Today's author interview is with a great friend and author, Nikolas P. Robinson
Welcome to the blog, and all of that. Has writing always been a passion of yours,
or did you discover it at a later age?
I
actually have copies (if I can track them down) of little illustrated stories
that I was writing back in first and second grade, some poems as well. I always
enjoyed reading, and I suppose that writing just came along as a natural
extension of that first passion. The problem is that I forgot that for a long
time, somehow I lost sight of my passion for writing for a number of years.
Thankfully I pulled my head out of my ass, and everything is back on track
again.
Do you outline or write as you go?
It depends on the piece…or where I happen to be in the creative process.
Sometimes I write as I go all along, sometimes I begin with an outline, and
sometimes I write along at a steady clip for a period of time before deciding
that an outline might be in order so as to provide myself with a bit of
structure and some markers that I can really feel myself working towards.
What inspires you?
Snippets of song, random little bits of
conversation that I’ve happened to share with friends, elements of things that
I have read, thought experiments, a snapshot memory of one location or
another…there are numerous things that I happen to find inspirational, so many
that I wouldn’t be able to stop if I really opted to go into any sort of real
detail.
Do you get inspired by a certain element
(Water? Fire? Air? Etc.):
Yes, I happen to find bohrium quite
inspirational. Seeing as how fire, air, and the like aren’t elements of any
sort, I don’t really know how to answer the question with any sincerity. I do
happen to find wildfires quite lovely though.
Do you listen to music or multitask while
writing?
I frequently have music or the television on while writing,
though silence is admittedly more conducive to the process for me. Strangely
enough, as antisocial as I happen to be, I used to find relatively busy coffee
shops and diners to be excellent environments for writing. I suppose that it
ultimately depends on timing, different moods require different environments in
order to really get me into the right state of mind for creativity to arise.
What is your favorite genre, and least
favorite?
I can’t say that I actually have a least
favorite genre; since there are works within every conceivable genre that I do
very much enjoy (even romance, since I happen to be a fan of The Notebook and
The Time Traveler’s Wife).
My favorite genres would unsurprisingly be horror and hard
science fiction.
Who are among your favorite authors?
Well, I happen to love Ayn Rand’s capacity to interlace
genuine philosophical thought into well-composed fictional narratives (at least
I always found them to be well-composed, though I have heard numerous other
people complaining about her writing over the years). Frank Herbert and
Alastair Reynolds are my heroes when it comes to science fiction. Both authors
are (or “were” in the case of Herbert) brilliant when it involves crafting
immersive, expansive new universes into which they projected their creative
vision.
What is your favorite piece you’ve written,
and what is it about?
I
haven’t written my favorite piece yet, or not completely. It is still rattling
around in my head and slowly being put down on paper and the like…but I do have
a favorite. Granted, it will depend on how different things turn out, which of
those pieces in progress happens to ultimately be my favorite…but since they’re
only partially written, I can’t say for sure.
Let’s change things up:
What is a hidden talent of yours?
I used to be able to sing fairly well…used
to be a musician as well. Now and again I consider going back to making music,
and I love the idea of doing so…but the practical application isn’t as pleasant
as it might seem, since I don’t do well with being in front of people as a
focus of their attention.
Also, I can roll my penis up into the loose skin at the base
of the shaft so that it appears that I have a massive scrotum with three
testicles and no penis. I refer to it as the mollusk, though I can’t really
explain why that particular name was chosen. Should I provide a picture…or even
just an ink sketch diagram of the process that is involved?
Do you have any animals?
I have a beagle, an unwanted nuisance of a cat, and two ferrets…as well as
children, do they count? I’ll assume that children count as animals, since they
do happen to be primates.
Favorites:
TV shows
There are far too many to list them all, but I suppose that I
will provide the Letterman list of my top ten favorites in no particular order
(as of this particular moment, in a second or two my list might be slightly
different, depending on mood): Farscape, Firefly, The Walking Dead, Game of
Thrones, Dexter, Battlestar Galactica, House, Supernatural, Fringe, and Castle.
Movies
This is another one with far too large of a list to really go
into, but here’s a brief list of my favorites: Dune, Serenity, Frequency, The
Salton Sea, Romeo Is Bleeding, The Fifth Element, Night of the Living Dead, The
Evil Dead, The Machinist, and Vertigo.
Books
As
with the other media-related queries, I will try and answer with a top ten
list, without any numerical values assigned: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, Dune
by Frank Herbert, The Steel Remains by Richard K. Morgan, Hater by David Moody,
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, Beggars In Spain by Nancy Kress,
Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds, World War Z by Max Brooks, Snow Crash by
Neal Stephenson, and Starfish by Peter Watts.
Animal
I don’t believe that I have a favorite animal. If asked
whether I happen to be a dog or a cat person, I am definitely a dog
person...unless “dog” happens to include one of those abominations that are
more like hamsters or gerbils than anything of the canine species.
Color
I would have to say that gray or black are my favorites, but they aren’t colors
so much as shades…where colors are concerned, I happen to prefer deep, rich
varieties of blue, black, and red.
And last but not least, tell us all about
your upcoming novel.
I
actually have two novels in progress that are in contention for the title of
“upcoming” since they’re plodding along at approximately the same pace, in
addition to another one or two that are coming along a bit more slowly. I’d
love to tell you about them, but I wouldn’t know which one(s) to focus on…so,
it’ll be as much a surprise for you as it is for me, I suppose. Two are horror,
one is science fiction, and the other is something akin to the urban fantasy
genre in a sense.
The
following is a brief excerpt from my novel The Dead (working title), which I
initially started writing a few years ago, only to put it on hiatus until quite
recently:
I was sluggish that morning, it was
too damned hot in my trailer, and the stifling temperatures of late spring
always caused me to be rather lethargic. The air conditioner had stopped
working the fall before, and I hadn’t bothered to purchase a new one since
then. Money had been pretty tight for a while now, by my estimations at least,
too many of my customers had gotten arrested or had found better deals
elsewhere over the past couple of months. Besides, heroin was a dying trade. I
understood that fact, hell, there was absolutely no way that anyone could have
gotten me to inject that filthy shit into my own body. I had seen the scum that
got strung out on junk for far too many years to ever actually have any desire
to emulate them. But the money was good, it beat the hell out of actually
showing up to work at some dead end job for a living. And if these fucking
wastes of flesh weren’t getting their fixes from me, the money would just end
up padding someone else’s pocket, probably some strung out piece of shit
themselves. So I found it to be a far better thing that I be raking it in than
the alternative.
The
day was bright, despite the clouds coming in and I slapped at the blinds for a
couple of minutes before they finally fell closed. I’d had too much to drink
the night before, the throbbing behind my eyes served as a testament to that. I
could barely remember if I’d been drinking alone, or if there’d been company
along for the bender, but I believed that I’d been flying solo. There wasn’t a
woman or another man, an occasional option, in my bed with me, so it stood to
reason that I could assume that I hadn’t gotten laid. No great tragedy there,
I’d probably had enough of the mindless fuck puppets at the bars around here.
And that left only my customers as the remaining option, and I’d sooner take a
straight razor to my cock than shove it into one of those degenerates. I
wouldn’t be surprised if half of those sallow, scrawny shits were infected with
A.I.D.S or something equally as bad. Nothing could make me that desperate for
flesh.
I
was going to piss myself if I didn’t get up though, so I stood up on unsteady
legs and made my laborious way to the bathroom down the hall. Not that it would
have been the first time that I’d been intoxicated enough to just let loose in
my sleep. However, on these nights I’d had so much to drink that my sweat and
urine were functionally impossible to differentiate from one another due to the
high alcohol content of both, so I only presume that I’d pissed my sheets like
some snotty little brat. At least I know for certain that my bowels had never
released while I was in slumber, so I hadn’t reached that degree of alcoholic
decline. However, anything was possible with time, and I was well on my way
down the road that would eventually and inevitably lead to regularly soiled
linens on par with those found in convalescent or nursing homes. The worst part
about all of this was that I really couldn’t care less.
The
yellow light in the bathroom made me appear jaundiced in the mirror, but I knew
that it wasn’t all the light, that my pallor couldn’t have been a whole lot
better. I lay my .45 on the counter and removed my penis from the open flap of
my boxers and pissed standing up into the sink. It wasn’t because there was a
problem with my plumbing; it was simply more convenient to relieve myself in
this way with an erection, less painful bending of the instrument in question.
After
I was finished I ran some water into the basin in order to clean it out. There
was a slight pinkish red tint to my urine, so I had definitely had far too much
to drink. Perhaps I should have checked myself into some manner of AA class or
another, sought treatment for what was quite obviously a serious problem, but
to me more an error in judgment, a lifestyle choice. Hemmingway had been no
better, but he’d also been a successful author, who ultimately self-terminated
after putting himself into seemingly endless situations that should have probably
led to his death anyhow. I was nobody, a nonentity, so I suppose that I didn’t
have the leeway that certain others of more redeeming social value might have
regarding their behaviour. Fucking artists, like somehow being artistically
inclined could excuse being a drunk or a madman. Shit like that sort of
arbitrary double standard drove me nuts my whole life and it still does.
I
was well educated though, I’m not just some shit from a trailer park, white
trash to the core, not that it really matters in the real world. I had
graduated two years before with a degree in economics from UCLA, but contrary
to popular belief, college doesn’t change your life…it does absolutely shit for
a person like myself. Sure, I could have taken some shitty job at some accounting
firm or some business or another, but I had no motivation to waste my life in
such a way. What fun would there be in living like that? Besides, my trailer
and the lot have been paid off for years, my car is paid in full, and I found
that I could make a better living with a less savory use of my understanding of
economics. Sure, there are risks in the life that I’d chosen, but the benefits
are there as well. I can sleep in about as late as I might want, I can afford
to go out drinking every night without having to worry about losing my job for
showing up half tanked. I’ve never been arrested, hell, so far as I knew, I’d
never even crossed by the police radar. According to my cost-benefit analysis,
I had made precisely the right choices as far as my chosen occupation was
concerned.
There
were messages waiting for me on the machine when I made it out to the living
room, a bright flashing red dot informing me that the outside world does indeed
exist regardless of how much better for me life would be if it did not. Fuck
them I figured, if it was important, they could wait until I felt like
returning their calls. I hate those god damned machines, always flashing,
people always calling me. It was like a fucking nightmare, the constant
irritant that the phone could be, connecting me with the trash outside who
always wanted something from me, the dealers wanting money, the junkies wanting
their fixes. Why did I have my number published in the first place? What the
fuck could I have been thinking? I should have just picked up a pager like
every other drug dealer out there, that way these assholes wouldn’t be able to
intrude on the comfort of my home when I didn’t want them to.
It
was only eleven in the morning…I hadn’t slept in nearly so long as I had
figured originally, but who ever knows what time it actually is when they wake
up with a hangover and a bladder full of piss? It’s a good thing that I’d woken
up though; I needed to avoid pissing myself at all costs if it could be
avoided. After all, I still retained some small sense of decency, dignity, and
self respect; perhaps not much, but there was some remnant of those things left
inside of me.
I
felt like a fucking cripple, stumbling around like some kind of defective. I
wandered down the hall into the kitchen and moved shit around almost blindly in
the cupboard for an indeterminate amount of time before I finally found the
bottle that I was looking for, darvocet, the perfect quick cure for the
constant thrumming in my skull. How I could continue living like this is as
mysterious and alien of a concept for me as it would be to nearly anyone else,
but it was habitual now, ingrained into the fabric of my personality. I was an
alcoholic, an addict, the exact same breed of scum that my father had been, and
likely his father before him.
I
rooted around in the fridge for a short while, finally determining that I
should go ahead and wash the pill down with milk, because it was close enough
for food, and about as close to solid material that I could ingest and keep down
for any small period of time. I twisted off the plastic cap and tipped the
gallon back into my mouth. I spit a mouthful of the rancid shit out into the
sink; the fucking milk was spoiled. Damn eyes inability to focus, I should have
noticed by sight, the shit was nearly transparent in the clear plastic bottle,
the curdled chunks floating at the top. My nose was also far too stuffed up to
possibly allow me to smell the fetid odor of the disgusting crap that I’d just
tried to force down my gullet. What a fucking morning.
Tossing
the gallon jug into the garbage, I walked over to the liquor cabinet and
quickly yanked out a bottle of tequila, something guaranteed to wash the rotten
taste out of my suffering mouth. The bitter flavour washed down my throat, a
catalyst necessary to wake me up properly. It probably wasn’t the wisest
decision to be mixing hard liquor with my pain medication on an empty stomach,
but this type of behaviour hadn’t killed me yet, so I figured that it wasn’t
such a big deal as doctors always made it out to be. And what would it really
matter if something did happen? Worst case scenario being that I would kick the
bucket, and what a fucking tragedy that would be. I had no family left, never
really had any friends. The only people who would miss me would be a handful of
needle freaks, and they’d miss me the same way that a child misses Santa Claus
when they finally reach the age of disillusionment.
My
mother died when I was 13, unlucky year indeed. My father quickly thereafter
lost himself in his work and booze, and I couldn’t really blame him. My mother
had been a wonderful woman, holding our damaged little family together. And,
all Freudian psychology aside, I wasn’t willing to settle for anyone less than
her for myself. Good luck there, my father hadn’t degenerated to my degree of
decadence and disrepair until they’d been married for a couple of years.
Finding a woman patient and saintly enough to put up with my manner of bullshit
from the beginning may as well be impossible for how probable it would be.
