Kevin J. Anderson is a multiple New York Times best selling author who has worked in the Star Wars, Dune, X-Files, Predator, DC Universes as well as creating new worlds of his own.
Along with his wife, author Rebecca Moesta he also owns and operates the site wordfire.com
I'm just glad he never commented about my awful grammar!
Email 1
Kevin, there are a lot of dorks out there who wish they had your job. You obviously had to work hard to get in the position to work with some many different well known sci-fi / fantasy properties.
But everyone has to start somewhere, how did you deal with rejection in your early days? Do you still feel the pressure rejection or creative differences now?
Hi Mark,
I just kept sending stories around. I got them rejected, then I sent them to someplace else while I wrote a new story...and I got better. It’s all about persistence. Even now I still get some things turned down, but then I try something else. The alternative is to be a dork who does nothing but gripe about somebody else’s success.
Best
KJA
Email 2
Yeah I really hate when people talk and talk and just do not follow through.
You're books have been translated into several other languages, do you ever worry that the translators will get something wrong or some of the nuance will be lost in translation?
Not my call,and there’s no way I can police it. (I don’t speak Serbian...) No matter what, it exposes my work to a wider audience around the world.
Email 3
You have had the chance to write and further the story in some pretty amazing sci-fi universes, but in doing so you do have to trade off a little bit of your creative freedom, example being when writing a Star Wars title you can't kill off anyone you want. But exactly how much free reign are you given?
Sorry, got caught up in deadlines --
That¹s a specious argument, I think. ALL stories have constraints that
³limit creativity² -- If I write a story set in medieval
Email 4
How did you get involved with working on the new Dune books?
The whole story is several pages long, and you don’t want the full version. (It’s in the afterword to DUNE: HOUSE ATREIDES). When Frank Herbert passed away, he left his Dune series on a cliffhanger; he had sold the next book in the series, had just begun work on it, but he left the story incomplete. About ten years after his death, as an impatient Dune fan who wanted to know how the story ended, I got in touch with Brian Herbert — who was an author himself, and had collaborated with Frank Herbert on his last novel. We brainstormed, liked working together, came up with plenty of ideas to continue and reenergize the Dune series, and eventually found Frank Herbert’s outline for “Dune 7.” We have done eleven books in the Dune series so far, all of which have been international bestsellers (many of which have won awards), and inspired a whole new generation of fans. Now, we’re just finishing our first original book, HELLHOLE, which will be out next spring.
Email 5
Just to play devil's advocate
What would you say to a critic who thinks writing all these books for an established universe is totally cheating and makes storytelling so much easier. All of the ground rules have already been laid out. The real challenge is creating your own universe, which you are now doing with Brian, but only after 11 successful novels.
Hmm, so you think it’s easier to write in somebody else’s universe, to keep all the details of a story from contradicting anything in 6 massive and complex Dune novels by Frank Herbert (not to mention 11 books of our own)? When I was writing Star Wars books, I not only had the movies to memories, but more than 30 reference volumes, plus a bunch of prior novels. Star Wars writers coming into it now have more than a hundred novels to keep in mind and shelves full of reference material.
Just to make sure your readers have the whole background, I have written books in established universes — Star Wars, Dune, X-Files, Star Trek — but I have also written dozens of original novels. The biggest series is The Saga of Seven Suns, a 7-volume space epic, and I’m currently doing the Terra Incognita fantasy trilogy with two crossover rock CDs, and eight high-tech thrillers with Doug Beason, this new SF trilogy with Brian Herbert, and a dozen or so standalone original novels. I’ve done both, and there is a thrill and a challenge in doing justice to a series that I already love as a fan...or creating my own from scratch.
Email 6
How do you research and prepare for a novel based on an existing universe vs when prep for a novel in a universe of your own creation? Do you just try to read as much as you can on a given topic and make notes? Do you start with an initial idea in your head and then research to see if it contradicts or has already been told by another author?
For either there’s a certain amount of research and knowledge you have to bring to the table, depending on what the subject is. For instance, writing my X-Files novels as well as my original high-tech thrillers with Doug Beason (VIRTUAL DESTRUCTION, FALLOUT, and LETHAL EXPOSURE), I had to do a lot of research into the workings of the FBI and how criminal investigations are carried out. After that, however, I had to completely immerse myself into the X-Files show to know how the characters talked, thought, and acted, as well as their histories and the backstories. If I’m doing an original character or series, I have to do just as much “imaginary research” by creating all that background and biographical material and keeping it all in my head so I can remain consistent as I write the story.
Email 7
Musicians and record labels constantly talk about how the ipod ruined album sales. Is their any fear in the literary world of e-books, the kindle, or ipad leading to illegal manuscript downloads?
For books, a certain section of readers have always gone to the library to get free access to books, so as an author I know that a segment of those who read my novels either get them from a used book store or a library.
The bigger point is, will the majority of the customer base be honest and ethical or will they just choose to steal things? A key part of the question is pricing; if the customer perceives that the publisher/artist is overcharging them, then they’ll “get even” and just rip it off. When iTunes started charging less than a buck a song, a lot of people decided to buy legally rather than stealing. Right now, e-books are problematic because a Kindle downloaded file often costs more than a physical paperback book — to most consumers, and myself included, that sounds absurdly high. I’ll be putting a bunch of my own hard-to-find books and stories up as e-books on my own site, www.wordfire.com, to see if the audience is interested.
Email 8
Do you have any words of encouragement for young writers? Is their one piece of advice or step they can take to rise above the rest?
Having a career as a fiction writer, earning your living at it, is about the equivalent of becoming a professional athlete. It’s not easy, most people who dream about it never make it, and you have to practice constantly to stay at the top of your game. Many people ask me for a “short cut” -- there isn’t one. You just have to write, and keep writing, and keep submitting, and be persistent.
Email 9
I think its always important for children of all ages to read. I don't care if they are reading a Spider-Man comics, the New York Times, or one of your novels. What do you say to parents who try too hard to focus their children's reading away from fantasy based themes to books from the school reading list?
In a word, “aaargh!” For a kid, discovering the joys of reading should be like eating ice cream, not taking cod liver oil. Let them enjoy the process, see how much fun it is to be swept up in a story that INTERESTS them, whether it’s a science fiction, or western, or mystery, or romance. Once they like reading, then they’ll spread out into other genres. Forcing them to read books that are “good” for them is not a way to turn them into readers.
Email 10
Well thanks so much for your time and best of luck to you in the future, if you would like to toss me a photo to run with the interview, I'll gladly include it!
Cool. Chronologically speaking, that might well have been the longest interview I’ve ever done! I’ve attached two photos (and I’d appreciate a link back to www.wordfire.com, if you could).
Thanks
KJA
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