Interview with Andrew Gross by Diane G. (icesk8tr)

Diane G.: First of all, I would like to thank you for agreeing to do this interview for PaperBackSwap!!

What inspired you to start writing, and how did you get involved with James Patterson?

I always wanted to write. I was a published poet while still in high school and ended up editing the literary magazine at Middlebury, but when I graduated I shifted to business and got a MBA and focused on other things. I ended up doing apparel turnaround in the sports field (Head, Le Coq Sportif) and when one of them severely didn’t turn around I decided not to leave any more blood on the field and asked my wife for a year to pursue this dream, the year turned into three, as happens, but when my book didn’t ultimately sell—twenty publisher rejections—and I was sitting around my den not knowing what my next step was in life, I got a call, out of the blue, “Can you take a call from James Patterson?”

Unbeknownst to me, my rejected manuscript had been given to him by the head of his publishing company, and he was looking for someone who “wrote women well” to team up with to start his women’s murder club” series. We did six books together!

Diane G.: How much did you learn from working with James Patterson, and did the fact that the books were bestsellers help you with your confidence to write that first novel on your own?

Not only my confidence– I knew I could do this!—but my skill sets as well. In the way of plotting, pacing, and how to create emotion in scenes, a big thing with Jim. It’s pretty clear I don’t write Patterson clones, but I have adapted many elements I learned from him into my own voice and my own concept of how a novel should be crafted. I always say it was like a combined MFA-MBA in thriller management!

Diane G.: I know your first solo novel was The Blue Zone, and since then you have written three books in the Ty Hauck series. Are you going to continue with the series, concentrate on single novels, or both?

I’m intending to continue with a Hauck novel I’m starting to write now, with publisher approval. It should be published in 2013- crazy that we’re thinking that far ahead.  I think he’ll get mixed up with American arms shipments to Mexican drug lords. Nasty.

Diane G.: I have followed your books since The Blue Zone and I get so caught up in the novels while I am reading them, which as you know, causes me to miss stops on public transportation. Eyes Wide Open was definitely in this category as well! Do you get caught up in the novels when you are writing them?

Of course. Hard not to. I always search for the emotional core of my books- and the character who best carries that weight. Sometimes I have to find it during the writing itself. It’s not always clear. It’s always emotional for me, however that character’s fate turns out. I don’t get so caught up in the “chase,” but in the human side of what’s really at stake behind it.

Diane G.: Eyes Wide Open draws from tragic events that have happened in your life, did this make it more difficult to write the story, or was it in a sense therapeutic?

In truth, the book was easy for me to write because much of the first half revolves around events that were real and to which I was party—so it kind of wrote itself. A family suicide is never easy, and it’s destroyed my brother and sister in law, but the connection of Jay in the book to Charlie and Gabby is close to how it was for me. It was an awkward distant relationship, and I was sorry for Alex, my nephew, but he was a sick, troubled and violent kid, so to be honest, I always had a distance from him so I was able to write about what happened with some emotional distance.

Diane G.: So, I have heard you had a passing encounter with Charles Manson, what was that like?

Just one quick encounter as a kid, described in the book. I recall two things: he was polite to an extreme, so polite, it was almost threatening. He was very quiet and restrained, and held my brother back from an emotional outburst, but even in saying very little, and none of it threatening, we all definitely remember that he had the most “power” in the room.

Diane G.: This book and others you have written revolve around family situations, how does your own family influence your writing?

I often take my family, which is pretty calm and loving, and then twist it and do terrible things to it to come up with the scenarios in my books. I kind of say, what is the worst thing that could happen to me, and then I write it!

Diane G.: How much time to you spend researching details of historical events or a geographical area when you are writing a book?

Depends. Enough to “sell” the scene to the reader, but not so much that I come off like an expert or a show-off. Another thing I take from Patterson—don’t let “expertise” slow the down the scene. So don’t over-study! Not my thing.

Diane G.: What authors have influenced you in your life, and do you have a favorite author you like to read?

Robert Stone’s Dog Soldiers and Robert Penn Warren’s, All the Kings Men are the two books that had the most profound affect on me. As a craftsman. In terms of who I read, whatever’s cool and hot in the thriller trade. Reading Connelly’s The Reversal and another book called Before I Go to Sleep now.

Diane G.: What is next for you?

Another thriller built off a real life experience. Last year in Houston, while on book tour, I was stopped for a traffic violation, and ended up pulled out of my car, cuffed, throw in the back of a cop car, told I was being arrested and taken to jail, then after ten other cops arrived, had a bunch of chilling 9/11-type questions thrown at me: “what were you doing in a federal office building in downtown Houston?” “When was the last time you were stopped by the police?” Fortunately, for me, the situation ended benignly, with a full apology. But for my character, and for the “arresting” officer, it doesn’t end so benignly at all. So as long as these crazy things keep happening, I’ll have good fodder for new books!

You can learn more about Andrew Gross and his books at his web-site: www.andrewgrossbooks.com

A big PBS thank you to Andrew Gross and Diane G for a great interview!

Author Interview with Marie Sexton by Mary (kilchurn)

Mary: I will shamefully admit that Promises sat on my bookshelf for MONTHS.  I would occasionally pick it up and start the first page and then put it down.  *shudder* written in first person *shudder* After some arm twisting by a good friend of yours, I huffed and puffed grumpily to my bookshelf and picked it up and began to read.  In the ensuing hours, I fell in love with Matt and Jared.  A lot of the readers I know have similar feelings about 1st person narratives, so I have to ask, why 1st person?

Marie: I’m always surprised when people say they don’t like 1^st person. I’m exactly the opposite. As a reader, it’s absolutely my first preference. I’m really not a fan of 3^rd. I only enjoy reading 3^rd if it’s nice and tight and very specific, like Harry Potter, but frankly, that’s hard to find. The very minute the POV starts jumping around (which seems to happen way more often than not), I put the book down and never go back. Omniscient 3^rd drives me up the wall. To me, it makes the book feel very distant, like I’m not actually engaging with the characters or the story at all. When I read, I like to be completely immersed in the thoughts and life of the main character, so when I started writing, it never even occurred to me to write in anything other than 1^st.

That being said, I did break my cycle. Between Sinners and Saints and Song of Oestend are both written in 3^rd. In Saints, we really needed to see both Levi’s and Jaime’s POV. It was funny, because I kept emailing Heidi saying, “It’s all messed up! I’m doing it wrong! I hate writing in 3^rd!” And she’d read it and sort of pat me on the head and tell me, “It’s fine. Keep going.” And for the most part, I think it worked. Oestend is written entirely from Aren’s POV, though, and in hindsight, I kind of wish I’d used 1^st. ~shrug~ Oh well. 🙂

Also, for the record, writing a m/m (or m/m/m) sex scene in 3^rd person is much more difficult than writing it in 1^st!

Mary: Your “Coda” series is set in a fictional town called “Coda”.  Is it based on a real town?

Marie:  Not quite. It’s sort of a combination of Lyons and Allenspark. But mostly, it’s fictional.

Mary: Who has been your favorite character to write? Why?

Marie:  Probably Angelo, because he’s so damaged, but also so tough and angry and outspoken. He’s very much the voice of my petulant inner-child.

Mary: Which character has been the most challenging for you?

Marie:  Jon was really hard, because he was just so uptight and dry. I tried at one point to write Strawberries from Cole’s POV, but he’s too verbose. I wrote about half a chapter before giving up and going back to Jon. But Jon really is such a straight man (no pun intended). I had to add George and the emails from Cole to Jared to lighten that book up a bit.

Mary: There are some critics out there who think that it is impossible for women to write “authentic” Male/Male romances.  As a woman writing in the genre what are your thoughts?

Marie:  I would say, I get emails from gay men all the time telling me otherwise.

Mary: Song of Oestend is due out in August 2011.  Until now you’ve written “contemporary” novels.  What was your reason for approaching another genre?

Marie:  I think a few different things converged here. First, I’ve always been a fantasy reader. I read fantasy almost exclusively for many, many years before I found m/m romance. I was only reading romance for about a year when I decided to try writing one. My one unfinished novel (which I started between A to Z and The Letter Z) is also fantasy. I think I was just longing to do something new. Truthfully though, what I really wanted to write (for some reason I can’t really explain) was a haunted house story.

Song of Oestend started because I was at a little house concert. I’m sorry to say I don’t even remember the name of the musician, but she sang a song called Barbed Wire Men. Suddenly, I wanted to write a story about a cowboy and an artist. But I also still had the haunted house bug, and I couldn’t figure out if cowboys in a haunted house would be contemporary (which made the haunted house seem like less fun) or historical (which presented other problems I didn’t want to deal with). Then, I read Warded Man by Peter Brett, and I was really intrigued by this idea of very dangerous things running around in the night. And somebody (maybe Heidi, or maybe my husband) said, “Put them all together.” It seemed sort of crazy, but in the end, that’s what I did. I set it in an alternate universe, and voila!

Mary: What made you start writing?

Marie:  It was a whim. I woke up one morning with a vision in my head of two men in a hallway. I sat down and started writing it, and it turned into Promises.

Mary: Do you write in a structured environment, i.e. an office or do you start writing wherever the mood strikes you?

Marie:  I generally move all over the place, although I think I’m most productive when I make myself stay in my office.

Mary: You have a partner in crime these days, Heidi Cullinan.  How did you meet and do you think you will ever collaborate on a project?

Marie:  Sometime in early 2010, Heidi sent an email to the Dreamspinner author loop saying she wanted to host a booth at Des Moines Pride, and asking if anybody would like to join her. I checked the drive time from Colorado to Iowa and said, “Why not?” The first time I met her was when I showed up on her doorstep in June of 2010. After that, we were emailing or chatting almost every day. A few months later, she said, “I don’t suppose you’d want to drive to McAllen, Texas with me?” And again, I said, “Why not?” So we embarked on a massive roadtrip together.

Suffice it to say, once you’ve peed in a ditch together, or been lost in the bowels of a downtown Memphis parking garage and emerged again into the light, you form a bit of a bond.

Will we ever collaborate on a project? Hmmm…. How to answer that…. Let’s just say, anything could happen. 😉

Mary: What does Marie do for fun when she isn’t writing?

Marie:  I watch a stupid amount of TV these days.

Mary: What was your favorite book as a child?

Marie:  I was a huge fan of the Great Brain books. I think that’s where I learned to love 1^st person narrators – especially ones who aren’t entirely reliable.

Mary: What has been your favorite book as an adult?

Marie:  Harry Potter, and the Doctrine of Labyrinths series by Sarah Monette. The first two Labyrinths books, Melusine and The Virtu, just blew me away. I absolutely love Felix and Mildmay. They’re so messed up and damaged and unbelievably codependent. They’re amazing.

Mary: Many of the male/male romance books are primarily available in eBook and it seems like portable reading devices are taking over.  Do you own a kindle/nook/kobo/other?  Why or why not?

Marie:  I do own a Kindle. It was my present to myself when I received my first publishing contract. It’s convenient, but I’m not a total ebook convert. What I am is CHEAP. If I can get the paperback cheaper (or better yet, free from PBS), I’ll still choose to do that rather than pay for the ebook.

Mary: How did you find PaperBackSwap and how long have you been a member?

Marie:  I had to check my profile, and it says I’ve been a member since October 2006. I’m trying to remember how I first found PBS. I have a really horrible memory. I do remember being VERY excited to find it. My daughter was two at that time, and going to a book store with her was completely out of the question. Plus, I had shelves and shelves and shelves of paperbacks to trade. I do remember it as being sort of love at first sight. (Love at first site? LOL. Sorry. Bad pun.)

Mary: What book(s) are at the top of your To-Be-Read pile?

Marie:  On PBS, the ones at the top are:

Amazonia, by James Rollins

Babel-17, by Samuel R. Delany

Best Served Cold, by Joe Abercrombie

Honestly though, I haven’t been reading nearly as much since I started writing. I used to be a voracious reader, but these days, I tend to start lots of books and never finish them.

Mary: How has PaperBackSwap impacted your life?

Marie:  The biggest impact has been the people I’ve met. Back in early 2009, I met a girl named Amy via PBS, and we became very good friends. We’d swap m/m books, and she was my biggest cheerleader as I wrote Promises. And then a few months later, we contacted Troy via PBS. Since that time, I’ve unfortunately lost contact with Amy, but Troy and I still talk almost every day.

****************************************************************************

And now for some fun things –

Onion Rings or French Fries?

French fries, with ranch dressing. I don’t like ketchup.

Coke or Pepsi?

Sprite

M&Ms or Reese’s Pieces?

M&Ms, but my favorites are the peanut butter ones.

Anchovies or No Anchovies?

I’ve never had a pizza with anchovies on it, but I’d absolutely be willing to try it.

Bugs Bunny or the Flintstones?

Bugs Bunny

Early Bird or Night Owl?

Early bird, but not by choice. It’s all my daughter’s fault. I was a night owl until she came along.

Steak or Chicken?

steak

Red Wine or White Wine?

Red

Folgers or Maxwell House?

Either one, as long as I have some of that CoffeeMate flavored creamer to go in it.

************************************************************************

Marie Sexton was always good at the technical aspects of writing but never had any ideas for stories. After graduating from Colorado State University, she worked for eleven years at an OB/GYN clinic. She quit the clinic at about the same time she started reading M/M romances. At some point in the ensuing months, the static in her head cleared, and her first story was born.

Marie lives in Colorado. She’s a fan of just about anything that involves muscular young men piling on top of each other. In particular, she loves the Denver Broncos and enjoys going to the games with her husband. Matt and Jared often tag along. Marie has one daughter, two cats, and one dog, all of whom seem bent on destroying what remains of her sanity. She loves them anyway.

Visit Marie’s web site at http://www.MarieSexton.net or find her on Facebook.

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Marie’s Books:

The Coda Series:

1. Promises
2. A to Z
3. The Promise and The Letter Z  [ebook only] (doesn’t matter which one you read first – they take place at the same time)
4. Strawberries for Dessert and Putting Out Fires [ebook only] (also take place at the same time)
5. Paris A to Z [ebook only]

Other Stories:

One More Soldier [ebook only]

Between Sinners and Saints

UpComing book:

Song of Oestend (due August 2011)

Marie Sexton has generously offered an autographed copy of one of her print books to a member who comments on this interview. The winner will get to choose which book!

Thank you Mary and Marie for a great interview!!

An interview with Charles Stross by Trey

Born in Leeds, England, Charles Stross knew he wanted to be a science fiction writer from an early age. He didn’t really get started until his early teens (when his sister loaned him a manual typewriter around the time he was getting heavily into Dungeons and Dragons); the results were unexpected, and he’s been trying to bury them ever since. He made his first commercial sale to Interzone in 1986, and sold about a dozen stories elsewhere throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s before a dip in his writing career. He began writing fiction in earnest again in 1998.

Along the way to his current occupation, he went to university in London and qualified as a pharmacist. He figured out it was a bad idea the second time the local police staked his shop out for an armed robbery — he’s a slow learner. Sick at heart from drugging people and dodging SWAT teams and gangsters — it’s hard to do that when you’re wearing a lab coat — he went back to university in Bradford and did a postgraduate conversion degree in computer science. After several tech sector jobs in the hinterlands around London, initially in technical publications and then in UNIX, he emigrated to Edinburgh, Scotland, and ended up in web programming consultancy and a subsequent dot-com death march at Datacash.

All good things come to an end, and Stross made the critical career error of accepting an employment offer he couldn’t refuse in early 2000, just as the bottom dropped out of the first dot-com bubble (taking his new job with it). However, he had a parachute: he was writing a monthly Linux column for Computer Shopper, and by a hop, a skip and a jump that would be denounced as implausible by any self-respecting editor, he managed to turn his unemployment into an exciting full time career opportunity as a freelance journalist specializing in Linux and free software. Even more implausibly, after fifteen years of abject obscurity, his fiction became a runaway success and he found himself earning more as a novelist than he ever had as a programmer.

He now writes fiction full-time, has sold around 16 novels, has won one Hugo award (the novella “Concrete Jungle”) and been nominated nearly a dozen times, and has been translated into about a dozen languages. He’s also won the Prometheus Award for libertarian science fiction with Glasshouse.

He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with his wife Feorag, a couple of cats, several thousand books, and an ever-changing herd of obsolescent computers.

Trey: First, thank you for agreeing to this interview Charlie.

If I remember correctly, you started writing Halting State, and its forthcoming sequel, Rule 34, because you wanted to write a world you wouldn’t mind living in. After all, some very bad things happen to the planet and humanity in general in Accelerando, Glasshouse, Saturn’s Children, Singularity Sky and The Family Trade, and the potential for some awful things to happen are in the Laundry novels. Is that still the case as of Rule 34?

Charlie: Yes.

Rule 34 is about as close a projection of where we might be in 2023 that I can come up with. It’s a police procedural, so of necessity it deals with some icky bits, but it’s a police procedural set in a future that is basically civilized, and has found coping strategies for dealing with today’s problems such as climate change and peak oil and corporate ethics. Some of the strategies work, some don’t — but it’s not about survivors eating their neighbours in the ruins or getting a Magic Solution to Everything handed to them on a plate by a prophet who is a thinly-disguised Mary Sue for the author’s pet hobby-horses.

In other words, it’s a world I expect to live in (although I’d like to avoid the messy bits that are the focus of the novel, if you don’t mind). Doubtless my expectations will change over the next 12 years.

Trey: I know that you had to keep changing the nature of the plot of Rule 34 as real life kept out performing your imagination for the criminal plots. What were some of the earlier versions of the plot? And how did the real world over take them?

Charlie: It wasn’t just criminal plots; it was more a case of Rule 34 being an attempt at a realistic projection of our world about 10-15 years hence. That’s always a risky time-frame even if you write it in narrow-focus (for example, a detective novel won’t paint much of a picture of global politics). When the global financial system nearly crashed in 2008 I realized I had a big problem with my existing plot, which centered on a rather outrageous economic crime; then Bernie Madoff came out of the woodwork and I realized I’d been thinking way too small. So it was back to the drawing board for a whole, and — of necessity — push the project back a year while the big picture stabilized. So I got my publishers’ permission and wrote The Fuller Memorandum, which was already under contract, a year ahead of schedule to buy myself some time.

Trey: 3D printing and mini-factories are moving from science fiction to something that can be bought by a hobbyist (sort of like computing in the early 80’s). And it plays a role in Rule 34 in both interesting and disturbing ways – where did you get the ideas for this? And do you see it going down that path in reality?

Charlie: It’s been kicking around in the zeitgeist for years. Also (cheat code coming up) it’s always a good idea for any SF author who wants to be on what passes for the cutting edge to keep a close eye on what Bruce Sterling is up to. Bruce has consistently been a decade ahead of the field for, well, decades: and he’s been _very_ interested in design and small scale fabrication and rapid prototyping since the turn of the century. And I’ve been running across people doing weird shit with 3D printers for the past few years. And a postgraduate law researcher who was looking into the intellectual property implications of 3D printing and coming to some very unexpected conclusions — copyright and in some cases patent coverage do not apply! — and it all seems to be coming together.

Trey: I’ve enjoyed reading your female characters – Rachel Mansour, Sue Smith and Elaine Barnaby, Oshi Adjani and Miriam Beckstein – how do you wind up writing them as well as you do?

Charlie: It’s not hard: I just try to give them the same level of realistic ideation that I’d give a male protagonist. I’m more surprised that many male SF authors don’t take more pains to get their female characters right. Women are people too, and they’re probably the majority of the reading audience!

Trey: One of the characters in Rule 34, the Toymaker, is one of the most disturbing viewpoint characters I’ve encountered in fiction in years. Where did you get the information to put together a viewpoint for a sociopathic character like you did?

Charlie: Actually, the Toymaker is loaded up — he’s both a paranoid schizophrenic and a sociopath — although one of these conditions is a long term side-effect of medication intended to treat the other. (Many neuroleptic drugs have bizarre and unpleasant side-effects, and we don’t actually have any medications for sociopathy/reduced empathy, so I decided to invent one, along with plausible undesirable effects …)

There are a lot of sociopaths out there: about 2% of the population, by some estimates. But it’s a spectrum disorder. Most sociopaths aren’t knife-wielding serial killers, they’re just people who have a depressed ability to feel empathy for or model the internal emotional states of other human beings or animals. One side-effect of this is a lack of guilt or embarrassment. Got a thrill-seeking friend who’s a bit narcissistic and lies shamelessly? Odds are they’re a bit sociopathic. Then we go all the way to the far end of the spectrum and find the predators who end up in high-security prisons because, despite being utterly free of moral qualms, they’re not actually supermen and most of the criminal ones get caught. An interesting thing to note is that sociopaths/psychopaths don’t anticipate punishment and so are virtually undeterred by the threat of criminal sanctions. (Which feeds into my point about our legal systems being broken.)

Finally, there’s another category of sociopath out there: the corporation. Corporations are granted many of the rights of individual humans in law, but they’re _not_ human: they’re machines for maximizing revenue flow. While a well-run corporation abides within the letter of the law, there’s no conscience there, no empathy other than that which the employees bring to their day job, and if they exercise empathy to the detriment of the company’s interests they can be fired. Successful corporations tend to be a bit sociopathic, and the climate of modern capitalism is if anything structured to promote sociopathic behaviour.

Trey: In 2002 you had a thought provoking essay on the Panopticon Singularity. How has that essay been superseded in the past 9 years? Or filtered into your works?

Charlie: Rule 34 is the panopticon singularity novel. It comes from a throwaway idea by Vernor Vinge — that perhaps one of the limiting factors on the survival of technological singularity would be the development of tools of ubiquitous law enforcement, such that all laws can be enforced — or infringements detected — automatically.

Our lawmakers are out of control.

In the period 1997-2010, in the UK, the then Labour government created an average of one new criminal offence (felony) for every day Parliament was in session. I asked a couple of legal experts how many actual chargeable offences there were in the English legal system; they couldn’t give an exact answer but suggested somewhere in the range 5000-20,000. The situation in the USA is, however, much, much worse, with different state and federal legal systems and combinations of felonies; the true number may be over a million, and a tax code so large that no single human being can be familiar with all of it (but failure to comply is frequently felonious).
Now, most of the time most of these laws don’t affect most of us. But there’s a key principle of law, that ignorance is no defence: I’m willing to bet that most human beings are guilty of one or more crimes, be they smoking a joint or underage sex or speeding or forgetting to declare earnings, or failing to file the paperwork for some sort of permit we don’t even know exists. We are all potentially criminals.

Meanwhile we have a legal system based on the theory that human beings possess free will, that they commit crimes out of malice, and that the threat or actual delivery of punishment is necessary to keep them in line. All of which are arguably invalid assumptions, if what behavioural psychology tells us is correct.

How do you run a complex society that relies on most people staying within agreed behavioural limits most of the time, if your legal system is not merely broken but can’t be fixed because it’s based on false premises?
(That’s what Rule 34 asks …)

Trey: It has been said that history is the secret resource of science fiction – and I’ve read many novels that were thinly disguised versions of historical events. You, on the other hand, seem to have largely avoided that (with the exception of the New Republic fleet in Singularity Sky). How did you do that? And more importantly, why?

Charlie: I don’t avoid it; it’s just that history never repeats exactly the same pattern, so it’s lazy writing to use an historical event without mangling it out of recognition! Also, a lot of my plots tend to focus on micro-level details so that the background patterns of history aren’t immediately obvious.

The Merchant Princes series did draw on history to some extent — on the evolution and development of mediaeval states, on the problems of economic development, and (extensively) on the collapse of the first British empire (which, in one of the time lines our protagonists explore, went very differently — thanks to a different outcome from a committee meeting held on a rainy Sunday in spring of 1745 in a palace in Edinburgh).

Trey: What is next up for you? Any new projects in the works?

Charlie: Plenty. I’m currently working in parallel on the fourth Laundry novel (The Apocalypse Codex) and on a collaboration with Cory Doctorow (The Rapture of the Nerds), both due for publication in 2012. In the work queue behind them, there’s a far future deep space novel (Neptune’s Brood), and then a near future political farce (The Lambda Functionary) — both sold, so barring catastrophes they’ll see print in the next couple of years, although I’m still at the note-taking stage on both projects.

I don’t generally comment on stuff that isn’t sold, though, so if you don’t mind I’m going to keep quiet about more speculative stuff. In any case, what I’ve just described is my bread and butter through 2013 …

Trey: How does it feel to keep getting nominated for the Prometheus Award for libertarian SF? Especially since it doesn’t seem like you aim your novels at that segment.

Charlie: It’s amusing. But I should like to note that Libertarian SF is a broad church, encompassing social libertarianism (“legalise cannabis!”) as well as economic libertarianism (“Ayn Rand is God!”). I can sign on for one but not the other; and in any event, examining issues surrounding the human existential condition — including, yes, liberty — is part of my shtick.

Trey: Outside of a desire to eat and keep a roof over your head, what motivates you to write?
Charlie: It’s fun. Or rather, I have these crazy ideas and when I let enough of them escape onto the pages people send me books to sign — and holding them is fun.

Oh, and also to keep the cats’ vet bills paid. (They’re elderly and cantankerous and don’t have insurance.)

Trey: What non-science fiction books would you suggest for your fans?

Charlie: I’m currently working my way through Postwar: A history of Europe since 1945 by Tony Judt, and making slow going. (Reason: something very weird has happened to Europe in the past two-thirds of a century — for the first time ever there’s a hegemonic expanding power in Europe that the countries on the periphery are queuing up to join rather than arming up to fight to the death! Furthermore, the last time we went this long without an invading army crossing the Rhine was the height of the Roman Empire. This phenomenon is truly remarkable because it’s truly unprecedented, and I want to get my head around it because it may be one of the most significant historic changes of the 21st and 22nd centuries.)

Trey: Favorite beer when you’re in the US?

I’m partial to a Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA — but only one of an evening, and usually at the end!

Trey:Thanks again Charlie. I’m looking forward to seeing Rule 34 in print.

Thank you Trey and Charles Stross for a great interview! Charles Stross has generously offered a copy of his new book, Rule 34 to a member who comments on this interview. The winner will be chosen at random. Good Luck!

Author Interview with Deanna Raybourn by Jerelyn H. (I-F-Letty).  Thank you both!

Jerelyn: Well nothing could give me more pleasure than to welcome Rita-Award winning Deanna Raybourn to the PBS blog, thank-you for joining us today.   I have you to thank for my recent fixation with Victorian settings.

I get a sense that you really love this time period.  Is this why you chose to set your stories in the Victorian period?

Deanna: Absolutely! I initially set the first book in the Regency, but I got about fifty pages in before I realized that just wouldn’t work. I needed late Victorian, something darker and more atmospheric with fog and gas lit streets and a bit more grit. I did tons more research and started the book over and it clicked immediately.

Jerelyn: The upcoming The Dark Enquiry is your 5th Lady Julia Grey novel.  She is a wonderful character how did she come to you?

I think every author has at least one character that is largely autobiographical, and Julia is mine. We’re very different people, but I like to think that we look at the world from a similar point of view. She’s Victorian, but she’s very modern Victorian. She is always looking ahead to the twentieth century.

Jerelyn: Lady Julia comes from a large quirky family are you from a large family?

Deanna: I’m an only child! But my extended family is large and very colorful. I’ve told my editor some of our family stories and she says I can never use them in a book because no one would believe them.

Jerelyn: I love her relationship with Portia, is she Julia’s favorite sibling?

Deanna:  She’s Julia’s favorite sister, no doubt about that, and she’s an excellent foil to Julia, I think. The other sisters are very busy with their own lives and we see very little of them in the series. Julia has mentioned that her favorite brother is Benedick, whom we haven’t even met yet—I love keeping him offstage so readers get to wonder a little about why Julia is so fond of him. She has a soft spot for Valerius, of course, as the closest to her in age, and in the last few books, she’s really come to know and appreciate Plum.

Jerelyn: You write about England so well, that I was surprised you’re an American.  Did you travel often to England while researching the books?

Deanna: I’ve been to England several times, and my grandmother is English, so that part actually came pretty easily. I grew up reading English books and watching English television, and that sort of immersion is essential if you’re going to try to get across the syntax of another country. I’m always hugely thrilled when someone mistakes me for being English! My English editor actually did, and that tickled me to no end.

Jerelyn: Tell us about Nicholas Brisbane, if you will?   He is in a word YUMMY!

Deanna: Nicholas is an enigma even to me. I deliberately didn’t write a full back-story for him because I wanted to continually be surprised. And I think the biggest shock of writing him that way is that clues I laid in one or two books back—completely without intention—are now coming home to roost in revelations about him. He’s a great deal of fun to write.

Jerelyn: Will you tell us about Dark Enquiry?

Deanna: This is the first time we have Julia and Nicholas in London since the beginning of the series, and I’m tremendously excited about that. They go sleuthing around a Spiritualist club and end up exposing some terribly dangerous secrets…

Jerelyn: What characters are the most fun to write?

Deanna: I love writing Nicholas and Julia and the various Marches, of course, but I also thoroughly enjoy the assorted villains. It’s always a pleasure to spend some time in those dark and twisted minds because I know I can get out again!

Jerelyn: Who is the hardest to write?

Deanna: Any character without a discernible sense of humour. Sometimes it’s necessary, but if they don’t have entertaining quirks, I find them more difficult to relate to.

Jerelyn: What do you read, when you have the time?

Deanna: I read loads of research books, nonfiction things like letters, biographies, memoirs. I read novels written by the English, about the English—anything to help me keep my own writing voice sharp. I particularly love Agatha Christie and Mary Stewart for mystery and Gothic adventures.

Jerelyn: Did you always aspire to be a writer?

Deanna: Always! I was making up stories even before I knew how to hold a pencil. My degree is in English and history because I figured that was the most practical for someone who intended to write historical fiction, and it’s served me very well.

Jerelyn: Is there an author that inspired you?

Deanna: Ask this question any given day and you’ll get a different answer from the day before. Today I will say Daphne du Maurier because I think Rebecca is a perfect novel.

Jerelyn: What is up next for you?

Deanna: My editor and I are chatting just this week about what I’m writing next—very exciting!

Jerelyn: Are you comfortable with social media as it pertains to the marketing of your books?

Deanna: Absolutely. I think writers have to be prepared to engage with readers, whether it’s at book signings or conferences or through social media. I am on Facebook, I tweet, I blog, and I encourage readers to friend me or follow me!

Jerelyn: What are your views on sites like Paperback Swap?

Deanna: I think they are a great means for readers to find new authors, people they might not be willing to try if they had to pay full retail for a book. Having said that, I should mention that for my favorite authors, I always purchase retail for two reasons: first, I want to make sure that they are getting royalties which, of course, they don’t for anything after the initial sale. And second, I want that sale to count with the publisher’s numbers. If I don’t buy retail, then that book doesn’t go down as a sale for the publisher and they might decide not to keep putting out books by my favorite author. For out of print books, I of course have to buy second hand, and for new books I buy through online retailers, independents, and for my e-reader. I’m thrilled there are so many options!

Jerelyn: Thank-you Deanna for your time and for visiting with us today.

If you would like to read more about Deanna she has an excellent blog, you can go to her website http://www.deannaraybourn.com/ or follow her on face book  http://www.facebook.com/people/Deanna-Raybourn/1291673294 or on twitter.

The books of Deanna Raybourn:

And

due out 6-21-11

A copy of Ms Raybourn’s book, Dark Road to Darjeeling, will be sent to a member who comments on this interview. A winner will be chosen at Random. Good Luck!

The PBS Blog Team would like to wish Ms. Raybourn a very Happy Birthday!