Interviews

Please note: This interview was conducted by fantasy author, and WU contributor, Juliet Marillier.

British author Joe Abercrombie kicked off his remarkable fantasy trilogy, The First Law, with The Blade Itself, published by Gollancz UK in 2006. Readers loved the book, and the critical reception was overwhelmingly positive. A five star review in Starburst included this:

You’d never guess that The Blade Itself is Joe Abercrombie’s debut novel. He writes like a natural. There are great characters, sparky dialogue, an action-packed plot, and from the very first words (‘The End’) and an opening scene that is literally a cliffhanger, you know you are in for a cheeky, vivid, exhilarating ride.

The second and third books, Before They Are Hanged and Last Argument of Kings, proved that The Blade Itself was no flash in the pan – the three novels are equally strong. This series takes the conventions of epic fantasy, pounds them to a pulp, wrings them out and hangs them up to flap in a chill wind. It’s a twisted, funny, absorbing journey. With Last Argument of Kings due for its American release this month, I was delighted when Joe agreed to an interview with Writer Unboxed.

Here’s the first part of our Q&A.

Q: Firstly, congratulations on The First Law trilogy. I wish I’d written it myself! Your books contain all the qualities I love in a novel – excellent writing technique, depth of character, originality and ‘heart’. I picked up The Blade Itself when it first came out on the basis of a well-written cover blurb, including this:

Logen Ninefingers, infamous barbarian, has finally run out of luck. Caught in one feud too many, he’s on the verge of becoming a dead barbarian – leaving nothing behind but bad songs, and dead friends.

I liked the cover description of the book as ‘noir fantasy with a real cutting edge.’ Now that I’ve read all three books, I realise the trilogy is a lot more than this. It’s a dark and gritty story in which the graphic violence is tempered by subtle humour. But the winning factor for me is your compassion for a cast of complex, flawed characters. I hope we can explore the issue of characterization in more depth later. But firstly, could you talk a bit about using the tropes of epic fantasy to create a story that breaks the stereotypes?

JA: Firstly, thank you very much, especially about the compassion, I don’t get accused of that too often.

As a reader I like nothing more than to be surprised. So I like a lot the notion of writing within a well-established form, partly because there will be an established audience for it and an audience is always nice, but also because readers will come with a whole range of expectations about the types of characters and situations they’ll encounter, and how those characters will behave or those situations play out. Give them what they expect a couple of times and they’ll be sure they’re on firm and familiar ground, which hopefully will make it doubly shocking when you pull the rug out from under them.

Q: I was surprised to […]

Back-to-back interviews, aren’t you lucky?

Last week, I reported on the upcoming writers seminar hosted by Publishers Weekly, which takes place on Monday, September 22, from 9 a.m.-6 p.m. at the NYU Kimmel Center in New York City. I wanted to know a little more about it, though, and I thought you might too. Our thanks to PW’s marketing manager, Krista Rafanello, for taking the time to answer my questions. Enjoy!

Q: We’ve heard you’re hosting a seminar for writers later this month. Is this a first for PW? Who’s your target audience for this event (genre fiction writers, lit fiction writers, adult vs. children’s fiction, etc…)?

A: Yes, PW is hosting our first event targeted to aspiring writers in NYC on September 22. Books and authors are our passion and we have wanted to do a seminar like this for some time. The program is shaped for aspiring authors or curious book lovers across all genres. The course is meant to be an introductory seminar to give unpublished writers great insight into how publishing works to help them navigate the entire process. We often hear from first-time authors that they were not very well prepared upon publishing their first book so we’ve put an incredible program together with experts to guide them.

Q: What are the event goals?

A: We would like everyone to leave feeling that they received a wealth of inside information and have a firm grasp on the ins-and-outs of getting their books published. Our attendees will leave informed and in a position solicit agents or take the first appropriate step towards getting their work published for their individual circumstance.

Q: There are plenty of writing workshops and the like available for people aspiring to become published. What sets your seminar apart?

Neurosurgeon and successful entrepreneur Allen Wyler had always been a long-time fan of thrillers.  In 2005, he decided to follow his yen and try his hand at fiction.  The rest, as they say, is history.  His debut thriller DEADLY ERRORS garnered raves in a crowded genre.  Laced with authentic ER detail and the ability to distill medical jargon into readable prose, Wyler’s medical thriller wowed the crime fiction community.  His followup effort, DEAD HEAD, was equally successful and established Wyler as an author on the same par as Tess Gerritsen and Michael Crichton. 

Wyler writes in the best of thriller tradition: hella-quick pacing, stripped prose, plot-twists you never see coming.  I ripped through DEADLY ERRORS in two days, riveted by the story of an everyman surgeon trying to clear his name. 

With DEADLY ERRORS now in paperback release, Wyler is fielding movie offers for his novels and is hard at work on his third title.

Enjoy our our interview with Dr. Allen Wyler. 

Q: As a successful neurosurgeon, what made you want to take the plunge and write thrillers? Are there any similarities to the creativity that writing novels demands and the skills it takes to do brain surgery?

Allen Wyler: The practice of medicine, in particular neurosurgery, doesn’t leave a lot of room for creativity. I think many physicians have a creative drive and choose to express it in one of the arts. Mine happens to be writing. I love the process of coming up with an idea and then hammering it into a viable story. The only similarity I can see between neurosurgery and writing is both take discipline and patience.

Q: What is your writing process like? Do you plot extensively or let the plot evolve organically?

AW: For me a good thriller is heavily plot driven because of usually requiring numerous “twists and turns.” (No question, good characters are essential also.) My approach to putting a story together is to first define the beginning and how I want it to end. Once that’s done, I connect those two points with an outline so I can see the story’s logic. Then I begin writing. As I go along, questions always pop up I never would have predicted and I go back and incorporate them into the outline or what I’ve already written. This method happens to work best for me.

Q: Have you ever gone down a blind alley and been forced to re-plot your novel? What do you do if you get stuck?

AW: Not a complete dead end, but I have had to make significant changes. I’m going through that right now.

If you missed part one of my interview with independent editor Lisa Rector, when we talked about using an independent editor for your work and what it means to reach the “third draft stage,” click HERE, then come back. Lisa specializes in late-draft writing, working with experienced writers in genres like fantasy, mystery and suspense to polish their work and make it publishing-ready. She owns Third Draft, an editing company in New York City, and frequently tours as an editor for agent Donald Maass’s Breakout Novel Workshops. Today, we continue our Q&A about the third draft, sagging middles, 11th hour checklists and more. Enjoy!

Interview with Lisa Rector: Part 2

Q: What are the most critical steps to take as you’re maneuvering through the third draft? In what order would you suggest taking them?

LR:
1. Get feedback from critique groups, mentors, professional writers and other members of the writing community. Be specific in your requests and look for consistencies among responses.
2. Learn to filter good advice from bad. Just because a character or idea is intriguing doesn’t mean it belongs in your book.
3. Distance yourself from the work. Put the manuscript away for a few days – or even a few weeks – you’ll likely return to it with renewed passion and a more objective eye.

Q: Are there any tips or tricks to make editing itself less “painful”?

LR: The thought of more work at this point can be crushing. It feels like a setback. It isn’t. It’s bringing you closer to publication.

Still, it can be overwhelming to focus on everything at once. I advise writers to edit with intention. One round may involve deepening motivation, another heightening tension or emotional complexity.

Editing has as much to do with finding one’s strengths as it does with eliminating weaknesses.

Q: Are there dangers associated with the third draft–like going too far with revisions and writing “new story” instead of enriching what’s already there? How can you catch yourself in this to ensure your edits are doing what they should at this stage?

Lisa Rector is an independent editor who specializes in late-draft writing, helping advanced and published writers of mainstream and literary fiction massage their text until it’s ready for the critical eyes of New York publishers. Lisa, owner of Third Draft in New York City and an award-winning writer herself, lectures about editing techniques at workshops and conferences nationwide (often with her husband, agent Donald Maass). We’re thrilled she took time out of her busy schedule to chat about 11th hour editing, sagging middles and more. Enjoy!

Interview with Lisa Rector: Part 1

On Independent Editing:

Q: Tell us about yourself and your journey. How did you become an independent book editor?

LR: It was either that or Stars on Ice! I’m not skilled at anything else. (laughs)

I was fortunate to be published at 17. I started out writing for newspapers and magazines, and then moved to editing fiction. I knew I wanted to help authors and work closely with them in developing their stories. It’s satisfying to take what a writer envisions in the early drafts and help make that a reality.

Q: What does a book editor do, and what can a writer expect from your services?

LR: Essentially my job is to find what works in a story, what doesn’t and why. Most authors can sense when a novel isn’t working but they’re at a loss for how to fix it. I try to guide them towards better story choices and decisions that will help grow their career.

It’s a very hands-on, communicative process, from manuscript analysis to personal story conferences.

Q: Can you expand on that—take us through how things might work with a sample client?

This was the first time ever that Spinner had trusted me with the keys to Mister Twisty’s, but at any rate I was feeling very tired myself, and for some reason, a little sad also. From the basement I could hear the hum of the giant cooling machines as I sprayed a little Windex on the counters to wipe away the stickiness, and rubbed down the swirl machines with chrome cleaner. And I was just about to go home when I heard, or thought I heard, a difference in the intensity of sound coming from below me. For a moment I thought I might be coming down with a cold, or maybe the flu myself, but when I shook my head and pressed my sinuses everything seemed fine. It was probably nothing, but just suppose there was some kind of a malfunction in the equipment downstairs, or even one of the old guys had had a heart attack and fallen into the machinery. We never really kept track of who went down and who came back up, and for all I know there might be someone down there, dying this very minute. I knew that Spinner had said he’d been working on the equipment a few weeks earlier, but I also knew that he had told me once, when I first began to work there, never to go down to the basement for any reason at all.  

Don’t go down in the basement, Jonathan!  Don’t!

Poet, short story writer, and novelist Jim Krusoe’s carved a niche following in literary circles with his ability to weave the mundane with the outrageous.  His new release, Girl Factory, is the story of a sad-sack frozen yogurt clerk and how the surprising discovery of beautiful women incased in acidopholous cultures in the basement of the shop changes his life.  Okay, this book is Weird with a capital W, but I found it exhilerating, smart, and funny.  Nothing unfolded the way I thought it would, which is a tribute to Krusoe’s ability to keep the reader both off-balance and fascinated.

Missed part one?  Click HERE. 

Krusoe, who teaches writing at Santa Monica College, is completely committed to the idea of exploring the novel in many different drafts, which he does until he feels the “tingle” — the moment when he knows he’s gotten it right.  This method may not make for quick writing, but it means that Krusoe explores every possible authorial choice.

We’re please to present part two of our interview with Jim Krusoe.

Q: You’ve kept plot and prose tight in GIRL FACTORY.  Do you plot in advance, or let it unfold organically?  When it comes to editing, how do you know when you’ve done enough?

Jim Krusoe: I let it unfold, which is why it takes me so much time to write. Sometimes I have to do as many as a half dozen drafts before I even begin to figure out what a book is about. I wrote the first sixty pages of the novel I’m working on these days twelve different times, each with different settings and characters until I could feel that tingle on my skin. But I always tell myself that books are about four things: what the writer wants to […]

Talk about unboxed.  I’ve read a lot of wonderfully weird books in my service to WU, and Jim Krusoe’s literary novel Girl Factory, was about the weirdest, most wonderful read I’d had in years.  Maybe it was that at the time I’d been in the middle of one of my own increasingly bizarre adventures in California, but Girl Factory kept me in excellent company while I was away from home.  I completely identified with the protagonist, a service industry drone named Jonathan.  Except when he went off the reservation in a breathtaking plot twist.

In addition to novels, Krusoe has published five books of poetry and Blood Lake, a collection of short stories.  His debut novel Iceland, garnered high praise and comparisons to Kafka.  Krusoe’s stripped voice packs multiple meanings in one sentence, and his tight plotting kept the pace brisk.  Girl Factory had me laughing out loud while I kept asking myself, “how the hell he’d do that?”  One thing’s for sure.  I’ll never go into a frozen yogurt shop again without wondering what’s in the basement.

In addition to writing novels, Krusoe teaches creative writing at Antioch University and Santa Monica College.

We are pleased to present part one of our interview with Jim Krusoe. 

Q:  Tell us about your road to publication.

Jim Krusoe: The road was interminable. I had a draft of this book completed about seven years ago, and while various people liked various parts of that draft, no one liked the whole thing (or even the same things). So about thirty rewrites and five years later I was about to throw in the towel, when Lee Montgomery at Tin House, who had read an early draft, asked if I wanted to give it another go. She called for some huge changes, which I agreed with on principle, but after that it took me two years to figure out how to accommodate her ideas. Then I suppose I did another dozen drafts adding new sections and cutting others. So I should have abandoned it, but there were parts of the story I just couldn’t shake.

Q:  That’s amazing.  Usually the story goes that everyone rejects it, and then it goes into a drawer.  What was it about this particular story that kept you and others coming back to it?  Did you feel that because an editor wanted to see you revisit the story, that you felt obligated to keep going?

If you missed part one of my interview with debut novelist Danielle Younge-Ullman–when we discussed writing a book in 2nd person, selling at auction and gave you the opportunity to read two chapters of her work–click HERE, then come back. Danielle’s novel Falling Under has been called urban fiction, women’s fiction and mainstream literary fiction. One thing’s for certain about this dark, contemporary novel, though: Mara’s unique tale will stick with you long after you finish the book.

Today, Danielle and I chat about neurotic protagonists, writerly challenges, mysterious endings, publicity and her experience as a debutante at The Debutante Ball grog.

Enjoy!

Interview with Danielle Younge-Ullman: Part 2

Q: Mara is a neurotic protagonist, really haunted by her past. Was it tough at times, trying to balance the telling of her story with her neuroses? What challenges did you face with your unreliable narrator, and how did you get past them to create an identifiable and compelling heroine?

DYU: I tried to give her a high level of self-awareness and a good sense of humor, alongside the neuroses, which, I think, helps the reader stay connected to her. I also worked hard to show how resourceful, brave and loyal she is in the face of repeated abandonment (physical and emotional) and how determined she is to find a better way to live, even on the days she can barely get herself out of bed. Mara is operating at all times, on the assumption that she’s on her own and she has good reasons for this assumption even during times when it’s incorrect, even in circumstances where she’d be better off trusting. I laid the groundwork for the founding of this worldview from the very first page of the book and I think it helps the reader understand Mara’s (often bizarre) actions and reactions.

Q: What is your writing and editing process? How long did Falling Under take to craft, from start to finish?

DYU: I do a combo of outlining and flying by the seat of my pants. It appears that I must have an outline but it also appears that I will never be able to follow one. So I outline, write, veer wildly from the outline, write until I run out of ideas, ditch the old outline, make a new one based on what I’ve written and so on, until I’m done. And then I edit, edit, edit. It isn’t pretty and I hope someday to have a more painless and smooth process. Falling Under took approximately a year to write, though I did pause in the writing to write two plays, so it was perhaps less than a year in total.

Q: What was your biggest challenge working on this novel? What are some things you’ve tried that didn’t work? What, if anything, did you learn about your writing style?

Danielle Younge-Ullman’s debut novel, Falling Under, will be released next Tuesday, July 29th. The description of her book caught my attention months ago. Said Kristy Kiernan, author of Catching Genius, “Danielle Younge-Ullman redefines modern fiction with this finely wrought, edgy debut. She is the best kind of new author— enormously talented and utterly unafraid.”

Sounded pretty unboxed to me. I was thrilled when Danielle, who is also a Canadian playwright and actor, agreed to an interview. Not only was her novel a super fast, dark and dynamic read, but Danielle herself made our Q&A a lot of fun. She also kindly secured an excerpt of Falling Under from her publisher, Plume, which you can read at the end of this post.

Enjoy!

Interview with Danielle Younge-Ullman: Part 1

Q: Falling Under marks your debut as a novelist. I’d love to hear about your road to publication. How did it happen? And what inspired Falling Under?

DYU: My first attempt at a book was a chick lit novel. I had a great time writing it but didn’t make much effort to get it published because already I sensed I wanted to go in a different direction—deeper, darker and perhaps more literary. I was interested in keeping some of the common chick lit elements (single woman battling issues with work, love and family) and turning the rest of it on its head, making the issues serious and the writing more instinctive and raw. I didn’t want to follow any rules (besides the general rules of good storytelling and proper grammar) and I didn’t want to censor myself.

In terms of the story itself, I wanted to write a character who has the fears and anxieties many of us have, but who, because of her past, is paralyzed by these fears. I had a vision of her, young and vibrant and talented, but stuck in her house, haunted by the past and afraid of the future. And then I thought, what happens when someone like this falls in love, has a chance at a happier existence? For someone who has no faith in herself or the world, love is terrifying. Love is, potentially, a disaster. Unless of course, this person, under all her fears, is passionate, stubborn, fiercely determined and stronger than she realizes because of everything she’s been through. I built the story on these two opposing sets of issues—put simply, her fear and lack of faith, versus her hope, determination and strength.

When Falling Under was finished and ready as I could make it, I queried agents and soon landed with a great NYC agency. A few months later my agent submitted the book to publishers and three weeks later we had our first offer. Ten days after that we had multiple offers and sold at auction to Plume. There is a much longer version of that story, of course, but those are the main points!

Q: You mentioned the auction. What was it like? How involved were you in the decision-making process?

If you missed part 1 of my interview with Lucia Nevai, author of the gritty-wonderful debut novel, Salvation, click HERE, then come back. (There’s an excerpt of Nevai’s work at the end of part 1 as well.) In part 2, we discuss the novel’s theme, her research and the long evolution of Salvation once her publisher, Tin House, committed to her work.

Here’s an inside look at why major revisions hold both blessings and curses. Read on.

Interview with Lucia Nevai: Part 2

Q: Salvation seems to me a survival of the fittest tale, with each of three siblings surviving a brutally negligent upbringing in their own unique way. Little Duck survived through good looks. Jima survived through liquor and by being needed to help sustain her sister’s life. Crane survived through her intellect, which sometimes meant appearing dull-witted. How did you see survival and salvation as linked?

LN: You’ve hit on the core of the book. I was pleased to discover after we’d named the book Salvation that the root word save is from the Latin salvus, meaning safe. The various dictionary definitions of the word, salvation, are: (1) deliverance from the power and effects of sin; (2) liberation from ignorance or illusion; (3) preservation from destruction or failure; (4) deliverance from danger or difficulty. So it seems that salvation can be spiritual, intellectual, emotional or physical. I hope the reader will agree with me that, social skills aside, in Crane’s case, the many agents of her survival forge a salvation that is all of the above.

Q: Let’s talk a little more about the setup. Little Duck isn’t really Big Duck’s son; he’s the son of an evangelist and Tit, a prostitute. Crane isn’t Big Duck’s daughter; she’s Tit’s other child with a pharmacist. They live together in a two-room shack they happened upon, along with Big Duck’s wife, Flat, and their daughter, Jima; but even that family arrangement is fraudulent, since Big Duck has another wife and children somewhere else. Salvation is a little like the Ugly Duckling tale, but no one in this cast really belongs in this stolen “nest.” How important was it to set up this story so that there were no safe places, no places to belong, no real home? What did taking “place” away from the characters mean for you in terms of creating story and an arc of character change? And what did it mean for the characters when “place” finally became something of substance and hope? How did that create new challenges?

Lucia Nevai is a debut novelist with an impressive writing history: short stories published across the board, including in The New Yorker. Her work has also garnered the Iowa Short Fiction Award and the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award, not to mention some glowing critique. Here, Salon’s Jonathan Miles reviews one of Nevai’s short-story anthologies, Normal, a compilation of 12 tales:

Certain stories close so perfectly that their endings are almost audible — a sudden beauty or truth reveals itself with the delicate click of a jewel box. You think of James Joyce, or perhaps Raymond Carver or Tennessee Williams: To exit their stories is to walk from a warm bath into cool night air, to feel knowledge or sensation as a sudden and real thing. At least two of the stories in Lucia Nevai’s first collection, “Normal,” achieve that dizzying level: “Monsieur Alle” and “Close.” These two stories are jewel box-perfect — piercing, often stunning works that portend a promising new voice in American fiction.

Here’s the thing: YES, Nevai has an amazing way with words that translated exceedingly well to novel-length fiction. Salvation is proof of that. But Salvation didn’t begin as a novel idea; its roots are also in short story. But I’ll let Nevai explain her journey, and her unique voice and POV choices. And be sure to read the excerpt of Salvation at the end of today’s post.

Enjoy!

Part 1: Interview with Lucia Nevai

Q: Salvation began as a short story. How did it evolve into a novel?

LN: Salvation began as a three-page short story, “Cannibals,” published in a literary quarterly. It portrayed the experience of children playing ritualistically in a sand box on a hot summer day in a Middle-Western lake community when the man next door kills himself. It didn’t fit in the collection of stories I was putting together with my literary agent, Denise Shannon. She was intrigued by it and wondered if it could be longer. Her instincts about my fiction had proven dead-on in the past. I had time. I decided to give it a try. For this brief story to evolve into a novel, I had to figure out who the children were to each other, to the community and to the man next door.

Q: How did your experience as a short-story writer prepare you for the broad work of Salvation? What were your strengths, and were there any growing pains with this new medium?

LN: My experience as a short-story writer left me with a high standard for how paragraphs should sound and work — both on their own and in sequence. There can’t be a wrong paragraph in a short story. But that same hyper-attention to the paragraph left me without any experience in how to relax and let the events in a novel unfold for characters in a life-like way. As a result, for a long time, Salvation had too many episodes of equal weight that made the same emotional point.

Q: What inspired Salvation? Were the characters fully formed for you when you began writing?

I began reading Jill A. Davis‘ latest novel, ASK AGAIN LATER, with a little apprehension. The story centers on Emily, a single woman in NYC whose life is thrown into a tailspin when her mother is diagnosed with cancer. Cancer certainly isn’t a funny topic. But Davis, an Emmy-nominated writer for the Late Show With David Letterman, not only got me laughing, but it was pee-your-pants-type of laughing. Uplifting, ironic, and extremely smart, Davis’ book was refreshingly free of bathos. It’s also a clear-eyed dissection of modern urban life.

Davis’ debut, GIRLS POKER NIGHT, rocketed up the NYT bestseller list and established Davis as a new voice in upscale women’s fiction. I was curious how Davis made the transition from television comedy writer to novelist, and if a writer can use comedy to explore dark subjects. The answers she gave are every bit as funny and thought-provoking as her books.

We are pleased to present our interview with Jill A. Davis.

What made you decide to be a novelist? How did writing for newspapers and television prepare you for writing novels?

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a writer and I always had a notion that I’d like to write a book. I have a very practical side which lead me to writing for newspapers. While I was studying journalism at Emerson College in Boston I was working full-time as a feature writer for a small newspaper. This was the land before spell-check! I loved writing a piece one day and seeing in the newspaper the next day, and hearing from people who’d read the articles. It’s a very satisfying loop. At the end of the day, when my official work was finished, I started working on these humor columns that I really enjoyed writing. At some point I showed them to my editor and I think she had some space to fill – so she ran the column. I think it was about getting my phone service shut off and the extreme balancing act of paying rent, phone, tuition and beer money …

Today, WU contributor Allison Winn Scotch steps in for a Q&A with fellow author Julie Buxbaum.

It’s not every day that an aspiring writer quits her cushy lawyer job in the hopes of being published. It’s also not every day that she then writes a debut novel that, according to Publisher’s Marketplace, sells (in conjunction with a second book) for over seven-figures. But for Julie Buxbaum, the above scenario is a reality: the now-London-based writer’s first book, The Opposite of Love, was published this past January by Dial Press to much acclaim, and her team recently announced a film deal with Paramount Pictures. Not too shabby for this former lawyer who didn’t even start writing her book until she told her law firm, “Sayonara.” So we’re thrilled to have Julie stop by and answer some questions on her writing process, her follow-up book, and how she’s dealt with this whirlwind process.

Q: Some writers outline their entire book from start to finish. I tend to write where my characters lead me, which means that I don’t always know how my book is going to end. Which sort of writer are you and why?

JB: I am definitely of the school of thought (particularly if you are not writing something like a mystery, where clues need to add up) that your characters have their own stories to tell, and it’s usually best to get out of their way. Though I did write an outline for The Opposite of Love, as soon as I got absorbed in the writing process, I completely forgot to look at it; I have never actually gone back over it, but I would imagine my end product is very different than what I had originally envisioned. If I hadn’t let myself go off outline, I would have missed the most fun part of the process: the surprise.

Q: Your lead character, Emily, shares a few, but not all, similarities with you, which might lead readers to assume this is more autobiographical than it is. Did you make an intentional decision to make her different than you, despite some life-experience similarities, such as losing a mother to cancer?

You’re in for it now, WU readers!

I’d read 78 REASONS WHY YOUR BOOK MAY NEVER BE PUBLISHED & 14 REASONS WHY IT JUST MIGHT by Pat Walsh, a senior editor at MacAdam/Cage Publishing, back in February, and laughed my head off through the entire book. It’s an insiders view of the publishing world from the point of view of an editor. No hold’s barred, funny as hell, Walsh’s book is like eating potato chips….you know you should stop (some of his reasons are pretty grim for aspiring authors), but you can’t.

Walsh has recently returned to MacAdam/Cage after a hiatus. Now back digging through the slush pile, he has an invitation for WU readers—which I strategically placed at the end of the interview to get you to read the whole thing. Not to worry. Walsh is as funny here as he is in his books.

We’re pleased to present a WU interview with Pat Walsh.

Q: Why did you write this book – 78 REASONS WHY YOUR BOOK MAY NEVER BE PUBLISHED & 14 REASONS WHY IT JUST MIGHT?

PW: I kept seeing the same mistakes over and over in our submission pile. I knew the information was out there, but there was no one book that focused primarily on mistakes made by writers. Also, it was a healthy outlet for my whining.

Q: What are some of the myths in publishing that writers buy into?

PW: 1. That publishers are looking for copies of already successful books. Harry Potter knock offs are everywhere, and a few might get published out of many thousands.