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Author Interview—Amanda Russell

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

Bio

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

Interview

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amanda Russell:

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

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

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


Web Presence

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

August 9, 2025Permalink Leave a comment

Author Interview—Rob Jolles

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

Here’s his bio:

Rob Jolles

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

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

Next, the interview:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get that outline going, and start. Today.

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

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

July 28, 2025Permalink Leave a comment

Author Interview—Fabiana Elisa Martínez

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

Fabiana Elisa Martínez

Bio

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

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

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

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

Interview

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

July 14, 2025Permalink 2 Comments

How You Can Give Better Author Interviews

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

Images of microphone and pen from Pixabay

The Hermit Option

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

My Experience

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

Purpose

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

  • Author Photo

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

  • Taglines

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

  • The Comedian Mindset

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

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

  • Well-Edited Answers

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

  • Brevity

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

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

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 23, 2024Permalink

Author Interview–Nancy Craig

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

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

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

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

Now, on to the interview:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 15, 2024Permalink

Author Interview—Demetri Capetanopoulos

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

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

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

Let’s dive into the interview:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

July 27, 2023Permalink

Author Interview—Eric Choi

It may seem like I conduct these author interviews within a plush studio high atop Poseidon’s Scribe Tower at Poseidon’s Scribe Enterprises. In truth, for most of them, I only communicate with these writers by email and have never encountered them in person.

But I’ve actually met today’s featured author. We served as panelists together at PenguiCon 2023, where Eric Choi was a guest of honor. A story of his appears in both anthologies I’ve edited—20,000 Leagues Remembered and Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne.

Eric Choi is an award-winning writer, editor, and aerospace engineer in Toronto, Canada. He was the first recipient of the Isaac Asimov Award (now the Dell Magazines Award) and he has twice won the Aurora Award for his story “Crimson Sky” and for the Chinese-themed speculative fiction anthology The Dragon and the Stars (DAW) co-edited with Derwin Mak. With the late Ben Bova, he co-edited the hard SF anthology Carbide Tipped Pens (Tor). His short story collection Just Like Being There (Springer Nature) was released last year. Visit his website or follow him on social @AerospaceWriter.

Next, the interview:

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

Eric Choi: My start in fiction writing is owed to the Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy (formerly the Isaac Asimov Award). I was the very first recipient of the Dell/Asimov Award for a story called “Dedication”, which was about a team of astronauts on Mars struggling to survive after their rover is damaged in a meteorite shower. The story was published in Asimov’s Science Fiction and years later it was reprinted in Japanese translation in the anthology The Astronaut from Wyoming and Other Stories. I am forever grateful to Rick Wilber, Sheila Williams, and the late Gardner Dozois for starting my fiction writing career. 

P.S.: Who are some of your influences?

E.C.: My background is in aerospace engineering, and many of my greatest influences have been other engineers and scientists. The British website SF2 Concatenation has an excellent series of articles by science fiction writers with a degree in science, engineering, mathematics, or medicine about the top ten scientists and engineers who have most inspired or influenced them. Those who influenced me were profiled in an article in the Summer 2019 edition and include aeronautical engineer James Floyd, astronomer Carl Sagan, my undergraduate thesis supervisor James Drummond, atmospheric scientist Diane Michelangeli, Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman, and astronaut Sally Ride.

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

E.C.: My leisure reading tends to include a lot of non-fiction. I am currently reading Cobalt Red by Siddharth Kara about the appalling conditions in which the cobalt for lithium-ion batteries is mined, and The New Guys by Meredith Bagby about the historic NASA astronaut class of 1978 that recruited the first Black, Asian, and female American astronauts. Some of my favorite non-fiction books include The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre about the KGB double agent Oleg Gordievsky who changed the course of the Cold War, Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly about Katherine Johnson and the other Black female mathematicians and engineers who played crucial roles in the early U.S. space program (the movie doesn’t do the story justice), 747 the memoir of aeronautical engineer Joe Sutter, Thread of the Silkworm by Iris Chang about the Chinese rocket scientist Qián Xuésen (the subject of my alternate history story “The Son of Heaven”), A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaikin which is my favorite history of the Apollo program, and Bush Pilot with a Briefcase by Ronald Keith about the Canadian aviation pioneer Grant McConachie (a fictionalized version of whom appeared in my alternate history story “The Coming Age of the Jet”).

P.S.: Does your day job as an aerospace engineer help you with your fiction writing, or interfere with it?

E.C.: Science fiction inspired me to pursue a career as an aerospace engineer. Over the course of my day job I’ve had the privilege of working on a number of space projects including the QEYSSat satellite, the Phoenix Mars Lander, the Canadarm2 on the International Space Station, the RADARSAT-1 satellite, and the MOPITT instrument on the Terra satellite. I guess you could say that some parts of my day job are a bit like a science fiction, so the fiction writing is really coming full circle. There have always been important linkages between science fiction and the real-life space program. Our knowledge of the Universe, our attitudes towards science, and our understanding of science and technology are some of the key influences on science fiction. In turn, science fiction has helped shape perceptions of the space program, in some cases influencing the politics and funding of space projects and even the design of the missions themselves, as well as inspiring people like me to pursue careers in engineering and science. So if there is interference, it is most certainly a constructive interference.

P.S.: In addition to your fiction, you’ve written a number of technical papers associated with your aerospace job. Since fiction is so different from professional, scientific nonfiction, how difficult is it for you to transition between the two types of writing?

E.C.: There are actually a lot of similarities between writing fiction and writing technical papers. A work of fiction has a narrative arc with a beginning, a middle, and an end. But a technical paper has an arc as well – an introduction, a description of methodology, a presentation of data, and a discussion of results. And if you think about it, both are telling a story in their own way that is most compelling and convincing to their respective audiences.

P.S.: You got to co-edit an anthology with Ben Bova! What was that experience like?

E.C.: I first met Ben Bova at the 2011 Ad Astra science fiction convention in Toronto, where I found myself sharing an author signing table with him (presumably because of the alphabetical order of our surnames). There was a huge queue of fans for Ben and almost none for me (which meant that everything was right in the Universe), but I managed to make some small talk in the rare moments when he wasn’t giving his time to his readers. What I really wanted to talk to him about was an idea I had for a hard SF anthology, but I couldn’t quite get the nerve. Finally, like an awkward teenager asking for a date, I managed to blurt out my idea and asked if he might be interested in working with me.

He said yes.

Our hard SF anthology Carbide Tipped Pens was published by Tor three years later, and I had found a mentor and a friend. Ben’s name rightfully came first on the cover, but he would often say to people “it’s really Eric’s book”, an act of genuine kindness that would leave me in a state of Heisenbergian uncertainty somewhere between impostor syndrome and bemused pride. I only knew Ben for a few years, just a short moment in the grand tour of his remarkable life, but that’s all friends need.

I was deeply saddened by Ben’s passing in November 2020. His death was due in part to the consequences of a pandemic whose effects had been made far worse by selfishness, science denialism, and outright lies – all things antithetical to Ben’s generosity, wisdom, and honesty. As writers and readers of science fiction, I hope we can honor Ben Bova’s memory by paying it forward and being voices for fact-based reason and science in the service of humanity.

P.S.: Many of your short stories, including “Raise the Nautilus,” involve elements of alternate history. What draws you to exploring science-themed alternate histories? What are some of the challenges?

E.C.: If science fiction is the literature of scientific and technological possibility, then the appeal of science-themed alternate history is in exploring how scientific and technological possibility influences the relationship between chance and determinism in shaping historical events. It is, however, a challenging genre to write. Not only do authors need to get the science right, but they must also recognize the sensitivity of putting real people into fictional situations. Authors of alternate history have an obligation to be careful in their portrayals of real people and ensure that the words and actions of historical figures are consistent with what is known about them from the historical record. For example, my Aurora Award nominated novelette “A Sky and a Heaven” is an alternate history about the Space Shuttle Columbia accident. I changed the name of the commander of Columbia because in an early draft of the story this person did something that I felt was inconsistent with the personality of the real commander Rick Husband.

P.S.: A story of yours appears in the new anthology Life Beyond Us. Tell us about that one.

E.C.: Life Beyond Us is a new astrobiology-themed science fiction anthology from the European Astrobiology Institute and Laksa Media Groups edited by Julie Nováková, Lucas K. Law, and Susan Forest. The book features twenty-seven stories, each accompanied by an essay written by a scientist in a relevant field. My story “Hemlock on Mars” opens the collection with the accompanying science essay “Planetary Protection: Best Practices for the Safety of Humankind (And All Those Aliens Out There)” by Giovanni Poggiali of Observatoire de Paris. Planetary protection is the practice of safeguarding Solar System bodies from contamination by Earth life as well as protecting Earth from possible lifeforms that might be brought back from other Solar System bodies. In “Hemlock on Mars”, a hardy microbe is found in the clean room where a mission to search for life on Mars was assembled. It may have hitched a ride on the spacecraft. It might survive on Mars. It might compromise the primary life detection science investigation. Worse, if there is any indigenous Martian life, it might harm it. But it might not be present on the spacecraft at all. If it is, it might not survive the journey. It might well not survive on Mars. And Mars today is probably lifeless, but we’re not entirely sure. Do they pull the plug on a very expensive mission that promises to answer one of humanity’s most profound scientific questions? Or do you let it land and risk contaminating Mars with a potentially harmful terrestrial organism?

P.S.: Your story, “Raise the Nautilus” appears in two anthologies—20,000 Leagues Remembered and Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne. Readers of this blog already know about the story, but may not know the real-life events you researched to write it. Please tell us about those.

E.C.: In “Raise the Nautilus”, the British Royal Navy attempts to salvage Captain Nemo’s submarine and retrieve an artifact that could turn the tide of the First World War. The title and theme of the story were influenced by the 1976 Clive Cussler novel Raise the Titanic in which a team attempts to salvage the ocean liner and recover a substance that could tip the balance of power during the Cold War. The fictional operation to recover the Nautilus was based on the real-life salvage of the USS Squalus, a U.S. Navy diesel-electric submarine that sank during a test dive off the coast of New Hampshire in May 1939. 26 sailors were killed, but the lives of the remaining 32 crewmembers and one civilian were saved over the course of a 13-hour rescue operation using a diving bell called a McCann Rescue Chamber. The Navy then undertook a long and difficult salvage operation over the course of the next four months in which the Squalus was eventually raised and towed to the Portsmouth Naval Yard. Following extensive repairs, the submarine was recommissioned as the USS Sailfish and went on to serve in the Pacific theatre during the Second World War.

P.S.: Your recently published collection Just Like Being There contains a novelette and several short stories, including “Raise the Nautilus.” What would you like readers to know about this collection?

E.C.: Just Like Being There is my first collection of short fiction and features fifteen of my hard SF and alternate history stories including the Aurora Award short story winning “Crimson Sky” and the Aurora Award nominated novelette “A Sky and a Heaven”. Story topics include space exploration, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, cryptography, quantum computing, online privacy, mathematics, neuroscience, psychology, space medicine, extraterrestrial intelligence, undersea exploration, commercial aviation, and the history of science. Each story is followed by an afterword that explains the underlying engineering or science.

Putting the collection together was tremendous fun but also a lot of work. The novelette “A Sky and a Heaven” was a new story and the longest piece I have ever written. For the other fourteen previously published stories, I went back to the manuscripts as I had originally written them and in some cases made minor revisions. As an example, I moved out the dates in a near-future space exploration story called “From a Stone” because as of the publication of the collection humans have not yet resumed crewed voyages beyond low Earth orbit. In general, however, I was pleasantly surprised at how well my stories have held up over time. What took the most time and effort was writing those afterwords that discuss the engineering and science behind the stories. I was fortunate to still have much of the original research material for the stories, but I also did new research to make sure the information was as up-to-date as possible. 

P.S.: What tales can we expect from you in the near future?

E.C.: My new story “Random Access Memory” about people who experience an unusual phenomenon while playing a certain slot machine at a casino will be appearing in the upcoming anthology Game On! edited by Stephen Kotowych and Tony Pi. Another new story called “Beware the Glob!” about a dangerous extraterrestrial creature that is unleashed from its frozen Arctic slumber by climate change will appear in the September/October 2023 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact.

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

Eric Choi: Robert A. Heinlein’s first enunciated his famous rules for writers in 1947 and they are still applicable today. To paraphrase: You have to write, you have to finish what you write, you must not allow yourself to get stuck in an endless cycle of rewrites, you have to put what you write on the market, and you have to keep putting your work out there until it’s published. That last part is particularly important. Rejection is an inherent part of writing and you must never let it discourage you. To this day, my own rejection to acceptance ratio averages about 7 to 1. The important thing to remember is that rejection often has nothing to do with the quality of your work or your skill as a writer but rather the fit of the story with a particular market or publication. If you are fortunate to receive constructive feedback, revise your work as you see fit (it’s always a writer’s prerogative to incorporate or ignore external comments) and then send it back out there until it’s published.

Poseidon’s Scribe: Thank you, Eric.

Readers can find out more about Eric Choi at his website, on Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Read Eric’s interview by Analog editor Emily Hockaday, and Eric’s list of the best books on aviation and space history.

June 13, 2023Permalink

Author Interview—Jacob Pérez

Every time I turn around, more fascinating authors consent to be interviewed. Today I’m featuring another author from the anthology The Science Fiction Tarot. 

Jacob Pérez was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, but spent most of his young adult life in Boston, Massachusetts. He grew up reading books and gaining an unhealthy knowledge of comics and movies. After graduating from college in 2008, he dedicated his continued education to caring for people. If he couldn’t have superpowers, nursing was the next best alternative.

He spends his time off writing about monsters, spaceships, robots, and the most bizarre creatures. He loves crossing genre boundaries and exploring the complexity of human nature. He now lives in Loomis, California, with his wife, three beautiful kids, and an indifferent cat named Zelda. He’s currently working on expanding his writing portfolio.

Let’s get to the interview:

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

Jacob Pérez: I started my writing career back in 2009. I’d just graduated from college and was working through my nursing degree. My job, then, was an office assistant position that allowed for a lot of downtime. Around this time, I read Eric Van Lustbader’s The Ninja. It sparked something in me. After reading it, I discovered I wanted to write a novel I would enjoy throughout, as so many of my favorite books had done for me.

I’d always been an avid reader. For as long as I can remember, I would carry around a novel to read during my free time. So, writing was always in the back of my mind. But the reason I waited so long to write was due to a lack of confidence. Growing up in a predominately Spanish-speaking household, the idea of learning to write at a professional level felt like a daunting aspiration. But there I was, with the perfect job and that spark of inspiration to give me the push I needed to start writing.

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

J.P.: I grew up on The Berenstain Bears and R.L. Stine as a child. They were my gateway into my obsession with reading. Unlike many classmates, I enjoyed our assigned book reading list. But my early influences were an eclectic group of writers: Mary Shelley, Victor Hugo, Eric Van Lustbader, Stephen King, Dan Simmons, Frank Herbert, and Orson Scott Card, to name a few. I devoured their books and their series. Some of my favorites include The Last Stand, Hyperion, Dune, Frankenstein, and Ender’s Game. I didn’t gravitate toward one genre. I loved them all.

Since then, my taste in writing has expanded. I’ve found authors like Neil Gaiman, Kazuro Ishiguro, Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, M. John Harrison, and Jennifer Egan, whose mastery of the English language is awe-inspiring. Picking my favorite story is hard, but if you twist my arm and force me to answer, M. John Harrison’s The Pastel City and Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s This is How You Lose the Time War (which I read before the recent tweet) are at the top of my all-time favorite novels.

P.S.: If you won a trip to the fictional world of another author, where would you go and what would you do there?

J.P.: I’ve always been fascinated by space exploration and the many forms executed in science fiction. That being said, I would love to be a crew member of the Wayfarer from Becky Chamber’s The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. Who doesn’t want to travel on a spaceship with a multi-species crew while creating wormholes to connect distant trade routes?

P.S.: I understand your day job is a nurse. It seems you drew inspiration from that in your short stories “Coterie” and “Code Gray.” Do you plan to continue with medical-related stories, or go in different directions?

J.P.: My two short stories, “Coterie” and “Code Gray,” are a couple of the very first I ever wrote while under a mentorship about four years ago. As a new writer, it was only natural for me to draw inspiration from my day job. Key elements were already there. But as I develop as a writer, I want to step out of my comfort zone. I want to explore the potential that speculative fiction has to offer without overly relying on my day job. I’m sure another medical-related story will eventually want to be told. It’s been a lot of fun writing other stories for now.

P.S.: I gather from your Facebook page that you are (or were) a runner. Do you find yourself thinking about fiction story ideas as you run? If not, when do you get your best ideas?

J.P.: I used to run until I tore my meniscus a few years back. Until that happened, running was a great time for me to develop my stories. Now, I’m juggling toddlers, work, and friends. And while I try to think about my writing constantly, my best ideas appear at night. My phone’s notes are riddled with ideas, phrases, and concepts that pop into my head late at night. It would seem my muse likes to come knocking in that period of half-sleep while I’m trying to turn in.

P.S.: Your bio mentions monsters, spaceships, robots, and bizarre creatures. How did you become interested in writing science fiction?

J.P.: As mentioned above, I became interested in science fiction from my insatiable love of reading. It also stems from my obsession with movies and comic books. My father exposed me to movies like Star Wars, Robocop, Aliens, and Terminator when I was very young. He also introduced me to comic books and their fantastical stories that spanned from Earth to the far-reaching edges of space. I’d like to believe that movie ratings were lost in translation at my household. But in reality, I believe my father just wanted to share his love of science fiction, and ratings be damned.

P.S.: In The Science Fiction Tarot anthology, your story “The Bridge” earns a tarot card labeled “Virtual Reality.” Can you tell us the premise for the settings in the story?

J.P.: My story, “The Bridge,” is set hundreds of years in the future, after humanity flees a dying Earth. An immersive virtual reality program has been developed to alleviate the physiological stressors of prolonged space travel. My main character is a companionship entity within this virtual reality program whose human girlfriend is on the verge of ending their relationship. When I wrote this story, I wanted to explore what would happen if such a character developed real human emotions, but those feelings contradicted its core programming. It also delves into the creator’s motive in creating the program, her legacy, and how it affects the story’s characters. As our technology increases and the debates on AI intensify, the idea that a programmable entity could have feelings is not far-fetched.

P.S.: It appears some of your Puerto Rican background worked its way into your story “The Bridge.” Did your memories of PR make the story easier to write?

J.P.:  Yes, this is a perfect example of writing what I know. I love Puerto Rico. I love the rich culture of my people, our traditions, and the way we place a high level of importance on family and family honor. While I’ve never been to that particular observatory in Puerto Rico, I drew sensory descriptions and settings from personal experience. It’s definitely a setting I will use again in future stories.

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

J.P.:  There’s an easy aspect to writing? Tell me, please! All kidding aside, the easiest part for me is creating wonderful stories using my words. I love coming up with exciting plots and memorable characters. It’s very rewarding. What I’ve found the hardest is balancing my other obligations in life and finding time to write. Like many writers, I don’t have the luxury of making a living from writing. At least not yet. So family and work come first in my life.

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

J.P.:  My current work in progress is a Writers of the Future entry. My main character travels via quantum teleportation for the first time and discovers the multiverse. Suddenly, he has the opportunity to find a universe where his wife doesn’t die in a car accident. But chaos ensues when his jumps have unforeseen consequences. It’s a fun story and a little different from the emotionally complex stories I’ve written in the past. The balance in humor, plot, and character development has been a challenge, but it has a lot of potential to make for a great story.

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

Jacob Pérez: Now, that’s a loaded question. There is so much great advice out there, made by people far more talented and experienced than me. But the one that I live by is one a mentor gave me. Writing is a marathon, not a sprint. We all want to be great writers and publish our stories for the world to read. In our enthusiasm, we forget that it takes time to master any craft. Everyone’s writing experience is different. I’m guilty of comparing myself to others. But it does you a disservice to rush the process. So many factors affect a writer’s journey, and every journey is unique. So, keep your head down, read, write, learn, and figure out what you want to say with your voice. Let that unquenchable need to write and tell stories fill you with perseverance. Because writing is hard, but if that’s what you love and want to do it right, the journey is worth it.

Thanks, Jacob.

Readers can find out more about Jacob Pérez at his website, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and his Amazon author page.

June 4, 2023Permalink

Author Interview—Ben Coppin

The new anthology, The Science Fiction Tarot, contains many fascinating stories by marvelous authors. Today I present another interview with one of these writers—Ben Coppin.

Ben Coppin lives in Ely in the UK with his wife and two teenage children. He works for one of the big tech companies. He’s had a textbook on artificial intelligence published, as well as a number of short stories, mostly science fiction, but also horror, fairy tales and other things. All his published stories can be found listed here.

On to the interview:

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

Ben Coppin: Maybe the real question I should answer is what stopped me. As a kid, I loved writing — I still have some stories I wrote from when I was 7 years old — science fiction before I’d ever ready any real science fiction. But then when I did A-Levels, which is the final set of exams you do in the school system in the UK I had to choose between sciences and language-related subjects, and I chose the sciences. And from that moment on, writing became pretty irrelevant. I didn’t even write an essay until many years later when I did a Master’s degree in Linguistics. And then in 2002, 2003 I was figuring out what I wanted to do, and what I wanted to be, and I had this instinctive idea that writing was the right direction. So I wrote a textbook on AI which got published in the US and was used as a college text book. 

It was an amazing experience, but also very grueling. I was working full-time and writing this book at the same time, and I’d foolishly agreed with the publishers to write it in half the time I estimated it would take — I told them 18 months, they said it needs to be 9, and I agreed. And so when I finished it, I was pretty sick of writing, and certainly didn’t want to write any more text books.

Then fast forward to 2018. I had an idea for a novel but no idea how to go about writing one. So I took a load of online writing courses, and although I did start on the novel, I also realised that I needed to practise on something shorter. So I got into writing short stories. I completed a second draft of that novel, but have never got it to a state where I think of it as being finished.

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

B.C.: As a kid I read almost exclusively science fiction. Mostly Asimov, Heinlein, Harry Harrison, Arthur C. Clarke. I also loved (and still love) The Hobbit, which I think is my favourite book. I branched out a bit when I went to University, and now I read all kinds of things, but I do tend to gravitate back to science fiction. Iain M. Banks, William Gibson and Neal Stephenson are particular favourites. In the past few years I’ve also particularly loved some books that are perhaps on the border between science fiction and fantasy — the Broken Earth trilogy by N. K. Jemison and the Terra Ignota series by Ada Palmer. Both feature incredible world building and mind-blowingly good writing that keeps you hooked. Oh, and I’m really liking the trend towards what to me seems like more positive, more human, perhaps a bit lighter science fiction from writers like Becky Chambers.

P.S.: You’ve had more fiction published in just the last four years than many writers do in over a decade. What’s your secret?

B.C.: Heh. I find competitions are a good forcing function. They provide a prompt and a deadline. Deadlines are so important for motivation, at least for me. If I start a story that is not for a competition, there’s a much higher chance that I’ll just never finish it. With a deadline I just have to get it done, even if it doesn’t feel perfect. I’m also lucky in that I am never short of ideas—it’s not always easy to turn them into stories, but at least I rarely find myself stuck for ideas.

P.S.: Has your expertise in AI helped you in your fiction writing? If so, how?

B.C.: Maybe. Or maybe it’s a hindrance. I know a lot of people like science fiction to be very grounded in science, full of scientifically accurate scientific detail. Personally, I prefer Star Wars, Iain M. Banks and Ada Palmer precisely because they’re not constrained by things we consider to be scientifically plausible today. Perhaps that’s part of the reason that I’ve tended to try to avoid AI in my science fiction writing. Having said that, it often creeps in because it feels like such an essential part of the future of our world.

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

B.C.: I guess I’ve tried lots of things. I wrote a romantic comedy a couple of years ago which is one of the stories I’m most proud of. Admittedly, it’s set on a dying earth, so it is also science fiction… So yeah, I guess I tend to write science fiction even when I try to write other genres. And I tend to like writing about protagonists who are a bit lost, not really sure what’s going on or what they need to do. Heroic heroes don’t really appeal to me so much, at least when I’m writing.

P.S.: In what way is your fiction different from that of other science fiction authors? 

B.C.: Hmmm… This is a good question, and a hard one to answer. I guess I like to think that I allow myself to draw on a broad range of genres and styles — I have written science fiction westerns, detective stories, comedies and adventures, all of which I’d consider science fiction, but all of which make use of the tropes of other genres. But that’s not unique, of course.

P.S.: Tell us about “The Time Lottery,” your story in The Science Fiction Tarot. Winners of this lottery don’t get money, do they?

B.C.: Hah! No, indeed. The idea came from two places: A friend of mine, Paul, messaged me out of the blue one day, saying, “I had an idea for a story: time lottery.” I asked him if I could use it, and he agreed. Around the same time, I’d also been reading Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones in which she mentioned the idea of a couple who lived in such a way that when one of them was awake, the other was asleep. And those two sparks gave me this idea of a society in which there wasn’t enough resource for everyone to be awake at the same time, and the idea that a lottery would be a fair way (perhaps) to decide who got to be awake, and for how long. So then the story was set in a utopia, but a utopia with a problem. And when the protagonist wins the lottery and is woken up, he has a goal in mind that is not easy to achieve.

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

B.C.: Easiest: coming up with ideas. Hardest: actually sitting down and writing. Seriously, I find it so difficult sometimes just to get out my laptop and start typing. Once I’m typing, it’s not so bad, but getting going is always the hardest part.

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

B.C.: I’m working on a second novel. It’s science fiction, obviously, and is about legacies and how we can focus too much on the legacy and not enough on what’s going on now. It’s actually based on an idea I had many years ago, and in fact wrote a very short story about it, which got published a few years ago. I won’t say which one…

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

Ben Coppin: Just write. It’s the hardest thing. Reading books and taking courses are super helpful for the basics and for getting a sense of what the rules are: as people always say, if you want to break the rules, you need to know what they are first. But once you’ve done all that, just write, as much and as often as you can. The more you write, the easier it is to keep doing it. Even if you just write garbage, it is easier to then write something worthwhile than if you’ve written nothing. And if you don’t write anything, you’ll never get anything published. So if publication is what you’re aiming for, write, and submit. A lot.

Thank you, Ben.

Readers can find out more about Ben at his website.

May 23, 2023Permalink

Author Interview—Daniel Johnston

My interviews tend to feature fiction writers, and an occasional poet. Today, to vary things up, I’m interviewing a nonfiction author. Daniel joined a writing critique group I’m in.

Daniel Johnston’s area of expertise is the business relationship between governments and oil companies. He’s traveled widely, worked for dozens of governments, and testified as an economics expert in 35 legal disputes. He teaches graduate level seminars to petroleum accountants. He’s written numerous books and articles, as you’ll read about in one of the questions below. In a less academic vein, he wrote the book Growing up Johnston, a compilation of stories and anecdotes about his wife and children extracted from a lifetime of journaling.

Here’s the interview:

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

Daniel Johnston: Early in my career I worked for a large consulting firm where publishing was the lifeblood of their marketing efforts. The old publish-or-perish trope applied there just as much as it did in the academic world. I also managed to develop a few analytical techniques that are now in common use in the industry and I wanted to get credit for them.

But, for me it was more than just career ambition. There was certainly the allure of getting published and I also felt somewhat compelled. 

It is hard to say where that came from but I suspect it is just part of the human condition. I suppose some people get the urge and some may not. But even people who do not write or publish seem to appreciate the magic of it.

Now my inspiration and compulsion are what drive me most, not the commercial and marketing forces. This is especially true now that I am trying to capture and record many of my experiences over the past seventy years.

In addition to my personal experiences, I am trying to capture and breathe life into some of the old family stories that have passed down through the ages. Some of them have devolved into a single sentence or two such as the story of my children’s Great Great Great Grandfather John Gearhart. The family story that filtered down to my wife and me shortly after we were married was: “He was in the Civil War on the Union side. Fought at Shiloh and was wounded and crippled for the rest of his life.” My wife’s grandfather told me this and he remembered his grandfather. I have now extensively researched him and that battle and can show on a map roughly where he was (32nd Illinois Volunteer Infantry under General Hurlbut) half-hour by half-hour during that battle. At one point he was at the famous “Peach Orchard” where there was so much lead in the air, soldiers remembered and recorded that the falling peach blossoms looked like falling snow. I can’t help but imagine those beautiful peach blossoms and petals covering the bloody blue uniforms of the dead and wounded Union Soldiers lying on the ground in that orchard.

These are the kinds of things I want to write about now.

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

D. J.: I was a voracious reader from early on in my existence reading such things as The Hardy Boys, A Wrinkle in Time, The Secret Garden, Little Women, etc. Fortunately, television in Wyoming in the 1950s was almost non-existent and reception was awful. Furthermore, our parents did not allow much television once it became so common in every household. We were not allowed to sit and stare at a TV. But, I loved reading anyway.

As I got older I preferred non-fiction history books such as Julius Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul or The Civil War and all kinds of biographies and autobiographies. In particular those about such characters as Benjamin Franklin, Golda Meir, Robert Rogers, Hernan Cortes, Alexander the Great, Chief Tecumseh, Hannibal, Cleopatra, George Custer, etc.

I also love historical novels like, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Chang’s Wild Swans or James Michener’s works.

With respect to my career, starting in the early 1980s I read anything I could find that had to do with petrophysics, petroleum engineering, petroleum economics and finance. These subjects and my experiences are the foundations of the consulting practice I developed over the past forty years. 

P.S.: Please give us a description of your book Growing up Johnston. What prompted you to write it?

D.J.: This book is a self-published memoir. My co-author, Julianna Johnston Ehlert, is our middle daughter. We only had fifty hard-cover copies of the book printed. If we want to print off a few more later it is easy and it is a miracle in this day-and-age to be able to do that! The book consists of over 340 pages of family anecdotes, photos, stories and journal entries. There is a chapter for each of our six children (three girls and three boys) and additional sections for stories that involved more than one child or my wife, Jill. Many of these memories are simply cute or sweet things the kids did or said or special moments in our lives.

For example, when our youngest daughter was around 4 years old, she asked me: “Daddy? Why is it that flapping works for birds but not for people?”

On another occasion we were out on a lake and my middle son said, “Hey Daddy! I saw a fish jump!”

“How big was it?” I asked.

He thought for a minute then said, “About the size of an octave on the piano!” All three of the boys play the piano and violin.

There are a lot of other events that are not so light hearted. In 1980 we had a still-born baby. I wrote about that pregnancy and that painful experience as well. 

Everybody with children has experienced these sweet and powerful moments and that is what this book is all about—a record of those precious heart-warming/heart-breaking times in our lives and in the lives of our children.

P.S.: Tell us about your journaling habit. When did it start, and why do you do it? What do you write about?

D.J.: I started writing/recording in a journal shortly after I got married. In addition to recording the various nuggets and landmark events in our lives, I often took my journal on trips with me and there were always lots of things to write about. I also took our children with me on many business trips, sometimes just one child or my wife and sometimes a few kids or the whole family. My journals have been helpful for remembering times, places, people and details of some of the incidents and experiences I am trying to capture in my collection of short stories.  

P.S.: You are likely the most widely-published author in the world on the subject of the business relationships between governments and oil companies. Please give us a brief listing of your major written works in this field.

D.J.: This is a pretty bold claim but I believe I am also the most widely quoted or cited author on this subject. Not only that, my second book, International Petroleum Fiscal Systems and Production Sharing Contracts, was essentially the first of its kind in the international petroleum industry.

By way of explanation, I got involved in the international oil industry at the end of the 1970s just as many governments were opening up to foreign investment in their petroleum sector. The World Bank was helping many developing nations craft petroleum laws and regulations and contract terms to enable them to establish business relationships with international oil companies. Because I worked for a consulting firm I worked with many different governments and companies. Most of my peers in the international sector worked for one or two companies in one or two countries. Their perspectives were much narrower than mine.

By the late 1980s I realized there were few people in the industry with the range and depth of experience and knowledge of the subject as I had. I recognized my opportunity and saw publishing as a way to stake my claim on this niche and advance my career.

I ultimately published five books through PennWell Books, three by the University of Dundee, Scotland, and one with the World Bank. I also published a large database on contractual/fiscal terms in various oil producing countries and I am currently working on a second edition to this database which stands at over 1,500 pages. 

PennWell was the main publishing house in the petroleum industry during the1980s-2010s. PennWell also published the Oil & Gas Journal and Offshore Magazine, (now published by Endeavor Business Media). These were two of the main periodicals in the industry during most of that time.

I published a number of articles in their magazines before I wrote my first book for them, Oil Company Financial Analysis in Non-technical Language. This book did well due to the fact that it reached a broader audience than most of PennWell’s other, more focused, books. Their ‘non-technical series’ books were often their most popular.

I should point out that I had many huge panic attacks when I worked on that book and the next one. I would be overwhelmed by insecurity. What if I make a big mistake? What if people don’t like it? What if it is a failure? It could ruin my consulting practice. These attacks were brutal. It always took me a while to convince myself that I had a number of nuggets, even whole chapters in these books that were unique and would benefit people. I was right. My first book became required reading for candidates wanting to earn official certification as petroleum accountants. This was administered by the Institute of Petroleum Accounting and the Council of Petroleum Accountants Societies (COPAS).

As a result of this book, I was asked to write a column for the Petroleum Accounting and Financial Management Journal published by the Institute of Petroleum Accounting at the University of North Texas (UNT). I wrote my column for about ten years and taught annual seminars at UNT.

My next book (1994), International Petroleum Fiscal Systems and Production Sharing Contracts went viral. It has been translated into the Russian and Chinese languages as have most of my PennWell books. Both of these books stayed on PennWell’s bestseller list for over a dozen years. Inclusion on their bestseller list, I should point out, was based simply on gross revenues. The top 25 titles, in terms of gross revenues, are included on their bestseller list. I was their first author to have two books on their bestseller list at the same time. 

I published three other books for PennWell including a few other works. Of these, my favorite, is International Exploration Economics, Risk and Contract Analysis (2003). This has also been translated into Russian and Chinese. It makes a good companion book to my book on fiscal systems and production sharing contracts. My five PennWell books ranged from 100,000 to 150,000 words each. And, I might point out, the first few books were researched and written before the internet was born. I spent hours-on-end in libraries in Dallas and Dundee. Researching the old-fashioned way!

Two of my other favorite books were published by the University of Dundee in Scotland. These include: Economic Modeling and Risk Analysis Handbook (about 450 pages) and Maximum Efficient Production Rate (60 pages).

I taught there for over ten years. Each year I would go to Dundee and teach two one-week long seminars attended by both LLM students (Masters of Laws – postgraduate ) as well as industry people from around the world, such as accountants, financial people, managers, executives from both oil companies as well as governments. Because the subjects were still relatively new, and my books were so popular, my courses were heavily attended.

I taught my courses all over the world in both the public setting as well as in-house courses for oil companies as well as government agencies (national oil companies or oil ministries). During the next 25 years I averaged 10-15 overseas trips per year. 

In 2007 two lawyers (Dr. Thomas Walde and Tim Martin) and I founded a new professional journal, the Journal of World Energy Law and Business (JWELB). It is published by the Oxford University Press (OUP) and the Association of International Energy Negotiators (AIEN). It is a refereed journal and has been a huge success. I have been the Vice Chairman of the Executive Committee since the inception of this journal. 

Also, I have published over 100 articles, half of which have been in refereed publications. I have been cited over 1,250 times that I know of.

Knowing my subject thoroughly was one thing. My books launched me into the stratosphere.

P.S.: Your job has taken you to many countries. Do you plan to write about these experiences?

D.J.: Yes. I have been to places I never dreamed of or even heard of before. So, I have seen a lot of things that I believe people might find interesting or inspiring. I was raised in northern Wyoming along the eastern face of the Big Horn Mountains. To me it was a paradise. I never dreamed of traveling abroad. Nor was it an ambition of mine. My career, from 1980 onwards, changed all that, but I still see the magic, mystery and misery of our world from the perspective of a Wyoming native and proud American.

Traveling to the countries and regions where the oil industry was active was much more important when my career began. This is because communications were nothing like they are today. For example, in the late 1970s sometimes people had to fly from Jakarta to Singapore in order to make a phone call back to the United States. Back then we sent and received Telexes.  Also, primitive computers and fax machines were just starting to enter the workplace in 1980. So, traveling was more common back then because we didn’t have ‘virtual’ capability such as Zoom or Webex.

As a result, I got to see a lot places and things that few of today’s generation in the petroleum industry will likely experience.

For example, around 1996 I was in New Delhi about to head home when I was contacted by a lawyer I knew in Singapore. He asked me to come to Singapore and meet with him so that we could go to Jakarta for an important meeting. So I joined him in Singapore, and as we settled into our seats on the flight to Jakarta he handed me a magazine and pointed to the picture on the cover. It was of a handsome young man about my age, Setaiwan Djodi. “This is who we are meeting with.” he said.

The magazine had an article about Djodi, a Javanese prince and famous musician. He was also, at that time, owner of Lamborghini, the famous Italian car company. The article also mentioned that Djodi had put on a concert and half a million people showed up. During lunch the day I met him I said, “I read this article that said half a million people came to your concert! That is fabulous.” He shook his head and smiled, “Oh no. It was only around 300,000.”

He had a potential business opportunity (petroleum) in Kazakhstan and wanted me to evaluate the situation. So, from Jakarta I went on to Kazakhstan and spent a wild week there traveling from Almaty to Autyrau on the north coast of the Caspian Sea. That trip was amazing and I hope to capture and preserve some of those stories.  

I was also stranded in Lagos Nigeria for two extra weeks because of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centers. That was a crazy time. In those days the Murtala Muhammed airport (Lagos) was considered the most dangerous airport in the world and it was shut down for international flights to the US and many other countries, thus the two-week delay. When I was finally able to fly out, I was instructed to arrive at the airport twelve hours early. I arrived thirteen hours early, just to be safe, and there was already a line. It was probably during one of my many trips to western Africa that I contracted malaria—another story.

As a result of my work and travels, I have seen a lot of this world in the past forty years and I am writing about those travels.

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

D.J.: I have decided that writer’s block can be fatal. I have only barely survived a number of close calls. And, for me, panic attacks come without warning and are always fueled by insecurity, as I mentioned previously.

One of the biggest problems for me is to get things in the proper and logical sequence. This is true of both my technical/economic writing as well as my essays and short stories. This effort taxes every ounce of my powers of explanation but my technical books are much easier to write compared to writing a story or essay.

I have not yet tried to write fiction and tremble at the thought. However, to me thought of it fascinates me. I am not sure I have the talent or the ability to write fiction but I plan to try some day.

P.S.: I understand you’re a musician and gardener. Do these hobbies complement your writing or are they a relief from writing?

D.J.: There are a couple of short vignettes that are influenced by my modest musical background and love of classical music. I have already started work on two such stories. One deals with meeting a young woman named Tasmin Little—who, at the time, was solo violinist for the Brussels Symphony Orchestra playing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. We spent three evenings together because of a chance encounter in Brussels. It is a simple sweet story but it adds a different flavor or dimension to my collection of experiences I am writing about.

Another minor story that involves classical music took place in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan on my first trip there. However, that is about all there is to the influence of my music on my writing so far.

With respect to gardening, I only have a couple of small stories, vignettes actually, that I hope to bring to life. One is a simple story that involves a metaphorical vine I came across in a Sumatran jungle. I have thought about it a lot since then. Sometimes it is the little things that touch our hearts.

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

D.J.: At the moment I am just finalizing and recovering from a project I had been working on for years. I provided expert witness testimony in an arbitration between a big oil company and a foreign government involving a $1.5 billion claim. I do a lot of this kind of work the last twenty years. These projects require a considerable amount of written testimony that must be carefully and meticulously crafted. This is because everything I write in an expert witness statement and every article or book I have ever written come under intense hostile scrutiny that culminates in various rebuttal statements from opposing experts and ultimately, oral cross examination—pure hell.

Other than my professional writing obligations, I am also working on a book of short stories (essays) about the experiences and subjects I mentioned above.

Also, in addition to my international travels, I am writing about some of my experiences growing up in Wyoming in the 1950s and 1960s, and being an identical twin. I am also working on some of the old family stories. For example, I have an ancestor who fought under Admiral Nelson in the Battle of the Nile and then was crippled with grape shot at Trafalgar. I want to bring that story to life—doing lots of research at the moment.

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

Daniel Johnston: If you feel you have a story in you—you do. It is there and only needs work and inspiration to give it life. With respect to the work I just mentioned it helps to have some writing skills.

Writer’s block, insecurity, panic attacks and self-doubt are part of the experience in my opinion. Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a grueling experience for me if I had studied writing instead of almost exclusively focusing on the physical sciences.

Fortunately, the wonderful part of writing is the editing process. With all of my manuscripts, books, articles and witness statements, I edit over and over and over. I will easily go through dozens of drafts for even small articles or stories. 

With respect to writer’s block, when the frustration becomes overwhelming, take a day off. Or more. Do anything other than write or worry about writing. Sometimes the human mind does its best work when we are doing anything other than work.   

Also, join a writer’s group. While I only have experience with the Fort Worth Writers group, it has been wonderful for me in many ways. Fascinating people. Fabulous learning opportunity. I love it.

Poseidon’s Scribe: Thanks, Daniel. Readers who want to find out more about Daniel Johnston can check out his website.

August 14, 2022Permalink