Interview with Melissa Crandall

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Melissa Crandall is an author with tie-in novels and a self published fantasy under her belt. She’s also written a collection of short fiction. Here, she shares her experience.
A Story Every Day: Can you give us a brief timeline of your whole history? Your first memory to the present?
Melissa Crandall: I was just a wee thing when the dinosaurs showed up….  Just kidding.  I’m not quite that old.  Let’s see…My first memories are a bit jumbled, but most involve my dog Yogi, a wonderful border collie.  I’ve always been an animal-lover, and they fill up a lot of my life.  Did the college thing.  I’ve lived in New York State, Pennsylvania, Washington (State, not DC), Oregon, and am now in Connecticut.
ASED: How did you get involved with writing tie-in novels?
MC: I cut my teeth on fanzines, back when fanzines were hard-copy things (a dying breed nowadays).  I did fan stories for Star Wars, Star Trek, the Dragonriders of Pern, Elfquest, Phoenix, Dr. Who….you name it.  I got into the writing of actual media tie-in novels when another author invited me to join her and a friend in a Star Trek collaboration (“Ice Trap” under the name L.A. Graf — which stands for Let’s All Get Rich And Famous.) 
ASED: What tie-in novels have you written and how does your process for them differ from your process when you write your “own” things, like your self-published fantasy?
MC: I wrote  the Dr. McCoy sections of “Ice Trap” as I said above, then I moved on to solo novels:  Star Trek “Shell Game,” Quantum Leap “Search and Rescue,” and the novelization of the pilot episode of “Earth 2.”  The big difference with a media tie-in book is that you’re playing in someone else’s sandbox.  There are rules by which you must abide.
ASED: You’ve been writing since you were 5. What was one of the first things you wrote?
MC: The first thing I wrote was a “book” (several sheets of paper folded in the middle and stapled together) called “The Dog and the Fox.” 
ASED: What’s one of your favorite pieces that you wrote at a young age?
MC: When I was in grade school, a friend and I did a series of “comic books” about a super hero horse.  In high school, there was an entire group of us that wrote together.  Those were fun times.  We did a lot of westerns, TV ripoffs, that sort of thing, and even one or two original stories.
ASED: Do you see your younger writing reflected in your writing now?
MC: The work I did as a young writer helped grow me as an adult writer.  And I still have the love of words, the fascination with fantasy, the willingness to find “magic” (and I use that term loosely) behind the mundane.
ASED: What was the process like for your first published piece? Can you walk us through it?
MC: I assume you mean first professional piece.  That was “Ice Trap” and it was actually fairly easy because the author who invited me along already had a relationship with Pocket Books.  When it came time to do my own Trek novel (“Shell Game”), the weight was on me to write the synopsis, market it to the editors, hope for the best, write the book, all of that.  I got the book in under deadline.  Then I received a HUGE number of revisions.  What a learning experience!  I got those in under deadline, too, I’m pleased to say.
ASED: Did you always want to be a published writer?
MC: I always wanted to WRITE.  I can’t say when I first began to think I might be able to be published.  For a long time, I shied away from it.  I was afraid that if I turned out to be good, I’d have to do it again, and I was worried I wouldn’t be good the second time.  I don’t think about that anymore.  I work hard at what I do and try to turn out the best work possible.  Some people will like it, some won’t.  You can’t please everyone. 
ASED: Did you share your writing from an early age or keep it private?
MC: I shared it with friends (once I discovered they wrote, too), but not with family.
ASED: What is the process of self-publishing? What did it look like for you?
MC: At first, I was resistent.  It took me a long time to get around to the idea of self-publishing.  The media tie-in books went the standard publishing route.  My book of short speculative fiction “Darling Wendy and Other Stories” was picked up by a small press in NYC.  I tried for a long time to sell an agent/publisher on my fantasy novel “Weathercock” without luck.  But I believe so strongly in the book and what it has to say about our world, our view of male/female roles in our society, and our notions of self-determination that I refused to let someone else tell me it should languish.  So I bit the bullet.
I was MOST fortunate to encounter Ryan Twomey at Bookateer Publishing.  Ryan talked me through the entire process, was a terrific cheerleader, an exacting task master, and an all-around terrific guy.

Warrior

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by Eric LeGrow

Sitting above a crossbar of steel, high above the roaring New York, so staggering a view, I knew a man, though he was not my friend. He stayed isolated from the group, working the harder jobs along the trim steel, hauling wires and jumping rails, as if he dared God to let him slip. When the boys ate their lunches hundreds of feet above the solid concrete, he drank from a small silver flask, the only sustenance we ever saw him ingest. But that man, alone atop the blaring city, rivaled the memory of Hercules.

Watching him work, you could image him beating raw ore into form. A brute who a thousand years ago would have been hailed a God, only to be the grunt, the fat ant doling out his life. Knowing him made me scoff at TV; boxing, bare knuckle, even famed blood sports paled in comparison.

One night with my wife I sat eating quietly in a diner adjacent to a club notorious simply for the patrons who frequented. Out of the blue He came, flask peaking out of his jeans. His eyes took sight of the club and he gave a roar, his body launching him through the door. Gunshots fired, quickly overpowered by the sound of fists packing meat into the floor. I watched as minutes later he poured out of the door, his chest slipping blood from entry holes, his fist still gripped tight to one man’s neck.

He spent the next at work free falling from one railing level to another. Some starred in wonder, question why any man would tempt death so much.

Why wonder, I say.

He was a gladiator at his prime, hauling metal. A small child had better education than this titan. None had right to judge.

Men who claimed him a degenerate stared in awe when his fists swung, both exhilarated and demeaned, for the could never match up.

Women who recoiled in disgust lived in a fantasy at the quiet hour, a world where his arms wrapped tight around them and their breath left in ecstasy.

For 25 years I knew him, without ever knowing him. At 45 he had a heart attack at the 20th floor of a building and fell. The concrete spilt beneath the impact of his incredible mass. Ribs cracked, bones shattered, and still he attempted to rise only to spit blood. It took medics twenty minutes to even cut far enough to drain the blood from his lungs, but by then it was too late.

He was laughing though. A rolling laughter till the last moment, the final chuckle echoing.

In all those years, the only thing I’d ever heard him utter was, “I’ve got no time for dreams or wishes. You can’t fell nuthin’ in em’ anyhow. Pain is real.”

People ask me where the heroes are nowadays. I laugh and say we killed them.

Book X: Pointlessness

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from the upcoming collection of short stories “DEADICATION” by Abadawn Sims

Artie was a clown. He wasn’t one of those clowns with a name like Bozo, Bonky’ or another cliché “B” name. No, he was just Artie the Clown. It was just his real name plus “the clown”. He always secretly wanted someone to call him “art” but instead it was always the full Artie. To tell the tale of how Artie became a clown is a whole story in itself, and so we shall focus on the end.

Tonight Artie sits on a crate just outside of the elephant stables. Hands on his head that hangs low Artie tries to remember a time before he was sad. He can’t. The other clowns are still in their dressing rooms getting ready, practicing ridiculous tricks and acting as though any of it really matters. The lifeless cheeks under his sunken eyes feel as though weights have been tied to them for years. He tries to keep awake but he keeps drifting off into a realm of sheer terror. He sees images no man wants to see. He awakes to take another swig of rum from the inside of his patchy suit jacket while spilling half of it down his painted chin then drifts off again.

Ander and Inger walk by arms locked side by side. The Swedish acrobat couple from hell, they act constantly infatuated with one another in public, after the show they get drunk and scream at each other in their trailer only to make up for it later having loud Swedish sex that everyone hears. Artie used to masturbate to it. That was years ago. It’s all bothersome now. They walk by him letting out loud giggles that would make a Disney writer pull the trigger.

In misery Artie closes his eyes. The sad clown is attacked with twisted visions of hell as he drifts off into a drunken emergency nap. For the past fifteen years about four to five times a day Artie finds himself waking up from these. His body so weary and shot from the abuse that it comatoses itself at sparse moments. There’s no auto-pilot on his blackouts anymore, it’s just black and he’s just out.

Everything is stale smoke. There’s nothing but a cloudy haze as he awakes only minutes after falling asleep. He can hardly see through his own strained eyesight. As his focus comes back he feels wet. Looking down he realizes he pissed himself. Gibberish at a low grumble streams from his cracked lip-stick red lips. As he fumbles around attempting to get up without the attempt, a small framed female in an Evil Kneivel knock-off suit with helmet in hands is kicking him. It’s Fernie, one of the human cannon balls and a real bitch to Artie.

“you need to get the fuck up scumbag, this is supposed to be family entertainment.”

“we..we’rre not enter-uhhhtainin any famlees right naow!” he tried to retort.

“you are a bumbling idiot and I’ve had enough of working with worthless drunks like you, the show starts in twenty and if Ringmaster Ducrow sees another slip up from an old alkie clown falling asleep during his act perhaps, I’m going to be so on his ass about getting you the fuck out of here.”

“shove it, wench!” he managed to pronounce clearly.

There she goes, dropping an exaggerated o-face and storming off back to the Ringmasters trailer. Artie used to hear them screwing too, he never masturbated to that. He hated Ducrow and saw him as the devil himself not to mention Fernie was a cunt. Ducrow only keeps Artie around because he knows he has nowhere else to go, but because of this he always rubs it in his face. Last year every clown in the circus got a bigger trailer. Not Artie. Artie still has to bunk with Larry the Llama man; a freak show act of a human that grows wool like a sheep. Once Ducrow caught Artie falling asleep in a blackout during the clown performance, and he literally beat the shit out of him that night. Even Larry the Llama man had trouble sleeping with the seeping shit smell that wafted from Artie’s sleeping corner. Ever since then any mistake that Artie makes is punished by brute physical torture. The only good thing to come out of the shit-kickings was that Artie wasn’t usually able to perform a day or two after, and he liked that. The list only goes on from there as to why our beloved clown hates the Ringmaster Ducrow.

Fernie the human cannon-ball however is in love with Ducrow. Although, he has no care for her, he sleeps with all of the female acts; bearded women included. He even sleeps with Inger and she’s married, however often enough Ander is included. Artie would get jealous those nights and would be unsure whether to masturbate or not, and was usually too drunk to get it up regardless.

So the dust settled, all was quiet and Artie fell back asleep. Suddenly he was being kicked into consciousness again, this time is was Boingo The Clown.

“Come on Artie we got to go on now!”

“I..I’mmm comin gawdammit.” Artie stood up and stumbled about as Boingo rushed around the corner to the main floor.

As he began to stagger in the same direction Artie nostalgically turned around to look at the backstage area, and for a brief moment felt as if he were a kid again, seeing it all for the first time. What now brings him misery used to be a place of joy and wonder. For all he cared this could be the last time he saw it, and it was.

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN ARE YOU READY FOR FUN!?”

The crowd of stupid children and fat parents roared.

“Ringmaster Ducrow presents to you; The Bouncy Clown Brigade!”

The audience uprises in hoots and hollers as the clowns make way onto the field.

Artie stumbles out alongside the other clowns that all perform their silly introductory antics. Then all eight of them pack into the tiny car, they drive around in circles and park right over a trapdoor. As the eight clowns pile out eight more follow out of the trunk from the trapdoor. The crowd is ecstatic.

The clowns all gather at one side of the ring while Bugsy The Clown makes way to center stage unveiling a cart of pies, Beanie The Clown runs to the opposite side of the stage and mimes rude gestures to the rest of the clowns. Bugsy holds out a pie and the first clown runs up grabs the pie jumps on the little trampoline and flings the lemon mirengue right into Beanie’s face. Two more clowns repeat the process, then it’s Arties turn.

As Artie runs towards the pie he drunkenly trips on his own feet and falls face first into the pie in Bugsy’s hand. The crowd is out of their seats in laughter. This would have been fine considering its part of the act but there were nine more clowns supposed to do the same thing before the tenth clown Brussels trips and falls into the pie. Because Artie fell early it shaves about 3 minutes off of their performance, and timeliness is important to Ringmaster Ducrow, he glares at Artie from ring side, Fernie right behind him giving a devilish grin his way.

The next couple acts went by without a hitch, but Artie couldn’t ward off the daunting stares he was getting from Ducrow, Fernie and the rest of the clowns. With one act left he finally said “fuck it”. As the exit music played and each clown did their silly final move Artie unbuttoned his bottoms, exposed himself and began to piss. The children laughed, the parents cringed and Ducrow began pulling his hair out and yelling obscenities. “GET OUT OF THE FUCKING RING NOW!” he demanded.

The clowns ran off ring towards the back stage quarters as Artie purposely lagged behind. The lights went dim and the cannon was rolled out into view. The crowd burst into excitement, completely forgetting the clown dick that was just presented to them.

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! ARE YOU READY FOR THRILLS!?”
The crowd of stupid children and fat parents roared.

“Ringmaster Ducrow presents to you; The Fearless Flying Fernie!”

The audience cheers as Fernie skips towards the cannon.

She purposely bumps into Artie on her way “I told you, you’re gone asshole.”

He has nothing left to say to her. Ducrow eyes down Artie, and points to the backstage before starting to hastily head there.

Fernie skips to center stage, giving a bow to the crowd she puts on her helmet and climbs into the cannons bore. The fuse is lit and the stadium is silent except for the faint hiss of the burning wick. Ducrow enters the backstage and turns around to no Artie to beat down. “What the fuck is he doing?” he was in the middle of saying when.

BOOM!

The cannon is shot, Artie jolts in front of the rifling as Fernie is hurled out of it. She flies through his body liquefying around her. The cloud of blood and flesh of a funny man fills the air like one of Gallagher’s watermelons. Fernie skids across the ground limp with her spine broken in several places. Artie’s bottom half takes a last reflexive stagger and plops to the ground. All of the parents cringe and all of the children laugh.

Raymond Carver Interviews: Prose as Architecture

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I’ve always believed writing is intensely personal – even if you’re writing fiction. Everything is rooted in your own mind and your own vision. That being said, I love reading author interviews to see where they write from, and compare it to the place from which I write. Not to change anything necessarily (maybe sometimes, though!) but just out of interest and curiosity.

I came across these two interviews with Raymond Carver, and to finish out our time with him I wanted to share them today. I think reading them is important and inspiring o us in thinking about our own relationships with our writing, and even our relationship with his (and other writer’s) writing.

 

Link here: http://www.iwu.edu/~jplath/carver.html

 

I’ll look forward to hearing your thoughts and interpretations!

Life After Love, part 1

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by Cheri Bermudez

I’ll be an author. I’ll simply publish a book, she thought to herself, rationally. Then she laughed. For someone who was (obviously) having delusions of grandeur, she certainly wasn’t having illusions of grandeur, her surroundings the same, as they always were. An apartment, a bedroom. Nothing permanent. She paid rent month to month. Every time she took the rent check to the main office she imagined $650 being flushed down the toilet. It might as well be. Where she was wasn’t home. Nothing was home right now.
She hadn’t always been so lost. At one point in her life she had felt very much at home; she had even imagined one in her head (a home, that is). Now she couldn’t picture home in her head. She had no idea where it was. Well. She had an inkling. But it was pointless to focus on that inkling, that feeling. Because the home she had once imagined in her head was now an impossibility, due to stupidity and circumstance. Better not to focus on that now.
That was how she handled things. Well, things that provoked any emotion. Not right now. It should be her motto. She always told herself she’d deal with it later. Whenever that was. It wasn’t her fault that she was so fucked up (she told that to herself too). It was a psychological reaction to anything that made her feel. Feelings are too powerful. They can take over who you are, make you do things that shouldn’t be done. It’s much better to be rational. Neutral. A lesson learned the hard way, but, she thought, at least she had learned it early in her life. Perk up, sourpuss! It wasn’t so bad. It really wasn’t. She thought it akin to what being haunted by a ghost may feel like. A moment, a feeling. It reminded her too much of a distant past that she barely remembered and of a more recent past that she remembered all too well. A paradox. A conundrum. Call it what you will. It was her life.
She became lost early in life, due to circumstance. At one point she had found home. But due to stupidity, she became lost again. Sheer stupidity. She could attribute it to being young, but nineteen isn’t so young. She really should have been more honest. Honesty, such a simple thing, may have saved her home. But because she had lied, the home was lost. Simple and plain. Why had she lied?She asked herself that every day, and that alone would bring her close to tears. So, not right now. Best not to think of that right now. Blink the tears away and keep on chugging. Or drifting. She wasn’t sure which she was doing. Probably drifting. Maybe paddling just a little, she thought to herself, trying to be positive. But really, she was drifting.
Failure, failure, failure. The words repeated in her head in a taunting rhythm. Her other motto. Or maybe it should be a nickname. Failure. She wasn’t really a failure though- as previously mentioned, she was simply drifting. She hadn’t found her spot in the world yet, and at 26 felt like she had somehow missed out on her entire life. The days would just pass. One after another. One the same as the other. She needed to find her place, her niche. Until then, the days that passed were nothing but failures to her.
Now back to this problem of feeling. In order to find her niche, she knew, she would have to feel. Something she did not at all want to do. Despite her distain for feelings, she wasn’t a sociopath. Not even close. She did feel things, but feelings are not logical, so she tried not to give them much merit. She had feelings every day, and some she didn’t mind so much. Like the feeling conjured when seeing a puppy or a kitten. That feeling was okay. But there were specific feelings she tried to dodge or elude. Every day was a fight, a match. Her vs. Shitty Feelings. That’s how she thought of them- they almost had their own persona. Shitty Feelings. Sometimes she won, and she managed to dodge Shitty Feelings for a day, but usually she lost. Sometimes she would dodge Shitty for half of the day, but he would take over the other half. Shitty Feelings was a man, in her mind, since most of her shitty feelings had something to do with men. Two men, specifically. Maybe it should be a woman though, because she also had a lot of shitty feelings about herself.
She thought about him specifically though. A lot. Every day. At least one million times a day. Or at least that’s what it felt like. Her heart, her home was with him. And he was gone. Gone forever. How does one cope with that?
There is no coping. Only survival. And survive she would. Scratching and clawing to get through each day did get a bit old at times, but it was what she was use to. It was what was comfortable, albeit not very healthy. That’s ok, she told herself. It’s how life is suppose to be. Life isn’t the fairy tale she had once believed it to be. Being young and naïve had its perks, but she had been disillusioned long ago. Besides, everyone has to grow up at some point.

Fishing, by Ian Phillips

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I’d watched this man for a few months without any intention of documenting that fact. If anything, it would be only to note his anachronistic clothing and curious gate. This changed early one morning, when my voyeurism paid off, so to say. Meaning that I saw something worth seeing, saw the man in a desperate moment.

I was staying in a midtown hotel, been put up there by an acquaintance who had my best interest at heart, although also in her brain, body, and soul. More accurately, her intentions where selfish, but in any regard, at that time I wasn’t above selling my soul if it got a roof over my head.

My life was monotonous. I hadn’t taken the subway in months; I existed in midtown, something I could never have imagined before, nor here after the fact. The most exercise I received was a shallow expedition into the park, and then only to sit on a particular bench, one who was dedicated to Emily M. Grangerford. Watching this old man was the basis for my existence, in a way. If ever I missed him, the day felt oblique, and I was not right again until I saw him.

As anyone can imagine, it was not the most invigorating spying. Each morning from my fifth story window, I saw the man emerge from the subway, walk half a block, and sit down in between sculptures of Atlas and Prometheus. There he stayed for the next hour, occasionally contorting his face in what must have been screams. People seemed to avoid him, in some cases even crossing the street, wiggling through stuck traffic. Once I saw a young tourist woman come up to him and push him backward. He didn’t get up from immediately, but stayed flat on his back so long I became bored. I turned my attention to something else, but saw eventually from peripheral I saw crowds milling away from him again, and I knew the screaming had resumed.

This location was only the first stop on the old man’s itinerary. From there he crossed the avenue and walked up two more blocks. There he always entered a deli, but came out empty handed. Once he did have a king cone, an anomaly, but he gave it away to a child. I was surprised to see that sort of humanity, didn’t really like it, as it made me think of him more as a person and less as entertainment. After the deli he crossed back over the avenue and sat down on the steps of a theater. The police hardly bothered him, a fact unimaginable presently, but it could have been because it was so early in the morning and huge crowds had not yet amassed.

This was his mainstay for the next couple hours, and I never knew his next move because I always went out, and obviously at street level I lost sight of him. I never sought him out either, and by the time I returned to my rooms there was no sign of him. It was always easy watching him from up high, I should described this in more detail earlier, because he dragged his left foot, and besides that, his getup was unique, clad strictly in a black double breasted suit with wide lapels, and very bright, even florescent, sneakers. Also, this is so out of sequence I should give up, after he left Prometheus and Atlas there sometimes appeared a priest with whom he seemed to speak in a normal sort of way. Once I saw them embrace and found that to be extremely singular. What happened on one particular day really mixed things up for him, one could say.

I had never seen him beg or solicit people, and so perceived he was in no want of money, plus the sneakers he wore changed for a new pair quite often. Stranger it was, then, when I saw him sprinting for, and finally catching up to a five dollar bill. Bending down to pick it up, the bill abruptly blew away from him. It occurred twice more, and I didn’t realize until then what exactly was happening. I remember laughing at the ridiculousness of it, couldn’t in fact believe that the trick was happening, nor that my old man was falling for it. Yet there he was, dragging his foot behind him, eager to catch the five dollars. The bill must have been weighted because once it flew up, right away it fluttered down, spinning like a helicopter propeller. Such a precise action looked very comical, with the man jumping up to catch the bill, clapping his hands together and then jumping again, all quite uncoordinated.

I searched building after building, window after window, and finally spotted the culprits of the unmerciful act. It was two young boys, brothers ostensibly, who held a fishing pole out a window, almost level with mine, and laughed and laughed as they teased this poor fellow. What had possessed them to pull off a prank that, frankly, I had never seen outside of television, I don’t know. Despite myself, I enjoyed the whole scene, glad for a change to the daily monotony.

My diversion soon ended. The bill leapt up before the old man snagged it and fluttered down again, landing in the avenue. The man followed, and in what proved to be his last attempt to catch it, was struck by a bus. The bus was not moving slowly, readying for a stop, but must have been cruising through at least three lights. It was immediately obvious that the old man would not move again. Traffic around him stopped and a crowd gathered, followed by five or six police officers.

Drawing up my gaze I saw that the boys had disappeared but had flung the fishing pole out a window where it became caught upon a gargoyle a floor below. I could have easily identified exactly which building, and even floor on which they’d been. I can’t rule out the possibility I was the only witness to the full scene, but it seemed unlikely. As it happens I had been watching for longer than usual and was late for my appointment. Anyway, I didn’t have much desire to see him covered with a sheet and loaded into the back of an ambulance. The last image I have in my mind is of those bright green sneakers lying about fifty yards from the accident scene. No doubt they’d been knocked off from the force of the bus striking his body. As I left my rooms I could not help wondering if it would have happened if I were not such a voyeur.

Alone, by Alead Liebenau

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Alone
Miming around and seeing white
dream bubbles blow in circles
couches parallel to one another
Aleah and Jon
relaxing in backformation
legs fanning up and down
each toenail chipped with red paint
fingernails breaking
lips chapped
one glass table with
a book of Japanese culture
kitchen light
bright yellow sparkles
green flickering glow
small cough to the right
heavy breathing to the left
winking and blowing
awkward silence
one drop of sadness
disappointed eyes
there is no transition
Aleah leaves love alone
Jon walked into a white room

Insular Dreams, by Antony Valoppi

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Insular Dreams

Carelessly caressing the past brings futures farther from ever needing relentless

rewards. Aftermath path leads to nevermore, evermore, more so never in sight

but vaguely on the surface. Surface mass shown past the odds of finding truth

within these callas confines in mind. Letting all go to ever felt. Call unto you by

no chance, perchance a lack of fluid thoughts caught on barbs of arid flesh –

dangling close to outcry – once tried to no avail. A veil of silence enveloped by

searing sight of light. Come three bells fell sustaining trough of spine and feet

at my feet as the stomach grows fond of this intrinsic ort shackled belly to hull in

this prison adrift. Sharing space with thine own leg gave back unto me. Grave

separation, companion reminder, a donation of fates path lay beside me for days

inviting scavenging maggots leaving me to dine on vile waste too offensive for

their taste. Pulled at four bells from this box cell to bare witness of thine maiden

secured by rope, gowned for parade – enslaved. I would give that very leg in

floors below to cease this torture of my soul’s beloved. For she is like the air after

a thunder storm. As voices of such a multitude increase – as rail side dragged –

displayed anchored plank. Defiant reed resisting sea spray. Why her eyes never

reached so deep to my soul as now – as last sight falls to me. Soft pedal eases

gently to meet the sea. Below I am shut. Laughter trapped by latched boards

echoing in this box cell.

Copyright ~ Antony Valoppi ~ 2011

Interview with Maria McDonald, Part 2

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This is a continuation of the interview with Maria McDonald, which was posted here on Monday!

ASED: What’s your ideal writing environment? Outdoors, indoors, coffee, tea?
MMD: Mostly indoors. I have a designated couch my husband has labelled my ‘writing couch’. It’s a
recliner, with the armrest just the perfect height for me to put pen down to paper and scribble
to my heart’s content. This, with a cup of steaming hot tea, either late at night (anytime between
11PM-3AM) or early in the morning (8-10AM – when my husband is still asleep) – Heaven!

ASED: How do you get yourself to sit down and write?
MMD: I just do. When you work full-time and have all these thoughts running freely inside your head,
you have to find the time to jot it all down, otherwise I’d get crazy and/or forget them; neither
of them is an appealing prospect I try to squeeze in about 10 minutes in the morning, between
having finished getting dressed for work and bolting out the front door. At my 1-hour lunch break,
I sit in an empty meeting room, plug my ears with music from my iPod and write until the 59th
minute. I sometimes write in-between stirring whatever it is I’m cooking for dinner. After dinner,
I try to squeeze in anywhere between 30 minutes up to 1 hour before bed. At a very early stage,
I even tried to do this on date nights with my husband, when we were waiting for food orders to
arrive. He had jokingly said that the waitress might think I was a food critic. But I’ve stopped doing
this now, and focus more on enjoying each other’s company.
(I hope this is the answer you’re after – let me know if it isn’t).

ASED: Do you have any explanation for why you’ve always had an inclination toward writing?
MMD: I grew up with a strict, traditional set of Asian parents. There were a lot of customs to abide to, a
lot of rules not to break. Talking back to your parents was an unheard concept in our custom. Not
even that, but just saying to them ‘I understand where you’re coming from, but this is how I see it’
would have serious ramifications. I had very little voice, so I started writing EVERYTHING I felt and
thought of that I could never voice to my parents in my journal.

ASED: The dream that inspired your first novel – what was it? How did the rest of the novel form
around it?
MMD: It was only a fragment; one of those dreams that jumped from one setting/scene to another and
when you woke up you went “well, that was one crazy dream.” But what I remembered vividly
from this dream was about a woman being thrown into the dungeon, being hosed down by cold
water as a form of torture and lashed out to the point of almost passing out when her male friend
rescued her.
A lot of dreams had stayed with me; I’ve always had a pretty imaginative mind, and this wasn’t
the first time I actually started stringing together before and after scenes from this particular
segment of a dream I had. It was only that this was the first one I actually decided to write about.
So, the rest of the novel… I started thinking about who this girl could be; what things she could
have possibly done that made her end up in a dungeon, tortured by up to five men; who the male
character would be. I’ve always been fascinated about stories about the olden days – like Prince
and Princesses, Kings and Queens from countries such as England, France, Spain. Movies like ‘The
Man In The Iron Mask’ and ‘Ever After’ heavily influenced this novel, too.
Later on that day, ‘Eleanor I’ was born – a peasant girl and a quiet achiever who is content to live
her life away from the spotlight until a chance meeting with a dashing young Prince. They fall in
love, but their love is against the law, because peasants, at that time, aren’t supposed to consort
with someone above her status (see the striking resemblance to the ‘Ever After’ storyline?). So the
King sends his one and only son to study abroad, thinking that the distance will eventually severe
their romance. When it only strengthens their bond, the King, with his cunning advisor, plots a
cunning plan against Eleanor; one that will get her arrested and tortured and ultimately test the
foundation of her relationship with the Prince.

ASED: What are your other novels about, and why do they remain unpublished? By choice? If so,
can you explain it to us?
MMD: Whilst each novel is different, and the character has many forms, the major factors tying all the
novels in common are:
1. A lead heroine.
2. Said female character facing a major adversity in her life.
3. Details of trials and tribulations as she works through and overcome said adversity.

Other works
Eleanor II is naturally a continuation of Eleanor I. Rid of all the threats hanging over her head
and finally allowed to marry King Patrick, Eleanor believes that the worst is over; that her most
challenging task ahead of her is how to create and uphold a more just law for the Kingdom she now
co-rules with her husband; how to appreciate the luxuries she has found surrounding her without
ever forgetting her roots; how she could care better for the poor, the roots and backbones of the
Kingdom.
Peeling Layers, as I said, is a story about Elizabeth Hartley, a product from a Caucasian Father and
an Asian Mother. She attracts the attention of Michael Bradford, the son of the billionaire James
Bradford, as well as a notorious high school bully Gordon Crane.
This originally started as 1 HUGE novel, detailing the intertwining lives of Elizabeth Hartley (Lizzy
to those closest and dearest to her) and Michael Bradford for 10 years, from the first day they
entered and met in high school to living in the real world. That is, until the novel reached 1284
pages and Microsoft Word kept crashing on me, and I was forced to separate this novel into 4
sections.
Lizzy & Michael II recount their adventures during College in NYU, getting more adventurous in
their drink choices, forming their opinions of one-night stand, casual sex/friends with benefits
and deciding whether or not they want to uphold the label of ‘conscientious students’ they have
received in high school.
Lizzy & Michael III details their adventures in growing up in the real world; of getting up every
day to ‘do the grind’ whilst not necessarily enjoying what they do for a living; of mastering the
balancing act of maintaining their closeness with each other and weaving relationships with their
respective partners; those who might not ‘get’, or agree with their plutonic relationship.
Lizzy & Michael IV is the ending to the ten-year saga. Michael Bradford has finally gotten his one
and fervent wish, now dating Elizabeth Hartley, finding happiness, which sometimes is in the last
place you look.
There’s a work in progress currently titled ‘Evelyn’, and by far is the darkest novel I’ve written.
Raped by a fellow student when she was sixteen, and almost succumbed to the same fate during
a home invasion by a thug who was put in jail by her policeman’s boyfriend, Evelyn made a drastic
career change from primary school teacher to CIA agent.

As to why they remain unpublished – well, for a long time, I knew that what I’ve written was a
really rough first draft, so I wasn’t ready to approach publishers/agents with the work I wasn’t
happy with for anyone else to read. Plus, by the time I finished writing Lizzy and Michael, my
writing style has changed immensely. So I revisited and revamped Eleanor I, making the sentences
flow in better fluidity.
Also, for a long time, I didn’t know what to do next. Only in the last couple of years I started
researching on how to get my books published. I joined Queensland Writers’ Centre this year,
went to a Writers’ Workshop in another state, and actually submitted ‘Peeling Layers’ for a
Manuscript Development Program (couldn’t submit Eleanor I because they require a specific
genre). Since joining QWC, I’ve started entering some competitions designed to closely dissect and strengthen my current manuscripts, and I plan to do so until I get in…

Raymond Carver, Again

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Since posting the first Raymond Carver story the other day, I’ve since decided to do week long “features” of short story writers. I’m choosing first from those that I enjoy, simply because this is my basis for short story writing, but I’d love to hear suggestions & I would be happy to feature those as well.

I started with Raymond Carver, and I adore him, so I’m going to continue with him this week.

His biography can be found here, and the second story I want you guys to think about is Cathedral. While I don’t have a link or text to post here, I want to encourage you to find it, and read it. Carver anthologies are available all over the place. I know this isn’t the easiest way to get your hands on the story – me not giving it straight to you – but I promise you it’s worth it to go out and find it!

I’d like to provide a summary or some commentary, but I don’t want to ruin it for anyone. So, feel free to put your comments and thoughts about it below in the comments, and I can comment there as well.

Enjoy!