If you haven't discovered Anthony Vicino yet, I recommened you
check out his blog and rectify the situation!
Ted Cross: Anthony, it’s great to talk with you. I
discovered you out of the blue last year when you wrote a blog post about new
cyberpunk novels and you included my book. I was thrilled because the few
previous reviews I had received had all been by request, so you were the first
person to ever put up a blog review independently and I really appreciated
that.
 |
| Introducing Anthony Vicino! Sit down, relax, have some barbecue! |
I also loved your blunt honestly. You said what you liked
and what you didn’t. So many reviewers skirt around what they don’t like,
possibly afraid of offending anyone. The elements you disliked in my book
didn’t bother me at all. In fact if anything they confirmed that my characters
had the traits that I had set out to give them (right or wrong!).
Now that I have read a couple of your stories (
Time Heist and
Sins of the Father), I have seen that you are not only hands down
one of the most talented indie writers I have encountered, but I feel a sort of
kinship with you. (see my
review of Time Heist here) We have very different writing styles (yours far more vivid
than mine), but we have many similar ideas about the future. Whether it’s the
use of nanobots or immortality via technology, we have both clearly had some of
the same thoughts about what is coming down the pike. If our histories had
matched up, we could almost have been writing in a shared world setting!
So often I see interviews with authors that are very basic.
Someone provides a set of questions and the author answers them. I thought it
might be fun to expand on the traditional interview and instead do a back and
forth ‘conversation’.
So to begin, what have been the main influences for your
science fiction writing? I noticed elements of the movie ‘In Time’ while
reading Time Heist, though I liked
your book better than the movie. Was that an influence? How about Richard K. Morgan
and his ideas about technological immortality?
Anthony Vicino: For those of you at home, let me set the scene: Ted
came on my radar last winter when he published his debut novel, The
Immortality Game. The book caught my attention because it sports a
mind-blowing cover replete with a futuristic pyramid (for those of you have
read my book Time Heist, you'll know I have a thing for futuristic
pyramids). Also, The Immortality Game, simply put, is an awesome title.
But TIG wasn't just
eye-candy with a snazzy title, it's a really good story featuring a
strong-female lead in an alternative setting ie: not middle-class white
America. Now, for those that don't know, Ted is a diplomat. Which in my mind
means one thing: He's a spy. Right?
No? Okay, well tell us a bit
about diplomacy and how you got into it, Ted. I get the feeling that your
experience there had a huge influence on the world you crafted in TIG.
 |
| Anthony really does have super powers! |
One of the things I aim for in
my writing, and something you do really well in TIG is invisible
language. Meaning that the words don't draw attention to themselves and tug the
readers out of the story. Guys like Brandon Sanderson, John Scalzi, and Jim
Butcher have mastered this skill, which is a huge part in why their stories are
so popular. Is this a conscious decision on your part or just a natural of
function of your style/voice?
Whenever I tell people about Time
Heist they think one of two things. First, they assume it's a time-travel
story. Second, the Life Tracker draws immediate comparisons to In Time, Justin
Timberlake’s movie. This used to bother me, but eventually I got over it,
because from a lot device standpoint, they are very similar.
But for the record, I wrote the
first draft of Time Heist well before In Time came out. Also, I
only got around to watching In Time about a month after Time Heist's
release. A large part of that was the crippling fear that I'd accidentally
rip-off something from JTimbers. Plausible deniability and all that.
As for my influences, let me
cite the old guard here: Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury. From a writing craft
perspective, Sanderson has been hugely influential. Charles Stross is an idea
factory. I've always found the range of his output inspiring.
 |
| Gravity has zero effect on him |
Richard K. Morgan's Takeshi
Kovacs novels are fantastic. Seriously, his stories are some of the best
sci-fi I've ever read.
Now, I know you love Morgan as
much as me, but who are some of your other influences, Ted? Your recent
publications have been this weirdly cool mashup of sci-fi and fantasy (The
Shard and Lord Fish: Chronicles of Xax). What inspired you to go that
direction?
Thank you for your kind words about The Immortality Game. Oddly enough, it was written merely as
back-story for a wizard character in my epic fantasy novel The Shard. The fantasy was the first novel I ever wrote, and I did
it because I had been irked for so many years that no one was writing the
particular kind of fantasy novel that I wanted to read most. Don’t get me
wrong, there are many fantasy books that I love; it’s just that having grown up
playing Dungeons & Dragons, I wanted to read some novels that took the game
as seriously as I did. Instead all the official novels were essentially like
superhero stories (see Drizzt) or cartoonish or they had a gamey feel to them.
I wanted D&D stories told with gravitas, as if a George RR Martin or a
Stephen King were writing them. No one did this, so I finally broke down about
nine years ago and started writing one myself.
I spend a long time on each novel, about four years apiece
so far, and partly that is because I spend a tremendous amount of time thinking
about the characters and their histories. I feel that I need to know them
really well before I can write them properly. The story of my wizard Xax
intrigued me so much that I felt a growing compulsion to write out his tale, so
once I completed The Shard that is
what I set out to do.
His story didn’t come from nowhere. Since living in Moscow
in the mid-nineties, I had vague story ideas about the Russian mafia, because
they were just swarming over Moscow back then. From reading Richard K Morgan’s
books (and I totally agree with you about how brilliant they are) I had some
interesting technology questions I wanted to explore, namely the idea of what
Morgan’s immortality tech must have been like when it was first developed.
Since my wizard had once been a scientist back on Earth, it dawned on me that I
could combine all these ideas, having this scientist work on the early
development of immortality tech while using the Russian mob as the antagonist.
Honestly, I had never meant to write science fiction, but once I started doing
it, it has taken over.
Invisible language is something I go back and forth on,
thinking that perhaps it comes naturally to me, only to then think that I’m not
very good at it. Many people complimented my dialogue, but then another reader
told me my dialogue was atrocious. Perhaps he went a tad overboard, but I’m
certain there is also some truth to what he said, and that’s making me focus a
LOT harder on my dialogue in current WIP. My writing may be a little too
straightforward, and I wish I was better at injecting humor or more vivid
detail into it.
I once asked John Scalzi if he would do a blog post about
how he handles dialogue, but he hasn’t done so and probably won’t. Too bad,
because I’d love to learn how he does it. Essentially I think beginning writers
try to put too much of the world's background into the story. This background
fascinates them and they want to tell the reader about it, not yet
understanding that the reader can get by just fine knowing very little of this
background material. When it comes down to it, I think writers should go back
and remove as much exposition as possible.
AV: I agree one thousand
percent. To the new writers at home, remember: Cut, cut, cut...and then cut some
more.
TC: As for my writing background,
I was always good at academic writing, but I never thought I'd get around to
writing a novel. Too much work, especially when I have so many other
interests! But over the years the story ideas just kept building pressure in my
mind. And when I read ASOFAI by George RR Martin, his brilliance made me
realize that I really wanted to write
a book. Too bad that realization came so late—I was maybe thirty-seven at the
time.
Diplomacy came about because I wanted to see the world. My
love of chess also played a part, since the best chess players back then were
Russians. So I jumped at the opportunity to work at the embassy in Moscow, and
from there I joined the Foreign Service full time.
You mentioned not having seen In Time until after your book was finished. I totally sympathize
with you. So many ideas have been touched on that it’s very easy to produce
similar ideas all on our own. I have found eerie similarities in my own books
from computer games and novels that I never knew existed until after my stories
were already written, so we have that in common.
By the way, because I knew we were going to have this
‘conversation’, I just re-watched In
Time. I didn’t much like the movie the first time I saw it, and I still
don’t love it, but I did enjoy it a bit more the second time around. But you
are right, other than the framework of using time for commerce, your story and
that one are nothing alike.
Okay, so we're already beginning to run a bit long, so maybe
we can do a follow up in the near future, but for now I'll just ask one
question: how is the indie life treating you? I have met several truly talented
indie writers (Lucas Bale and Michael Patrick Hicks) and I find it frustrating
how hard it is to get our works noticed by the reading public. Thoughts?
AV: For all the great strides
Indie publishing has made in recent years, it's still very much an uphill
battle. Then again, that's not an exclusively Indie publishing problem. Even
within the traditional world, it's hard gaining traction. My coping strategy
has been to simply ignore it and focus on the long term.
When I began Indie publishing
last November, I decided I'd play the long-con and set my sights way down the
road at the five and ten year mark. So with that in mind I've done very little
in the way of promoting my books this past year and haven't published anything
since that initial bulk release of stories. Instead, I've directed all my
energy into cultivating a following, meeting and collaborating with other creative
types, and writing a ton.
 |
| Anthony says this is his office! Should we believe him? |
This coming year should be
exciting, 'cause I'll finally be releasing new fiction into the world.
Currently I have twelve books lined up and ready to fire one story every month
for the next year starting this October. If some of you have been wondering why
I haven't been putting out new stuff, that's why. Christmas is coming. Duck and
cover!
We're getting a bit on the long
side here, so maybe we can do a part two in the future, Ted. How's that sound?
Readers? What thoughts have you? Get down to the comments and let us know!
TC: You amaze me with how quickly you write! The problem for
me is simply that I produce books too slowly, so I don’t see having another
book ready for another three or four years. It’s very hard to remain relevant
to readers if you don’t produce more work fairly quickly.
It’s been great having this short conversation, I wish we
could have gotten more, but we don't want to overload the readers.
 |
| Anthony is very outdoorsy, it seems! |
As Anthony said above, readers please let us know in the
comments if you have any questions or thoughts. We'd love to hear from you!
Thank you for reading!
Posts
