate, a skeptical crew, and a bureaucracy harboring its own agenda, when he is sent in a desperate bid to chase down an unknown submarine boat that seems bent on destroying British shipping. It is decidedly NOT a sci-fi story, but rather a hard-core historical maritime adventure much more in the vein of C.S. Forrester or Patrick O’Brian. I expect the editorial process to be long because fans of such historical nautical fiction are demanding—not to mention rightfully protective of the legends of that genre—and I do not intend to let them down. I’m also in early draft on a non-fiction book that tells the story of volunteers in Ohio who began rebuilding a WWII B-17 “Flying Fortress” bomber from five partial wrecks and discovered that much of the aircraft would have to be made by them from scratch if it were going to be able to fly again. It struck me as inspirational, but also fascinating, technically, and I have become a volunteer on the project myself.

Poseidon’s Scribe: What advice do you have for aspiring fiction writers?

Demetri Capetanopoulos: Do exhaustive research to ensure you get the details right—that’s what puts you in the moment, just as inaccuracy can shatter a reader’s mental immersion. But when actually writing, focus on the emotion you are trying to evoke in the reader with any particular passage. “Be in the scene”—meaning in the mood of the setting and the emotive state of the characters, and the right words will flow.

Poseidon’s Scribe: Thank you, Demetri. It’s been an honor to interview a fellow submariner.

Readers can connect with Demetri at his website, LinkedIn, Amazon, Goodreads, Twitter, and Facebook.

July 27, 2023Permalink

Author Interview—Darrell Bartell

Sometimes, for these interviews, the emails don’t travel far. I’ve known Darrell Bartell for a few years, and we belong to the same local writing critique group.

Darrell Bartell—actor, playwright, short story writer, author, former cab driver, security officer, stage magician, future radio broadcaster, and cancer survivor—completed his MA in drama at Texas Woman’s University. His script, “Bragging Rights,” a ten-minute one-man play based on the school shootings at the time, earned him a trip to Valdez, Alaska, in June 2000, where he met and learned from the late Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights, Edward Albee and Horton Foote, and actresses Betty Buckley and the late Marian Seldes.

Darrell earned his theater degree after battling cancer and later earned an MA degree in English with a minor in communications from Southern New Hampshire University. As a US Army veteran and former private investigator, while attending the American Broadcasting School in Arlington, Texas, Darrell based the format of his radio show on television’s “Americas Most Wanted” and featured unidentified victims, missing persons, and wanted fugitives while providing leads to law enforcement and medical examiners for those cases.

A member of the Fort Worth Writers, Darrell wrote the play, “When the Echoes Whisper My Name,” which is based on several unidentified victims’ cases he is working on and received second place in the Oklahoma Writer’s Federation Inc. (OWFI) 2011 playwriting contest. Darrell’s play, “The First One-Hundred Days,” about the first woman president of the United States, also took first place in OWFI’s 2013 playwriting contest. “The Specter Society,” one of ten short plays Darrell wrote during the pandemic, was produced by Dallas College and Palo Alto College on Zoom in April 2021 and is available on Youtube here, starting at time 43:26. Darrell’s book, The Corona Monologues, won the 28th annual, 2022 Communicator Award for distinction in writing. He tries to find and write about subjects that haven’t been brought to the stage.

Here’s the interview:

Poseidon’s Scribe: How and when did you get started writing? What prompted you? 

Darrell Bartell: This could take a while. I never started out to be a writer. I went to Tarrant County College and took an English II class. I was failing my exams and the instructor hated my papers. So, I dropped the course. About a year later, I decided to get serious about my college education. I signed up for English II again and sure enough, I had the same instructor, Tawny Kilbourne. This time I was prepared. I passed his exams and was getting good grades on my essays. Then came the final essay. I was to take a poem, a play or a short story and take an event from my life and write an essay. I used Margaret Atwood’s story “Rape Fantasies,” and surprisingly got an “A” on the paper entitled “Nightmares.” My instructor said the paper flowed well and wanted to see it published. The essay was published in TCC’s Under The Clock Tower literary magazine. The rest is history.

P.S.: Who are some of your influences? What are a few of your favorite books?

D.B.: It isn’t so much as who but what are my influences. I draw from my personal life and current events. They’re the greatest resources I can have when writing. My favorite books are the ones that provide information (resources) for my writing. I try to get as much detail as possible for the reader.

P.S.: Your bio lists many occupations. Have your drawn writing inspiration from all of them? Also, are there some jobs that influenced your writing more than others?

D.B.: I haven’t drawn inspiration from all of them, but quite a few. US Army, security officer, Texas Hold ‘Em dealer, and cab driver have given me a lot of material to work with. I would have to say the military is the one job that continues to influence my manuscripts. 

P.S.: Would you agree that much of your writing could be described as dark? If so, what attracts you to that type of fiction? If not, what term fits better?

D.B.: I don’t know about dark. I write about a wide range of subject matter. I don’t have a specific audience. I simply write whatever comes to mind and my sense of humor is probably as unique as it will ever be. I leave it up to the reader if my writing is dark or macabre, but I do try to leave an impression. 

P.S.: Your short story collection Ten-Five – You’re Going Home, Marine! is receiving acclaim. Congratulations on the interview about it in the podcast ‘Fort Worth Roots.’ Give us an overview of this book and what ties the stories together.

D.B.: Thank you. The book is an anthology of 23 short stories about different people from different backgrounds dealing with different situations. Each one has a twist at the end no one saw coming that I hope leaves an impression with the reader.

P.S.: Of short stories and plays, which is your primary medium (if you have one)? How do you decide whether a new idea will end up as a short story or as a play?

D.B.: I want to say playwrighting, but it’s been more and more novel writing. To be honest, I don’t decide if the manuscript will be a play or short story. I let the words and the characters decide that. What I try to do most is find material that hasn’t been brought to the page or to the stage before.

P.S.: You teach creative writing. In addition to helping students, has that experience helped you grow as a writer, too? If so, how?

D.B.: Absolutely. As an instructor I see the writing styles of beginning students with potential. Reading their essays helps me look at their creative and critical thinking process. Which changes every semester with every class of students. So I learn from my students all the time.

P.S.: The book trailer for your novel Barry and the Vampire in the Rosedale Encounter is creepy and enticing. Tell us about the protagonist of the novel and what challenges he faces.

D.B.: Barry McElroy is a 17-year-old high school student who has a chance to get into college. He’s been raised by a single mom ever since his father, an Army Ranger veteran left home after an episode of PTSD. On the way home from school, he’s attacked by a group of thugs called the Rosedale Gang and is rescued by the beautiful vampire, Casey. The next day, while researching his paper about unidentified victims and missing persons he comes across Casey’s niece who is listed as a runaway. When he brings this to her attention, they set out to find her in the hopes she doesn’t end up like Casey and become a vampire. He overcomes several obstacles from staying alive to staying a step ahead of law enforcement during the quest.

P.S.: What non-writing hobby or interest do you have? Does it complement your writing or is it a relief from writing?

D.B.: My non-writing hobbies used to be Chess and Texas Hold ‘Em. Unfortunately, I had to step away from them because I wasn’t getting much writing done. Lately, I’ve been researching my short stories by watching everything from American Horror Story to Friday the 13th, The Series. Hhhmmm. Maybe my writing is dark after all. 😉

P.S.: What are the easiest, and the most difficult, aspects of writing for you?

D.B.: Sometimes the easiest and the most difficult aspects of my writing is trying to find the through line. Making sure everything flows well and fits from start to finish. Also, making sure my characters are developed properly, It happens to the best of us writers, but sometimes we fall into the trap of our characters sounding the same.  

P.S.: Your book The Corona Monologues contains many dozens of statements from people as if they were auditioning for a play. Through them, readers experience the spectrum of human reactions to the recent pandemic. Why did you choose to express your thoughts about the COVID-19 pandemic in this form, as opposed to a short story, novel, or play?

D.B.: At the time of the pandemic, I didn’t plan on writing a book of auditioning monologues. I was going to work on book two of Barry and the Vampire. Like everyone else in the country, I was temporarily laid off from work, but like I said, current events are the best resources for writing. Every time I turned on the television or logged on to the internet, a monologue was begging to be written. For every monologue I wrote, I probably missed ten or fifteen others. There were too many characters coming at me, and it wasn’t possible to put them in a play or short story form. This is what happens when you have a theater background.

P.S.: What is your current work in progress? Would you mind telling us a little about it?

D.B.: Of all things, I used to work as a security officer in a hospital. I got to know the doctors, the nurses, and the support staff. I kept trying to figure out how to write their stories and after I left, I suddenly got the idea to have a different take on the medical profession in ways that has never been done before from my perspective. I’m working on a third short story on my latest anthology that I hope to get published next year entitled: Haunted Tales from the Hospital. There will be something for everyone.

Poseidon’s Scribe: What advice can you offer aspiring fiction writers?

Darrell Bartell: Easy. Keep a journal. Writing in a journal is to the mind what exercising at the gym is to the body. It has to be done well and often for it to work. Write about your hopes, your dreams, and your fears. Write about your family history. Write about the friends you’ve made and the women you’ve loved. I’ve been keeping a journal for over 25 years, and I hope to turn them over to the Fort Worth Archives before I leave this earth. I should be on journal #60 by the end of the month.  Also, find a writer’s group. You can’t go wrong finding a group of people who share the same passion as you and want to help you succeed. A group of fellow writers can help you by finding mistakes you over looked and making suggestions to improve your manuscripts.

Poseidon’s Scribe: Thank you, Darrell, and congratulations on being a cancer survivor and on your many writing accomplishments.

For readers curious to know more about Darrell Bartell, follow him on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, his Amazon page, and Goodreads. You may also listen to this podcast interview of him by Carol DeChaine and this video podcast interview on Fort Worth Roots, featuring Darrell’s book Ten-Five – You’re Going Home, Marine!

July 19, 2023Permalink

Author Interview—Janice Rider

If you love animals and the quiet contemplation of nature, the author I interview today will appeal to you. Janice Rider wrote the story “Want of Air” for Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne.

Janice Rider (she/her) has always loved the natural world and resides in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, close to the Rocky Mountains. She has a BSc in Zoology with a minor in English Literature and a BEd degree. Springs and summers following university course work were spent at the Calgary Zoo where she helped look after many different animals. A trip to Africa was a highlight for Janice; there, she was able to observe wild animals hunt and play. Janice directs The Chameleon Drama Club for children and youth. Three of her plays for youth were published through Eldridge Plays and Musicals. As well, a nonfiction piece of hers on snakes was published in Honeyguide Literary Magazine. Three of Janice’s short stories are published in anthologies – Beware the Bugs! by Word Balloon Books; the North American Jules Verne Society’s Extraordinary Visions; and Speculation Publications’ Beach Shorts. Currently, Janice is involved in a two-year international mindfulness meditation program for teachers. She sees mindfulness as a way of coming into harmony with the natural world.

Let’s get to the interview:

Poseidon’s Scribe: How did you get started writing?  What prompted you?

Janice Rider: I started writing when I was about fourteen years old.  I loved to read and writing seemed a natural outlet for my love of words. As well, my dad liked to journal and wrote poetry and short stories for fun. He and my mom encouraged my interest in writing. When I was in grade eight, I received the gift of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings for my creative writing, which was an added incentive to keep doing what I loved. 

P.S.: Who are some of your influences?  What are a few of your favorite books?

J.R.: I have enjoyed so many different authors, but when I was in elementary school any books to do with horses interested me, books like Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty and Glenn Balch’s Tiger Roan. As well, I appreciated the playfulness of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, as well as A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh. In my teens I particularly loved the books written by Charles Dickens, Richard Adams’ Watership Down, Jane Austen’s novels and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.

Currently, some of my favorite books are TJ Klune’s Under the Whispering Door, Thomas King’s short stories, Alexander McCall Smith’s The Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency series, Neil Gaiman’s short stories, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens, Kate Quinn’s The Rose Code and Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Daughter of Doctor Moreau. One book I found horrifying but utterly impossible to put down was Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. I like novelty in short stories and novels and admire authors whose characters are unexpected. When reading I also look for the ability of an author to touch the heart and bring compassionate characters to life without slipping into sentimentality. Clever humor is always welcome.

P.S.: How do animals figure into the stories you write?

J.R.: My stories almost always relate to the natural world and animals in some way or other. My background is in zoology, conservation and education, so I have a strong desire to pass on my fascination with the living world around us. Animals may be central to a story’s outcome, as in a story I am working on about a young girl and her sister who learn that bulls can be dangerous. They may be part of a human character’s make-up, as in a short story I’m hoping to get published about Medusa. In some cases, the animals in my stories form close bonds with humans, even if they are creatures like hornets as is the case in another story I’m in the process of writing.

P.S.: What are the easiest and most difficult aspects of writing for you?

J.R.: That’s a tricky question. Sometimes, my stories seem to write themselves; at other times, I have to keep revisiting them while working on other things. I feel that the best way to progress is to make time for writing on a regular basis, which can be challenging for me as I am juggling a number of interests in my life. When stuck, I will turn to a few pages of a well-loved author just for inspiration. I also notice that, for me, it is easy to begin a story, and I have lots of ideas; however, unraveling the ideas into full stories is a process and often requires rewriting.

P.S.: Your short story, “Shark Out of Water,” appears in the anthology Beach Shorts. Tell us about that story.

“Shark Out of Water” was originally written for the drama club I direct for children and youth. The young people involved in the production had such a lot of fun with it! When Speculation Publications advertised for submissions on the theme of romance reading for the beach, it seemed like a great fit. The story is based on the Hawaiian myth, “The King of Sharks.” A young woman, Fabia, becomes smitten with a new face on the beach. This man is so very different from anyone she has ever known, but is he all he seems or will he take an unexpected bite out of her life? You’ll have to read the story to find out!

P.S.: I understand that you’ve been practicing Spring Forest Qigong for over a decade. What is that, and how has it helped you?

J.R.: Spring Forest Qigong, like Tai Chi, is one form of qigong. There are literally thousands of different forms of qigong practice. Qigong can be practiced as a martial art form, as an academic discipline, or as a way of maintaining or improving health. Spring Forest Qigong is aimed at bettering health. I find it meditative and calming. I have been leading this practice for a long time and feel that it helps me to be more focused and centered.

P.S.: The anthology Beware the Bugs! includes your story “Marvin’s Millipede.” What is the problem or conflict to be faced by the protagonist of this tale?

J.R.: Oh, I had such a lot of fun writing this story! It just flowed and gave me such pleasure! The story is about a boy, Marvin, who has a love of arthropods – the creatures with jointed legs, segmented bodies, and an exoskeleton. His favorite arthropod is the millipede, you know, the critter with the multitude of legs for walking on, the one you see cartoon pictures of with piles of shoes on its many feet. When he and his two friends, Lucy and Sophia, find an American giant millipede a little over three inches long, they decide to conduct an experiment to see if they can make the millipede, dubbed Maverick Miles Maddox or MMM, bigger. Does their experiment work? Yes, it does! MMM becomes very large indeed, gigantic in fact! Marvin and his friends must now decide what to do about MMM.

P.S.: You’ve written three plays that were published. Each appears to take inspiration from earlier works, but gives these works a twist. Please tell us a little about all three and tell us the twist in one of them.

J.R.: I’ve written far more plays than I’ve published, and it was satisfying to have a few published.

“Aladdin and His Sister,” is about a spoiled Aladdin who is fortunate enough to have a resourceful, courageous, and compassionate sister, Maliha, to help him manage his affairs. Two genies feature in the play.

“Cyrano and Roxanne” is based on Edmond Rostand’s play, “Cyrano de Bergerac.” In my take on the story, I provide Roxanne with three bosom friends, Chrystele, Danielle and Brigitte, who help to see that this time round there will be a happy ending for Cyrano and the woman he loves.

“When Science Bites Back” is really two plays that are part of one production. Both plays are science fiction, which is not an easy sell for the stage, and based on stories by H.G. Wells works with a touch of Alexandre Dumas’ novel, The Black Tulip, worked into the second story. In “Bacterial Broadside,” villains steal an experimental sample from the famous bacteriologist, Professor Parvulus. Will the world ever be the same again? In “Orchid Obsession,” rival botanists compete for first prize at the Exotic Blooms From Bulbs Competition. When one of the botanists receives a bulb under unusual circumstances, will the bulb bloom into something bloodthirsty?

P.S.: The Extraordinary Visions anthology includes “Want of Air,” a story of yours with no animals. What inspired you to write it?

J.R.: “Want of Air” does not have animals in it, but in the story, Jordan’s mother, Karen, is working to protect a marine offshore area, and his father was an oceanographer. Jordan is clearly fond of living creatures as his bedroom is hung with photographs and illustrations of numerous sea creatures.

The inspiration for the story was my oldest son, Nathan, who began reading a shortened version of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas in grade four. Like Jordan, he became so involved in the book that he was identifying with the characters and their distress. He became anxious about the amount of air in our home. It was a cold winter day, and Nathan wanted the window open. For the story, I imagined what might have happened had Nathan opened the window on that bitter day. Thankfully, Nathan still has his dad in his life as my husband is very much alive.

P.S.: What is your current work in progress?

J.R.: I am currently working on more than one story. One of them is a science fiction tale about an elderly patient who has a robotic lion to help him manage his senior years. The patient’s son has tampered with the inner workings of his robotic pet who begins to engage in decidedly realistic lion behavior. The story is inspired by my dad’s current struggles and my work at the Calgary Zoo with lions.

Poseidon’s Scribe: What is your advice for aspiring fiction writers?

Janice Rider: Enjoy the writing process, connect with other writers, and carve out time to write, preferably each day. If I am writing something, and it ceases to be enjoyable, I step into another story and come back to the one I am struggling with later. I have a friend, Heather MacIntosh, who has also published short stories. Talking together and sharing our thoughts and tales has really inspired me to keep writing. When I write regularly, I feel content at the end of the day. It seems to me that writing, like qigong, is therapeutic.

Poseidon’s Scribe: Thank you, Janice. It’s good that you enjoy writing. I fear if I wrote about snakes, millipedes, and sharks, I’d be creeped out, not calm.

Readers can find out more about Janice on LinkedIn.

July 11, 2023Permalink