It ’s no secret that I really love Will McIntosh ’s books : I matter Soft Apocalypse as one of myabsolute favorite novels , and I was abig fan of Defenders . His a la mode novel Burning Midnight is now out , and it ’s astrange , first-class bookabout the wonders of collecting and otherworldly revulsion . We had a chance to chatter with McIntosh about his latest record , and what go into it ( and his other novels )
Your up-to-the-minute novel , Burning Midnight is in stores now , and follow a teenager and some wondrous spheres . It ’s a patch that ’s out there – how did you put it together ?
I wanted to explore the feverishness and excitement citizenry sense when judge to acquire rarified objects , whether it ’s o.k. artistry , Pokemon card , autographs , jewels , or MIB ( mint in box ) Star Wars action figures . I ’ve roll up one affair or another since I was a kidskin . As a teen I had a business selling rarified comedian , and I published an donnish theme pose out a theory of why hoi polloi call for back when I still a psych professor . I ’m fascinated by that weird , hungry senior high you get hunt for rarities , and eventually it was ricochet to come out in my fiction .
I ’m pretty indisputable the idea for Burning Midnight total most direct from an experience I had when I was twelve . My babe , a cousin-german , and I stumbled on a 60 class - old dump in the woods . We spent the summer hunt for antique bottles , and built a solicitation of something like 200 feeding bottle ( and eventually sell them to an age-old trader ) . Those great retentivity led me to require to create a story about hunt and discover improbably worthful things in the state of nature .
Since your first novel , Soft Apocalypse in 2011 , you ’ve written five novel . What have you learned since that first book up through Burning Midnight ?
Ha , some people intend Soft A is my best study , so I may have learned nothing , but allow ’s assume I have …
1 . stress out your fresh ideas as short works first . I may be the only writer who gain from doing this , but a few time I ’ve take excited by an idea , dove into chapter one of a novel , and two months by and by discover I ’m writing dogshit . Sometimes something seems like a great idea when it ’s in my point , but on theme it just does n’t do work . I ’m better off drop a week write a short narrative , then my precious critiquing friends can tell me it ’s bad , and I can move on .
2 . Have some color of an outline . I was a pantser early on , and it led to so much revise . I credibly rewrite 50 % of Soft Apocalypse . For Burning Midnight , it was more like 10 % . Often I only have a rough idea of what ’s going to happen , but I have some idea of what the beginning , midway , and ending will look like .
3 . If you ’re a new generator , seek to vex to one musical genre . I followed up Soft Book of Revelation with Hitchers , which was urban fantasy / horror . Not many people who want to show about a relatively realistic Revelation also want to show about a half million citizenry possess by their dead friends and relatives , so not many lecturer followed from my first Word to my second . I ’m mostly interested in exploring near - future SF anyway , so I ’m well-chosen to stick to SF for now .
What prompted you to make the jump from an ‘ adult ’ novel to a YA one ? What in Burning Midnight required the jump in elan , and did your approach change at all ?
It was more like I spark and come down , rather than jumped . Burning Midnight started out as an adult novel . I was about a third of the way through the first draft when I felt like there was something singular about the book of account . I did n’t be intimate what , so I emailed my agent , Seth Fishman , and secernate him I was travel to have to rethink the Bible , because it was feel too … .I struggled to describe it … it felt almost like YA . And Seth responded about ten seconds after . So write it as YA ! I was kind of stunned by his response , because I was n’t a YA writer . I did n’t recognise anything about writing YA . Then I realized that I ’d read a few YA book without even realizing they were YA . The Perks of Being a Wallflower , for example . The only change I had to make to the draft in forward motion was to make the characters younger . Initially they were college students , and I changed them to in high spirits schoolhouse students . That ’s about it . I write in a pretty square way anyway ( some of my committal to writing champion would say I ’m not a stylemonkey ) , so I opine my writing lends itself to YA .
Something that I ’ve noticed in your al-Qur’an is your unique take on genre : you seem to come in from a 90 degree angle . Soft Apocalypse was a different take on the post - apocalyptic genre , while defender had its own unique take on encroachment lit . Do you palpate that you ’re consciously wrestle musical style conventions ?
I had to think this one over for a while . When it come to writing fiction I try not to do much of anything consciously , beyond telling a good report . root , societal commentary , I care to let all of that emerge on its own out of the report . That being said , when it comes to developing the initial ideas for books , I can recall instances of conceive very consciously about doing just what you said – striving for a unique take .
In Soft Apocalypse , which began as a short taradiddle , I want to basically drop a character similar to Rob Gordon from High Fidelity into an apocalypse . Apocalypses tend to be about citizenry bucking up and surviving . But people would still cling to the of import aspects of their sure-enough lives , specially if the apocalypse came slowly . So I had this lonely cat look for love as he step over corpses .
The other one you mention is Defenders , and I can remember planning the little story and recollect it would be interesting to create a situation where it turn over out the invading aliens are not the trouble , it ’s the weapons we created to agitate them .
Your next novel , Fallers , is due out later this twelvemonth , about a world in which everyone ’s lost their memory . What has you excited about this novel ?
Everyone lose their memories my well be the least strange aspect of Faller ! The record opens with a guy regain consciousness in downtown Manhattan with no memory . He blot a crew of people and goes to see what they ’re all staring at , and it turns out they ’re looking at this enormous sky , because they ’re all stand on ten block of downtown Manhattan hanging suspended in an endless sky . The guy finds three thing in his pouch : a toy dog paratrooper , a cartoon draw in his own blood , and a photo of him and a adult female . Based on the paratrooper he fashions a parachute , and falls off the chip of city and get … another bit . It ’s a weird , wild playscript , and I ’m hop people will find it kind of unlike .
What ’s coming up next for you after 2016 ?
I * may * have just sell a Middle Grades book about robot bodyguards build up to resemble animal to a major publisher , but that ’s unofficial . : ) I ’m presently at work on another YA book . It ’s about lie in , about all the ways we ’re lied to , all the lies we tell , and what would happen if no one could ever get away with a lie again . I so want to call it The Future Will Be Bullshit - Free , but that may not be the good title of respect for a YA book . I ’m also developing an precis for a screenplay . I ’ve always want to spell a screenplay .
Burning Midnight is now in stores .
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