Words matter. These are the best Jonathan Maberry Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
When my writing career took off, it was pretty easy to keep my ego in check because old-school martial arts isn’t about ego gratification. It’s about maintaining a balanced view of the world and your place in it.
When I first encountered the ‘Sigma Force’ novels – long before I became friends with Jim Rollins – a bookseller told me that these stories were about ‘geeks with guns.’ While not entirely accurate, that’s pretty close to the mark, and that really speaks to me.
I wrote a novel, Ghost Road Rules, and as soon as it was done and polished, I began reaching out to agents. I ignored the frequent advice to ‘shoot low and try for a low-level agent because they’re the only ones that will take a flyer on a new author.’ That sounded like bad advice to me.
With ‘Extinction Machine,’ I wanted to start some conversations about whether we’re alone in the universe and what that might mean.
I write every day. Most weekdays, I write about ten hours a day. That doesn’t mean eight hours of surfing the Net or watching videos on YouTube. I park my butt in a chair and write… I learned that writer’s block is a myth created by people who don’t have, or understand, a writing process.
My first book deal was actually for a textbook – ‘Judo and You’ – that I wrote while teaching at Temple University. A scout for Kendall-Hunt came looking for someone to write the book, and even though it wasn’t a course I was teaching there, I agreed to write it.
When I was in middle school, the librarian there was secretary for a couple of groups of professional writers. She introduced me to Ray Bradbury and Richard Matheson, and I became very friendly with them over a period of two years. Both of them were very generous with their time, guidance and advice.
Jim Rollins is the king of the weird science action genre.
When people ask me about what I learned from martial arts, I don’t talk about favorite punches or kicks, or about fights won or lost. I talk about learning self-discipline, about ethics and manners and benevolence and fairness.
When we look at the flowers, we suddenly forget so many important things. We forget that all flowers die. We forget that winter will come again. We forget that nothing really endures and that, like the flowers that die at the end of the growing season, we’ll join them in the cold ground.
Like most writers, I read deeply into the genre in which I write.
Get your butt in a chair and write. If it comes out weak or bad or clunky or ordinary, then accept that this happens to everyone. Everyone. Get it down, get it done, and fix it in the rewrite. Just like everyone from Stephen King to J. K. Rowling to Chuck Palahniuk does.
