Author Interview: Chuck Regan

JC – Your sense of humor is hysterical. (See the ads on our Building Red: Mission Mars Facebook Page) Where did you pick that up?

CR - Thanks! Yeah, I’m having a ball with the ads, and I really appreciate the opportunity to play in this regolithbox. (Mars nerds will get that one). I worked in advertising for 17 years. It’s not often a client lets me off the leash on a topic I really enjoy. Mars, man. I have a Mars globe over my desk. No really, I do!

Well, I was teased mercilessly for the eight inch tail I was born with and had to develop coping mechanisms to survive. Okay, that was a joke, but as a metaphor, it still works. I was always a geeky, awkward kid, and humor diffused a lot of uncomfortable situations. Wow, that kind of took the wind out of the funny sails, didn’t it? I’m a sad, sad man. With a tail.

Actually, blame Douglas Adams. I read all his books when I was a kid. I guess his attitude is still in my bloodstream.

JC – What are some other hobbies or interests you enjoy outside of writing?

CR - Before my hobbies had been completely consumed by writing, I enjoyed painting Nerf guns to look like post-apocalyptic rayguns. Once, I built a steampunk raygun out of lamp parts, which is now proudly displayed on my library shelf. I have a side job illustrating book covers for indie publishers, which, let’s face it, it’s a hobby for what that pays.

JC – When it comes to writing, are you a planner or a pantser?

CR - For short stories, I start with an idea and a loose plot just see where it takes me. I tried that same technique on the last five drafts of the last two novels I wrote, and after a cumulative god-knows how many hundreds of thousands of words, feeling my way through different variations of each story, I realized I needed an intervention.

Now, I’m a big fan of the John Truby ‘Anatomy of Story’ approach, where plots are built around your protagonist’s psychological flaws. It’s very Jungian. This method provides a great backbone to let your characters express themselves within a solid framework. I’m still learning, so I can’t commit to saying I’m staked in either camp, but now I feel safer launching into a new project with a solid plot worked out beforehand. I tend to geek out and spend a lot of time world building.

JC – What books, stories, and authors inspire you?

CR - For storytelling, Joyce Carol Oates. For word-smithing, Ian McEwan. I’ve never actually drooled into a book before reading McEwan. The man is a genius the way he slides words into place and plays them off of each other. I read award-winning or classic literary fiction to program my brain in hopes that, like in The Matrix, a fraction of their craftsmanship gets uploaded.

Right now, I’m reading a collection of Dylan Thomas short stories and poetry. He’s so metal—all those death metaphors, worm-addled body parts and sacrilegious symbolism. I love it. Not sure how that will show up in my next project though. Something Cthulhu-y?

But I get a lot of shocked looks when I tell other genre writers that I don’t read a lot of genre. I read non-fiction to get ideas and to research details, but a lot of the contemporary genre stuff I’ve picked up just disappoints me. If I start editing their words in my head as I read and end up getting a strong sense of the author, that’s not good. I have to put it down, or in some cases, throw it across the room.

This is going to bite me in the ass, isn’t it? Well, there. I said it. I don’t read genre. But of the genre-esque authors I have read and enjoyed: Jeff Noon, Lovecraft, Thomas Harris, China Mieville, Asimov, Clarke, Douglas Adams, Tolkien, Burroughs, Jonathan Maberry, Richard K. Morgan, Richard Matheson, Max Brooks, Raymond Chandler, and Frank Herbert. (I consulted my Goodreads list).

Right now, I’m on a kick reading science fiction from the early 1900s. You really get a sense of the quaint naivety they had for science and astronomy, and some of them absolutely reek pure enthusiasm for adventure—wearing fur coats on the moon as they hunt for diamonds through green foliage. Great stuff. And in this jaded, ‘been there, instagrammed it’ world, I think we need to rediscover that sense of wide-eyed adventure in stories.

JC – Tell us about the inspiration for your story, “Storm Season.”

CR - One of my works in progress, Little Agony, happened to be a novel about colonizing Mars. Well, it’s about Mars being a kind of planetary ghost town as the rest of the system expands outward to claim greater riches. One of the many drafts of that novel included a subplot about mercenaries hired to wipe out "problem" colonists. I had too many points of view in that draft, so this subplot had to go away, but when I heard about this anthology, all I had to do was massage those chapters into place, and I had a short story ready to go!

Little Agony was very much inspired by Joss Whedon’s Firefly, the movie Outland, and the Steinbeck novel The Grapes of Wrath. “Storm Season” only hints at the dirty, grimy western feeling in the rest of the novel . . . if I ever finish the sixth draft . . . but the protagonist, a war veteran suffering from PTSD, has to get over his issues and fight these mercenaries . . . or become one of them. So there’s my pitch. Anyone out there interested?

JC – You’ve published quite a few stories! Do you have any advice for writers wanting to get published?

CR - One thing that I found extremely important was learning to not get attached to the words I had written. Sure, I’m always proud when I throw down two or three thousand words, but ANYONE can fill up twelve pages if they’re caffeinated enough. Find another writer or three who aren’t afraid to kick you in the teeth with their critiques. If what they say stings, that means you found the right people.

(Of course, I say this before I get my edits back from the Walrus editors… heh heh. Hm.)

Writing is not about being published. It’s about telling a story that is bigger than you. You are just a monkey channeling it through the keyboard. Make sure that channel is as clear from your own BS as possible. Do that first. Get out of your own way and learn to tell a good story.

And sometimes, the editor who rejected your story with a form letter just happened to have had a really unsatisfying poop before they read your email. You never know what is going through their head (or their other parts) when you get an acceptance or a rejection. And an acceptance only means you need to work harder on your next story to make it better.

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Chuck Regan is a part-time writer/editor, full-time designer/illustrator in the Philadelphia area. His short fiction has appeared in Zelmer Pulp, Shotgun Honey, The Big Adios, Gutter Books, Dark Corners Magazine, and Space & Time Magazine. His novel-in-progress called Little Agony is a sci-fi western about colonizing Mars. See more at www.chuckregan.com.

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