Please Meet Mark Salzwedel!
Inherit the Night would like to welcome science fiction author Mark Salzwedel to our author interview series! Now residing in New York, Mark grew up in Whitewater, Wisconsin and still has family in Wausau, Wisconsin. That puts him a little to the north and west of our world-wide headquarters but shows how many great writers come from Wisconsin! Could it be the long cold winters?
We were really excited to get to know Mark, as it is really cool to meet a new author near the beginning of their writing career. Mark’s first book — The Lever — goes LIVE in a few days, so be sure to look for his upcoming launch! Here’s what he shared about the novel:
“This particular novel started out as a short story, the final 2/3 of chapter 1. It was just sort of a sexual fantasy, and I wasn't sure it was going to go anywhere until I started asking myself questions about how such a situation might have come to pass. What conditions in the world around Roger made him a target to be abducted? It ended up being a much bigger story than I thought it would be at first. It ended up with the whole of humanity at risk depending on what 4 people did.”
Here are a few links to his social media, and he has a really nice author website as well!
Twitter: @markdsalzwedel
Instagram: @nycwritercomposer
Anyway, I’m sure he’s much better at telling us about himself than I am, so here’s our recent Q&A:
Please tell us a little about yourself.
I was born and raised in the Upper Midwest in a small college town, the son and brother of teachers, as it turns out. (I was the only one in the family to seek a profession other than education.) My mom and dad were into sports, handcrafts, music, and served as the regional investigators of the Mutual UFO Network, so as young children, we were occasionally thrown into the back seat of our station wagon with a blanket in our pajamas so they could go investigate a sighting. In college, I studied creative writing, languages, and dramatic arts. My first jobs out of college were in book publishing. I was an actor, freelance editor and writer, journalist, and national public speaker in California before moving to New York 15 years ago. That's where I founded a board game publishing house, did a bit more acting, and eventually ended up working in advertising, writing stories and music in my spare time.
What can you tell us about some of your recent work?
I've written a number of novels that haven't been published yet in the past few years, but THE LEVER is my most recently completed one. I have five short stories in various publications in the past few years, including one anthology. I tend to put a lot of time travel, first contact, mutants, robots, and fairy tale references into my fantasy and science fiction writing.
When and how did you realize you wanted to write?
I was 7. I was fascinated by typewriters. I didn't know any better.
What is the most exciting part of your artistic process?
It's a toss-up between finishing a story or getting an offer to publish it. Both are equally exciting for me.
Which authors influenced your writing?
Daniel Abraham & Ty Franck (author of The Expanse books), Jim Butcher's Dresden Files books, Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle (especially The Mote in God's Eye), and, I'm loath to admit, Orson Scott Card's Ender's game series.
What is most important to you when writing?
Reading the text out loud helps me find poor wording choices, run-on sentences, and other errors more easily.
What can you share about your research process?
Sometimes my research leads the brainstorming for a story idea. Otherwise, I often have to world build, as in THE LEVER and other sci-fi tales, and that inevitably raises tons of questions for research. I do a lot of calculations to estimate how long journeys and communications would take for interstellar distances, how different ships might approximate gravity, and for example in THE LEVER, what is possible with gene manipulation.
Do you hide any secrets in your books that only a few people will find?
I have become a fan of Easter eggs, but in most cases, I think a good story should naturally set up its sequel, should there be one. In THE LEVER, part of the epilogue is meant to settle for readers some questions about where the characters may be going after the end of the narrative, and that sets up what might be the start of a sequel.
How do you use social media as an author?
I test out passages in my writing to see which garner more interest and also as teasers for forthcoming stories. I also use it to market my published works obviously, but I'm also a fan of cross-promotion, so I also use my Sound Cloud and You Tube channels to get people interested in my writing.
Have you ever traveled as research for your book?
Usually, I just write about places I've been, but I did make one trip to Atlanta because my first novel years ago was set there and based on some real events in Atlanta. It was much different than I imagined, so I'm glad I went.
What is your writing process? Are you more of a plotter or a pantser?
I believe in prewriting. I will usually do some initial planning of characters, setting, and basic plot, and then leave it for months to percolate in my subconscious. Sometimes I will plot up to the first 10 chapters before I take a break from the process, but I always have a pretty good idea where it's going to end up, and I try to stay open to surprises along the way. In another space opera I've written, I had a pretty basic good vs evil dilemma going, and then one of the minor characters demanded a greater role, and she ended up being the "sort of evil, sort of good" factor that threw my good and evil characters into more ambiguity at the same time. The good character started coming off as a little timid. The evil character started coming off as righteous.
What makes your book(s) fit the LGBTQ+ genre?
All of the main characters are gay or lesbian, and one of the bigger plot points revolves around the relationship between two of the gay men.
