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Mar162011
‘Where Stories Are Made’ with author Jonathan Maberry
by Carolyn • Posted in Where Stories Are Made
‘Where Stories Are Made‘ is a new feature here at Book Chick City. It’s where the author takes us on a tour of their writing place, be it an office, coffee shop or park and tells us about their writing day and rituals.
My guest today is horror writer (adult & YA), Jonathan Maberry…
I can write anywhere, though I do have a lair.
Until we move next month, my office is a nook tucked between kitchen and living room, most of which is filled by a massive oak desk surrounded by shelves on which I have proof positive that I have never fully matured. My shelves are crammed with all sorts of oddities, ranging from bobble-head statues of Edgar Allen Poe, a genuine cat skull, various rubber body parts (which I often bring to book signings), a bottle of Holy Water and another of garlic; an IV bag of Zombie Blood, gargoyles, various rubber ducks (I have a mummy, vampire, and mad scientist), a carved alien head, dancing skeletons, rubber zombie finger puppets, a robot zombie who walks and is controlled by a remote-device in the shape of a brain; my Bram Stoker Awards, a statue of Shaun of the Dead, wind-up robots, lots of action figures of super heroes, and a Malaysian good-luck bat.
And, oh yes…and a laptop.
I have all the usual stuff, too…file cabinets, printers, cameras, scanners, a couple of 1-terrabyte storage drives, and an iPod docking station, and shelves crammed with books, audio books and DVDs. My iPod has 100 gigs of music ranging from Gregorian chants to classic rock & blues to every Beatles song every recorded.
Being inside my office is a bit like being inside my head. Fun, a little spooky, and cluttered with interesting curios.
Directly above myself is a shelf of books I’ve written, including collections of my comics, and anthologies that include one of my stories. There are a number of foreign editions peppered through, and I recently hit the point where it no longer fits on one shelf. That was a happier moment for me than Christmas morning. Very validating, since I jumped ship from a 9 to 5 job in 2002 and saw my first novel published in 2006. Now I’m writing my eleventh, with three more sold but as yet unwritten. My writing before then was always something I did part-time, ranging from magazine features to college textbooks and some mass market books I did on martial arts.
I’m moderately superstitious, so every time I start a new project I have to get something tied to it. For example, I recently started writing a Wolverine miniseries for Marvel Comics, so I went out and bought a Wolverine action figure. When I started ROT & RUIN I bought a coffee mug with the face of the little girl who turned into a zombie in the original Night of the Living Dead. And I have several statues of Ganesh. He’s the patron god of writers and the remover of obstacles. I’m not Hindu, but I always hedge my bets.
Of course, I may not actually be as superstitious as I claim, so this might all be a clever excuse for a grown man to buy toys.
I write ten hours a day, six days a week. It’s a bit of an insane pace, but I like writing fast and my agent, apparently, likes selling things I haven’t yet written.
I often divide my workday between writing at home and writing in coffee shops. I’m a caffeine nomad, and will frequently spend a couple of hours at a Starbucks then move to the coffee shop in a bookstore, then go to the gym and then back home. Breaking up the day refreshes my mind and gives me time to think.
One of the Starbucks is more or less my second office. They even reserve my special corner table when they know I’m coming in. In the peculiarly perverse way that authors show affection, I totally destroy that Starbucks in a gun battle in one of my adult thrillers. The staff are all delighted! Which confirms that I’m not the only weirdo that I know.
ROT & RUIN was born at my home desk, though. There are times I’ll get up in the middle of the night and hammer away until I can no longer spell, then shamble back to bed. My wife is very tolerant and supportive. She knows she’s married to a writer and that there is a large dose of weirdness that goes with that.
In a few weeks we’ll be moving to a much larger apartment where I’ll have an office about six times bigger than this. You’d think that this would mean that I’d have an office that will be smarter and less cluttered. You would be wrong. I’m already wondering if I can get a life-size Dalek in there. Or perhaps a couple of manikins that I can dress up as zombies from the Benny Imura stories.
Who knows what mischief I’ll get up to in the new office…
1 Comment
great piece :0 I really love Jonathan's work.
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