Rob Smales
Echoes of Darkness 2016 ~ Books & Boos Press; 1 edition (February 27, 2016)
Mr. Smales,
Thank you for taking the time for my audience and myself ~
Who are your influences?
Just like every other writer out there, I’m influenced by everyone I read, so my greatest influences are the writers I read most. Growing up I read a lot of Stephen King and Dean Koontz―which may explain my leanings toward horror―but I also read a whole bunch of Robert Heinlein and Piers Anthony, as well as Douglas Adams (I may have read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy a dozen times), Alan Dean Foster, Robert Asprin, and L. Ron Hubbard, so there was a large science fiction aspect. Then for mystery there was Robert B. Parker and Sue Grafton, John Sandford and Michael Connelly had crime covered, Howard and Salvatore were wonderful for swords & sorcery style fantasy . . . Christ, this is all just off the top of my head, and I’m skipping dozens of influences. It’s too late to keep it short, but can I just say my influences are eclectic?
When did you begin writing?
August 2010, at 41 years of age. I still have the story. It’s locked away in my Dropbox, and no one will ever see it . . . probably.
How do you come up with your stories, characters, character names, POV, etc.?
My instinct is to say I just do it, but that’s the kind of answer people hate. Unfortunately for them, that’s the way it is for a lot of my stories. I’ll be walking along thinking something completely unrelated, like, If God created Adam and Eve, whole and adult . . . did they have belly buttons? and the next thing I know I have a story flowing through my head that winds up being titled “Death of the Boy.” Situations come to me, and they either have the POV character already in place, or I think Who would be interesting in this scenario? I’ve been scolded for not taking more care in my name choosing, but I actually tend to just run with whatever pops into my head; I think horror works best if it could happen to anyone, and there are more people out there named Tom Smith or Bob Jones than Rock Sterling. Then I pretty much let the characters tell me the story. Plot is just as important as characters, but if the plot requires the characters to do something that’s completely unbelievable or inconsistent for those characters to do, I think the whole thing falls down.
If you could actually meet one of your characters, who would it be? Why?
I think maybe the old man in “Death of the Boy.” He’s crusty and crabby, and he’s seen a lot, and lived through it all. He’s got a flat, no-nonsense, just-get-it-done attitude, and the man pays attention to the world around him. I think if you could get him talking he’d have some serious stories to tell, and he’d tell them without any exaggeration or hyperbole: you’d get the facts. He’s also a bit of a bastard—maybe more than a bit. I might not like him, but he’d sure be interesting.
Do you work from an outline?
Not usually, though I tend to have a pretty good idea where I want the story to begin and end. I use a voice recorder to make a lot of notes, kind of talking my way through the whole thing at least once, then the characters and I enter a kind of partnership: they’re supposed to lead me from A to Z. Quite often, though, Z changes, at least a little, as I learn who the characters are and what they are capable of. At the moment I’m working on my first collaboration, and for that the other author and I are working from an outline, though we both recognize the outline might change a bit as we go along.
Tell me about your favorite scene in your novel(s).
It’s not just a scene, but an entire flash fiction story called “Those Little Bastards.” I like to do public readings, and while this one’s short enough that I can give the audience an entire story, rather than an excerpt, it’s also in the first person (which makes for a good reading) and the character is fun. He’s a grumpy old man, and maybe more than just grumpy, maybe not altogether sane, and that just makes him entertaining to be for a while.
Can you tell us a little about your writing philosophy?
I’m writing things I’d like to read, and that makes it fun for me. If other people like to read what I’ve written, good; it’s fun for them. But I don’t like being misunderstood, and no one enjoys being confused, so it behooves us both if I do the clearest, best job I can on my end, and the more I do the best job that I can, the better that job gets. I’m going to be telling stories and hopefully getting better and better at it until the day I die. Come along for the ride!
Have you ever tried writing in any other genres?
Oh, sure. When he was younger I wrote a short sci-fi series for my son, as something to read to him at bedtime. The first thing I ever wrote, that story I have locked away from the world in my Dropbox, was a romantic comedy. I have an adventure short out there somewhere, and a Christmas story that was accepted by an LDS publication—which is about as far from horror as you can get. That collaboration I mentioned is a YA paranormal adventure. I may enjoy writing the creepy stuff, but that’s not all I have floating around in this head of mine. I just need the time to wade through the drift of ideas and story notes so I can get some of them down on paper and out to the public. I’m working on that.
Do you have any interesting writing-related anecdotes to share?
I don’t know if this is interesting, but it was amusing to me. As I mentioned above, I enjoy doing public readings . . . but I’m uncomfortable talking about myself. I was at a mass reading one evening—six authors, all sharing excerpts of their work—and it was the first event of that nature I’d attended with my (also author) friend, Tony. We were all sitting in the front of the room when the emcee told the audience we’d do a round of introductions first, giving each of the writers a little time to talk about themselves and their work before we dove into the readings.
“Oh, great,” I muttered.
Tony leaned toward me. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m not all that big on talking about myself.”
“Oh.” He smiled. “You’ll do fine.”
Then it was my turn. I stood and said, “Hi. I’m Rob. I write stuff.” I sat down.
There was a beat of silence, then the audience heard Tony say “Wow. You really don’t like talking about yourself, do you?” Then Tony realized it was his turn already, and scrambled to his feet. “Hi, everyone, thank you for coming. My name’s Tony, and I like to write about . . .”
Do you listen to music as you write?
Sometimes I do, yes. It’s an instrumental rock playlist from Brand X Music I use as background noise when I need to focus in a distracting place, like a library or coffee shop. I play it on a loop if I need to shut out the outside world, and since I use the same loop whenever I’m writing I subconsciously associate these tracks with writing. They help my mind snap to attention and focus, like Okay, this is what we’re doing now.
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About the author:
Connect with Rob
Rob Smales is the author of DEAD OF WINTER, which won the Superior Achievement in Dark Fiction Award from Firbolg Publishing’s Gothic Library in 2014. His short stories have been published in two dozen anthologies and magazines. His story “Photo Finish” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and won the Preditors & Editors’ Readers Choice Award for Best Horror Short Story of 2012.
Most recently, his story “A Night at the Show” received an honorable mention on Ellen Datlow’s list of the Best Horror of 2014, and was also nominated as best short story by the eFestival of Words in 2015.
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Lifelong reader, recently turned writer, my friends were surprised when I turned to writing horror. They remember me reading a lot of Sci-Fi while growing up. And I did. But there was an awful lot of Fantasy, Crime, Mystery and, yes, Horror in the mix.
Though I do have a few non-horror stories in my head and fighting to get out (I started this ride writing a series of Sci-Fi shorts to read to my son at night), most of what I write about comes from the darker side of life. And unlife. I'm going to just keep sprinkling material onto the mulch pile in my mind and see what comes up.
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