JEN FORBUS INTERVIEW, PART 1

Jen Forbus offers the first half of her two-part interview with me at her site, Jen's Book Thoughts.

Topics include the Hector Lassiter series, the new novel, PRINT THE LEGEND (appearing in stores Feb. 16) and the philosophy of writing a series, among many other topics.

Excerpt:

Q. Your “series” with Hector Lassiter doesn’t follow a traditional chronological order. Instead the events from each novel intertwine with each other. It’s kind of like taking the concept of the epic novel and blending it with the serial novel. What made you decide to use this approach? What are the greatest benefits and what are the greatest drawbacks or challenges?

A. For better or worse, events in our own lives are never discrete from one another: it’s all like a kind of oil spill. I wanted to capture some of that in a series format which is something I don’t think has ever been done before. For me, it’s all one big book. This way of using time also allows me to recontextualize things and kind of never shut off Hector’s evolution as a character...I think the only way to pull this concept off is to do the crazy (or audacious) thing I did: Draft all eight novels, then revise them tightly as a block. Then cross your fingers and hope nothing falls apart in the process of preparing/polishing the books with an editor.

The entire interview appears here.