A Brief Email Interview with Martel Sardina, Joshua Doetsch, and Nathaniel Gray
This week we have three readers for our Featured Reading on the June 30th. Here’s a little bit about each reader and a few questions that will help you get to know them and what they will be presenting at the mic for us.
Martel Sardina is a long time Twilight Tales favorite. She’s an award winning author and former staffer who has recently added editor to her long list of credentials.
Joshua Doetsch is also a returning favorite and has recently had his first book published. He works mostly in the horror and fantastic reality genres, but his talents are sure to delight and surprise.
Nathaniel Gray is a new voice at our mic. He comes to us from Tina Jens’ class. his first appearance at our mic was all too brief and left many of us wanting to hear more of the story he presented that night. Here’s our chance to hear it.
Following are their answers to our interview questions.
Let’s start with the basics, what’s the title of the story you’ll be reading?
Martel: Let’s see…there’s the transgendered Frankenstein story, the noir murder mystery, and two really creepy ideas that are floating around in my brain. I suppose it will depend on my mood.
Josh: I’ll be reading excerpts from my new novel, Strangeness in the Proportion.
Nathaniel: Three pieces. The first is a short short titled “Interlude.” The second is an excerpt from my novel, The Rider. The third is a short story titled “Just Jazz.”
Who or what inspired it, and tell us briefly about the action?
Martel: The transgendered Frankenstein story was inspired by a conversation I had with a couple of teammates after a recent softball game. Ahh, the things you can think of with good friends over a couple of bottles of beer.
Josh: A lot of the inspiration (and the title) comes from the quote I use to open the novel:
“There is no exquisite beauty…without some strangeness in the proportion.”
—Edgar Allan Poe, “Ligeia”
The book is set in White Wolf Publishing’s World of Darkness setting (a real world setting with monsters in the shadows). It is technically a horror novel…but I like to think of it as a love story on the other side of entropy. As for inspirations…there were a lot of them. I wanted to story where a Tim Burtonesque misfit, drawn by Edward Gorey (with shades of silent film comedic heroes like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton) is forced into the dark underworld of Frank Miller’s Sin City as if directed by Edgar Allan Poe. The story is about an eccentric, absinthe addicted forensic pathologist, Simon Meeks, who falls in love with a Jane Doe cadaver. When Jane disappears, Simon snaps and goes off in search of her (scalpels in hand), plummeting into the hidden supernatural world that lies just under the surface of Chicago. It’s kind of about love and relationships with the dead…like the movie Ghost…only where that movie was more “Unchained Melodies”, my book is more “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” The lyrics and music video of the Nine Inch Nails song, “Perfect Drug” was also an inspiration (in fact, the lyrics work as a very vague plot synopsis). And finally, Count Carl Tanzler von Cosel (the infamous romantic/necrophile of Key West, Florida), offered some inspiration.
Nathaniel: Interlude came from an idea for a series of short stories all involving the same situation in this diner, where each story uses different groups of characters to see how they would play out in isolation. Those stories never got written, but Interlude, a conversation between the Cook and the waiter, did. The Rider is one of those pieces that has been gestating since my young childhood. I’d seen a screenshot for a game called “Full Throttle” which had this badass biker crossing a desert. I knew nothing about this rider or the story, but the image burned itself on my mind and I’ve been trying to get it out ever since. Just Jazz came from an idea about seeing and changing the future and my frustration with the only medium people use for that being weaving. I see the future as this ordered set of outcomes interconnected with other outcomes. This thought reminds me of music and how every note and chord affects the following notes and chords, and changing one will force others to change. So I made that into a story.
What’s the most interesting reading you’ve ever had?
Martel: I’d have to say my first ever reading at the Twilight Tales Open Mic at Love Is Murder 2005. I was so nervous that I was shaking which caused the paper to make a lot of crinkling noises. But after it was over, one author told me that he liked my story. If that hadn’t happened, I might have given up on this writing business then.
Josh: A drumming circle open mic night at Twilight Tales. I was reading an emotionally heavy piece…and the drums got me more into it…and I think that helped the drummer to get even more into it…and round and round and it felt like the most intense reading I’d ever given.
Nathaniel: This is actually my second reading ever (the first also being here at Twilight Tales with Tina Jens’s Fantasy Class through Columbia)
What inspires you to write, or what makes you want to tell a particular story?
Martel: I tend to write about things that upset me or things that scare me.
Josh: There is a ghost tree that grows in my head. On each of those thousand-thousand ghost branches are a thousand-thousand ghost ravens and each raven has a story to tell. When it is ready, a raven pecks at my eyes from the inside. I’ve learned the hard way that it’s best to obey the ravens.
Nathaniel: I’d heard about this condition called graphomania, and I think I have it. The Rider definitely comes from that incessant urge. I’ve been trying to tell his story since Middle School , and only in the past year or so has it really seemed possible.
What insights would you like to share with other authors about the writing process, getting published, or overcoming an obstacle in the story?
Martel: J.A. Konrath once told me that there was a word for writers who never gave up…published. I think that’s the most important thing for writers to remember. Never give up.
Josh: (1) Do not kill the things you love because of other people’s pretensions. Do not throw away your comic books, Godzilla movies, and Halloween decorations because someone says they’re tacky. The things we love fuel our stories and if you really love them, your stories will be deep enough. (2) Do not develop any pretensions. Only spend your energy on enthusiasms. The difference between a pretension and an enthusiasm is the difference between a man showing off his luxury car to his peers as a symbol of affluence…and a boy tearing the hell out of his new bike on a dirt hill, alone and in ecstatic joy. Never use a big word because you worry about what someone thinks. Use a big word because it’s fun and you want to play with it—play the hell out of it—work it to the nub. (3) And do not fall into the hysteria of anti-pretension either. Never throw away a big word because someone tells you you’re pretentious. Remind them that you have no pretensions, only enthusiasms. Make sure you are telling the truth when you say this. Or don’t. You are a writer, and thus a con-man of a sort, after all.
Nathaniel: Oh god, umm… You know? I have no idea. I keep asking those questions and all the answers I get seem too simple to be possible. So to help confound matters further I’ll tell you to: Just write. Get it out in any way possible. And above all be prepared to suck (at first).
Is there anything you’d like to tell us about yourself , or your writing that will help us understand who you are as a writer?
Martel: Just remember that I’m crazy and it will all make sense…LOL!
Josh: When I was a boy, I had a water bed. Water beds tend not to have a space underneath. No space, no monsters under the bed. My writing teacher and mentor in college is still convinced that I’m making up for lost time.
Nathaniel: I am terribly inconsistent. I’ll have weekends where I’ll get thousands and thousands of words out (many of them crap) and then there will be long stretches of time where writing becomes me saying to my friend, “hey I’ve got this great idea” and then not touching it for a long time. It’s very much a little-kid-in-a-house-of-mirrors syndrome. Everything is “ooooh shiny!” and I get distracted easily.
Finally, is there anything else you’d like to share?
Martel: Yes. I’d just like to say thank you to everyone who has tried to help me become a better writer over the years. I’d name names but I think that would encompass the entire Twilight Tales audience. So thank you everyone!
Josh: My first novel, Strangeness in the Proportion will be out sometime in the near future, by White Wolf Publishing. If you’d like to know anything else about me, you can check out my blog at www.myspace.com/nevermore_66.
Nathaniel: My brain can’t wrap itself around such an open ended question… I can’t think of anything.
We hope you’ll join us on Monday June 30th at The Fixx Coffee Bar (3053 N. Sheffield) to hear Martel’s, Josh’s, and Nathaniel’s fiction and perhaps more discussion!
