Musings from Fred Warren

This week’s post features an interview with Fred Warren. Fred Warren writes science fiction and fantasy. His short fiction has appeared in a variety of print and online publications, and his first novel, The Muse, is scheduled to debut in November 2009. Fred works as a government contractor in eastern Kansas, where he lives with his wife and three children.

Check out Fred’s blog at frederation.wordpress.com.

How do you start your day when writing?

I commute to work, about 45 minutes on a rural highway, which gives me a chance to collect my thoughts and prepare mentally for the day, including my writing. I’ve had some of my best story ideas  on the road.

Is there a specific space where you like to write?

I’ve always wanted to have a writer’s lair, but it’s mostly catch-as-catch-can among home office, bedroom, living room, and workplace (when there’s no work going on). I travel a lot with my job, so there are many hotel rooms, bookstores, and coffee shops, too. As long as a place is reasonably quiet and I can avoid interruptions, I can write there.

Your bio says that you wrote privately for years before you started publishing. What made you seek publication?

It was a mix of things. I wrote bits and pieces of stories for a long time as a sort of adjunct to my journaling, when I got tired of writing about the weather and what I had for lunch each day. It was kind of like talking to myself, though, and if you do that long enough, you go crazy. Later, I did some collaborative fan-fiction, just as a lark. I had a lot of fun creating longer stories and playing around with dialogue, and I got some positive feedback from people who were enjoying what I wrote. I was pleasantly surprised that I could write something that other people might actually want to read, and that opened the door to thinking about the possibility of writing something that people might actually want to buy. I got involved with a writer’s forum online, Liberty Hall, that forced me to step up the quality and quantity of my writing, provided rigorous critiques, and encouraged me to submit stories for publication. Once I got my first sale, there was no turning back. I was hooked.

What draws you to speculative fiction?

I like stories that take me someplace I’ve never been, that expand the boundaries of my imagination. I’m also fascinated by what happens when you put ordinary people into extraordinary situations. I spent some time in the Air Force doing flight test, and I can tell you that the most interesting things happen when you take an airplane near the limits of its capabilities. I think people are much the same.

In a nutshell, what is your novel, The Muse, about?

The Muse is a modern fantasy about a struggling writer who is looking for a shot of inspiration to take him to the next level. We talk about writers looking for their muse—this guy literally finds his muse, but it’s nothing like what he expected, and he discovers his world’s a lot stranger and more dangerous than he ever imagined. He’s in a battle for his soul, with the fate of the people he loves most in the balance.

What was your biggest challenge when writing The Muse and how did you overcome it?

I had a real mental block about writing a long story. Before The Muse, I had written nothing but short stories, up to about 8000 words. Cracking the 10000-word barrier was a huge milestone for me, and once I’d done that, getting out to 50000 words and beyond wasn’t nearly as daunting. I discovered the disciplines I’d learned writing short stories served me well in the long form, and it was actually liberating to be able to lavish more detail on characters, setting, and dialogue. It was like moving to a four-bedroom house after spending my whole life in a studio apartment.

Was their someone who read early drafts of your manuscript?

Oh, yes. Lots of people. I started with folks from Liberty Hall whose critique skills I knew and trusted, and expanded that circle to people who wrote in different genres or were simply avid readers who didn’t write at all. Old, young, male, female—I wanted as broad a sample of reactions and advice as I could get.

How did you find a publisher for your book?

It was the last thing I expected. I figured after I’d revised and polished the draft, I was in for a long haul of shopping the story around in search of a publisher. Grace Bridges was starting up a small, independent publishing company in New Zealand, Splashdown Books, and she got hold of one of my drafts. She liked it well enough to offer me a contract.  It was a case of the right story meeting the right person at the right time. We were both taking a risk—new author and new publisher, but Grace and I have worked well together, and I think the story is stronger for her involvement in its production.

What advice would you offer writers who want to use social media to promote their writing?

Keep your expectations realistic. There are lots of powerful tools available to promote your work, but there’s a lot of noise out there on the Net as well, and your promotion efforts can turn into just so much spam. Don’t expect people to respond to a flood of ads and tweets. I think it’s important to establish a presence on the Internet, a place where people can find you and your work, and to use your existing contacts and networking, the people who know you, to spread the word and build some meaningful buzz. It’s the personal testimonies that will carry the most impact—Person A telling Person B that this book is great and they need to read it.

Is there anything that you wish someone would have told you when you first started working on your novel?

Be ready to be surprised. I discovered that the story and I both grew as I wrote it, and things began to happen that I never expected. Characters seemed to take on a life of their own, objects I thought were mere window-dressing took on huge symbolic importance, and the surprises were almost always more helpful to the story than anything I’d planned.

Here’s a freestyle writing challenge. Describe a character that wants to forget his/her last birthday.

I creep toward consciousness as the stasis chamber completes my annual resurrection, and I remember the last time, stumbling onto the deck of my crippled starship, realizing the meteorite impact had destroyed any chance of reaching my destination. My mission has failed. I wonder if there’s any point in waking up again.

The chamber door chimes and opens with an inrush of conditioned air, tangy and metallic, and I discover with a thrill of fear that I’m not alone. We stare at each other. The alien is more human in appearance than I would ever have expected—slender, bipedal, with liquid green eyes and a bluish cast to its skin and flowing hair. It produces an object from behind its back. A weapon? No, it’s small, round, and sprinkled with tiny, colorful dots.

It’s a cake.

The alien smiles. “Your language is difficult. I hope I have interpreted the custom properly. Happy Birthday?”

I accept the cake and smile in return. “Close enough.”