This week's Twenty Questions sessions is with fellow Clean Reads author Brett Armstrong, whose latest release, Day Moon, is now available. Here is the blurb about Brett's latest release.
In A.D. 2039, a prodigious seventeen year old, Elliott, is
assigned to work on a global software initiative his deceased grandfather
helped found. Project Alexandria is
intended to provide the entire world secure and equal access to all accumulated
human knowledge. All forms of print are
destroyed in good faith, to ensure everyone has equal footing, and Elliott
knows he must soon part with his final treasure: a book of Shakespeare’s complete works gifted
him by his grandfather. Before it is
destroyed, Elliott notices something is amiss with the book, or rather Project
Alexandria. The two do not match,
including an extra sonnet titled “Day Moon”.
When Elliott investigates, he uncovers far more than he bargained for. There are sinister forces backing Project
Alexandria who have no intention of using it for its public purpose. Elliott soon finds himself on the run from
federal authorities and facing betrayals and deceit from those closest to
him. Following clues left by his
grandfather, with agents close at hand, Elliott desperately hopes to find a way
to stop Project Alexandria. All of
history past and yet to be depend on it.
You may visit Brett's website
here. Now let's hear more from Brett about his book and his interest in writing.
1. How did you get interested in writing?
When I first started
I suppose it was a natural outgrowth of reading books at my hometown’s
library. My mom would take me there and
spend hours looking over books for the pre-school classes she taught and I would
go into the back and read. I
particularly liked the history section and some of it was framed like a
newspaper from the time, so I just kind of started writing my own stories about
different places and times. Gradually I
started doing serialized stories for journal time at school and read them to my
class. In most situations I really
dislike public speaking, but talking about writing and reading stories felt and
feels very natural to me.
I didn’t start
seriously writing until I was a junior in college. When it came time to select a major and a
career path, I wanted to go into biomechanical engineering but WVU didn’t offer
that so a friend talked me into computer engineering. The courses were a pain at times and while I
could do the work it felt a little like drudgery. I had to fill some credit hours one semester
and couldn’t take a class I needed, because it was full, so I took a creative
writing class. Then another, and
another, until I had a minor in it. I
remember very clearly walking back from class one evening and getting about
halfway down the hill I was parked on and just feeling like I’d been struck by
the most obvious thing I had never considered. Writing made me feel something very different
from other things that I like doing.
Different from drawing, doing math, etc.
I suddenly understood what Eric Liddell, the 1924 Olympic gold medalist,
meant when he said, “God made me fast. And when I run, I
feel His pleasure.”
2. What inspired you to come up with this story?
A few different sources
really inspired me. At the time I was
graduating from WVU, there were a few controversies in the sports world where
people’s achievements were being overturned because of things they had done
more recently and it was like they were erasing history to an extent. I didn’t think the wrongs that had committed
should be ignored, but it struck me as very wrong to try to go re-write history
so to speak. Around that time I also had
an assignment in my capstone writing class.
Go out and do a writing “scavenger hunt”. I had to observe certain things and write
little story notes based on them. Except
it was raining that day, so I ended up on the portico of the English hall
looking out on the campus at the library and I just began writing about a
student doing the same thing. The
question of why the library was significant came to mind and that’s when Day
Moon started coalescing into its basic outline.
I had the basic premise within a couple days and then proceeded to sit
on the story for another two+ years.
3. Tell me about Day Moon’s main character, Elliott, and what inspired you to
create him.
I kind of imagined
what my son might be like one day. What
he would face, what background he would have, and then let the events shape
Elliott’s character from there. I’ve
always had issue with people who say characters are more important than
plot. I think the two are equally
important. I like to let the story pick
the characters up and carry them to places they would never expect and in so
doing, the characters are shaped by the events.
But at a certain point, the characters’ decisions begin to shape the
outcome of the plot and I think the balance there is very important to
maintain. So that’s how it usually works
for me. I start with the seed of a
person or persons I’m familiar with and then let the story and characters
mutually shape each other so that each takes on a life-like quality.
4. What characters, other than Elliott, did you find enjoyable to write as you
progressed with the book?
I really enjoyed
writing Lara’s portions, because she’s so snarky. She’s also a nice foil for Kendra, who is
also kind of sharp-tongued but in a very different way. Then there’s her lovely interactions with
Elliott’s cousin, John. I feel like Lara
brought out a lot of fun qualities about all the characters she interacted
with, including the Siberian husky they encounter.
5. What are some of the themes you explored in writing the novel?
There are quite a
few. There’s the clash between the old
and new, along with the sense of loss that goes along with that. The familiar theme of deception and wanting
something so badly you ignore the obvious warning signs of something worse. Having
resiliency and courage to stand up against evil, even when it is a lone stand
that may fail.
One of the major
themes led me to think up a new application of the word surreality. Conventionally it means the same thing as
surreal, but I think it could hold more nuancing than that. So I use it meaning, a surreal reality or a
surrogate reality. Which is what a lot
of the people, including the protagonists, live in at the novel’s start. It’s this false reality we conjure for
ourselves because it makes getting through actual reality feel easier. In that respect, the setting of this novel isn’t
so different from my first novel, Destitutio
Quod Remissio, which was set in ancient Rome. Ancient Rome suffered the same kind of ills
of pretending the world was something it wasn’t for them. Really that was one thing I think that sets
Day Moon apart from some other dystopian works I’ve read. The horrible situation society is in wasn’t
something resulting from a catastrophe per se or something people were drug
kicking and screaming into. It’s based
on choices. The thousands of seemingly
inconsequential tradeoffs that get made and we never weigh the
consequences. After a while, even if you
want to weigh them, it’s easier to just accept things as they are and move on,
pretend some things don’t matter or worth losing. Self-driving cars in the novel are a good
example of this. There are so many
benefits of having them that the manner they were implemented and the sacrifices
of some measure of freedom of choice and action and attention to the world
around them were overlooked.
There’s also first
love, finding your place in the world, and an emphasis on family
relationships. Really there are quite a
few spiritual themes as well. Elliott
struggles the entire book with doubt.
Did his grandfather really intend for him to find anything? Is he up to the challenge of stopping Project
Alexandria? Should Project Alexandria be
stopped? He’s forced to follow the
directions left by someone he knows but doesn’t get to have an audible
conversation with. Yet he’s convinced
there is something he was being led to do.
In that respect, it is somewhat like following Christ for a Christian. We know enough about Him to trust Him, but there’s
this constant struggle to take that next step forward when things get dark and
difficult. Elliott faces a lot of
setbacks and betrayals and each time has
to keep choosing that forward progress.
6. How familiar were you with Shakespeare’s works when you wrote this novel?
More familiar than
many, but less than many as well. I
really enjoyed reading Shakespeare while in school, particularly Macbeth for
some reason (probably because my family has a hefty dose of Scottish ancestry). I knew enough to be dangerous in Jeopardy
Shakespeare categories, but really, Shakespeare’s works are so diverse and
nuanced it would be a lie to say I’ve got a firm hold on them. I learned that in particular when I went to
actually write the poem “Day Moon” for the novel and had to try to piece
together a sonnet in iambic pentameter.
7. What were some of the things you learned along the way as you wrote and
edited the book?
On the editing side,
I learned it can actually feel very rewarding to do edits. Past experiences editing for publication had
their highpoints, but this was much more enjoyable. I have to attribute much of that to the
fantastic editors I got to work with.
A lot of what I
learned wasn’t necessarily fresh insight, but more reinforcing of things I was
already beginning to latch onto. There
are a whole slew of balances a writer must maintain: character and plot,
exposition and pacing, showing and telling, the author’s wants and the reader’s
needs, etc. To an extent, I do agree
with the idea that a story writes itself.
I think a novel is likes trekking through the mountains. You can see peaks in the distance, but much
of the journey is going into valleys, through forests, and past rivers; most of
which you can’t see at the outset or even for much of the journey. So it becomes a process of anticipation and
surprise for me. I know some things are
going to happen, but there are so many things between point A and point B that
I never anticipated, and that was very much true for Day Moon.
8. How did this compare to other novels you have written?
It is a fairly steep
divergence on the surface. All of the novels I had written to this point,
published or not, had heavy infusions of history in them. This was a chance to be more direct with how
I wrote. It isn’t really fair to say I
was looking to the future more than with historical fiction, because I firmly
believe historical fiction can say as much about today and tomorrow as it does
about yesterday, but this was subtly different.
It was also the first time I found a setting so close to home for a
book. Everything else was always far
flung, beyond Appalachia by at least hundreds, and often thousands, of
miles. It was a chance to explore some
of what growing up in Appalachia felt like to me, some of my sharpest memories
of it.
9. Tell me about this story you wrote when you were nine that took place in the
Aztec Empire.
So, it was actually a
three part series that makes me wonder about myself at that age. The series, called “Aztec” (creative, I know),
was about a slave who was taken prisoner after a rival people group was
subdued. In the Aztec culture, such
captives were often sacrificed, but this slave was clever and managed to
escape. He blended into the backdrop of
Aztec culture, rose through the ranks, and eventually gets revenge by murdering
the Aztec Emperor. He began installing
himself in the felled emperor’s place, but the emperor’s son, Moctezuma II,
escaped the palace purge and eventually launched his own campaign to retake the
empire. In the final third of it, Moctezuma II is just beginning to cement his
rule when Cortez arrives and some of the story was just feeling out how that
encounter could have played out and the viewpoints of each side as things
degenerated. Somehow I managed to get
that into like fifteen or twenty hand written pages and I’ve never been so
succinct since.
10. What do you find is the right environment for you to write?
Everywhere. I drift off into introspection fairly easily,
so things for stories can literally come just about any time. At the moment, the time I most often find
myself doing concerted writing, like answering this question, is sometime
between 10 PM and 1 AM while my wife and son are sleeping. I have a full time job, so I feel guilty
whenever I’m not with them for those brief hours I can see them, which leaves
the late night to write.
11. Are there specific programs or tools you find useful to help you with the
writing process?
Lately, I’ve found
that handwriting in a notebook with a fine lead pencil (because my print is
pretty small) my initial drafts and then typing them up later works well. I usually write in long bursts, getting
entire scenes or chapters done at a time and outlining subsequent passages all
at once. That means there are usually
lots of grammar and punctuation errors to clean up later. Opportunities to polish the prose for the
official (that is digital) first draft.
Excel is also really useful for charting out things like characters and
their attributes, settings and details about them, and later on anything
related to marketing the book.
12. What have you found to be useful methods for promoting your writing?
So much of the
successes I’ve had really happened without much action from me. I feel like a lot of my efforts end in vain
and when I let God guide me to something new it works much better. But if I had to name something discrete,
though I didn’t really purpose it myself, when my first book won the CrossBooks
contest, I was interviewed by the major newspaper in my state. It didn’t cause sales to go wild, but it has
been a seed that has led to a steady stream of other opportunities that would
have been unlikely to come about without it. Of
course social media. Just as a quirky suggestion though, I had a booth at a
book festival and my first book was set in ancient Rome, so rather than have
bookmarks or something else with the synopsis on them, my family and I made
tiny scrolls with the back cover copy on them. They were a pain, but one woman picked one up
and months later posted a five star review on GoodReads after purchasing the
book, and attributed her circling back to the book to that little scroll she
was handed. Unique, memorable touches like that can really go a long way.
13. What are some of the famous books or authors you have enjoyed or inspired
you?
I didn’t read Lord of the Rings till college or The Chronicles of Narnia till just last
year, but I would consider both massively inspiring. Then, of course, there’s Shakespeare, HG
Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, and the Arthur legends. Some inspiration when it came to dystopian
writing were of course 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 411, and The
Hunger Games. Even though Picasso
said, “Good artists borrow, but great artists steal,” I try not to just retell
someone else’s story. So I think what I
take most often are ideas for themes and tones.
How to nuance the story I’m led to rather than outright form it. If any
of that makes sense.
14. Any aspiring or independent authors whose books you’ve read that you liked
and want to mention to others to check out?
Bob Morris’s new
book: Six Pack Emergence. J I would also have to say for those interested
in Christian fiction, I’ve talked with a few authors personally and Curt Iles,
Joel Thimell, and Robert Craven all have the right heart behind the writing. They’re
each in very different genres but all have some good stuff. Though, honestly, for a long time I kind of
eschewed anything that wasn’t a classic or handed to me because it was wildly
popular. The more I read independent
works and less vaunted traditional publications, the less fame and big name
publishers seem to mean when it comes to having an enjoyable book to read.
15. What advice would you give to those who want to write a novel before they
actually get started?
Take some time to
pray about it. Then if he or she still
feels compelled, then go for it. Don’t
wait for perfect timing or the novel to be fully formed and in mind. To me writing a novel is like travelling
through the mountains. You have a
destination in mind and you can see some key points along the route there, but
all the depth and substance really takes place as you move from point to
point. It’s one of the most rewarding
parts of writing a novel, because you feel as though you’re discovering the
story as you write it.
16. I see you like to draw. Have you ever tried creating your own covers for
anything you’ve written?
I actually made a
cover for everything I wrote from age nine till high school. I sketched out what I wished the cover for my
novel Destitutio Quod Remissio could
have been like and even made some concept art for the logo of Project
Alexandria in Day Moon. It’s been a kind of back burner ambition of
mine to create a still image book trailer for a fantasy series I’ve been
working on for some time. I just don’t
give nearly enough time to making it happen.
Though, the best cover art I’ve ever done for a novel, by far, is the
graphic design I did for my first adult novel, which remains unpublished though
I went almost to the end of self-publishing before backing off with it. There’s still a picture of it on my website
and if I ever get a publisher to pick it up I will beg them to consider using
it at least in part.
17. You enjoy gardening – what are some of the plants you like to grow?
Pumpkins, zucchini,
and hot peppers tend to be our favorites.
We usually get enough pumpkin to last all year and for several years my
wife and I have had a hot, but edible, pepper growing contest with my dad (who
is a much more serious gardener). We
have a blind taste test of peppers we choose to enter and then each score the
peppers we taste on a scale of 1 to 10.
The last time my wife and I won with Dragon Cayenne peppers. They’re only about 80,000 Scoville units, but
that’s really pushing the limits of what I consider conventionally edible
anyway.
18. How has your Christian faith influenced you and your writing?
Forgive me, because
I’m going to be a bit redundant and rehash a little of #1.
It’s why I’m
writing. When I graduated high school I
wanted to get a “practical” degree for a good career. But after a few years at WVU I took a
creative writing class for fun.
Suddenly, writing which had always been a hobby felt so serious, so
essential. I started to understand
Olympian Eric Liddell, who said, “God made me fast. And when I run, I
feel His pleasure.” It just suddenly
clicked for me that I should write. As
I’m sure you’ve experienced, writing can be a roller coaster ride. Especially
when you start trying to publish things and involve agents, publishing houses,
marketing… basically everything that frightens and discourages me about
writing. A number of times I’ve asked
God, whether me pursuing writing is really what He wants me to do. I still work a full time job, I have a
family, and writing can be costly in terms of money and certainly time. Every time, without fail, when I’ve been on
the precipice of giving up, something has happened to turn me around. Once it was a man who works in the same
organization I do, whom I’ve never met, who read the article in the newspaper
about me and more than a year later e-mailed me to say, essentially God had
been leading him to say some encouraging words to me. He didn’t know why but he knew he needed to
and he had bought five copies of my first book to give away.
More to the point, it gives me focus
and purpose. It’s not about getting
famous or becoming wealthy or even gaining a career as a novelist. I’m very much convinced fictional writing can
shape how we feel and respond to the real world, so I want to write things that
are meaningful. If it can impact one person’s life for the better, then it is
all worth it.
19. Is there a favorite type of activity you enjoy doing with your wife and
son?
Being able to go for
walks together is pretty special. We
live a couple hundred yards from the road our mailbox is on, so we walk out and
get the mail together as a family. Those walks often end in chasing our little
guy all over the place, which only makes it so much better.
20. Who would win a battle of superhero skills: Superman, Batman or Wonder
Woman?
This is a tough
question because I’m uber-biased in favor of Batman. But I think I can justify it. If the metric is purely superhero skills,
then Batman has to crush the competition.
Superman and Wonder Woman each have incredible strength, speed, and a host
of other super human (or metahuman as DC terms it) abilities. Often when fighting a foe, they fly in fast,
punch a lot and use a special super power until they defeat their adversary. Batman, on the other hand, spends time and
effort to develop counter-measures for adversaries. He has mastered a variety of martial arts and
in spite of being just an above average human is able to keep up when the
pressure is on with Superman and Wonder Woman.
His effort and nuancing to his work require more skill. So until Superman and Wonder Woman display
that kind of resourcefulness I will have to go with Batman every time.
I wasn't disappointed. Firetok follows the tale of Douglass, a man who had struggled throughout his life with inner demons and has dreams and visions about future events. It leads him to an encounter with an old man and a dog -- the dog is named Firetok and Douglass develops a kindred spirit with him. Through the visions Douglass experiences and his bond formed with Firetok, Douglass learns about a child smuggling operation involving others close to him. Along the way, Douglass must make decisions about the relationships in his life and what he really wants
