|
Where to begin with Mister Youngquist? Well Dean and he go back almost ten years now and it was actually David and his publishing company Dark Continents which gave Dean a platform with his Phobophobia anthology of which he will forever be grateful. David is a class-a writer too and his contribution to the Short Sharp Shocks! Series is Book 9: The Other.
DEMAIN PUBLISHING: Hello sir, how goes it – it’s been a little while hasn’t it... DAVID YOUNGQUIST: Hello and thanks for taking the time to talk with me today. Glad we could sit down for some questions. I’ve been off the writing radar for a time, so it’s good to catch up, and this way maybe some new readers will get to know me a bit. DP: I hope they will too, so let’s get down straight to it. Can you tell us a little about The Other and where the idea / concept behind it.. DY: Many writers say they don’t really know where they get their ideas. I admit most time I don’t either. It’s usually an organic thing where several ideas kind of gel into one story line. In the case of The Other, there actually were things that inspired it. I did used to teach, when Fay and I first married, and then after that I worked second shift at a local factory for five years. Many nights found me up late grading papers, and then after working a late shift and getting home past midnight, I would often be awake into the wee hours of the morning. I am one of those people who can’t just come home and jump into bed, so I would be up working on a writing project or something. There were several times, I heard something in my garage, like someone rustling around working on something in there, but when I would go to check on it, the garage would be empty except for the wife’s car. I always wanted to expand on this happening as a story, so The Other is my offering of that. DP: With all that ‘experience’ then going into your story, I suspect you didn’t have to do much additional research? DY: There are a lot of interesting concepts in this story (at least I hope there are) so one would think there was a ton of research involved. My wife, however, referrers to me as ‘the largest walking encyclopedia of useless knowledge’ that she knows. I have to agree. Part of the reason for that is I’m an omnivorous and voracious reader. I read much more than fiction. Part of that is due to my education. I’m a trained teacher of Biology and History, so there are a lot of subjects I have studied as part of my course material. Psychology is a big part of the educational certification in the US, so knowing what the mind can do is part of this story as well. I have also written three collections of ghost stories, and was part of a paranormal investigation team back in Illinois for several years, so the concept of parallel worlds is something that I have dealt with. One of our investigators used a ‘ghost box’, so I have heard those voices from the other side. DP: ‘Ghost box’? That’s really cool – I’ll quickly tell this story: I had an experience a couple of years ago on a short holiday on a canal boat...there were five / six of us that went and one of the group (who I didn’t particularly know) claimed to be a psychic and in communication with ‘the other side’. She had this little machine which was something straight out of Ghostbusters – one night we were in a really old restaurant (in Oxford I think it was) and, a little drunk, we asked her whether there were any ghosts around us. She got the machine out and we watched it light up from red to green then go back down to green, a process which kept repeating itself every few minutes – she told us that the whole place was literally screaming with the undead and (probably due to the booze) we were really impressed and talked about who the ghosts could be etc etc. A couple of moments later however, one of the guys noticed that her machine seemed to go off everytime the waiter walked past our table. We grabbed hold of him and tested our theory – we were right. It seemed it was his mobile phone which was sending her machine haywire and it wasn’t anything supernatural at all...which kind of ruined the evening if I’m honest and ruined her reputation...tell us about the challenges you faced when writing The Other. DY: Not let it grow into something much larger. My short stories tend to morph into something bigger these days, so I had to keep the reins tight and stay focused on the end point of this story. DP: I know that pain – I hate being given word counts, deadlines ha ha – I’ve been a bit better of late but in the past tell me you want five thousand I’ll write ten, you want ten, I’ll write twenty or something...but as I say, I’m getting better now, more disciplined. Tell me David, when you were writing did you ever ‘become’ one of the characters? DY: Every writer is part of the character he or she writes. In this case, Jake, the main character definitely is an aspect of my life that could have been. And that life in the story of how it could have been. I’m one of those people that believe our paths take a direction at certain points in time based on one important decision or another. ‘Bad Jake’ made certain decisions. As did ‘Good Jake.’ And sometimes, the universe helps fix things. DP: I like that theory and perhaps needs further thought before I can retort as articulately as I would wish...but this interview is about you, not me. Do you think you have a specific writing style, has it changed over the years? DY: Every author evolves their own voice, or style, as they grow. If they stick with it long enough. My style evolved into something fast, with dark shadows around fringes of hope. I guess the realist and the optimist are always struggling within the confines of my writing. But I think that may be a Midwestern thing. We’re a hardy bunch or realists hoping life gets better. Farming stock tends to have to be that way, or there’d be no farmers left in the world. One of the most challenging things I still struggle with, is detail. I started my career as a reporter, and it shows. You don’t get the ton of detail with me you get with someone like King or Clancy. Sometimes I have to fight myself to put in enough detail to get people’s attention and keep it (at least in my mind). DP: I personally like your style because it is very much to the point – like Hemingway. Punchy. Who were your influences... DY: I have many influences on my work. From Karnow to King, from Poe to Twain, I think probably there are touches of all of them in my work. Poe, perhaps influences my style of writing horror, but I think if I had to pick one overall writer as a mentor / influence, that would be Jim Butcher [the second Short Sharp Shocks! Author to talk about Jim! - DP]. His Dresden Files series is the only piece I have read every book of. He had me hooked from the beginning. His ability to blend magic into the world of every day is the best I have ever read. The only complaint I have is he hasn’t released a new Dresden book in a couple years now, since he’s busy on other projects. DP: I’m beginning to think I’m missing out not having read Jim’s work – I need to address this asap. What’s next for you? DY: I’ve got a ton of things going on. Stitched Smile Publications has been kind enough to pick up my z-poc series Snareville for re-release, as well as my fantasy/cross dimension series Black Jack. I can’t say when the first will be released, but it is coming soon. They have contracted me for continuing books in both those series, so I’ll be revisiting the worlds of Danny Death and Black Jack Dragonfist soon. They also picked up my Black Jack tie-in series Were Wars, which has never been published before. This series follows the story of werewolves that have been hiding among us for centuries, to be outed now in the modern world. Finally, I’m working on a crime series that I’ll be taking with me to Bouchercon in Dallas, TX this fall called The Hitman’s Daughter. I hope to find an agent there interested in the series. DP: Well, all the best from us – please let us know how you get on! With all these different projects on the go do you ever suffer from the dreaded ‘writer’s block’? DY: 2018 was the first time I ever dealt with writer’s block. Up until then, I had enough projects going that if I bogged down on one, I simply switched to another piece, and went on from there until the first book talked to me again. For the last two years, however, I had only been working on the third Were Wars book and The Hitman’s Daughter. I hit a wall with both. You have to understand, however, the events of 2016 - 2018 were pretty full. We moved to Washington state, started new careers and schooling, had a death in the family, so yeah, giant mental blocks. I didn’t panic. Just took it easy. Went for a lot of walks in the mountains with the fam and down along Puget Sound (which is now about a mile from my front door) The muse spoke again, and I’m back on track. DP: Yes, sometimes you’ve just got to re-connect with nature for your own sanity if nothing else. I quick like walking between the trees or my favourite sitting by the sea watching the waves...very theraputic as well as inspiring. Thinking about inspiration, do you write outlines of your stories before you start or do you just chance your luck? DY: I am one of those people who do not do formal outlines. Since about the year 2000, I have had mindless jobs that allowed me to write the story in my head for eight hours a day, and then sit down at the keyboard and get it down. The job I have now is much more involved, but there is downtime in daily life where you just let your world build. Plus, the people in my stories tend to tell me where they want to go and what they want to do anyway, so a strict outline is pretty rigid to me. DP: Do you think there’s a particular theme you write about? Do you stay in the same genre or try to mix them up a little bit? DY: I fell into the z-poc genre wanting to write a better story than the shit that was out there at the time (2009-10-11) so I got in on that wave, and think I did a pretty good job. Took the genre in a new, more involved direction. Horror wise, writing it has always been a way for me to let the demons out of my skull and control them. But it’s my dark place. I don’t like to live there. When I discovered ‘Urban Fantasy’ though Jim Butcher, I finally figured out how to blend all my styles. I think most of what I do now would be referred to as ‘Urban Fantasy Noir’. Even my Hitman series, as grounded in the real world as it is. DP: I’ve always wanted to write a noir piece actually...I’ll have to give that some more thought. Um, so I’m a film producer, pitch me The Other. DY: If the Universe offered you a chance to correct the biggest mistake you made in your life, would you take it? Jake Jablonski finds himself deciding just that when he steps though the doorway of his garage into a life that could have been. DP: Brilliant, brilliant – and finally, one surprising fact about you, if you don’t mind. DY: My readers may not know that in addition to my Bachelor’s of Education, I also earned a degree in Horse Science Technology and spent many years of my life working as a horse breeder and trainer in different parts of the country before I met Fay. Thank you David – a pleasure as always. All the best with your projects and (obviously!) with The Other! To connect directly with David: Twitter: @DavidYoungquis1
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
CategoriesArchives
November 2023
AuthorDean M. Drinkel |