For those of you waiting to experience the thrills, the laughter and the dementia of Marvellous Hairy until it was in eBook form, your wait is over.
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Yes, you read that correctly. $3.99 US. You not only save paper, you save yourself a pile of money!
Welcome to the second half of a conversation between Rob Kroese, author of Mercury Falls and Mark A. Rayner, the scribbler behind Marvellous Hairy. You can find the first half of the conversation at Rob’s blog, Mattress Police. Check it out and then return her for the rest of our electronic chat.
Rob Kroese: I assume you’re a bit more scholarly in your efforts. I believe I read that you’re a university lecturer, in fact. What do you lecture on? And how is lecturing different from teaching or professing? Is your lecturing related to your writing, or is your writing an escape from lecturing?
Mark Rayner: Actually, Marvellous Hairy was delightfully research free, unless you count watching movies and going to whiskey tastings as research. (Though I had studied A Midsummer Night’s Dream in university, and I’ve seen the play a number of times, so I didn’t have to do much there to draw on the structure, themes and characters in the play.)
I teach in the Faculty of Media and Information (or FIMS, at The University of Western Ontario), and I’m a lecturer, not a professor, because I don’t have a PhD. This sometimes makes me feel like I’m the retarded cousin of the family, but I seem to be hold up my end of the conversation with my fully PhuddeD colleagues. And my students seem to enjoy the courses I teach on website design, digital imaging and information architecture despite my lack of a doctorate. I find the intellectual opportunities at FIMS appealing, and teaching is a lovely escape from the solitary insanity of my writing life.
On the topic of whiskey and drinking alone, do you use any kind of stimulant/ depressant/hallucinogen while writing, and if so, can you hook me up? Seriously, though, what’s your writing process?
RK: I believe that fiction should be a reflection of real life, and frankly I can’t get through either without some chemical augmentation. My writing process probably doesn’t even qualify as a process. It’s like the zyphoid process. I could explain it to you, but afterwards you’d be like, “Wait, how is that a process?”
I just write. I start at the beginning. Or the middle. And then I write some more. Then, when I get bored, I make something expode. Then I try to explain to the reader why something just exploded. I throw in some references to Creedence Clearwater Revival, Occam’s Razor or linoleum. Once I have about fifty pages, I realize that thirty pages of it is unusable dreck and delete it. Then I write 30 more pages, which are probably also dreck. This continues until I have a novel.
How about you? Marvellous Hairy feels a little more organized than Mercury Falls, like maybe you kind of knew where you were going when you started writing. Do you use an outline? Also, you seem like such a normal, level-headed guy. What drives you to write bizarre novels about people turning into monkeys?
MR: Really, I seem like a normal level-headed guy? I must be a better actor than I thought.
Marvellous Hairy started out as one of those three-day novel contest manuscripts. You’re allowed to write an outline before you start, so I did a plan for a complete novel, including the subplot and so on. Then I got into day two of the contest, and I ended up under my desk, hugging my knees to my
chest and sobbing. (Somewhere in there a lot of scotch was consumed.) And most of the outline got ejected. The manuscript had many good scenes in it, but that’s all they were. Luckily, I had that original outline to go back to, so I could flesh out the first draft. And I definitely knew how the story was going to end before I started. The book I’m working on now started without an outline, and it is just scary not having one. However, I’ve since gone back and figured out everything but the end. I’ll probably just have some guy in a God suit come in tell them all they’re going to Hawaii, where one of them will wipe out on a surf board and nearly die. (It’s because of the cursed linoleum tiki doll.)
Given your process, how many drafts for MF? I like CCR by the way, so those references didn’t go over my head. What’s the deal with linoleum?
RK: It’s funny how few readers realize that linoleum is an archetypal element of storytelling that goes all the way back to Homer. I think it was Homer, anyway. It might have been the dad from Family Guy.
I’m actually reading Angela’s Ashes right now, and there’s a big linoleum component in that book, but did everybody give Frank McCourt shit for that? No, he won the freaking Pulitzer. Page 179: “Declan tells me sit in front of him and if there’s any blaguarding he’ll break my feckin’ neck for he’ll be watching me as long as he’s prefect and no little shit like me is going to keep him from a life in linoleum.” See, linoleum, right there. That’s what that whole book is about. If you don’t believe me, look it up.
As for how many drafts of Mercury Falls I went through. I was actually doing some cleanup on my computer the other day, and I found something like forty different version of Mercury Falls, from various stages in the process. It’s a ridiculously inefficient way to work, but I don’t know how else to do it. I just don’t think I could write from an outline, because my characters would deviate from it at the first opportunity just to spite me.
Incidentally, the very first version was about the planet Mercury falling out of its orbit and destroying civilization on Earth, but then somebody told me they already did that on Thundarr the Barbarian.
So what’s the new book about?
MR: I’m actually working on two right now. The first project I’ll get finished is another fabulist satire. (I DO love that my publisher came up with that term, because now I can describe what I write in one easy phrase — who
cares if it is made up? I mean, science fiction was made up. The term “novel” was made up . Did you know that originally novels were called romances until Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein? And someone said, “you know this isn’t really very romantic. Especially the part where Victor strangles the Mother Superior with her own entrails. We should really come up with another term for this kind of thing.” The Church wanted to call them Satanic Verses, but the publishing industry favoured something a little less likely to force them into hiding for the rest of their lives, and more reflective of the fact that they didn’t rhyme, and the meter sucked. Yes that was a “u” in favoured. Deal with it.)
So anyway, the first project is about the coming toaster uprising.
The second project is a little out of my usual comfort zone. It is a historical memoir. Not a memoir of my own life — that’s far too dull to serve as a topic, so I’m writing the memoir of Emily Chesley, a long overlooked Victorian speculative fiction writer who lived in my home town of London, Ontario. I am the “acting” secretary of The Emily Chesley Reading Circle, and we have been meaning to edit her papers into a coherent narrative for some time, and I have volunteered to do it. The Circle’s activities can be followed at their website: emilychesley.com, if anyone is interested.
How about you, what’s up next for, Diesel? Or are you going to go by Rob Kroese now that you’re a famous author of Satanic Verses (or Demonic Drivel,
as some of your critics have bleated)?
RK: Sadly, I think I’m going to have to give up the name “Diesel,” because as much as I like it, it was important to me that I have my real name on the
book, so that when my idiot junior high teachers go to Wal-Mart, they’ll see that name glaring at them from the end cap and think, “Wow, I guess he DID live up to his potential. Meanwhile, I’m an idiot and I should shoot myself.”
Wait, what was the question? Oh, what am I going to do next? Well, I’ve been thinking about writing a personal memoir. I was thinking of calling it “Not Living Up to My Potential.”
MR: Excellent title, though I wouldn’t lose sleep about it. If you think about all the billions of people who lived throughout human history, how many could honestly say they lived up to their potential? Buddha? Jesus? I bet if you talked to Christ’s junior high teachers they’d say something like: “sure, he’s famous and I have to give him credit for the whole turning-water-into-wine thing, but let’s face it, he was kind of a non-conformist. I mean you don’t get crucified if you play well with others.” Obviously, Buddha didn’t have junior high teachers. That’s just silly. He dropped out of school to explore the “meditation potential” of certain smoke-able herbs.
Not that I advocate that kind of thing. I definitely think all you kids should stay in school. That said, once you’re out, I think it’s fair to start evaluating success on your own terms. Such as, did I find a good way to end this interview?
Yes I did. And here it is:
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Here’s the sound effect (MP3), if embedded player doesn’t work.
Actually, we WOULD like you to move along to buying a copy of our books. Go to Mercury Falls to see where you can get a copy of the angelic odyssey and check out Marvellous Hairy for the monkey apocalypse.
Rather than share more video of perverted parrots, I thought I’d share a few pertinent links for your listening, reading and web-surfing pleasure.
First off, the next episode of the Marvellous Hairy Podcasts is available today. You can find Episode Ten on my writer’s blog here. And while we’re talking about Marvellous Hairy, don’t forget to enter the Go Tuck (erize) Yourself contest — you can win one of 10 copies of the book, or immortalize yourself by becoming a character in my next novel. All you have to do is sign up for my newsletter, or join my Facebook page.
If you’re looking for more fiction, you can always check out the Storyblogging Carnival; I enjoyed Resignation, a flash fiction by Marco Kaufman.
Now, while on the topic of fiction, how about this for a cool novel outline, called: Areonoiac:
In a dystopian Victorian Empire, a young flying message courier stumbles across an arcane prophecy which spurs him into conflict with a murderous robot with the help of a tomboyish female mechanic and her closet full of assault rifles, culminating in a philosophical argument punctuated by violence.
Just one of the 600 novels produced every year by the 4000-pound Hydro-Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator.
Win a walk on role in my next novel, one of ten free copies of my new book Marvellous Hairy or take home a mystery item from my desk.
All you have to do is either:
I promise not to spam you relentlessly, and in exchange, I’m going to give away ten copies of Marvellous Hairy, a THING from the contents of my desk, and a chance to appear in my next novel.
That’s the Tuck(erize) part. Worried about what Tuckerization is all about? Simply put, Tuckerization is taking a person’s name, and making them a part of the story. I’m describing it as a walk-on roll, but you might like to think of it as a cameo. I’ll chat with you about what how you’d like your name to be presented, and what characteristics you’d like this person to have in my book. You can even decide which book you’d like to be in! (I’m working on two separate manuscripts right now.)
You can read more about Tuckerization at Wikipedia.
Join my Facebook page here.
Join my mailing list, the MonkeySphere, here.
Contest ends on October 16, 2009.
Here are the prizes again:
*Note: if you’ve already purchased a copy of Marvellous Hairy, first of all thanks. Secondly, I can send you either a copy of my first novel, The Amadeus Net or if you’ve got that, we’ll figure something out.
Join my Facebook page here. Join my mailing list, the MonkeySphere, here.
As readers of The Skwib, you may be aware that I am also a novelist releasing his second work, Marvellous Hairy – a novel in five fractals. It’s available direct from the publisher now, and in stores in October.
But I’m also podcasting this bad boy, and they are well underway. I’ll be listing them all here, at iTunes, at Podiobooks.com (released soon) or you could check out the episodes on my writer’s blog:
Episode One (chapters one and two)
Episode Two (chapters three to five)
Episode Three (chapters six to eight)
Episode Four (chapters one to thee)
Episode Five (chapters four and five)
Buy Marvellous Hairy directly from the publisher. Released in stores this October!
As readers of The Skwib, you may be aware that I am also a novelist releasing his second work, Marvellous Hairy – a novel in five fractals. It’s available online from the publisher now, and in stores in the Fall.
But I’m also podcasting this bad boy, and they are well underway. I’ll be listing them all here, at iTunes, or you could check out the episodes on my writer’s blog:
Episode One (chapters one and two)
Episode Two (chapters three to five)
Episode Three (chapters six to eight)
If you’d like to join me for the podcast of my second novel, you can find the listing of them as they’re released at the Marvellous Hairy website. While you’re there, sign up for my newsletter to catch all the news as it happens.
The first episode (which is about twenty minutes long and covers the first two chapters) can be found at my other blog, on my author’s site. I’ve added the second episode now too. You can also subscribe at iTunes, and soon at Podiobooks.com.
Or you could just go get your own copy to read yourself. Just sayin’.
Another classic xkcd: The author of the Windows file copy dialog visits some friends:
While I’m procrastinating, perhaps a few announcements are in order.
MARVELLOUS HAIRY is coming! That’s right, my second novel is on the way this fall, courtesy of Crossing Chaos Enigmatic Ink, a publisher for “The Enigmatic Polygeneration”. If you’d like to sign up for my newsletter, or facebook page, you can get the details as they’re available, though the book should have a pretty good distribution, and all the usual online stores for sure.
For now, check out the cover:
Review copies for influential readers are available. Just contact me.
Diesel, the zany mind behind Matress Police, and humor-blogs.com, is also a novelist. Go congratulate him for finishing his book, Mercury Falls, or better yet, sign up for his “interest list”. When it hits 500, he’s going to publish that puppy.
Another prolific friend, Ahmed Khan, is working putting together two anthologies right now, and one of my short stories, “Hounding Manny” has made the cut. You can check out the whole TOC for Fun Times in Strange Lands here. It’s a reprint of a story originally published by Oceans of the Mind, and it’s on the short fiction section of my site here: “Hounding Manny”.
If you are a little more ambitious in your reading habits, you may want to check out a contest being run by Corey Redekop, the author of delightfully demented Shelf Monkey. He has thrown down the gauntlet, and begun the Critical Monkey Contest. Here’s what Corey has to say about it:
I, as I assume most people who read this blog are, am somewhat of a book snob. I don’t pretend to read only the ‘classics’ of the Western canon, but there’s a lot of crap out there I go out of my way to avoid. See? Right there, snobbery. Bad monkey! Bad!
So I have decided to launch Critical Monkey, a little contest designed to make us confront our fears, and read those we otherwise actively ignore. These do not have to be authors who are typically derided in literary publications; choices can be books you simply have never wanted to read for whatever reason. Never read a Charles Dickens, but always felt bad? Now’s your chance to try him on for size. Have you avoided Margaret Laurence because a lousy teacher force-fed you The Stone Angel and squeezed everything good out of it (guilty!)? Time to make her acquaintance. Anything you like. Even Harlequin romance novels. I double-dog dare you to try.
You can read the rest of the rules, entry details and promise of prizes here. Essentially, you need to read seven books you wouldn’t normally read, and blog a review about them. The masochist has already inflicted Twilight upon himself. I’ve yet to decide what I will read first.
Copies of Marvellous Hairy are available at the publisher's website direct or on Amazon.com
