Joe McKinney

McKinney will also conduct the class, Writing Modern Horror on Saturday, April 10. In the class, participants will  reexamine their characters through in-class writing exercises and by the end of the day, the skeleton of a story will have some real meat on it.

Gemini Ink intern Melinda Gonzalez interviewed McKinney and discussed how he realized he wanted to become a writer, and what frightful projects he’s been working on.

Melinda Gonzalez: What is the first horror book/story you remember reading?
Joe McKinney: I’m not sure, to tell you the truth. It was probably something by Ray Bradbury or Charles Beaumont. But I do remember the first horror book that really, really made an impression on me. It was Stephen King’s Nightshift collection. I remember going through those stories and thinking that I had just discovered something incredible.

When did you first realize that you wanted to be a writer?
I’ve heard other writers say they always knew. I didn’t. I mean, I had the overpowering urge to write way back when. I remember being 10 or 12 and skipping out of an afternoon of bike riding and exploring to write stories. Throughout my teens I wrote stories, stapled the pages together, put them on the corner of my desk, and then promptly forgot about them. I knew writing was an important, even a necessary, part of who I was, but I never had a desire to publish anything. I never saw writing as a job I could have one day. I guess I didn’t start thinking of it that way until my first daughter was born. I don’t know if other parents identify with this feeling or not, but when my daughter came along, I suddenly felt this overpowering need to capture who I was on paper, almost as though I wanted to freeze that moment in time, preserve it. I got lucky when my impulse turned into a full time writing gig. I’ve been fortunate.

What type of obstacles did you experience before having your first book, Dead City, published?
Surprisingly, it wasn’t that hard. I wrote the manuscript, revised it quite a few times, and then sent it out to a few publishers. I got back politely written rejections, some offering genuine encouragement. Well, I knew the book was a good one, so I figured I’d get an agent. At the time, being a complete stranger to the publishing business, I had no idea how difficult a process that is for some writers. I sent it out to half a dozen agents, got a nibble, and that agent turned around and sold the manuscript to one of the publishers that had rejected me only a few months before. All of my obstacles and learning experiences have come since then, and most of those deal with the technical points of contracts. My advice there … writers beware. There are some unethical people out there. Just because somebody sticks a contract in front of you doesn’t mean you automatically have to sign. Read the fine print.

What, or who, has influenced your writing?
I read somewhere that nearly every horror writer today was either heavily influenced by Stephen King, or is lying when he or she says they were not heavily influenced by Stephen King.  That is pretty much true.  The man stands taller than the Marston House over modern horror.  But influence, for a writer, is more than a single source.  It’s more like being part of a web.  Every professional writer I know reads voraciously … and not just horror.  They read EVERYTHING they can get their hands on.  It is impossible to point to a single source and say, “My influence stopped there.”  There’s just too much input for that to be true.

What does your family think of your writing?
My mom was so proud when she went to buy my first novel from the store. Then she took it home and read it. A few days later, she came up to me, her expression sad and a little confused. “You were such a happy child,” she said. “Did we do something wrong?” Since then, of course, they’ve grown used to it. Nowadays, they have no problem introducing me as their son who writes about zombies and ghouls and ghosties. I think they even get a secret thrill out of it.

Who is your favorite author and what is it about them that you find most intriguing?
John McPhee. If I had to point to just one favorite (and man, that is a hard task), it would be John McPhee. I love science writing, and I love elegant, moving prose, and McPhee combines them both. If you’ve ever read Basin and Range, or Assembling California, or The Curve of Binding Energy, you know what I mean. The man’s writing leaves me speechless.

Are there any current projects or ideas that you would like to tell us about?
As a matter of fact, yes.  I’m the co-founder of a new crime fiction publishing house called Gutter Books. Our intent is to publish a mixture of new and old pulp novels and short stories. So far, we’ve got my novel, Dodging Bullets, a short story anthology, a John D. MacDonald reprint, a Graham Greene reprint, and two other modern crime novels all set to go. We plan to release three books this year, three or four the next, and see where the ride takes us.  My partner, Matt Louis, and I both love the classic pulps of the 30s, 40s, and 50s, but those stories, great as they are, don’t mix well with modern reading tastes. We’re looking to mix the classic elements of pulp fiction with modern sensibilities.  I think it’s going to be a great series of books.  I’m also beginning work on a second anthology for 23 House, which I’m co-editing with Mark Onspaugh. This one will be a collection of stories about abandoned buildings, and hopefully it will bring in a good mix of genres as well. My first anthology for 23 House, Dead Set: A Zombie Anthology, will be out in April. I’m also publishing the second and third books in the Dead City series. The second one, Apocalypse of the Dead, is due out in November, and the third one, The Zombie King, is due out in September, 2011. I’ve also got two short novels coming out from Bad Moon Books in 2011. The first, called The Lost Girl of the Lake, is a coming of age horror story.  The second, called The Red Empire, is about super intelligent giant fire ants. In all, it’s going to be a busy time.

Anything else you would like to add?
You bet.  I do a monthly column for a true crime website called In Cold Blog.  You can read my articles there, or you can stop by my website, Old Major’s Dream, for news and updates.

photo courtesy of OLLU

Gemini Ink intern and Our Lady of the Lake University student Melinda Gonzalez asked Executive Vice President of Our Lady of the Lake University and professor of English, Howard Benoist, PhD what he’s been reading. He recommended, Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku.

“I sometimes teach a speculative fiction course, and Kaku, who is a professor of theoretical physics at City University of New York and co-founder of string field theory, discusses the physics behind concepts like time travel, artificial intelligence, and teleportation in a very readable way,” Benoist says.

Benoist manages to keep his colleagues on their toes by adding a dash of humor to his daily interactions and feels that literature teaches us, “tolerance for ambiguity.”  His respect for the study of English and the unknown has been his driving force throughout life. Benoist has a PhD in English from the University of Pennsylvania and Master’s degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Preparing to celebrate her first year anniversary as Registrar/Operations Manager at Gemini Ink, Carolene Zehner has enjoyed getting to know the literary side of San Antonio. Observing the readers, the writers, the teachers and the thinkers has been an enriching experience, she says. At home, she is a metalsmith creating jewelry and tabletop pieces.

Who’s the author? The book?
E.B. White is an author who has enriched every stage of my life. As a child with Charlotte’s Web and as a young adult with his Elements of Style, it seems I always had a book of his at hand.  When I grew up, I learned of his work at the New Yorker and read all of his essays. Recently I came across the Letters of E.B. White and grabbed it.  This reads much like an autobiography and is a history of his 50-plus years at the magazine.

Who would appreciate this work?
This book is for any fan of the Algonquin group, the New Yorker, or Wilbur.

Favorite quotes?
Never totally without a sly shot of humor, the serious side of E. B. White says “a writer writes as long as he lives. It is the same as breathing except that it is bad for one’s health.”  His direct levity:  “The next grammar book I bring out I want to tell how to end a sentence with five prepositions. A father of a little boy goes upstairs after supper to read to his son, but he brings the wrong book. The boy says, “What did you bring that book that I don’t want to be read to out of up for?”

Weil returned to Virginia to write his first book, The New Valley (Grove, 2009), which was New York Times Editors Choice selection, honored with the “5 Under 35” Award from the National Book Foundation, and won the 2010 New Writers Award from the Great Lakes Colleges Association.  Weil’s short fiction has appeared in Granta, American Short Fiction, Narrative, and Glimmer Train, among other journals; he has written non-fiction for The New York Times, Granta Online, and Poets & Writers.

Weil is slated to read at Gemini Ink on Friday, Feb. 26 at 6:30pm and will also conduct the class, Uncharted Territory: Exploring Novellas on Saturday, Feb. 27.  In the class, participants will learn what is a novella and, what can it accomplish that’s different from what a short story or novel can accomplish.

Gemini Ink intern Angelia Potter interviews Weil about his writing process and what’s inspired him.

Angelia Potter: What was your process for writing The New Valley?
Josh Weil: Wow, that’s such a huge question: pretty much everything that goes into writing can be lumped into process. So this is a hard one to answer without taking up pages and pages to do it. But I do know this: I wrote the novellas in The New Valley exactly the same way I write anything. A lot of writing is about figuring out what works for you – whether to outline or not, how to treat a first draft, at what point you can keep pushing and at what point you’re just tapped out – and then trusting in that. Part of that trust is routine, and I tend to have a very defined one. I get up before light, make coffee, fill a thermos, stretch, clear my mind, sit down at the desk, try not to get up again – or at least not to pull out of the work – for four or five hours, take a nap, make some toast, sit back down again and try to write through until I’m worn out and my mind is getting sloppy. Of course, some days my mind doesn’t work right from the start. Those are the tough days. Those are the days I sit at the desk for 10 hours and bang my head and get up and pace and curse and stomp about. I’m trying to ease up on that, do less of the stomping. Because, in the end, the most infuriating thing about writing is also the most magical: no preparation, no understanding, no routine, can guarantee it; it comes a little differently every time, and all you can do is get yourself as ready as possible to receive it when it does.

AP: Are any of the novellas’ protagonists based on real life individuals?
JW: Not really. I mean, of course their concerns, their wounds and what’s in their hearts comes from me (I think that, in all good serious fiction the characters have to be wrestling with something that comes out of the author, but that doesn’t mean that the external elements, that the story elements, or even the specific people, are anything like the author). And there are elements of people I know that made their way into characters, or that sparked the idea for characters. Geoffrey Sarver, the protagonist of the final novella, is a combination of many different things (most of which I probably couldn’t put my finger on), but I first got the idea for him when I was out at a rural farm filling a hundred pound propane tank. The guy filling the tanks was a mentally slow man, middle aged, quiet, and sweet-natured, and all alone out there. I started to think about how lonely that must be. And the very beginnings of Geoffrey grew out of that.

AP: Was there anything in particular that inspired the writing of these novellas and how did you build a connection between them?
JW: As far as inspiration, I’d say this: they’re all about men who have lost a loved one, and who are struggling to make sense of the world in that person’s absence, and to learn to somehow move on. I’ve seen that in my life, and I’m sure these stories, at heart, come out of that.

AP: Why did you make the Virginia countryside the setting for these novellas?
JW: I was there. Simple as that. I started going back there, to a cabin that my father and brother and I built, about 15 years ago. That’s where I do my best writing; that’s where I duck away from the world. And where I duck into is simply the place that’s become the most important to me in my life. It’s where I feel my heart attached to the land. And so the first novella just came to me there, and was very much of that place. I can’t imagine it set anywhere else. Once I had that one there, I knew I wanted to write the others set there, too. They all just started to feel rooted in one spot.

AP: You illustrated the middle novella of The New Valley, have you illustrated any of your other works and is visual art another outlet that you pursue?
JW: “Stillman Wing” is the first piece of writing that I illustrated, but it felt natural to do so since visual art has been so important to me for so long. I used to think I’d be a painter – that’s where I thought I was going – and then I got bitten by the writing bug, and found I loved narrative, and so I shifted into filmmaking. Now, I miss the visual. I’d like to bring that into my work even more. The thing I’m working on right now will be illustrated, at least to some extent. I’m trying to find the right balance with it so that the illustrations are organic to the story and don’t get in the way of it.

AP: Maureen Howard, author of The Silver Screen, compares The New Valley to authors Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy. What do you think of such a comparison?
JW: I think she’s a writer who has earned comparisons to writers of that stature; I certainly don’t feel like I’m remotely in their league. But she was talking about some specifics of my writing, and comparing them to some things that McCarthy and O’Connor do, and I’d certainly say that I’m deeply influenced by both those authors, so she was perceptive in picking up on that and so kind to point it out where she felt she saw it.

AP: What are you working on now?
JW: Two things, actually: a novel and a short story collection, but I’m loathe to offer too many specifics until I know that one or the other is going to work. I’m at that place right now where it’s truth-telling time – the people I trust most are about to see the work – and so I’m going to keep quiet about it until they’ve whispered in my ear.