Evan Kilgore
Here
is a very free wheeling interview with Evan Kilgore, author of Who is Shayla Hacker. It is a facinating
glimpse into the process of writing. The questions are very random- the
interviewer, Barb's fault- so thank you to Evan for his patience and
in depth answers!
You are a recent college grad. Tell us
about your life before that.
I’ve been writing most of my life. When I was very little, I’d
make picture books, and then, after I got clued into the whole alphabet
thing, words began to creep in. By the time I was in middle
school, I started doing what I’d consider novel-length projects.
At the time, it was very…I guess, juvenile. James Bond-style
stuff, lots of guns, space ships, and government conspiracies. In
high school, I started to get more serious about it all, but at the
same time, I was still kind of playing around with a lot of different
interests.
When I was about fourteen, I think, I started a web, graphic, and
application design company, and got very much into the
programming/computer world for a while. After selling some of my
software on a web site I put together, I started getting approached by
different companies looking for custom programs, and I wound up doing
about a dozen different projects for corporate clients across the U.S.,
and in Australia and Europe.
At the time, I was also drumming in a basement rock band. My
brother and I took to designing a computer game that I think I still
have on an old disc somewhere (it was complicated and kind of epic),
and we also began putting together some stop-motion movies using some
of our old toys.
When I toured USC’s film school, it just kind of struck a chord with
me. I’d never written in the screenplay format before, but I
always loved movies, and it seemed like a great fit. I applied
and got in, and over the next few years, the programming stuff sort of
fell by the wayside, and I concentrated on writing more full-time.
I wrote Who is Shayla Hacker over the summer after my sophomore year at
USC, when I was 20. Much of it I did while on lunch breaks at
production company internships I was tackling that year. I
started submitting it places that fall, and eventually, it found its
way to the awesome guys at Bleak House, who took a chance on a kid and
put it on the shelves.
This is your
first published book but you have said you have written over 36,
correct? Who or what has encouraged to keep writing?
That’s correct; I’ve completed 36, and I’m at work on my 37th right
now. Shayla Hacker is my first published book. About four
years ago, I actually had another novel of mine I wrote in high school,
The Book of Lies, accepted at a different publisher, but that company
unfortunately went under before it could see the light of day.
I’d have to say in the beginning, it was probably my parents’
encouragement and my family’s overall love for storytelling and the
written word that kept me coming back. My Mom would read to my
brother and me for hours on end when we were little, and my Dad and my
brother and I would do these ridiculous stories on tape recorders with
sound effects and all kinds of crazy other stuff. I think my brother
and I both just soaked it up. That early on (I think I was maybe
three years old the first time I heard The Hobbit, The Lord of the
Rings, Narnia, and all those other classics), I think just the sound of
the language really has a profound effect on you.
By now, it has become an addiction. I literally have a hard time
going a day without writing. It’s such a part of me that I can’t
ever really stop my mind from wandering to whatever story I’m working
on at any given time, whether it’s a book, a screenplay, or a TV
episode. I kind of live in two worlds at any given time – the
real one and this imaginary place that I can’t ever really escape or
even tune out.
You have been working on a
Discovery Channel series on what inspires artists. What inspires you?
Everything. Although it seems kind of cliché, and I’m not
a fan of those trendy “writerly” little quirks (like good-luck pens or
handles of Jack Daniels in desk drawers), I do keep a notebook and pen
on me at all times. Anything can be inspiring. It could be
a commercial for detergent or something, where, in the background of
all the fluffy towels and laundry baskets, there’s this man standing in
a field of dandelions or whatever, and he’s just staring. I start
wondering what his story is. Who is this guy? Or I’ll be
finding my gate at the airport, and I’ll pass a mysterious little door
that looks like it goes nowhere or it’s all bricked up, and that gets
me thinking about what’s on the other side. When’s the door
from? Why would they need to brick it up? What might be on
the other side?
There are stories absolutely everywhere.
It infuriates people sometimes because they think I’m taking notes on
them. Usually, I’m not. I don’t think I’ve ever consciously
put anyone I know into a book, though mannerisms, experiences, and
dialogue can sometimes find its way in, here and there. More
often than not, though, it’s something completely random that wouldn’t
really make sense in any context other than what was going on in my
head at the time.
What I found, working on that show and talking to the artists involved,
is that a lot of it just has to do with having an open mind.
Absorbing the world and seeing possibilities in shadowy alleys and
mountaintops and bridges and rivers instead of just seeing the road to
dinner or the route to the office. People and places want
to tell stories. You just have to want to look for them.
Your book is
very vividly written- the reader can see the scenes as written. Is that
a film background? How has film/tv affected your writing?
Thank you – I’m glad the imagery came across. I feel like I’ve
been writing in a similar style since before I started at film
school. Perhaps a part of it is the process - how I write.
When it comes to books, I’m not big on outlining, mapping character
arcs, and all of that. It feels too synthetic to me. I like
to write like a reader, which means experiencing the story and
following it as though I’m living in it. I loved reading as a
kid, and part of the fun of writing is recreating that experience for
myself over and over again.
That’s not to say the overall direction of the story isn’t planned out
ahead of time, but when I sit down each morning, I enter the world of
the book. I’m there with the characters; not thinking about
whether this needs to be a second turning point in the book or a
mid-plot twist or whatever.
That type of thing I save for the film and TV process, which, for me,
is completely different. For a screenplay, it’s all about
outlining, planning, and making each scene serve several distinct
purposes with respect to the story, the characters, the exact imagery,
and the dialogue. After taking film classes, I do think a little
more about the pacing and the character arcs – or perhaps just think
about them in different ways, with a different vocabulary – but I
always try to make sure that the process isn’t getting in the way of
the experience.
How has the
adventure of a new published author been so far? Do you enjoy the PR
aspects of it?
I love it. I’m still learning the ropes of how it all works, and
each event I’ve done so far has been slightly different, but traveling
is something I always enjoy, and this is an excuse to go all over the
country. I’m seeing places I might never have seen and meeting
tons of great people I’d never have met. Everyone’s been
fantastic, everywhere I’ve been – very friendly, supportive, and fun.
I’m sure, one of these days, I’ll face a room of angry hecklers, but
I’m new enough to it all that so far, it’s just been a blast.
What has the
hardest part of the book process been? The most enjoyable?
Hmm. I guess the hardest part was just waiting for everything to
come together. After the good guys at Bleak House called me to
say they wanted Who is Shayla Hacker, there was a good year or
year-and-a-half while they worked out the rest of their lineup, and we
went through the editing process. It was wildly exciting for me,
so bottling up that excitement for a year was kind of hard.
Cutting about 10,000 words from the first draft wasn’t too easy, either.
The most enjoyable part, I’d have to say, is the writing. I
didn’t get into writing because I wanted to be A Writer; I got into it
because I love writing. When I sit down at the keyboard each
morning, I’m not thinking about whether or not the book’s going to be
marketable, or how many pages I’ve got to fill before I can wrap it up
and send it off. It is a chance for me to enter a different world
as another person and do absolutely anything I want.
There are occasional dry days, of course– when it’s just not clicking
and nothing seems to come out right – but most of the time, it is
absolutely the greatest high I’ve ever experienced.
Who is creating
"The Asylum" on your web site and why?
“The Asylum” (www.insaneonline.com) is a project I actually started
about ten years ago. That, mind you, made me about 13 when it
began, and I was very into games at the time. Any time I find
something I like, I usually try to figure out a way I can make my own
version of it, because to me, understanding how it works and doing it
myself is ten times more enjoyable than simply experiencing it.
After playing some old-fashioned computer games, The Asylum was my
(early) way of turning around and making one of my own. I’ve
added to it over the years. Every now and then, in a rare gap in
my schedule, I’ll find myself coming back to it. I love creepy
old places, and I love insanity.
I think I spend a significant (and perhaps unhealthy) quantity of time
just thinking, and that kind of thing makes you realize how fragile
perception and the real world really are. Everything really only
seems real because we tell ourselves it does, and honestly, who’s to
say that the one crazy guy screaming at invisible spiders in a padded
cell isn’t the sane one, and the rest of us are out of our minds?
In the beginning, I was devising this grand story that would hold
together The Asylum – a kind of mystery for you to solve. There
are still elements of that. You might pick up some clues and
fragments of it if you poke around the different sections in its
depths. Someday, maybe, I’ll answer those dangling questions, but
for now, I’m content to let it be a kind of refuge I can settle into
and explore when I happen to be feeling in just that particular mood.
How are the TV
series and miniseries prospects going? Should we be watching for your
work soon?
At present, those particular projects are on hold. I am
developing some very exciting new material, and meeting some great
people, but right this instant, I can’t really say more.
Hopefully something will be hitting the screens in the next few years,
but there’s nothing totally set in stone just yet.
If you could
give your book to one person who would it be and why?
David Lynch. I have an inordinate respect for the man, he seems
blindingly insane, and I’d love to hear his take on it. His
particular brand of craziness both fascinates and resonates with me.
You have some
very unique settings in your book. Where did you come up with them?
Travel is a definite constant in my work. I love books and movies
that take you places. To me, that’s part of the magic of the
medium. There’s such freedom to be able to go to locations (real
or imagined) you might never see in your lifetime. I like to get
to the end of a story and feel like I’ve been on a journey with the
characters – to go back in my mind and remember it like I would a
vacation to Europe, Asia, Australia. I love to be able to reread
the first few pages of a book I’ve just finished and feel like I’m
really looking back at different people in different times of their
lives, before a major adventure they’ll never forget.
At the same time, age and history fascinate me. It’s something of
a cliché, but there’s really not much of a sense of it here in
America, just because we are so relatively young as a country.
I’ve been fortunate enough to do a decent amount of traveling abroad,
and when I’ve stood in front of cathedrals from the 1500s or, better
yet, sarcophagi that date back to thousands of years, BC, to me, it’s
impossible not to feel something there. It’s like hearing the
echoes of the generations of people who have stood and looked at this
same artifact. Someone in the Middle Ages could have stumbled
upon this and even then thought, This thing is inconceivably old!
I find I’m strongly pulled to that sense of age and history.
There are stories in that, so when I’m traveling places in my head
while working on a book, I like to go to exotic locations (such as the
Amazon and Egypt, in Who is Shayla Hacker) that just innately have that
kind of depth oozing from them.
How did you
come up with those specific five characters from the book?
One of the underlying themes in Who is Shayla Hacker is this sense of
connection, even between the most random and isolated people.
Each of these characters is kind of alone at the beginning of the book,
and ironically, it’s that loneliness – that need – that becomes
something of a bond between them. As it turns out, I wound up
with a cast of people who span the generations and run the gamut as far
as careers and backgrounds, but to be perfectly honest, there wasn’t
some master plan behind that part of the story. When I wrote the
first chapter of Shayla Hacker, I listened to the voices that
interested me the most, and I went with them. A lot of the time,
that’s how I find my work comes together. The characters speak
for themselves, and although I know generally who they are and how
they’ll play into the story from the start, there’s a lot that comes
from “them” as the book gets underway.
As a side note, some readers have suggested the five main characters
might be facets of one single, all-encompassing “master” character, and
everything in the book is largely symbolic, as opposed to literal. I
don’t think I’ll comment either way with regards to my take on that,
but I found it an interesting interpretation.
You write every
day. Are you working on any new books?
It’s true, I do write every day, and I always have a book going in the
background. Even if I’m concentrating on a script for the
time-being, I find I really need to have a novel in progress to
maintain some strange and probably vaguely-neurotic sense of balance in
my life.
I’m ironing out my lineup with Bleak House, and we’re in the process of
going over roughly three completed projects that I think would be a
good fit with them. I don’t know that I want to go on record with
any specifics about those yet, but in the next month or so, it’s
looking like I should have some more official announcements to make.
As far as what I’m actively working on this moment, I’m about
two-thirds of the way through a surreal novel set in the 1930s that
revolves around the bizarre, the far-reaching, and the vaguely
fantastical. I’d never written a period piece, and it was a crazy
time. The more research I did, the more I became really
fascinated by the different elements I could incorporate – with a
strange twist, of course.
I’m also editing a first draft of the Who is Shayla Hacker screenplay
adaptation, as well as mapping out a couple more features and TV
projects.
If all goes well, I’m hoping for a pretty busy year ahead…