IS THERE MUCH DIFFERENCE FOR YOU IN THE BUSINESS SIDE OF RELEASING A SECOND BOOK — DOING READINGS, ANTICIPATING REVIEWS, "LIVING UP TO EXPECTATIONS"? DOES STEPHEN KING SEND YOU A LETTER WELCOMING YOU TO THE MAJOR MAINE AUTHORS CLUB? I think, if we're talking in terms of readership, that Stephen King is the Major Maine Authors Club, and the rest of us are part of some funny little auxiliary. But yeah, the second time around is different, and by and large that difference is negative. The first time it's a novelty, and you're just kind of spinning around like Mary Tyler Moore — or maybe it's more like Mary Poppins. You can't believe you have an actual book in actual print. You go into stores to molest your book with no regard whatsoever to the suspicious glances shot your way by other customers. The second time, you understand the business a bit better, and the significance of review venues and sales numbers, and it's tougher on the soul. Best you can do is try to ignore it and continue working, since by the time someone's plunking down cash for the book, its fate is almost entirely out of your hands.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTION THAT GUIDES EVERYTHING MATTERS! IS, "DOES ANYTHING I DO MATTER?" I'M NOT CONVINCED YOU GIVE A CONCISE ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION (NOT THAT YOU SHOULD, BY ANY MEANS), BUT I WONDER HOW YOUR IDEA OF THE ANSWER EVOLVED AS YOU WROTE THE BOOK. Well to be honest I still haven't answered the question for myself with anything approaching satisfaction. Life isn't a novel, after all, and even though any writer worth his salt will make an effort to approximate the complexity and messiness of real life, it's impossible to really capture and still write a compelling narrative. Because let's face it, real life has a lot of digressions, pointless scenes that lead nowhere, and lots of dead air. This is part of its messiness and complexity, but it doesn't make for good reading.
THE PREMISE OF EVERYTHING MATTERS!, LIKE GOD IS DEAD, MUST HAVE GIVEN YOU PRETTY MUCH FREE REIN OVER WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS IN THE STORY. HOW MUCH WERE THESE DEVELOPMENTS JUST MAKING FUN SHIT UP, AS OPPOSED TO GETTING THE PLOT WHERE IT NEEDS TO BE? You'd be surprised how many of the scenes in the book, no matter how improbable, have a basis in reality. But of course there's a lot of pretty wild make-believe going on here, too, and that's definitely the fun stuff. I can't really say it's an either/or proposition as you've presented it here, though. My intent is to both make fun shit up and move the plot along, concurrently. Whether or not I've done that successfully is open to debate, of course. I don't diagram out stories, and often I have very little idea of where the plot is heading until I actually reach that turning point and write it. So a lot of the time the storyline is dictated by these moments of weird improbability, and that's the fun of writing — being surprised by what you come up with next. And with any luck that fun is transmitted to the reader.
DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU'VE SAID YOUR PIECE REGARDING THE END OF DAYS YET? Probably not. I'm working on another book now, and things aren't looking good for humanity. Three for three. A writer friend of mine once told me "we all have our obsessive themes," and it struck me as very astute, if quietly so. The trick is to figure out how to continue to mine these obsessive themes while avoiding the constant danger of plagiarizing yourself.
Christopher Gray can be reached at cgray@phx.com.
