Two for Tuesday: Blog Interviews
Greetings Prosers,
Welcome to this week’s instalment of Two for Tuesday, where we share two things we believe you should feast your eyes upon within the world of Prose.
This week is the turn of Prose Partner Paul (@PaulDChambers) who is sharing snippets of two articles from the past from our blog site. For those new to Prose, you may be unaware that we have a beautiful blog site as well as this lovely reading and writing community.
On the site we have hundreds of articles, interviews, advice and sometimes just some lists of lovely writerly things like writing huts and libraries. The link to the blog site is attached so that you can peruse at your leisure. Paul explains what he is sharing and why:
The first article excerpt I’m sharing is an interview with one of my author heroes. He writes under the name of Michael Marshall Smith and Michael Marshall and is one of my top three favourite living authors. They say that you shouldn’t meet your heroes, and technically I didn’t; but we messaged a while and he turned out to be an absolute gentleman and top bloke all round. Do check out the whole interview. He rocks.
P: The Straw Men series of books blew many people away with its deeply disturbing, and delicious darkness. We asked Smith what he thought of the world’s fascination with all things evil.
M: “I think it’s always been that way. I’ll bet that ninety-five percent of the tales told around neolithic cave fires were about bad men and strange women and dark nights and the things that can happen in them. Warnings.”
“We all have a sense of the dark currents that swirl around and within us, and that’s what gave rise to myth and religion in the first place: people reaching for metaphors to unlock the internal and external struggles in our lives, the interplay of fate and freewill and destiny.”
“So much of this stuff is occluded from us on a conscious level, too, which is why we need story to dramatise and externalize. The sense that Something Is Going On, behind the scenes or outside our control, is inherent to the human condition because so much of our own nature is hidden to us. I suspect also that the relative comfort — and cushioning — of so much of the world’s entertainment-consuming public gives time to consider such matters, along with a nagging feeling that something, somewhere is coming for them.”
“We’re waiting for the hammer to fall. While we wait, let’s imagine what kind of hammer it’s going to be.”
The second interview I’m sharing a taster from is one where Prose Partner Sammie interviewed the very lovely author of The Martian, Andy Weir. Another chap who turned out to be extremely humble and welcoming to Sammie. As always, we try to cover the intelligent basics that people want to read about, but we also try to ask some more inane questions. Again, you should check out the whole thing, it’s awesome!
P: Tell me about journey behind the last word you typed, to The Martian rights being sold to Crown Publishing Group, then onto Ridley Scott for film adaptation.
A: "Originally the book was just a serial I posted a chapter at a time to my website. Once the book was done, people started requesting that I make an e-book version so they didn’t have to read it in a web browser. So I did and posted it to my site. Then other people emailed saying they want to read the e-book, but they aren’t technically savvy and don’t know how to download a file from the internet and put it on their e-reader. They requested I make a Kindle version they could just get through Amazon. So I did that as well. I set the price at Amazon’s minimum allowable price of $0.99. More people bought the book from Amazon than downloaded it for free from my website. Amazon has a truly amazing reach into the readership market.”
“The book sold very well and made its way up various top-seller lists on Amazon. That got the attention of Julian Pavia at Crown. He told his colleague David Fugate (a literary agent) about it. David ended up becoming my agent and Julian offered me a book deal. It was a whirlwind of activity because 20th Century Fox optioned the movie rights that same week.”
Do please go to the blog site blog.theprose.com and check these and other articles out.
We've met authors, screenwriters, bands, composers, comedians, bookstores and many, many more. There’s plenty of reading for you there. In the meantime, enjoy your wordy worlds.
Until next Tuesday,
Prose