Ask the Author: Joe Hill
Answered Questions (18)
Joe Hill
The author is Rio Youers, the novel is The Forgotten Girl, and the event is at Water Street Books in Exeter, NH, at 7PM, on June 20th (which, at the time of this writing, is... tonight).
Anyone who turns up, buys Rio's book, and gets in line for his signature, will also be handed a signed comic, for as long as supplies last. Rio will have 50 issues in all to give away.
I'm doing a Q&A with Rio, but am not sticking around for the actual signing. This is Rio's event, not mine, so I won't be signing things myself. The comics were all signed ahead of time.
Hope to see you there, and definitely check out The Forgotten Girl. It's a helluva good time.
Anyone who turns up, buys Rio's book, and gets in line for his signature, will also be handed a signed comic, for as long as supplies last. Rio will have 50 issues in all to give away.
I'm doing a Q&A with Rio, but am not sticking around for the actual signing. This is Rio's event, not mine, so I won't be signing things myself. The comics were all signed ahead of time.
Hope to see you there, and definitely check out The Forgotten Girl. It's a helluva good time.
Joe Hill
Friends don't let friends listen to the Beatles in stereo. The mono recordings or nothing. On vinyl, as God and George Martin intended.
Joe Hill
Oh man! What a great question. If we're talking romantic couple... probably Jake and Sadie from 11/22/63. It seemed to me that Jake didn't just fall for a lovely, thoughtful woman, but also for an emblem of an innocent, more hopeful time. If I had to pick a runner-up I'd go for Yorick and Agent 355 from Y: The Last Man. I am a fan of the idea that the person you're looking for has often been at your side all along and you just didn't notice.
Cecilia and Robbie from Atonement are pretty wonderful too.
But it's possible for a "couple" to be defined just as a pair of comrades. In which case I'd go with Aubrey-Maturin from the Patrick O'Brian novels, and Holmes-Watson.
Cecilia and Robbie from Atonement are pretty wonderful too.
But it's possible for a "couple" to be defined just as a pair of comrades. In which case I'd go with Aubrey-Maturin from the Patrick O'Brian novels, and Holmes-Watson.
Joe Hill
I'm going to answer this one in the Escape Hatch newsletter, which folks can sign up for on my website!
Joe Hill
I read a lot of historical fiction and have impulses to write stuff set in America's past. The older I get, the more I find myself thinking about the way no one can escape history. No matter how much agency you claim for yourself, no matter how you plan, history is this tidal force that catches you up and bears you away from all your certainties. If you're lucky, it doesn't drown you.
Whether or not my readers really want me to do a historical thing is another question.
Whether or not my readers really want me to do a historical thing is another question.
Joe Hill
I don't know. I have some ideas but I'm not sure I'll ever put them down on paper.
Joe Hill
It's pretty organic. Quite a bit of what I've written is a response to something I read (I just slagged The End of the Affair in a blog post, but I admit that book: Horns was at least partly a reaction to it). I see Heart-Shaped Box as a commentary on M.R. James and a certain kind of Dean Koontz novel (Koontz always has great dogs). NOS4A2 was definitely a conscious response to It. If not for Mary Poppins and J.K. Rowling, The Fireman would be very different, if it existed at all.
Basically, I'm a geek, and in my fiction, I am geeking out to the max about the novels and stories and poems that thrilled me.
Basically, I'm a geek, and in my fiction, I am geeking out to the max about the novels and stories and poems that thrilled me.
Joe Hill
Beggars Banquet has "Sympathy for the Devil" on it and that was one of the anthems for the novel. The rest of that LP is pretty good too.
Joe Hill
You mean HELL yeah.
Joe Hill
Two good ones, from memory:
The primroses were over.
When the woman screamed, Parker rolled out of the bed.
I leave it to you to figure out where they're from.
The primroses were over.
When the woman screamed, Parker rolled out of the bed.
I leave it to you to figure out where they're from.
Joe Hill
The desert world has come up with an answer to the Turducken -- Piecaken.
But I'd still go with pie, because I prefer a hot flaky crust to a gob of icing any day.
But I'd still go with pie, because I prefer a hot flaky crust to a gob of icing any day.
Joe Hill
Nope. I have absolutely nothing against a perfectly lovely breed of cat. A Norton Manx is a British Motorcycle, and this is a book that was written by a guy who had English bikes very much on the brain.
Joe Hill
Visit www.joehillfiction.com and scroll down. There's a sign-up form on the front page. Thanks for subscribing to the newsletter.
Joe Hill
It seemed like the kind of thing William Goldman would do. To my mind, Goldman perfected the modern thriller. He's best known, of course, for The Princess Bride, a book that will never, ever go out of print. But he's also a master of the lean, mean page-turner, and he does a lot of crazy things with sentences and chapter breaks to keep his reader off balance and in the flow. If you want to see what I'm talking about, have a look at Marathon Man; that's a great one to start with.
Joe Hill
To answer the first question, probably Lonesome Dove, True Grit, and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.
I'm tempted to skip the second question -- I don't know there is such a thing as one book that everyone everywhere should read. I think, though, that at a certain point, it's difficult to think about the big ideas in English literature without at least a passing acquaintance with Shakespeare. And if you were only to read one of the plays, my unfashionable pick would be The Tempest.
I'm tempted to skip the second question -- I don't know there is such a thing as one book that everyone everywhere should read. I think, though, that at a certain point, it's difficult to think about the big ideas in English literature without at least a passing acquaintance with Shakespeare. And if you were only to read one of the plays, my unfashionable pick would be The Tempest.
Joe Hill
I will be answering this one in the third issue of Escape Hatch, out in two weeks.
Joe Hill
I have answered this question in the forthcoming issue of Escape Hatch, my monthly newsletter, out later this morning.
Joe Hill
I see genre as a set of props that you can bring in to stage the performance. In the horror prop room there's the axe, strobes for suggesting the flash of lightning, plastic gallon jugs of fake blood. In the science fiction prop room, you've got the robot costume and a drawer full of Buck Rogers zap guns. And so on. If you use those props, you're inevitably going to encourage certain expectations in your audience, which you can seek to meet or confound, depending on your goals.
If I'm not sure The Fireman is really horror, it's probably because I got most of my props from the science fiction department, with a couple side trips to to the room where we store stuff for romantic comedies. I also visited the wardrobe we use for "road trip" stories. Oh, and also, I grabbed a carpetbag left over from the theater's last performance of Mary Poppins. Ahem.
If I'm not sure The Fireman is really horror, it's probably because I got most of my props from the science fiction department, with a couple side trips to to the room where we store stuff for romantic comedies. I also visited the wardrobe we use for "road trip" stories. Oh, and also, I grabbed a carpetbag left over from the theater's last performance of Mary Poppins. Ahem.
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