Sunday, December 1, 2019

Q&A with the author (All 10 chapters)

Q. Where do you get the ideas for your books?

A. There is no one answer to that question, but generally I have an active imagination and ideas come to me fairly easily. I got the idea for Time Capsule several years ago when I planted a tree in my yard and wondered what would happen if I found something buried there. I decided to write a story about that and it eventually became a book.

Because it’s a fiction novel, I had to create all of the people, places, events, dialogue and so on, which was a lot of fun. I’m a former journalist so I used real people, places and events for inspiration but turned it all into a fictional narrative, built around two main characters who are newspaper reporters like I was.

Once I got started with the discovery of the time capsule, I crafted the rest of the story from actual experiences and some that I invented out of my own head.


Q. Tell me about your writing process?

A. It really differs from book to book. In Time Capsule, once I had created Rob and Jennie Covington, I began to visualize them doing and saying things that news reporters would do and say, and then I wrote it all down. To be honest, when I wrote the beginning, I had no idea how it would end or how I would get there, but as I continued to visualize scenes and as I wrote more and more of the story, the ending came to me in time.

You can write whatever comes to mind, just to get it memorialized "on paper," because you'll go back later to edit what you wrote--probably more than once. The first draft can be far from perfect as long as it gets you off and running and begins to tell your story. 

The best part for me was writing all of the dialogue, which I admit sounds a lot like things I might say myself. I think the first words I actually wrote in Time Capsule were, “No stupid, your other left,” a good-natured barb that Jennie threw at Rob when he was planting the tree.

In effect, it was those five words that defined the relationship between these characters for all of Time Capsule and the Covington books that followed. In one of the books, I described their compatibility as "a healthy relationship based on trust, mutual admiration for each other’s talents, common interests, sexual attraction and the ability to take a joke.”


Q. So in Time Capsule you just made up the story as you went along?

A. Yes, exactly. I started out with the basics: “Man plants tree, man finds box, man opens box, there’s a mystery inside.” When I wrote that, it was really all I had. Then, by way of introduction, I went back and told the story of how the main characters met.

Next, I decided that I needed a dead body. I didn’t know who it was or how it fit into the story, but I wrote it as a separate chapter that also set the location for the book. I moved it to Chapter 1. That gave me more ideas, but I still had no idea how the book would end or how I would get there. In fact, I didn’t even know what was in the box. So I wrote a couple of chapters, set it aside for a while and kept thinking about it.

After a while, I got an idea to describe some items in the box and have each of them take the reader off in a secondary direction, so I created three new characters, attached each of them to an item in the time capsule and wrote a back story to go with each character.

Then I realized that aside from solving a mystery, Rob and Jennie would have real jobs, so I wrote about what they do at work. As reporters, they cover events, write stories and interact with other people on the job. I brought in fictionalized versions of actual events that happened to me or people I worked with and added them to the soup.

Eventually, I had five threads running at the same time. I had Rob and Jennie pursuing the mystery of the time capsule, Rob and Jennie going to work at regular jobs and three separate characters with their own stories linked through items in the box. I tied them all together and finally an ending came to me. I had a beginning, a middle and an end, so Time Capsule became a manuscript…but it wasn’t yet a book.


Q. So what happened after you finished your manuscript?

A. I contacted a publisher and paid a small fee to have an “editorial review” written on my manuscript. I asked the publisher to tell me honestly whether the manuscript (1) worked as a book, (2) could be fixed and made into a book or (3) should be tossed into the trash and forgotten.

The publisher, Beth, liked my work and was interested in publishing it with some minor changes and some editing suggestions. Then she asked me, “What else do you have?”

What I had was three pages of another book about a private detective who starts out dead. It was three pages going nowhere, but I sent her the pages anyway. Beth liked the idea and told me I should finish that book, too. So I re-read what I had written, added a few details and some quotes and moved on to Chapter 2, where I wrote, “It all started….” And then I let my imagination run wild. Ideas started coming to me and I wrote the whole second book in a matter of weeks.

With my publisher’s encouragement, I have since written two other Rob and Jennie Covington books and recently started on Covington book number 4.


Q. What does someone need to do to write good fiction books?

A. In general, I believe there are three main qualities you need to write good fiction:

(1)   Obviously, you need the ability to write, which means having a decent vocabulary and knowing the rules of grammar, syntax, sentence structure, punctuation and spelling. If you can’t form words into proper sentences and sentences into paragraphs—and make them interesting to total strangers—then writing a book is probably not your best career option.

(2)   You also need perpetual curiosity, or what I call the “what if” gene. I think a fiction author needs to go beyond just seeing things for what they are and wonder “what if this” and “what if that.” For example, if you plant a tree and all you see is a tree, a shovel and a hole, you’re probably not going to write a book about the experience—unless it’s a book about gardening. But if you plant that tree and wonder, “What if I found something I didn’t expect,” and you imagine what it could be, then you’re off to a good start on your story.

Some of the most famous inventors, writers, musicians and artists of all kinds have that “what if” gene. They wouldn’t be what they are without it.

(3)   Finally, you need a vivid imagination. If you have the curiosity to ask the question “what if,” you need a vibrant and active imagination to conjure up an answer. It’s your imagination that tells you what’s in the time capsule, who found it, what he did, who he told, what was the mystery and what happened next. It’s your imagination that takes a simple “what if” idea and turns it into a book.


Q. Who are some of those famous “what if” people you mentioned?

A. Let’s start with a man who wondered what would happen if two people stretched a wire between two rooms and connected it to a vibrating mechanism, then spoke into the device on one end and listened to it on the other. As a result, we have the first telephone.

A writer once imagined what would happen if a vengeful ship captain set out to find and kill the giant white whale that had taken off his leg, and we got the classic novel Moby Dick. 

Two guys sat down with guitars one day and wondered, “What if we wrote a song that said ‘she loves you yeah yeah yeah,’” and that gave the Beatles their first big hit.

And an artist once looked at the woman he was painting and wondered what would happen if, instead of a smile, he gave her a smirk, and that gave us one of the world’s most famous works of art—the Mona Lisa.

This is what happens when creative people asked themselves “what if?” and use their imaginations to answer the question.


Q. What’s the hardest part of writing a novel?

A. In fiction, because you are making up things that don’t really exist, the hardest part is keeping the timeline straight, being consistent with your characters and making sure that what you write is believable enough that it could happen the way you said it did. (Exception noted for science fiction.)

For example, I have gone back to review chapters I wrote previously and realized that a person couldn’t know something I said he knew because it hadn’t happened yet. That happens a lot when you rearrange sections during an edit. For that reason, I’ve started keeping calendars of events and writing a chronology of what happened and when.

I once found that one of my characters had two different first names—one early in the book and one a few chapters later. In my defense, I wrote those chapters months apart. To avoid that, I’ll sometimes insert a place holder where the character goes, write his or her description separately and blend it into the book later.

In one book, I discovered that I had two people going to work on a specific date in June 2004 when, in fact, that date was a Sunday and neither of them would have gone to their jobs on that day. I had to search the manuscript and change the date throughout.

In the same book, I gave a character the wrong last name. Hey, it happens.


Q. What’s the easiest part of writing a novel?

A. I’m not sure I’d say it’s always easy, but the most enjoyable part for me is writing dialogue. It comes fairly easily to me most of the time. I just think what I would say at a given time and then have my character say it, or I try to put myself in the character’s mind and imagine what he or she would say. It’s almost like talking to yourself through a keyboard.

I also find it pretty easy to create characters. Because they’re not real, you can give them any traits or habits you choose and make them look any way you want them to look. I have written handsome men, ugly men, beautiful women, homely women, old people, young people, adorable children and children who need a bath. I’ve written happy people, sad people, drunks, ministers, cops, killers and everything in between.

After I finish a book, I often go back and read the parts where I introduced a character and try to figure out where the inspiration came from. Sometimes I also see parts of myself in the people I write, and that amuses me.


Q. A lot of authors outline their books before they start to write. Why don’t you?

A. Maybe I’m not that organized, or maybe my brain doesn’t work that way, but really, I don’t think it’s necessary. I tend to develop ideas after I first put pen to paper rather than plot out an entire book in advance. I don’t think one way is necessarily better than another. It all depends on the author.

In my case, sometimes I wake up with ideas and run to my office to type them out. Sometimes they come to me when I’m walking my dog or sitting outside on my deck. As long as I can write “and then…” and come up with a narrative to move my story along, I don’t need to have it outlined all the way to the end.

I will admit to this: Sometimes I get to the point where I have written the beginning and the end and I need to fill out the middle that connects those two dots. At that point, I’ll make a list of the things that need to happen or the questions that need to be answered before the end of the book makes sense.

When I do that, I will retroactively list all of the chapters I have written with a summary of what’s in them, and add a chapter for every plot point that I need to insert. This is usually when I complete my calendar and double-check my chronology to make sure the story has the proper timing and flow.

If that’s what you consider an outline, then yes, I’ll do that sometimes. I’d call it more of an “outline after the fact.”


Q. When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

A. I started at a very early age. When I was a kid of 10 or 12, I wrote a neighborhood newspaper. It was laid out in pencil on notebook paper and probably reported on the day’s wiffle ball game or somebody’s birthday party. (I forget.) I’d say the number of editions was probably in the neighborhood of…one.

In high school I started writing poetry and song lyrics for a garage band I was in, and during college I wrote for the school newspaper. I became a journalist after college and worked for four newspapers over 13 years.

Even after I left the newspaper business I continued to write news releases, newsletters, pamphlets, brochures, advertising, position papers, magazine articles and other materials for a public utility and, later, for a variety of clients as a freelance communications consultant.

So I guess I've always been a writer and I never wanted to be anything else, which is good, because it’s about the only thing I really know how to do.

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