#afterlifeserial

Q: What first got you interested in writing?

Michael: When I was in elementary school, my mom would make little blank books out of paper and string for me to write stories and comics in.  I started passing these around school and the other kids loved them.  I also loved reading Greek Mythology and a series called the Three Investigators which featured Alfred Hitchcock helping three kids solve various mysteries.  In High School, a friend introduced me to Allen Ginsberg and his poem "Howl."  This immediately got me interested in writing poetry.  I loved the energy and emotion it invoked.

Q: What authors would you say have had the most influence on you over the years?

Michael: Fritz Leiber, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Greek and Norse Mythology, H.G. Wells, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Michael McClure, Aldous Huxley, George R.R. Martin, Joe Abercrombie, Ian Fleming, Billy Collins, Tony Hoagland, John Hodgen, E.E. Cummings, Sylvia Plath, the British Romantics, especially William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Milton, William Blake, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Sir Thomas Mallory (can you tell I was an English major in college?)

Q: What is your favorite genre to read?

Michael: Fantasy

Q: What is your favorite genre to write?

Michael: Fantasy

Q: Describe your most recent project in your own words.

Michael: I have two writing projects going on right now.  First, I've been writing a lot of science fiction and fantasy short fiction, so I've been publishing stories and novellas on Amazon with the ultimate goal of publishing a compilation of some sort.  Second, I'm working on a science fiction/western post-apocalyptic action serial called Afterlife, which is being published every other week in Shea Magazine.

For the rest of the questions here, I'll focus on Afterlife, since I consider it my main project right now:

  Q: How did you come up with the idea for this project?

Michael: I first came up with the idea for the main villain, Warrick Baines.  I thought about an environment and a setting he could inhabit, and then everything else spawned from that.  I decided to write a serial because I've written one in the past and found that it was a good way to pace myself and motivate myself in order to complete a longer piece of fiction.  I also like the idea of getting an audience who keeps coming back to read future installments to see what happens to the characters.  It's almost like a television show in some ways.

  Q: How long have you been working on this project?

Michael: Since August of 2013

  Q: What is your favorite moment you’ve written so far?

Michael: In this project, my favorite moment would be the standoff in the Doctor's Office which occurs from chapter 6 through chapter 7.  There are a lot of exciting moments still to come, though.

Q: What do you think is your biggest weakness in writing?

Michael: I hate using a Thesaurus.  I feel like it can become a crutch and it can result in bad writers using words they don't really understand.  The flip side is, I tend to re-use a lot of words and phrases, so this is something I always have to be on the lookout for and it helps to have people who know what they're doing read over my stuff before I publish things.  Also, like any other writer, I tend to fall in love with things I write sometimes, even bad or cliched things, so it can be hard getting rid of some things when I'm editing my work.

  Q: Conversely, what is your biggest strength in writing?

Michael: I feel like my characters and the dialogue between them is very strong.  I try to use aspects of people I know in my characters, and I try to add flaws to the good guys and some good traits to the bad guys, so everyone seems human to some extent.  I mean hell, they say Adolf Hitler loved kids.  If that evil son of a bitch could show kindness on some level, I guess anyone can.

  Q: What are your long-term goals with writing? Are you hoping to make a living off of it, use it as supplemental income, or just a hobby?

Michael: I want to write twenty best-selling novels while revolutionizing the online publishing industry and I want my books to help bring about world peace and I want them to end poverty once and for all.  There you go.  I'm honest.  Why not dream big?  If you only make small goals, what will you do once you achieve them?  I do make smaller goals along the way, of course.  I start off with trying to get one person to read something I write and then I go from there.  It's like writing a novel: first you write a word, then a paragraph, then a chapter, and before you know it, you've got 500 pages.

  Q: Anything you’d like to add that I didn’t already ask?

Michael: I love writing poetry.  I've had poems published in Gargoyle Magazine, the Loch Raven Review, Scribble, and various other journals and publications, many of which are located in my hometown of Baltimore, Maryland.  I've been doing poetry readings around town for fifteen years or so now, and I felt like jumping into fiction for a while with the birth of my daughter last year.  Poetry needs to be read aloud, and it requires going places and having a very active social life and meeting lots of new people.  It's harder to do these things with a baby, so I've focused on spending as much time as possible with my wonderful wife and daughter, and I've started writing lots of fiction.  I'm not done with poetry and never will be.  I've just been focusing more on fiction lately

There, now that I've scared everyone away, thanks for this interview!  It's been fun!