(literary connections)Our 'Thriller Man'Q&AWith Brandon Massey, Author of the Year

NY7 member Tracey Smithtalks with Author of the YearBrandon Massey, who shares histhoughts on being a successfulwriter, reveals what fuels hiscreativity and explains how he isthe inspiration for the character'Isaiah' from his thriller The Other

Brother.

GaG: Congratulations on The OtherBrother. I love the supernatural genre.I brought The Dark Corner a while agoand I actually want to get everyth ingyou've written.

BM: Hopefully, you'll enjoy the rest ofthem. It's interesting becauseThe DarkCorner is the one that gets the mostfan mail, then The Other Brother. Quitehonestly I was very surprised that GoOn Girl! selected the book for discussionbecause sometimes book clubs areresistant to reading science fiction.

GaG: We specifically read that genre.

BM: That's great because there's such adiversity of work out there that unless

book clubs show an interest in it, it'sreally difficult for authors who writea little off the beaten path to get anaudience.

GaG: With speculative fiction I'mfamiliar with Octavia Butler, TananariveDue, Steven Barnes,yourself, L.A.Banksand Nalo Hopkinson.

BM: I guess we would be the mainones, there are about two or threeothers who write in the genre as well,like Robert Fleming and Evie Rhodes.

GaG: Is it true that you wrote yourfirst book, Thunder/and at yourgrandmother's kitchen table afterdropping out of college?

BM: Yes,literally.

GaG: What was it liketellingyourfamily that you wanted to be a writer,dropping out of college and thensitting down to write that first book?

BM: I had known since I was about15 years old that I wanted to be awriter. My family was supportive buta little wary because we didn't knowany writers. They wanted me to get aregular job and do the writing on theside. I left school when my granddadpassed away; he and I were very close.My family wanted me to stick it out,but I said, 'no, I'm going to come homeand make this writing thing work.' Iwrote the first draft of Thunder/and atmy grandmother's table in a month. Isent it around to different agents andpublishers and got the usual rejectionletters. It wasn't until about fiveyears later when I self-published thebook that things began to happenfor me.

GaG: Many writers work full time andwrite on their own time. Why didn'tyou follow this conventional route?

BM: I grew up feeling veryindependent and self-directed - youknow how you get something in yourhead and refuse to change your mind.

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I just believed that I could make itwork, which in retrospect is sort ofcrazy when you think about the odds.

GaG: You never had a doubt and justwent ahead and did it.

BM: That's the thing about whenyou're young; you think you can doanything. It's not until you get olderthat you realize all the obstacles andbecome hesitant about taking risks.I'm actually glad that I started youngbecause it would have been harder tomake that choice at the age I am now.

GaG: How did you learn how to write?

BM: I was always very comfortablewith the written word. It wasn't untilI was about 15 years old that I beganto think about doing this as a career.I think that writing is like anythingelse, where there is some sort ofinnate talent and it's just a matter ofdeveloping it. I guess I was self-taught,mainly through trial and error andreading lots books.

GaG: So I guess you read a lot ofscience fiction. Do you read outsidethe genre?

BM: Yes,I try to read a bit ofeverything. I read mystery, thriller,historical, non-fiction, and poetry. Iwas reading Shakespearean sonnetsfor a while. I try to have a broadappreciation for different types ofliterature. I always tell people that youreally can't even begin to be originalunless you acquaint yourself withwhat's been done before.

GaG: Onyourwebsiteyou say thatyou have no trouble coming up withnew ideas, that you fuel your creativitywith lots of life experiences. Tell me alittle about that?

BM: I'll think back on somethingthat I've either been through or knowsomeone who's been through it anduse that as a basis to build a story.Actually, The Other Brother came from

that. I grew up with an absent father,so I never developed a close relationshipwith him. He moved out West, gotmarried and now hastwo daughters. Acouple of years ago I went out to dinnerwith him and his family and I watchedhow his daughters interacted with him;they absolutely adored him. I was justsitting there looking at them and I'mthinking 'okay what did I miss, 'cause I'mnot getting that, I don't feel that at all'. Sothat was the basis of 'Isaiah's' character.

GOG: Wow, so you're a little bit of'Isaiah'?

BM: Yeah,just a little bit of resentmentand sort offeeling like 'okay why arethey worthy of your attention and I'mnot'. I think it made Isaiah's characterso believable because you feel to someextent that he has a legitimate beef.He's not just your stereotypical villainwho's some crazy person.

GOG: Soyou're taking a situation to anextreme, putting a shock and a jolt to it.

BM: Well that's the kind of story Ienjoy, where it has some type of reallife corollary. Where you read it and say,'I know someone who's been throughthis: The author just takes it and twistsit in so many ways.

GOG: Now you're a winner of TheGolden Penn Award, was that forThunderland?

BM: Yes,the Golden Penn Award wascreated by the Black Writer's Allianceand they used to have an awardsceremony each year for books indifferent genres. I won the award forBest Mystery Thriller.

GOG: That is great. Why did the BlackWriter's Alliance disband?

BM: I think it just overwhelmed thefounder. I never got the full story, butas of about three or four years ago itjust went away. I believe it was basedout of Dallas.

GOG: Well, Go On Girl! will not disband.We've been around for 16 years and areplanning our 20th anniversary.

BM: Ohwow!

GOG: Essence recently had their firstliterary awards ceremony and they planto continue this event. I think the moreorganizations out there recognizing

Black literature, the better.

BM: In the horror genre, there's theBram Stoker Award [awarded by theHorror Writers Association] and noneof my books or anthologies have everbeen nominated, even though they'vebeen critically acclaimed by reviewpublications. Without the recognitionof those organizations supporting Blackwriters we would not be acknowledgedbecause we are definitely ignored bythe mainstream.

GOG: Speaking of anthologies, howdid your first anthology Dark Dreamswith lane, Tananarive Due and StevenBarnes come together?

BM: I had this notion of doing thiscollection of stories by Black writersin the horror suspense genre, becausenothing like that had ever been donebefore. I talked to lane first; she andI have the same agent and I've knownher for about 10 years. Then I metTananarive and Steven at a writingconference and asked ifthey wouldbe willing to put something together.Once I had everyone's commitment, Iwent to my publisher and said 'I havethis idea for an anthology and I havelane, Tananarive Due and StevenBarnes on board: My editor KarenThomas thought it was a great idea andwe did it. After the first one came outwe were able to come to an agreementon the second and third. I don't thinkI'll do anymore though.

GOG: Why not?

BM: Writers tend to be sort of crazy. Ihad certain people that I knew I couldturn to for quality stories in the first,second and third books, but I was tryingto also open it up to newer writers soI had to put out a call for submissions.We got hundreds of stories, and it wasa lot of work to find the diamonds inthe rough, so to speak.

GOG: Let me talk to you about OctaviaButler. Go On Girl! has read manyof her books, including her last oneFledgling. Talk about her influence onyou and your work.

BM: I've read three of her books,Parable of Sower, Kindred and WildSeed. She was one of the first writers ofcolor working in the speculative fictiongenre, so it was inspirational for me tosee that you could be Black and write

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this stuff, it can be good and you canwin critical acclaim. She won some ofthe biggest awards in the sel-f field,like the Hugo and the Nebula.

GOG: At what point did you feelvindicated for your choice to becomea writer. When did you know that youcould really make a career out of writing?

BM: When I got my first publishingcontract for Thunder/and and DarkCorner that was the big validationfor me. No, actually before then,when I was 22 years old and I sold myfirst short story to a science fictionmagazine; they paid me $200. Thatwas my first sense of 'okay, this is real,I can really do this. I can sit down andwrite something and somebody willlike it and pay me for it.'

GOG: You said there was a 10-yearperiod before you wrote Thunder/andand got an agent?

BM: Yes,I started the book when I was19 years old. I self-published it when Iwas 25 years old, got an agent 3 yearslater and a book deal shortly after,so yes it was a 10 year process. I gete-mails from people who want to writeand they think 'well, I'll sit down andwrite this book and someone will sendme a check in a few months'. No, Ihave to tell them that it's not a get-rich-quick career. Most successfulauthors have been writing for yearsbefore they get their big break.

GOG: How did you keep your moti-vation strong during those 10 years?

BM: Ithinkl'mjustverystubborn! Iknew I was good. Somebody has to getpublished, and it might as well be me. Ireally didn't let myself get hung up onthe odds. I think that to be successful asa writer you have to believe that you aredifferent, that maybe those other 10,000people can't break in but you're goingtobe the one that can. If you don't believethat, you're not going to make it. Youcan't let criticism or failure stop you. Youhave to say, 'this was just a temporaryspeed bump, I'm gonna keep going:

GOG: You've got an agent shoppingyour books for movies correct? How isthat working out?

BM: We actually did sell the filmrights to my second book The DarkCorner, so we're actually waiting to see

what happens with that. The thingabout Hollywood is that they'll buysomething from you and then they'llnever do anything with it. We've hadsome interest in the other books, butmany times an independent producerwill show interest but they want youto give it to them for nothing. It'sreally hard to get the attention of thereal players in Hollywood, unless yougo out there. Tananarive and Stevenhave made some good progressbecause they moved to LosAngelesspecifically for that reason. Unless youtake that step it's really hard to makeall the contacts you need.

GaG: Would you ever consider movingto Hollywood to pursue screenwriting?

BM: I would have to say nobecause I'm not really interested inworking that much in Hollywood.It's a different process writing bycollaboration, writing by committee.They'll take your book and change itso much. Evenif you write the screenadaptation of your novel, once you turnit into the producer it will be changedso much before it hits the screen. Oneofthe things I love about conventionalpublishing is that pretty much everybook that I've published came out theway I wanted it to come out.

GaG: Have you been pretty happywith the marketing on your books?Do you feel your publisher is receptiveto your ideas?

BM: They are very receptive to myideas. In fact we are doing somethingdifferent with my new novel; it'scalled Don't Ever Tell. It comes out inJuly. There's nothing on the cover thatscreams that this is a book about Blackpeople; it looks like other books in thethriller genre. I feel that I've reachedmy plateau in the African-Americanfiction audience. All the people that aregoingto read me have already read me.

GaG: Why do you think that?

BM: Salesfigures really support thattheory. We've hit a ceiling, and inorder to grow the audience we haveto reach beyond Black readers. Wereally want to attract anyone who isinterested in these types of fast-paced,suspenseful stories.

GaG: Tell me about Don't Ever Tell.In this story you have a female lead

character; how did your idea for thatcome about?

BM: That's another one of thoseinstances oftaking a real-life situationand saying 'what if?' About two yearsago I got married to a woman I thinkis perfect for me, but I began to thinkwhat if she wasn't so perfect. Themain character of Don't Ever Tell getsmarried and it turns out that her pastincludes a psychotic ex-husband whois in prison for trying to kill her. Heescapes and comes after her and shenow has a new identity and is marriedto someone else. Her husband has todecide how to deal with all this.

GaG: You have a very thick idea file.What is your most off-the-wall idea?

BM: I'm working on a novella that'sgoing to be in a book I'm doing withTananarive and L.A.Banks. It's calledThe Ancestors, and it will come outin May 2009. I have a lead characterthat is doing a genealogy projecton his mother's side of the family.The oldest surviving relative lives inMississippi and he visits her and findsshe's actually not the oldest survivingmember. The oldest surviving memberis a vampire. This is sort of a spin-offon the book The Dark Corner, which isalso based in Mississippi.

GaG: What is the difference betweena novella and a novel?

BM: A novella is about a third ofthelength of a novel. Typically you'll seea collection of novellas in one book.It's just a question of length. The oneI'm working on now will be about onehundred pages.

GaG: In The Other Brother 'Gabriel'and 'Dana' have twin girls, would youever revisit these girls in another story?

BM: Probably not. I just like to leavesomething there for people to thinkabout. I find it to be one of life's ironiesbecause he was a twin and he hadtwin girls, but that happens a lot; it'spassed down in families. But, I don'tthink I'll do a sequel because themain source of conflict, 'Isaiah', is notaround. But I have so many other ideasthat I want to explore.

GaG: What is the next big thing thatyou want to accomplish with yourwriting?

BM: The next big thing is a series,

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where I follow a character through histrials and tribulations. Right now I'mworking on a new novel that will comeout next year that will be number six, soit's time for me to try something new.

GaG: Will your series character be amale or female?

BM: It will be a guy, sort of like an'Easy Rawlins' type, but in modern day.

GaG: Will it be more along the lines ofmystery versus science fiction?

BM: Probably more of a straight, realworld story. With the supernaturalstuff, it's hard to come up withsomething that hasn't been donebefore. There are only so manydifferent ideas - you're either dealingwith vampires, ghosts, werewolves,or psychics, and I've done all of thosethings in my books. In orderfor meto keep myself original, I have to finddifferent ways of telling stories thatstill have suspense.

GaG: Is that why Don't Ever Tell is amore of astra ight mystery novel?

BM: Yes,that's why. It's funny whenI first wrote it, it was a supernaturalstory. But when my editor first readit she said it doesn't really use thesupernatural all that much, it doesn'tneed it and it would be better withoutit. Well, I put the supernaturalelements in because I thought thatis what people will expect from me. Isaid I'd prefer to take it out. And whenI took it out, it had more of a gritty feelto it. Moving away from supernaturalis something I've wanted to do for along time, but when you are publishedwriting a certain type of book, there'sa certain expectation from yourpublisher and your readers that youwill continue to write the same typeof story. Don't Ever Tell will be anexperiment to see how people willrespond.

GOG: How do you want to beremembered as a writer?

BM: I want to be remembered forwriting stories that were extremelyentertaining but that also hadsomething meaningful to say aboutthe human condition. In particularit's importantfor me to write aboutBlack men and women working outthings in relationships. •

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