Max Barry's Blog, page 12

Why don’t you write more short stories?

Bruno

Why don’t YOU write more short stories, Bruno, since they’re so easy.

I dunno, I’m just less interested in shorts. I’ve never fallen in love with a short story the way I’ve loved plenty of novels. I like how they can be tricky. If you have a great idea for an ending and not much else, a short story is ideal. But this also annoys me a little as a reader, too, like the whole time the author is trying to outsmart me. Then it’s, yes, wow, you got me, I did not realize that whole family was going to die. Well done you. That’s another thing: they all have horrific endings. I realize this includes my own short fiction. I had a short story idea just yesterday and it seemed like a good one but the ending would be horrible for all involved. Who wants to read that? Not me. Wow I hate short stories.

Was there ever a book that didn’t get published that you really thought would be a shoe in? If yes, is there a way you could provide us, your local fans, a way to read it anyways?

Hobson

Oh yeah, I’ve written plenty of books I thought would be published but weren’t. There was one before Syrup, two between that and Jennifer Government, one between that and Company, one between that and Machine Man, then I managed not to insert a dud book and went straight to Lexicon, and at least one since.

I was totally sure all those would be published, because why else write them. I mean, novels are hard. You don’t do all that work unless you think the end result will be amazing. I don’t know any method of writing a first draft other than operating under the delusion that it’s the greatest thing in the world ever. It’s not, of course, because it’s a first draft. At that stage it barely makes sense. But you need belief.

I’d classify three of my unpublished novels as unsalvageable, by which I mean I’m doing the world a favor by never showing them to anyone. The rest might be good if I had a few more ideas and did a lot of work, maybe. But I sure don’t want to publish them in their current state.

One I still think is awesome and should be published. I originally wrote about it, humiliatingly, here, but it sits in a weird place because it’s not really a young adult book but not really anything else either. It will almost certainly not sell very well, which would make it harder to sell future books, and it’s messy in places and I don’t really love the ending any more. But every now and again I read it back over and think, this is something.

Was there ever a book that didn’t get published that you really thought would be a shoe in? If yes, is there a way you could provide us, your local fans, a way to read it anyways?

Hobson

This question has an unsatisfying answer. I just want to warn you about that up front.

Yes, I’ve written books I thought would be published but weren’t. There was one before Syrup, two between that and Jennifer Government, then one before Company, another before Machine Man, then I managed to go straight to Lexicon, and since then I’ve written four or five partials, two of which are close enough to novel length to count.

I was totally sure each of those would be published because otherwise why write them. I mean, novels are hard. You don’t do one unless you think the end result will be awesome. The only way I know to write a novel is to operate under the delusion that it’ll be the greatest thing in the world.

But then once I show it to people I sometimes discover that’s not the case. I would classify three of my unpublished novels as unsalvageable, by which I mean I’m doing you a favor by never releasing them. Everything else I think could be good if I had a few more ideas and did a lot of work. Maybe. But they’re definitely not good enough now and what I’m working on instead is more interesting.

One I still think is awesome and should be published (see my humilating 2007 blog about it) but it sits in a weird place because it’s not quite a young adult novel but not really anything else either. It will almost certainly not sell well and so make my trend look bad, which has commercial implications. And it’s messy in places and I don’t really love the ending any more. But every now and again I read it back over and think one day I will make this something.

How do you decide on the name of the characters?

I have a strict process. First, I use whatever name pops into my head. Then, about eight months later, I realize everybody’s name begins with E. So I have to change some or the book is too annoying to read. But now I can’t imagine them as anyone else, so I make the smallest changes possible, like using their surnames more often.

Sometimes I write a novel that doesn’t get published, and that’s handy because I can reuse all the names. Boy, there were a lot of Hollys before one finally made it into Company.

I do strongly believe in the importance of names, though. They’re the characters’ faces: the part you see over and over. So they’re doing characterization work every few lines. This is why I will find any excuse to get a name like Plath or 6 or Jennifer Government into a book.

Do you ever plan on writing a sequel to Lexicon, or another book set in the same universe?

Ike

Sometimes. Usually I start thinking about that kind of thing when I’m around ten percent into a different book. That’s when I’m remembering how much work it is to figure out a world and characters and plot and tone and everything from scratch. So I look back on previous novels and wonder why the hell I threw all that away. Like, why not just dust that thing off and take it for another spin around the block.

The reason is that by the time I finish a novel, I hate everything about it. Well not really. It’s more like the thought of reading it again makes me want to vomit. At that point, if I had to go write a sequel, everyone in it would die in the first ten pages, from spite.

I really like finding something new. The days I love writing the most are when something happens I didn’t expect and I realize the story is going somewhere different. I guess that could happen in a sequel. But it wouldn’t have that same feeling of stumbling around in complete darkness, trying to find the lamps. I bang my toes a lot doing that but when the light comes on, that’s why I write.

Is VR going to live up to the hype this time?

guin

Not for me. I can’t change direction without feeling motion sick, so Virtual Reality headsets are super-charged vomit inducement machines.

Also, I know it’s just for games, but someone with one of those things strapped to their head looks like the ultimate psychically defenseless human being to me, because they can only perceive what a computer decides. I mean, I’m sure it’s fine. But if I could put you in one of those and control what you saw and heard, I bet I could convince you to do anything at all and make you think it was your choice.

How significant is it that Austin Grossman re-tweeted your ASK MAX tweet and has he had any input into the computer game you allude to, and if not, why not? And, can we expect more writers to turn their hand to computer games unaware that indie computer games creation is about as profitable as indie novel writing?

Dan

This is a timely question because Austin Grossman has a new novel out about Richard Nixon fighting demons. Literal demons, that is. No, actually, both kinds. It’s very fun and does that Austin Grossman thing of taking someone you’d think was totally cool and together and tearing them apart with insecurities. If you enjoyed Soon I Will Be Invincible or You, or you are intrigued by the idea of a Cold War fought with intercontinental necromantic missiles, take a look at Crooked.

But no, I haven’t consulted with Austin on the computer game I’m fooling around with. I probably should have, since he is excellent at writing both novels and games. That would make a lot of sense. But the only way I know how to be creative is to take the thing away somewhere private and smash my brain into it until it’s done. So I’m doing that.

The crossover between fiction and games… on the one hand, there are more similarities than people might think. In both cases you are world-building, one way or another. And I like that I can dive in to either and build something all by myself. This is handy because I lost the ability to work with other people sometime around 2002.

On the other, the mindset is very different. I’m kind of horrified by how programmers can spend so much time focused on the tools: choosing and tweaking their IDE and plugins and language and platform and agonizing over the process. It’s like what writers do but times a thousand. And that looks like a lot of busy-time spent Not Writing to me. You can tell me this attitude will come back to bite me hard in about twelve months but I say it never will.

Probably indie game design is exactly as profitable as indie novel-writing, as you say, Dan. But it is interesting. And in gaming, people aren’t debating whether their industry is dying, which is nice.

Today I went looking for Lexicon covers. Usually I’m sent a copy when a foreign edition comes out, but not always. In those cases I just get surprised to discover that something like this exists:

This is Russian. I actually thought it was awesome until I noticed the handgun poking out of her mouth. That kind of took it over the line for me. It reminds me of a terrifying poster for some werewolf movie that used to hang in the window of a video store I had to walk past as a kid, where a wolf’s snout is poking out of the man’s mouth. That was really scary. I was about fifteen but even so.

This one is from Turkey. I didn’t remember any Moon references in Lexicon, so I checked. I did actually use the word “moon” twice and “moonlight” once, in sentences that were about something else.

That’s pretty great. Good job, Taiwan.

What? Come on, Greece. It’s like you tried to redraw the American paperback cover from memory.

This is from Israel. It strikes me as the philosophical opposite of the Russian cover. It’s funny how the same book says to one person, “Man in a suit walking up a flight of concrete steps,” and to another, “Woman shooting bullets out of her mouth.” And neither of those things happens in the story.

I loved the Syrup movie, but who would have been your dream casting choices for the main characters?

Anonymous

I’m not sure I get to answer this after the movie is made. That seems like it would be rude. Probably no-one wants to have people come along and look at a job you did and discuss who would have done it better.

I never have a dream cast in mind for my own books anyway. It’s like trying to imagine movie stars playing your family. Whoever you pick, it’s going to be weird.

But I do love the cast I got. I especially love that Amber Heard, who plays 6, is right now being pursued by the Australian government for smuggling two tiny dogs into the country, in what has become known as Terriergate. I was fortunate enough to meet Pistol, one of the smuggled dogs, on the Syrup set, and let me tell you: It was no surprise to me when he ended up in the middle of an international incident. Australia has very strict quarrantine laws, being an island, but I don’t think we want to push Amber on this one. She really loves that dog.

Max… Do your toilets flush in the opposite direction of those in the Northern Hemisphere, or has the Simpsons been lying to us all of these years?

Flushed…

Good question. You are referring to the
Coriolis Effect,
which influences toilets
to flush counter-clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and the correct
clockwise direction here in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s a real force but it’s so
weak it only works if your toilet is in a climate-controlled, vacuum-sealed laboratory,
which is probably not true for both of us.

For me, the real Hemispherical mind-bender is the date the seasons begin. Everyone
knows the seasons are backward in the Northern Hemisphere. But DID YOU KNOW
they’re not exactly opposite? Countries have different definitions of when each season
begins so it can be Winter in the US while it’s Spring in Australia.

Unfortunately you can never be sure if this is true, because it’s one of those
things people like to be pranksters about. If you know someone in another Hemisphere,
the conversation goes like this:

You: What season is it there?

Them: Winter. Why?

You: Are you kidding me?

Them: No. Why? It’s Summer there, right?

You: No, Summer isn’t until next week.

Them: You’re joking, right?

You: Are you?