Marshall Payne is no stranger to DEP. His short story, Clowns, appeared in issue thirteen of The Sword Review and he also has work which has been published in DEP’s sister publications (Dragons, Knights and Angels Magazine, and Raygun Revival).  An author with over a dozen published stories of science fiction, fantasy and horror, he is also a reviewer for Tangent Online.
 

Marshall Payne is no stranger to DEP. His short story, Clowns, appeared in issue thirteen of The Sword Review and he also has work which has been published in DEP’s sister publications (Dragons, Knights and Angels Magazine, and Raygun Revival).  An author with over a dozen published stories of science fiction, fantasy and horror, he is also a reviewer for Tangent Online.  

Born in Lubbock, Texas, he grew up in Wichita, Kansas, but recently moved to the Texas Hill Country after years of being both a professional musician and a salesman. Of music, he says it was invaluable to his creative development as a writer, while his sales training is an asset to the business end of writing, especially dealing with rejection. He was a telemarketer for years, and the word “no” barely fazes him.


Interview Questions:

Hi Marshall, I'm really pleased you've agreed to do this interview with me, for Inside the Writing Mind. I wanted to interview you because not only are you a published writer, but you also are a critic.

Q:  Would you like to tell us how long you've been writing, and would you like to share a bit of the inspiration behind your decision to embrace writing as a career?

Long story, but since you asked: I believe it was John Lennon of the Beatles who said that when he was a teenager he used to go watch Elvis Presley movies at the cinema. It made quite an impression on him, Elvis singing, swinging his hips and driving all the girls wild.  Not to mention this great new thing called Rock ’n Roll!  Lennon said he took one look at the silver screen and said, “That’s the job for me!” Well, when I was seven my parents took me to see A Hard Day’s Night, and I knew right away that was the job for me! A few weeks later I got my first guitar and eventually ended up eking out a meager living playing in bands. I’d play anything to make money, blues, country and western, but I also had bands where the financial consideration wasn’t important. There I played my own tunes I wrote, which were rather in the vein of Elvis Costello meets The Cure, if that makes any sense. But one big drawback to the music biz (among many) is that every time someone quit the band it’s almost like starting over from scratch. Then one morning on the road at the age of 27 I woke up and wanted to be a fiction writer. Boom, just like that. Funny thing is, I’d never really read much fiction, a couple of Heinlein juveniles, Steppenwolf by Hesse, a Vonnegut novel or two. I’d always been into avant garde music, and I had a suspicion that there was a little niche in science fiction that wasn’t all rayguns and rocket ships, a subgenre where I could say the sorts of things I wanted to say that couldn’t be found anywhere else. But what made the notion of being a fiction writer so appealing is that the only one who could stop me from finishing a story and sending it off to New York was me. I felt like I’d have more control of my destiny.

Q:  Can you name some of the authors/people who inspired you? In what way have these people/authors inspired you?

After being struck rather late in life with the notion to be a writer, I went to see a friend of mine who was an avid SF fan. I asked him to give me a list of authors to read. I specifically asked who was the SF writer where reality came unglued, meaning whose fiction had an existential bent. He proclaimed Philip K. Dick to be the main proponent of reality-shifting science fiction. So Dick was an early influence. But I could also tell that while Dick had many brilliant ideas, his prose often left something to be desired so I studied wordsmiths like Delany, Bester, LeGuin, etc. This was in 1984 when cyberpunk was the hot new thing, so I was also reading Gibson, Sterling, Swanwick, etc. Today, I’m leaning more toward fantasy and I like Guy Gavriel Kay, Cecilia Dart-Thornton, Greg Keyes, Susanna Clarke. Magic is cool, but I prefer the dragons and elves kept to a bare minimum.

Q:  Of the stories you've written, which story do you consider as the most successful and why?  

No one specific story. I like my more recent work the best, but I imagine most writers feel that way about their work. One problem I had with my earlier fiction was that I was trying too hard. Some of my stories smelled too much of the lamp as I tried to dazzle the reader with long, convoluted sentences and sesquipedalian finery. Complex thoughts require complex writing to convey them, right? No, I don’t think so anymore. Much of fiction is about metaphor and conveying meaning through imagery, and I’ve found myself simplifying my prose. Shorter sentence, shorter paragraphs.  That’s what most publishers are looking for nowadays as readers have so many other distractions clamoring for their time. And one can certainly say just about anything using more accessible language, it’s just trickier to pull off sometimes. Trying to use the story’s drama to portray the uniqueness of one’s vision and world-building, while keeping exposition to a bare minimum has become my new goal.

Q:  Most of your published work is in the speculative genre. Was it a conscious decision on your part to write in genre? Or have you thought of writing mainstream/general literary pieces too?

I’ve never really entertained the notion of becoming a mainstream writer. Heck, becoming a published genre writer nowadays is tough enough. Doing the equivalent in mainstream is probably near impossible. And while there is some good mainstream fiction out there, so much of it isn’t anything that special to elevate it above genre writing. It’s still just mystery, romance, suspense in a blockbuster package. And speculative fiction by its very nature makes it more of a challenge.

Q:  Where do you get your ideas/inspiration from?

The same place Harlan does, that little clearinghouse where you send five bucks to and they send you back a story idea. Though they recently raised the price to ten so I’ve taken to rummaging through Harlan’s garbage can out back of his crib. (chuckle) No seriously, many of my ideas come from reading fiction.  There’s really nothing new under the sun, just different ways of twisting an old idea to make it fresh. Sometimes I’ll be reading and a completely unrelated idea will spark something. Example: recently I was reading a Martha Wells’ novel and she had a throwaway line about a curse placed upon people that would cause them to dance themselves to death. That got me to thinking and within minutes I was at the computer pounding out a story about a warrior from some archaic realm who magically finds himself transported from the battlefield to a discotheque in our modern world. Bewildered, standing in a throng of crazed Goths and punks, he obviously looks like he came from a costume party, so he’s not really all that out of place. And though he’s a rather callous warrior, his heart goes out to these humans under the mirror ball who are obviously under a curse and will surely dance themselves to death. So I got a light, 1,600 word story from that. The idea really had nothing to do with Wells’ fine novel, but she did get my creative juices flowing with her throwaway line.

Q:  Not only do you write speculative fiction, but you also write reviews for an online speculative review magazine. Has being a reviewer affected the way you write? Has it changed the way you look at fiction in the speculative field?

Being a reviewer for Tangent hasn’t really altered the way I write, but I have learned a lot from it. I’ve always been one to tear a piece of fiction apart, study it, see what makes it tick, but when one has to write his thoughts down and then have them appear in print, it does make you more conscientious and careful. One thing I do before even reading a story I’m assigned to review is try to find out a little bit about the writer. I know this is contrary to the New Criticism method of analysis, which maintains that only the work on the page should be under consideration. And ultimately it is. But I’m using my Tangent reviews as a tool to learn more about the field in general. And while it’s not a hard rule, I try to read something else by the writer first to give me an idea what he or she is up to. I’ve been known to read a half dozen stories by an author before reading the story assigned. When reviewing a story, I spend as much or more time Googling references as I do reading the actual story. It really is a great way to learn new things and expand one’s knowledge. So if anyone ever wonders what purpose many of these online zines serve, well, they make it possible to find an author’s work quickly. Print medium doesn’t offer that luxury.

Q:  Some say that being a critic often changes the way writers look at their own work.  Has being a critic made you more critical of your own work?  Has it changed the way you approach your own stories?

Not at all. It has made me realize how much all this is subjective. I recently gave a somewhat negative review and got a couple of complaints maintaining that a reviewer’s opinion has no place in a critique. That there is an aesthetic criteria that we should all adhere to. Sorry, but that’s nonsense. Let’s say that we all agree that James Joyce’s Ulysses is a great novel. (And then again everyone may not.) Having all agreed on that, the harmony would soon end, I’m afraid, for as any discussion group delves deeper into the work in question, especially something as idiosyncratic as Ulysses, heated discussions and disagreements will arise on various points about what makes the novel great, or if anyone cared to be so bold, where Joyce’s highly mannered prose undermined his vision. But such diversity of thought is good. Of my own fiction I’ve received both good and bad reviews, and I certainly enjoy the good reviews more. If being a reviewer has taught me anything it’s that a review is only one person’s opinion. Likewise, I’ve developed a thicker skin, which is something every writer needs. I sort of got off the question here, but my point is that most writers don’t mind an opinionated review if it’s favorable toward their work. It’s the unfavorable opinion that brings discord and contention.

Q:  What do you consider to be the essential elements of a successful/engaging story?

I’m perhaps a tad old-fashion in that I like a story to arrive somewhere poignant at the end, for the main character to have a change and learn something. Much mainstream short fiction nowadays isn’t like this. An interesting interaction between two or more people is shown and then the story just sort of ends without the author giving a possible solution to the problem. More like a vignette of real life. I guess this is realistic as few problems in life have any absolute answer, but I like it when at the end of the story the protag and reader learn a little something. It doesn’t have to be much. Perhaps just a bit of insight into the human experience.  And that’s where I see the big problem with much horror fiction. Learning that you should never go down into a dark basement because monsters will eat you isn’t a lesson really worth learning. Nothing profound in that. I understand many of these writers consider the craft of creating suspense alone a worthy endeavor, but I don’t. I’m more interested in engaging ideas and characters worthy of my spending a little bit of my finite time with. Barring a poignant ending, I ask that a story at least be cleverly told.

Q:  Looking at speculative fiction today, do you think it's changed very much from how it was (say ten years ago)? In what way has it changed/evolved?

Well, to finish the story I began with, my first foray into writing fiction never produced my first sale back in the 80s. All my fault, as I did the worst thing any writer can ever do. I gave up, opting to pursued my music career instead as it was paying the bills. But a couple of years ago I decided to dedicate myself solely to fiction writing, and this time it led to publication fairly quickly. I really wasn’t reading much SF in the 90s so I can’t answer your question there. But I can answer it in terms of marketing and getting published. What surprised me when I made my second attempt was how much tougher it was to break in for most writers. With the advent of the PC, now everyone fancies himself a writer. Where before publishers in New York had one stack of slush that reached to the ceiling, nowadays they have rooms full of the stuff. Or they would if they even read slush anymore. They’re relying on agents more and more to cull through all the dross for them. And while the competition is greater, I really don’t think the writing is any better. The New Wave of the 60s was responsible for the quality of writing improving greatly over, say, the Golden Age, but I think that’s tapered off. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the next few years, especially in short fiction. While sales figures keep declining for the big print zines, there has been a host of online zines cropping up, though it’s hard to say exactly what affect they’re having on the field. It’s certainly a good training ground for new writers to learn the ropes of publication.  But everyone wants to make their first pro sale, and that’s becoming harder and harder it seems.  Especially the novel market.

Q:  Do you think the critic's role is important in the speculative field? Why do you think it's important? Or why do you think it isn't that important?

To be honest, I’m not really so sure it’s that important what a critic says. I often find myself reading the last line of a review to see the car crash (where the reviewer says this is the most egregiously bad piece of fiction every written) or to hear how great the reviewer is proclaiming a story to be. After I’ve read the story, then I’m interested in what the reviewer thought specifically, to see if it coincided with my thoughts on a given story. I think the most important thing a review can do is bring a particular story to the reader’s attention. If the reviewer says it’s the greatest story he’s read in a while, then I want to find out if it holds up to such high praise. If the reviewer says the opposite, I’ll often read it with a sympathetic eye, giving the writer a chance to prove the reviewer wrong. And while it’s important to deconstruct fiction and for a review to go beyond either “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it,” when all’s said and done I don’t think the reviewer’s opinion is any more important than anyone else’s.  Reviews are just a tool for writers to find readers and vise versa. And there is the danger of rubbernecking to see the car crash. Sad as it is, many people take pleasure in watching others fail.  Therein lies the harm of the review. Before I give a negative review I make sure I’m finding legitimate fault with a given piece and not simply panning a story to give the review entertainment value.

Q:  What makes a good critic?

The same thing that makes a good writer. Understanding of this often arbitrary field and the love and dedication to it to do it justice. Certainly being well and widely read is an attribute.

Q:  Do you think reviews are helpful to writers/editors? If so, in what way?  

Only like I said above in that it helps readers find the work. It all still comes down to that a review is just one person’s opinion. Of course writers and editors much prefer a positive review, as it confirms the editor’s decision to having published the story and the writer’s talents to having produced it. While I’m sure a bad review occasionally makes the creator see the possible “error of his ways,” I don’t think that happens too often. More than likely, after a bit of teeth gnashing, the offended party will just chalk it up to a difference of opinion and move on. No one should write to please everyone. That only produces a product so bland that it offends no one. Truth told, this reviewing end of the publishing world is a necessary evil. It’s a free promotional tool that everyone seems to want to take advantage of. And since it is free, the writer and editor are rolling the dice hoping for a positive review. But even a bad review is probably better than no review at all as it promotes discussion. And to discuss the work one has to read it and form his or her own opinion.

Q:  What has been your most rewarding experience as a writer and as a critic?  

As a writer, probably the work itself. Yes, there was the big thrill when I made my first few sales, small as they were. It’s always nice to see your work in print. But in the end I think the supreme joy is derived from the process of creation itself. And at least for me, that part keeps becoming more gratifying. When one starts out one is unsure if they can pull off this difficult thing called fiction. There are so many unmanageable elements to deal with: plot, character, sentence structure, word choice, etc. But after a few successes one develops confidence.  It’s with that confidence that the real fun begins. Knowing that with a little luck you’ll be able to pull off a new story idea. Not that it ever becomes easy, but it becomes more comfortable as one has a larger grab bag of techniques to reach into and the increasing dexterity of knowing how to use them.

As to the rewards of being a reviewer, I’d have to say putting a smile on a writer’s face when I’ve singled their story out as one of the best of a bunch. I’ve gotten a few nice emails of thanks, and some writers will even quote the review on their webpage or blog.  


Q:  What advice would you give to young writers starting out in the speculative field?

Quit your day job! (chuckle) One last musician story, if I may. Back in the early 80s when I was a weekend warrior, I really wanted to be a pro musician but for some reason that goal seemed so illusive. Talentwise, I was okay but nothing spectacular. Then an older musician friend told me something that eventually changed my life. He said that when you’re a weekend warrior it’s very hard to become a pro as your day gig will only hold you back from reaching the next plateau of talent. The best way to become a pro is to be one. Well, I found that interesting and rather disheartening, as it is very Catch-22 advice. But it turned out to be true. About a year later I lucked out and was offered a job playing bass with a touring show band of seasoned professionals. Now I didn’t realize it at the time, but after the summer when I got back home I discovered that I had leapt a few plateaus in my playing. Everyone back home noticed it right away, though I hadn’t. Over the summer I was too busy trying to keep up and do the job. What it boiled down to was that for those weeks on the road I did nothing but live, sleep and breathe music. I did in a few weeks what might’ve taken years as a weekend warrior, if it happened at all. It’s a thing of momentum.

Now while I haven’t made my first pro sale in fiction yet, since making my first sale last year, I have been selling quite steadily to several fiction markets, so I know it’s just a matter of time. Everyone has to make their own decisions in life, but mine has been to pursue writing full time and only work occasionally. I’m treating this like a full time job even though I’m not getting paid much at all for it at the moment. My path to becoming a pro is to go ahead and act like I’m already one, then wait for the sales to hopefully catch up. Realistically speaking, very few authors ever make a living from their writing, especially fiction, but it can and does happen. It’s really a matter of desire, I think. Being able to forgo many pleasures in life so as to dedicate yourself to this crazy dream that everyone will tell you is not only impossible but a waste of time. You have to keep psyching yourself up when logic dictates that the only smart thing to do is to throw in the towel.  

It’s like the story of the young violinist who goes to the master violinist and asks him if he can play for him to see if he has what it takes to be a great violinist. But after thirty seconds the master violinist stops him and says, “Naw, you don’t have the fire.” So the young violinist gives up playing the violin. Well, twenty years later the young violinist, now a successful businessman, runs into the master violinist at a cocktail party and asks him how he knew he didn’t have the fire after only listening to him play for less than thirty second. “Oh, I didn’t even listen to you play,” the master violinist says. “That what I tell everyone who asked me that stupid question.”  To which the businessman, aghast, says, “That’s terrible. I could’ve gone on to be a great violinist.” “No, you don’t understand,” says the master. “If you had the fire, you wouldn’t have listened to anything I said. You just would’ve gone ahead and done it.”

To me that’s the key. A little practical advice would be to read the classics and become an expert on the field of speculative fiction, as well as literature in general. Only when you know the grand tradition of our field can you improve upon it. As to the writing itself, becoming a master craftsman should be every writer’s goal. And learning to edit one’s own fiction is the perfect place to begin. Developing the ability to parse your sentences and rework them until they say exactly what you want them to say should be a joy and not a chore. Learning to write beautiful rock-firm sentences is what separates the pro from the wannabe. Most of us have stories we want to tell, it’s developing the craft to tell them that makes the difference and will ultimately get you out of the slush pile.


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Many thanks to Marshall Payne for taking the time to reply to these questions.