Monthly Archives: February 2018

An Interview with Author Larry Kilham

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Retired engineer and entrepreneur Larry Kilham is the author of four science fiction novels, two memoirs, and four other nonfiction books with topics ranging from creativity and invention to artificial intelligence and digital media. Free Will Odyssey (2017) is Larry’s most recent fiction work. You’ll find him on his website LarryKilham.net and on his Amazon author page.

What is your elevator pitch for Free Will Odyssey?
Peter Tesla, a prodigious young inventor, develops an electronic device using artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality to enhance the user’s free will. A major application is drug detoxification. Peter’s star client is the U.S. president. Along the way, Peter is tried for the mysterious death of a girlfriend and struggles with the schemes of a secretive industrialist.

What sparked the initial story idea for the book?
The story idea evolved. I started out writing about free will, and as I followed my characters, they challenged me with the rest of the story ideas. I’m very curious, and as my characters’ predicaments suggested solutions, I researched these with Google and in my extensive library.

Share a little about your main character.
The story is told in the first person. The main character, a technology entrepreneur, is largely a composite of my father and me. We were both entrepreneurs who started small companies. Most of the other characters—lawyers, engineers, high-tech business moguls, etc.—come from my business experience.

What unique challenges did this work pose for you?
Learning about free will, mind enhancing electronics, and drugs. These are all difficult because there are no clear-cut truths. They are all areas of current research. Criminal court dialogue took a lot of effort. I Googled sample court dialogues developed for law students, and I submitted my drafts to lawyer friends.

What was the most rewarding aspect of writing Free Will Odyssey?
Stumbling into a potentially important new method of drug dependency treatment and, through the medium of a novel, publicizing it. I hope I can add to the chorus of writers who say that by various methods we can greatly improve the drug rehabilitation process.

How did the book come together?
The novel took about six months to write, a couple of months to edit with several editors including Larry Greenly (of SouthWest Writers), and two months to design the cover, prepare the manuscript in pdf, and submit to Kindle and CreateSpace. I designed the cover myself using a photo from Shutterstock. While that was going on, I also worked with a professional narrator to produce the audiobook.

Was there anything surprising you discovered while doing research for this book?
I was surprised by the vast range of differing opinions about what free will is and if it exists at all. Free will has always interested me philosophically. Dostoyevsky used it as a theme in Crime and Punishment, Saint Thomas Aquinas studied it, and popular psychology magazines have recently reviewed free will in terms of current problems like drug addiction.

The Juno Trilogy—Love Byte (2013), A Viral Affair (2013), and Saving Juno (2014)—explores whether natural or artificial intelligence will dominate the future. What challenges did you experience in writing this series?
My biggest challenge was writing entirely for fiction readers. Generally, they are new to AI and often reticent about reading stories involving AI. Fortunately, when I was writing The Juno Trilogy, I joined a writing workshop in Santa Fe. We read our chapters to each other every week. The feedback was very helpful.

What first inspired you to become a writer?
I first thought about becoming a writer when, to my surprise, I was picked to be the features editor for my college newspaper. Thirty-five years later, I decided to try writing a book after I was encouraged by my writing instructor, author Joan Torres, at our local community college. The only writing I did before that was trade magazine articles which were, if I may say so, quite good. I didn’t write books earlier because I had to make a good living through a lot of adventurous business travel. Let’s face it, writing generally is a tough way to make a living, let alone prosper.

What writing project are you working on now?
My project for 2018 is to write about my father Peter Kilham who was a great designer, inventor, and visionary. Through a compelling sense of purpose and perfection, he invented bird feeders which brought millions of people happiness. I will share my conversations with him along the way. Everyone can draw inspiration from his story. The book will be something like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Tuesdays with Morrie.

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. She has a new speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



An Interview with Author Margaret Tessler

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Margaret Tessler is the author of the Sharon Salazar cozy mysteries, five of which have been finalists in the New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards. Her most recent novel, Relative Danger (2017), was originally planned as the 7th in that series but instead developed into a mystery with a new protagonist and a new setting. You’ll find Margaret on her website at Abq-Talespinner.com and on Facebook.

What is your elevator pitch for Relative Danger?
I have two, depending on how many floors the ride takes us: 1) When the family pariah returns to town, she unleashes chaos; and 2) Becca Sandoval must uncover the reasons for the hostility generated by the family pariah and learn what’s behind the sinister order she’s joined.

What sparked the story idea?
All my stories are sparked by some personal incident. In this case, one family member caused quite a bit of dissension within the rest of the family over a particular issue. That was when I came up with the idea of having people wear warning labels. (Disclaimer: The people and incidents in the book have no relation to my real-life soap opera, which eventually fizzled out, by the way.)

Tell us about Becca, your main character.
At one point, Becca describes herself as being like “everyday people.” She’s down-to-earth and unpretentious (her musical tastes include both Alan Jackson and Chopin). She has a good sense of humor. She’s basically kind and sympathetic. People find it easy to confide in her. But her halo isn’t firmly planted, and she can be snarky when the occasion calls for it. One comment I often get from readers is that they like the solid, healthy relationship between Becca and her husband Diego in Relative Danger, and between Sharon and Ryan in the Sharon Salazar series.

How long did it take to finish the book?
I kept getting interrupted in my writing, so it took two years to complete. I shared the story with my two critique groups, which I call my “editorial committee.” In addition, I have three or four beta readers who added their input. Their combined feedback was invaluable.

Relative Danger is a departure from your six-novel Sharon Salazar mystery series. What challenges did this new work pose for you?
Originally, I had planned the story as the 7th in the Sharon Salazar series. Then I was fortunate to find two agents who expressed interest in the initial pages of the story. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t accept something that was part of an ongoing series. Since I’d written only a few pages at that point, I decided it would be simplest to change the names of my characters and set them in Albuquerque instead of San Antonio. I figured if that didn’t sell, I could always go back to my original version. However, as I continued writing, I discovered I liked my new characters and liked keeping them in Albuquerque. Although the personalities and careers of the main characters (Becca and Sharon) are similar, I needed to find ways to set them apart. For example, Sharon has a difficult relationship with her mother; Becca has a very warm relationship with hers.

What’s the best compliment you’ve received as an author?
I’m always gratified when people tell me they can’t wait for the next book to come out. I’ve also been pleasantly surprised by the number of people who enjoy re-reading my books.

What does a typical writing session look like for you? What do you absolutely need in order to write?
“Typical” for me is mostly hit and miss. It might sound counter intuitive, but I find that writing sparks inspiration and not the other way around. What I absolutely need is to park myself in front of the computer, quit looking for excuses to procrastinate, and start writing.

You published a memoir, Life in the Slow Lane, in 2004. What was the hardest thing about writing that book, and what was the easiest?
The easiest part was that I could use material I’d already written over a period of eight years: weekly family letters plus a daily journal. The hardest part was deciding what to filter out so the book wouldn’t wind up with 100,000 pages.

What do you love most outside of writing and reading?
I have a large extended family, so family activities account for a lot of my time. I also enjoy gardening, and I like to sing and play the ukulele.

Do you have a writing project you’re working on now?
I’m working on a lighthearted mystery with multiple viewpoints that’s totally different from my other novels. It’s giving my brain a break!

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. She has a new speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



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