The Annihilation of Foreverland (35 page)

The Discovery of Socket Greeny

The Training of Socket Greeny

The Legend of Socket Greeny

Novellas by Tony Bertauski

Drayton (The Taker)

Bearing the Cross (Drayton #2)

Swift is the Current (Drayton #3)

Yellow (Drayton #4)

Short Story

(
South Carolina
Fiction Open Winner, 2008)

Columnist

Post and Courier Gardening

http://www.postandcourier.com/section/featurescolumnists

Interview with
Tony Bertauski

When did you start writing?

I always wanted to write creatively. I just wasn’t good at it. I didn’t have a writer’s muscle, either: that ability to spend hours at the keyboard. I was a technical writer before fiction. I did a Master’s thesis and wrote several articles for trade magazines before completing two textbooks on landscape design. After that, I figured fiction would be
cake
. Turns out, the craft of fiction –
good fiction
– is a hell of lot harder than I thought.

My first effort started with Socket Greeny. It was a story I started for my son because he hated to read.
He still hates to read
, but this character – Socket – took root. It was the first time I felt possessed by a character with a story to tell. It took me 5 years and countless rewrites to get it right. I thought I had the Golden Ticket, that I just needed to pick a publisher to mail me a giant check. I even estimated how many years it would take for the movie.

Turns out publishing fiction is harder than writing
it
.

If you can’t make money, why write fiction?

I didn’t say you can’t make money. There are a lot of people out there with a book; I’m just a minnow in a crowded pond. It took a good deal of networking and research to realize just how hard it is.

T
hanks to epublishing, I can still get books
out. That frees me up to write what inspires me. Writing is the true love. It’d be great to make a living from it, but for now it’s just a hobby and money is just a bonus. There’s something deeply satisfying to have characters come to life and watch their stories unfold. It’s a deeper experience than reading someone else’s story.

What do you want readers to get from your stories?

I’ve always been inspired by fearless writing that asked poignant questions; questions like
who am I
and
what is the universe?
Things that made me look at life slightly different; books that exposed a layer of reality. Writing in the young adult genre appealed to me most because that’s the age I really craved those questions and answers.

When someone reads my stuff, I want them
to see the world slightly different.

Who
is your favorite character?

I love a bad, bad antagoni
st that you can’t entirely hate. T
here’s some smidgeon of redemption you feel inside this demented, sorry character. Heath Ledger’s
Joker
is a good example, a
despicable character that didn’t deserve an ounce of pity, but, for some reason, I didn’t hate him as much as I should have. It’s that character I find most intriguing.

How do you come up with stories?

After I finished the Socket Greeny trilogy, I thought I was done with fiction. I’d written three novels, developed the covers and interior, edited and queried until I was spent. The Socket Greeny story just unfolded and (to bludgeon a cliché to death) I was the conduit. I didn’t feel anymore stories. I didn’t traditionally publish but felt like I’d accomplished something special.

Six months later, a seedling germinated. Don’t know how, don’t know why, and c
an’t even remember what it was, but in
one night I’d scratched out the rough outline for what would become
The Annihilation of Foreverland.
It took three months to write. The writer-muscle was developing.

Once
Foreverland
was complete, I was empty again. And then, while visiting relatives during the holidays, my nephew was talking about Santa’s invisible ninja elves. I felt it
, this time. I knew the moment
my next novel
had arrived
.
Claus: Legend of the Fat Man
was finished four months later.

After that, I don’t know. Something will probably come up. I’ll know when it does.

What is your writing process?

I’m not a “blank page” writer, one that lets the story just go. I need to know where it’s going, to some extent. A lot of times, I’ll sit down and let a few chapters just unfold in my imagination, like I’m watching a movie. I quickly write down keywords so I have the direction and then, when I have time, I can get them on the computer. My writing muscle is up to 2 or 3 chapters in one sitting, but that’s still only 3
or
4 hours of writing. Writing champs, like Stephen King, can go all day, uninterrupted. I don’t have the stamina. Although, once I got in the zone and my wife and daughter left for the grocery store. They walked right back in the house.
I thought you were going to the store?

They did.