Science fiction is the ugly stepchild of mainstream literature, and fantasy is the ugly stepchild of science fiction, and tie-in novels are the ugly stepchild of fantasy… and on and on and on.
Growing up devouring horror comics and novels, and being inspired to become a writer because of horror novels, movies, and comic books, I always knew I was going to write a horror novel.
As new technology emerges as the greatest challenge to novels since the advent of film, it may be that the fragmentation of storytelling into installments key to Dickens’s era will be recreated in some way.
The worst violence we can do to each other often is psychological, especially in families. I dwell a lot on domestic danger. That’s the backdrop of most of my novels – what kind of damage is done without ever lifting a finger.
I didn’t know anything about romance novels until a friend suggested that I try writing one. After I read a few, I realized that my favorite part of fiction had always been the relationship aspect.
Oh yeah, I grew up with comics. You know, I always like to describe myself as a ‘narrative junkie.’ I love novels, I love comics, movies, TV. If it’s a good story, I’m hooked.
In the 1930s, all the novelists had seemed to be people who came blazing up into stardom from out of total obscurity. That seemed to be the nature of the beast. The biographical notes on the dustjackets of the novels were terrific.
All novels must be autobiographical because I am the only material that I know. All of the characters are me. But at the same time, a novel is never autobiographical even if it describes the life of the author. Literary writing is a completely different medium.
This is one of his most human and most amusing and witty novels. The characters are very Indian. I decided that I wanted to do a comedy, so this was just the right one.
I love reading about the supernatural, and time-slip novels, and the mistress of both is Barbara Erskine.
Often I think the novels I read won’t make very good movies – I better not say which I’m looking at for potential films! – but it’s nice to have an excuse to just sit and read for a whole day.
Novels often have leisurely openings; a TV drama needs an arresting opening.
It’s a given that we exist in a world where we have to live in continuity every day; no one is immune to that, in life or romance novels. By the same token, it’s not something I find terribly important.
When I was 13 or 14, I started devouring novels; literature took quite a while to take me over, but it caught up just in time to save me from becoming a mathematician.
Down the road a bit, I would like to write a couple of stand-alone adult novels, especially in the horror genre. I’ve got lots of things up my sleeve.
Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence – a lot passes you by – simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.
Even though I got a late start, first publishing an essay when I was 50 years old, I’ve since written eight suspense novels.
I chose a time in the century which had the greatest moments for novels – the late ’30s and World War II.
I have written two medical novels. I have never studied medicine, never seen an operation.
Why do I like to write short stories? Well, I certainly didn’t intend to. I was going to write a novel. And still! I still come up with ideas for novels. And I even start novels. But something happens to them. They break up. I look at what I really want to do with the material, and it never turns out to be a novel.
For me, writing post-apocalyptic novels isn’t so much about exploding helicopters and fifty-megaton doomsday bombs as it is about the pleasure of dealing with the best of everything that makes us human: cleverness, grit, loyalty, and self-sacrifice.
I started out as a novelist and wrote several novels before deciding to publish one, and I fully intend to go back to the form.
In 1966, I attended Marquette University and graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1970. I received my doctorate in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where I wrote my dissertation on William Faulkner’s early novels.
For me, writing a novel is like solving a puzzle. But I don’t intend my novels as puzzles. I intend them as invitations to dance.
I do have two data identities. I have my name, Bruce Sterling, which is my public name under which I write novels. I also have my other name, which is my legal name under which I own property and vote.
I don’t just want my books to be about the ’30s and ’40s. I want them to read as if they had been written then. I think of them as ’40s novels, written in the conservative narrative past.
I am suspicious of writers who say their work is original and influenced by nobody. If it is, it is probably uninteresting. The biggest source of novels is other novels.
Mark Helprin and Lawrence Durrell, both of whom write fat and florid novels that appall me now but opened my eyes to the power of fiction when I was in my 20s.
I began my writing life as a poet, so poetry has always been fundamental. I evolved from poetry to journalism to stories to novels. But poetry was always there.
I have been incredibly lucky with my novels but I had absolutely no idea if anyone would be interested in a cookbook. So I started to think about self-publishing.
When I was a teenager, I thought how great it would be if only I could write novels in English. I had the feeling that I would be able to express my emotions so much more directly than if I wrote in Japanese.
There’s no lack of writers writing novels in America, about America. Therefore, it seems to me it would be wasteful for me to add to that huge number of people writing here when there are so few people writing about somewhere else.
Look at Austen. In her novels, you get a dance, followed by an encounter, followed by a letter, then a period of solitude. No flashbacks and no backstory. Let’s have no more back story!
Sometimes, a novel is like a train: the first chapter is a comfortable seat in an attractive carriage, and the narrative speeds up. But there are other sorts of trains, and other sorts of novels. They rush by in the dark; passengers framed in the lighted windows are smiling and enjoying themselves.
There are two different forms of storytelling: Novels tend to come from the inside of a character, and movies tend to look at them from the outside in relation to others in their world.
I started out when I was 29 – too young to write novels. I was broke. I was on unemployment insurance. I was supposed to be writing a Ph.D. dissertation, so I had a typewriter and a lot of paper.
I’ve always been charmed by houses, and descriptions of them are prominent in my novels. So prominent, in fact, that my editor once pointed out to me that all of my early novels had houses on the covers.
I didn’t get anything published until I was thirty-three, and yet I’d written five novels and six or seven plays. The plays, I should point out, were dreadful.
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 must say, it was a lot easier writing novels than I thought it would be. I think it’s because I’m a novelist at heart, and it took me a while to figure that out.
My novels are about the European reality, not about chases. You want chases, get somebody else’s books.
Rejection is part of the process, so you can’t let it crush you. My first three novels never made it into publication, but my fourth, ‘Sheltering Rain,’ was translated into 11 languages.
They say great themes make great novels. but what these young writers don’t understand is that there is no greater theme than men and women.
I had been attempting novels since I was 14 but always ran out of steam. High hopes, poor craftsmanship.
The world is full of novels in which characters simply say and do. There are certainly legitimate genres in which this is sufficient. But in real and lasting writing the character is.
I have to say that movies have as much impact on me as music. And that I learned as much about narrative from movies as I did from reading novels, how to arrange stories, how to juxtapose things.
I would only read the novels that people classify as ‘beach books’ if I were being held prisoner and the only alternative was the ‘Book of Mormon.’
Romance novels are my favorite books to read. I write young adult romances, and am so happy to be promoting this wonderful genre.
As a kid, I dreamt of becoming a writer. My most exciting pastime was reading novels; in fact, I would read anything I could find.
I think, above all, the characters in my novels feel universal to the readers.
I wrote about four novels before I wrote a word of journalism.
Writing novels is so much more satisfying than writing television.
In suspense novels even subplots about relationships have to have conflict.
The biggest threat to a better life is the desire to keep the future under control – to make the world predictable by reining in creativity and enterprise. Progress as a neat blueprint, with no deviations and no surprise, may work in children’s cartoons or utopian novels. But it’s just a fantasy.
