Tag: interview

Talking Kickstarters with Oscar Rios of Golden Goblin Press

Just before both our Kickstarter projects went live (and were quickly funded, I must say), I got a chance to chat with Oscar Rios, President of Golden Goblin Press about Kickstarters, RPGs and how much coffee you’ll need when you’re running a project.

Posting this now, after Oscar’s project has been incredibly successful, almost seems quaint. But the information he imparts is critical for anyone looking to run a RPG Kickstarter. I took his advice to heart and look where I ended up.

This is the first of what should be many audio interviews here on Weird 8. I think we’re off to a good start. Enjoy!

Max Barry Interview

Nine years ago I sent out a chance email for a shot to interview one of my favorite authors, Max Barry. Just that the guy would take time out to answer an email from a fan like this is amazing. Clearly he’s awesome. Read:

Update October 2004

Pie Driver interviews Max Barry

When you were 12 years old, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be the newsreader on TV. That guy really seemed to have his shit together.

What’s your daily writing regiment?

I roll out of bed about 7:15am. I iron my wife’s clothes for the day (she’s a school teacher), because yes, I am just that sensitive. Then I go into my study and start writing. I stop when the words do, or when I start to feel faint from hunger, both of which usually happen around 11 o’clock. Sometimes I write in the afternoon, but more often I do all my creative stuff for the day before noon.

Do you outline before or during your writing? While Syrup has a more evolving storyline, Jennifer Government seems more structured. How are your story-telling techniques evolving?

I start with an initial idea, usually about a couple of characters and what they might want to do, and go from there. I very rarely know what’s going to happen more than a couple of chapters in advance. That helps the story from becoming too predictable, and, more importantly, keeps me guessing. I can’t think of anything more boring than planning out an entire novel, then having to write it. As much as possible, I try to avoid ending up pushing characters around like chess pieces, trying to get them to hit particular plot points. I much prefer they take the lead.

It’s funny that Jennifer Government seems more structured. That’s only because I rewrote it so hard; those story threads didn’t come together so neatly in the first draft, I promise you that. This is the downside of not doing outlines.

What has made Syrup and Jennifer Government keepers as opposed to the other novels that were shelved?

Mainly that they were not crap. That’s a big reason. Crap novels, onto the bonfire. Good novels, I call my agent.

How did it feel to finish Jennifer Government and yet have no publisher want to publish it?

My SYRUP publisher (Penguin Putnam) didn’t want it; other publishers were much more receptive. But yeah, it was pretty shocking. When I first got published, I felt so pathetically grateful to everyone that helped me there that I swore I would always stick by them, even if I became hugely famous and popular. They were all so very nice. But they had to make a business decision, and they made it. Tough for me, because I seriously thought my career was over. And I’m very attached to my career. But it was a rough time for Penguin Putnam financially. If I’d been in their shoes I might have cut me, too.

Has Jennifer Government been a success? By what standards? Do you think it will help sell your next book?

Any novel that allows me to keep doing this for a full-time job is a success to me. Getting good reviews is nice, too. In terms of sales, yes, Jennifer Government has done great. I get a stack of fan e-mail, which is just brilliant.

I have a feeling that the sales of novels tend to reflect the quality of the one before them. If you like this one, you buy the next one; if you don’t, you won’t. So very possibly Jennifer Government was just a reaction to Syrup. But hopefully not. Hopefully my next one will get out there and do even better.

Has NationStates been a success? What the future plans for it? Did this evolve as a game or a marketing ploy?

Oh yeah, very much so. I created it as a game to hopefully attract 1,000 people, and so far somewhere it’s had around 400,000 players. I’m not exactly sure what to do with it, since it has become such a big deal all by itself — many, many more people have played the game than read the book — but I’d like to do something.

The idea for NationStates.net — that you get to see what a country based on your idea of perfect politics would look like, and play with it — was one I’d had for a while. And it tied in to the concept behind Jennifer
Government. But I probably wouldn’t have ever coded it unless I could justify that time and expense as a way to promote my novels.

Who do you see as your peers, whether in story-telling or as a novelist? Any authors that you model yourself after?

It really depends on the novel. Two writers I adore, though, are Neal Stephenson and Chuck Palahniuk.

Has being a young author been an asset or a detriment to establishing your career?

I think it’s an asset on the promotional side. The media is definitely more interested in talking to young authors. But as for the actual writing, I think I’ll be creating better novels with another ten or fifteen years’
experience. I sure hope so, anyway. If I’m not, I haven’t been paying attention.

Now that making shit up is your profession, what do you do for fun?

The thing is, though, making shit up is fun. I have that rare and amazing thing: a fun job. But these days, when I’m not writing, I’m trying to maintain NationStates.net. That thing is a real time sucker.

What’s so bad about being Australian?

There seem to be an awful lot of us, wriggling our way into the bastions of American culture. It started with Aussie actors, then came directors, now we’re all over the place. You can’t take five steps in the US entertainment industry without tripping over an Australian. So I apologize for being yet another one.

Max.

Christopher Miller Interview

More than ten years ago, I interviewed author Christopher Miller about his first book. Soon I’ll be interviewing him on his second, and maybe even third book. Check back soon…

October 2002

Pie Driver interviews Author Christopher Miller

I met Christopher Miller in the summer of 2001 up in Portland, Oregon. He had just sold his first novel, Simon Silber, Works For Solo Piano, and was contemplating a move to the Big Apple. In the brief time we chatted, I inundated him with questions about publishing, but never felt I got the time to really get the answers I wanted. After all, his novel hadn’t even been published yet. But the book was published in May 2002 and I ran down to my local bookstore first thing and picked it up. You should too. It’s a great story about an eccentric composer and his slacker biographer. A great read for sure. Pie Driver tracked down Miller recently and blackmailed him into submitting to an interview:

I’ve read the bio in the back of the book and talked a little about your history, but can you talk a little about the class you took at Washington University with William Gass?

It wasn’t a class but an independent study – Gass wisely refused to teach writing workshops, and I’m sorry to say that I never took his philosophy class. The independent study was a little disappointing because he was, or seemed, so utterly indifferent to my writing, and I’d admired his for so many years. It’s too bad, because there’s no one smarter than Gass, no one who has thought as much about style and structure, no one better qualified to mentor a younger writer with similar tastes. And I guess I went to Wash U. with some naïve idea that he’d take a special
interest in me, as if grooming his replacement.

Why did you take the grad school route?

Good question. I had vowed not to because I didn’t like the grad students I met as an undergrad, and because my father was a professor of literature and I felt duty-bound to strike out in a different direction. For a decade I did the starving-artist thing, working low-paying jobs in the so-called caring professions; when I applied to graduate school – already in my thirties – I was working at a group home for profoundly retarded adults, and I’d had enough. There’s a limit to how often you can hose feces off a profoundly retarded adult before you convince yourself that whatever bad effects graduate studies may have on other people, you’ll manage to avoid the pitfalls. I’m not sure I did avoid the pitfalls, but at least the shit I encountered in graduate school was only metaphorical.

How long did it take to write your novel?

About five years from start to finish, though I was working on other things too in those years, including a short novel that I started before Silber and am still working on, though I’m not sure it’s getting any better. It isn’t even getting any longer.

Describe meeting your agent and working with him to get him interested in your novel.

I met my agent through one of his clients, Deborah Eisenberg, who taught a writing workshop at Washington. I showed him the first 50 pages of Silber – all I had at the time – and he said he’d be interested in seeing the rest when it was finished, though that wasn’t for another couple of years. In the meantime I’d almost changed his mind by twice sending him the manuscript of
another novel, the hopeless one I just mentioned.

What was the hardest part once they bought the novel?

Probably the wait – almost two years between selling the book and seeing it in print.

How extensive were the changes they suggested, and were there any changes that you fought?

The most extensive change was to the ending, the last 10 or 20 pages, because my original ending was a mess. I knew it was a mess when I submitted the novel, but I was hoping I could get away with it. I’m glad my editor made me change it. As with the other changes he suggested, he didn’t try to fix it for me, just forced me to face the fact that as it stood it didn’t work, and then left it to me to find a solution. I didn’t really fight any of his suggestions, though I didn’t always find ways to follow them even when I wanted to. For instance, he kept urging me to include more of Norm’s aphorisms, and I wanted to–I think they would’ve been fun to read–but I couldn’t think of any more.

Why the move to NY?

I’d been reading a lot of Ben Katchor, whose comic strips make New York City seem like the most poetic place in the world.

How has it been?

I didn’t like it much while I was there, but now that I’ve left–I moved to Vermont last month to teach at Bennington–I’m suddenly incredibly nostalgic for NY. It takes me so long to warm to a new place–and I move so often–that it’s been years since I liked a place while I was actually living there. Who knows where I’ll be when I start to like Vermont?

Working on the second (or third) novel?

I’m working on two short novels, one about a small town where everybody is obsessed with food, and another I like to describe as a novelization of a non-existent David Lynch film.

What sort of work ethic is being employed?

I force myself to sit down and at least pretend to write twice a day, every day. I always drink coffee when I write, and I only drink coffee when I write. Coffee and writing are so inseparable for me that if I have an inspiration when I’m not drinking coffee, I don’t even write it down. “Naw,” I tell myself, “that one doesn’t count – I’m not drinking coffee.” I also chew Nicorette when (and only when) I write. I’m the only person I know who’s managed to addict himself to nicotine gum without first being addicted to cigarettes. It’s like getting addicted to methadone without ever
trying heroin.

Did any other authors/novels give you inspiration for Simon Silber?

I had been wanting for more than a decade to write an homage to Pale Fire (Vladimir Nabokov), and that book definitely served as a model for mine, just as it’s served as a model for half a dozen other books I can think of (Edwin Mullhouse, The Debt to Pleasure, etc). You could teach a whole course consisting of books that wouldn’t have been written if not for Pale Fire.

Top five books?

Maybe not my all-time favorites, but five books I’m feeling especially gung-ho about at the moment:

Hilaire Belloc-Cautionary Verses
Kazuo Ishiguro-A Pale View of Hills
Lydia Davis-Almost No Memory
Flannery O’Brien-The Third Policeman
Gilbert Sorrentino-Gold Fools

Favorite books of 2002?

Ben Marcus-Notable American Women
Lydia Davis-Samuel Johnson is Indignant
Martin Amis-The War Against Cliché

Any advice to aspiring authors?

Read everything (there isn’t much) ever written by Lydia Davis. If you don’t like her, you may be aspiring up the wrong tree.

Interview with Chris Livingston

Way back in 2001 I interviewed Chris Livingston, who was just finishing his long-running temp web site Not My Desk. This is the interview in its entirety, and look for a new update some time soon…
Pie Driver Interviews Not My Desk

PD: So I’m going to interview you for my site. we’ll do one question at a time, and it will be this cool email string that we can go back and edit and make even cooler. Cool?

NMD: BRING IT.

PD: What made you start a web site about temping?

NMD: Allow me to set the stage for you. The year: 1942. The city: Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. The writer: 13 year-old Anne Frank, hiding in her attic, writing faithfully in her diary. Powerful. Poignant. Unforgettable.

Funny? Mmmm… no. Not a lot of humor, almost no mention of fiendish fax machines, vengeful copiers, or unpredictable office chairs. Little talk of nose-hair issues or ties getting caught in paper-shredders or male co-workers’ nipples showing through their dress shirts. No essays, not a single one, about fart noises.

Obviously, there was a niche, just waiting to be filled. That’s where I came in.

Okay, seriously, I had been writing essays about my temp jobs and sending them (unsolicited) to my family and friends. One day it occurred to me: why should only they suffer, when I can hurt others with my immature and predictable stories? There’s a world of strangers out there, and I can reach them, and annoy them, through the internet.

PD: What sort of disease did you contract that made you want to eschew the full-time job-thing for the uncertainties of the temping world?

NMD: Well, for a while there, it wasn’t so uncertain. There were jobs galore out there. I could pick and choose. I could specify what I was looking for, be picky about location and pay. I could wear nothing but big cotton briefs to my jobs and no one would complain for fear of me quitting. Many of my interviews ended with me forcing the interviewer to do a little dance for me and shower me with fresh-baked cookies. It was a temp’s market. The tables have turned these days. Now they’re wearing the big cotton briefs, so to speak.

PD: Now that the boom is over, and George W. is firmly planted in the White House, is finding work become easier or harder?

NMD: It’s definitely harder. Back when Clinton was running things, he’d call me every few days to make sure I was finding work. Nice guy. But does Bush do that? No. Of course not. He calls maybe once every two weeks. What a jerk.

PD: Are you, as rumored, the Uber-temp? Or more of the Anti-Temp? Or just a plain, old Generic Temp?

NMD: I’d have to go with Anti-Temp. Definitely not Uber-Temp. An Uber-Temp would be a Jack-of-all-Trades, completely proficient at everything, like Lara Flynn Boyle is in the film “The Temp”, before she freaks out and starts killing everyone in predictable ways. I’m not a Jack-of-all-Trades. I’m more of a Jerry-of-a-Couple-Things. I can do a few things okay, but I have to fake the rest.

Also, it’s rare that I really take advantage of the resources the Generic Temp has at his or her disposal. I hardly ever call in sick, or skip work, masturbate in the lobby, or walk away from jobs. I’m also not really looking for anything permanent, like a lot of temps are.

So, I guess I’m the Anti-Temp. I care a little too much about what my employers think of me to be a complete pill. And I don’t steal as much as I should.

PD: What came first: the employed temp or the unemployed temp?

NMD: This is a silly question. Too silly to bother answering.

Although…

No, it’s silly.

But…

Hm. I mean, to be an employed temp, you need to sign up at a temp agency and get an assignment. Between the time a temp signs up and gets assigned, I suppose they are officially a temp, yet not employed. So, it would seem that an unemployed temp would have to come first. But then, let’s say the “temp” decides he doesn’t want to temp, or is so droolingly incompetent or surly or ugly that he never does get assigned… was he ever a temp? AGGGGGGHHHHHH NOW I WON’T SLEEP!
DAMN YOU, DAVE OF PIEDRIVER!!!!

PD: What’s the competition like in the “Web sites about temping” world?

NMD: Well, the wonderful thing about the World Wide Superweb Interhighway is that there are so many “lanes” or “avenues” that each “traveler” or “surfer” can “go” where they “want” with little or no “hassle”. This means the competition is nil. People can read my website right along with their other hundred or so favorite semi-daily temping humor journals.

Still, I pretend I’m in fierce competition with other sites, just to add a little excitement to my life. I also pretend there are agents of a shadowy branch of the government after me, when in reality, they’re just after my neighbor.

PD: Do you see any way of amassing large amounts of wealth by running your web site? People have got rich on less, you know.

NMD: The way I see it, I have a few options for getting rich. 1) Let people read the first paragraph of an article, then charge them for the rest, like Salon.com does. 2) Put up tons of pop-up ads, as well as placing full-page ads between the front page and the articles, like Salon.com does. 3) Change my site name to salom.com, and get bleed-off traffic from people trying to visit salon.com. And charge them for it.

The fourth (and best) option would be to charge money to people who want to interview me, like you are. Say, about $75,000 per interview. Deal?

PD: If Notmydesk becomes a Hollywood blockbuster, who do you see playing yourself? Who would be your as-yet-nonexistent girlfriend? Who would play me?

NMD: Look, if we’re talking NMD the Motion Picture, there’s really only one answer. Who could play me? Who could capture the innocence, the playful mirth, the wide-eyed wonder? Who could bring the pain, and power, and promise to the screen? Who could emulate the joie de vivre, while at the same time mirror the despondency and desolation? Really, only one man. Michael Winslow, the sound-effects guy from the Police Academy movies.

As for my girlfriend, she could be played by a digital amalgam of Christina Ricci (body, limbs & head) and an anklosaurus (powerful, heavily-armored club-like tail used for smashing enemies). And you could be played by Haley Joel Osment.

PD: What if they wanted Paul Verhoeven to direct and Joe Eszterhas to write it?

NMD: Hey, Verhoeven did RoboCop, and I’m down with that. As far as I know, Joe Eszterhaus is incapable of ‘writing’ anything.

PD: What if Episode Two sucks just as bad as Episode One?

NMD: Thing is, hombre, it don’t matter none. If Episode II sucks, we’ll go to III with the everlasting hope that it will somehow save the prequel trilogy. If II is good, we’ll hope III will continue the trend. Either way, we (Star Wars fans) are gonna be in the queue on
opening day. Sure, we would like nothing more than to wash our hands of the whole affair. But who are we kidding? And besides, wasn’t bitching about Jar-Jar (and the rest of the Episode I suckiness) a lot of fun? You might say we are the Gundark, and Lucas has got us by the ears, and no amount of wrestling will get us free, and holy shit what a giant fucking dweeb I am for having said that.

PD: And so Not My Desk heads into oblivion with only a temporary name badge to keep him employed. Ah, NMD, you are my hero…