 | ||||||
Cruel Devices - 2014
George,
Thank you for taking your time for my audience and myself ~
Who are your influences?
Too many to mention, though I will concede that my sci-fi
novel, Spindown was heavily influenced by William Goldings’ Lord of the Flies
and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. My second novel, Cruel Devices which is
a horror story definitely has traces of Stephen King between the pages.
When did you begin writing?
Looking back over the years I've always enjoyed telling
stories. Only recently did I realize that I’ve unofficially been writing my
entire life though it took the form of puppet shows, homemade comic books, and
wacky stories that I’d tell my family on long road trips. When my daughter was
four, she and I would make up bed-me stories. I noticed that the tall tales we
were making up were better than some we bought from the bookstore. I decided to
try my hand at writing children’s stories and joined the Society of Children’s
Book Writers and Illustrators for a brief period. When I won the Joan Lowery
Nixon award for a children's book entitled “Don't
Wake Esmeralda!” in 2006, I thought there may be a future in writing for
me.
After my kids outgrew picture books, I found my voice in
speculative fiction. For obvious reasons, I was able to delve into darker
themes and more sophisticated concepts, but I still believe a good story is a
good tale at its core for any age.
How do you come up with your stories, characters,
character names, POV, etc?
I often reverse engineer my books and let the story dictate
the best setting to tell the story. I start with a question or theme I wish to
explore and then work my way backward filling in the holes until the logic for
why things are happening is sound.
For example, in Spindown, I wanted to look at what makes us
human – are we born to become who we are to become or merely the by-products of
experiences, or a mix of both? In order to examine this idea I needed
characters devoid of any emotional experiences, yet be full grown adults. I
wanted characters that were ‘blank canvases’ that I could expose to extreme
situations and observe their reactions. The solution was a group of clones that
were severely isolated from one another. Then the question becomes why would
they be that way? So by reverse engineering I determined that these imaginary
people worked in space on an ore mine on a moon of Jupiter and that it must be
a corporation using clone labor to reduce costs. I keep backing up the ‘camera’
until the questions are answered and backstory is solid. Once that’s done I can
begin the journey.
Do you work from an outline?
I usually have certain plot points that I want to hit along
the way in the story, but the outline method that works best for me is more
like a cyclone fence. So there is a defined structure to it, but plenty of
openings between the ‘nodes’ to allow for unexpected things to come from
evolving characters. Some of the best moments occur when the story momentum
takes me ‘off road’ from what I’d planned to do.
Tell me about your favorite scene in your novel(s).
For Cruel Devices it would be the opening scene in the
bookstore. This is where author Gavin Curtis gives an impromptu lecture of the
nature of horror and how it’s the removal of control from a person. Shortly
after that speech, he begins a slowburn descent in which all control is
stripped from him. Ultimately he’s put in the cross hairs of an evil entity and
a till the death tug-of-war for power ensues.
For Spindown it would be the first time the renegade clones encounter a dead person. Since the characters are naïve about the world they’ve never experienced death. Each member of the group presents a child-like theory as to what has occurred.
Can you tell us a little about your writing
philosophy?
At the end of the day it all about story and whether or not
the reader was engaged. I like what Vonnegut said about respecting the
reader: “Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not
feel the time was wasted.” Obey this simple rule and everyone wins.
Have you ever tried writing in any other genres?
Spindown is considered hard sci-fi, Cruel Devices is
horror/suspense, and I’m currently finishing up a massive Steampunk Detective
Noir novel set in 1901—Yeah, apparently I’m ‘Genre-Free’. Smiles
Do you have any interesting writing-related anecdotes
to share?
A peculiar thing happened to me as I began to write
Spindown; the introduction of the main character, Fowler opens with his morning
routines. The system requires a daily health status check to ensure that workers
are fit to go to work in the mines. So we see him wake up and perform these
diagnostic tests on his body before doing anything else. Within a week of writing
that scene, I was diagnosed with diabetes and like Fowler, became forced to
measure my blood each morning before going off to work. It was a moment when life
imitates art. At the same time I was writing a theater play in which one of the
characters, a young child drowns. The boy was the same age of my son at the time
and it creeped me out a bit to write that scene.
Though the idea was ridiculous, I found myself thinking what
if in some weird way, I was causing something tragic to happen to my son just
because I’d written it. It was a silly fleeting idea, but the concept of an
author’s writings bringing something into reality stuck with me. Months later I
began writing Cruel Devices. I’m aware that it’s been done before, even Stephen
King has a short story called Word Processor of the Gods, L. Ron Hubbard
dabbles with the concept in Typewriter in the Sky and there’s the video game,
Alan Wake, has a writer near a mystical lake that turns everything he writes
into existence. I took a different approach for how and why something like this
would be happening. That’s all that I can say without giving spoilers, sorry.
Do you listen to music as you write?
Great question. Music is a very important part of my life,
so much a part of it that songs/genres that I listen to when not writing easily
distract me when I’m ‘working’. I do this kind of Pavlovian conditioning thing
in which there are some classical and ambient selections that I ONLY listen to
when writing. It helps to trigger my brain into knowing that ‘It’s time to
write’ when this music is played:
Philip Glass – Symphony No. 9, Low Symphony, Heroes Symphony
Vangelis – Antarctica
The ambient sections of the ‘Monster’s Ball’ soundtrack
Brian Eno – Music for Airports
Anything from the band Pauseland, and a minimalist band from
Austin, Texas called ‘Stars of the Lid’
On the behalf of my reader's, again, I thank you George for your time
✒ ✒ ✒ ✒ ✒ ✒ ✒ ✒ ✒
 | ||||
| Goodreads author |
Connect with
George Wright Padgett
Cruel Devices on Amazon
✒ ✒ ✒ ✒ ✒
Spindown on Amazon
✒ ✒ ✒
No comments:
Post a Comment