Cold Flesh: J.F. Gonzalez 9/26 - 10/1/05

[hugonian]

Session: J.F. Gonzalez, Sept. 26 – October 1, 2005

Instructions: Post a question for the author and wait for a reply. From Monday to Saturday, the author will peek in periodically to answer questions. If the author cannot answer your question before time expires, feel free to PM the author with your question.

This week’s author: J. F. Gonzalez “Ménage Á Trois” is the critically-acclaimed author of several novels including Survivor, The Beloved, Maternal Instinct, and Clickers (with Mark Williams), among others. Beginning in February of 2006, Leisure Books will begin reprinting his work in mass-market paperback (starting with Survivor). His short fiction regularly appears in various anthologies and magazines, some of the latest include Cold Flesh, Dark Arts, Hot Blood 12: Strange Bedfellows, and In Delirium. Current projects include laboring over a pair of novels, one for Leisure, the second a collaboration with Brian Keene on the sequel to his first novel Clickers for Delirium Books. For more information, visit his website at www.jfgonzalez.com.

Q&A Schedule: See when other authors will be available--schedule of authors

Cold Flesh info: For more info regarding Cold Flesh, such as reviews and updates, please visit the official thread or the official website.

[UndeadAnthology]

Hi J.F.,

What was the process of writing Clickers 2 with Brian Keene like? How did you guys share the writing duties? How long did it take you to convince Keene that, no, the story did not require zombies (just kidding guys!)?

Jacob

[Baron Samedi]

Was this story written specifically for the Cold Flesh anthology? How does writing to order differ from writing on spec for your own, or the story's, sake?

--Gene

[hugonian]

I have a few questions about Leisure Books.

Firstly, did they contact you to reprint your works, or did you submit to them? If you contacted them, please describe the submission process, especially if you did anything that really caught the editor’s eye. If they contacted you, what do you think spurred them to do so?

Secondly, could you describe your new relationship with the publisher? Your obligations, their obligations, the types of promotion they’re planning, etc.

That's about it.

Thanks, J.F.

Originally Posted by UndeadAnthology

Hi J.F.,

What was the process of writing Clickers 2 with Brian Keene like? How did you guys share the writing duties? How long did it take you to convince Keene that, no, the story did not require zombies (just kidding guys!)?

Jacob

Well, so far we haven't even started the damn thing yet, so I have no idea what the writing process will be like. I imagine we'll share writing duties the way Mark Williams (co-author of Clickers) and I shared them -- we'll tag team it by one of us writing a chapter, the other editing what the other wrote and then writing the following chapter, leap-frogging along as we go.

As to how long it took to convince him to write it with me, the conversation went something like this:

"Hey man, I was wondering...I've been thinking of writing a sequel to Clickers and -- "

"No shit! That's ****ing great man!"

"Thanks. Anyway, I've been thinking of writing this sequel and I have some ideas and this book really screams to have a co-author...you wanna collaborate on it with me?"

"**** yeah!"

So it took...maybe thirteen seconds?

J. F. Gonzalez

Originally Posted by Baron Samedi

Was this story written specifically for the Cold Flesh anthology? How does writing to order differ from writing on spec for your own, or the story's, sake?

--Gene

No, it wasn't. Believe it or not, this story was originally written for Book of the Dead 3 in 1993-1994. Unknown to many people, I ghost-edited that anthology (it was never published...long story, but the book eventually was reassembled by John Skipp for MONDO ZOMBIE, forthcoming from CD Publications) and I wanted to try my hand at a zombie story. Only problem was, I never showed it to Craig Spector, who I was helping out on this project. There was so much GOOD stuff coming our way for the book that I lost confidence in my story, even though I thought it was pretty good.

So I sat on it for a few years and would occasionally rework it. I didn't start sending it out again until maybe a few years ago. It was bought by two different anthologies twice, anthologies that, I must add, bit the dust before publication.

Aside from some updating some cultural stuff, the story I wrote over a decade ago is basically the same version that appears in COLD FLESH.

So to answer your question, this story wasn't written for COLD FLESH per se, but I have written other stories to order. I find the process chanllenging, if its an intriguing enough theme and if I have an idea that might fit the anthology.


J. F. Gonzalez

Originally Posted by hugonian

I have a few questions about Leisure Books.

Firstly, did they contact you to reprint your works, or did you submit to them? If you contacted them, please describe the submission process, especially if you did anything that really caught the editor’s eye. If they contacted you, what do you think spurred them to do so?

Secondly, could you describe your new relationship with the publisher? Your obligations, their obligations, the types of promotion they’re planning, etc.

That's about it.

Thanks, J.F.

Yes and no.

My relationship with Leisure goes back to 1996 or 1997 when I submitted Clickers to Don. He passed on it, and I continued to send him pretty much every novel I wrote for the next seven or eight years, most which he passed on, some he held on to. When I sent him Survivor he came back to me and said he had a backlog of stuff from me -- could he take a look at another time? So I said fine, and eventually sold it to a small press. I sent him a copy of the trade paperback when it was published as a gift, with no expectations that he'd buy it. For the most part I was pretty depressed about my writing career at the time and had already resigned to myself that I'd never sell a novel to a mass market publisher and decided I'd be happy selling stuff to the small press.

But then Don read the book and really dug it and made an offer. Of course it didn't hurt that the New York Times Book Review got a copy and gave it a rave review (along with Keene's The Rising and Tim Lebbons Fears Unnamed and Tananarive Due's The Good House). It was unexpected. So I sold mass market paperback rights to Leisure, and when The Beloved came out in January from the same small press and I sent Don a copy of that and he made an offer for that as well.

As to how I approached them way back when, it's the same way you approach any publisher -- with professionalism, with respect, and knowing that just because they pass on one project doesn't mean they won't pass on the next. For me it took a few books, for others it takes one or two, and other writers are even luckier and sell their first written novel.

What made it stand out and what helped the process? Probably the fact that it was already getting good reviews and had a good buzz, both among readers and my peers. That gives them a leg up in promotion and publicity.

What are my obligations to them? To write the best horror novels I can for them, basically. Now that I have a good working relationship with them, I purposefully went into the writing of my latest novel with a maximum word count in mind -- and I was able to make it! That's important, because when you're writing for a mass market publisher like Leisure its important to keep the manuscript at a certain word level. I'd done that before on my first few books, but then in the last few I just let the story dictate what happened and they went a little over (it probably didn't help that I figured my writing career was going nowhere and I said 'screw it, if its going to be a 130,000 words its going to be a 130,000 words, no mass market publisher will buy it anyway). It's not like that now with this new book -- I aimed for a certain word length and I made it, and that's very important.

As far as promotion and stuff like that from their end...Leisure does a fantastic job in getting their books EVERYWHERE and that's half the battle. We haven't talked specifics yet about what we're going to do yet, but I will be working with them in promotion, doing everything I can to assist them in their (and my) marketing campaigns. I plan on doing some signings in selected cities on the East and West coasts when Survivor comes out, and will probably be making the World Horror Con in San Francisco as well.

I can't seem to shut up, can I?

J. F. Gonzalez

[hugonian]

What did you do to promote the small-press editions of Clickers and Survivor? What campaigns proved most successful? Did you do anything unusual that really paid off?

Originally Posted by hugonian

What did you do to promote the small-press editions of Clickers and Survivor? What campaigns proved most successful? Did you do anything unusual that really paid off?

I remember with Clickers (which first came out as an ebook) I sent press releases to everybody and sent pdfs to as many reviewers as possible. The publisher of the paperback (DarkTales) sent review copies, and it got nice reviews in places like Fangoria and Wicked magazines. For Survivor we sent out review copies and that was about it. I did some signings and for the most part, Survivor got a lot of word of mouth buzz.

Probably the most successful things I've done was get review copies out to people. I haven't done anything terribly unusual yet because I haven't thought of any unusual way, or unique way, to promote anything yet!

J. F. Gonzalez

Jesus, glad to hear things are going well for you, man.

Have you considered starting another magazine like Iniquities or Phantasm?

Also: Chris L. had a baby girl last month. (Well, his wife did, anyway.) Little Sarah is cute and healthy...and has a mischievous glint in her eye, just like her folks!

Paoletti

Hello. I really enjoyed your story in Cold Flesh.

Now on to my questions.

I'm unfamiliar with your other work, however I read in one of your earlier answers that this was your first zombie story. Did you enjoy writing it and would you write another story in that genre? Or have you already?

Now that "Menage A Trois" has been published, are you completely happy with it, or are there still some things that you would have changed?

Do you have any advice for someone who wants to be published as part of an anthology someday?

What is the most important thing you've learned in your writing career that you wish you had known when you first started?

Do you enjoy writing with a co-author, or do you prefer working solo?

This last bit isn't so much a question as something I noticed while reading your story. Several times near the beginning you reference the dead rising as a "plague" except it's spelled "plaque" (ex. p. 436, first paragraph). I figure it was a spell check error and it didn't take anything away from the story, it just caught my eye and I hope it doesn't annoy you that I'm pointing it out.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to your answers.

[big john h]

I'm a young author who has had about 25 acceptances this year. I have a work upcoming in The Undead, Bare Bone, and Wandering Flesh. Have you written anymore Zombie stories, and if not, will you ever? I write Zombie stories almost as scenarios or episodes. I've had stories set in 1800's Montana on a cattle ranch, 1980's Georgia on a rural farm, and present day Virginia in a jail cell. It's hard to get fresh ideas. Any advice?

Originally Posted by Paoletti

Jesus, glad to hear things are going well for you, man.

Have you considered starting another magazine like Iniquities or Phantasm?

Also: Chris L. had a baby girl last month. (Well, his wife did, anyway.) Little Sarah is cute and healthy...and has a mischievous glint in her eye, just like her folks!

Paoletti

Marc, Great to hear from you too, and nice to see we're sharing the contents page of another anthology! (for the record, Marc and I had stories in an anthology called YOUNG BLOOD that Zebra published a decade ago).

To answer your question...NO! Unless somebody offered me a paying gig to edit a horror magazine (hint to all you businessmen out there lurking), I would not want to be behind the start-up or the business end of a magazine again. Editing them is fun, and I loved it, but the business end was not so fun for me.

Another aside for everybody reading this...in 1997 I bought and published a zombie story Marc Paoletti wrote with Chris Lacher in my magazine Phantasm. The story is called "Rednecks Who Kill Zombies! On the Next Geraldo". You guys would probably dig it.

J. F. Gonzalez

Originally Posted by Collin

Hello. I really enjoyed your story in Cold Flesh.

Now on to my questions.

I'm unfamiliar with your other work, however I read in one of your earlier answers that this was your first zombie story. Did you enjoy writing it and would you write another story in that genre? Or have you already?

Now that "Menage A Trois" has been published, are you completely happy with it, or are there still some things that you would have changed?

Do you have any advice for someone who wants to be published as part of an anthology someday?

What is the most important thing you've learned in your writing career that you wish you had known when you first started?

Do you enjoy writing with a co-author, or do you prefer working solo?

This last bit isn't so much a question as something I noticed while reading your story. Several times near the beginning you reference the dead rising as a "plague" except it's spelled "plaque" (ex. p. 436, first paragraph). I figure it was a spell check error and it didn't take anything away from the story, it just caught my eye and I hope it doesn't annoy you that I'm pointing it out.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to your answers.

Oh boy, let me see if I can answer all these.

Yes, I enjoyed writing "Menage A Trois". Yes, I would write another zombie story if I got an idea I liked well enough. And no, this isn't the only zombie story I've written. Around the same time I wrote "Menage A Trois", I wrote another zombie story for the same project but it was nowhere near as good and I've never done anything with it. Trust me, it's not that great.

As for, am I happy with the story now, yes, I am. I wouldn't change anything except whatever minor grammatical errors might have gotten missed when it was proofed.

The most important thing I wished I'd known when I started? I wished I'd had the foresight to not take as long as I did to get the ball rolling. I wished I'd paid more attention to the markets at the time I was starting. Other than that, no, there isn't that much I regret. Just that I wish I started sooner.

As for working with another writer, it depends on the writer. I've collaborated with five other writers so far, and all have been positive experiences. Typically, I like working solo but there are times when the project at hand demands another flavor added to it and that's when a collaborator can be very useful.

And no, it doesn't annoy me that you saw the error. These things happen. If I get a chance to sign the book at an autograph signing, I can correct it!

J. F. Gonzalez

Originally Posted by big john h

I'm a young author who has had about 25 acceptances this year. I have a work upcoming in The Undead, Bare Bone, and Wandering Flesh. Have you written anymore Zombie stories, and if not, will you ever? I write Zombie stories almost as scenarios or episodes. I've had stories set in 1800's Montana on a cattle ranch, 1980's Georgia on a rural farm, and present day Virginia in a jail cell. It's hard to get fresh ideas. Any advice?

First, congratulations on acceptances of your stories! That's something to be proud of.

As to whether I've done other zombie stories, yes, I've done one other one and it isn't very good. If I ever get the idea to do another one, I will. I just haven't had an idea I've liked until recently...today in fact (thanks to this board). Maybe it'll turn into something cool. We'll see.

As to where to get fresh ideas, the only advice I can give you is three words: read widely (not just horror fiction -- and don't just saturate yourself on zombie fiction, either...don't construe this as knocking zombie fiction, 'cause I ain't knockin' it, I LOVE zombies, but reading too much of only one genre of fiction, especially if its a genre you wish to write in, will only make your own work sound like recycled bits of stories other people have already done)...write as much as you can...and most important of all...LIVE LIFE! Live life, absorb as much as you can and put that back into your writing.

Most important...observe what is around you. Take the time to read the news, read magazines, take in current events. Write about them if something about them bothers you. Story ideas can come from current events, the news, from anything in life. It's the job of the writer to be perceptive to things in order to turn them into stories.

Hope this helps.

J. F. Gonzalez