Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m a Social Worker, a trade that brings me into contact with many strata of society. As such, I have the opportunity to learn about people’s foibles, which usually takes place under the rubric of confidentiality and prohibits my using such details in fiction. But the wonder and creativity of people’s response to abnormal situations is a source of endless fascination for me, a fascination that informs my writing. All told, I’ve completed twenty-seven novels, all in the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres. These genres represent to me worlds of possibility, many of them within reach, if we but have the eyes to see them and the minds to apprehend them.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Organo-Topia. I started a novel several years ago featuring the womanizing star-ship captain of a nano-extermination vessel, their task to respond to and contain nano outbreaks. I didn’t get very far with it, but it did have a great opening scene. So I rewrote that opening scene, threw in declining fertility rates, clones, a plot to rid the galaxy of breeding humans, and an irascible detective bent on stopping the perpetrator. Thus, Organo-Topia was conceived. Publication pending.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
None other than to do most of my writing in the morning, when my mind is fresh.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Many of the early science fiction masters: Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Andre Norton. Further, I read everything I could by Samuel R. Delaney. I started reading in Junior High School, at a time when one’s library record was kept on 3×5 cards. Mine was easy to pick out, because it was so thick, multiple cards stapled together.
What are you working on now?
Ghost Ship Orlova. What inspired the novel was a simple news story about a ship with a reinforced hull used for eco-cruises to the arctic. A dispute between the owners and the lessees led to the ship’s being towed down the Atlantic coast of the United States. While out to sea, it was caught in a storm, and the tugboat hawsers snapped. For months, the ship floated loose and abandoned across the North Atlantic toward Ireland. What if the ship were a spaceship, instead of an ocean vessel? The ship’s namesake, Lyubov Orlova, was the queen of early Russian film, born within a year of the Grand Duchess Anastasia, who was rumored for sixty years to have survived the massacre of the Romanovs at Yekaterinburg. What if she did survive? From there, the ideas began to cascade through my brain.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Facebook writing groups reach the largest number of readers, typically. Exposure through websites like Awesome Gang certainly helps. Marketing is the most difficult for me. I don’t have a built-in shameless self-promotion department, as some people appear to have.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Now that you’ve finished a novel, I’m going to suggest something rarely mentioned and probably more torturous than any advice you’ve received before.
Write another one.
Yes. Another novel. Different topic, different setting, different characters. Why? 🙂
The mind works in serial, parallel, and spiral ways. Sometimes even as spokes on a wheel. Most novels, inevitably, are LINEAR. Writing something completely different removes your brain from the linearity and helps to inform your perspective in ways that will surprise you.
The other advantage is you’ll have avoided the “all-eggs-in-one-basket” trap. Worse thing I ever did was wait ten years between finishing my first novel and starting my second. Best thing I ever started doing was reducing the time between novels. Now, I rarely wait more than a week before starting a new novel, whether I’ve got any ideas for it or not. The least amount of time I’ve waited between novels is one day, and it didn’t affect me at all.
“But I’ll get confused.”
No you won’t. I’m on my eighth novel since last March 2014, and I know every single story along with its characters, settings, plot, twists, turns, and tucks. Never a moment of confusion. Further, as I write a new novel, I edit the ones I wrote before. Three or more novels in some process of completion at all times. I’ve even penned two first drafts at once.
If you want to be a writer, then write. Just write. And keep writing.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Just write.
Be as the empty cup in the Zen Buddhist parable. Set aside any preconceived notions of how much, how often, how many words, how many pages.
A mountain looks taller when viewed from the base. A journey of a thousand pages begins with a single word.
Just start writing and don’t stop. Don’t stop to edit, don’t stop to show it to anyone, don’t stop to type it (if you’re writing by hand), don’t stop for any reason, even writer’s block. The most successful way to address writer’s block is simply to write, even if it seems a Sisyphean task, where the words want to roll right back over you from the high hills where you’ve pushed them. If need be, write without thinking, and in the suspense of reason, the channel opens. Be the open channel and let the words spill forth. They know where they’re supposed to be. Just write, and the novel will write itself.
What are you reading now?
I’m not reading anything at the moment. In fact, it’s rare that I do read. It’s definitely a failing of mine, since reading recently released novels helps any author to know what’s being published. Reading also feeds the imagination.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Burning on the back of my stove is a multi-kingdom fantasy novel.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Samuel R. Delaney’s Dhalgren is the only one I’d need.
Author Websites and Profiles
Scott Michael Decker Website
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