6-Sided Q & A - with Michael Ehart

Quick Links pertinent to Michael Ehart:

6 Sided Q & A

+ Buy his book Servant of the Manthycore.
+ Buy the excellent anthology The Return of the Sword featuring Michael.
+ The center of the Ehart universe - Michael’s Blog.
+ Some current short fiction from Michael on a great site - www.everydayfiction.com
+ Up and coming publisher of Servant of the Manthycore - Double Edged Publishing

1)    Q. Were there any pivotal books or authors that inspired you to become a writer?

        A. That’s a good place to start, as I had an unusual advantage in that my Mom is a romance writer, and as I was growing up she was going through the same things that most early career writers do. This was a tremendous help, as it never occurred to me that there might be something unusual or difficult about writing.

Early influences were Robert E. Howard, Robert Heinlein and Lester Dent, with later polish added by Roger Zelazny, Hunter S. Thompson and Kurt Vonnegut.

2)    Q. What inspired you to set Servant of the Manthycore in Bronze Age Mesopotamia? What made this time and cultural setting appealing to you?

        A. Several years ago a friend bought me a subscription to a wonderful magazine, Biblical Archeological Review. It was crammed full of pictures and articles about excavations and finds throughout the ancient middle-east. Soon I was haunting bookstores and abusing the inter-library loan system for any new information I could find. When I wrote the first story it occurred to me that the mood felt a lot like The Epic of Gilgamesh, and the particular chimera I chose as the beast felt like a good choice as well. Later, more Euro-centric monsters seemed too friendly--- I wanted something that was scary in the terms of “the beginnings of all things” sort of fashion.

The time and cultural setting is enormously appealing for me. This was the era when nearly everything we take for granted about civilization was invented, from writing and astronomy, to literature, money and a written social contract and courts of law. I am amazed that it is so little used; there is a near-endless amount of material to be mined here, with more being discovered literally every day.

3)    Q. Is there a theme for an anthology and/or another author's world/character(s) That you would enjoy working with?

        A. Roger Zelazny was the master--- I would love to write in his Jack of Shadows world, or any of a dozen others he created. That being said, I’m not certain that I would actually do so. I am not a reader of fan-fic, and I would be so afraid that it would come out as such.

Now, if Michael Moorcock wants to collaborate on something…

4)    Q. When was the first time you felt truly successful as a professional writer? Was it a personal milestone within your own work, the sale of a certain short story, perhaps selling your first novel?

        A. I have been writing and selling stuff for most of my life, since my mid-teens, and I am in my early 50’s now. It has always been easier for me to make money selling non-fiction, and a couple of times for a couple of years I worked as a reporter. During those times it was easy to be comfortable with the idea that I was successful, but the first time I really felt like a pro was about ten years ago when I successfully pitched a fairly ambitious project to a small newspaper chain for pretty stiff amount for freelance, and they accepted. Having a human-interest story picked up by one of the wire-services was another.

As a fiction writer is was having an editor I had worked with before ask me for a story for an upcoming issue. Knowing how buried they were under slush, It was a definite “you have arrived” moment.

5)    Q. You had mentioned being successful in selling your short fiction when you were in your teens; In retrospect, are you proud of these stories and feel that they stand the test of time? Is it possible for anyone to find and read any of these early pieces?

        A. Most of what I sold in my teens and early twenties was non-fiction. I did sell some fiction, though, and for the most part when I run across it I am appalled by the low-quality stuff that managed to find its way past first readers and make it into print! I sold to a number of venues, nearly all defunct now, including confession magazines, college humor and underground rags, a number of literary fiction quarterlies and one very stupid story to a short-lived mystery magazine. I had pretentions, too, which though embarrassing to recall have saved me from recent humiliation; I wrote most of my early fiction under a pen name. Made all my girlfriends read it, too, which may explain why I’m on my third marriage.

6)    Q. Everyone has their own fervent opinions about true and timeless classics in books and other media. Give a proclamation regarding modern classics: the best book(s) (and/or comics), movie(s) (and/or TV), and album(s) of the last ten years. What are your reasons for these choices?

        A. Sturgeon’s Law still holds true: 90% of everything is crap. Still, there is some amazing stuff being written, filmed and sung. Best is going to be relative, but I certainly can tell you some of my favorites. In short fiction some up-and-comers who just blow me away are Michael Canfield and Nisi Shawl, both of whom I am lucky to be with in a live crit group, so I get to see their stuff in the making (Canfield is a particularly sick man--- always a treat to read something from him), Camille Alexa, and nearly everyone in The Return of the Sword anthology.

Novelists? Kat Richardson, Neil Gaiman and James Sallis are all producing stuff that may very well be taught in schools someday.

As far as comics are concerned, DC has been doing some wonderful stuff, both in their books and with DCAnimation, bringing back characters long forgotten and using them in wonderful new ways, and (this is older than ten years, but still rocks) it is hard for me to think of a better deconstruction than Watchmen--- I am thrilled that there will be a movie version of this.

The best film I have seen in the last ten years? The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada has to be near the top, with Clay Pigeons, Sin City, and The Constant Gardener all crowded around.

I’m a middle-aged guy, with appropriate tastes in music, but I like some of the newer artists like Del Castillo, Joe Santorini and Kanye West.

Thank you Michael for your illuminating answers and gracious participation in my little project.