Bryan Geoffrey Way
Do you have a nickname or what do your friends call you?
Never earned one worth remembering.
You should join a band. Usually if you’re in a band, people tend to call you by your first name and your band name. You should start a band called “The Coming Apocalypse” and then people will start calling you Bryan Apocalypse which would be pretty cool. I’m going to pretend that all of that happened and from now on I will refer to you as “Bryan Apocalypse”.
No arguments here, as long as I don’t have to adopt a look involving eye makeup and chains!
Eye make-up and chains are optional. Although if people are going to call you Bryan Apocalypse you’re probably going to have to rock a mohawk. At least long enough to have your profile pic taken.
I’m now going to get a reverse Mohawk and spend an inordinate amount of time trying to convince people of my edginess.
Birthplace:
Upland, PA.
Current hometown:
Newtown Square, PA.
Favorite city and why?
It’s tough, but Philadelphia. I have a few of my best and worst memories from college, Flyers games, Ritz theatres, South Street, restaurants, bars… few places make me more nostalgic, and that’s a feeling I love.
I spent some time in Philadelphia and I liked the time I spent there. Although there’s no denying that Philly’s a tough town. Not as tough as Pittsburgh, but few are.
I can only imagine how tough Pittsburgh must be. So many fair-weather sports fans.
Birthday / Age:
March 14, 1985. I’m 28.
How would you describe yourself physically?
Tall, unfit, and self-assured. I know the last one sounds a tad counterintuitive, but I’m frequently told I carry myself with confidence.
I can totally relate. I used to work in mental health services with troubled adolescents. A few years of that and you’ve heard everything insulting that could possibly be said to you. These days, it’s pretty tough to offend me. I take more offense at the person’s intentions in trying to offend me than anything they could possibly say. Of course, with the internet, one is always voluntarily subjecting oneself to people that don’t know you forming an opinion of who you are without actually having met you in person. Thankfully you can block people that are more trouble than they’re worth. Not everyone’s going to get along, but that’s the way of the world.
Absolutely. One of my vices is involving myself in random debates with people online. There’s an XKCD webcomic where the protagonist is furiously typing away at a keyboard, telling his significant other “Someone is wrong on the internet.” I’m absolutely that guy.
I try to draw conclusions about myself based on other people, so I’m going to go for the same three self descriptors. Adding, of course, that I have a giant ass!
Do you really have a giant ass? Like walk through doorways sideways giant?
It’s not like I have the elephant man’s cranium hanging off the back of my hips, but compared to most relatively skinny white people, I’m donked out.
Badonkadonk!
The first thing people notice about you is…
My glasses. I always assume, however, that they first notice I am a human male.
Religion, if any?
No thanks!
Just figured I’d offer.
I didn’t realize you were making an offer. What’s your solution?
Bushido. The code of the samurai. More of a philosophy than a religion, but if you’re looking for metaphysics it certainly beats any of the “invisible man that lives in the sky” ones.
I’m intrigued by the concept of moral or ethical codes. It’s a shame that the golden rule doesn’t have the same drawing power as Christianity.
I think that the great thing about The Golden Rule, if we’re talking about “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Is not philosophically irreconcilable with Satanism. Satanists certainly believe in the concept of doing unto others as others have done unto them. One of my favorite lines is, “If someone smites your cheek, then smash theirs.”
“Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes
may not be the same” was Shaw’s permutation. Too many words, and it
starts to become gobbledygook. Which is kind of how I feel about most
religious/spiritual writing!
Are you superstitious
at all? Any phobias?
I’m insanely superstitious. Bad
enough that I carefully select the clothes I wear when the Philadelphia Flyers
are playing. I also occasionally feel
like I’m being watched, and thought it was a singular feeling until I saw The Truman Show. I’m a little touchy with heights, but I have
serious limnophobia: fear of lakes. Creature from the Black Lagoon must have
messed me up for life.That’s unusual. I get a lot of people that are scared of the ocean because of sharks, because of jaws. But you’re the first person I’ve interviewed that’s afraid of lakes because of The Creature From The Black Lagoon. We’re going to get along just fine.
I realize how completely insane it is. But every time I set foot in still water, I imagine being dragged beneath the surface by some creature that has inhabited the bottom for centuries. Even worse, I imagine the authorities would come to the conclusion that I drowned. I’d be comforted in some way if I could know that they’d find this cryptozoological entity as a result of my death.
Do you smoke / drink? If so, what? Any bad habits?
Yes on both! I only smoke hookah and have a particular preference for Starbuzz shisha, particularly Blue Mist. Anything else is too tough on the ‘ol asthma pipes. As far as alcohol is concerned, I’m a serious bourbon aficionado. Jack Daniel’s, Bulleit, and Maker’s Mark are my favorites, and I prefer them with Coke Zero and a lime, unless they’re aged. As far as bad habits are concerned? I probably drink too much.
Current occupation / Dream job:
I work at a video store. But it is a wonderful video store, well befitting my eclectic tastes! My dream job is to be a script doctor, and I believe working on screenplays is my primary forte. With enough clout at that position, I could occasionally direct films or write novels as I saw fit.
Script doctoring is a tough career field to break into. I’ve done some ghost-writing and punch up work but the payment hasn’t exactly been spectacular. I’ve actually got some punch-up and re-formatting work-for-hire I have to handle after I finish my interview homework. I don’t know how far along you are on your script-doctoring career path, but, like most careers, it seems like you have to work cheaply until you establish yourself and the quality of your work, creating relationships, and then word gets around. One satisfied client recommends another, and you develop enough work that you don’t have the time to handle all of the incoming work at which point you can either shop out your surplus or raise your rates.
I’m nowhere at the moment. I’ve worked on scripts for a few clients, but they’ve really been more exercises to expand my range than opportunities to get paid. I don’t regret it. Since I read professional spec scripts for a time, I feel I can identify a lot of problems and fix them. Particularly dialogue. It seems everyone these days wants to be Quentin Tarantino or Aaron Sorkin. It’s unfathomably annoying. Good dialogue comes from good characters, plain and simple. Being smart and cute with words just pisses people off.
I’m all for a witty turn of phrase, but a casebook problem with writers is when they pile their screenplays impenetrable with bon mots and wry replies. Sometimes you just have to use plain speech to move the story forward.
I expect it of action films. Nothing better than post-John Woo films that make such writing the rule rather than the exception! Screenplays are visual by their nature, and sometimes even professional writers forget that many lines of dialogue can just as easily be accomplished with a look.
True, but as a screen-writer, you have to watch out for that too. You have to be careful not to write in too many line read instructions and “exasperated/wry/frustrated looks”.
Absolutely. It’s a creative work to be interpreted by other people, and too much of that is essentially mailing them directions.
What do you like to do when you’re not at work?
I spend time with my girlfriend, watch movies, play the occasional video game, but I definitely spend most of my time writing and editing. At any given time, I have at least five writing projects going, so that helps keep me busy and scare off writer’s block!
I try to keep a calendar/list of future writing projects so I have a sense of when I want the projects to be completed and have a release schedule. An ambitious one, true, but I wouldn’t schedule my projects for a tighter schedule than I think I can accomplish. Do you find it difficult to push a project to completion when there are at least four other projects that you’re working on at the same time?
Not really. I’m rarely bound to the parameters of a given project, since I don’t have to actually produce anything. All of the books and screenplays I have completed were at one point unfinished, but I’m able to divine a way forward early on in the process. Even if I can’t finish it in one pass, I’m supremely confident that it will come to me eventually, and it tends to come naturally. Little ideas will poke out here and there, and sooner or later they’ll coalesce into a coherent whole. But even when it’s done, I still go back and toughen it up.
What is your zombie outbreak survival plan?
Improvise! I’d love to say I have a reinforced basement with a generator and my own personal arsenal, but I’m a realist. Odds on I’ll be at home when it happens, but if I’m not, I value being able to adapt to both my surroundings and the people around me. I’d probably just follow whichever evacuation orders I got and end up dying in a rescue center!
I’m working on a post-apocalyptic zombie-epidemic epic-length book project, and I’ve integrated the concept of there being heavily defended refugee centers to gather survivors from different catchment areas. There are a lot of semi-secret population relocation plans that FEMA has put together and part of what I’m trying to do is raise awareness that there are creepy plans for managing refugee populace already in place. It’s good to know that, well, I’m hesitant to say “Great minds think alike.” because I’ve never thought of myself as having a great mind, so let’s just say “Interesting minds think accordingly.”
Someone else would have to confirm that we have great minds. There are plenty of people who operate under the assumption that they’re brilliant, particularly when it comes to their art, but those who second guess and find moments to stare into the abyss of their own mediocrity are harsher critics of their own work. Charlie Kaufman made an excellent point of that in Adaptation.
A lot of my confidence is bluster and bravado. The whole “If you don’t buy your bullshit, how do you expect anyone else to buy it?” deal. I’m just as critical of my work as anyone else and I’m truly grateful that anyone spent the time and effort to read it, or even better yet, to buy it AND read it. I also appreciate constructive criticism a lot more than complementary compliments. Sometimes my line of verbal swagger comes back to bit me in the ass, but more often than not I can walk the line I talk. When I don’t, I like to be called out on it. I have high expectations of myself and the people I work with.
Absolutely agreed. I’m immensely pleased with my experiences in film school, because writing classes unfailingly ladled a heaping helping of criticism on the writer. More important than improving one’s writing is improving one’s ability to absorb criticism. I’m now at a point where I can sort out objective and subjective criticism with ease, but I’m finding more and more that those dishing the criticism have a hard time accepting disagreements with aspects of their critique. It’s a vicious cycle.
Weapon of choice:
I’d probably be most comfortable with a bō. If I could pick a realistic weapon, it’d be a Winchester rifle. If I could pick an unrealistic one, it’d most definitely be the ZF-1.
Do you have any special skills?
I have a hard time with questions like this. I’m a second degree black belt in Taekwondo, I play piano (poorly, in my estimation), and I have a fairly shocking ability to retain information that pertains to my interests, but none of those really feel like ‘special skills’ to me. I have two hitchhiker’s thumbs, though!
Did you go to college and, if so, what for?
I went to Temple University and graduated with a degree in Film and Media Arts with a minor in English. Looking back, I wish I’d minored in something practical.
A degree in Film and Media Arts can be practical… if you use it to pursue a career in Film and Media. Have you tried to pursue a career in Film and Media?
I’m about the luckiest son of a bitch in the world on that front. My internships in Los Angeles took place in the summer of 2007, several months before the WGA strike. Almost no one in my class got a job that summer. I’ve tried chipping away at it ever since, but I’m just not prepared to make the personal sacrifices necessary to get a film financed.
If you went to college, did you manage to pay off your student loans?
Mom and dad take care of that department!
Any pets? If so, what are they and what are their names?
The closest I am to owning a pet is my parent’s dog Riley, a miniature pinscher.
What is your favorite animal?
Tough question… I like both cats and dogs, but I’m especially partial to sugar gliders.
Speaking of pets, any pet peeves?
Scores. Bad drivers, faux pas, denseness, take your pick. I compare myself unfavorably with Larry David on this front.
Favorite / Least favorite Food:
Pan seared, medium rare filet mignon is easily my favorite meal. I’m having a hard time thinking of anything that truly repulses me, but peas are suitably nauseating.
What is your favorite quotation / motto / saying?
It’s sad that this is the most difficult question for me to answer. In a pinch, I’ll go with “Men are jerks. Women are psychotic.” from Kurt Vonnegut’s Timequake.
What is the best thing that ever happened to you?
My current girlfriend!
What is the worst thing that ever happened to you?
It’s pretty lame. The director of a senior project film I was helping produce spent an hour blaming me for production spiraling out of control and obliquely threatened to fire me, which would have thusly damned my graduation. Half an hour later, my girlfriend of two and a half years said we should ‘separate’ and her inability to present the situation as a clean break cost me a year of my sanity. Considering that I wasn’t diagnosed with a terminal illness and no one close to me died, that’s pretty good for a worst day ever!
Ever had your heart broken? Is there a story worth telling behind your answer?
Oh, definitely. By almost everyone I’ve dated. Any story worth telling would necessitate a novel.
Write those novels then. You write ‘em, I’ll read ‘em.
I’ve told the stories so many times that I’m becoming bored on behalf of other people. I can’t just supply crucial details, I always have to build layer after layer of context before delivering the cumulative punch, all viewed through the lens of my personal bias. Just ask my girlfriend. I spent our entire first date telling her all my hangups with my ex!
And she didn’t block your number afterwards? She’s a keeper!
Though it was undoubtedly a gigantic turnoff, it allowed us to engage each other on a completely honest level. Walking around her neighborhood until 6:00am has an almost Before Sunrise quality in my memory.
Ever broken someone’s heart? Is there a story worth telling behind your answer?
Not counting casual dating relationships that got way too seriously emotional, I’ve only done it once. I was too much of a coward to break up with one high school girlfriend, who called me at 2:00am on New Year’s Day while I was drunk with my friends. When she asked why I hadn’t spoken to her in awhile, I replied “Because I don’t like you anymore.” The next hour saw her lady friends taking turns to belittle me on the phone while I just sat there feeling like a jerk.
What is the best thing you’ve ever done?
Another tough one! Is it best because it gave me the most satisfaction, or best because it was the most helpful in a more global sense?
You can take the question both ways if you like. More is usually better for the interview.
Fair enough! The most satisfaction I got was from finally self-publishing my novel. CreateSpace did the final assembly, but I did the dirty work. I edited, spell-checked, formatted headers, footers, widows, orphans, selected fonts from a free library, conceived the cover design, chose the book size and page color, called and e-mailed the companies whose products I mentioned… I took on the onus for the final product myself, and I’m immensely satisfied with it.
In a global sense, probably feeding the homeless every Friday evening while I was in college. Unsurprisingly, they have a lot to say, and their cautionary tales are such that any normal person should be shaken to the core.
I used to work in Methadone maintenance counseling so I know those stories. I don’t mind giving money to homeless people, but I always make them tell me why they need it first. Even if it’s a lie, it’s usually an interesting lie.
I can’t give money anymore, even for the most finely tuned bullshit story. One indigent fellow pointed out to me that few showed up to the event on the Friday following the first of every month. The reason? They just received either food stamps, vet benefits, unemployment, or some other form of government aid that they then promptly flipped for hard drugs. On the other hand, I have no problem heading into a restaurant or fast-food location and bringing someone a full order of whatever they’d like.
What is the worst thing you’ve ever done?
Orchestrated a hated neighbor’s front porch and exterior doors being soaked through with urine, and at least one other substance.
If you could kill one person, who would it be, and why?
Haven’t met them yet! Whomever it is, whenever I do meet them, will have to really, really be asking for it.
What do you do?
Is this an existential question? *laughs* I suppose I write! I’ll write anything and everything… drama, comedy, horror, sci-fi, romance, journalism, novels, screenplays, articles, essays, poems, short stories, and songs.
How did you get started doing what you do?
I’ve done it since I could remember. I wanted to be a variety of things growing up… Ghostbuster, Paleontologist, Meteorologist, hockey player, filmmaker… I realized early on that I had a rich fantasy life, so the best way to live it was through writing.
What is your advice to other people that want to get started doing what you do?
Keep doing it, every day. Doesn’t matter what it is you write, whether you’re starting the great American novel or just a few observations from the day. Those observations may be perverted for the sake of your work, or leave you searching for the right word to describe them. Finding out if other people feel the same way or discovering the perfect word in a dictionary helps the whole process.
What are some of the projects you’ve worked on/finished in the past?
Life After: The Arising is my crowning achievement at the moment, in that it’s the first thing I’ve written to be properly published. It’s the story of a college student who returns home and ends up at ground zero of a zombie uprising. The catch is that he’s seen all the movies and read all the books, believing he has what it takes to keep his group of survivors alive. The reality, however, is much more complicated than that. The novel is told in first-person limited and unfolds over the course of eleven days without serious ellipsis. The entire project lasted a decade and still continues; the Life After story lives in five short stories, two novels, and a rather expansive fake medical document, and I aim to continue growing the story. The short stories are little snippets that feature characters or events that have something to do with the main storyline for Life After: The Arising, occasionally revealing something about the greater arc. The medical document is a 60 page report by the CDC on the undead in the world of Life After, and I wrote it to be as realistic as possible. I’ve even tricked a few people into believing it!
The only other thing I’ve written that I’m selling is a short story called Hosts, which is a soft sci-fi account of a psychologist treating a set of patients whose links to reality are broken. Completed without seeing the light of day are a romantic comedy screenplay, a post-apocalyptic screenplay, and two video game adaptations. I’m also working on a remake of a ‘50s horror movie that is giving me some trouble, but I still quite like.
I did the same thing with The End Of The World Is Nigh that you did with Life After: The Arising. Well, not exactly, obviously, but the part about writing vignettes to accompany the main work that take place in the same fictional world. Sometimes you create an interesting character and you want to explore that character’s back story and that exploration doesn’t necessarily serve the purposes of the main project, but it’s a great way to write a short story or novelette to expand upon the world.
Absolutely! I’ve spent long enough with the protagonist of Life After: The Arising that I find him boring. Also, as someone who has grown up on Wikipedia, IMDB, and DVD special features, I love hearing background tidbits. Anyone who reads my book understands the story, but I love the idea that there is another story behind it; maybe the zombie one character kills occupies no more than a sentence in the novel, but that former human may have been in love. For years. And maybe the crisis was the moment they decided to confess their feelings. So they track down the person they cared for, only to discover that they’re already a zombie. Unable to process their obsession in this state, they merely succumb to the intimate contact of this imagined lover as they sink their teeth in. Then that line in the book becomes heartbreaking.
Oh my. You just outlined the titular story I’m building my next anthology around.
But, yeah, you could probably string out the back-stories that take place in that world for book after work. It’s a shame the zombie-genre market is so over-saturated these days. It makes it really hard to stand out these days as an author working in the genre. I’m sure that everyone has the best intentions, but it would be nice if the writing and the cover design matched their intentions.
You’re right. The good thing is that the demand is high, and I’ve received largely positive feedback from both zombie and non-zombie fans. My weakness is properly branding myself. I have no website, and I’m not prolific when it comes to finished work, even if I do have stories available free on Homepage of the Dead. I need a hype man.
You should call Flavor Flav. He’s an amazing hype man. You can have him just follow you around and follow up everything you say with “Yeah boyee!”
And I can follow that up with uncomfortable laughter!
What projects are you working on now?
The sequel to Life After: The Arising is the one garnering the largest portion of my attention. I’m also working on a short story about the fate of the police in the opening days of the zombie epidemic shown in Life After: The Arising. I should have that finished in March. I hope.
What are you watching?
I’m trying to catch up on all the Oscar nominees! I’ve been dying to see 12 Years A Slave as I’m a huge Steve McQueen fan, and I’m also looking forward to Her. When I need to shut my brain down for 20 minutes or so, I’m watching Frasier.
What are you listening to?
I go through phases of listening to nothing other than NPR, then phases of burning through one album after another. Right now NPR is the order of the day, but Pink Floyd ends up in my brain two or three times a day.
What are you reading?
This is my darkest secret: I rarely read. I’ve probably polished off between 50-100 books my entire life. I either feel like I should spend my leisure hours writing, or I worry that I’ll subconsciously lift subplots and themes from better authors. So, at the moment, I’m stuck with the news and periodicals.
That is an interesting problem for writers. I’ve been interviewing a lot of writers recently and I usually end up receiving their books in PDF format. I always appreciate being given someone’s writing to read, but with the production schedule I’ve set for myself for this year, I can either be writing my own stuff or reading someone else’s and finishing my own work takes precedence. Plus I’m planning on putting out a series of monthly themed anthologies through Burnt Offerings Books for 2014 and trying to put out a novel of my own work and a novel by another author through the imprint, so my time for leisure reading is practically nonexistent. Once I get caught up on all of my projects, I’m going to tear through a dozen books in a row and update my book review blog, unless there’s a website that’s interested in picking up some of my reviews.
I wish I could even function on that level. I’m pathetic. If I hadn’t spent much of my youth reading dictionaries, I probably wouldn’t be capable of stringing together a sentence in print.
How many of the 50-100 books you have read in your entire life were dictionaries?
Probably two. The one I read most extensively was a pocket dictionary I carried around in middle school.
Favorite author / book?
Vonnegut is probably my favorite author, but my favorite book is a tie between Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War and George R. Stewart’s The Earth Abides.
Favorite band / song?
Pink Floyd is definitely on top of my favorites, and the favorite song depends on my mood. Either ‘Echoes’ off Meddle or ‘Time’ off Dark Side of the Moon.
Least favorite band / song?
At the moment, it’s Lorde and ‘Royals’. I’m just so tired of hearing so much buzz about this rather ordinary sounding pop. Not exactly nails on a chalkboard, though.
If you could do anything other than what you do now, what would you do?
I’d be successful!
Who would you want to meet that you haven’t met?
You get three choices: Alive. Dead. Fictional.
This is tough.
Alive? I’d probably meet Dan Aykroyd. I have an idea for another Ghostbusters movie I just want to be able to tell him.
Dead? Rick Wright of Pink Floyd. Inasmuch as I am a terrible piano player, I’ve based almost all of my playing off him, so I’d like to soak up as much as I could and hear his history of the band.
Fictional? Maybe Data from Star Trek.
What’s the best and worst job you’ve ever had?
Worst: I worked as a stocker at Borders. The book dust made me sick, I had to be at work every morning at 7:00am, the company was tanking, and I developed no rapport with my co-workers. I was just miserable.
Best job? I was an intern for a talent manager in Hollywood. I read scripts for his clients, frequently got taken out to swanky bars and had my tab covered, and I got a VIP, all-access trip to the Transformers premiere.
Are there any questions that I didn’t ask that you wished I had asked that you would like to answer now?
What I’d do with a trillion dollars! I’d give 75% to NASA immediately and tell them to get us to Mars, or Europa. I would use the remainder to set up a trust that pairs successful authors and screenwriters with struggling ones. I feel this would create a natural fusion of new ideas with professional advice and connections. Yearly contests would be held for work in each field and genre, and those judged as the best get their work financed. I feel the influx of new ideas and stories would help shake up the occasional stodgy repetitiveness of film in particular. Naturally I’d finance some projects of my own as well. Whatever’s left over goes, again, to NASA.
Anyone you recommend I interview that
you can put me in touch with?
From the looks of our mutual friends, there’s no one left over!
Yeah, I have been pretty comprehensive as of late. To be honest, that was my goal. I kind of wanted to run out of mutual acquaintances and then just handle whatever requests trickle in based on the pre-existing interviews so I can spend more time working on my own stuff. I think I’m just about at the point so it’s kind of a relief.
Then I must be an inconvenient distraction.
Nah. No one’s making me do these interviews. I stand by what I’ve always said. If anyone wants to subject themselves to the interview process I’m willing to interview them. When I need a break, I take a break. And when I’m not feeling up to editing interviews, I don’t. I usually get in the mood and knock out a dozen or so and then run out of steam. My “To Edit” queue is down to sixteen, including yours so I hope to clean out the Inbox tonight, but life distracts and even if it doesn’t seem like a lot of work keeping up my end of the conversation I do try to be engaging and not make my end of the conversation entirely about myself and my self-promotion.
I empathize, as I tend to let a backlog reach entropy before an explosive burst of work. Nothing quite like pure inspiration.
Got any questions for me?
I do, and I’d like the opportunity to sit you down for an interview on Zombie Pop without spoiling any of the surprises!
I’m looking forward to having the tables turned on me. Be careful what you wish for. My interviews tend to be pretty epic.
I always try to aim for expansive talks with topics owing to my own curiosity or ones that I think my subject would like to expand upon. I’m already curious about what types of questions you’d like to be asked?
Oh my. I really don’t know. That’s why I use a standard interview questionnaire for my first-pass interviews and the try to riff from there based on the first round answers. Some people get put off that I didn’t put together a custom survey for them and ask them questions specifically about their work, but, and this might sound strange, I usually don’t know much about anyone I interview going into the interview. There are a couple people that I’ve interviewed whose work I was passing familiar with, but they were rare exceptions. I think that’s what makes my interviews interesting. They’re not your usual fan-gasm promotional puff-pieces with soft-pitch questions.
Interviewer: “Why are you so awesome? You do know how awesome you are, right?”
Interviewee: “Oh, well thanks for saying so. You’ve got great taste!”
Instead, everyone gets a level playing field. It doesn’t matter if you’re promoting your first project or your hundred-and-first, everyone gets the same chance to be interesting and engaging. You’d be surprised at the people that have turned me down or blown off their interviews. I think that once someone gets to a certain point in their career they feel that they don’t have to prove themselves anymore and that my style of interview isn’t promotionally driven enough. That’s fine. I’ll just interview someone that actually wants to be interviewed. Sometimes I ask people if they want to be interviewed. Sometimes they ask me if I’ll interview them. But I never chase anyone about their interview. I’ll usually send them one reminder as a courtesy, but after that I let it lie. I’ve got my own projects I could be working on instead and I’m not desperate for new interviews. That being said, it is nice to have a tool to use to make new friends and get to know my imaginary friends on Facebook a bit better. Plus some excellent networking opportunities have arisen as a result of doing the blog and I like helping people to promote their work since nobody would help me promote my first project.
If nothing else, it’s great to have variety in the types of interviewers one encounters. I’ve conducted a few interviews, and I’m rarely aware of the subject’s work, but I try to develop somewhere in the neighborhood of ten questions based on three premises: what intrigues me about their work, what questions haven’t they answered satisfactorily, and what aspiring writers might like to know about the author in question.
Thanks for letting me subject you to being interviewed!
It was a pleasure!
Pitch parade:
Give me all of your links for things you want to promote. All of them.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LifeAfterNovel
Twitter: @TheBryanWay
Website: http://www.zombiepop.net/author/bryanway/
Blog: Not yet!
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Bryan-Way/e/B00E2PNMT0/
Free Life After short stories: http://bit.ly/14pshT0
From the looks of our mutual friends, there’s no one left over!
Yeah, I have been pretty comprehensive as of late. To be honest, that was my goal. I kind of wanted to run out of mutual acquaintances and then just handle whatever requests trickle in based on the pre-existing interviews so I can spend more time working on my own stuff. I think I’m just about at the point so it’s kind of a relief.
Then I must be an inconvenient distraction.
Nah. No one’s making me do these interviews. I stand by what I’ve always said. If anyone wants to subject themselves to the interview process I’m willing to interview them. When I need a break, I take a break. And when I’m not feeling up to editing interviews, I don’t. I usually get in the mood and knock out a dozen or so and then run out of steam. My “To Edit” queue is down to sixteen, including yours so I hope to clean out the Inbox tonight, but life distracts and even if it doesn’t seem like a lot of work keeping up my end of the conversation I do try to be engaging and not make my end of the conversation entirely about myself and my self-promotion.
I empathize, as I tend to let a backlog reach entropy before an explosive burst of work. Nothing quite like pure inspiration.
Got any questions for me?
I do, and I’d like the opportunity to sit you down for an interview on Zombie Pop without spoiling any of the surprises!
I’m looking forward to having the tables turned on me. Be careful what you wish for. My interviews tend to be pretty epic.
I always try to aim for expansive talks with topics owing to my own curiosity or ones that I think my subject would like to expand upon. I’m already curious about what types of questions you’d like to be asked?
Oh my. I really don’t know. That’s why I use a standard interview questionnaire for my first-pass interviews and the try to riff from there based on the first round answers. Some people get put off that I didn’t put together a custom survey for them and ask them questions specifically about their work, but, and this might sound strange, I usually don’t know much about anyone I interview going into the interview. There are a couple people that I’ve interviewed whose work I was passing familiar with, but they were rare exceptions. I think that’s what makes my interviews interesting. They’re not your usual fan-gasm promotional puff-pieces with soft-pitch questions.
Interviewer: “Why are you so awesome? You do know how awesome you are, right?”
Interviewee: “Oh, well thanks for saying so. You’ve got great taste!”
Instead, everyone gets a level playing field. It doesn’t matter if you’re promoting your first project or your hundred-and-first, everyone gets the same chance to be interesting and engaging. You’d be surprised at the people that have turned me down or blown off their interviews. I think that once someone gets to a certain point in their career they feel that they don’t have to prove themselves anymore and that my style of interview isn’t promotionally driven enough. That’s fine. I’ll just interview someone that actually wants to be interviewed. Sometimes I ask people if they want to be interviewed. Sometimes they ask me if I’ll interview them. But I never chase anyone about their interview. I’ll usually send them one reminder as a courtesy, but after that I let it lie. I’ve got my own projects I could be working on instead and I’m not desperate for new interviews. That being said, it is nice to have a tool to use to make new friends and get to know my imaginary friends on Facebook a bit better. Plus some excellent networking opportunities have arisen as a result of doing the blog and I like helping people to promote their work since nobody would help me promote my first project.
If nothing else, it’s great to have variety in the types of interviewers one encounters. I’ve conducted a few interviews, and I’m rarely aware of the subject’s work, but I try to develop somewhere in the neighborhood of ten questions based on three premises: what intrigues me about their work, what questions haven’t they answered satisfactorily, and what aspiring writers might like to know about the author in question.
Thanks for letting me subject you to being interviewed!
It was a pleasure!
Pitch parade:
Give me all of your links for things you want to promote. All of them.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LifeAfterNovel
Twitter: @TheBryanWay
Website: http://www.zombiepop.net/author/bryanway/
Blog: Not yet!
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Bryan-Way/e/B00E2PNMT0/
Free Life After short stories: http://bit.ly/14pshT0
With higher education practically a prerequisite in my family, I graduated from Temple University in 2007 having majored in film and minored in English, all the while having worked on a series of books, screenplays, short stories, poetry, essays, songs, and articles I refused to show to anyone until I started writing about online relationships for Examiner.com, eventually graduating to the local film post.
It wasn't until 2013 that I finally decided one of the dozen projects I'd been working on needed to be released for me to call myself a writer. Life After: The Arising, the first novel in a long-gestating series of zombie short stories and documents, had been completed in 2004 but I continued revising it periodically while I grew the story and learned to be a better writer. It was my first published work when the pre-release came out in June of 2013.
I continue to live on the outskirts of Philadelphia, and I never intend to grow up.
About the Interviewer:
Scott Lefebvre can write about whatever you want him to
write about.
Mostly because when he was grounded for his outlandish behavior as a hyperactive school child, the only place he was allowed to go was the public library.
His literary tastes were forged by the works of Helen Hoke, Alvin Schwartz and Stephen Gammell, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Edgar Allan Poe, and H. P. Lovecraft.
He is the author of Spooky Creepy Long Island, and a contributing author to Forrest J. Ackerman’s Anthology of the Living Dead, Fracas: A Collection of Short Friction, The Call of Lovecraft, and Cashiers du Cinemart.
He is currently working on ten novel-length book projects which will be released in 2014.
He also publishes themed collections of interviews from his interview blog You Are Entitled To My Opinion.
His reviews have been published by a variety of in print and online media including Scars Magazine, Icons of Fright, Fatally Yours and Screams of Terror, and he has appeared in Fangoria, Rue Morgue and HorrorHound Magazine.
He is the Assistant Program Director for The Arkham Film Society and produces electronic music under the names Master Control and LOVECRAFTWORK.
He is currently working on a novel-length expansion of a short-story titled, "The End Of The World Is Nigh", a crowd-funded, crowd-sourced, post-apocalyptic, zombie epidemic project.
Check out the blog for the book here: theendoftheworldisnighbook.blogspot.com
Check out the Facebook Fan Page for the project here: www.facebook.com/TheEndOfTheWorldIsNighBook
Check his author profile at: www.amazon.com/Scott-Lefebvre/e/B001TQ2W9G
Follow him at GoodReads here:
www.goodreads.com/author/show/1617246.Scott_Lefebvre
Check out his publishing imprint Burnt Offerings Books here:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Burnt-Offerings-Books/1408858196016246
And here: http://burntofferingsbooks.blogspot.com/
Check out his electronic music here: soundcloud.com/master_control
And here: master-control.bandcamp.com
Check out his videos at: www.youtube.com/user/doctornapoleon
Check out his IMDB profile here: www.imdb.com/name/nm3678959
Follow his Twitter here: twitter.com/TheLefebvre or @TheLefebvre
Follow his Tumblr here: thelefebvre.tumblr.com
Check out his Etsy here: www.etsy.com/shop/ScottLefebvreArt
Join the group for The Arkham Film Society here:
www.facebook.com/groups/arkhamscreenings
Stalk his Facebook at: www.facebook.com/TheLefebvre
E-mail him at: Scott_Lefebvre@hotmail.com
Mostly because when he was grounded for his outlandish behavior as a hyperactive school child, the only place he was allowed to go was the public library.
His literary tastes were forged by the works of Helen Hoke, Alvin Schwartz and Stephen Gammell, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Edgar Allan Poe, and H. P. Lovecraft.
He is the author of Spooky Creepy Long Island, and a contributing author to Forrest J. Ackerman’s Anthology of the Living Dead, Fracas: A Collection of Short Friction, The Call of Lovecraft, and Cashiers du Cinemart.
He is currently working on ten novel-length book projects which will be released in 2014.
He also publishes themed collections of interviews from his interview blog You Are Entitled To My Opinion.
His reviews have been published by a variety of in print and online media including Scars Magazine, Icons of Fright, Fatally Yours and Screams of Terror, and he has appeared in Fangoria, Rue Morgue and HorrorHound Magazine.
He is the Assistant Program Director for The Arkham Film Society and produces electronic music under the names Master Control and LOVECRAFTWORK.
He is currently working on a novel-length expansion of a short-story titled, "The End Of The World Is Nigh", a crowd-funded, crowd-sourced, post-apocalyptic, zombie epidemic project.
Check out the blog for the book here: theendoftheworldisnighbook.blogspot.com
Check out the Facebook Fan Page for the project here: www.facebook.com/TheEndOfTheWorldIsNighBook
Check his author profile at: www.amazon.com/Scott-Lefebvre/e/B001TQ2W9G
Follow him at GoodReads here:
www.goodreads.com/author/show/1617246.Scott_Lefebvre
Check out his publishing imprint Burnt Offerings Books here:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Burnt-Offerings-Books/1408858196016246
And here: http://burntofferingsbooks.blogspot.com/
Check out his electronic music here: soundcloud.com/master_control
And here: master-control.bandcamp.com
Check out his videos at: www.youtube.com/user/doctornapoleon
Check out his IMDB profile here: www.imdb.com/name/nm3678959
Follow his Twitter here: twitter.com/TheLefebvre or @TheLefebvre
Follow his Tumblr here: thelefebvre.tumblr.com
Check out his Etsy here: www.etsy.com/shop/ScottLefebvreArt
Join the group for The Arkham Film Society here:
www.facebook.com/groups/arkhamscreenings
Stalk his Facebook at: www.facebook.com/TheLefebvre
E-mail him at: Scott_Lefebvre@hotmail.com
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