Since Jeff Chapman, Simon Kewin, and I have stories appearing in the next issue of Bards & Sages Quarterly, we thought we'd try something fun and interview each other, then post the answers on each of our blogs.
Question #1: How would you describe your story in one sentence?
Jeff: Let the dead die. (Story title: "The Facts in the Case of M. Hussman")
Simon: The barbarian horde is at the gates of the city, but young Queen Myrgiane sits with her courtiers working on her embroidery, calmly waiting for her plans to unfold. (Story title: "Threads")
Milo: It's a weird western, and there's some time travel involved. (Story title: "Sins of the Father")
Question #2: What inspired you to write it?
Simon: I like the idea of stories that turn on some apparently insignificant, commonplace thing rather than powerful magical artefacts or great heroes (although they're cool, too). So, a snatch of a song or a chance remark; something that anyone could know or do. I had the idea of the embroidery that features in the story and I thought it would be interesting to contrast it with a rampaging barbarian horde. That, in itself, amused me, but also, how can a mere embroidery save a city from such an onslaught? The answer really comes down to the two characters, Queen Myrgiane and Bloody Argan. The queen, especially, was fun to write. Anyone underestimating her is making a big mistake.
Milo: I was watching a really bad spaghetti western (can't even remember the name of it), and my mind wandered...
Jeff: The prompt "love beyond the grave" and Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar."
Question #3: Are you a bard or a sage?
Milo: I'm not wise enough to be a sage, but I could possibly quoth some bardish scifaiku.
Jeff: Definitely a bard. I make up stories to entertain and stimulate the little gray cells. I still have all my wisdom teeth, but I make no claims regarding the wisdom imparted by my tales.
Simon: Well, not a bard, given my singing voice, so I'll have to go Sage. There's a long flowing cloak to go with it, right?
Question #4: Anything else you'd like to add?
Jeff: This is my first steampunk effort and my first attempt at an epistolary story. It's a powerful and flexible form that allows for a level of detachment and brevity that would be awkward in a standard narrative. It was a lot of fun to write.
Simon: Without giving the ending to Threads away, I can't help thinking there are more stories to be written about what happens next. Perhaps I will write them one day...
Milo: Cade, the albino samurai from "Sins of the Father," has shown up in a couple of my other tales, and I have a feeling he will keep doing so. He's like that.
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As always, thanks for reading.
Scifaikuest
Once upon a time, young Milo hated poetry. Truth be told, he hated writing in all its various forms, and nothing paralyzed him with fear like the word COMPOSITION or filled him with intense loathing as much as POETRY. He didn't understand it, didn't appreciate it, and wanted nothing to do with it.
Fast forward a couple decades, and you'll find the latest issue of Scifaikuest with 20 of my sci-fi and horror-flavored haiku in it. That's right: POETRY, believe it or not. While I probably won't be attempting a sonnet anytime soon, I've embraced the haiku as my favorite poetry form. Yes, because it's the shortest -- and because I enjoy creating a scene in the reader's mind with only 3 lines. I'm also a stickler for the old-fashioned 5-7-5 syllable count, which makes composing these things even more challenging.Many thanks to Deborah Walker and Simon Kewin for introducing me to this publication a couple years ago, and to the editor, Teri Santitoro, for inviting me to submit 20 of my best haiku for a featured poet spot. I thought she was going to pick and choose from the 20, but she ended up publishing them all, which came as a big surprise when I received my contributor's copy.
Are you a poet? Do your feet show it? Are they long fellows? (Har har.) Leave a comment below in haiku, and you'll be entered to win a copy of Maikro in the eReader format of your choice.
Highway 24
Please welcome fellow Write1Sub1er and SpecFic author Jeff Chapman as we discuss his brand-spankin' new novelette Highway 24 (now available from MuseItUp Publishing).
On a lonely country highway, a young travelling salesman runs down a teenage girl. It was an accident. Why she was wandering around on a highway in a pink, formal dress, he can’t imagine. There’s no doubt she’s dead. Fear takes over and he flees the scene, absently taking one of her shoes with him. An old memory, something familiar about that shoe, struggles to surface. As he speeds away from the accident, he thinks his nightmare can’t get any worse, until he sees a pair of green eyes in his rear-view mirror. The shoe and those eyes lead him to a small town where he meets an all too knowing preacher and a sheriff obsessed with the girl’s tragic demise. As Paul digs deeper into the mystery of the girl and her shoe, he comes face-to-face with a dark secret from his father’s past.
Jeff, what inspired you to write Highway 24?
I grew up on the great plains in a small town out in the middle of farm country. There are lots of lonely highways across miles of open fields with no one around or any signs of habitation in sight. If you're out on one of those roads in the middle of the night and you're in the right frame of mind, they are creepy.
Is this the longest work you've had published to date? How did the process differ from your short stories?
Yes, this is definitely my longest published work. I wrote an early draft of this story four years ago, maybe longer, I don't remember. It grew and grew as I developed it, revised, and read it to critique groups. At some point I realized it was too long for short story markets. I didn't know what to do with it so I put it in a drawer so to speak. I submitted it to an anthology at one point but the project fell through before the story could be accepted or rejected. I saw MuseItUp accepts stories over ten thousand words so I revised it, again, and sent it off, hoping it would finally find a home. My short stories tend to have a quicker turn around. The writing process wasn't much different from my shorter works.
How would you describe your experience with MuseItUp Publishing?
Outstanding! They are a very professional outfit. My editor, line editor, and cover artist were a joy to work with. I enjoyed the editing process. It's very educational to go through your work line-by-line with someone else who is also invested in its success.
If there's one thing you want your readers to take away from Highway 24, what would it be?
Don't drive on lonely country roads by yourself late at night. Seriously, I hope readers think about their relationships with their parents and see that they might not be all that much different from them. I hope readers also consider the destructive power of past sins left unresolved.
Thanks, Jeff. Can't wait to read it. I'll be picking up my copy today.