| The following is a transcript of a live chat
held March 4th on Delphi Internet, in the SF Literature Forum. It has been
edited for clarity.
.Gordie>
I posted your bibliography to our website today after converting it
to HTML. Man, have you done a lot of stories in a fairly short period of
time!
.Mike Resnick>
I like to write... and I discovered about a decade ago, after avoiding
them for most of my life, that what I like to write most are short stories
.Gordie>
I did notice several collections that had a fair amount of duplication.
Is there one that you see as more definitive, or are they all transitory
in their "completeness?"
.Mike Resnick>
The one with the most stories is the most complete <g>. I have
one coming up in a couple of months that's probably going to be my best
to date -- 7 stories, which include a Hugo winner and 4 Hugo nominees:
AN ALIEN LAND and then the Kirinyaga stories will be out in April
of 1998. I'll let my reputation, for the moment, stand on those two volumes.
.Gordie>
As much as I'm enjoying the easy flow of this, we should probably officially
start this. Folks, this is Mike Resnick. Mike, this is folks. Any questions?
<g>
.Mike Resnick>
Hi, folks. Be gentle with me.
.Feintuch>
Mike, care to tell us about your latest project?
.Mike Resnick>
Hard to do, as I'm working on a batch. I'm just finishing up A HUNGER
IN THE SOUL for Tor, Carol and I are doing a new screenplay for Ed
Elbert (the guy who's producing SANTIAGO), and I'm working on the last
WIDOWMAKER book for Bantam. And I'm always doing short stories for
whoever.
.bud>
When doing so many projects - does it not get confusing ?
.Mike Resnick>
Not when you've been doing it for 35 years. I'd feel lost if I was
only working on one project at a time. I didn't tell you the whole of it.
I'm also editing three different libraries for Alexander Books and I just
handed in a couple of books with new intros for them.
.bud>
Multitasking at its peak
.Blondie>
I have a question, unless you're in the mddle of another one.
.Mike Resnick>
Let me see... I was answering a question. Nick DiChario and I just
this week sold a collection of our collaborations, and I'm writing intros
to each story. Sure, go ahead, Blondie!
.Blondie>
Have you ever written any non-sfnal Westerns? The galactic-frontier
milieu of SANTIAGO, WIDOWMAKER, etc., is so much like a Western.
.Mike Resnick>
I've done about a third of one, called THE ACE OF SPADES. Teddy
Roosevelt is a minor character (of course), and it's set in the Dakota
Bad Lands in the 1880s...
.Blondie>
Neat!
.Mike Resnick>
But, sf became so lucrative that I set it aside, but I think I'll go
back and finish it in a year or two. Also, I'll be doing a screenplay about
Doc Holliday and Johnny Ringo in, I think, 1999.
.Blondie>
Glad to hear it. You'd write terrific Westerns. :)
.Mike Resnick>
<scuffing dirt with shoe> Aw, shucks.
.Blondie>
<g>
.Mike Resnick>
Well, Lucifer Jones has encountered every pulp device except a cowboy.
.Gordie>
What is it about that frontier background, wherever it is, that attracts
you, Mike?
.Mike Resnick>
I like creating myths and myths seem to work better on frontiers. I
use a future frontier because I write sf and that's where my readership
is. I'd be as comfortable doing it in New Mexico in 1888, but I'd starve.
<g> But what I do best is Africa. I notice that all but one of my
Hugo nominations, and all my Hugo and Nebula wins, have been for science
fictional African tales.
.Sue>
Mike, do you speak any African languages?
.Mike Resnick>
I speak some Swahili. I tend to lose it when I've been away from Kenya
and Tanzania for more than a couple of years. No other languages. But,
for the record: Jambo, Memsaab Sue. Habari? If anyone cares, the proper
answer to that is: Mzuri sana. Unless she's in hideous pain. <g>
.Feintuch>
Translate?
.Mike Resnick>
Hello, Sue; how's it going? Very well.
.Sue>
Mike, you were pretty young when you sold your first story. What was
it about? And, how would you say your writing has changed the most since
that story?
.Mike Resnick>
This is going to come as a surprise, but I honest to ghod can't remember
my first sale. I sold about 30 things in a month, and I no longer recall
which appeared first or paid first.
.Sue>
Well, I guess that's kinda neat. Not memorializing something like that.
:)
.Mike Resnick>
Most of my fiction was "the kind men like". I did it to get
rich. Once I got rich, I went back to sf, about two decades into my career.
I sold a lot of articles, really boring stuff, like to trade journals.
One I remember was an interview with the guy who built a 70-story skyscraper
on a slab in Chicago's Loop. It only paid $50, but I got a list of every
product he used, wrote to each company, offered them the same interview,
but slanted so it would read like the building would collapse without their
windows, their carpets, their sinks. And sold it -51- more times, for a
total take of about $6,500, back when that was decent money for a day's
work.
.Gordie>
Or a month's work.
.Mike Resnick>
I did a lot of that, and a lot of soft-core, and some Gothics
and some doctor/nurse stuff. Nothing memorable, but as Barry Malzberg says,
you learn a hell of a lot at a penny a word that they don't teach you in
Creative Writing 101.
.Sue>
So, promoting yourself from the start has been a big part of your success?
.Mike Resnick>
No, I don't promote myself. I just write and sell a lot. Or did I misunderstand
the question?
.Sue>
It sounded like sending things 'around' was 'promoting' but perhaps
I chose the wrong word?
.Mike Resnick>
(It's hard to promote youself when 90% of your first 8 million words
are for trash markets and appear under pseudonyms.) No, I wouldn't call
that promoting; promoting is publicity to make your name worth more; that's
just selling, or, if you prefer, marketing.
.Sue>
Have you felt sorta schizoid doing that?
.Mike Resnick>
No, I never felt schizoid. Though when people would ask me what
I wrote, I usually found a way to change the subject. <g>
.Sue>
Marketing was the word I should have used. Gotta be careful with you
writers. <G>
.Blondie>
Were you attending conventions all that time, and following the field?
.Mike Resnick>
Yeah, I've always been a fan. Our first worldcon was in 1963, when
we were 21 and 20, respectively.
.Sue>
The only other thing that just came to my mind is that I saw one of
those ref books the other day that said, If you like ___, you'd like ___.
Is there someone out there that 'writes like Mike Resnick? (In your opinion)
.Mike Resnick>
That's probably the most difficult question for a writer to answer.
I've been compared to Bester, Kornbluth, Sheckley, even Robert Ruark. I
don't see it. You'd have to ask someone else.
.Gordie>
Mike, can you say something about your process of writing?
.Mike Resnick>
I write at night, from about 10PM to 4AM. I print up what I've done
and leave it out for Carol, who gets up ahead of me. She goes over it line
by line, word by word, and makes extensive notes. I never go on to the
next chapter until she's satisfied with the previous one. She does half
my plotting and comes up with half my characters, and while I could sell
without her, I guarantee I wouldn't be half as good. She's mastered the
most difficult discipline of an "uncredited collaborator" which
is to pick stories and characters that play to -my- strengths, rather than
urge me to write the stories -she- would tell if she were doing the writing.
That's tougher than you think.
.Feintuch>
I was wondering, Mike... lemme ask the standard dumb question here:
Which of your works do you like best above all?
.Mike Resnick>
Let me give you my standard answer: my best is PARADISE, and
far and away my favorite, though hardly my best, is ADVENTURES.
I'll add: my best-selling is SANTIAGO, and my most-honored is IVORY.
.Feintuch>
What do you see as difference between your best and your favorite?
.Mike Resnick>
ADVENTURES was pure fun to write; I laughed my head off and
loved every minute of it. But it's fluff. PARADISE is, in my opinion,
an important book that handled its subject matter in an entirely new way,
and I think it did it as well as it could be done.
.Mb>
Do you two tend to start with characters, or themes, or crazy ideas,
or what? :-)
.Mike Resnick>
It varies. Sometimes characters, sometimes a theme I want to address,
sometimes a plot. But most often, I start with a story someone blew, a
story or movie or play where I think they did it wrong, missed an even
better story, and I transmute it into a Resnick book.
.Gordie>
Can you share one of those transmutations?
.Mike Resnick>
Sure. Take THE ELEPHANT MAN, movie or play, makes no difference.
To me the most interesting character, the blackest of villains, was the
carny owner who knew what Merrick was and beat him daily and treated him
like a dumb animal for a decade. So when I read Merrick's autobiography,
I was astonished to learn that the carny owner came to the hospital, destitute,
and asked Merrick to come on the road with him while he put together a
grubstake. The hospital said he didn't have to, BUT HE WENT ANYWAY,
and then came home to die. And I couldn't stop wondering what qualities
the carny owner had to make Merrick go back on display. So I wrote the
book, and called it SIDESHOW, and it sold so well it spawned 3 sequels.
It's about some very peaceful aliens who are sightseers, visiting earth
and to draw the least amount of attention to themselves, they masquerade
as a carnival freak show. A rival carny owner kidnaps them and puts them
on display. Then I tried to work out how they would bond, despite his actions.
.Blondie>
You seem to be very prolific. Do you write fast enough to keep up with
the various projects you'd like to do, or do you have a list of future
projects a mile long?
.Mike Resnick>
2 miles long. I seem to get slower every year. I turn 55 in about 70
minutes and let me tell you: gravity catches up with you.
.Blondie>
Happy birthday!
.Mb>
:-D
.Mike Resnick>
Thanks. But I'm too young to order from the Oldpharts menu at Bob Evans,
no matter what it says!
.Gordie>
<g>
.Mike Resnick>
We're celebrating by sneaking down to our Orlando apartment for two
weeks. Cincinnati, where I am now, skipped winter and proceeded right to
Noah's flood.
.Gordie>
Mike, have you done a story collaboration with Laura yet? (Laura being
his Campbell Award-winning daughter.)
.Mike Resnick>
No, and I wish you'd all nag her. I've collaborated with 14 other writers,
and when I get up to 18 or 20, I'll sell them as a book. But my award-winning
daughter doesn't want any part of it. She says she's had a hard enough
time just lugging my name through this field, and she's sure we if collaborate
it'll look like an act of charity on my part.
.Gordie>
Dual Journeys Through Common Lands?
.Mike Resnick>
The title will be WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS.
.Gordie>
Nice title.
.Mike Resnick>
...and the book of Resnick/DiChario collaborations I just sold this
week is THE MIKE AND NICK SHOW.
.Sue>
Other than Carol, do you have a favorite collaborator?
.Mike Resnick>
Yes. Nick DiChario. I've done 11 with him, and sold 'em all. I think
two of them are outstanding. I also liked collaborating with Susan Shwartz;
we were up for a Hugo and a Nebula last year. The one I hate collaborating
with is my very closest friend, Barry Malzberg. He's got such a distinctive
voice that I have to totally rewrite him to give the story a consistent
tone, and losing his voice hurts, because it's perfect for what he says.
The two stories with Nick that I love are BIRDIE and WORKING STIFF. They're
both his ideas, and I think they're brilliant.
.Gordie>
Do you split up the work in collaborations, or is it a groupthink kind
of thing?
.Mike Resnick>
No, I have a rule: my partner writes the first draft, I do the polish
and the selling.
.Sue>
Is there someone that you'd like to work with that you haven't collaborated
with (other than Laura)?
.Mike Resnick>
A few people. MY DAUGHTER. Bob Sheckley. George Effinger on a short story
(we've collaborated on a novel). Jack Williamson. Pat Cadigan. Oh... and
Frank Robinson. Well, that's 6 -- I get them, I sell the collection. <g>
.Gordie>
Maureen Birnbaum on Kirinyaga?
.Mike Resnick>
George is doing it. Koriba's not exactly pro-feminist, you may have
noticed. <g> I think George almost has enough for a second collection.
Seems like I just wrote the intro to the first one a couple of years ago.
.Gordie>
I've noticed... Koriba's pretty much pro-Kirinyaga. Period.
.Mike Resnick>
Koriba isn't pro-Kirinyaga in the very last story. He's not a forgiving
man. Which reminds me: everyone please nominate "The Land of Nod"
for the Best Novelette Hugo.
.Gordie>
He was pro-his-vision-of-Kirinyaga, I thought. Just not reality's vision.
.Mike Resnick>
Well, yeah, I suppose you could say that. I'm going to miss putting
words into the old bastard's mouth.
.Gordie>
Will the eventual collection of those stories include your essay "I'm
Not Koriba" by any chance?
.Mike Resnick>
No, no sense excoriating the current editor of F&SF in front of
(hopefully) a couple of hundred thousand readers when I'm selling him a
quarterly column plus 2 or 3 stories a year <g>
.Gordie>
lol
.Gordie>
Anybody else have a question for Mike? Or should we let him prepare
for his birthday?
.Sue>
Yes, Happy Birthday Mike, have a great vacation!
.Mike Resnick>
Thanks, Sue -- I'll do my best.
.Gordie>
Just a last reminder, Mike will respond to questions posted to him
on the message boards, so if you come up with one you didn't think to ask
tonight, you can post it there.
.Mike Resnick>
Yeah, I'll have laptop and modem in Florida. I also answer e-mails.
.Gordie>
Just use RESNICK at the To: prompt.
.Gordie>
Well, we'll wrap it up then. Thanks, Mike for spending some time with
us, and have a great birthday!
.Mike Resnick>
Nite, all...it was fun!
.Terry>
Nite, Mike. Thanks for being here!
.Mike Resnick>
I'm going out for a hot fudge sundae in 48 minutes <g>
.Mike Resnick>
- signed off -
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