Welcome everybody to my second ever author interview here at Battle Hymns. This time around, I'm very pleased to have Jeff Salyards on board to answer some questions. If you haven't yet had a chance to read his debut novel, Scourge of the Betrayer, you are forgiven, since it's only been out since early May, but I strongly urge you get out there and read it.
Not only was Jeff kind enough to take the time out of his busy schedule to answer questions, but he answered them with aplomb. Say one thing about Jeff Salyards, say that he's thorough. SO thorough in fact that his fantastic answers need to be doled out in parts. So I give you PART ONE of the Battle Hymns/Jeff Salyards interview:
Battle Hymns: Can you tell us a little about yourself?
Jeff Salyards: I grew up in Fox Lake, a small town north of Chicago that still boasts
that Al Capone used to resort there during the summers, most notably at the
Mineola Hotel. My dad was a newspaper photographer and got the chance to tour
the upper floors of the hotel before they closed them to the public, and he claimed
to have spotted some bullet holes in the walls and weathered blood stains on
the floors. But that’s hearsay, he was prone to storytelling, and none of these
details are directly about me anyway. Maybe I’m deflecting. Or stalling. I’ve
been known to do both. (See, there’s something about myself.)
I’m married with three kids, all girls, which I’m sure if karmic payback
of some sort. By day, I’m an editor for the American Bar Association; by night,
I’m a masked vengeful vigilante called Strikethrough writer. On a good
night, anyway.
BH: For folks who haven’t had the chance to read it yet, can you tell us
about Scourge of the Betrayer?
JS: Scourge is a hard-boiled, character-driven fantasy novel. There are no
dark lords, grand prophecies, or wondrous artifacts; there are some brutal
battles and scraps, lots of biting rejoinders and sarcastic jabs, a nasty cursed
weapon, and some profane (but still oddly endearing) characters.
BH: What did you learn as a writer from writing Scourge of the Betrayer?
JS: Not to quit. There were a few times, both in writing the book and then in
soliciting agents, that I almost gave up on the project. And that’s the tricky
thing about writing—no matter how much support or encouragement you get, at the
end of the day it’s a solitary effort, and you have to be your own sustainable
energy source. I almost lost the motivation to continue on this one, but
luckily I’m a stubborn son of a bitch (actually, that’s figurative—my mother
was a wonderful lady, devout and zealous), so I pressed on. And I’m obviously
glad I did. Otherwise, instead of doing this interview right now, I’d probably
be sitting in a dark room muttering to myself and eating Nutter Butters.
BH: What challenges did you face, if any, in writing Scourge of the Betrayer?
JS: My own tendency to procrastinate, for one. Seriously, I’m far too good at
rationalizing and justifying for my own good. Second, carving out time when I
was motivated. With three little cherubs/demons at home, it’s always a
challenge to find the opportunity and energy to write, especially for any long,
uninterrupted stretches. Given that I haven’t utterly reformed or sold the kids
on Craigslist, I will still face these challenges as I crank out the rest of
the books in the series.
BH: Who is the biggest influence on your work?
JS: Judging by the early reviews, you’d think the answer would have to be
some combination of Glen Cook, Joe Abercrombie, and possibly Michael Moorcock.
Which, while I’m delighted to be mentioned in the same breath as any of those
writers, is a little funny to me. I read the first few Black Company books back in high school (which is longer ago than I
care to think about). Ditto for Moorcock. And I didn’t even start reading any
Abercrombie until I was nearly done with the manuscript.
It’s really difficult for me to pinpoint “biggest” influence, as there
have been so many writers who have inspired and shaped me at different stages
along the way. On the fantasy and science fiction side, Richard K. Morgan,
Raymond Feist, Urusla K. Le Guin, Tad Williams, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Neal
Stephenson, K.J. Parker, William Gibson, Octavia Butler. In other genres, Don
DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, Tom Robbins, Bernard Cornwell, Lee Child, David
Foster Wallace. Playwrights like Edward Albee and Tom Stoppard, movie directors
like Quentin Tarantino and Sam Peckinpah, TV directors like David Milch, and. .
.
OK, epic fail on this question—I haven’t even winnowed the influence list
down to a handful. Sorry.
BH: What inspired you to become a writer?
JS: My brother and sister were much older than me and moved out when I was
three or four, so in a lot of ways I grew up like an only child. So I figured
out how to entertain myself pretty early on. And as far back as I can remember,
reading was one of these diversions. I could fall into a book and disappear
down the rabbit hole after Alice for hours. I loved how books could transport
you, allow you access to places you’d never seen or maybe even imagined, entry
into lives and experiences that could be so distant from your own (or
comforting in their closeness and relevance). My mom loved reading, writing,
theatre, painting, pottery, you name it, so she certainly encouraged me down
that track.
So, from an early age, I decided that I wanted to write stories that
provided someone else the same kind of journey into an imaginary place.
BH: What’s the best part of your job? What’s the worst part of your job?
JS: Well, there’s the day job, and the night job doling out cold justice
to criminal masterminds writing, so
I’m guessing you’re asking about the latter. There are a lot of great
parts—finally seeing my book in print on a shelf at Barnes & Noble, a
lifelong dream come true. I kept expecting Ashton Kutcher to jump out of an
aisle with a camera and mock me for falling for the joke. Hearing from readers
(and I mean strangers here, not the biased friends and family) who loved the
characters, dialogue, or the book as a whole is incredibly rewarding. But those
are post-writing greats. The best part of the writing process itself is when,
after countless revisions, second-guessing, revisiting earlier drafts to see if
maybe I had it right then and drifted away from where I really wanted to be,
grudgingly admitting that those first drafts sucked, revising some more, and finally
at long last hitting the sweet spot. Producing something on the page that actually
resembles the kickass idea I originally had in my head that prompted me to give
it a go in the first place.
The worst part? The frustration when I begin to wonder if I’ll ever hit
that sweet spot again.
BH: For you as a writer and/or reader, what qualities make for a good read?
JS: It’s said by those who like to say things and hear themselves say it,
that most books generally fall into one of three camps: primarily idea-driven
(e.g., Atlas Shrugged, 1984), plot-driven (a lot of thrillers/mysteries),
or character-driven (e.g., A Prayer for
Owen Meany).
Obviously, this is an artificial or academic classification, as most
books are hybrids, or have elements of all three categories pretty well
balanced. But it can be useful at least as a launch pad for discussing
literature. While I like books that do all of these things well and are too
slippery to pin down, if I had to pick between a primarily idea-, character-,
or plot-driven book, I’d pick up the character-centered one first.
Idea-driven books can be stimulating or mesmerizing, but they can also get
stuck in the clouds or come across as pedantic or proselytizing, and if the
characters aren’t interesting, my attention wanes. Plot-driven books can be
taut or even thrilling, but again, pretty flat and more of a summer read if the
characters aren’t fleshed out. A character-driven book might be slow or
meandering, but if the characters are well-drawn, nuanced, and feel real, I’m
willing to forgive a lot. Fascinating or repulsive (sometimes both), slick or broken,
intellectual or brutes, full of hubris or painfully shy, just give me some good
characters to latch onto.
Even if the pace, plot points, and structure are all handled masterfully,
the ideas or world building rich, the prose wonderful, if I don’t give a damn
about the characters involved, I’ll walk away admiring the craftsmanship but
pretty dissatisfied on the whole.
BH: What is a day in the life of Jeff Salyards like?
JS: I’ll start at midnight—while most folks without young kids are sleeping
soundly, dreaming of exotic vacations, winning the lottery, or threesomes, I’m
usually waking up at least once or twice before six to change a diaper, console
a kid who just had a nightmare, or because I got kicked in the face by the
middle girl who sneaks into our bed a lot but seems physically incapable of
sleeping parallel (I think it’s a disorder). So, I rarely get up feeling
refreshed. I usually hear the alarm and wake up cursing, though I have to be careful
because if Little Miss Perpendicular is right there, she’ll parrot it right
back.
I don’t say this to elicit sympathy. I didn’t contract kids, or inherit
them, or take them in as strays in a moment of weakness—obviously, big choices
were made, and it’s great being a dad. Just giving you the lay of the land
here.
So, after a ridiculous sitcom-esque morning (albeit with more mumbled
profanity) of trying to get three kids and two adults dressed, fed, reasonably
clean, and out the door before noon, it’s a train ride to downtown Chicago for
me.
Then a day at work herding cats with my editor hat on. . . following up
on authors to check on status of their manuscripts, get contracts signed,
answer project queries. Meetings/calls with various book boards to help them
develop their publishing portfolios. Budgeting for the next fiscal year. Internal
meetings with other staff to brainstorm about better methods of herding cats.
After a train back home, it’s time to put the dad/hubby hat back on (it’s
reversible) for a couple of hours.
Then, assuming I’m not in slackass mode and can muster the energy/will,
it’s time to get some book work done. Writing the novel, or as is recently the
case, promoting it and neurotically tracking its progress, and finally falling
into bed. Praying to the fickle gods of slumber that they will grant me one
night of solid sleep, knowing that it’s far more likely they will cackle at my
desperate plea and smite me. That’s how they roll.
*****
Stay tuned for PART 2 coming at you later this week!
