It’s Saturday, and I have a brand new Wrong Answers Only Interview to share! This week, I had Kit Power over for a torturing session, and— Well, okay, I was almost bested this week, but it’s only because I don’t completely feel like myself. I blame spiders for my weakness. Stoopid spiders …
Nevertheless, I think I made Kit squirm a bit, and lie, lie, lie. 🙂 So, sit back, and enjoy this week’s Wrong Answers Only Interview with the one and only Kit Power!
Give Me ALL the Wrong Answers …
What inspired you to start writing?
I made a deal with Satan.
I was on a transatlantic flight, as part of my high powered business executive duties, and the double brandy I’d drunk was giving me heartburn. Then the plane lurched in the sky.
All at once, time slowed down. The man in the seat across the aisle turned to me. I’d not really taken him in before that moment – I’m not a terribly observant person at the best of times, and I find most of the rest of business class to be crushingly dull company in any case – but this man was staring straight at me, and even though the plane continued to drop, and people around me cried out as the seatbelt light came on, his gaze held me. Have you ever found an object or picture so fascinating that your eyes are drawn to it? It was like that.
He looked a bit like Roger Delgado – a salt and pepper beard, immaculately trimmed, and eyes so dark brown they were almost black below dark hair in a fierce widow’s peak.
“Do you want to die?” The voice was deep and melodious, with just a hint of amusement, and he delivered the question in the same relaxed tone one might ask a stranger to pass the salt.
The plane lurched again, and I heard a couple of shouts and one quick scream, like a small mammal in the claws of a bird of prey. I registered the sounds and sensations, but they felt distant, faded, unimportant. The man became… realer. More vivid.
I thought about the question. “No, I don’t,” I decided.
He smiled. “You can save the lives of everyone on this plane, you know.”
The plane started to rattle. The shouts and yells were becoming louder. There was a voice on the address system, but I couldn’t make out what it was saying.
“How?” I was aware of a whining noise that was slowly building to a shriek, rattling through my seat, and yet it felt distant, apart, like the signal from a distant radio tower.
The man smiled; a wolfish grin that made his eyes gleam.
“Just a promise, that’s all. An agreement between gentlemen. A man’s word is his bond, is it not?”
I swallowed painfully, my mouth suddenly dry, and nodded. From what felt like a thousand miles away, I could feel my teeth rattling in my jaw, the impact rattling down my neck, through my skull.
The man leaned forward, for all the world like a country club member about to pass on some juicy gossip; who his co-worker was sleeping with, perhaps, or whose stock was about to plummet. “Write fiction. Short stories, novells, novels, I don’t care. But you must always be working on some piece of fiction, with the sincere intent to publish. Understand?”
“Yes, but why?” The words came out as a whine, as an external pressure constrained my throat, feeling like a hand slowly closing off my windpipe.
The grin stayed, but something in the set of his jaw made me realise I’d angered the man. This in turn led to me feeling like my bladder was about to give way – an existential wave of dread that rolled out from my stomach, up and down, making by heart race and my legs tremble.
“Because I like lies. And you now have a very short number of seconds, so…”
“Yes! Yes!”
I shut my eyes as I yelled the words. Then I opened them.
All about me was calm. The vibrations and noises had ceased. A rather bemused stewardess handed me a cup of coffee. “My, aren’t you keen?” she smiled.
I smiled back, the gesture feeling weak on my face.
I drank the coffee.
The flight passed without incident, but the memory didn’t fade, as dreams normally do; instead, it solidified, feeling more and more real with each passing hour, until I was honestly struggling to remember that it hadn’t happened, that what I was experiencing now wasn’t just the final bubble dream of a dying mind, plummeting to his death over the Atlantic.
Truth be told, I’m still not entirely sure. Most nights, I dream of the plane, that man, and his strange grin.
Anyhow. The feeling only went away when I fired up my laptop and started writing fiction.
So that’s why I write fiction.
If you weren’t a writer, what would you be?
An acrobat – I’m naturally limber and have very fluid motion. People often remark upon my graceful athleticism. Often, when I’m watching gymnastics, I’ll find myself thinking ‘I could do that but I don’t wanna’.
And it’s true. I totally could.
How do you handle writer’s block?
I make an effigy of people in my life who have wronged me out of meat products, then destroy them in a controlled detonation in my back garden. I then eat whichever parts of the meat cooked in the explosion, and – without fail – the solution to the block presents itself.
I don’t make the rules.
How do you develop your plot and characters?
Oh, meticulous planning and plotting. I write reams and reams of outlines, background, character diaries, plot beats, hundreds of Post Its. My preparation notes often run to several times the word count of the final product, but hey.
I also sometimes plot by putting character names and situations on a dartboard, and then allow the essentially random act of me throwing the dart to decide what happens to who, because you need that random element I think.
What is the most surprising thing you discovered while writing your book(s)?
Editing is really easy. It’s just a cinch. You just know, instinctively, what’s good and not about a first draft, where to cut, where to extend. It’s all just so… obvious. That surprised me.
Where do you draw inspiration from?
Nowhere. The world has nothing to show me and does not interest me. I’m not a naturally curious person, anyway. I don’t read, either.
Who is your favorite author and why?
Garth Marenghi – got to be in awe of a man who’s written more books than he’s read.
What is your favorite book?
The Wolf Of Wall Street. As I mentioned earlier, I don’t read much, but I made an exception for this, and it didn’t disappoint – amazing on just a sentence level, incredible characterisation, and it’s clear the author is just an amazingly wonderful human being in every sense. At no point did I find myself repeatedly wanting to put out my eyes to make it stop.
Not every other page. Or anything.
What were the key challenges you faced when writing this book?
What to do with all the spare time I had while writing it. Honestly, it got a bit exhausting playing playstation games and watching movies, in between leisurely staring at the screen for hours thinking of nothing.
On a typical day, how much time do you spend writing?
Eight hours a day, and ten at night.
About Kit Power
Kit Power is six foot tall and incredibly handsome.
You can find Kit Power online:
- The book: https://blackshuckbooks.co.uk/the-finite/
-
IndyGoGo campaign for My Life In Horror Vol. 1: /igg.me/at/mylifeinhorror1
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Kitpowerwriter/
- Twitter:https://twitter.com/KitGonzo
- Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kit-Power/e/B00K6J438K
- Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7700839.Kit_Power
About The Finite
The Finite started as a dream; an image, really, on the edge of waking. My daughter and I, joining a stream of people walking past our house. We were marching together, and I saw that many of those behind us were sick, and struggling, and then I looked to the horizon and saw the mushroom cloud. I remember a wave of perfect horror and despair washing over me; the sure and certain knowledge that our march was doomed, as were we.
The image didn’t make it into the story, but the feeling did. King instructs us to write about what scares us. In The Finite, I wrote about the worst thing I can imagine; my own childhood nightmare, resurrected and visited on my kid.
