Living Legend Alan Dean Foster!

Predators I Have Known, available on Amazon!

It's appropriate that Alan Dean Foster be my first Legend featured on Writing Insight because the Star Trek Logs were among the first books I read and I've read them countless times over the years. If you're a fan of science fiction then you've probably read (and loved) something of Foster's as well. He is famous for writing novel adaptations of movies, including the books for Star Wars, Alien, and Transformers to name a few. He's also had many successful individual novels and series, including his Humanx Commonwealth books and Spellsinger series. With over 100 books to his credit Foster has also written fantasy, horror, mystery, and westerns. It turns out that Foster is so great at telling us adventure stories because he's a bit of an adventurer himself. This year he is publishing Predators I Have Known, a non-fiction book about his travels. And face it, you're going to buy it for the chapter "Teenage Killer Ninja Otters" alone.

Mr. Foster, thanks for being interviewed here at Writing Insight! It seems that your adventurous nature informed all those great stories you've written over the years. I noticed that the trips for Predators I Have Known start about ten years after you began to be published. In the beginning of your writing career before you could go on big trips what adventures did you draw on?

Only the ones I could think up and read about.  My father subscribed to National Geographic Magazine, which issues I devoured as soon as they arrived at our house.  When I left, I picked up my own subscription: unbroken now for more than forty years.  I also was heavily influenced by the travels and adventures depicted in the Uncle Scrooge comics written and drawn by the great Carl Barks.  Just the names Barks alluded to in his stories were enough to spark my imagination.  In one issue, Scrooge is required to make his annual world inspection tour of his vast property holdings, and he reels off a list of wonderful place names.  One of them is Famagusta, which rolls off the tongue (and the brain) so mnemonically I could never forget it.  Half a century after first reading that comic I finally made it to the real Famagusta (it's an ancient city in northern Cyprus).  I also never forgot the book BRING 'EM BACK ALIVE by the famous animal collector Frank Buck.  One of the stories in that volume led to the creation of the character Pip, the Alaspinian minidrag.

What was your very first "adventure" trip and did it make it into Predators I Have Known?
I'd always dreamed of sailing to Tahiti.  Everyone knows the vision from the movies: lying in a hammock on a beach beneath overarching palm dreams, sipping some exotic drink with a little umbrella poking out of it, gazing at the turquoise water and some beautiful vahine.  I went there in 1973.  First thing I learned was, all the really pretty vahines were either married or ladies of the evening, and the French authorities gaze askance on visitors who opt to beachcomb.  They want you in the fancy hotels, paying taxes.  Yet because of a remarkable woman, Princess Maheta Miri Rei, I ended up having quite the summer adventure.  Look for her briefly, at age 27, as the drum dancer in the second-highest grossing film of 1938, WAIKIKI WEDDING, starring Bing Crosby.  Wonderful as that particular story is, there are no predators involved, and therefore nothing from that trip made it into PREDATORS I HAVE KNOWN.  Although I suppose I could have included the bit about me snorkeling on Raiatea's reef and being followed by a small shark, of whose presence I was utterly unaware until I emerged from the water and was so informed of my follower by a frightened friend.

If you could do a safari on another world, one that either you've written or someone else has created, which world would you pick?
That's easy.  I'd have to go to MIDWORLD.   Suitably protected and guided, of course.  It would be fun to visit future Earth, and the thranx homeworld of HIVEHOM, but there would be more to see and marvel at on Midworld than any dozen other planets.

If you were an animal which animal would you be and why?
Otter.  What other animal has so much obvious fun, whether its playing hide-and-seek, sliding down snowbanks or waterfalls, is equally at home on land or in water, is quite capable of defending itself against much larger animals, and is downright cute to boot.

Blooming Author J.W. Ocker!

“Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.” ~ George Sheehan

 J.W. Ocker's book The New England Grimpendium was published by Countryman Press, a division of W.W. Norton and Company, NY, this month.

Tell us about The New England Grimpendium. What is it about and where will it be available?
It’s basically a personal travelogue of some 200 macabre sites, artifacts, and attractions all over New England. Stuff like Claude Rains’ grave, the Edward Gorey House, a book made of human skin, the Zaffis Paranormal Museum, the Black Dahlia Memorial, the town where they filmed Beetlejuice, unique grave stones and cemeteries, weird collections, mummies. Anything creepy and Valley of the Shadow of Death-ish that I could find in New England. The book is part guidebook on how to find these things and part a collection of essays based on my firsthand experience at each location.

It’s available in all the usual places, Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble. I have a few copies in my study.

What were your inspirations for The New England Grimpendium? What sorts of thing inspire you as a writer in general?
Two main ones, I think, for the book. First, New England itself. My wife and I moved to New England from the Mid-Atlantic region for no other reason than that we both love New England. We love how old it is. How great its Falls and Winters are. The fact that every three blocks, you can find a centuries-old graveyard.

Second, the entire horror genre was the foundational inspiration for the book…movies, literature, art. In fact, I sought out physical New England connections to the genre just as much as the historical gruesomeness. For instance, there’s a whole section on horror movie filming locations and another on legends and personalities of the macabre. Everybody from Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, and Henry James to Aleister Crowley Rob Zombie, and the guy who wrote the Monster Mash have left traces in New England. Ah. That was a very masculine list. Shirley Jackson, Edith Wharton, and Bette Davis are also featured.

As to the actual writing, the inspiration came from actually seeing and experience these places. So not only do I get to tell readers about the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast, but also what it’s like to stay the night there at that murder scene turned tourist attraction.

In general, I don't know. I guess I’m not much of an inspired guy. Always looking for places to go, though.

Let's talk about your process. How do you approach a story, do you start with outlines or something else? Where did you work when writing The New England Grimpendium? Do you think it was the optimal writing environment for you?
Writing experiential nonfiction is a pretty lazy process for me, especially this kind where it’s less a continuous book and more a collection of articles. Of course, going to the place is half the writing. From there I just need an idea for the context (basically the introduction), and off I can run. In fact, I probably spend more time coming up with the angle than actually writing the piece. Also, since most of the book is written in a casual tone, it’s just a matter of “talking” rather than “composing.” All in all, it’s a pretty undisciplined approach and I’m totally hurting myself as a writer because of it.

I wrote most of the Grimpendium in my study at my house. It’s my favorite place in the world, full of my books and all the things I’ve collected over the years. And there’s this big window that looks out on my neighborhood just behind my computer monitor, in case I want to get all voyeur-y on the world.

Tell us about your "story of getting published."
For the past 3.5 years I’ve been writing for my site O.T.I.S.: Odd Things I’ve Seen, where I visit, photograph, and write about whatever oddities of art, culture, nature, and history stick out to me as interesting. Stuff like L. Frank Baum’s New York birthplace (they have yellow-bricked sidewalks there, you know), drive-through animal safaris, the Dr. Seuss National Memorial. Whatever sticks out to me as something that will make my life better if I see it firsthand.

Although the tone of the oddities varies wildly, a recurring them on O.T.I.S. is definitely the macabre. I originally put together a book proposal based on the overall O.T.I.S. concept, but after a couple of rejections decided to refine it. I then focused the concept a bit more, picked New England because that’s where I live, and created two proposals, one a literary tour of New England sites, the other the Grimpendium. The first publisher I tried picked up the Grimpendium. They also turned down the literary idea, by the way. Spooks beat books, I guess. The website was the important part, though. It gave me the appearance of an expertise on a topic and the illusion of a following, and it helped me develop and refine a style for this type of writing.

What are the publicity plans you have coming up?
I’ve already done some speaking and have a few book store appearances lined up, some guest blogging, a few newspaper interviews and photo ops. As we get into October, I’m expecting the interest to increase since ‘tis the season and all that. I’ll be posting updates on events and press attention on my author site jwocker.com as they happen. And, of course, I’m beating the book mercilessly on O.T.I.S. with photo essays based on the book. It’s like Shakespeare said, “Sell yourself.”

Odd Things I've Seen
J.W. Ocker
J.W. Ocker on Twitter