If you write genre fiction, you write for two sectors of the reading public. Problem is, they want opposite things. What do you do?
For any genre—and I’ll use science fiction as my example—you’ll have two types of readers. Let’s call them Experts and Newbies. You’d like both of them to buy and enjoy your books.
Experts
The first type knows the genre well. Scifi experts can quote the Three Laws of Robotics, have a ball lecturing you about Dyson Spheres, reveal the universal question for which the answer is 42, and babble on about Babylon 5. They read often, and crave the most recently published stories, and prefer them crammed with all the technologies and the latest scientific discoveries.
Newbies
Don’t take that term the wrong way. We all start as newbies. The newbie takes a chance when buying your book. Despite harboring doubts about scifi, the newbie remains curious and willing to learn. The newbie may not know a warp drive from a hard drive, but likes a good story as long as it doesn’t confuse.
These two types differ in their approach to what I’ll call New Stuff and Tropes.
New Stuff
I mentioned experts seek technology and scientific discoveries. They want the latest, the cutting-edge, the most imaginative concepts. Give them the New Stuff. Not only that, they want the full explanation. What’s it look like? How is it powered? How fast does it go? What languages can it speak? You could write many pages of convincing technobabble without boring an expert.
Newbies don’t delight in New Stuff. It’s all new to them. They just want to know how the characters feel about the new stuff and how it affects the plot. Any paragraph that reads like a technical manual annoys them, maybe enough to stop reading.
Tropes
With tropes, the situation reverses. Here, I using the term to refer to technology or concepts well known to readers of the genre. Expert readers get your meaning as soon as you mention wormholes, the multiverse, generation ships, FTL, or cryosleep. If you go further to explain the trope, experts feel insulted.
Newbies, by contrast, get stumped by tropes. These strange words and phrases serve as an ejection seat to launch them out of the story. Just a brief definition would save newbies from frustration.
The Balance
As a writer, you’d like to please both types. When it comes to New Stuff, you should aim for just enough explanation to satisfy experts, but not so much that it bores newbies. With Tropes, seek the briefest definition to help out the newbies. Better yet, define the term in context so newbies can catch the meaning and experts don’t get exasperated.
At a critique group meeting recently, one member criticized my manuscript, saying I hadn’t defined an unfamiliar term, but that member managed to glean what it meant. Another group member knew the term, and said I shouldn’t bog down the prose with further explanations.
I’d achieved balance.
The Signal Technique
Say you’ve got some new stuff in your story. You want to explain it all for the benefit of experts without making newbies nod off. Perhaps the signal technique will work. At the beginning of a paragraph, provide a signal to the reader that a long description follows. If you make the signal clear enough, the expert reads on with eagerness and the newbie skims or even skips that part.
This method might work as well for tropes. Here the signal tells experts they may skip an upcoming explanation without missing anything, while the newbies should read the paragraph to understand the unfamiliar jargon.
Jules Verne mastered that technique. Known for including long lists, he provided unmistakable signals in advance. It’s as if a hypertext alert pops up from the page saying, “Uninterested readers may skip this next part.”
Summary
Needless to say, I’ve simplified things in this discussion of two audiences. Your readers span a spectrum from newbie to expert and all points in between. You can write for them all if you keep their preferences in mind. Maybe, for your next book, one member of your reading audience might be—
Yes, my predictions prove false more often than they prove true. But as the adage goes, a scientist is blamed for one falsehood in a hundred truths, while a seer is praised for one truth in a hundred falsehoods. So give this seer a break, will ya?
It’s all a matter of hitting on the right method. I’ve tried crystal balls, tea leaves, tarot cards, astrology, and palmistry, but none of those worked. This year, I realized I should turn to our modern-day version of the Oracle of Delphi—ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot by OpenAI.
I gave ChatGPT this task: “make 10 predictions about topics or themes science fiction writers will write about in 2024.”
The AI couched its answer by stating that predictions are iffy. Further, it said its last training update occurred in January 2022, so the predictions are based on trends known up to that date. Personally, I think it was just being humble.
With all the caveats out of the way, here’s what we can expect in 2024:
AI Ethics and Rights. As artificial intelligence continues to advance, science fiction writers may delve into the ethical considerations and legal rights surrounding sentient AI beings. This could include questions about consciousness, autonomy, and the responsibilities of creators.
Climate Crisis Solutions. With an increasing focus on climate change, science fiction could explore innovative and speculative solutions to the environmental challenges facing the planet. This might include technologies to reverse environmental damage or new ways of sustainable living.
Neurotechnology and Brain-Computer Interfaces. As developments in neurotechnology progress, science fiction writers may explore the implications of widespread use of brain-computer interfaces. Themes could include mind control, augmented intelligence, and the potential societal impacts of such technologies.
Space Exploration and Colonization. Given the growing interest in space exploration, science fiction could continue to explore themes related to interplanetary travel and the challenges of colonizing other celestial bodies. This may include the societal dynamics of living in space and encounters with extraterrestrial life.
Genetic Engineering and Biohacking. Advances in genetic engineering and biohacking may lead science fiction writers to explore the consequences of manipulating DNA, creating designer organisms, or even the potential for genetic warfare.
Virtual Reality and Alternate Realities. With the evolution of virtual reality, science fiction could depict worlds where the lines between physical and virtual realities blur, exploring themes of identity, addiction, and the consequences of living in immersive digital environments.
Post-Pandemic Societies. In the wake of global events, science fiction writers might explore the long-term societal impacts of pandemics, including changes in governance, healthcare systems, and the dynamics of human interaction.
Quantum Computing and Reality Manipulation. The advent of quantum computing may inspire science fiction narratives centered around the manipulation of reality, parallel universes, and the consequences of unlocking the full potential of quantum technology.
Social Media and Surveillance Culture. With the increasing prevalence of surveillance technologies and the influence of social media, science fiction could examine dystopian futures where privacy is almost nonexistent, exploring themes of control, rebellion, and the impact on individual freedom.
Augmented Reality in Everyday Life. As augmented reality becomes more integrated into daily life, science fiction might explore the societal implications of a world where digital information overlays the physical world. This could include themes of information manipulation, addiction, and the consequences of an increasingly connected reality.
Now you know. The oracle has spoken. By ‘oracle,’ I mean, of course, ChatGPT, not—
We’ve arrived at that time of year again, when I judge how well I did at this time last year in foretelling the attributes of science fiction books in 2023.
In past years, I’ve tried various techniques, but this time I used a sure-fire method—palm reading. Let’s see how well I did:
Prediction: Artificial Intelligence. A continuing trend, yes, but in 2023, we’ll see a twist. Authors will get past the Frankenstein reruns and the cute-robot-is-nobler-than-humans plot. Novels will show us more sophisticated AI, computers with a different order of intelligence, one alien to us.
Prediction: Classics redone in LGBTQ. Authors will explore the contours of the LGBTQ realm by rewriting classic tales, but repopulating them with LGBTQ characters.
Assessment: I’ll call this a fairy accurate prediction, too. The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older is a retelling of Sherlock Holmes mysteries with lesbians in the role of Holmes and Watson.
Prediction: Climate Fiction. CliFi hasn’t run its course yet. Readers want it, and authors will supply it.
Prediction: Private Space Flight. I jumped the gun, er, rocket, in predicting this for 2022. 2023 is the year we’ll see spaceships funded by billionaires without government involvement, for better or worse.
Assessment: It took some hunting, but I found what might be an example. Skeleton Crew by HT Aaron appears to involve private space flight, though I may be wrong about that.
Prediction: Solarpunk. I’m seeing more novels in the coming year with this motif, bringing us sustainable, renewable energy and diverging from capitalism and a colonial mindset.
Prediction: Terraforming. Once seen as an extension of man’s dominion over Earth, terraforming will show its warts in 2023. We’ll see stories of botched terraforming, opposed terraforming, and weaponized terraforming.
Assessment: I’ll claim this as an accurate prediction, too. The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz depicts a terraforming project that missed something important.
Before you congratulate me on my foresight (I know you were about to), maybe you shouldn’t credit my palmistry skills. What’s really improved is my after-the-fact ability to find books that fulfilled my prophesies. For those prediction assessments that cite only one or two examples, it’s clear I didn’t forecast a major trend.
I made no personal predictions last year about how my own writing would fare in 2023. Probably a good thing I didn’t.
Watch this space next week to see my spot-on predictions for the world of science fiction in 2024. Considering my past track record, the law of averages says you’ll be amazed at the prognosticating prowess of—
This past weekend, I attended and spoke at ICON 48, the science fiction convention in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. What a great time!
On Friday night, I spoke at a very imaginative panel on the topic of “Dyson Spheres and other Megastructures in Space.” Tony Penticoff did a marvelous job of monitoring the panel (and making an informative presentation) while Bill Pitcher and I talked about various aspects of these structures. The ten audience members seemed engaged, and asked several detailed questions.
My first Saturday morning panel covered “Embracing Technology isn’t only for the Young.” (How would I know? I’m not old yet.) Still, Michael Fraska and I talked about that topic in an informed way and I think the three attendees got something out of it.
Next came an Author Meet and Greet. I sat at a table with Myron Williams while prospective readers stopped to talk. To my surprise, I sold a couple of books.
After lunch, I moderated a panel on the topic of “Riding the Publishing Roller-Coaster,” and authors Tom Ashwell and Jim Hines (ICON toastmaster and Hugo award winner) helped the seven members of our audience understand the ups and downs of the writer-publisher relationship.
In mid-afternoon, I moderated a panel called “The Rapid Increase of Population Growth” with retired EPA scientist Paul Price. He gave the eight-member audience a much better understanding of the rise in human population. Though the world’s populace may experience some problems in the near term, it may be best to worry about something else.
Nobody attended my scheduled author reading with fellow author Trisha Anderson. I chatted with her for some time, though, and spent a pleasant half hour learning about her novels.
Saturday night, I served as a panelist for two artificial intelligence topics. The first, “Artificial Intelligence in World of Creators,” drew a crowd of three people, but moderator Tony Penticoff and panelists Joseph Isenberg and I explored how AI may soon create stories as well as human writers can. We might have to adapt to a future where AI writes better fiction.
The next panel, “How AI Will Transform Our Lives Over the Next Five Years,” garnered an audience of eleven. Tony Penticoff moderated this panel as well, and Bill Pitcher joined us. A lively discussion occurred, with great audience participation.
Sunday mornings at scifi cons tend to be subdued after attendees have stayed up late the past two nights, and a sense of winding down pervades the hotel. However, eight alert and curious audience members gathered for a 10:00 am panel titled “First Time Authors – How to Get Published.” I moderated, while authors Tom Ashwell and Athena Foster imparted excellent advice.
At noon I moderated an interesting panel called “Writing a Compelling Fight Scene.” Author Alexis D. Craig did a masterful and enthusiastic job of educating the ten-person audience about how best to do that.
My last panel, “How Do I Get My Work Out There?” started at 1:00. Author Rachel Aukes moderated, and author Megan Mackie sat on the panel with me. I believe the six attendees of this panel walked out with solid tips on how to get their manuscripts published.
All in all, a wonderful con, and, having grown up in Cedar Rapids, it represented a nice homecoming for—
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!
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 LeaguesUnder 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.
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.
Some authors (like me) strike out at the plate for years before achieving their first sale. Others hit it out of the park on their first time at bat. Today you’ll meet one of the latter types, and a story by this author appears in the anthology The Science Fiction Tarot.
Marco Cultrera writes science fiction and is enjoying a fine start to his writing career. He sold his first story to The Arcanist magazine at pro rates, a rare accomplishment. He’s had other works published by Hybrid Fiction magazine, Polaris Borealis magazine, Total Quality Reading magazine, and The Science Fiction Tarot anthology. Another story is set to appear in the anthology Novus Monstrum. Since 2018, he’s served on the staff of Can*Con, the SFF convention in Ottawa.
Born and raised in Italy, he now lives in Ottawa where he’s found his theoretical physics degree to be more useful in his writing than in his day job.
Next up, the interview:
Poseidon’s Scribe: How did you get started writing? What prompted you?
Marco Cultrera: I’ve always been a voracious reader, from a very early age. I always thought that one day I may write, but I wasn’t in a hurry to start. There were so many wonderful books to read, I didn’t have the time to write my own. Eventually, in high school, I got into RPG games and that medium gave me the impetus to start creating adventures for my friends to play. From there, the switch to speculative writing was only natural. In my mid-twenties, I began writing in Italian a bit, just to test the water. But then life got in the way, I got married, moved to Canada, began working in videogames, where I started writing exclusively in English, and then kids began to pop-up. It was then, in the early two thousands, during the long nights half-awake between one feeding and another, that the plot of my first book coalesced in my mind, inspired by… Oh wait, I was getting ahead of myself, on to the next question.
P.S.: Who are some of your influences? What are a few of your favorite books?
M.C.: The author I almost mentioned above was Steven Erikson. I got sucked in into his Malazan Cycle, to this day the best fantasy I’ve ever read, and probably ever will, and it got my creativity going. I wanted to create something similar, but also give it my own personal stamp. And so my first novel was born, a 200K-word mammoth that will probably never be published, but helped me immensely in improving my craft. I also rediscovered Science Fiction in that period, after having read all the classics in my youth (Asimov and Clarke above all, but also Jack Vance and Philip Jose’ Farmer), and I was blown away by the way the genre had evolved. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie blew me away, also I love how Andy Weir is able to insert rigorous science in all his books while keeping them extremely entertaining. I found his Project Hail Mary unputdownable. So naturally, my second novel – the one I’m sending to agents now – is a near future sci-fi story with technological and environmental themes. In general, I try to read broadly, including Literary fiction (The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell remains one of my all-time favorite), crime novels (I love all Harry Hole books by Jo Nesbo) and I also go back the classics (reread recently The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse, what a fantastic book).
P.S.: Is there a common attribute that ties your fiction together (genre, character types, settings, themes) or are you a more eclectic author?
M.C.: I would say no, I’ve written any kind of speculative fiction, from introspective reflections of the human condition and how it constantly changes confronted by technology, to action packed sword and sorcery. I really enjoy jumping from one genre to another, and the opportunity to explore the very different characters that creative freedom allows. At the end of the day, I live and die by the ideas I can come up. If one takes root in my brain, I just need to write it, no matter how wacky or out there it is.
P.S.: Tell us about “Malapropic Rhapsody.” Is it true you sold your first story at pro rates, and the editor accepted as is, with no revisions?
M.C.: Yes, it was quite shocking, to be honest, and it may have set some unrealistic expectation of the rate of publication of my short stories after that. I wrote that story on a whim, as part of a monthly competition in a private forum I was part of. Surprisingly, it won. Riding that enthusiasm, I looked up what were the best Flash Fiction magazines on the net, and I found The Arcanist. I submitted it, and I was delighted to hear a few weeks later that they loved it and wanted to publish it, with no editorial changes whatsoever. Payment was $50, which divided for the number of words, it came to about 8¢ a word, that at the time was considered pro payment. So I started writing more stories and submitting them everywhere, and naturally, shortly after, an endless train of rejections began to appear in my inbox…
M.C.: I have always been fascinated by how human consciousness may have arisen, and what evolutionary advantages have brought the Homo sapiens sapiens to become the dominant species on Earth. One day I was driving home, and passed by a church while ruminating on that, and I thought, “What if we knew that there was an afterlife? How would that have affected our evolution?” I decided that it would have hindered it, as surviving at all costs wouldn’t be as imperative if our ancestors knew that there was a new life after death. The next thing I knew, I had written 10K words about an evil corporation trying to find out if there was any truth about that.
P.S.: You’re a big part of the Ottawa-based SF&F writing convention Can*Con. Tell us about Can*Con, your role in that annual event, and how you started doing that.
M.C.: I discovered Can*Con in 2017, when I found out that my favorite fantasy author, the Steven Erikson mentioned above, was going to be the Writer Guest of Honor. I bought a full ticket and was blown away. In just a few days, I had met and talked with Steven and a ton of more established authors. I also got to pitch my novel to the editor of Daw and talked to a New York based agent! I learned more in that weekend at the con, than in the previous ten years trying to figure out the industry by myself. It was clear in my mind that I needed to be part of Can*Con moving forward, so I approached Derek Kunsken, one of the two co-chairs, and told him straight out that I wanted to help. He referred me to the other co-chair, the excellent Marie Bilodeau, and it turned out they needed someone to take over their website. I had all the knowledge necessary from my day job, so I accepted. Since then, I’ve made a ton of writer friends and become part of Ottawa’s writing community, that include some legends in the field, like Julie Czerneda, and Kate Heartfield, who is rapidly raising to a well-deserved stardom (her latest novel, The Embroidered Book, is just phenomenal. But don’t take my word for it. Come to Ottawa on the third weekend of October, you won’t regret it.
P.S.: Your story in The Science Fiction Tarot, “Support Group: Apocalypse,” earned a tarot card labeled ‘Apocalypse.” What is the premise of this story?
M.C.: Parallel Earths have become all the rage recently, but I swear I wrote this story before a certain entertainment corporation had to come up with something else after having dispatched a certain blue titan. What if victims of different apocalypses in parallel but equally doomed Earths could come together every week to a support group run by a licensed therapist? Would they be there for each other? Argue about who has it worst? Go read the story to find out…
P.S.: What are the hardest and easiest aspects of writing for you?
M.C.: Hardest one is finding the time to do it. I have a full-time job that keeps me quite occupied and a very busy household, with three daughters and four cats, so stealing time to write is a challenge. The easiest thing is coming up with ideas. I have always more concepts in my head than I will ever be able to actually write, so whenever I sit, I have no problem putting words on the page.
P.S.: In what way is your fiction different from that of other science fiction authors?
M.C.: I guess what I really like to do is come up with new ideas, or at least a new take on old ones so out there that they are hardly recognizable. Yes, characters are very important, and I work hard to make mine likeable or whatever shade of humanity they are meant to be, but my stories are invariably plot driven. Don’t get me wrong, I read a lot of character-centric fiction, and enjoy it a lot, but when it comes to my own writing I always start from an idea (or a set of ideas) that I have not seen anywhere before, and build a cast of characters around it to support it.
P.S.: What is your current work in progress? Would you mind telling us a little about it?
M.C.: I always have at least a short story and a longer project in various states of completion. The story right now is about how something like ChatGPT can be turned on its head in the right dystopian society. The novel is about an asteroid about to hit Earth. Wait a minute? I can hear you thinking. What happened to an original idea? I can’t think of a more used trope in the history of Science Fiction. Yes, but what if the impact is 18 years away, and the first ever woman to have become Secretary General of the United Nations is determined to save every single human and not just a small colony? And what if the progress of the salvation effort is monitored through a webspace in the holoweb, created and updated in real time by a group of people scattered all over the world that share visions of Earth’s last moments? Not enough? What if the first trillionaire private citizen is building a lunar base to become the only savior of humanity? Not enough? Well, then I can’t do anything for you. Just go back to watch Armageddon or Deep Impact again, patting yourself on the back that you were right all along…
Poseidon’s Scribe: What advice can you offer aspiring writers?
Marco Cultrera: This question made me chuckle a bit, as I still consider myself an aspiring writer. I would say my advice is to find like-minded individuals. Writing seems like a solitary endeavor, but it doesn’t have to be. Join a writing group, online or in person, look for writing events in your city, go to book launches and talk to the authors. In my experience, the writing community is wonderfully inclusive, and everybody is always ready to cheer you on in your journey. Since I joined the Can*Con team, I made a ton of friends, and my enjoyment in the slow process of becoming an established writer has multiplied tenfold.
Poseidon’s Scribe: Thanks, Marco. My readers and I will watch your career with interest. Your early success seems well deserved.
Readers interested in following Marco Cultrera will have to do occasional internet searches for now. He’s spending his sparse free time writing fiction, not posting on social media or updating an author website.
For today’s author interview, I flew to Australia and sat down with… No, actually, I did this one all by email. Mike Adamson has separate stories in both 20,000 Leagues Remembered and in Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne.
Mike Adamson holds a Doctoral degree from Flinders University of South Australia. After early aspirations in art and writing, Mike secured qualifications in both marine biology and archaeology. Mike was a university educator from 2006 to 2018, has worked in the replication of convincing ancient fossils, is a passionate photographer, master-level hobbyist, and journalist for international magazines. Short fiction sales include to Metastellar, Strand Magazine, Little Blue Marble, Abyss and Apex, Daily Science Fiction, Compelling Science Fiction and Nature Futures. Mike has placed stories on well over two hundred occasions to date, totaling some 1.1 million words. Mike has completed his first Sherlock Holmes novel with Belanger Books, and has appeared in translation in European magazines. You can catch up with his journey at his blog ‘The View From the Keyboard.’
Here’s the interview:
Poseidon’s Scribe: How did you get started writing? What prompted you?
Mike Adamson: I think I must have been a latent storyteller from a very young age. I would cite exposure to classic Star Trek and of course the many worlds of British TV producer Gerry Anderson as strong inspirations, as was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, my favorite story at age 5. It was also the classic Space Race era, those of my age grew up with the fact that space had become accessible, and this spurred many a reverie for inquiring minds. I remember being in school around age 5 or 6 and being given the exercise of drawing a picture and writing a caption, and what I produced was two pages of writing with a small drawing at the bottom of each—about a voyage to the Moon as I recall. I remember my teachers being in deep discussion over it! Then, not many years later, I would look at a blank writing pad and experience an almost indescribable urge to fill those lines with text, to create something wonderful, to tell a great story but also invent something, a world, a time that doesn’t exist, in the process. I must have been born for speculative writing!
As a kid I worked on a series of adventures about space travelers who fell through a time warp into an age of cavemen and dinosaurs, then tried a couple of more ambitious projects about space exploration and the colonization of the Moon. Around age twelve I learned to type and hammered away at an epic, if somewhat naive, science fiction novel, without actually completing it. I finished my first original science fiction novel at age sixteen: having digested the works of E E Smith and reveled in the early Star Wars and Galactica era, there was no surprise in it being space opera on a grand scale. In my teens I wrote rafts of fan fiction, which was a good exercise in learning to produce feature-length texts.
P.S.: Very exciting that your novel, Sherlock Holmes: A Tradition of Evil, will be coming out later this year. The video trailer is captivating. Tell us about the novel.
M.A.: I’ve been writing Sherlock Holmes short stories since 2019 and have had excellent success in placing them, so for my debut novel I wanted to do something on a big scale—real stakes for the characters and for society in general. I also wanted to explore Holmes earlier in his career than we usually encounter him, allowing the story to be foundational to the awe in which he is held in later years. I set the piece in the December of 1885, early enough for many Police to still regard him as a meddling amateur, which provides for some interesting frictions.
The story concerns government and law enforcement itself, and I needed the character of Mycroft to make the logic work. The story introducing Mycroft, “The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter,” is one of those which contains no date reference, but, luckily, some scholars place the story as early as 1885, and I chose to run with this. I have the full line-up of supporting characters—Inspectors Lestrade, Gregson and Bradtsreet, Mrs Hudson, Wiggins and the Irregulars, plus genuine historic figures, such as the Home Secretary, and the Commissioners of the City and Metropolitan Police Forces.
I wanted to draw the reader into the case at a very visceral level, so after gathering the threads together in the traditional way, I opted for a blow-by-blow account of the closing drama, a night of tension and action as Holmes and Watson pursue their man across the city. I’m hoping readers appreciate this approach and find the finale to be real edge-of-the-seat stuff.
Recently I was invited to work up a second novel, and am perusing my notes for the best storyline for a further outing.
P.S.: Speaking of Sherlock Holmes, that novel’s not your only story involving the iconic sleuth. What others have you had published, and how does your Holmes deviate, if at all, from Doyle’s original characterization?
M.A.: As I mentioned above, I’ve been writing Sherlock Holmes for the last four years, and currently have some twenty-two stories complete, around 220,000 words worth (with notes for a great many more). I began with a cross-over between Holmes and my own Victorian detective character, Inspector George Trevelyan (created in collaboration with my sister, Jen Downes, a very fine writer who has twice appeared in Analog, and with whom I’ll be sharing a table of contents next year in Sunshine Superhighway: Solar Sailings, from Jay Henge Publishing).
The Trevelyan stories are classic mystery with a supernatural edge, which contrasts with the Holmesian canon in which the supernatural is more or less “handled with tongs.” Having already completed a couple of Trevelyan adventures, I eased into Holmes by presenting him with a case that would not resolve without acknowledging a supernatural element, which he of course cannot do. He consults with Trevelyan to get to the bottom of it.
This piece, “The Misadventure of the Perspicacious Waif,” was accepted for Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine by the late Marvin Nathan Kaye in 2019, then switched to Weird Tales, from the same publishing stable, as he felt the readers of SHMM would not appreciate a piece which deviated from canon in recognizing a supernatural reality. That was fine with me, as it got me a berth in that grand old magazine of the strange! Unfortunately, after Marvin passed away, I’ve not been able to establish contact with the new editor, and the piece is in limbo—recorded by me as a pro-level placement but out there in some realm between the worlds. The stated theme for the next issue of Weird Tales is occult detectives, so I should have a fair shot, given that the story both fits the theme and has already been tacitly picked up. All I can do is watch like a hawk for the magazine reopening to submissions (which, on their random schedule, could be anytime) and re-pitch the piece to the new editor. Fingers crossed…
Since then I’ve written new adventures for the great detective across the period 1881 to (so far) 1916, with only a handful of unpublished pieces in hand at any one time. They’ve appeared in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine (two acceptances, neither of which has appeared in print yet), Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (Sherlock Holmes tribute issue Jan/Feb 2021), Strand Magazine (two placements, both now published, the second of which was actually solicited) and a total to date of eleven anthologies from Belanger Books. I’m enjoying being a Holmesian very much, am continuing to write and to expand my publishing venues.
My Holmes is essentially canonical, though some might say they find him less caustic than the original. However, I group my material in ways that agree or disagree with Doyle’s approach—for instance, I probably have an anthology coming along in the next year or two, which will consist of purely canonical tales, but a later volume might collect those with supernatural or otherwise strange themes, under the title “The Dark Holmes.”
All my stories follow a chronology which compliments the original canon, filling in the spaces between the classic stories (an approach I’m sure many have followed previously), so, regardless of the nature or classification of the tales, they can be read in order from the earliest to the last, with the novel(s) forming part of that collective arc.
P.S.: Who are some of your influences? What are a few of your favorite books?
M.A.: It’s difficult to say! My early influences included Clarke, Asimov, E E Smith and Heinlein, and in the fantasy vein Robert E Howard was the fascination of my youth, plus of course Burroughs. Later on I discovered Clarke Ashton Smith’s classic tales of cosmic horror, and finally devoured H P Lovecraft’s complete works. I read the entire Sherlock Holmes canon several years ago, of course, and have long enjoyed Jules Verne and H G Wells. Being a classics fan is an obvious benefit for writing in the public domain franchises, but leaves one rather out of touch with where the fields are at this point. (This also goes for writing “voice,” as there are times I find myself automatically composing in 19th Century expression, and have to wrench narratives back into contemporary “sound!”)
Among moderns, I would say Greg Bear has been a distinct influence—Eon in particular, whose imagery and concepts remain vivid to me. I would also cite the great Australian science fiction author Terry Dowling, whose saga of future Australia, the massive “Rhynosseros” arc, made a huge and lasting impression on me when I read the stories in paperback many years ago. His world-building still leaves me breathless, and the range and depth of his stories is epic. The late Jack Vance, a personal friend of Terry Dowling, is another whose world-building is legendary, and (as with Clarke Ashton Smith’s writing) lets one submerge in a cocoon of sensory stimulus that, I feel, modern stripped-to-the-bone writing hands away in the name of pace. Frankly, to me this is an unfortunate bargain in the name of attention-spans truncated by the speed of modern information access. No wonder I’m often accused of being heavy on the exposition…
From an early age I also considered myself an artist, so it’s natural that artistic influences should have impressed themselves strongly. Some artists shaped my view of both science fiction and fantasy from a young age: Chris Foss, the “Dean of Science Fiction Illustration” as he has been called, whose signature airbrush art remains the gold standard, tops the list for me, plus others from the British industry from the ’70s onward—the late Peter Elson, Angus McKie, Tim White and more. The great Bruce Pennington, whose distinctive non-airbrush style was like a signature for the New English Library range of the ’70s—I find his work strongly evocative and suggestive of story elements to this day. In the fantasy field, the late, great Frank Frazetta is the leading influence, along with Boris & Bell. Also past comics greats have played their part in shaping the color, texture and scope of my visualizations—Mike Noble, John Buscema, Don Lawrence, and so many others.
M.A.: Deakin Valley is a railway ghost story set in the Peak District of Derbyshire, England. Railways have an undying appeal all their own, but in the country where they were invented they also have the longest history. Britain’s rail map has changed often, with many old lines disappearing. Much of Britain’s railway engineering and architecture, its bridges and stations, is of Victorian vintage and it can be rather creepy when you encounter infrastructure long out of use. On the domestic rail network in my home town of Adelaide, South Australia, there are such features—disused stations, boarded-up tunnels, dismantled bridges—and observing those from passing trains got me thinking. A torn-up spur-line might once have led somewhere important, perhaps with a secret, something dark… And the story flowed from there.
I matched up a commercial photojournalist with a disaster a hundred years ago and gave him a mystery to chase, then threw in magic and a deep sense of existential dread that might reasonably dwell in a land so ancient, redolent with the fury and suffering of battles long gone by. I focused it all in a fatal attraction to solve the mystery—learn the truth, but die in the attempt? It was a lot of fun to write, and I have a second outing for the same characters in notes.
P.S.: Is it true you’ve made over 3000 story submissions in 88 months? On average, that’s more than a submission each day. Tell us about the importance of such persistence in the journey to publication, and about how you manage to write and submit so much.
M.A.: Persistence is everything! Well, not everything of course, it assumes you’ve mastered your craft and are submitting good ideas, well-written and edited. But when it comes to marketing, persistence, and a sense of self worth, are paramount. In the early days I took feedback from editors as an important guideline, but it occurred to me that it would be impossible to accommodate every opinion received in terms of reworking. When the same story was rejected by two different markets for precisely opposite reasons it became clear that editorial opinion is entirely flexible and random, and that rewriting to accommodate any one opinion may in fact be installing the very reason for the next rejection. This is not an easy situation, and now I look for commonality of reaction. If I get the same reaction from more than one market then it carries weight and is worth a rewrite. Otherwise, I simply persist in submission in the belief that sooner or later any particular story will cross the desks of first readers and editors who see my point and appreciate my telling, and this seems to hold true quite often. An early story one market considered unpublishable was later picked up by an another and printed with bare-minimum edits, which rather makes my case.
Yes, I recently passed three thousand submissions since I began to keep records at the beginning of 2016. I had four placements in the previous few years which convinced me that I could do this, and a few test submissions late in 2015 to get the hang of online engines like Moksha, but they don’t feature in my official list. My record for submissions is ten in one day, and for rejections, six. It’s a high-volume situation and is essentially a seven-day-a-week job, in which I check emails four times a day, and do most of my redirection of rejections each morning. Writing falls usually in the afternoon, though if I have the bit in my teeth on a new project I may do some composition at any available time.
Ideas flow at different rates, and my total number of new stories per year has been falling. In 2017 I churned out 62 pieces, a figure I have never approached since. I tend to write to prompts now, and could as easily be working on a flash as a novelette. I have sometimes written two flash pieces in one day. I have files of story ideas going back years and when I’m at a loss for an inspiration I look back over notes to see if anything grabs me. It’s a little mechanistic in that sense, but one must treat writing as a job, and producing new material is very important, given the generally low pay rates for reprints. That said, I have had a reprint or two which actually earned more than the original placement, so go figure!
P.S.: You’ve written a number of stories in a series you call Tales of the Middle Stars. What ties that series together? Which stories are published, and what are your plans for the series?
M.A.: Tales of the Middle Stars is an arc against a common background of the exploration and settlement of the stellar neighborhood in the centuries ahead. It describes a period of human colonial expansion and peaceful coexistence with several alien races. The basic idea postulates that current work on FTL flight by spacial warping pays off and that by the early 23rd Century our first vessels of exploration are examining the nearby stars. The discovery of planets requiring only minimal terraforming spurs a wave of colonization that extends into the 26th Century and beyond. The “Near Heavens” was the navigator’s name for the region closest to Earth, settled first, and the “Middle Stars” is the next region, beyond which of course lies the “Deep Sky.” I got the nomenclature from a starmap used as an on-set prop for the original Alien movie in the late Seventies, which was titled “The Middle Heavens.” That always stuck in my mind, and adapted easily.
The first story I placed, back in 2016, “Lo, These Many Gods,” in SQ Mag #28, was a Middle Stars piece, and since then I have completed fifty-five more, with thirty-nine published to date. My chapbook The Salamandrion, in the “Short Reads” series from Black Hare Press, is also a Middle Stars outing—actually the third story I wrote. Others have appeared in venues as varied as Andromeda Spaceways (twice), Stupefying Stories (forthcoming), Spring Into SciFi, Shelter of Daylight, Etherea, Phantaxis, and a host of anthologies.
The series begins early in the 23rd Century, when, in my timeline, Earth has turned the corner from absolute climate catastrophe and has been resettled from a chain of space cities. Most of the 22nd Century was occupied with global terraforming measures to turn back from that nadir, but during this time the FTL project matured on drawing boards out at the cities. The era of stellar exploration ushered in a whole new identity for humankind as not simply spacefarers, but members of a community of races, and all that that implies.
I have, or will have, stories ranging from those early voyages over a period of some three hundred years, with the densest accumulation to date ranging between AD 2480 or so to 2510. Between 2496 and 2501 humanity is embroiled in its first alien war, whose effects are felt over the following generations. And in the decade after that, a new and terrifying presence begins to be sensed among the worlds of the Middle Stars…
I would estimate there are a couple of dozen stories to go to fill in the chronology, sometimes revisiting characters, often moving among familiar worlds, and there will always be the opportunity for new outings in future. My hope is to collect the stories into anthologies with a publisher at some point, but what form that would take is as yet an open question. There are likely enough stories for four or five volumes, and the intention is to move into novels in due course, beginning with an epic answering the question of that “terrifying presence.” It’s a matter of finding the right publisher to take on such a project, and do it justice—this might be a project to undertake in cooperation with an agent. Until then, I’ll continue to produce the material for the short story market.
P.S.: A few of your stories involve climate change and take place in a post-habitable Earth. Tell us about these stories, and do you plan to write more in that vein?
M.A.: The climate crisis has been at the back of the scientific mind since I was a child—acid rain had already signaled that industry could affect nature, for instance. I remember a story in Science Fiction Monthly, in 1974, “Dancing in the Hour of Not-Quite-Rain,” in which people sheltered from acid rain in bunkers, and, finding they were over the maximum safe occupancy, threw out an old man, to burn, because it was his generation that allowed industry to break the world… Fifty years later, the problems are more fundamental, and industrial bloody-mindedness and a lack of political will smacking of universal corruption continue to drive us toward catastrophe.
This came to shape my thinking about the next centuries, and what unfolded was a narrative line which always featured the climate crisis in the background, regardless of the foreground characters or events. The remainder of the 21st Century, in this timeline, features worsening climate effects until, about 80 years from now, the planet becomes untenable for higher life forms. I pray this will never happen—but it makes for a good story! The “Post-Habitable Earth” tales occupy the 22nd Century and follow a number of scientists in their efforts to address the crisis, working from a chain of space cities at the L5 position, built in the later part of the current century by industrialists seeking a lifeboat from their own mess.
A number of stories look at what life has become for those left behind in underground redoubts and habitat cities (for instance “Rats,” which appeared in Andromeda Spaceways #76, October, 2019), how some genetically engineered themselves to live in the new environment, while other pieces look at the great project to restore the old climate, to cool the planet and reseed life, rebuilding the ecosystem from the ground up. “Flight of the Storm God” looks at that reseeding enterprise, and appeared in the Flame Tree collection Endless Apocalypse (March, 2018), then subsequently on the Little Blue Marble website, and was featured in their 2021 annual print collection.
The initiative turns the clock back to a planet cool enough and with enough oxygen to support higher life by the last decades of the 22nd Century—maybe too compressed a timeline, I admit, but I didn’t want to be unpalatably pessimistic in how long I extended the planet’s agony. And, with resettlement and recreation of the world from its own ashes, as it were, the stage is set for the Middle Stars stories to follow on.
Stories in this arc have appeared in Ecotastrophe II, Little Blue Marble, Compelling Science Fiction, Andromeda Spaceways and others; one was a finalist in the 2021 Gravity Awards. I have several more to write, bringing the “Post-Habitable Earth” arc up to book length, which obviously invites a collection under one cover at some point.
In this way, viewed at a global level, a great many of my science fiction stories form a contiguous series from the present day to some five centuries in the future. Many years ago I had a vision of an artbook chronicling the history of the next thousand years, and while that project never developed, thematic material of the sort it might have contained certainly has evolved in literary form.
P.S.: Your story, “The Silent Agenda,” appears in the 20,000 Leagues Remembered anthology. To most people, a contract discussion about translating novels wouldn’t seem interesting enough to write about, yet you turned that into a dramatic story. What prompted that story?
M.A.: Back in the 1980s I came cross Walter James Miller’s 1976 fresh translation of 20,000 Leagues, but the volume was packed away and forgotten until comparatively recently. I studied with interest his extensive introductory essay, both on Verne’s life and his treatment at the hands of translators. In the jacket blurb he described Lewis Page Mercier’s 1871 translation as a “literary hatchet job.” The revelation that as much as 23% of the original French novel had been excised I found both outrageous (for obvious reasons) and intriguing, as it meant there was actually much more to be enjoyed than I’d ever read before!
Mercier removed maritime and scientific material, references to French scientists, and indeed scrambled some of Verne’s technical material, so that Verne was dismissed by later English-speaking critics as not in fact knowing his own subject, when the errors were entirely in translation. In 1874 the American translator Edward Roth made the same observations (while unfortunately also perpetuating the problem by taking the extreme liberty of adding scenes in his own versions of some works!) This is blatant enough, but given Mercier’s other cuts I found myself wondering, as Roth had, if Mercier was not deliberately undermining Verne’s credibility. Indeed, it’s contrary to the translator’s role as the invisible intermediary (Mercier is not usually even given a credit in standard English editions), and of a scope which to me suggests a specific policy direction which could only have come from the publisher.
The political motivations behind these cuts run rather deep—specific mention of Nemo’s revolutionary inclinations, for instance. We knew he supported anti-establishmental activities, even the Ward Lock 1964 illustrated children’s edition features Nemo delivering gold to fund such groups. I found it highly significant that Verne’s intentions were interfered with. The cuts largely muzzled his political statement, shifting emphasis firmly onto adventure at the expense of anything critical of the establishments of his day. This enabled the English-speaking world to assign Verne the status of a children’s writer, and thus more easily dismiss him, while in the Francophone world Verne was a respected literary giant taken seriously by all ages. This smacks of a very British kind of sour grapes, and that deserved to be explored in detail.
Drama proceeded from the very outrage of the notion that a best-seller could be eviscerated, turned into something quite different as it crossed the language barrier, to serve the political and social interests of another part of the world, while cashing in royally on its established success. Before reading Miller’s work I had no idea there was such a story behind the novel but when 20,000 Leagues Remembered came along it presented itself to me four-square and clamored to be written.
M.A.: “The Highest Loyalty” was a most interesting exercise as it explored a diversion from Nemo’s scientific cruising for reasons very much to do with the outside world. Verne tells us he supported those who fought to make a difference against corrupt establishments, and it struck me that a submarine would have made the perfect “underground railroad” for snatching souls from jeopardy during the American Civil War.
Given the chronology of events—that Nemo, Prince Dakkar of Bundelkund, was set upon his life’s course by the events of the Indian Mutiny of 1857, and that he escaped with his followers to build the Nautilus in the years after, it follows that Nemo was free and at liberty beneath the sea during the war. Given his conflict with the Western colonial powers, and his commitment to taking no sides, it seems clear he would be a wholehearted supporter of the Abolitionist cause. If this was the case, the Nautilus probably carried many a party of escapees from the South to safety in Union territory, and I revisit this situation at a later date as Nemo comes to the rescue of an Abolitionist agent in jeopardy from the spate of reprisals following the conflict.
Nemo is a fabulously complex character, a man of admirable qualities yet who stands apart from civilization as we know it and will wage war if need be. This makes him eternally attractive to explore, and pastiches provide the opportunity to do so, remaining within Verne’s own timeline (troubled is it is with the Mysterious Island contradictions). Here I had the opportunity to demonstrate the strength of his convictions, that he would place his life on the line to serve a fellow freedom fighter. I have always believed that Nemo was more hero than villain, and exploring this in new prose is a delight.
I have other tales of Nemo and the Nautilus on paper and many more I would like to pursue, so am watching with keen interest for appropriate future calls for submission as might eventuate!
P.S.: What are your current works in progress? Would you mind telling us a little about them?
M.A.: I have a number of projects in hand at this point, each with an eye on a wider marketplace. Hiraeth Books have commissioned two, possibly three anthologies from me. One is a collection of my vampire short stories, the saga of changeling Lucinda Crane, a vampire whose allegiances still lie with the humans among whom she was born and on whose behalf she battles all manner of supernatural foes. I’ve written eight stories to date, the first of which appeared in an anthology from Spectral Visions Press (University of Sunderland) way back in 2014, one of those pioneering pieces that got me started on this course. Hiraeth have picked up others, as did Bards & Sages, for various volumes, and are collecting them all under one cover. This calls for a fresh polish of the whole saga.
Also forthcoming from Hiraeth will be one or possibly two fantasy volumes. “A Triptych of Swords” is my working title, being novella-length pieces in the historical fantasy vein, though with a venture into a full fantasy world as well. I have one piece left to finish for this one, and we’ll see how the project shakes down in the next year or so.
Also on the table is an urban fantasy novel, Venatrix, which mixes a climate-ravaged near future with an enclave of witches who fight catastrophe with chaos magic. Set in Venice and many other Italian beauty spots such as Tuscany, Genoa and Verona, it combines hard-hitting action with modern neopaganism in a blend which I’m hoping will be fresh and engaging. I have a few chapters to go, then will be looking for a small press to take it on.
Also on the horizon for this year will be to assemble that Sherlock Holmes anthology from my previously published material, which will be a most vicarious pleasure!
And lastly, I’m working on the textual material for a dedicated author website, which will feature essays, chronologies and purchase links for all my areas of creative work, with Sherlock Holmes and “Tales of the Middle Stars” in a fairly advanced state of writing.
Poseidon’s Scribe: What advice can you offer aspiring writers?
Mike Adamson: The best advice I can offer to a writer hoping to break into the modern short story market, let alone novels, besides the persistence discussed above, is patience. Understandably, every writer hopes that things will gel in a year or two and he or she will start making some useful income from pro market: that a dozen placements, or two dozen, at the low end will bring you to the attention of the top. This might be the case if the writer is well-connected, schmoozes the book fairs, left university with a first class arts degree in writing, is a graduate of Clarion West or another recognized academy, but for most of us the reality will be a long, slow burn.
Assuming that the writer has wrestled down the particulars of the craft—can use the language effectively, distinguish between forms and styles and know which is appropriate for what market, has the services of a good beta reader or editor to provide a mirror to the writer’s own point of view—then patience is the best tool in the kit, along with self-confidence. Rejection is part of the landscape and learning to not take it personally is a major hurdle. Comparatively few rejections are a measure of the worth of the material: many are based on length or how closely your piece matches a theme, or even—and this is a bitter pill—how well a story a magazine is happy to take “fits” with all the other stories they would like to include in a particular issue. Or they might have accepted something similar recently, or it’s on a theme they’ve visited frequently before…
Taking all figures collectively, since the beginning of 2016 I’ve received over 2700 rejections, most of them of the form type. At all costs, one cannot afford to take it as rejection of oneself. The golden truth is that the very next editor might think differently, so rejection becomes acceptance. That’s the vindication of your work in every sense, and it does happen. Yes, the wider marketplace really is this subjective! Editors are human and they are independent of each other, running their own enterprises, each with his own her own literary agenda, which makes for the wide variety of styles and tastes of magazine out there. This also ties in with learning which markets are a match for the kind of thing you produce, and which never will be. Magazines have target audiences who expect a particular kind of material, and many markets may be plugged into particular niches, not genres per se, but orientations and outlooks, specific even to kinds of narratives or levels of surreality, and you need to be well clued-in to join those clubs. That comes under research your markets, of course, which is imperative.
Then there’s read till your cup runneth over. One should not write in a vacuum, one should know what one’s peers are writing, as well as have a good knowledge of the history of one’s field. And I’ve found, the more you pour in, the more likely it is to run out again, through a keyboard as fresh work—your own. This is not thieving ideas or narrative lines: I liken it more to putting fuel in your literary tank to run the engine of inspiration.
Poseidon’s Scribe: Thanks, Mike. I think your answers revved up my engine of inspiration, and those of others as well.
Readers seeking more information about Mike Adamson can visit his website or follow him on Facebook, Amazon, and Goodreads. He’s been interviewed before, and you can read those here and here.
The anthology Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne brought together authors of varied backgrounds and interests. Today I present an interview with Joel Allegretti, but—as you’ll find out—he writes in many formats beyond the short story form.
Joel Allegretti is the author of, most recently, Platypus (NYQ Books, 2017), a collection of poems, prose, and performance texts, and Our Dolphin (Thrice Publishing, 2016), a novella. His second book of poems, Father Silicon (The Poet’s Press, 2006), was selected by The Kansas City Star as one of 100 Noteworthy Books of 2006.
He is the editor of Rabbit Ears: TV Poems (NYQ Books, 2015). The Boston Globe called Rabbit Ears “cleverly edited” and “a smart exploration of the many, many meanings of TV.” Rain Taxi said, “With its diversity of content and poetic form, Rabbit Ears feels more rich and eclectic than any other poetry anthology on the market.”
Allegretti has published his poems in The New York Quarterly, Barrow Street, Smartish Pace, PANK, and many other national journals, as well as in journals published in Canada, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and India.
His short stories have appeared in The MacGuffin, The Adroit Journal, and Pennsylvania Literary Journal, among others. His musical compositions have appeared in Maintenant: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing & Art and in anthologies from great weather for MEDIA and Thrice Publishing. His performance texts and theater pieces have been staged at La MaMa, Medicine Show Theatre, the Cornelia Street Café, and the Sidewalk Café, all in New York.
Allegretti is represented in more than thirty anthologies. He supplied the texts for three song cycles by the late Frank Ezra Levy, whose recorded work is available in the Naxos American Classics series.
Allegretti is a member of the Academy of American Poets and ASCAP.
Let’s get to the interview:
Poseidon’s Scribe: How did you get started writing? What prompted you?
Joel Allegretti: When I was in the fifth or sixth grade, I said to my father one day, “I want to write a book.” He thought it was a good idea.
I was a fan of Greek and Roman mythology in my younger years. I wrote a little story called “The Flaming Sword.” I think it took place in Roman times. It was about a soldier who had a sword encased in fire, but that’s all I remember. I cut up pieces of paper, stapled them into a booklet, and wrote and illustrated my story.
I wonder if I created an ancient-world prototype of the Jedi lightsaber.
P.S.: Who are some of your influences? What are a few of your favorite books?
J.A.: My earliest influences were Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe. Then came Ray Bradbury, Leonard Cohen, Gabriel García Márquez, and Jorge Luis Borges. A big influence on my short stories isn’t a literary figure, though, but a TV series: The Twilight Zone, the original series hosted by Rod Serling, whom I still admire. I like to conclude a short story with a surprise ending. The Twilight Zone is all about surprise endings.
A few favorite books are Selected Poems: 1956 – 1968 by Leonard Cohen; One Hundred Years of Solitude by García Márquez; The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux; Immortal Poems of the English Language, edited by Oscar Williams; The Voice That Is Great Within Us: American Poetry of the 20th Century, edited by Hayden Curruth;and Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet, translated by Bernard Frechtman. I find myself re-reading The Time Machine by H.G. Wells every few years. Ditto Jean Genet in Tangier by Mohamed Choukri, translated by Paul Bowles.
One Hundred Years of Solitude had a monumental impact on my reading tastes for a few years. It opened me up not only to the author’s others works, but to the rich world of Latin American literature as a whole. Unfortunately, I don’t know Spanish or, in the case of Brazilian writers, Portuguese, so I had to read the books in English translation.
On the Road by Jack Kerouac affected me when I read it at nineteen. The closing paragraph influenced the last stanza of a poem I published five years ago, “The Day after the Night John Lennon Died.”
I was captivated by Jack London’s Martin Eden when I read it in the ‘80s and dove into other London works, both famous ones, like The Call of the Wild, and lesser-known ones, like Before Adam. In 1990 I traveled to San Francisco for work and made a special trip to Jack London’s Wolf House in Glen Ellen.
It was also in the ‘80s that I discovered Graham Greene and W. Somerset Maugham and read book after book after book by both writers. I go back to Maugham’s short story “Faith” from time to time.
P.S.: You’ve written poems, short stories, a novella, theater works, and musical compositions. Is there anything you can’t write?
J.A.: I think the full-length novel is beyond my natural abilities. My novella, Our Dolphin(Thrice Publishing, 2016), runs 19,000 words. It ran 46,000 words before I took an editorial flail to it. “This can go. This can go. This adds nothing.” Now, 46,000 words is a substantial word count for me, but it’s too short for the novel market, which generally requires a minimum word count of 65,000.
I remember talking on the phone with a late poet friend over a dozen years ago. She told me she was writing a prose book and had written 800 pages. I said, “I wouldn’t know how to fill 800 pages.”
P.S.: You’ve stated that your novella, Our Dolphin, is an example of magic realism. What drew you to that style, and in what ways does your novella exemplify it?
J.A.: Magic realism influenced Our Dolphin. I wouldn’t have conceived it had I not read Latin American writers, but I can’t say it is magic realism.
The first part of the book takes place in a little Italian fishing village. The main character, Emilio Giovanni Canto, is the deformed adolescent son of a fisherman. One night he hears commotion coming from the beach and goes out to investigate. He discovers a small dolphin stranded on the shore. Emilio helps the creature back in the water. Emilio later meets it again and discovers it has the power of human speech, but only he can hear it.
Certain phrases in that part of the book, like “a gull of mythological proportions” and “the face that brought her infinite despair,” show the influence of García Márquez, or of García Márquez as translated into English by Gregory Rabassa (One Hundred Years of Solitude, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, et al.) and Edith Grossman (Love in the Time of Cholera).
Other literary influences are at play in Our Dolphin. The main character, Emilio, was inspired by my favorite literary character, Erik, whom everybody knows as the Phantom of the Opera.
The second part of the book takes place in Tangier. The scenes were influenced by the writings of Paul Bowles and William S. Burroughs, who’s my favorite Beat writer. In fact, one of the characters in Our Dolphin, a man known only as Moore (not his real name), is based on Burroughs. I took a day trip to the city in 1990 and drew on my memories when I was writing that section of the novella, but ultimately, the Tangier of Our Dolphin is a Tangier of my imagination.
P.S.: Though you’ve written many forms of poetry and prose, is there one or more common attributes that tie your written works together (genre, character types, settings, themes)?
J.A.: I like to investigate the ordinary in the out of the ordinary and the out of the ordinary in the ordinary.
P.S.: Your book Platypus (NYQ Books, 2017) contains poems, short stories, Fluxus-inspired instruction pieces, and text art. Does it defy categorization as much as a platypus does, or is there some common theme tying the parts together?
J.A.: Platypus has thematic sections, but as you point out, the book contains a little bit of everything, so I named it after an animal that has a little bit of everything.
P.S.: What are the easiest, and the most difficult, aspects of writing for you?
J.A.: The easiest aspect? Coming up with an idea. Ideas pop into my head all the time. though I don’t follow through on all of them. I’m always jotting down ideas and potential titles, as I guess most writers do. This goes for both prose and poetry, my primary genre.
The most difficult aspects? Bringing an idea to fruition and getting the work right. Here’s an example. I spent several hours a day for six days in a row revising a 5,200-word short story that had gone through multiple iterations and larger word counts. I wound up cutting it down to 4,700-plus words. Every time I thought I was done, I found something else I wanted to change. My instincts with respect to this particular story worked out in my favor. I submitted it to a magazine one morning and received an acceptance that evening. How often does that happen?
P.S.: The anthology you edited, Rabbit Ears: TV Poems(NYQ Books. 2015), includes a large number of poetic tributes to television. What or who inspired this idea, and would the book induce a reader to watch more TV, or turn it off forever?
J.A.: This is where my professional background comes in. I spent my career in the business world, specifically, in public relations. My last position before retirement was Director – Media Relations for a national not-for-profit financial-services organization. I prepared the CEO, the vice presidents, and other spokespeople for press interviews. I dealt with 60 Minutes, Nightly Business Report, and producers at local TV stations around the country. I was inside TV studios. I was well aware of television’s power.
Without that experience, I doubt an anthology of TV poetry would have occurred to me.
In 2012 I was reading Dear Prudence, the selected poems of David Trinidad. One of the poems is “The Ten Best Episodes of The Patty Duke Show.” My favorite sit-com from that time period is The Dick Van Dyke Show. I wrote a poem called “The Dick Van Dyke Show: The Unaired Episodes.” Here’s an excerpt: “1966. Sally’s boyfriend, Herman Glimscher, confesses to everyone that he and his mother are really husband and wife.”
A couple of months later I wrote a poem about Bob Crane, he of Hogan’s Heroes and seedy extracurricular activities. It occurred to me then that I hadn’t seen an anthology of poetry about a medium that had influenced our language, politics, and lifestyles.
Rabbit Ears is a celebration of TV. The 130 contributors reveal an abiding interest in and affection for the subjects they cover, from Rod Serling to Gilligan’s Island to the Emergency Broadcast System to the Miss America pageant to American Idol to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc., etc., etc.
Incidentally, Rabbit Ears serves a charitable function. All contributor royalties earned on sales go to City Harvest, a New York food-rescue organization.
P.S.: In what way is your fiction distinctive, different from that of other authors?
J.A.: I have to be careful how I answer this question lest I come across as unconvincingly humble or as somebody with an ego the size of Brooklyn. I’ll say my fiction is different from other authors’ fiction because I’m the one who writes it.
P.S.: I think every Jules Verne fan would love to attend the carnival you describe in “Gabriel at the Jules Verne Traveling Adventure Show,” your story in Extraordinary Visions. Where did you get the idea for that story?
J.A.: I certainly would enjoy a night at the Jules Verne Traveling Adventure Show.
When I saw the call for submissions on the North American Jules Verne Society website, I got excited, since I grew up reading Verne and watching films like Journey to the Center of the Earth, with James Mason and Pat Boone, on TV. I made it my personal mission to write a short story to submit.
The inspiration for “Gabriel at the Jules Verne Traveling Adventure Show” was Ray Bradbury’s novel Something Wicked This Way Comes, which I read when I was thirteen and again maybe fifteen years later. It’s about a demonic carnival that sets up shop in a small Illinois town. It gave me the idea for a World’s Fair-type of show featuring amazing Verne vehicles like the Nautilus, Robur the Conqueror’s Albatross, and the mechanical elephant in The Steam House.
I consider my status as a contributor to Extraordinary Visions to be an important accomplishment. I see myself as having come full circle.
P.S.: Since both the “Gabriel” story and Our Dolphin feature young boys, could you compare and contrast Gabriel Henderson and Emilio Canto, the respective protagonists?
J.A.: There’s some of me in Gabriel Henderson. I drew on my boyhood memories of reading Verne to create him. There’s a scene in which Gabriel goes to his local library to find books by Verne. Whenever I went to a library, I walked straight to the V section in Fiction. Gabriel, by the way, is my Confirmation name. It was also Verne’s middle name, but I didn’t know that when I chose it. I took the name of an Italian saint, St. Gabriel Possenti.
Emilio Canto, a deformed boy, is another matter entirely. The inspiration for him was purely literary: the Phantom of the Opera.
P.S.: What is your current work in progress? Would you mind telling us a little about it?
J.A.: I’m working on placing a short (41,100+ words) novel, Vera Peru, Euro-Siren of the ‘60s, a blend of pulp fiction and imaginary music biography. The inspiration for the title character was the Velvet Underground’s Nico, who has fascinated me for decades.
The novel opens in 1984 in New York’s East Village. A dissipated wreck of a middle-aged junkie from Alphabet City is arrested for shooting up her grandson with heroin. She gives Detective Dominic Andante her vital information: name, age, address, nationality (French). She says at one point, “It’s obvious you don’t know who I am. I’m Vera Peru. I’m an international celebrity.” She mentions being late for a recording session and having to face her producer’s wrath. Andante thinks she’s drug-crazy. He starts investigating and discovers she was telling the truth; she was an important person in France and England in the ‘50s and ‘60s.
For Detective Andante, Vera Peru’s offense isn’t just another heinous crime. It has a parallel to a decade-old tragedy in his personal life. As a result, he becomes obsessed with Peru and determined to learn what could have motivated this once-glamorous woman, who had achieved European stardom, to descend into narcotic degradation and commit such an unspeakable act on her own blood. But there’s more at play than even he, an experienced New York police detective, expected. As I write in the final chapter, “He hadn’t seen this.”
Vera Peru, Euro-Siren of the ‘60s comprises alternating chapters that cover Andante’s investigation and the title character’s life and career, from modeling in Paris to stardom in French cinema to hit singles in England to a disappointing entry into the American market and, finally, to her fall. There are cameo appearances by George Harrison, Allen Ginsberg, David Bowie, the Ramones, and Jean Genet.
As coincidence would have it, Jules Verne makes an appearance. During her acting career, Vera Peru works with a Greek-French director, who considers making a film of Verne’s novel about the Greek War of Independence, The Archipelago on Fire.
In addition, I completed a new poetry manuscript, Concrete Gehenna. The 60 poems cover a wide range of subjects, including classical, rock, and avant-garde music; film; the visual arts; New York City; members of the Warhol Factory; mortality; and religion.
The influences, likewise, are varied. Individual poems were inspired by, among others, Asian and Native-American forms, Edgar Allan Poe, Wallace Stevens, Weldon Kees, Frank O’Hara, Anne Carson, and Yoko Ono’s Fluxus-era instruction pieces.
Poseidon’s Scribe: What advice can you offer aspiring writers?
Joel Allegretti: Regard yourself as your primary competition. Look at what you’re writing now and compare it to what you’ve written. Are you writing the same work over and over? Are you absorbing new influences? Are you stretching yourself?
Moreover, I advise that you put effort into developing your own voice.
Poseidon’s Scribe: Thanks, Joel. You caused me to look up ‘Fluxus.’ Best of luck with the novel!
Many author interviews have appeared here, but until now I’ve never interviewed a playwright. Today’s interviewee writes both stories and plays. One of his stories appears in Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne.
David A. Natale has written since he was a kid in Cleveland.
He received his BA in Theatre Studies from Yale and an MFA in acting from the University of San Diego and the Old Globe Theatre. David then spent eight years in New York before moving west.
Most of Natale’s career has been as a performer and playwright. His one man show, “The Westerbork Serenade,” tells the true story of Jewish actors in a Nazi transit camp in Holland during WWII. It won a Seattle Times Footlight Award in 2007 and toured the Netherlands in 2010.
His latest play, “Around The World in Less than 80 Days,” which follows reporter Nellie Bly’s 1889 global race, was produced at Key City Public Theatre in 2022.
After years of struggle in performing arts, Natale makes the transition to the literary milieu. He has been published in Italian Americana, Cultural and Historical Review. And his short story, “Nellie and Jules Go Boating,” appeared this year in the North American Jules Verne Society’s latest anthology, Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne.
He also seeks a publisher for his supernatural mystery thriller about a pizza driver: Pizza Stories: Deliveries from Beyond.
David lives in Seattle with his wife, step-son and dog. He works as an actor, stage-hand and pizza man.
Now, on with the show…er, interview.
Poseidon’s Scribe: How did you get started writing? What prompted you?
David A. Natale: There were a number of writers in my family: My dad was a newspaper reporter for more than 50 years. My mom also started out as a reporter before becoming a public defender. I had a great aunt who was an author and reporter with her husband in England. I remember looking at the row of their novels on a shelf.
But mostly, growing up I remember my dad telling us stories about his childhood in the Old Neighborhood, a working-class Italian enclave on the West Side of Cleveland. He had a whole colorful cast of characters.
My mom would read us things like Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Once, when I was scared of thunder, she said it was just the elves bowling in the clouds. I believed her. Telling stories was always a thing in my family.
P.S.: Who are some of your influences? What are a few of your favorite books and plays?
D.A.N.: The first books I read included, Wind in the Willows and Huckleberry Finn. I was also really into Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and that wave of fantasy writers along with classic Sci-fi masters like Asimov and Bradbury. I also read my mom’s old Fantasy and Science Fiction magazines from the 50’s and comics I found in my grandparent’s basement, like The Witching Hour and Dr. Graves. More contemporary influences include Carlos Ruiz Zafòn, Leigh Bardugo, Helene Wecker and Emily St. John Mandel. I also like Michael Connelly and John Le Carré. And Dashiell Hammett is so great, though I fear for everyone’s liver. As for plays and playwrights, Anton Chekhov gets my thumbs up. His short stories are even better. Right now I’m reading Salman Rushdie’s, Victory City. Three books that have had big influences on me are: The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon.
P.S.: Your bio mentions living in Ohio, California, New York, Washington State, and travel to the Netherlands. Have the experiences of living in all these various places influenced your writing?
D.A.N.: Even if it’s in the future or some magical reality, I usually end up placing my stories in a place that is much like where I’ve been. The settings are a lot like Seattle or Cleveland, NYC or some lonely highway out West.
P.S.: You’ve written and performed a one-man show. What was that experience like? In writing the script and performing the play, how do you sustain audience interest with just one character?
D.A.N.: Well actually, in my one-man show, there are something like fifteen characters. That definitely keeps the audience engaged. In college, I saw the Italian playwright and performer, Dario Fo. He was a master at performing solo multi-character scenes. His lazzi, “The Raising of Lazarus,” includes half the city of Jerusalem! My director and mentor, Gin Hammond, is also amazing at this. Through simple shift of focus, body and voice, it is possible to create the impression of any size crowd and any situation as well as dialogue between two or more characters. Something about, “less is more,” allows the audience to fill in the gaps with their own imaginations which can be most effective and moving. If one person is playing the Jew and the Nazi, we are forced to see the full spectrum human behavior that is within us all.
P.S.: Your crime story, “How Marco Got the Business” got published in the journal Italian Americana, Cultural and Historical Review. Tell us about that story.
D.A.N.: It’s a story about a guy from a poor immigrant family trying to bust into bootlegging during the 20’s. I wanted to attempt a noir homage to the Old Neighborhood stories I heard from my dad and uncle.
P.S.: Congratulations on the performance of the play you wrote, “Around the World in Less Than Eighty Days.” You acted in the play as well. Please tell us about the play and what it felt like to have your script accepted and staged.
D.A.N.: Denise Winter, the artistic director at Key City Public Theatre, was going to do a production of Around the World in 80 Days. I told her I wasn’t thrilled with the script which seemed old-fashioned and not very PC. Me and my big mouth! She challenged me to make a better script. Because of COVID, we had almost two years to develop it.
Around the World in Less than 80 Days ended up being a mash-up of Verne’s story and the true historical 1889 global race between reporters Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland. In addition to Phileas Fogg and Passepartout, there were the characters of Bly, Bisland, Joseph Pulitzer, Jules Verne himself and more than 30 others; all portrayed by 5 actors.
It was a real thrill to have my play performed. I will say, though, that even though I know what a good play looks like, I find it really hard to make one good. But having the chance to hear, and say the lines one writes is a great way to find out if they work.
P.S.: Your story, “Nellie and Jules Go Boating,” appears in Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne. How would you compare and contrast that short story and your previously-written “Less Than Eighty Days” play?
D.A.N.: The story expands on one scene in the play where Nellie Bly meets Jules Verne. It has a shared dream sequence where Bly and Verne fight a giant cephalopod.
P.S.: What are the easiest, and the most difficult, aspects of writing for you?
D.A.N.: Often, the hardest thing for me is just starting. I get the most chores and errands done whenever I have writing to start. I guess the easiest is when I have a general idea where a story is heading and I can just step aside and let the characters do their thing. It is a real thrill when a character does something you didn’t expect them to do and the story goes a whole new direction.
P.S.: Much of your career consisted of playwriting and acting. Only recently have you turned to short stories and novels (though you’re still writing plays). What was the transition like for you?
D.A.N.: A play is a collaboration. It engages artistry from many fields. So, a playwright can, and should, leave a lot open for interpretation. All you have to do is set the scene and let the designer and director figure out how to make it happen. Say who the characters are and let the costumers dress them. Write a line of dialogue and let the actor figure out how to say it. In a short story or novel, the author has to do it all! And they are expected to do it with some style. I guess I’m more familiar with the theatrical medium, but like I said, it can still be a challenge. To bring up Chekhov again; it’s interesting to compare his short stories and plays. In his play, a character says, “I am the Seagull,” and it’s up to the poor actor to figure out what the heck they are talking about. While in his stories, Chekhov will use great care and detail to explain what a character thinks.
P.S.: Your plays and stories span a wide range of genres, character types, and settings. Is there a common attribute that ties your fiction together in some way, or would you describe yourself as eclectic?
D.A.N.: As a reader and audience member, I enjoy a wide range of genres. So, I try to write the things I might like to read or see. I even considered taking a crack at a romance. I’m romantic but I’m not really a fan of the genre—unless there are ghosts or something. I’m for the underdog, so, in my stories, usually the protagonist is one.
P.S.: I understand you’ve been commissioned to write another play script, but it involves two subjects that seem completely disconnected. Tell us about this play and (if possible) explain how the topics are related.
D.A.N.: Key City Public Theatre is in Port Townsend Washington, a quaint Victorian sea town. They want a new holiday show that speaks to that audience’s interests. Hence, why not a story that combines a sailboat race with a gingerbread-house building contest? Well, it’s a commission, so I say—why not?
P.S.: Is it true you’re working on some fiction in the solar punk vein? Would you mind telling us a little about it?
D.A.N.: The story is for a contest that asks writers to imagine our world up to 180 years from now. It is supposed to explore a just and positive climate future. With all the climate doom and gloom, I wanted to face the challenge. It was a real mind opening experience. Once I started to think about what the world could be like if we just stopped being f#@k*ng stupid, I was amazed at how the ideas started to flow. That is the whole point of Solar Punk, as far as I understand it. If we can imagine a just future, we can make it happen. I mean, we are already living in a dystopian future. Or are we?
In my tale it’s 180 years from now. Earth is one World Commonwealth. Technological discoveries of fusion as well as advancements in robotics and, of course, A.I. have allowed humanity to prosper. But in order to qualify for funds, one has to take The Treatment: a psychoactive trip that forces one to grapple with one’s personal and historic climate crimes. Heck, I even put romance in the story. Check my website for updates…
Poseidon’s Scribe: What advice can you offer aspiring writers of plays, short stories, and novels?
David A. Natale: I would just say: Do it for yourself. If someone sees your work and is moved, that’s terrific. But if you enjoy writing, that is all that matters. Writing can be a real remedy for boredom, depression or despair and a real path to inspiration, happiness and hope—I mean for you personally.
Poseidon’s Scribe: Thanks, David. That’s great guidance for writers of both stories and plays.
Readers seeking more information about David A. Natale can visit his website. Information about his play “The Westerbork Serenade” appears here. An article about his play “Around the World in Less than 80 Days” appears here.