Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} It’s been a long, slow slide into the world of writing.  It didn’t start with writing, of course.  It started with that reading thing he was always doing. It all began with Piers Anthony’s “Xanth” series.  It seemed so innocent then.  A little “Andromeda Strain” went with it, and why not have The Hobbit as a chaser?  Okay, so maybe things started to look a trifle odd when the whole Lord of the Rings series followed The Hobbit, especially at his age.  Then he got involved with that Heinlein guy.  Then came Asimov and Doc Smith.  Some Zelazny followed, and things really got out of hand.             He wrote poetry in junior high and wisely recognized his lack of talent.  He wrote short stories all through high school.  He knew they were crap, so he threw them away… and continued to write more of them.             He had no idea he was practicing the storytelling art.             Then he got sidetracked into role-playing games.  Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.  At last!  Something besides reading all the time.  Something social, something that involved being with people.  Maybe he was a normal kid after all.  Or as normal as a gaming nerd ever is.             Or not.  Storytelling comes in many forms.  One of the most basic is the shared story, where people gather around the fire and tell pieces of story to distract themselves from the dark.  Even today, some writers do that, inside their own heads, to drive back something dark and sinister in their own worlds.             He went back to that basic with role-playing games, standing at a table, watching people pretend to be other people, with pretend-hopes, pretend-dreams, pretend-victories, pretend-lives.  Isn’t that all storytelling is?  A role-playing game is just an advanced form of playground Pretend, but with dice, rules, and a little math. Then he worked his way up into the more difficult forms of storytelling, stripping away the gestures, the expressions, the tone of voice, until he could tell a story with nothing but letters—cold, static things, unchanging, unfeeling.  Dead things, but brought to life in the mind of the reader.             He still tells stories at the gaming table.  He still builds worlds, topples kingdoms, and sings songs of victory or of grief.  But, as much fun as those are, they are shared only with a dozen friends or so at a time.  Yet, words, written or printed, caught and penned and given over to the world… those could be shared with everyone.             A writer is like a pen, fountaining ink, giving shape and form to chaos.  A writer sews together the pieces to make a whole—smooth and flawless, like a fine clockwork, or a monster, crudely stitched and lopsided.  But whatever the writer creates, it is the reader that provides the bolt of lightning that gives it life.             A story is something in the mind of the reader, not words on a page.  It’s a feeling in the heart of the listener, not what someone has said.  A story doesn’t live in pages, between covers, tucked away on a shelf—or, if it lives, it sleeps.  A story truly lives and breathes in the hands of a child as she learns to read.  A story lives in the smile of a man as he re-reads an old favorite.  A story lives in the thoughts of the aged as they recall the things that they wish had happened, things they read about.             So he writes.  He writes because he has stories in his head and heart, clamoring to have their chance to live.  The stories are there, the ink of ideas dripping from mind to pen to page, all set down as they flow along.  They become that mess of ink on the page, to be sent away so that others may breathe life into them.  ========================             Garon Whited is a single, white male, brown-haired, blue-eyed, six feet tall, who lives alone, keeps mainly to himself, and is described as “a quiet sort” by his neighbors.  He also owns a shovel and a chainsaw, but that’s only a little worrisome.  He is old enough to refuse to eat his veggies, which he does with remarkable consistency.  Fortunately, most of his madness seems directed at defenseless keyboards and helpless reams of typing paper.  Any screaming involved is entirely his own. Most people tend to think he’s a bit strange, mainly because they’re not completely sure he’s from this planet, much less actually human.  The exceptions to this are few, including one very pretty lady (who is also a fan) and Mr. Whited’s nephew.  His nephew seems to think he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, but that may just be a side effect of Brother’s Revenge, which is closely akin to Grandparent’s Revenge.  Or maybe his nephew is correct and most of the rest of the world is just dense.  Mr. Whited is siding with the nephew. In the meantime, he has a hobby of writing science fiction and fantasy.  He also enjoys a good role-playing game, no matter what the game system is. In addition to the science-fiction novel “Luna,” he has a fantasy trilogy in the works.  The first, “Nightlord:  Sunset,” is already out.  The other two novels planned in the Nightlord series are “Nightlord: Midnight,” and “Nightlord: Sunrise,” all of which detest any sort of whining or sparkling from the undead.  ================== Interview: Who are you?             Well, start with the easy questions, hmm?  All right, I’m Garon Whited.  STR: 12, INT: 17, WIS: 14, DEX: 13, CON: 11, CHA: 12, six feet tall, brown hair, blue eyes, sardonic humor, patient with anything that doesn’t involve stupidity, and, for the moment, forty-something years old on the outside.  Um, what do all those numbers mean?             It means that if you ask a silly question, you get a silly answer.  Although, to a certain type of person, it’s still highly informative.  Okay.  So, how did you start writing? It started with the space suit.  Tough piece of engineering, a space suit.  Space suit?             As in “Have Space Suit, Will Travel,” by Robert Heinlein.  That got me started on science fiction and reading in general.  Blame him.  Then I read my way into “The Chronicles of Amber,” by Roger Zelazny.  Things got a little out of hand after that.  I bought a house so I’d have someplace to store my library.  But, the writing?             I was sitting in a bookstore one afternoon and reading something—I forget what—when I thought to myself, “This is crap.  This isn’t even crap.  This is toilet paper with ink on it.  Used toilet paper with ink on it!  I could eat a pen and crap a better story than this!”             So I did.  Metaphorically speaking, of course.  I never liked the taste of ink.  So, you feel that the quality of today’s fiction has diminished?             Not at all.  There’s quite a lot of good fiction out there.  The trouble is that there’s so much worthless fiction to wade through.  I may be in that category, myself, but I have two things going for me:  I don’t take my writing style to seriously, and I admit that not everyone will find my stories appealing.  You don’t feel that your work is good?             Sure it is.  Most of my stuff is worth at least one read-through.  My work, however, it NOT universally appealing; humans are diverse.  I’ve been given a lot of positive feedback from readers, which is why I’m cautiously optimistic about saying that people like what I write.   Do you read your own stories?             Not if I can help it.  Why not?             Because I have to fiddle with them.  Change a word, move a comma, wonder how it would go if I altered it just a little bit here and here and here… It’s horrible.  I can’t read my own work without tinkering with it, and that just makes me crazy.  More crazy.  At most, I’ll do a word search to find a particular passage, just to make sure I haven’t confused what I wrote with an alternate idea I entertained, but that’s about it.  What would you change in your published works so far?             If I could secretly replace all of them with updated versions?  If you like, yes.             That’s the only way to do it.  I refuse to hand out the “uncut, unedited” version to milk the consumer.  Everything I write comes out uncut and unedited.  Well, aside from the usual typo check.             What would I change?  That’s a toughie.  Probably just little pieces, here and there.  A better turn of phrase, a sharper piece of wit, little things like that.  But those little things are the difference between “lightning bolt” and “lightning bug.”  It’s one reason I take so long to write a book.  I keep going back over each one, again and again, until I don’t think I can refine it any further.  Do you feel you take a long time to write?             Yep.  I can’t type as fast as I can think.  That’s a bad thing.  Why?             When I type, the story runs ahead, circles around, comes back to bug me.  Then it takes off on a new track, and I have to decide which one I’m going to follow.  If I typed fast enough to keep up, I’d have a new novel out every month.             That’s not to say that they’d be good novels—there’s something to be said for the refining process—but I’d be a lot faster.  So, rewriting is important?             Rewriting?  Well, not so much.  Tweaking, yes.  A rewrite, to me, is starting over and trying again.  A tweak, or a refining run, is going over the existing story, making notes, and changing things in it.  There’s a time for each.  Good to know.  So who is your favorite character?             Raeth.  Why?             Raeth is smart, loyal, brave, and practical.  He never gives up, he never gives in, fights for what he believes is right, lives for what he believes, and would die if his death would serve his cause.  I like him a lot.  What about Eric, or Max, the protagonists in “Nightlord: Sunset” and “Luna”?             Nice guys.  I like them, too.  But Raeth is my favorite, followed closely by Bronze.  Then it gets fuzzy for third place.  Probably Tort.  That’s about all the time we have.  Is there anything you’d like to add?             Hmm.  Yes.  For anyone interested, the answer is: No.  “Nightlord” is not an autobiography, nor a biography, nor anything but a work of fiction.  I do not know how to reach Flatland, nor would I tell you if I did.  Now stop asking before I send Bronze to stomp on you.  Doesn’t that imply—?             It’s a joke, son.  I’m kidding.  About which part?             No comment.

Discoverer of the deadly-poisonous Antarctic Butterfly.