Pocketbook Writer

I’m being a bit lazy on the blogging front today. I worked well yesterday and made good progress on the new Taleran book. I’m really starting to enjoy working on fiction again. The flow of ideas is coming back to me, and I spent a fair amount of time going through and updating my “Taleran Encyclopedia,” which lists all the characters, and various points about language, and calendars, and religions, and all the other exciting elements involved in creating a world like Talera. I have already added a substantial amount to that work and also needed to familiarize myself again with all the elements since it’s been a few years since I worked on Witch of Talera.

In being lazy this morning, I spent a fair amount of time on my deck reading a book by a friend of mine, Charles Nuetzel, who is a somewhat retired author of numerous books. The current book is Pocketbook Writer: Confessions of a Commercial Hack. It’s from Borgo Press, and published by Wildside, just like my Taleran books.

I met Charles many years ago via email and did a length interview with him, which is reprinted in the book. It’s certainly an interesting look at a bygone era in publishing. Charles lived through and worked in the early period of the explosion in paperback book titles. He wrote in all kinds of genres and under many pseudonyms, although I first came in contact with his work in SF and Fantasy. He was very much influenced in those areas by Edgar Rice Burroughs and the first books I found by him were Sword and Planet tales, Warriors of Noomas and Raiders of Noomas. These have been re-released by Borgo in a single volume under the title Torlo Hannis of Noomas, which Charles was kind enough to dedicate partially to me. He’s also written a new edition to the series, with a collaborator (Heidi Garrett), called Slavegirl of Noomas, and I believe there are plans for a further book as well.

I’ll make my blogging rounds later this evening. In the meantime, don’t forget that Ello is hosting Dr. Gigi Durham today for a discussion on the issue of the sexualization of young girls and the problems it is creating, for women, men, and society. I’m heading over there now.

The Interview

I was flattered to have Shauna Roberts ask if I minded doing an interview on her blog. She asked some good and tough questions that really made me think. But it was fun, and the results are at her For Love of Words blog. Email interviews seem like an exciting way to do this sort of thing. I did one a couple of years back for Cold in the Light, and I conducted one with Charles Nuetzel, who I’ve mentioned here before as a writer of Sword and Planet fiction. I haven’t seen many on blogs yet but I think it’s a great concept.

Shauna is herself quite an interesting person. She dwells in New Orleans and makes her living primarily as a freelance science and medical writer. She also writes fiction and is particularly fond of the genres of fantasy, SF and romance. Shauna has written on numerous topics, and has even coauthored a book on Rhesus monkeys. For more, you can check out her home page.

Thanks, Shauna. I appreciate you taking the time to interview me and post it on your blog.