The following is mostly a "reprint" from an interview I did with author Andy R. Bunch in August of 2013. Since I've known Andy for more than a year now, we've become good friends. Thus, I've updated and embellished the material to bring it up-to-date. Andy will be joining me, April Bullard and G.S. Coltman at the Early Bird Holiday Bazaar in Astoria on November 15.
Q: So, Andy, your blog lists a wild ride of crazy experiences. I think it goes something like this: "In the footsteps of Hemingway, Conan Doyle and London, Andy Bunch is an adventure writer. He has traveled extensively along the West Coast, built a church in Mexico, sung for his supper in Canada, and taught Archery in Alaska. He’s trained in CPR/First Aid, Shao Lin Kung Fu, Kajakenbo, and Vin Tsun martial arts. He’s sky dived, rafted class 4 rapids, drank moonshine with felons, dined with royalty, spent a week in the woods with only a knife, flint, black-plastic and some TP, and studied British history in Great Britain."
Author Garrison Keillor says that “Nothing bad ever happens to a writer; everything is material.” Tell us about your adventures.
A: Yep, I’d agree with Keillor. I think it morphs into something other than the original incident though. Kipling said, “A good writer should be able to watch an alley cat slink across a park and be able to write what it feels like to be stalked by a bangle tiger.”
That’s the goal in my mind. Experience reality from a number of angles and then stir enough of that into your writing to reach people with a deeper truth. I believe that in order to entertain others you must be entertained yourself so I try to find the humor in most situations, but life isn’t all about fun and laughing. Still, in order to inspire life in others you must first come alive yourself. So whatever is happening in your life, learn to put it in perspective and find a way to profit from it.
As far as specific adventures in my past ending up in my books, the truth is always stranger than fiction but seldom as entertaining. I’ve fallen in the ocean in Alaska, capsized a canoe. I ended up fighting for my life from pneumonia. That joined with some of my childhood bouts of strep throat in my description of the disease my hero and his friends face early on in my Fantasy novel, Suffering Rancor.
I try to let life invade my stories, but you’d almost never be able to draw a connection between the real life event and the ones in the book. One exception would be when my father died in 2003. I went back through my novel and rewrote the impact a father’s death has on a character. It hurt to write that, but if that was going to be in my book then it had to be accurate.
Q: Wow! Interesting. But your writing experiences are equally so. You have College coursework in technical, essay, short story, and novel writing which led to a Penguin Award for student leadership, and later a degree in business management. You've worked as a technical writer and a document control specialist, been a contributing editor on the “Salmon Creek Journal,” and the fiction editor of “The Phoenix” Magazine. Your fiction and nonfiction appear all over the web.You have some independent publishing experiences as well. You’re a contributor to the Northwest Independent Writers Association anthology as well as having published two books on your own. And you've co-written a couple of books as well as written two of your own, not to mention the contributions to anthologies. What are the joys and pitfalls you’ve experienced in these ventures?
A: I struggled a lot with short fiction, but I felt it was important to grasp that before moving onto longer works. Short stories really are a different animal, but there are some obvious cross-over skills.
I hadn’t written much short fiction since I switched to novels, so I confess to dusting off a story I’d begun already for the first NIWA anthology. I thought I could tack a fast conclusion on it and be done, but I was actually only halfway through it. That’s become a favorite story of mine. I wanted to turn things upside down a bit and create a sympathetic monster, inept bad guys and a heroine who’s willing to do anything for power including screw over a simple creature that tries to help her. Unfortunately the characters had other ideas so it went where it wanted to and became a great story despite me.
The story in this year’s NIWA Anthology came from a NIWA writing challenge. One of the skill building exercises we took on was to come up with a difficult challenge and post it to our forum. Then we all wrote a short story to fit the challenge. We used a picture of a sink hole that formed in someone’s bedroom overnight—under their bed. It was a very evocative picture. I’m really proud of that story. From a publishing standpoint, the anthologies sell real well. So I’m hoping to garner some fans out of those.
Q: Your book Suffering Rancor has been described as “like Pirates of the Caribbean meets Conan the Barbarian.” I really enjoyed the work. Tell us about why you wrote it and what the experience has taught you.
A: Rancor was the book I learned to write on. I had a few abortive attempts at other novels early on, but Rancor was the one I had to write because I couldn’t get it out of my head any other way. I struggled with dyslexia growing up and reading was an enormous challenge, but I loved words. I loved how the felt when you said them and I loved reading the dictionary to finding new words. My favorite two things about words is the way they represent entire concepts so that you can make a sentence that conveys pages of information, and secondly how words can be pieces to a puzzle and you need the exact right one for the job.
I was a horrible speller, K to 12th grade, and everyone actively discouraged me from writing. In fact, my dad pretty much paid for me to go to community college and my car insurance, so long as I pursued a degree other than writing. I took writing classes on the side and wrote in the library or coffee shops where I wouldn’t get caught.
My last year at Clark (of 6), I went on a study abroad trip to the UK and I remember standing in Rudyard Kipling’s house and thinking, “Maybe not everyone makes it as a writer but some people do. Why not me?” I came home and told my parents that I didn’t care if it made me homeless, I’d pan-handle for money to buy chalk and I’d write my novel on the sidewalk even though the next rainfall washed it away. After that they stopped opposing it so much.
So Suffering Rancor and I journeyed quite far together. No one in college really taught me how to write a book, but they did teach me how to peer edit, so I joined a writers group and started working the fundamentals. 16 years and 7 rewrites later I had a bouncing baby novel on my hands. My illustrator, Corey Pennington, came into some money and paid the initial publishing costs so we could get the project out there. That’s back when you had to pay a lot to companies for each little thing, it’s practically free now. Anyway, Corey is a good friend and we got the book out with only a few dozen typos and some embarrassing homophone issues. I’ve since revised it one more time and freshened up the cover.
Q: You are a founder of NIWA. How’d it get started and would you like people to know about it?
A: I’m one of six original founding members of Northwest Independent Writers Association. Initially we wanted to band together for support and sharing ideas about the industry, but we quickly realized that the biggest challenge facing Indie Authors is the public’s belief that traditionally published books are better quality. In reality, the entire market has shifted due to technology changes. The only thing you can be sure of in a traditionally published book is that someone in New York thought it would have a wide market appeal.
I don’t really care if a million people like the book I’m reading, I feel comfortable judging a book for myself. Between ebooks and Indies, the traditional market is hurting for cash and less likely than ever to spend money on an unknown writer. Not to mention that they’ve stopped spending money on editors and promotions, so the writer is pretty much on their own anyway. I’ll get off my soap box. Ultimately, NIWA realized that its primary function was to promote professionalism and quality among Indie authors and to increase consumer confidence in their work. So that’s what we do.
Q: What words would you share with new writers hoping to venture into independent publishing?
A: Oh, boy! There’s a lot of things they need to know. I encourage everyone who feels that they have a book inside them to write it. It’s hard work but good therapy. Actually publishing that work with the technology we have now is relatively easy. Promoting and selling that book is a ton of work, and being commercially successful is exponentially more so.
If I could offer only one piece of advice it would be “don’t think that Indie publishing your work is a way to mitigate the heartache of rejection. Nothing about writing, revising, editing, publishing, or selling your book will be free from rejection.”
Vonnegut once said, “Don’t write because you want to: write because you have to.” I’m not that cynical, but I see his point. Being a writer is like being that naked cowboy singer in time square. You don’t have anything to hide behind but the instrument of your talent, so you’d better not suck, and it doesn’t matter if the crowd gathered to gawk at you as long as they throw you a buck and leave thinking, “that guy’s actually pretty good.”
Q: You've got a new book out now called Diner Tales. I've read it and I liked it very much. Lay that subtitle on us and tell us what it means. And what led you to write this?
A: The subtitle is: A Contemporary Canterbury Anthology. I have always loved the Canterbury Tales by Chaucer. I love the idea of writing very different stories that would be told by very different people who represent typical people you'd run into in life.
I used to hang out at a coffee shop all night when I was in college--it's the only place that life would slow down enough to let me focus on my homework. I'm glad I had that experience and I'm glad to be beyond it now, with a wife and baby. Now I'm in bed by 8 p.m. most nights so I can get up at 4 a.m. to write.
Q: Four in the morning, Andy! You're insane!
What I like about the book is that it's a collection of short stories all tied together. Some of the stories are funny, some are dramatic, some are touching and some are contemplative. In your book we meet people we see everyday and judge, but through your book we get to know them as human beings.
I also like the fact that it can be used as serial reading--something you can carry with you throughout the day and read quick chapters and have a whole story to think about before going on to another. It's just a fun book.
Anyway, where can readers pick up your books?
A: My books can be found by searching Amazon or Barnes and Noble.com. My fantasy YA novel,
Suffering Rancor, is also on Smashwords, kobo, the iStore etc. and the audiobook is available through Amazon or Audible. This smart link is supposed to get you to the right book no matter what country you’re in
http://www.smarturl.it/Rancor and this one’s for the ebook
http://smarturl.it/eRancor. My second book,
On Becoming a Man, is a Christian inspirational I co-authored with Janice Seeney. Amazon is probably the best place to find that, here’s a link
http://goo.gl/kK13W. And
here's the link to Diner Tales.
Thank you, Andy. Excellent stuff. You can find out more about Andy at:
http://andyrbunch.weebly.com/index.html
