L. Andrew Cooper

I'm weird. _Crazy Time_ is my eleventh book, the first that I've self-published. Small and academic presses have handled all the others, including the two novels and two short story collections. Although I wouldn't necessarily reject them or their fabulous resources, I've never been a fit for the so-called "big five" publishers, the majors, because their idea of "good" fiction tends to be fiction similar enough to what has sold before to make them confident the "new" stuff will sell now. The "mainstream," also referred to as "traditional publishing," relies on stories and characters that follow familiar and reassuring patterns, even when aspects of the stories claim to be bleak or edgy. Don't get me wrong--some of the big publishers' stuff is actually good. But most of it is crap, and though I believe escaping formulae completely is impossible, I am not interested in setting out to write according to the patterns of what has been selling lately. My characters take on their own lives (and deaths) inside me, and their stories evolve without consideration for my wallet. Therefore, I didn't even try to find a publisher for _Crazy Time_, which I believe some, but far from all, readers will love, not despite but because of its weirdness. To reach these readers, I decided to go it (mostly) alone. Will I succeed? Still trying... check back with me later...

Ideas for possible stories pop into my head on a fairly regular basis. I very, very rarely take notes or otherwise try to preserve them when they're new. They must go through a process I refer to as my brain's Darwin Effect: if I forget about them, and most of them are forgettable, they are clearly not fit to survive. But some of them stay around, blend with each other, mutate randomly, take root, grow... and if a concept grows a character, or a character grows a concept, I may just have found something fit. I usually have some major story elements (beginning, middle, and/or end, that kind of thing) before the next major step, which is to brainstorm, almost always with software so that I can immediately start to arrange ideas into the shape of an outline. If I can produce a complete outline that suits the form and medium (e.g. full-length novel, feature screenplay), I'm ready to draft. I write from beginning to end, following my outline (allowing changes, of course), but also obsessively rereading and editing as I go along. With a complete draft, I usually do two or three more editorial passes before sending it off to friendly readers, who prompt more edits. Then... maybe soon, maybe months and an extra edit later, maybe years and many edits later, maybe never, the work goes off into the world.