Interview on Smashwords

Why do you write?

Because when I am writing, it feels like there is nothing else I would rather do. 

 

Have you always been a writer or why did you start?

Writing is actually my "third act." I was a college professor, then a banker/finance manager and now a writer. When I retired, I thought I should study calculus to keep from going crazy but that was an insane idea. Then I thought of studying Mandarin (I am Chinese); soon I got bored with the text books and started translating "real stuff." One of the items was a famous book called The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, said to be the best introduction to traditional Chinese culture. From that study, four years later, came The Battle of Chibi, my first book. 

 

Who are your favorite writers and why?

I have read Tolkien and J.K. Rowling over and over because they have created new worlds and write flawlessly. I also like Salman Rushdie, Larry McMurtry and a host of others I continue to discover. I am fascinated by the stories and how they are told, unusual stories told with a difference. 

 

How do you approach cover design?

The covers for my first two books came courtesy of Createspace and its templates; I published in paperback then. When I change to publishing in ebook format, I made adjustments, easy with software today. With my third and fourth books I got more ambitious (and lazier) and turned to professional help, both with proof-reading and the covers. 

 

What do you read for pleasure?

These days, almost everything I read is for pleasure. I have pretty much given up on the news and politics. I do like to challenge myself and so have read stories about young adults, even young teens, or the paranormal and some things which one would not associate with pleasure so much as with learning about how and what to write. Learning itself makes that a pleasure. 

 

What is your e-reading device of choice?

I like my laptop because it has versions of the reading apps that allow for the greatest control, but I am learning how to use similar apps on a 7-inch tablet that I have just acquired. Originally, the idea was to be able to read lying down, but I find that that makes me sleepy. 

 

What book marketing techniques have been most effective for you?

None that has brought fame and fortune so far, but I expect to keep learning and trying.

 

Describe your writing process.

For The Chinese Spymaster which is the novel that was entirely made up, that is, it was not a translation and/or an adaptation of some other work, I started with an idea or two that I wanted to make work. Then I created some characters and they led me to situations, actions and other characters. I often wrote notes of what I thought some scenes would play out but felt that if I kept in mind the integrity of each character the scenes would often develop differently. By contrast, in writing The Battle of Chibi, I felt obliged to follow the text quite closely; I did make radical decisions about which chapters or parts of chapters of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms I would keep.

 

Who were the greatest influences on your writing?

More than the writers I mentioned earlier, I think of my high school senior year English teacher and my college English teacher. They were both very dedicated and required a five hundred word essay a week which they would have graded before the next one was due. My high school teacher even required that the essay be written during class! But he was less strict about the number of words.

 

What's the story behind your latest book?

I have heard a great deal about Judge Dee; his fans are as devoted and loyal as those of Agatha Christie or Nero Wolfe or Carl Hiaasen. So I thought I would see if I could turn his stories (written by Robert van Gulik) into a play. (I also have an interest in community theater.)

The Chinese Spymaster goes on a "blog-tour"

Like many (most) authors, I give almost no thought to promoting my books. This is unfortunate for a self-published or "indie" author. Promotion is what publishers do for their authors although one hears complaints that more and more these days they don't do much. It is the rule of 80-20 (a phenomenon Vilfredo Pareto discovered and so it is sometimes named after him although he is most famous for the principle of "Pareto optimality"). For publishers 80 percent of whose revenues are generated by 20 percent of their clients will spend their time and resources on the 20 percent. The other 80 percent are much like like their self-published ("Indie") brethren: they have to do it themselves.

Into the vacuum ("opportunity") has flourished a plethora of book-promoters--from the many full-service marketing/PR like services ($$$$) to a great many how-to books or web-sites ($/*). Naturally there is a full spectrum of these services; in marketing-speak, it is called "differentiation"--the services provide various levels like whiskeys that are red, black or blue and aged for ten, twenty or thirty years. 

Some experts on book promotion recommend that authors visit book or publishing conferences. Others swear by readings and book-signings. Still others claim that the only way is to get the book reviewed, the more frequently the better. This appeals instinctively to writers; we write and read and so it seems logical that reviews should be the trick.

But there are, it used to be said, many roads to Rome. I have commented before on how helpful certain web-sites can be for authors in search of feed-back, comments or reviews of their writing; that is probably the first category of help that writers look for. One of those web-sites also provides help in promoting one's work.


The Making Connections Group on Goodreads (note link to a sample tour) has dedicated moderators who are active bloggers. They also arrange for "blog-tours" and The Chinese Spymaster has been on one of these with a promotion, a review and/or an interview blogged by a different blogger every day for a week, some days by more than one.  The work of arranging such a tour has been undertaken by the gracious and hardworking moderators of this group. This clueless writer shuffling slowly into the social media of the twenty-first century is more grateful than words can express.

Agamemnon Must Die

My current writing projects include Agamemnon Must Die. This is my attempt to satisfy myself about Aeschylus' Oresteia. It includes my first attempts to compose and use poetry in a novel. As I thought about it, there were times when it seemed appropriate--the Greek choruses, the paranormal utterances or dreams, etc.

(This image was discovered by Heinrich Schliemann in Mycenae in 1876. He was a man with few doubts, having "discovered Troy" a decade earlier. The mask is now dated to the 16th century B.C. and more commonly called The Mask of Atreus, a reference to Agamemnon's father. It is on display as the Mask of Agamemnon at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. )

I have attempted a form of hexameter, in imitation of Homer. But Greek meters are very different from English; they depend on vowel length as opposed to "stress" in English. I hope for comments on how to improve on these. They have been posted, along with several chapters from the project on Authonomy.com. This link is to the chapter from which the following is excerpted.  Small differences show the restless reworkings indulged in by an author.

I

What insanity drove the Greeks to sail against

Troy? A thousand ships and a hundred thousand men!

Half the principalities sent their best warriors,

Leaving enough to man their walls, and those too old

Or too young for the expedition. Fewer than half,

A quarter or a tenth would return years later.

The others had listened to Atreus’ sons, Agamemnon

And Menelaus, pleading for support to punish the violation

Of the law of hospitality—the abduction of

His wife Helen by the Trojans! Having listened,

They firmly declined. Truth be told, they were wise.

Troy was a storied legend of wealth and power. No Greek

Had ever measured strength against Priam’s walls,

Or even braved the blue-green seas to assess the dangers

They would face. Brilliant Achilles agreed to go;

He sought his own glory for it had been foretold

That he alone could vanquish Hector, the doughty defender;

He scorned the oracle that tied his fate to this matchless deed.

He would not live long beyond this glorious moment,

Perfidious Paris, a mere archer, would fell this hero.

II

Insanity, the Judgment of Paris they called it, a divine jest

Was perhaps intended, but it brought tragedy:

Three goddesses who should have known better, vied

For the golden apple inscribed “To the most fair.”

And Paris the clueless presumed he could decide among

Goddesses which one should win this worthless prize.

So he chose Aphrodite who promised the fairest woman—

Helen, Menelaus’ wife—spurning wisdom and domestic

Bliss as promised by Athena and Hera respectively,

As bribes! Thus was set in motion events that would bring

Shame and pain, all the worst in gods and men.

The earth was young, gods and men still consorted;

Helen herself was said to have been sired by Zeus.

Who, insatiable, lusted also for Thetis, spirited

Goddess of the sea, beloved of Hephaestus

God of craft. But an oracle warned that any male offspring

Born to Thetis would eclipse his father. So Zeus

Chose brave but mortal Peleus whose son by Thetis, Achilles,

By brilliant and heroic deeds would slay Hector and rip out

The heart of Troy’s resistance and defense.

But to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, Zeus decreed

That Eris, goddess of discord and strife not be invited.

III

The “Judgment of Paris” would cause the Greeks much hurt.

It also broke the heart of the wood nymph whom Paris had

Seduced. She had tripped gaily through the woods

On Mount Ida when a Trojan hunting party

Led by Paris wandered, lost and confused by the

Trails cleverly fashioned by elves and nymphs in mischief

Within the forest. Mother Ida’s child was o’erwhelmed

By the beauty of the Trojan prince and allowed

Him to catch a glimpse of her. He loved her then

And came often to the sloped woods, until

Those three goddesses came shamelessly to seek his “Judgement.”

Olympians though they were, they could not escape the malice

Of Eris, provoked by exclusion from the wedding. Forlorn

And joylessly did the wood nymph wander around the valleys

Near Troy. What of Menelaus, brave, prudent and loyal?

He was left to bay like a young wolf wounded and lost,

Straining with every atom of his being and energy to find

The world he lost—Argos, Agamemnon and Helen.

Did all-seeing Zeus or far-seeing immortal Apollo,

His son, think they could out-wit Eris by dismissing her?

Big mistake, to belittle the goddess. The gods were foolish,

The goddesses no less, Eris alone did not

Deserve the blame. Agamemnon too, with his

Compliant brother, might have stepped back from war.

Yet he slew his own daughter, first-born Iphigenia. 

The whole poem may be seen at this link.

Poetry within a novel

In planning my new writing project, Agamemnon Must Die, I gave serious thought to including sections in poetry. This is partly because my inspiration, Aeschylus' Oresteia, was written in poetic form and partly because my work will be a radical retelling of the story that will include "paranormal" experience and exposition. It is also because I feel it a good thing to challenge oneself with a form, not prose, once in a while.

Upon the recommendation of a fellow writer, I chose to read some poetry new to me (not e.g., T. S. Eliot or the English Romantics), Stephen Vincent Benet's John Brown's Body, first published in 1928 but frequently  reprinted or republished since. I learned from this reading the following, adapted from a review posted on Goodreads and Amazon:

National epics do not make for good poetry. Virgil, for instance, pales in comparison with Homer. And of Tennyson's patriotic poems, the most memorable are really silly pieces with good rhymes, rhythms and a jingoistic spirit. Benet's work is sprawling and changes its rhythms often as it tries to encompass the Civil War. Would it have been better with a consistent meter such as empower The Iliad or The Spreading Chestnut Tree? A silly counter-factual question, I know.

But I found some lines heart-breakingly good:

What do souls that bleed from the corpse of battle
Say to the tattered night?
...
There was no real moon in all the soft, clouded night,
The rats of night had eaten the silver cheese,
Though here and there a forgotten crumb of old brightness
Gleamed and was blotted.

... and this on Abraham Lincoln:

Honesty rare as a man without self-pity.

The experience of reading Benet's work did not change my plans for Agamemnon Must Die and I hope to share selections from my forays into a new written form for me soon. 

AGAMEMNON MUST DIE

Returning from the Trojan War, King Agamemnon expects to resume the throne of Mycenae from the regency of his wife Clytemnestra. He is assassinated. 

The royal family of Mycenae has a bloody, monstrous history. Agamemnon returns with his war trophy, the Trojan princess Cassandra whom he unthinkingly flaunts before his queen. After an epic sword fight in his own banquet hall, Agamemnon is killed. Cassandra has her nightmares/visions of the gory and unspeakable deeds of the House of Atreus; she is led away to be executed. Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus have their respective reasons, but regicides must be avenged. Or so say the voices in Orestes' head: he must avenge his father; he must kill the regicides; he must kill his own mother.

But killing one's own mother would break the greatest of ancient taboos and would result in more clamor in his head. Are they just voices? Can they be placated? Aeschylus the playwright resolved this and won a prize from the Athenians. What did that mean?

The above is the "pitch" for the 16,000 words I have posted on Authonomy.com inviting comment. 

I have puzzled over why Aeschylus's Oresteia has been considered such a great classic since the 1960s when I read the new edition of The Complete Greek Tragedies published by the University of Chicago Press with David Grene and Richmond Lattimore as editors. Recently I felt the "call" to recreate the story of the characters and the fragments of their actions and motives provided by the playwright who was a veteran of the Battle of Marathon (490 B.C.). The Oresteia, however, dramatized events that were believe to have occurred perhaps 700 years prior to that, at the beginning and the end of the Trojan war (ca. 1190 B. C.). The war itself is a matter of myth and legend; the city that might have been Troy suffered many occasions of fire and destruction in its history. The Trojan war may be most closely identified with what is now referred to (in the archaeological record) as Troy VII, possibly VIIa.

Almost at the very beginning of my writing, I realized that the story I shall tell will follow the outlines that Aeschylus has left us but that the characters and their inner thoughts, their motivation, will be very different. It has never occurred to me to try to capture the beauty and majesty said to characterize Aeschylus's poetry; that is a task more suitably attempted by classicists and philologists. I felt also that the moral world imagined for the Greeks by Grene, Lattimore, Werner Jaeger, C. M. Bowra and the others that I also read so long ago must be changed. I hope, however, that the present generation of readers of literary fiction will find something of value in "Agamemnon Must Die."

I invite their comments on Autonomy.com to help me make it so.

The two covers on display with this post were a gift from a fellow writer on that web-site. Comments on preferences for either cover would also be welcome--either on Authonomy or here.

Goodreads--reviews and giveaways

Goodreads is one of two web-sites I mentioned in a previous post that is a useful "hang-out"

for writers. Others have written about it and mentioned that it is visited by twenty million (per year?); whether or not these are regular visitors or members of one of the hundreds of groups or even a casual passerby, this number impresses me. The Internet has also made independent publishing a big deal; I understand that digital publishing has now overtaken print publication although I do not know how this is measured. I personally prefer the feel of a book in my hands and so decided to publish both in paperback and electronically. This is fortunate as one of Goodreads' many useful services is the Giveaway; that is limited to books in print (at least for now). Winners are drawn from those who put their name in and are selected by some algorithm Goodreads uses.

Those who advise independent publishers recommend the Giveaway for the independent writer to draw attention to his or her book. The Giveaway does not entail a review or even a comment, but a writer always hopes for the best. Some readers will simply indicate how they rate their reading experience (one to five stars). Others might leave a more or less long comment. Goodreads allows a member (it is free to join) to "recommend" the book to "friends" on the site; these would fall half-way between "followers" on Twitter and "friends" on Facebook. In my idiosyncratic taxonomy, that would be the case.

I don't know how to classify those who "follow" this blog and those who visit, but I do want to invite everyone who sees this to participate in the drawing for the book at this link, Goodreads Giveaway.

As stated above, the Giveaway is limited to the print version only. Anyone who is willing to write a review, however, can get a free electronic copy from yours truly at tjoa.books@gmail.com

Online help for writers

As a writer, I believe I am not alone in feeling that while "in the zone" of writing there is nothing I would rather be doing. But it is a lonely process. Some writers welcome this, even develop character traits that ensure their being left alone. They develop eccentricities, curmudgeonly-ness, even plainly anti-social behavior. But there are authors and some aspects of writing that improve with fellowship. That is why many authors thrive in academia or in writers' retreats. That is also why writers have gravitated towards communities of which "The Village" and Montmatre are the most cliched examples of creativity fueled by shared consumption of caffeine or absinthe or whatever.

In the brave new world we now inhabit, the "Matrix" can provide some substitutes. I wrote in

an earlier post about the gathering of reviews. This is something that a writer lives for; it is the equivalent of applause for actors, musicians, street entertainers, and others who perform. Even a negative review is better than being ignored. Well, the website Goodreads.com contains many Groups that feed this authorial need. These Groups provide the key to this sprawling web-site; search the groups for genre (Cozy Mysteries) or purpose (Indie Writers/Review Group) and you will find groups that provide reviews and other support for Romance, Science Fiction,  Inspirational or Spiritual works, novellas for children or New Adults, Mysteries and Thrillers, Post-Apocalyptic Zombie adventures, Travel, Health, and so on. Or you can look up an author, for example yours truly, and see what books he/she has written and the reviews and comments that any of them have attracted. Link to Goodreads

Prior to publication, authors often seek the opinions of others. There are those, no

doubt, from whose heads the novels have sprung fully formed, like Athena from Zeus' head, but lesser mortals need the comfort of the opinions of their fellows. Publishing sites like Createspace usually have a section devoted to "Previews" of works in progress, but these pale in comparison to Authonomy.com. Like Goodreads, this site works on the principle of reciprocity. Authors who wish to benefit from them must show a willingness to contribute to them. Is that too much to ask for? Read and comment on the work of others as you would have others read and comment on your work in progress. With a blush, I offer a look at a new writing project I have undertaken--Agamemnon Must Die. As you can see, I have uploaded a portion of this work in progress (minimum of 10,000 words) and comments follow led perhaps by one's comments on the work of others but also by who else has commented, the web equivalent of "word of mouth."

Authors who are born to write in solitude need not apply, but for the rest of us, I hope these leads are helpful.