his is the second part to the dual author interview between Jeff and I, the first part of which is here.
Jeff very graciously responded to a post I did on Network Your Blog asking other authors if they wanted to exchange book covers and purchase links.
Jeff replied with the extremely cool idea of a dual blog interview which would go on for many days, alternating days and blogs. He was also the only one who responded. So he took pity on me. I'm very excited because his idea is far better than anything I've come up with so far. He's also an excellent, sharp as hell writer who you should NOT miss.
So here is the second part of the interview! Enjoy!
JM: What was the first thing you wrote (after childhood) that you showed to somebody else, with the idea that you might want to be a writer?
TS: It was a spooky little ghost story about a little girl who drowned in the tub because her alcoholic mother neglected her. She haunted the new family who moved into the house. My friends loved it because it scared the hell out of them and I got a charge out of scaring the hell out of them. Scaring your friends is fun. But I tend to have that effect on people anyway :)
I always wonder this about writers. What was your most frightening moment?
JM: It probably helps for a horror writer to have known fear from time to time. Of course, every parent knows plenty of fear, every time something bad happens (or might happen) to one of the kids. But I'll say my most extended fright was when my family moved to Germany, during the summer before my senior year of high school. We stayed in a hotel for a while, then rented a house in town. The house didn't have enough bedrooms for me to have my own, so I was intended to sleep in the basement.
That first night, I hardly slept a wink (and we had been in the country for weeks, so it wasn't the novelty, or jet lag, or anything like that). It was a vibe that the basement held--no specific incident or vision or anything. It just felt wrong. Bad. Creepy.
After that first night, I never slept down there again, and rarely went down at all. I just plain didn't like the place. The extent to which I didn't like it is demonstrated by the fact that I, a high school senior, preferred sleeping in the living room, with no privacy and a couch that wasn't quite long enough, to having all the privacy I would have wanted down in that basement.
Years later, I learned that in that small German city, there had only been one murder in the last hundred years or so. Guess where it happened.
That's right. The basement.
Your turn...
What's the hardest aspect of writing, to you--the part that, if you didn't have to deal with it, you'd be much, much happier? And how do you manage it?
TS: The hardest aspect of writing for me is to keep chipping away at the story when it's like pulling teeth. When the characters aren't talking to me and I have nothing new to say, those are the days when it's the hardest. I'd be thrilled if it were always like flying. When the story is coming to me so fast and furious that I can't type quickly enough, and the hours fly by.
That rush you get when everything comes together. The moment you realize why you planted that tiny, insignificant thing way back in the beginning of the story that has become so important near the end. That line that you almost cut a bunch of times but left for no other reason than that you had a niggling in the back of your mind that you needed to keep it, and you were right. Moments like that make it all worth the pain of the inevitable trudge uphill.
Craziest thing you've ever done?
JM: That's a tough one. I've probably done plenty of things that various people would consider crazy, but it always seemed like a good idea at the time. Twice, I've left jobs to take different jobs that paid considerably less, but in both cases it was to get me closer to where I wanted to be, career-wise, which was sitting at my own desk writing books. So the craziness of those decisions is probably open to debate. I would probably have to say jumping out of a second floor hotel window, in Switzerland.
It wasn't to escape a jealous husband, or anything like that--it was, in fact, to go down to the lake and take pictures at sunrise. I woke up early and went downstairs, but the hotel's front door was locked, and there was no one at the desk (this was not one of your big chain hotels, just a little, locally owned place). I guess they have different fire safety laws in Switzerland than they do here. Anyway, I was up and wanted to be outside, so I went back up to the second floor. There was a window in the hallway, so I opened it, climbed out, dangled and dropped.
I wanted to protect my camera bag, containing what is still the best camera I've ever owned, a Minolta SRT-101 SLR, so landed on my feet and apparently took too much weight on my heel. It kind of hurt, but I walked down to the lake, which was socked in with fog and totally not photographable. I went back up the hill, found that the hotel door had been unlocked in the meantime, and crashed for another hour or so. When I got up again, I couldn't put any weight on that foot, and found out that I had broken the heel. So, not such a good idea.
How did you find the publisher for Repo Chick Blues?
TS: Originally Repo Chick Blues was published by Liquid Silver Books in 2004. I'd gotten several bites from agents who decided to pass in the end. I sent the book to LSB and got a response about a week later. They loved the story and if I added five sex scenes they'd publish it. I thought, what the hell? I added the sex scenes, then wrote Finding Chloe, which was published by LSB as well.
I decided to shop Dirty Business, the third in the Leah Ryan series, to a different publisher. Dare Empire Emedia Productions took it on within a week of my sending it to them. They asked for the first two books, re-released those, and Dirty Business will be released August 31st.
Your turn.
Let's see. . . craziest thing you haven't done but want to do?
To see Jeff's answer, visit Jeff's blog!
Check out some of Jeff's books here:
Nine Frights
The Slab
The Devil's Bait
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