Anton Strout: Dead to Me

 

Title: Dead To Me
Author: Anton Strout (http://www.antonstrout.com/)
Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Ace
ISBN: 978-0-441015-78-8

The Interview:

1. First off, congratulations on the big novel sale! Give us the elevator pitch. What’s your book about?

Welcome to the Department of Extraordinary Affairs Other Division-New York’s answer to the underfunded world of paranormal investigation.  It’s a job caught up in red tape, memos, and office politics, but its becoming par for the course for recent recruit Simon Canderous.  After a life of petty crime and twenty four years of watching his power of psychometry-the ability to divine information solely by touching an object-destroy any chance of a real relationship, he’s joined the forces of Good hoping to gain some control.  But when the mysterious ghost of a recently dead woman shows up at the Lovecraft Café, he and his mentor must figure out how she fits into a nefarious plot involving the cultists rights movement, a large wooden fish, and the forces of Darkness crushing on him.   Crap.  Did I just miss my floor?  Can you hit ‘five’ for me?  Thanks.

2. Most new novelists have an interesting story to tell about their journey to publication. What’s yours? Did you use an agent? Make sure to tell us about the day you found out you’d sold a book.

I always dabbled in writing, but never really took the idea of it seriously until about 2000.  For the past ten years, my day job has been working for Penguin Group (USA) in their paperback sales department and I’ve seen tons of books come through our doors.  When I decided to actually buckle down, I joined a workshop run by fiction writer Jennifer Belle.  I didn’t want to be in a fantasy one necessarily because what I was really working on was good writing and general characterization, and I found what I needed in her workshop.  Then I started asking several editors from my day job if they would mind giving it a look over, simply on the side.  They agreed, and I bit my nails for awhile waiting as more books like mine kept getting published all around me… Jim Butcher, Laurell K. Hamilton, and more recently our Patricia Briggs.  I started shopping for an agent around the same time and ironically was offered representation with ICM the same weekend I sold the book and its follow up to Ace.

The day I found out via email since no one could find me in my office, I literally was heading out of town for business for a week, so I must have seemed quite the thankless bastard because other than a quick OMG yes, I disappeared off the grid.  I was pretty much dazed and useless the rest of that day.. some say it’s a state I’m still in.  They might be right.

3. Do you have another book in the pipeline? What are you working on now?

I have a few things in the works.  I just finished the manuscript for the sequel to DEAD TO ME, which promises more Manhattan, more zombies, and more supernatural goodies than you can shake a retractable baseball bat at!  I would guess book two will be scheduled for March 2009.

This June, a tie-in story to the DEAD TO ME world will appear in THE DIMENSION NEXT DOOR (DAW), retelling historical events from certain parts of the main series.

I also have a mainstream fiction novel about a punk band past its prime that I’m working on, but it’s been shelved until I clear some of this paying work out of the way.

4. What’s your writing process like? Morning writer, night writer, or something in between?

I’m a nerd.  I outline my novel very briefly using Excel to keep it simple.  I export all that to Word and start building up scenes around those notes, usually starting from the top of the story these days as I know my cast of characters and world pretty well by now.  It’s just easier for me to be linear.

As far as my schedule, I try to get a little writing done everyday, which sometimes means sitting down in the chair even when the words aren’t coming.  Eventually, my brain starts to get the hint and kicks in by Pavlovian response after awhile.  I do most of my writing late in the evening, probably a 10pm to 2am shift.  I only get about five hours of sleep which seems to be more than enough for me, then it’s off to my day job.  Rinse and repeat.  My wife is very understanding as she used to be an editor.

5. There seems to be an unusually high percentage of writers who own cats. Here at the The First Book, we’re doing a study to find out if there’s a direct relationship between writing success and cat ownership.  Do you own a cat? If so, tell us about him or her. If not, tell us what you have against cats.

Here are my metrics:

I own two cats currently.  I’ve always had cats.  I don’t write about cats at all and I don’t use any of the ideas they whisper to me.  Most of them are crap, anyway…

Their names are:

Lizzy Boo- mellow girl cat rescued from Chinatown in NYC.  Not too jumpy.

Luna Bug- shelter cat who I took because he had been abused and hid at the back of his cage so no one would have rescued him.  He’s a gentle boy, just spastic from whatever abuse he suffered before I took him in

My ex has our other two animals…

Loki Bear- ancient tortoise shell girl cat

Lucy Bean- a dog, a Welsh Corgi

See a pattern in the naming?  L word ending in vowel followed by one syllable B word… I don’t know why, but I find it aesthetically pleasing.