A Brief EMail Interview with Aaron Longoria and Lane Kareska
This week we have Aaron Longoria and Lane Kareska at our featured reading.
Aaron Longoria has done a number of open mics and participated in this year’s Red Light Night. His voice training really brings his characters to life at live reads. His tales of the Dragon Cafe and its hapless owners have really been a hit. whatever he brings to the mic this week, you can be sure the evening will be fun and the voices interesting.
Lane Kareska is a relatively new voice at our mic, but his first reading (in a group of fiction writers from Tina Jens’ class), so impressed us at Twilight Tales that we invited him to be a featured reader. The snippet we heard, shows great promise. We hope his new job, several hours from Chicago, doesn’t keep him away too long.
Following are their answers to our interview questions.
Let’s start with the basics. What’s your story called, and can you tell us a little about it?
Aaron: Dragon Cafe: Passion on the Side is my first in-depth characterizational story within the Dragon Cafe series. Slopwyth Dragon is co-proprietor of the Dragon Cafe, and the tale tells of long-lost love renewed between Slopwyth and his lover of three years ago, Artifice Stallion, the premier danseur of a horseling troupe called the Equines Fine; and the insuing [sic] conflict therein.
Lane: My story is called “King Hellry.” These are the beginning pages of my novel of the same title. It’s about a young guy named Sam who through a series of circumstances, finds himself accompanying his old and dying Grandfather, Arthur Hellry, on a hallucinatory and violent trip into the wild heart of Mexico- where Hellry hopes to find and kill his lifelong rival, Wolfram True, the Sin Eater.
What kinds of things inspire you to write?
Aaron: Usually, a nice, brisk walk helps motivate me to write—stirs up the sluggish brain cells. As for inspiration, ideas can come from as far as left field. It might be something I see while driving hither and yon.
As for my current story, Passion on the Side, I noticed a bus stop poster while waiting for the light to change. The poster showed the Lipizzan stallions dressed in tutus, dancing and standing on their hind legs. I saw that and said, “There’s a story there, somewhere…”
Lane: My family, friends, experiences. All the crazy people I know and the good and bad times alike. My earliest memories are being read to by my mom. She really instilled a respect for literature in me and made me want to try and be a writer. I also find myself most inspired by place. I’ve had some really horrible experiences in some great places and vice versa. But beyond that, I’m really getting into places with age. Places that are older than can be counted. The novel King Hellry was inspired by grandfather, but it was also inspired by the southwest, where I was born and where I lived and where he lives now. Mountains, deserts, ghost towns.
Do you have a particular genre or do you write more across the board?
Aaron: I’ve always appreciated Fantasy. There’s so much one can work with—human and non-human characters. That seems to be my forte; the conflict involved between such diverse species within their own worlds, yet making it realistic as well as fanciful.
Lane: My mentor Tina Jens has really liberated me when it comes to genre. I’ve always been a pulp nut, even when I didn’t know what to call it that. Working with her has really energized my passions for horror, for the weird and the fun. The most fun I’ve ever had in my life was as a kid reading comic books in the summer. Was Spider Man a genre? I don’t know, I know he touched on great themes of literature, but also there were sci fi issues, and horror issues, and romance and even moments of sex appeal.
Have you gotten any advice that has made a difference in your writing?
Aaron: I’d say the best advice I’ve ever heard is “Listen to your characters.” As I’m fleshing them further, they’re the ones taking place within the story. Makes for more believable storytelling.
Lane: Tons. Rob Duffer has taught me that it’s good to be scared, to not feel too comfortable. Mort Castle taught me work ethic. Tina Jens has taught me to take fun seriously, and to respect craft.
What’s the biggest obstacle you have to overcome when you sit down to write?
Aaron: For me, it’s the flow of the story. Making sure I’m going from Point A to Point B and back, as well as pulling the story all together, creating and resolving the conflict, and just making sure everything gels. If I’m happy with the flow, I’m hoping the reader will be, too.
Lane: The temptation to get up and do something else. Every session is a battle.
Any final thoughts you’d like to let to share about your featured reading?
Aaron: I enjoy bittersweet love stories. I think it’s important for our heart-strings to be tweaked now and then, and I hope my audience finds this as enjoyable a tale to listen as I found it a pleasure to write. Thank you.
Lane: I’m thrilled to be a part of this. Thrilled to be sharing and to be experiencing all the fun.
We hope you’ll join us on Monday July 21st at Mystic Celt (3443 N. Southport) to hear Aaron and Lane’s fiction and perhaps more discussion!
