Guest Post: PJ Manney on GameStop and the Power of Populism

Recently I reviewed Richard Kadrey’s The Grand Dark for Green Man Review. I enjoyed the book and kept thinking about it, so I had some questions. Richard kindly agreed to a follow-up interview. Here’s his answers to those questions.

Q: What was it about the setting of The Grand Dark that drew you? It feels as though it came first and then the story within it – or was it the other way around?

RK: All of my previous work had been set in real places, primarily Los Angeles and San Francisco. With The Grand Dark, I wanted to build my own world from the ground up. The character of Largo appeared pretty much at the same time as I was creating the city of Lower Proszawa in my mind. I wanted someone somewhat innocent and with very little power to contrast with the weight and complexity of the city. But he had to be fluent in the streets. Largo could have been a crook, but instead I made him a bicycle messenger. Someone at the mercy of the weather, the traffic, and moody cops.

Q: What fears did you have about moving away from Sandman Slim and into different waters?

RK: I was very nervous. Largo was the opposite of my best-known characters, especially James Stark, aka Sandman Slim. Stark is confident and powerful. Largo is just the opposite. His defining characteristic is the constant fear he lives with because of his brutal childhood. But Largo isn’t a wimp. He finds his strength as the book progresses. Stark, and even Coop in my caper novels, were already strong and didn’t need a lot of lessons. People associated me with that kind of character and I got some pushback at first. But now that the book is out, readers seem to be coming around to Largo and the tough time I give him in The Grand Dark.

Q: Some critics have said that speculative fiction, no matter what time period it’s set in, is about the times in which it’s being produced. Do you think that’s true of The Grand Dark, and why or why not?

RK: Trust me, this book wouldn’t have been nearly as dark if I’d written it at a different time and under a different president. We’re seeing the rise of a cruel, fascist ethos around the country. For me, it feels as if we’re hurtling toward some kind of great calamity, which is what’s happening to Lower Proszawa in the book.

Q: Does having written for comics shaped your novel writing process? Do you have a vision for a graphic novel version of The Grand Dark?

RK: I’ve always been a visual writer, so comics were a natural extension for me. Writing both comic and, now, film scripts has helped me break down stories to their basic components and put them back together again, scene by scene.

Q: What’s coming up next for you?

RK: I’m working on a new Sandman Slim novel and I’ve finished up a new film script that I really can’t talk about right now. I also have some comic proposals out. Because I’m also a photographer, probably the strangest thing I’d like to do is a photo tour of burial sites around the world, and then put them together in a book with a story about each place.

5 stories, 5 times

Have you ever wondered how your favorite story would sound if written by another author? What is it exactly, that makes writers different? What does each one bring to the story they’re writing, in terms of style, mood, tone, etc? How would the story sound as written by someone else?

That’s what the Reading 5X5 anthology explores – twenty-five SFF writers writing five variants of five stories. I asked five groups of five authors to start from the same basic story brief, but write in their own way. The result is fascinating – five wildly different approaches to each of the five briefs, but each telling, at its core, the same story.

Where did this come from?

In 2013, I read Retrospective: the Best of Gene Wolfe, in which he encourages writers to pick a story by a successful author, rewrite it from scratch, and analyze the differences. I liked the idea, but never got around to actually doing it.

In 2015, I participated in my first Novel-in-a-Day, in which each author writes one chapter of a novel, based on just a few shared facts and plot elements. There are usually multiple versions of each chapter, and it’s always interesting to read another author’s take on ‘your’ chapter.

From those two seeds, Reading 5X5 arose in mid-2017. What if comparing and contrasting different authors’ takes on the same material was the focus of the effort, rather than a bonus? What if it were an anthology, with several groups of authors taking on the same stories?

Between 2013 and 2017, it just happened that I had started an online SFF magazine, Metaphorosis. By the time I’d come up with the anthology idea, we’d been publishing for almost two years. That meant I had a ready-made pool of authors whose work I knew I liked. I sent out a query, which said, essentially – “Here’s a fun idea. Are you interested? And by the way, let’s do it for charity, so please give me your work for free.” I’m happy to say that a lot of people said yes, because that’s just how Metaphorosis authors are.

Around the same time, I’d come up with the Reading 5X5 title, which gave me the size of the anthology. We had so much interest that we signed up alternates, in case someone needed to drop out. In fact, no one did (the one down side being that I didn’t get to step into the gaps myself.)

So, how did it all work out?

I’m extraordinarily pleased. The stories are fascinating to read and to compare. Some groups ended up reasonably similar (in theme, but not in detail), while others were strikingly different. Some authors stuck close to the brief; others (even those who wrote the briefs) veered off in unexpected directions. No matter what, though, the stories in each group are recognizably the same story at their core, while being creatively, inventively different in most other ways.

Not only that, but it was fun to do.The whole endeavour was collaborative. Writers volunteered to write the story briefs, they took on the proofreading, and they participated in promotion. I enjoyed it, and I think the writers did too.

What about the actual book?

From the start, I wanted the anthology to work for two groups – readers (people like my spouse, who just want to read good stories and can’t be bothered with all the trim) and writers (who want to really dig in and see how and why the stories differ, and how they would have handled the brief). True to that goal, we’ve produced two editions of the book.

• The Readers’ edition – just 25 great stories from five story seeds.
• The Writers’ edition – all 25 stories, plus two extras, plus the original story briefs, plus extensive author’s notes for each story and by the writer of each brief. My recommendation is that writers who really want to make the most of the book start with the briefs, and write their own story from one or more of them before reading the anthology. See what choices you and the other authors made, and how they worked out differently. To help that along, set up a website where authors can post their stories and compare with an even larger group: x1.reading5X5.com

You can probably tell I’m rooting for the Writers’ edition. The stories are great in themselves, and I hope a lot of people will enjoy them. But the Writers’ edition is where the real fun is, in my mind. It’s not only interesting in itself – seeing the genesis and the thought process of each author – but it’s a ready-made writing exercise that authors can try on their own, with their critique groups, or, via the website, with strangers. The best ways to develop as a writer are to read and to write. Reading 5X5 offers both. Come check it out!

And did I mention it’s for charity? All proceeds go to the Clayton Memorial Medical Fund, providing for critical medical expenses of SFF writers in the Pacific Northwest (where Metaphorosis is based).

#SFWAPRO

Enjoy this writing advice and want more content like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

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