Richard Godwin

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Nik Korpon

Posted on May 31, 2015 by richardgodwin

CaponeCW_640x267_TimeMach

Nik Korpon is the author of Stay God, Sweet Angel and numerous stories. He writes Noir, he writes transgressive prose that digs into alienation. He is an assistant editor with Dark House Press. He lives in Baltimore. Nik met me at The Slaughterhouse, where we talked about his novel and the sub-genres of Noir.

How central is identity to your novel Stay God, Sweet Angel?

Identity plays into almost everything I write. In Stay God, Sweet Angel, it’s the literal centerpiece of it, as the guy not only uses a Baltimore pawn shop as a drug dealing front, but he also assumed a different name on fleeing some bad business up in Massachusetts. There are also an assortment of people who might or might not be who they say they are.

Actually, let me take that back. I think the more accurate thing to say would be that appearances–if not personal identity explicitly–fascinate me, how we present ourselves to each other. Crime fiction is kind of built off that, but the tension between personal interiors and exteriors, who we choose to be to which people, all of that gives a writer so much to play with.

I remember seeing Dateline or 20/20–I think it was 20/20, because it came on Friday night after the X-Files back in the 90s–about this grandfather who had been sentenced to forty years in jail for something like fifty robberies. They interviewed him a couple times and, obviously, he looked like a grandfather, very soft-spoken and mild-mannered and whatnot, but what really struck me was the interviews with his victims. Every last one of them said how nice he was, and that he’d make sure the ropes weren’t too tight, or put a pillow beneath someone so they were comfortable. A couple people even gave him extra money because he was so nice. But still, the guy was taking tens of thousands of dollars worth of stuff. It’s not the most extreme example of interiors and exteriors–and especially not when I was at the age where all I watched was Nightmare on Elm Street and Godfather–but something about that dissonance has stuck with me for twenty years.

Do you think within Noir there is a sub-genre of a Noir literature of alienation?

You mean characters alienated from society, or something along those lines? I definitely see that. I mean, just by definition–or one of the definitions–noir is about the downtrodden, the outcast, the forgotten. Fiction about losers, is what I think Otto Penzler called it. It’s about the cogs on which the clock runs, not the actual clock. So those people are bound to feel alienated and lash out accordingly. Plus, if a character has nothing tethering them to society, there’s nothing to keep them from sinking and sinking and sinking.

I think it’s really interesting to watch people flip that alienation on it’s head though, and where most noir characters are lone wolves (wolfs? can you have multiple “lone”? I digress…) you instead see characters that are constantly surrounded by people, to the point of claustrophobia. It’s hard to pull some nefarious shit with a lot of onlookers. Somewhat related: I’d avoided using technology in stories for a really long time because I thought it hurt the aesthetic of the world. Calling someone on a mobile isn’t nearly as cool as finding a payphone, yeah? Then I read a few books (or, being honest, probably watched a couple TV shows) where they used cell phones extensively and I was completely converted, because they made it so much harder for characters to achieve their goal. The phones became the all-seeing eye. Plus there was the possible drama of meeting a supplier at a diner table to set up some deal while your hand was under the table, texting all the details to your partner to rip-off the supplier. Stuff like that. They became a socially acceptable form of Big Brother.
That went way off topic…

How important is redemption in your writing?

Much more important now than it used to be. When I first started writing crime and noir, I was trying to outdo everything I’d read. Make it darker, more visceral, more lyrical. That was fun for a while but it started to wear on me as I got older, and as I read more. I still like things to be dark and fucked up–probably because I write largely about love and families, which are both dark and fucked up–but I prefer to have some glimmer of hope at the end. That doesn’t necessarily mean a character needs to be redeemed, but I like for them to be moving toward it, even if they fail. All of this is probably a function of me getting older, having kids and whatnot. I don’t need, or want, everything to be gloom and doom all the time. If I want unrelentingly depressing shit, I can watch the news.

I think this was probably my bone with True Detective, though I did enjoy the show a lot, and it’s why I tend to gravitate more toward stories like Justified, The Americans, Breaking Bad, things like that. There’s still a lot of bad stuff happening, but there’s a very human element to the story. With True Detective, Ligotti, all the anti-natalist theory and whatnot, the cynicism became overwhelming and made the story part of my brain shut down, or at least stop paying attention. I mean, I was raised Catholic; I’ve already got enough residual guilt weighing me down (and, like many Catholics I know, have later become a practicing Buddhist).
That’s not to say that I believe solely in happy endings. In the same way that I’m turned off by completely depressing endings, I don’t think anyone walks away from a dramatic incident unscarred. Most of my endings are somewhere in between, where the character has (usually) overcome the obstacle (mostly), but whether they survive in the long-term is still unclear. Which, to me, is the most honest ending.

Who are your literary influences?

They’ve changed over the years. The Outsiders was my favorite book for about ten years when I was young, along with some Stephen King. When I first started writing, probably in my early 20s or so, I was all about Irvine Welsh, Chuck Palahniuk, Nick Hornby, F, Scott Fitzgerald and the Beats, especially The Subterraneans by Kerouac. I loved that book desperately. Actually, I haven’t reread it in probably ten years, mostly because I don’t want to taint the way I remember it. I drank wine out of the bottle and wrote these overwrought faux poems and an abortion of a novel. All of my writing was terrible then. Hasn’t gotten much better now but…

Once I started to get serious about writing (and I’m not saying those people aren’t serious writers, just that my tastes changed) the three biggest books for me were Kiss Me, Judas by Will Christopher Baer, Dermaphoria by Craig Clevenger, and Chronicle of a Death Foretold/100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Pretty much anything in Macondo, actually. I read everything Gabbo wrote, save Melancholy Whores, in about six months. Dermaphoria was a big one for me, because just as Palahniuk and Welsh redefined for me what books could be as a reader, Derma blew open what you could do as a writer. I also read it right before starting grad school, so it came at a pivotal time for me. The Baltimore of my writing is directly taken from Gabbo’s Macondo, in that most of the stories are in the same world and characters pop up in various stories and novels. And Baer, I could listen to his words instead of music.

As I got more into crime fiction, I found James M. Cain, specifically Postman, and that changed everything again. The doomed lovers, the inevitability bearing down on them, that opening line. I’ve been trying to write that book for eight years and still can’t get it right. Cain led me to Jim Thompson, who inflicted his stories on me for a couple years. I worked my way through a lot of the golden-era writers up to contemporary stuff, people like Megan Abbott, Lehane, Don Winslow, Gillian Flynn, Woodrell, Tana French. I don’t think there’s hard and fast evidence of their influence on me, but it’s filtered through. I can hear it even if no one else can.

More recently, I’ve been reading a lot of “mountains crime,” for lack of a better term (I always think rural noir sounds condescending), guys like Ben Whitmer and Wiley Cash, and crime from Northern Ireland, Gerard Brennan and Stuart Neville. Kind of a weird mix, but it fits somehow.

And it’s not explicitly literary, but I read a lot of teleplays over the last year before writing a few TV and film scripts (all spec, unfortunately), and it has started informing my novel-writing. For one, you track through one “story” a hell of a lot quicker than reading a novel, and two, the screenwriter has already stripped away all the bullshit so you can see story and story only. It’s incredibly helpful because you start to see how scenes and sequences are put together, watch dialogue and action play against one another, see only what’s essential to the narrative, then apply that to prose. I mean, you see all that in books, but I’m not a terribly smart guy so it’s helps me to have it laid bare like that.

Do you think too much crime fiction sanitises crime?

I think it’s hard to get it right. As many books sanitize crime as glorify and revel in it. I’m not sure which is worse. Glossing over it robs the scene of its impact, but blood and gore for the sake of blood and gore pulls you out of the story too. Unless it’s particularly campy and that’s all part of the fun, like that scene in Hatchet where you can actually see the lip of the bucket as they’re throwing blood on the tree. I’m pretty forgiving with violence, as long as it’s honest, but I prefer to read, and write, emotional violence than physical violence. What’s that Thuglit line–Think clever, not cleaver or something like that? A broken glass at a dinner table can be more dramatic than a chainsaw if it’s used properly.

Graham Greene wrote, ‘There is a splinter of ice in the heart of a writer.’ What do you make of his observation?

Possibly that writers should be somewhat cold? I’m not sure. I think it’d be hard for someone to write if they don’t have some kind of interest in other people, empathy or something along those lines. I don’t know if you have to actually enjoy people to be a great writer–I tend to be introverted, so I hope you don’t have to–but an interest in what makes people tick is helpful.

What do you make of the e-book revolution?

It’s great. It’s given all of these emerging authors a chance to get their books out and be heard. It’s also allowed a number of great micropresses to start publishing work of these writers who are unknown but exciting as hell to read. Same with all of the great magazines that have popped up over the last five years. All of the talk about ebooks rendering print obsolete and whatnot is a bunch of horseshit, to my mind. A lot of people still prefer paper over digital, and will continue to buy paperbacks.

What the ebook revolution did was give more flexibility to readers and possibly attract newer, more tech-savvy readers (though I don’t mean that in a condescending way). I don’t have a ton of spare time, so having a Kindle app on my phone lets me sneak in some extra reading when I have twenty minutes. I’d still prefer to lay in my hammock with a beer and read an entire book, but beggars and choosers, you know? Still, despite having a Kindle app and a Kindle, most of what I read is still paperback.

From the publishing side, I think the next logical step in ebooks–and it’s something some indie presses are doing, as well as some indie music labels–is to package a digital download with a physical copy. I’ve picked up a bunch of records that have a code for a free digital download, and it makes the most sense because it allows people to have the record wherever they go. Same with books. There’s no reason not to do it, other than trying to make an extra couple bucks of people. In the end, it hurts the readers and the writers most.

How important is personal struggle to your writing?

It’s probably one of the most important things of the book. If your characters don’t have to struggle for anything, there’s no drama, no reason to keep reading (or writing, for that matter). One of the things I constantly worry about is how much struggle is too much. I never want it to be easy for a character to reach their goal–and I’m always looking for ways to make their life harder–but finding that sweet spot between drama and grinding-doom is tricky. I’ve always admired writers like Stephen Graham Jones and the Breaking Bad writers who constantly write themselves into a corner then manage to find their way out without it being ridiculous. I don’t know if I ever quite hit that mark.

What advice would you give yourself as a younger man?

I’d tell a younger me a couple things:
-No, it’s not good enough yet. Have another crack.
-Yes, someone’s written a story like that before, but it’s okay. Do it different and do it better.
-No, your life is not going to end if you don’t get this story/novel/screenplay picked up somewhere. Write another one and make it better this time.
-Yes, the writing life can be cruel, lonely, self-defeating, and full of misery.
-No, you can’t quit. Give it ten minutes and you’ll write a great sentence or have a great conversation at a reading and everything will be fine again.
-Yes, by all means, write a story you think is interesting and is fun to follow. That’s the whole point, yeah?
-No, it doesn’t have to be “noir as fuck,” whatever that means.
-Yes, you can practice you signature for that four-book deal that will allow you to quit one of your jobs. Just don’t leave the cap off the pen. It might be a while.

If you could choose a film-world to live inside, which would you choose?

I’m probably going to lose punk points for this, but it’s a split between Inception and Amelie, which, yeah, are pretty damn far apart. Something about the immersive world of Inception, the set decoration, the aesthetic of it, it really hit me. There are problems with the film, sure, but the world itself is beautiful. And strangely enough, I wrote the novella that became The Boys From County Hell, a sci-fi novel featuring memory thieves and Billie Holliday I just finished, right before I saw Inception. So I was doubly pissed to see dream thieves and Edith Piaf done amazingly well on the screen.

Same way with Amelie, but in the totally opposite direction. Everything is so whimsical and grease-smeared, and with the wet cobblestones and the organ grinder music going on in the background, hits some Francophile chord in me. Doesn’t hurt that I’ve been planning on marrying Audrey Tautou for the last fifteen years…

Thank you Nik for an informative interview.

Links:

‘Stay God, Sweet Angel’ can be found at Amazon US and UK

See all Nik Korpon books at his US and UK Amazon author pages

Find Nik at Goodreads, Facebook, and Twitter @nikkorpon

And of course you are invited to visit his “occasionally updated homepage,” here.

Posted in Author Interviews - Chin Wags | Tagged Nik Korpon | 3 Comments

Quick Fire At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Mav Skye

Posted on May 24, 2015 by richardgodwin

QuickFire02

Mav Skye writes slipstream subversive fiction. Supergirls is the story of two women corrupted by a lifestyle whose propaganda they feed on, a dystopian narrative of sexual predation hiding inside broken ideals. The protagonists are driven by the desire for wealth and their own conditioning by the fictional heroisms of TV and the myth of the superhero and the sequel is Night Without Stars. Mav met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about her novel and the theme of predation.

Tell us about Night Without Stars.

Fear is a flighty little feather. Blown one way, it can turn the strongest men into cowards, blown another direction, it can spur the weak to become warriors. We don’t know how we will respond or react until the fear feather tickles that little trigger inside every single one of us, that little trigger called SURVIVAL.

Night without Stars is about the survival beast inside, and how our lovely Supergirls, Jenn and May, deal with it. There are new characters added to our story as well, a rogue priest who falls desperately in love with Jenn. And two siblings rescued from the sex trade, Tina and Tony.

Do you think it is possible to survive in a predatory world without turning to predation?

We are living in a predatory world right now. You and I may live peacefully in our homes, but there are monsters out there. Possibly right next door. Down the street, a wolf in sheep’s clothing preaches at the local church. They are in our schools, work places, in our politics. Predators perceive innocence and goodness as weakness. They are constantly sizing up the gentle and naïve, sniffing the air for fear.

Because fear is what first turned them into the monsters they are now. Fear can strip power or empower.

Predators don’t come out of the womb as monsters. Not most anyway. No, predators are created when someone hurts them, someone steals their power. The emerging predator copes with the fear and the pain by identifying with the tormentor, by becoming the monster.

Is it possible to survive in a predatory world without turning to predation? Yes. But we must guard our hearts and minds, because every single one of us is susceptible to the beast within and without.

How does Supergirls 2 compare to 1?

The first book introduces us to Jenn and May, their desperate attempt to reach for their dreams by conning a bad guy (Piggy) out of his money. Obviously, their plan isn’t so simple, and it ends tragically for the sisters. The story is told from Jenn’s pov, and the story teeters on the edge of reality.

In Supergirls 2, we take the plunge all the way into the ghostly realm. Jenn and May are in their own world, and they pull others into their spiraling cycle of love, madness and survival. They find peace and family with a complete set of strangers (whom we get to know intimately as the story is written in multiple POV’s). It’s the American dream before it turns into the American nightmare.

Both books definitely have animalistic themes. And I have to admit that there is something of a cautionary tale for adults in them. The first had the obvious theme for a pig. I kept seeing Bells as this enormous, pink pig with an apple in his mouth, struggling on the floor in front of the fire. He is the ultimate in decadence and filthy rich lifestyle. He has a sadistic imagination where he is the ultimate god of his world.

The second book uses imagery that leads to “the beast within” theme. The story opens in a fairytale way with innocence and curiosity…by the end of the first chapter a man in a wolf mask is knocking on the door and I hope readers can just hear the old wolf’s words “Little pig, little pig let me come in!”. The single scene immediately impacts the rest of the story (and characters.) The suspense won’t let you go until the end.

Tell us what else is on the cards for you this year?

Oh, the usual literary riff raff. Let’s see, I’m shooting for October (again!) to release Wanted: Single rose, my first full-length horror novel. I’m also finishing up a draft of an extremely long (about 120k) small town crime story based on the town I grew up as a teen. It’s called Devil’s Playground.

Also, writing the third novella in the Supergirls series, of course, and you can be the first to know that I’m writing ZOMBIES. The book I’m currently working on is about a young girl who gets trapped in a doomsday prepper’s grain silo immediately after the apocalypse. A sadistic old woman has the only key to unlock the door, and thinks of more and more sadistic ways to torture the girl. I’m thinking about calling it Zombpunzel. Ha.

And as usual, I’m always writing new short stories here and there, and combining them with some previously published stories for my 3 Tales to Chill Your Bones series on Amazon.

Thanks Mav for a great interview.

Links:

Get a copy of ‘Supergirls 2’ at Amazon US and UK

‘Supergirls 1’ Amazon US and UK

Mav Skye Amazon author pages US and UK

Find Mav Skye at her website, on Facebook, and Twitter

Might as well sign up for Mav Skye’s Horror Newsletter while you’re looking around. It’ll get you a free copy of ‘Harvester of Days’

Posted in Author Interviews - Quick-Fires | Tagged Crime Fiction, Horror | 8 Comments

Quick Fire At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Terry Irving

Posted on May 18, 2015 by richardgodwin

QuickFire02

Terry Irving is a novelist, journalist and an American four-time Emmy award-winning writer and TV producer. He is the author of Courier, and The Day of the Dragon King. He has also set up Ronin Robot Press, a publisher that specialises in the best of the books ignored by the major publishers. Terry met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about Publsush Crowdfunding and publishing.

Tell us about Pubslush Crowdfunding.

Great name, isn’t it?

Pubslush is the literary equivalent of Indiegogo or Kickstarter. It’s named after the “slush pile” where unwanted manuscripts ended up at publishers back in the day. If you look at the other crowdfunding sites, you’ll see films, graphic novels, plays, etc. but very few books so it’s clearly needed.

Now, it’s a site that serves a relatively small but growing number of independent authors and publishers with readers looking either to read the latest new books or to support struggling writers and publishers in these days of complete confusion and collapse in the book business. It supports three types of projects: simple crowd-funding: an author or (in my case) a struggling publisher looks for funding through a combination of selling the project and handing out awards depending on the amount donated, Book Pre-orders: a small press can pre-sell a book and get a feel for whether the market will support it and get the funds to publish at the same time. Finally, it’s a marketplace where an author (or publisher) has the space to really sell a book. There are over 150 publishers taking part–from Iguana Publishing to Grey Gecko Books-and they are partnered with major companies in the field like Lulu, Smith Publicity, and NaNoWriMo.

Why do you think many good novels do not get published?

An interesting question that really has to be answered in two parts: How many unpublished novels are good? And of those good novels, why don’t they get published?

First, I have to say that the vast majority of self-published novels–particularly of the eBook variety, aren’t Good. They aren’t even OK. They suck. I’m sorry, but it’s true. Sadly, I’m a Baby Boomer and when one of us does something, every damn one of us does the exact same thing. In this case, we have all retired (or can’t find work) and are writing that book. Or are trying to make some money and are writing a couple of dozen books in the hope of making a reasonable income. Since we’ve been told our entire lives that everything we do is wonderful and perfect, indie writers seem to go in one of two directions: either they go to endless meetings where you sit in a circle and have your work critiqued by every Tom, Dick , and Harry who walks by and, as a result, never actually publish anything or they throw the most incredible drivel up on the market and see if it sells.

Usually, someone buys it.

Sadly, it’s usually a self-defining definition. If you’re “self-published” your book sucks. If your book didn’t suck, it would be published. It’s like finding a “respected scientist” who researches UFOs. You cannot be respected if you research little green men. Ipso Facto.

In my case, I was published and then the publisher was killed in a brutal and completely criminal fashion by the grandparent company. (I guess I should point out that I am referring to the company in a metaphoric sense and not the Publisher as a human being. Did I need to explain that?) I had always intended to be a “Published Author.” For one thing, you can’t get into any of the cool book conventions as a “selfie” or an “indie” or whatever they call us these days. In addition, you’re stuck in a category with some truly dreadful books. It’s not all Shades of Gray and Dust or Sand or whatever.

The third part of my two-part answer is that the book publishing industry is in flux. Which is nice way of saying that it resembles trying to make a living in Weimar Republic when your money would drop in value between the time you bought a loaf a bread and the moment you paid for it. No one has a clue what will sell, what stores will be open to sell it in, what advertising still works (if any,) what marketing works, and what authors are worth putting any money into.

If it wasn’t for Patterson, I think half of the American publishing market would be defunct.

So, the big boys only take on established authors with a track record of sales. This looks a lot better when you go into the weekly meeting where you have to defend every book you’d like to green light. Instead of mumbling about this Tolkien fellow and goblins and rings, you can just say, “Hey, it’s Steve Berry, he sells back our investment in the first week and if we don’t take him, Simon & Penguin, Marks, Knopf, $ Gireaux will.”

At which point, the president of the company walks in and announces that they’ve just been sold to Random Osprey & Robot and everyone has to find three best-selling gay/cis-male nonsexual erotica books with at least two holistic brownie recipes by tomorrow noon.

Tell us about Angry Robot Press.

Angry Robot is a publisher determined to survive. To my knowledge, they’ve gone through three owners in the past decade and continued to publish crazed gore-sodden noir and equally insane science fiction. They aren’t evil people, it’s just the nature of the business. When Exhibit A got the axe, they were owned by Osprey which was a company of incredibly serious military books (Polish Aces of World War 2, Uniforms of the Boer Wars) that had grown out of a manufacturer of tea cards a million years ago.

What I suspect happened was that the CEO of Osprey was also the Editor-in-Chief. That indicates to me that she was the only person at Osprey who knew diddley about books. She departed for an editor’s job at a big publisher and the suits at Osprey jumped up within 24 hours and announced a “reassessment” of the company–which means they threw a big “For Sale” banner on the outside of the building. One thing I learned from my dalliances in the world of tech startups is when you want to sell a company, you need to make it neat and simple for the suits on the buying end. You don’t want to present a combination of tea cards and blood-splatter fiction to a banker.

So, after about two minutes of “reassessment,” Angry Robot was cut loose and on their own. They had the same problem, two new imprints which weren’t making money yet (Exhibit A and Strange Chemistry) so they had to go in order to make their own sale simple. Boom. We were dead.

I followed it vaguely in the trade press and it appeared that Angry Robot went into bankruptcy for about ten minutes and then was acquired by an American company that specialized in holistic meditation–now, that has to be a marvelous synergy. To their credit, they didn’t use the author’s contracts as collateral and returned my rights on a relatively quick basis.

I guess I wish them well on their journey toward holistic splatter-fiction synthesis.
My agent tried to get me another publisher but–even though he has told me that 4 editors at Random House and 3 at Simon & Schuster have read Courier–had no luck. He always disliked Dragonking–just not his cup of tea–and I was left in the cold. In December, when Courier was about to off what few shelves it was on, I decided to take the leap and created Ronin Robot Press.

In truth, it’s a combination. I’ve blown most of my savings on living for three years without an income while I wrote my books and the far longer time I spent waiting for Exhibit A to put them on the market. Then I blew a LOT of money on PR firms that did very little and on going to book conventions which were enjoyable but not sales monsters. Finally, I’ve been a freelancer for too long and I believe in paying an invoice the day it comes in the mail. Far too many people have used the Bank of Freelancer to fund their business and left people with nothing when the business craters. More than anything, that’s what I’m looking for with the Crowdfunding effort at www.roninrobotpress.pubslush.com, the funds to bank away and use to pay the people who are writing, editing, designing the covers, and proofing our books.

Consequently, I need Ronin Robot to succeed. Sure, I’d like to sell my own books but that comes second to making money. Thus Westerns, Romances, and whatever else will sell. I care intensely about the books I write and I’d like to see them go mainstream but it’s quite possible that the books from other authors will be what keeps me alive.

Tell us about your aims in the crowd funding project.

Additionally, I’ve been a freelancer for too long and I believe in paying an invoice the day it comes in the mail. Far too many people have used the Bank of Freelancer to fund their business and left people with nothing when the business craters. More than anything, that’s what I’m looking for with the Crowdfunding effort at www.roninrobotpress.pubslush.com, the funds to bank away and use to pay the people who are writing, editing, designing the covers, and proofing our books.

Consequently, I need Ronin Robot to succeed. Sure, I’d like to sell my own books but that comes second to making money. Thus Westerns, Romances, and whatever else will sell. I care intensely about the books I write and I’d like to see them go mainstream but it’s quite possible that the books from other authors will be what keeps me alive.

Finally, I enjoy sitting in my office and pounding on the computer keyboard. I’ve spent far too many years dressing up in a suit and trying to train tv producers and writers half my age with double the ego. I simply don’t want to do it any more. I enjoy writing my own books, which is rather normal for writers I suppose, What’s odd is that I enjoy editing and/or rewriting other people’s work. Most of my career hasn’t been in original writing but in editing and improving the writing of others and I find that I can work out their “voice” and style. Not all the authors agree with this. In fact, one out of eight has agreed so far. Most independent authors are terrible and quite a few are borderline illiterate but all have a very healthy opinion of their own work.

I’d like to have Ronin Robot Press mean something in the market–a guarantee of a quality, enjoyable book with a comprehensible plot and a minimum of screaming errors. I still will buy a Baen Book almost automatically because Don Baen was a superb editor and I knew I’d like whatever he chose. If the stars align, I would like to be able to do that.

At the minimum, I’d like to put food on the table and money in the pockets of as many freelancers as possible.

Thank you Terry for an informative interview.

Links:
Ronin Robot Press Pubslush event