Over at the lobo_luna community, I'm taking part in a question and answer session. I thought I'd start posting the questions and answers here as well. I plan to cross-post a question and answer here on Sunday and Wednesday.

Question #3. What makes you write the stories that you produce?



Beyond the deep, pathological need to write and to tell stories--to create (hopefully) entertaining fictions for the amusement of readers?

The stories themselves come from a variety of places, but I think the common thread--the real dominant theme in my work--seems to be tales of chipped up, sometimes broken people trying to find their place in the world. What careswen has noticed is a lot of bittersweet. There seems to be, in several of my pieces, a theme of people pulled apart by the paranormal--or at least speculative fiction--elements that invade their lives, and then finding their way back to each other.

Look, I'll be truthful about something: I am not really a "Big Idea" writer. I'm more interested in characters--in people--and how they interact with the world and each other. I'll forgive a lot in a story if I'm engaged by the characters. Don't get me wrong, I like big ideas and shiny world building, and twisty plots, and all that. I do. But the thing that does it for me as both a reader and a writer are the characters in a story.

I want characters who read like real people, with all the mess and noise and ugliness and beauty of a life lived. I'm all about creating (what I hope are) interesting characters with problems and flaws, tossing them into a difficult or fantastic situation, and then watching them work it out. I'm perfectly capable of creating interesting settings and doing deep world-building. You need that skill in the spec-fic business, but that is not my focus. There's nothing wrong with grand, sweeping epics: I 'm just more interested in what happens between the lines and in the margins of those grand epics to the characters involved.

After looking over my pieces--finished and otherwise--and thinking about it, it seems to me that the real theme that runs through my work is seeking and finding the thing you need the most. There is a definite theme of decent, damaged, messed-up, lonely characters finding the thing they need to--if not be whole and happy--at least be content, maybe even redeemed, and no longer alone in the face of their personal demons.

So I guess the thing that runs through almost everything I write--the reason I produce the stories I do--is that in my heart, I believe people need other people, and small, quiet, personal stories are the one I want to tell.

Make of that what you will.