Do you remember the first story you ever wrote?
Yes, I do. In fact, I still have it somewhere.
Remember that I grew up in the Cold War, and when I was about 10, I was also a huge history nerd already, and was obsessed with WWII.
So, I wrote a story about a band of plucky 10 year old kids who band together to fight off the Soviet invasion of America. More specifically, the dirty Commies were obsessed with the strategically important 1000 block of West 42nd Street in Houston, Texas, but they didn't count on me and my friends. Even then I tended to interweave fiction and fact, because one of my friends' dads was a weapons collector, specializing in WWII weaponry, and he also was a reloader, so both guns and ammo were plentiful. So, coupled with my love of WWII, all of our arms were of that vintage. I carried a Tommy gun and we battled the Russians to a standstill.
I also incorporated the things I knew about, and in this case it involved the one thing I knew how to drive, and that was riding lawnmowers. As the story progressed, not surprisingly things got pretty hot in Houston, so my merry band of preteen marauders rode our riding mowers (which we armored ourselves with sheets of metal) and left Houston to the other place I knew well, Silverton, Colorado, high up in the Rocky Mountains. (As I recall, I was cognizant enough of how long it would take to get to Colorado going 10 mph, and it took something like 4 or 5 months)
I can also trace my literary roots because it was about then that I was introduced to Louis L'Amour, whereupon my band of guerrillas got rid of our WWII weaponry in exchange for Winchesters and Colts, and our riding mowers for horses. Once again, Silverton became strategically important, and a whole battalion of Commies were there, and every so often we would mosey down from our hideout into town on our horses and engage in good old-fashioned shootouts. I even had the Soviets using the famous Durango-Silverton train for supply purposes...and of course, we robbed it. Several times.
I hit puberty right around then, so alas, it is unfinished. Maybe I'll go back to it one day.
What is your writing process?
It's hard to explain, and I don't recommend it because I don't really have a process. By any measure, I'm prolific; in the 12 years since I've been doing this, I have published 35 books, and they are unfashionably long, averaging around 200K words for my main Marching With Caesar series.
Not too long ago, I read about "plotters" and "pantsers", as in "flying by the seat of the pants", and that is definitely my style. One reason I've written so many books (all of which have been well received so far), is that once I immerse myself in a story, I'm as eager as anyone else to find out how it turns out. While I have a general idea of where the book will end in a linear sense (since I write about Rome, I'm writing about events that have already happened), it's the twists and turns that come as much of a surprise to me as it hopefully does to the readers that keep my brain busy and my fingers moving.
Also, most of the "writing" is done in my head, although I have no idea how it happens, or when, although I suspect it happens while I sleep. What it means is that it's not uncommon for me to write 10K words in a day, and I can leave off in midsentence, go to bed, and return and pick up the sentence where I left off, with the next segment of the story already stored in my head.
Like I said, I don't recommend it for anyone, but it works for me.
