11-Question Interview with Gene Doucette

My interviewee (not sure that’s a real word, spellchecker says ‘no’) this month is Gene Doucette. Gene is a writer with an uncanny main character, Adam.

This character has his own Twitter account  and he’s somewhat of a pot-stirrer so watching him interact with other users can get interesting. Here’s a link to an interview with Adam the Immortal.

If you’re on Twitter, be sure to look up both Adam (@AdamtheImmortal) and Gene (@GeneDoucette). You can find him on the web at http://genedoucette.me/.

 

WRITER/AUTHOR: ELEVEN INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

Author name: Gene Doucette

Latest title: Immortal

 1.       I’m always interested in the writer’s process. How often do you write? Do you have a daily word count goal? Give me an overview (or detailed if you really want to go there) of your writing life.

I don’t write daily.  I’m actually terrible about it.  What I do is write in compact bursts of activity amidst large slabs of non-writing that constitute the remainder of my life.  I would love to get to the point where I can write every day, and that may become more likely now that the kids are away in college.  On the other hand I may take up that time by reading more; by now my writing habits are probably set.

2.       Do you also work a full-time non-writer job or career?

I do.  I work full-time as a bank analyst.  The job requires a great deal of writing, but it’s technical writing, so it hardly counts.  Still, at the end of the day I’ll have put in 5,000 – 6,000 words that “hardly count”. 

 3.       How supportive has your family been of your writing time? Have you ever had to fight for your right to write?

Before I started writing novels—and after I stopped writing plays—I wrote humor columns about my family, so I’d say they were not only supportive, they were my primary source.  And to that extent my children never stopped doing ridiculous things that required immediate documentation.  But finding time to write has always been a challenge, as it would be for anyone working a full-time job while raising two kids.

4.       How long did it take to write (from start to finish) your novel?

That depends on when we decide it was finished.  The first draft took a few months, but by the time the last rewrite was finished it had been two years.

 5.       What route to publishing did you take (agent, traditional, self-pub), and how long did it take from finish to publication?

The route I took is possibly the most non-traditional approach one can take without involving circus elephants.  After I finished Immortal (for the first time) I landed an agent who marketed it extensively.  We got some excellent feedback along the lines of “we love your writing and we don’t know how to sell it” and a note or two that the ending could be stronger.  After two years of that the agent shook my hand and wished me luck.  So I rewrote the ending and asked around about my odds on getting another agent with the new ending in place.  They weren’t good; the general opinion was I should write another book and sell it, then bring Immortal along later.  (I actually did this; the novel is Fixer, but I’ve not yet acquired representation for it.) 

A couple of years ago I came upon a small market publisher that sounded like a decent fit for the book, so I sent it to them and they accepted it.  This was exciting for about a year, until the time came for the book to be released and nothing happened.  They’re out of business now and being sued by I don’t know how many writers whose books had come out as scheduled. 

Fortunately for me, one of the people who used to work for them as an editor loved Immortal and was in the process of forming a new publishing company.  And that’s how we got here.

6.       Is there a theme, or premise you’d really like readers to connect with in your latest book?

I had to put some real thought into how to answer this.  Most of the responses I came up with were really post hoc conclusions, things I came to realize as I was writing the book rather than themes I’d worked out beforehand.  The truth is as I was writing it I was just trying to make something that was fun and interesting to read.  I didn’t have any kind of higher agenda or thematic concept to work through. 

 I did make some discrete decisions as I wrote it.  I decided early on that I wasn’t going to feature any magic; I didn’t want to glamorize or paint over the basic realities of the historical record; I did want to use beings that one might associate with fantasy and magic but I wanted to present them as things that actually could exist in our world (with some allowances for creative license.)  And so on.  But these weren’t ideas that came up to make the book different; they were decisions I made so that I could make it to the end of the book; I found them interesting.

 7.       Where are you going now, are you working on a sequel, or something entirely different?

I am trying to find time to finish up Hellenic Immortal.  It has made it to beta readers, and the feedback I’ve gotten so far has pointed me toward one final draft before it’ll be ready.  And then I get to start on the third book.  I’m also busy in a film project or two, and Fixer is still waiting for some attention.

 8.       Where do you find inspiration for your stories and novels?

My inspiration comes out of my wanting to see if I can pull something off.  “Wouldn’t it be fun to write from the perspective of an immortal man?” or “what if there was a guy who saw five seconds of the future and there was a killer who lived five seconds in the future?  How would he stop the killer?”  (This is Fixer, sort of.)  I don’t think I can write anything unless I’m not positive I can actually do it until I try.

 As to where the ideas come from, I read a great deal of non-fiction, so there are enough useless factoids bouncing around in my head to keep me busy for a long time.  Sometimes they connect into something I can use. 

 9.       With all the focus lately on authors providing a lot of their own self-promotion, what are you doing in this respect?

I don’t think this is a new focus, but I do think the avenues for self-promotion have become much broader, with a lot more side streets.  At this very moment I’m doing most, if not all, of the promotion for Immortal, and to do it I’m using Twitter, Facebook, GoodReads, my blog and website, and special events like this blog tour.

10.   Who or what would you say has been the biggest influence on you as a writer?

Um, books?  I guess?  I don’t know that I could point to any singularly inspiring writer or real life friend or family member.  I’ve just defined myself as a writer since I was old enough to understand that there was such a thing, and I’ve never been interested in being anything else.  I could say that I write “for myself” but that’s not at all accurate since I’ve never written anything I didn’t want someone else to read eventually.  Even in high school, when an English teacher told us we had to keep a journal for a semester, I wrote my journal entries for her: she was the reader.   

 11.   Where can we find your book? Is it available in e-format as well?

Immortal is available in print from Amazon—and hopefully in other places soon as well.  It is also in every e-format you can name: Kindle, iBooks, Nook, Kobo, and a few others I’m forgetting.  If you have an e-reader there’s really no excuse not to buy a copy.