Fresh Voice Beth Bartlett!

What is your ultimate writing goal?
Ultimate. That sounds so final. In the end, I want to make people laugh and leave my mark on the world. I’d prefer all that happen with a few books. Okay, a lot of books. After I’m gone, my ghost would be happy if people downloaded my writing into their brain, and it made them snort caffeine-free coffee substitute all over their virtual monitor.

Why do you write?
Because I must! If I were ever in a 12-step Writers Anon program, I would be the jittery one with noun patches all over my arms, scribbling ideas on my jeans with the tip of my finger. I started writing stories in chalk on the underside of my father’s desk when I was four, and I’ve never stopped. Soon I’ll need a new desk.

Have you worked to achieve your voice or is it just a natural style for you?
It’s a natural style that evolves with time, depending on my interests and influences at the moment. I’ve always had a strong and slightly bizarre voice. When I was younger, I stifled that and went through the typical phase of imitating great writers. I think ever y writer has to go through that to find his or her own style; it’s like trying on everything in the second-hand store before you go home and cut your own patterns. Once you learn from the masters, you know how to bring your own honesty out and slap it on the page.

Who are your favorite authors and why do you like them?
The names carved into my heart are Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams. They have the ability to take
words and turn them into the craziest, most delightful balloon animals. I’m also hooked on Gini
Koch’s “Alien” series and Kevin Hearne’s mythologically lush “Iron Druid” series. Koch’s books are fast- paced, funny and sexy. I have to own each one as soon as they’re released. Hearne’s books pile in magic, history, religion and the paranormal. Each one makes me slap my head and say “Of course! That’s how the universe really works.” Even though he’s only written one novel so far, Craig Ferguson’s “Between the Bridge and the River” inspired me for an entire summer. He broke the rules in ways I’d never seen before, such as turning throwaway moments into tiny side stories.

What most attracts you to the life of a writer?
The solitude. I’m a hermit at heart. I also enjoy sweatpants. In my day work as a freelancer, I’ll
occasionally stop and giggle, because I’m making a living by pulling words out of my head and building an article someone wants to pay me for. For my own interests, it’s the urge to create, to take the demons and angels in my mind and wrap them around the wire forms of language. If all goes well, those works stand on their own and provoke a reaction in the reader.

If you couldn't be a writer but knew you were guaranteed success at a different career, what
would you choose?
I can imagine a lot of crazy things, but I can’t imagine my life without writing. What’s success without being stressed over deadlines, worried about contracts, scared of writer’s block and frustrated by blog stats? That’s writerly happiness, right there. If I had to pick something, it would be 1970s pop culture television historian, and I would write about it in secret so the universe would never know.

If you had to describe your writing in one word, what would that word be?
Dorkalicious.

What's the best writing advice you've ever gotten?
Never give up. Never. Give. Up. NEVER GIVE UP! If you give up, the terrorists win. If you give up, every person who said you couldn’t be a writer will be right. I’ve heard that from so many writers, and it’s true. If you give up, Muppets sob in dark corners with stripper glitter matted in their fur and half-empty tequila bottles between their knees. If you give up, you have to go back to being normal, and none of us are really equipped to do that.


Beth Bartlett is a freelance writer and humorist. Her work has appeared in such publications as
Writer’s Digest, mental_floss, Country Extra, Meetings South and American Profile. She writes a
weekly humor horoscope column for the Lovely County Citizen newspaper and for her own site,
WisecrackZodiac.com. In her spare moments of sanity, she also contributes to the Bombeck-style humor site AnArmyofErmas.com and indulges her nerdy side at PureGeek.me. You can also catch her discussing Wonder Woman and writing on Twitter as @plaidearthworm.

Perennial Author Matt Forbeck!

Matt Forbeck has been nominated for 26 Origins Awards for his games and books and won 13. He has also won a number of ENnies for his gaming work. His tie-in novels have earned four nominations for Scribe Awards and won one, although he's still waiting to hear the results of the nominations for Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon, which he co-wrote with Jeff Grubb.

What have you learned that seemed completely unrelated to writing at the time but has influenced your writing career?
The most valuable class I ever took in high school turned out to be typing. This was back in the days before computers were common, and half my class had to work on manual typewriters, while the others were blessed with electrics. You could tell people who worked manual typewriters back then because their fingers had to be strong and sure to make the words happen fast.

Learning to touch type made me a much faster writer than I would otherwise be, and that in turn now allows me to write fast enough to make a living at it. At the time, I hated it, and I got the worst grade in that class of my entire high school career, but it paid off in the end.

A toy manufacturer has decided to make you their new superhero action figure. What is your superpower and what are you wearing?
I'm an immortal traveler of both time and space, who peeks into the lives of other people in fantastic worlds and reports on their most exciting tales. Because of this, I'm dressed in a set of clothes filled with anachronisms that work together but don't quite match up: a bulletproof trenchcoat that projects full-body protection against biological, chemical, and radiological dangers; boots that provide bursts of speed; gloves that are invulnerable to anything; and a hat that links me mentally to a plant of hyperintelligent supercomputers that guide me on my way—when I let them.

Do you ever regret deciding to become a professional writer?
Only when my bills come due.

Honestly, no. I love being a professional writer, and I've been at it full-time now for over two decades, which means I've ruined myself for anything else. There's little like getting paid to make things up for a living, and I'm grateful to all the people who buy my books and games so I can keep doing it.

What is the best part of being a professional writer?
I enjoy the challenge of new and exciting projects, and the chance to entertain people for a living. I love going to conventions and meeting with gamers and readers and other people who do the same kinds of things I do. But on a personal level, the best part about this life is the flexibility it offers me.

As a father of five young kids (a 12-year-old and a set of 8-year-old quadruplets), my children place a lot of demands on my time, but because I work at home and set my own goals and hours, I can always be there for them when they need me. That's worth a lot more than money to me.

Give us a quick overview of what you write and where we can find it.
"I started out as a tabletop game designer, but these days, I mostly write novels and work on computer games. I've had two novels published this year through Angry Robot: Amortals and Vegas Knights. Both have been getting rave reviews.

I have two nonfiction books due out later this year: Star Wars vs. Star Trek and Book of Extreme Facts. Plus I have a novella in G.I. Joe: Tales from the Cobra Wars, a short story in Hot and Steamy: Tales of Steampunk Romance, and a short story in The New Hero 2. On top of that, I wrote the story for the Conduit 2 game for the Wii. I also cowrote and helped produce a film called InSpectres, based on Jared Sorsensen's roleplaying game of the same name.

For details about all this and the rest of the things I'm working on, stop by Forbeck.com or follow me on Twitter at @mforbeck.

Perennial Author Dayton Ward!

Dayton Ward started writing professionally after entering a Star Trek writing contest for unpublished authors. He had stories selected for each of the first three annual contests, which along with the other winning entries were published in that year’s edition of the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds anthology. After he became the first contestant to disqualify him/herself from entering future contests, the editor called him up and asked him if he was interested in writing a Star Trek novel. The rest, as he likes to say, is a frappin’ mystery.

What have you learned that seemed completely unrelated to writing at the time but has influenced your writing career?
It’s going to sound simple and perhaps even a bit trite, but one skill which I already had developed thanks to my prior military and corporate careers and which has been of enormous help to me as a professional writer is time and task management. The ability to juggle multiple projects, each with its own deadline and master and set of issues or hurdles to overcome, is of prime importance if you’re looking to be a freelance writer. Often, you’ll be working on a handful of different assignments and a couple of them will have deadlines that are either relatively close together or even on top of one another. The ability to divide your time and energy so that each project gets the attention it deserves and you hit all your marks is what will distinguish the working professional from the rest of the pack. And in case you’re wondering, editors absolutely value this skill in the writers they hire.

A toy manufacturer has decided to make you their new superhero action figure. What is your superpower and what are you wearing?
Everybody always wants to fly, right? I’ll go with that. No more long lines at the airport! As for the outfit, if it has to be tights, I just want them to give me something that’ll showcase the six-pack abs I’m hoping they’ll mold onto my stomach.

Do you ever regret deciding to become a professional writer?
If I have any regrets about writing professionally, it’s that I haven’t yet found a way to earn a full-time living at it. My next major writing goal is to do exactly that, but I’m a realist. Most writers have some other source of income or support system, so I know it’s not an easy goal to reach. I could spend more time writing, but I prefer not to take that much more time away from my wife and kids, who already put up with me working the equivalent of two jobs, one of which—when you boil it down—is an ongoing passion project that happens to generate a bit of side income.

What is the best part of being a professional writer?
Are you kidding? I get to just make stuff up out of thin air, and people pay me for it! Wait. I suppose I could go into politics and get the same sort of rush, but that’s another subject. Anyway, I love telling stories, be it writing them or even just sitting around a table in a bar or a campfire, and getting reactions out of people. Writing just formalizes the process. In the case of my media tie-in writing, I get to play with characters I already love, and in some cases have loved since my childhood, and share the resulting stories with people who share that affection. And somebody gives me money to do that? Gravy; thick, brown, tasty gravy.

Give us a quick overview of what you write and where we can find it.
I write and co-write a lot of media tie-ins, mostly of the Star Trek variety. I also manage to get some original science fiction published here and there, along with being a regular contributor to Star Trek Magazine and Tor.com as a guest blogger.

Some of my more recent publications include:

• Star Trek: Typhon Pact – Paths of Disharmony – January 2011
• “Into the Abyss,” in Full-Throttle Space Tales #4: Space Horrors – October 2010
• “One Small Step for Bubba,” in A Bubba In Time Saves None! – June 2010
• Counterstrike: The Last World War – Book II – May 2010
• The First Peer, in Star Trek: Seven Deadly Sins – March 2010 (with Kevin Dilmore)
• Star Trek: Vanguard – Open Secrets – May 2009
• “A Fresh Perspective,” in Full-Throttle Space Tales #3: Space Grunts – May 2009 (which I also edited)
• The 4400: Wet Work – November 2008 (with Kevin Dilmore)

Blooming Author Lindsay Buroker!

Lindsay Buroker's Goblin Brothers Adventures Vol. 1 was self-published, Dec 2010.

Tell us about your book. What is it about and where will it be available?
This collection of short stories features a pair of adventurous goblins, Malagach and Gortok, who want nothing more than to be heroes. Well, Gortok also wants new tools, a bag of honey-crunch spider legs, and a tour of a working steam engine. But being a hero would be good too!

For now, the stories are available as an ebook, which you can find online at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords (Smashwords is a big indie ebook outlet, and they have formats for every ebook reader out there, so Ipad, Sony, Kobo, etc. folks can download the stories too). If there's interest, I'll look into making a print copy available, but you won't be able to beat the $0.99 price tag for the ebook!

What were your inspirations for your book? What sorts of thing inspire you as a writer in general?
The Shrek movies were a big inspiration for these characters. I wanted to tell a fun story with atypical heroes that young readers would enjoy. At the same time, I wanted some humor for older readers (also known as grownups), so I poke a little fun at the Dungeons & Dragons/Tolkien-inspired fantasy I grew up reading (much the way Shrek pokes fun at fairy tales).

As for what inspires me as a writer in general, I just love the characters that populate my mind (more people than you'd think there'd be room for in there), and I want to share their words and adventures with others.

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 your book? Do you think it was the optimal writing environment for you?
Outlines? Hm, I remember doing these in school....

I believe I'm called a seat-of-the-pants writer (AKA a pantser). I get an idea, mull it over a bit, figure out the ending, then get started.

If I know how the story ends, I'll find a road to get there. I've learned, thanks to a lot of half-finished projects, not to start things when I don't know how they'll end.

As for where I write, anywhere. Laptop at the coffee shop or with pen and paper in front of the TV. I'm not fussy.

I usually plot things in my head while I'm at the gym or walking the dogs, and that way I have a good idea of what happens next when I sit down to write.

Tell us about your "story of getting published."
Well, since I decided to publish myself, there's not much of a story here. I've watched some writer buddies make it (insofar as getting an agent and a publisher), and I'm very excited for them, but I'm not sure I have the patience for the process.

For me, it was about a month from thinking, "Hey, it's time to try e-publishing!" to "Cool, my ebook is up on Amazon and Barnes & Noble." That included editing, cover design, and formatting (otherwise I could have had it up over night!).

I figure, if the Goblin Brothers stories do well (I'm planning a whole series of novels with these characters), I can approach an agent later.

What are the publicity plans you have coming up?
I'm busy turning more novels and stories into ebooks and finishing up the first Goblin Brothers novel, so I'm just planning to do a little bit here and there when it comes to marketing.

My main goal is to get links back to my two sites, so I'll try to find some guest blogging gigs and publish some articles around the web (not to mention hitting up those kindly folks who are willing to interview authors and let them promote their work *smile*).

You can follow my progress on my website. And you can read some of the Goblin Brothers stories for free on the Goblin Brothers website.

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.