Colleen Houck Book Club discussion

Welcome to the group! Dan will be answering questions in December in this thread only. In the meantime if you have a question for the author or just want to introduce yourself feel free to do so in this thread.

How do you research your characters, locations, and tidbits of history and things like that?

Where do you like to write? Can you write on vacations or when you are away?

Who is your favorite character? Is it one of yours?

How did you get started writing?

What authors inspired you in your formative years?

Do you have a favorite Christmas read?

I loved the Partials series! What was your inspiration behind it?

What are you writing now?

Any must haves while you write?

Shara wrote: "How do you research your characters, locations, and tidbits of history and things like that?"

Research is one of my favorite parts of writing, and I got to do a ton of it for the Partials series. I don't know anything about biology or virology, for example, but Kira is a medic trying to cure a disease, so I had to learn enough about those topics to not sound like a moron when I wrote them :)

More than that, though, I never wanted to write the sentence: "Then Kira did some science," which meant I had to understand the exact process she goes through in studying and curing the disease. That meant reading a lot of books and papers about the function of viruses, and then translating all of that into a story I could understand (which, I hope, would also be a story other people could understand and get invested in).

The other thing I had to research was the science of urban decay: the plague in the books killed us, but it left all our stuff, so...what happens to our stuff when we're not around to take care of it anymore? How long will canned food last? Or gas in cars? Or houses, or bridges, or anything else? It turns out there's a lot out there to read on this subject, though I recommend in particular Alan Weisman's book "The World Without Us," which taught me fantastic little details like how all the windows in the abandoned houses would be gone after the first winter. You can see that reflected in the first book, when Kira returns from a scavenging mission and catches a glimpse of sunlight reflected from a window, and suddenly she feels like she's home, because home is the only place she sees unbroken glass. Research is fun, but if I don't take those cool facts and turn them into meaningful bits of character or plot, they don't belong in the book.

And, of course, I made great use of all that "urban decay" research in book two, Fragments, when they leave home and travel across the wasteland of ruined America. Things like Chicago being flooded, and Houston being on fire, and the midwest being a toxic wasteland, are all real probabilities suggested by real science.

Shara wrote: "Where do you like to write? Can you write on vacations or when you are away?"

I have an office in my house where I lock myself in and work for a pretty standard 9-6 day, with a pause in the middle to eat lunch and play video games. And the games are a key part of the process: if I write straight through I can get around 2000 words in a day, but if I stop and play games halfway I can write around 4000 words in a day. Creative minds need to be recharged, which is why so many of us don't fit in at real offices where video game breaks are frowned on :)

I have six kids, so weekends and vacation are out--I don't get any writing time on those at all. But I travel a lot as an author, which means a lot of time in airplanes and hotel rooms,a nd I'm getting pretty good at writing in those. The book I finished in October I finished in a hotel, and then the book I wrote in November was partly written in a different hotel.

How did you meet your wife?

How did the Whithered come to be?

Is there anything in one of your books you feel like you could have done better?

Tonnie wrote: "Who is your favorite character? Is it one of yours?"

My favorite character of all time, drawing from every book, movie, TV show, play, comic, and other piece of media? That's a pretty big question, and my answer would probably be different every day, but today I'm going to say Lady Elaine Fairchild from Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. She lives in a world so kind and gentle that everyone in it speaks in a loving whisper, and yet she's an unrepentant a-hole interested only in herself, smarter and meaner and more productive that everyone around her--and then on top of that, she goes out of her way to help other people because, more often than not, she knows she's the only one who can. She's a villain and a hero all at once, with a sassy attitude and a sneer for everyone she's helping, plus she lives in a house that is also a museum that is also a merry-go-round. I hope to one day be even a fraction as awesome as Lady Elaine.

Colleen wrote: "How did you get started writing?"

I told my parents in second grade that I was going to be an author--or really, I told them at the time that I already WAS an author, despite having not written anything yet. But I knew that I wanted to, because I knew that I loved reading more than anything in the world, and that's all thanks to people like A. A. Milne and Maurice Sendak and Madeline L'Engle and on and on and on. What finally did it for me was Choose Your Own Adventure books, which I read and reread and analyzed and reverse-engineered until I felt like I knew how a story was supposed to go together, and what made it satisfying and what made it not. So I wrote a Choose Your Own Adventure book about a maze that was impossible to escape from, and today I am only marginally kinder to my readers.

Colleen wrote: "What authors inspired you in your formative years?"

I feel like I'm still in my formative years, author-wise, because I'm always finding new things to admire and attempt, but here are some of the ones that got me started:

A.A. Milne: not so much the Winnie the Pooh stories as the Christopher Robin poems. I could tell even as I child that he was playing with words, and I knew that I wanted to spend my life playing with words as well.

Fred Saberhagen: I suspect I may have read everything he's ever written, and that's a lot. I found him when I was 12, which was shockingly perfect timing. He's who made me want to write books.

Victor Hugo: Or, I suppose, whoever translated all those Victor Hugo books I read in high school. Saberhagen taught me how to tell stories, and then Hugo taught me how to make them art.

Fyodor Dostoevsky: And then Dostoevsky taught me how to make them sad. My books are, more often than not, horror, or have elements of horror, and that's not because I read horror as a kid, it's because I read Russian literature. Nothing good every happens to anybody, and it's terribly and tragic and beautiful at the same time.

Ashley wrote: "Do you have a favorite Christmas read?"

I don't. With the exception of two books (Dune, by Frank Herbert, and The House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende) I rarely ever read anything more than once. Someone ruined my life with a math formula a few years ago, and now I'm going to ruin yours:

((your average life expectancy) - (your current age)) x (the of books you read in a year) = how many books you'll read before you die

The three things I learned from this are:
1: I need to read more books in a year
2: I don't want to waste any of these slots, so no rereads and no finishing books I don't love
3: my friend who taught me this formula is a jerk

But if there's a book you love to reread over and over, go for it. Like I said, I have two books which, formula be damned, I reread every couple of years, rain or shine. I love too much NOT to spend a slot on them.

Shauna wrote: "I loved the Partials series! What was your inspiration behind it?"

Three things:
1: I love Hermione Granger, and it bugs me that she solves all the problems but Harry gets all the credit, so I wanted to write a book where the hot-tempered nerd girl gets to be the hero.
2: I love Battlestar Galactica, and especially the dynamic between the humans the people who look like humans but fundamentally aren't, but it became obvious over the course of the series that they didn't actually have a plan, so: I wanted to write a book about my own version of cylons, who actually had a plan
3: I'm a cold war kid, and I love post-apocalyptic wastelands, and it was a sandbox I'd never played in so I figured why not put my Hermione Granger cylon story into an apolcalypse? Three great tastes that taste great together.

Colleen wrote: "What are you writing now?"

I have a ton of irons in a bunch of different fires, but the one I'm actively typing on at the moment is a revision of a new experiment for me: a wrote a middle grade book, which I've never done before. It's a science fiction story that I pitch as "Home Alone in space," and I love it. As soon as I finish this revision draft my agent will see if we can sell it somewhere.

Colleen wrote: "Any must haves while you write?"

I like it to be quiet when I write, though with six kids at home and a lot of my writing time coming only on airplanes, that doesn't always happen. I don't require any specific snacks, and I like music but I don't need it. The only thing that I absolutely have to have is privacy: there can be other people in the room, but if they read over my shoulder while I'm writing I will LOSE IT. People watching me write feels like an intimate violation in a way that I can't fully explain. I don't care if you read it after I'm done, even before it's been edited or proofed, but it you read it literally while I'm writing it I just can't handle it. It makes me feel nauseated just thinking about it.

So in book two, how does the toxic wasteland come about?

Dan wrote: "Tonnie wrote: "Who is your favorite character? Is it one of yours?"

but today I'm going to say Lady Elaine Fairchild from Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood."

I...LOVE that answer!

Dan wrote: "Ashley wrote: "Do you have a favorite Christmas read?"

I don't. With the exception of two books (Dune, by Frank Herbert, and The House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende) I rarely ever read anythin..."

Follow up question, how many books do you read on average in a year?

What would you say to someone who has never read one of your books to spark their interest?

Have you ever forgotten what was happening in one of your stories while you're in the middle of writing it?

What other jobs have you had and if you couldn't be an author, what would be your second choice?

Hello! I'm Maddie and I am wondering what video games do you like to play? I read from a question above that you play video games in the middle of your writing day and what console do you use? And the other question I have is what is your favorite type of music to listen to when you end up writing with music on. Thank you! I love the concept that you have the nerdy girl be the main character cause I am a nerdy girl myself.

Jorge wrote: "How did you meet your wife?"

In college--nothing really exciting about the story. We were both English majors (me in editing, her in education) and one day at a party we started talking and haven't stopped since.

Jorge wrote: "How did the Whithered come to be?"

When I wrote IANASK I didn't have any clear plan of who the bad guy was, he was just a monster. Then when I started writing sequels I needed more monsters, and a good reason for them to keep showing up in this one little town; I didn't want to just do a Buffy-style hellmouth, so I came up with the idea that there are a limited number of them and they all know each other, so when Killer 1 showed up on the news all the other monsters knew it was their old buddy who'd been missing for a while, and came looking for him. Several years later when I started the second trilogy I had two different characters who possessed inside info about where the monsters came from, which meant I had to figure out where they came from :) I took that idea of an insular community and whipped up a backstory, and that was the Withered. The main idea, though--that they are essentially ancient, pathos-ridden parasites on the human race--was always a part of them, from the very first book.

Jorge wrote: "Is there anything in one of your books you feel like you could have done better?"

It bothers me to this day that no one in Partials ever rides a bike. How would that not be the main form of transportation in post-apocalyptic America? Such a dumb oversight.

Colleen wrote: "So in book two, how does the toxic wasteland come about?"

How did it come about in-world or how did I as a writer decide to create it? Though I guess the answer is the same either way: One of the things I learned from a research source I mentioned earlier (The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman) has a section about the city of Houston, which along with Galveston contains the largest oil refinery and storage complex in the world. That complex is locked down under layer after layer of safety systems, but without someone around to take care of them those systems will eventually and inevitably fail, and then all it takes is one spark--from lightning or a wildfire or even just a really hot day--and Houston will light on fire and burn literally for decades, if not centuries. There's just too much fuel in one place to NOT burn. The end of that section includes an ominous comment along the lines of "And what happens to all of that toxic smoke? Just grab a weather map and follow the wind patterns." So I grabbed a map and followed the wind patterns and realized that all those decades of toxic oil fire smoke would just rush up the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains and sweep out across the midwest. Checking with a few other sources confirmed that a toxic wasteland in the center of America is almost a certainty in this situation, and that it would last forever. Once I had that tasty little nugget of info, there was no way I couldn't put it into my series.

Colleen wrote: "Dan wrote: "Ashley wrote: "Do you have a favorite Christmas read?"

I don't. With the exception of two books (Dune, by Frank Herbert, and The House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende) I rarely ever ..."

Not nearly enough. I'd say somewhere in the low 20s? Not counting all the books I start and decide they're not worth finishing, which is a LOT. I enjoy my reading so much more now that I just give myself permission to not force myself to finish everything

Melissa wrote: "What would you say to someone who has never read one of your books to spark their interest?"

"Somebody once told me that the only possible audience for my books was Satan and Saddam Hussein. The next day I won my city's Reader's Choice Award."

India wrote: "Have you ever forgotten what was happening in one of your stories while you're in the middle of writing it?"

No, because I outline EXTENSIVELY before I start writing. Like, extensively. It's kind of ridiculous.

Shauna wrote: "What other jobs have you had and if you couldn't be an author, what would be your second choice?"

My first job was as a groundskeeper in a cemetery, which probably explains a lot. Most of my professional work has been as a writer for various cosmetics and pharmaceuticals companies, which gave me a lot of fodder for my book EXTREME MAKEOVER, about a beauty company that destroys the world.

If I wasn't an author, my second choice would be some other writing career, probably in TV, though if that's too close to author to count then I'd say game designer. I'm a boardgame/card game/ roleplaying game fanatic, and frequently make my own designs for fun, so I'd love to take a crack it for real some time.

Maddie wrote: "Hello! I'm Maddie and I am wondering what video games do you like to play? I read from a question above that you play video games in the middle of your writing day and what console do you use? And the other question I have is what is your favorite type of music to listen to when you end up writing with music on. Thank you! I love the concept that you have the nerdy girl be the main character cause I am a nerdy girl myself."

I am terrible with console controllers, so I always play on PC. I play a lot of MMOs (currently Guild Wars 2 and Star Trek Online) as well strategy games like Civilization and occasionally shooter games like Overwatch, though I am terrible at them. While writing my Mirador series I played a ton of League of Legends, but I suck at that, too, so I rarely touch it anymore. And of course I'm in love with all of the board game ports on tablets--my current obsession is Race For The Galaxy, which is a fun science fiction card game that was made into an even more fun tablet app.

Every book I write has a specific sountrack, and often a specific song. PARTIALS was written to a playlist of protest songs, with everything from the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter" to Muse's "Uprising."

Hello Dan . . .

When writing the next book in a series, do you find that to remember ALL the little details that you need to read the previous book in the series again?

Hello, Dan . . .

Colleen Houck is one of my FAV writers! Colleen's FAV superhero is Superman. I think she favors him mostly because he is "really" easy on the eyes. (i think so too . . . eye candy . . . mmmmmmm!)

Is there a superhero you favor or admire? . . . and why?

What an awesome chat. That's because Dan is awesome. Congrats to India who is this month's chat winner. Don't forget to join me next month when my featured author is Melissa Landers!