Guest author Alex Beecroft
May. 14th, 2013 10:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charlie_cochraneI've known Alex since Noah was a boy. She's been a sounding board, a shoulder to lean on, and a source of both much merriment and some great bedtime reads. Oh, and she's been kind enough to let me borrow one of her characters from Under the Hill for nefarious purposes. (But that's for another day.)
What inspired you to start writing?
It happened when I was about 11. I think it may have been because my friends stopped wanting to play 'lets pretend' with me. I don't know what they did instead, but I went away and started writing down the things I was pretending instead of acting them out. It didn't feel like a creative process I was encountering for the first time rather than something I'd always done. It still feels like something I've always done and couldn't be me without.
What does it feel like watching your first book fledge and leave the nest? Does that feeling change when it’s the second/third/umpteenth?
It's honestly amazing. I floated on a cloud of joy for a good month when Captain's Surrender was accepted for publication, and I thrilled every time I dropped the words "my publisher" in conversation. (Which may have been more often than strictly necessary.) But you can't go from 'unpublished' to 'published' more than once in a lifetime, so later books don't pack quite such a punch of OMG I've actually done it! I never stop getting a warm glow when a new book comes out, but popping the publishing cherry can only happen once.
Are you character or plot driven? What do you do if one of your characters starts developing at a tangent?
I... don't know which I'm driven by. I suspect that they each influence each other in some sort of mystical gestalt state. If a character decides they would never do something that I was hoping they would do, I will give in and change the plot. I suppose the characters are primary for me, but only when they've reached that stage of being alive and having their own opinions. As soon as they have their own opinions, I wouldn't force them into anything. And if they didn't ever get to that stage of independence I would worry I had not done a good job with them.
If you were in a tight corner and had to rely on one of your characters to save you, which would it be and why?
Probably John Cavendish from False Colors. He excels in the split-second right decision, so he would choose the right thing to do and do it almost at once. Chris from the Under the Hill books always comes through at the end, but there would probably be a period of uncomfortable peril while he took a run up to the problem.
If you had no constraints of time and a guarantee of publication, what book would you write?
Oh, what a great question. It would actually probably be the one I've just finished - The Glass Floor. It's 140K long and I wrote it because I wanted to. I don't have a guarantee of publication, but it just wanted out, so I let it. It's a historical fantasy in which an 18th Century Romanian nobleman invades the Ottoman Empires at the head of an army of vampires. I'm not sure what I'm going to write next, though. Maybe the one in which he then has to placate his boyfriend's angry father ;)
Is there a classic book you started and simply couldn't finish?
Most of them, to tell the truth. I'm a shameful Age of Sail writer, as I couldn't finish Moby Dick. Actually I could barely start it. I'm not fond of the classics in general. There's usually too much angst and not enough explosions.
What’s your favourite gay romance/other genre book? And why?
I don't know that I really have favourites. There are three books that stand above any other books in my life, and those are The Lord of the Rings, The Left Hand of Darkness, and Master and Commander, so I suppose my favourite LGBTQ book would have to be The Left Hand of Darkness, in which everyone other than one of the main characters is genderqueer.
What's your next project?
Either a sequel to The Wages of Sin or a sequel to The Crimson Outlaw, or possibly a sequel to The Glass Floor. I've got a number of other stand alone ideas in mind too, but I've never tried a series and I want to see what that would be like. Maybe I should turn some of those things into trilogies... Hopefully I will have a decision on that by the end of this week!
And here's the girl herself reading a bit of the story!
What inspired you to start writing?
It happened when I was about 11. I think it may have been because my friends stopped wanting to play 'lets pretend' with me. I don't know what they did instead, but I went away and started writing down the things I was pretending instead of acting them out. It didn't feel like a creative process I was encountering for the first time rather than something I'd always done. It still feels like something I've always done and couldn't be me without.
What does it feel like watching your first book fledge and leave the nest? Does that feeling change when it’s the second/third/umpteenth?
It's honestly amazing. I floated on a cloud of joy for a good month when Captain's Surrender was accepted for publication, and I thrilled every time I dropped the words "my publisher" in conversation. (Which may have been more often than strictly necessary.) But you can't go from 'unpublished' to 'published' more than once in a lifetime, so later books don't pack quite such a punch of OMG I've actually done it! I never stop getting a warm glow when a new book comes out, but popping the publishing cherry can only happen once.
Are you character or plot driven? What do you do if one of your characters starts developing at a tangent?
I... don't know which I'm driven by. I suspect that they each influence each other in some sort of mystical gestalt state. If a character decides they would never do something that I was hoping they would do, I will give in and change the plot. I suppose the characters are primary for me, but only when they've reached that stage of being alive and having their own opinions. As soon as they have their own opinions, I wouldn't force them into anything. And if they didn't ever get to that stage of independence I would worry I had not done a good job with them.
If you were in a tight corner and had to rely on one of your characters to save you, which would it be and why?
Probably John Cavendish from False Colors. He excels in the split-second right decision, so he would choose the right thing to do and do it almost at once. Chris from the Under the Hill books always comes through at the end, but there would probably be a period of uncomfortable peril while he took a run up to the problem.
If you had no constraints of time and a guarantee of publication, what book would you write?
Oh, what a great question. It would actually probably be the one I've just finished - The Glass Floor. It's 140K long and I wrote it because I wanted to. I don't have a guarantee of publication, but it just wanted out, so I let it. It's a historical fantasy in which an 18th Century Romanian nobleman invades the Ottoman Empires at the head of an army of vampires. I'm not sure what I'm going to write next, though. Maybe the one in which he then has to placate his boyfriend's angry father ;)
Is there a classic book you started and simply couldn't finish?
Most of them, to tell the truth. I'm a shameful Age of Sail writer, as I couldn't finish Moby Dick. Actually I could barely start it. I'm not fond of the classics in general. There's usually too much angst and not enough explosions.
What’s your favourite gay romance/other genre book? And why?
I don't know that I really have favourites. There are three books that stand above any other books in my life, and those are The Lord of the Rings, The Left Hand of Darkness, and Master and Commander, so I suppose my favourite LGBTQ book would have to be The Left Hand of Darkness, in which everyone other than one of the main characters is genderqueer.
What's your next project?
Either a sequel to The Wages of Sin or a sequel to The Crimson Outlaw, or possibly a sequel to The Glass Floor. I've got a number of other stand alone ideas in mind too, but I've never tried a series and I want to see what that would be like. Maybe I should turn some of those things into trilogies... Hopefully I will have a decision on that by the end of this week!
And here's the girl herself reading a bit of the story!
