Full Name:
Edwin Stark
How often do people ask if you’re related
to Tony Stark?
About two or three times each month; more
often now since the Iron
Man movies started to roll out a few years
ago.
So… are you?
Maybe I’m the black sheep of Tony’s roommate’s uncle’s cousin’s best
friend, thrice removed and once reinstated. I probably should call him and ask him to
“search your feelings, Tony Stark” in a wheezy asthmatic voice.
I love that answer! You’re okay in my books!
Do you have a nickname or what do your friends
call you?
Eddie
Birthplace:
Caracas, Venezuela
Current hometown:
A tropical rainforest located on the
outskirts of Caucagua, a small hellhole of a town 50 miles away from Caracas.
Favorite city and why?
New York… one of the craziest places in the world. Gotta love it.
Birthday / Age:
46 years
How would you describe yourself physically?
5’ 8” (and a half), dark blond hair thinning
on the top, a bit wiry in the muscle department, nondescript Caucasian guy who
has to wear reading glasses.
How would someone else describe you
physically?
Reddish, clay colored skin, horns protruding
on my head, smells like brimstone…
You sound like a friend of mine.
I hung out with a lady friend of mine at a convention last fall. We slept in separate beds to keep it kosher. She told me that the next day my bed smelled
like cloves. So I guess that cloves is
my brimstone. But why was she smelling
the bed I slept in?
Now you got me thinking… Maybe we should find out why. If it’s some special charm emanating
from our bodies, perhaps we should try bottling it up and test it in the
aftershave market…
I think I’ll do a bit better with my
clove scent than you will with your brimstone scent in the men’s fragrance
market, but the field’s wide open. May
the best body odor win!
I’ll
toast to that… by the way, your shoelaces are untied.
The first thing people notice about you is…
Nothing.
They just steer their eyes away from me.
I never bothered to stop them and ask “Why?”.
Maybe next time you should. There might be a story in that.
I’ll keep that in mind for the next time I
meet someone who averts their eyes.
Religion, if any?
I don’t practice any kind of organized
religion.
Are you superstitious at all? Any phobias?
Not that I can recall.
Do you smoke / drink? If so, what? Any
bad habits?
No. Social drinker. Having an extreme self-deprecating sense of
humor is something I want to get rid of.
But I haven’t found a Self-deprecator Anonymous group that can help me.
I don’t think that’s a thing yet. Maybe you can start one up?
With the current state most Egos are in
these days, I’d find it hard to believe that there would be many members. But if I organize such an organization, we’ll
save a lot when leasing location to perform any group meeting. A janitor’s closet somewhere would suffice, I
guess…
What is your zombie outbreak survival plan?
Initially, barricade myself with plenty of
supplies. Later, when I got rid of the
horde besieging me, then I’d start going out of my shelter to do a throughout
clean up of the neighborhood. Mental
note to myself: stockpile a lot of ammo.
Yeah, a lot of people are all like
“Machete!” and “Crossbow!” and “Katana!” but spend a day splitting wood or
hammering nails and let me know how tough you feel. Yes it’s true that firearms run out of ammunition,
but there’s a lot of fucking ammunition out there and zombies don’t use
firearms last I checked.
As someone who uses a machete on a daily
basis in real life, I concede that. But
it’s a zombie apocalypse, come on! Who
really wants to get that personal to a super-fast infected / undead thing
from Hell bent on gnawing your earlobes?
The farther you can drop them without getting close, the better.
Weapon of choice:
M4 Benelli shotgun. It can really make big holes in
things.
Do you have any special skills?
I’m a fast learner. I consider myself a walking and talking Swiss
knife.
Did you go to college and, if so, what for?
Nope, I wasn’t able to attend college.
You didn’t miss much except a lot of
drugs and alcohol and promiscuous sex.
Okay, maybe you did miss out on a bit.
Ouch. That’s gonna leave a mark.
What is your favorite animal?
Cats. I like to hang around with my
superiors.
Speaking of pets, any pet peeves?
Stupid people.
Favorite / Least favorite Food:
Fish.
What is your favorite quotation / motto /
saying?
Macte animo, generose puer sicitur ad astra.
Translation?
“Be spirited,
kind child; it’s with tribulations the way you earn the stars”… that, or just a
badly phrased order for a double-pepperoni pizza with mushrooms…
I’ll take it either way
Tell you what. Let’s call
Domino’s Pizza and say my motto aloud. We’ll
wait and see what they ship us.
I hope they deliver a spirited kind child and a double-pepperoni pizza with
mushrooms! It’d be a win/win!
Ever had your heart broken? Is there a story
worth telling behind your answer? Several times. I posted about a couple of them, particularly
the more soul grinding ones, on my personal blog.
Not a bad pitch, sir.
I agree wholeheartedly. Or broken-heartedly. Whatever.
Ever broken someone’s heart? Is there a story
worth telling behind your answer?
No. And no.
How did you get started doing what you do?
I started writing sometime around 2005. A big tropical storm killed my TV antenna,
disconnecting me from the outside world.
To avoid going insane, I started to jot down all the ideas for short
stories that I had been accumulating inside my head since I was a kid. Surprisingly, a few ones were consistently
good enough to become really good short tales.
I haven’t stopped writing ever since.
What is your advice to other people that want
to get started doing what you do?
Just don’t get
started; it’s a harsh, unrewarding job.
Save yourselves a lot of aggravation and take a course on plumbing.
There’s a lot more rewarding ways to
spend your time and effort. And the
millionaire world-famous bestselling authors people idolize are like people
that won a lottery, and then won another lottery that only pervious lottery
winners were allowed to participate in.
Whenever someone asks me how to do what I do, I tell them, “Don’t. It’s a huge waste of time and effort.” and if
they’re all like, “Fuck you! I’m going
to do it anyway!” they’ll probably do alright.
Who is gonna stop the fools? Personally, I’m glad that the revolution in
self-publishing finally came along. If
you think the publishing industry is hard over there, down here in Venezuela is
Byzantine, where
book piracy is running rampant and a bestseller is just something that sells
about 5,000 copies. I’d have never found
out that I’m a competent writer if the revolution didn’t happen. I’d have suspected it for the rest of
my life. That I sell a few books now and
then and I’m getting 4 and 5-star reviews from strangers is an affirmation of
that suspicion…
What are some of the projects you’ve worked on/finished
in the past?
Give us a little history if you will.
Cuentos
– This is the short story collection that started it all; I had to put all the
vampires, zombies and creepy sci-fi stuff I wrote somewhere, didn’t I?
AI Rebellion
– My first novel. Cyberpunk. Wordy.
Didn’t know what the $#&! I was doing. The e-book version is adequately priced at
$4.99 to drive away people from it. It’s more like an archeological artifact
these days; sort of “This the way Edwin wrote circa 2007”…
Eco Station One – Well, this is more like it. This book was quite liberating, as it helped
me discover the vein of craziness so characteristic in my later writing.
The Clayton Chronicles – Two cookie-cutter
vampire novellas with a twist lurking within them.
Aftermath and Other Zombie Shorts – This is the book
that got me started in the zombie genre.
(Of course, author friend David Forsyth shares a lot of the blame.)
Of course he does. Let me ask you a question that I like to ask
authors working in the zombie genre. Why
zombies?
While other of my fellow zombie writers
seem to be obsessed in these creatures just per se, I see them as
catalysts to the interactions between my characters. I never liked zombies much since a friend
invited me to a showing of Dan O’Bannon’s “Return of the Living Dead” in
1984. It scared the crap out of me,
though it was a very amusing film in retrospective, and I had nightmares for
three days. But years passed and I matured,
and my writer’s mind couldn’t help but marvel at how prodigious zombies are as
a plot element: they can work as a situation backdrop, a threat and sometimes
even as Deux Ex Machinas if you want to get really sneaky enough while
writing. My zombie series, curiously
enough, doesn’t deal with the start of a zombie outbreak, another staple in the genre,
but with how the zombie epidemic ends. Yeah, yeah, the world has been zombified and
there’s zombies, zombies everywhere and no real safe place in sight. What happens to the survivors after five
years have passed since the zombie apocalypse?
After eight years? How about a
decade? What changes has the world
experienced during those ten years? And
more important: how much have those survivors changed themselves? As you see, I couldn’t resist the temptation
and began to get my hands dirty…
What projects are you working on now?
I’m currently serializing my “Aftermath”
books. Now I’m working on Episode 3
What are you watching?
Nothing.
In the middle of the rainforest there’s no movie theaters, TV reception
is abominable and I no longer have a TV, anyway.
But you do have internet.
Sigh.
Nowadays almost every cellular and/or smart phone has some form of
Internet connectivity and ways to plug a PC into them. Don’t get fooled by my capacity of reaching
the outside world; most people say: “But he has Internet… he must be OK, isn’t
he?”. No, I’m not okay. Life is pretty harsh down here without this
foolish assumption. I live 100 hours out
of each week without electricity, supplies are hard to get, and I have to walk
back and forth fifteen miles with fifty pounds of groceries strapped on my back
every week. And don’t get me started on
toilets. But if you are curious about
this last part, let me tell you that the joke about banana leaves that Robin
Williams makes in “Jumanji” didn’t work as intended with me.
What are you listening to?
Mostly “The Best Of…” records from several
artists. Saves a lot of money in the
long run.
What are you reading?
The Complex – Book 1 by Julie Rudolph.
Interesting premise on how a Zombie epidemic might start.
I’m working on an interview with her
too. Her book’s been getting some decent
buzz so I guess I’ll have to check it out sometime. Unfortunately I’m so busy working on my own
stuff that I don’t have the time to read anyone else’s stuff. Maybe after I finish the ten books I’m
working on I’ll be able to check out some of the books by the authors I’ve been
interviewing and start writing up reviews for my book review blog, to tie in to
the interviews on my interview blog, but it’s looking like that’s going to have
to wait until at least the spring thaw.
The good part is, I should have ten books self-published by then.
Yeah, her book was great. But I had some misgivings about the way she
conceived the plague that created her particular zombie universe. Something didn’t quite click with me through
the beginning of her book. I guess I saw
a few of the nuts and bolts of her writing engine not quite properly tightened,
but her capacity to conjure suspension of disbelief is astounding; very soon I
forgot all about it and I started to care about her characters and what
happened to them… She’s gonna be something out there.
Thanks for letting me subject you to being interviewed!
Pitch parade:
Give me all of your links for things you want to promote. All of
them.
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/edwinstarkwriter
Twitter: @TheEdwinStark
Blog: http://edwinstark.wordpress.com
About the Interviewee:
Hello, my name's Edwin Stark, and I was born in Caracas,
Venezuela. That's South America for the
few geographically-challenged ones out there.
I suppose that somehow the stork had just stumbled out from a pub while
it was delivering me, (it was confused to say the least) and mishandled my
humble persona, leaving me stranded in this unlikely place.
Having German ancestry, I spoke that language as a toddler, but my Mom had the
misconception that I'd fit better here if I spoke Spanish, so that tongue was
lost during my growing years. I grew up
dreaming crazy tales and was my teacher's pet when it came to composition
class--but not in deportment: that was for certain--and as I grew up I tried to
get noticed as a writer by submitting to every magazine and writing contest
available in my home country. No such
luck; the publishing market in Venezuela is utterly locked out: you can only
see your words in print if you're already a notorious politician or a TV
celebrity. Since I wasn't in the
inclination of becoming a serial murderer to achieve notoriousness and get
published, the need to rethink the approach to my writing career became a must.
Eventually, I decided to switch languages and start writing in English. I was
already proficient in that language... but was I good enough to tell stories in
that fashion?
I then started to write short stories, effectively dumping my native
language. I wrote nearly 200 short
stories during a period of about eighteen months, slowly learning the nuances
of story-telling in another language than your own. I already had the benefit of having the knack
of telling a tale; I only had to adjust. 190 of them short tales certainly
sucked; 10 were really neat, but the important thing was the learning
process. These ten tales eventually made
it into Cuentos, the short story collection which became my third book. I succeeded so well in tearing myself apart
from Spanish, that almost everyone I meet online says: "I CAN'T BELIEVE
ENGLISH ISN'T YOUR FIRST LANGUAGE!"
So far, I have written four books: AI
Rebellion, a rather preachy cyberpunk thriller that still shows the
struggle of switching languages (and I only recommend people to read it if
they're on an archeological mood, as in if they're interested in seeing my
progress as a writer), Eco Station One,
a very bizarre and funny satire, the aforementioned Cuentos, and The Clayton
Chronicles, a rather cookie-cut vampire tale. All these are available for the Kindle reader
on Amazon, in paperbacks and all e-book formats in Smashwords.
About the Interviewer:
Scott
Lefebvre has probably read everything you've read and 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.
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
Full Name:
Susan Simone
Do you have a nickname or what do your friends
call you?
People at work tend to call me Sus.
I haven’t figured out why yet lol.
They’re just lazy. That’s part of the plight of having a
disyllabic fist name.
Ha! Probably.
Birthplace:
Steven’s Point, Wisconsin
Current hometown:
Millersburg, Ohio
Favorite city and why?
I don’t really have one. I
prefer the country and woods.
Birthday / Age:
35
How would you describe yourself physically?
Oversize hourglass.
How would someone else describe you physically?
Oh I can think of several ways others describe me, some of them nice and some
not so nice. I’m a proud BBW so I try
not to focus on what society has brainwashed us to think is normal or pretty.
Well, you are married, so you’re probably
happier than a lot of women that are thin, single, and bitter. Thankfully the animal shelters always have
cats they can adopt so crazy cat lady is always an option. Or they could just settle for being a
spinster.
The first thing people notice about you is…
I honestly have no idea.
Religion, if any?
Asatru… some call us Heathens, no we do not worship the devil. We don’t even believe the devil exists. Kind of hard to worship something you don’t
believe in. This was the faith of the Vikings and
indigenous peoples of that era.
Ooh!
My room-mate is a heathen! I’m an
antitheist so his metaphysical beliefs are a source of constant amusement for
me. I love messing with him about the
rainbow bridge and always pretending to confuse his gods with the Marvel Comics
characters from Thor. But it’s all in
good fun and I don’t mind having runes all over the house.
Heathens are a very accepting group.
For us it’s as if the same stories have been told over and over
throughout history but through the lenses of the culture of that era. If you want the truth you have to back to the
beginning.
Yeah, that’s what he keeps trying to tell
me too. But then I ask him if he thinks
that Thor could beat Superman in a fight and he gets all flustered and leaves
the room ranting about Loki. We have
fun.
Are you superstitious at all? Any phobias?
I have a thing about mirrors at night and doll eyes at night. I actually cover the mirrors in my room part
way and when I was a kid my dolls slept on their bellies so I didn’t have to
see their eyes. And clowns. Not a total phobia, but they’re creepy.
You’re not the only one. My friend Angela has a thing where she can’t
have wall art that has eyes or she feels like they’re constantly watching
her. I always wonder what makes a person
want to be a clown. The only person that
puts on clown-face that’s okay in my book is Angus Oblong. Everyone else can go be clowns somewhere that
I’m not.
It’s all Stephen King’s fault. He
just had to make something innocent and silly into an evil child eating spider
clown thing.
If you’re going to be scared of
everything that Stephen King twisted around into something evil you’d better
move to Mars, because life on earth is going to be pretty fucking tough for
you. Wait… Bradbury fucked up Mars for
everyone. Ah well, at least earth has
decent beer. And it’s where all of my
stuff is.
The whole world is out to get us! Screw
it, where’s my mead? (Viking honey wine)
Do you smoke / drink? If so, what? Any
bad habits?
Sitting on my duff when I know I should be more active.
Current occupation / Dream job:
Actually what I do now. I’m the
executive editor with J. Ellington Ashton Press, and the Senior Artist. I love helping the author’s dreams come true,
reading books before they’re out, letting my imagination run with these idea
for cover art. I have the most AMAZING
co-workers ever. Add to that making time
to write is a job requirement and, yeah, it’s great!
That does sound pretty sweet. What kind of books does J. Ellington Ashton
Press publish?
Everything but children’s books.
Eventually we will break into that market as well, but not just yet.
What do you like to do when you’re not at
work?
I like to walk in the woods. I
recently gave up Facebook games and started knooking (weird crochet knitting
hybrid) with my spare moments.
What is your zombie outbreak survival plan?
Ironically one of my dearest friends in the world is a professional
prepper. He teaches people how to do
disaster prep, works with first responders on natural disasters, and does a lot
of volunteer work with Zombie Squad. So
he has us storing food and thinking of safety plans for disasters or you
know…zombies. Our plan is to maintain as
long as we can and wait for him, and if not head to the woods. The woods is life, food, and shelter if you
know what you’re doing.
Weapon of choice:
Duck, cover and hide?
I would probably be most comfortable with a short sword or a staff, but if they
want my brains I’ll take anything I can reach.
Do you have any special skills?
I have 15 years of classical voice study. In my competitive days I was a coloratura
soprano (chics that break glass). In my
old age my voice has lowered to a solid mezzo or first alto on occasion. I can still get high but not with as pure a
sound as when I was younger. I also etch
glass, do bead work, and really any craft I can get my hands on. I belly dance for fun, but I don’t think I’d
do it in public.
Did you go to college and, if so, what for?
I’m a graphic design student at Art Institute of Pittsburgh Online. And once a long time ago I went for
psychology, but life intervened and I never finished.
If you went to college, did you manage to pay
off your student loans?
The loans I am accruing now, no.
Working on a plan for that. My
old loans, yes. And I did it in a way
that many people can. I was an
AmeriCorps *VISTA. This is homeland
peace corps. Basically you’re sent to
work and live in America’s poorest neighborhoods to work on programs that build
capacity and help people get out of poverty.
There is an educational award after this. One year as a VISTA gives you over $4,000
towards college or to pay off old loans.
With two years in the program (the maximum) I got myself debt free. It’s an amazing program and I highly
recommend it. I could talk for hours on
the benefits.
Any pets? If so, what are they and
what are their names?
We have two cats. A big black
priss who will only answer to Baby, and white calico (white, pale grays, and
pale beige) fur ball we call Miz Storm Cloud, or just Storm.
What is your favorite animal?
Owls and Wolves are my favorites, but really I love all animals. If I had money I’d open a no kill
shelter. I say I never met an animal
that I didn’t like, some I wouldn’t pet, but never one I didn’t like.
Speaking of pets, any pet peeves?
Stupidity? That sounds awful,
but I cannot suffer a fool. I’m not
talking about book smarts vs. street smarts.
There are a lot of different kinds of intelligence. I’m talking about the people so oblivious to
their world they come off like Brian’s dumb blond bimbo on Family Guy.
Favorite / Least favorite Food:
I. Love. Strogannoff. All time favorite. Right now my least favorite food is
Gluten. I recently found I am allergic
and getting off of it changed my life for the better. Gluten is evil, even if it tastes good.
What is your favorite quotation / motto / saying?
I have two. Let your freak flag
fly, because why hide who you are? It’s
not worth the pain and stress of hiding for society. Exist in the state of epiphany. It’s this idea that once you have a life
changing thought everything else around you changes and one idea crashes into
another and another and another until you are in a sea of ultimate
possibility. That’s a scary place to be
for a lot of people, but you should embrace it.
Ride the wave and see where the universe takes you.
What is the best thing that ever happened to
you?
Babies. Like all moms I love my
kids, but I have a special fascination with midwifery. I could even be licensed as a midwife if I
got in my clinical hours. Anyway, there
was a really special magick to being pregnant.
Wouldn’t trade that or my kids for anything in the universe.
What is the worst thing that ever happened to
you?
I have survived a great many things.
Abusive relationships that I thought would kill me, home invasions I
thought the same. I don’t want to dwell
on these things. They happened. They’re a part of me, but they do not define
me.
Ever had your heart broken? Is there a story
worth telling behind your answer?
I’ve had my heart broken a number of times in a number of different
ways. It’s part of life. It happens.
No major story there.
Ever broken someone’s heart? Is there a story
worth telling behind your answer?
I don’t know really. There are
times I think I might have, but I don’t know for sure that these events were as
important to them as they were to me.
What is the best thing you’ve ever done?
I’m not sure there’s any one thing.
I live my life by trying to be kind and giving of my time whenever I
can, and I have a philosophy about random gifts. Small things that just make people smile that
no one expected. I do things like that
often.
What is the worst thing you’ve ever done?
Again there is no one thing.
I’ve done my share of bad.
Everyone has. As I get older
these mistakes are less and less, but it is part of the human condition. We don’t always make the right choices and
sometimes we act or speak out of anger.
If you could kill one person, who would it be,
and why?
I have an ex I mentioned earlier… *laughs*
No, no one that I would kill myself.
Some folks at the top of my shit list, and the top of other’s lists on
my behalf, but if I don’t like you I tend to just leave you alone. Living my life and being happy is a much
greater revenge than letting that stuff affect me outwardly. However I will argue that pedophiles and
rapists deserve the death penalty.
What do you do?
Primarily I am a writer, but as mentioned above the job I hope to pay
the bills someday is being the Executive Editor and Senior Artist with JEA.
How did you get started doing what you do?
I blame Anne Bishop for that. *laughs*
I’ve loved books most of my life.
Something I got from both parents.
Anne Bishop has this trilogy, The Black Jewels, that I fell in love
with. There was this character, Lucivar,
that I just loved. The first thing I
ever wrote turned out to be 600 pages of fan fic messing with that
character. I did once ask Ms. Bishop to
look at it, but there were some legalities involved and well… no one outside of
my family will ever read it. But it led
me to making up my own worlds and telling the tales of those that live there.
What is your advice to other people that want
to get started doing what you do?
Just do it. A journey of a
thousand miles begins with a single word, etc.
It sounds trite and over used, but that’s the reality. If you love it, do it. It does not matter what anyone else thinks of
your work. It matters only that you can
live with yourself and the chances you did or didn’t take at the end of the
day.
What are some of the projects you’ve worked
on/finished in the past?
Give us a little history if you will.
My first published work is, Silent
Heart. It is the story of a deaf
girl that walks unwittingly into the murder of a royal. Only she can tell the story of what she saw
through pictures. A stranger comes along
and saves her from these murderers and together they set off across the country
to get to the king. It’s high action and
they survive, night time cliff climbing, abductions, torture, houses under
siege, and more.
My next was Under A Twisted Moon. This is a werewolf book. The main character has no idea what she is,
just knows there’s a monster inside her she has to keep under control. Events spin out of control and the monster
comes out. She has to deal with the
media, an abusive husband, and the local pack that is kind of pissed she just
got seen on TV Shifting. In the end it’s
about her finding her strength and claiming who she is. It’s very close to my heart. I pulled out some details from my own life
and really put my heart out there.
What projects are you working on now?
Morning Song, is a post-apocalyptic,
pagan romance that is in editing now and with luck will be out in Jan.
2014. I’m working on several
stories. The two main ones are Warped Souls which is about a girl who
shares her body with a demon after a Ouija board exploded. The two are forced into this situation. The other I don’t have a good name for, but
it explores the idea of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, or more
specifically the horseman of Death. He
finds a girl who needs his help and she has this spark about her he can’t
place. Quite literally Death falls in
love with Life.
What are you watching?
As I type this up? Pit bulls
and Parolees on Animal Planet. I love
what Tia does and I think it should be used as a rehab model for both animals
and ex cons all over the world.
What are you listening to?
I call my music taste Aluminum.
Heavy on the rock, light on the metal.
Volbeat and Starset are two of my favs, but I still love Adele too.
What are you reading?
An Inconvenient Duchess. A bodice ripper, horrible I know, but every
now and then you need something light and silly. After that I’m going to read Winter’s Heart by Michael Kanuckel,
which has gotten great reviews and I was really excited to get on his free
promo and snag a copy.
Favorite author / book?
Do I have to choose one?
Seriously I got like 50. A
Wrinkle In Time, The Black Jewels, Kushiel’s Dart, Mellusine, Daughter of the
Forest, Handmade by Robots… Yeah I’d
better stop now.
Favorite band / song?
That changes often too, but
right now Starset, My Demons.
Least favorite band / song?
A pox on Pop music!
If you could do anything other than what you
do now, what would you do?
Sing and travel.
Who would you want to meet that you haven’t
met?
You get three choices: Alive. Dead. Fictional.
I have a long list of people I want to meet alive, mostly singers and
writers. I’m not a fangasm person so no
one outweighs any other.
Dead: Anne Frank
Fictional: Mildmay, a character in
Mellusine by Sarah Monet.
What’s the best and worst job you’ve ever had?
Best job is of course what I do for JEA, worst would be fast
food. I’ve done my time and I hate food
service.
Are there any questions that I didn’t ask that
you wished I had asked that you would like to answer now?
No.
Anyone you recommend I interview that you can
put me in touch with?
Well I work for a publishing house.
There are like 30 authors who would be great. Ever get low on interview fodder let me know.
It’s not a matter of running low on
interviews. I’ve got eighteen on my
desktop to edit as I type this. But I
like giving people an opportunity to promote their work and have something that
they didn’t have to craft themselves to share as a promotional tool. The interviews are easy for me to do since I
take a correspondence style approach and make my interviewees do their fair
share of the work for their free promotion.
So if you know anyone that would be interested in participating in the
interview process, send them my way or make an introduction and I’ll handle the
follow-through.
What we like to do for interviewers is put them on our company page and
introduce them to the authors, then the authors comment or pm…etc. Would that be okay with you?
Would that be okay? That’d be FABULOUS! Hook it up!
Maybe post your interview after it posts by way of example of what they can
expect.
Just make sure you mention that I don’t chase anyone or remind them about their
interviews. I’m not their mother, and if
someone doesn’t get their interview back to me, I don’t chase them, I just
delete the draft and move on down the list to the next interviewee. I have to be a big long-standing personal fan
of someone’s work to chase them about their interview and I pretty much already
ran out of those folks and most of the people I interview I don’t know anything
about before I interview them, so, in the words of Tom Atkins… “Thrill me.”
Got any questions for me?
Not yet. *laughs*
Thanks for letting me subject you to being interviewed!
Pitch parade:
Give me all of your links for things you want to promote. All of
them.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SusanSimoneFanPage
Twitter: @SusanS_Writer
Website: http://susansimone.weebly.com/index.html
Etc.: http://www.jellingtonashton.com/index.html
About the Interviewee:
Susan is a writer and artist by day, a child and pet wrangler by
night, and occasional crazy person on the weekends. She lives in a place where
new hybrid cars, beat up farm trucks, and Amish horse and buggies meet in fast
food parking lots for coffee.
Susan grew up in central Wisconsin, only to move to rural Ohio in
adulthood. She's a country girl through and through with progressive and
optimistic ideas of nation and society. A heathen by faith and major sci-fi fan
she is an eclectic person and welcomes as much diversity into her life as she
can to feed her fertile imagination. She lives by the motto, "Let your
freak flag fly!"
Susan is the author of "Silent Heart", "Under A Twisted
Moon", "Morning Song", and other titles forthcoming. Susan also
has her one and only zombie short in the JEA anthology "All That
Remains". In addition she has
published articles on the Yahoo! Contributor Network in a wide variety of
subjects such as the validity of deity in the American government and the use
of easy to find herbs.
Susan is the Executive Editor with J. Ellington Ashton Press as well
as a graphic design student at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh Online
Division. She does a large portion of
the cover art with JEA and has worked with businesses in the past for logo
creation and event announcements.
I
should add in here I am also doing cover art for authors not with JEA for a
fee, they should check my website for details.
About the Interviewer:
Scott
Lefebvre has probably read everything you've read and 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.
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
