Tell us a little bit about yourself:
My name is Lex Chase, I’m 33 going on 12, a lifelong geek
and pop culture diva, and I don’t know my natural hair color is anymore.
I’m the writer behind the superhero romantic comedy
series Pawn Takes Rook due out this Spring from Dreamspinner Press. It’s the
torrid tale of a disgraced brooding badass superhero told from the POV of his
plucky hyperactive sidekick. Think Dark Knight Rises told by an over excitable
bright-eyed chipmunk.
How did you get started in writing? What made
you decide to submit your first story and what was your experience with that?
Who was the first person you told when you got your first contract? What was
their reaction?
I
won’t say I’ve been writing since Kindergarten because that’s a copout answer.
But since my teens I’ve been making up characters and stories, it was my way of
coping with the schoolyard bullying. All my life I was an artist first, I
dreamed of drawing comics and when I finally got a shot at that dream, I was
shocked that my peers didn’t know the first thing about telling a story. They
wanted someone to write a story for them to draw. And I was absolutely puzzled
that wouldn’t you rather write and draw your own? That was my goal. I didn’t
actually decide ‘I’m A Writer’ until my health required me to rethink my career
path as an artist.
I’ve
actually been actively writing since 2009 and have gone back to school to
become a journalist. I make it a goal to write 1k a day and I’m always working
on something to challenge myself or improve my craft.
I
wrote Pawn Takes Rook in December of 2011, it wouldn’t be until almost a year
later in August 2012 that I had handed it in to Dreamspinner. I was cripplingly
self-conscious about the story. It’s told in First Person POV which is something
that totally turns me off when I read it other books, but it just seemed to
fit. My critique group (The Pensacola Writers and Critique Group
http://www.facebook.com/groups/162266207194431/ Hey guys!) pretty much kicked
me in the head and shocked me with cattle prods to hand the thing in. So off it
went, and I basically sat back and fretted like a total flutterbudget.
As
for who was the first person I told, that was my parents. They were actually on
a cruise to the Caribbean, and we Skyped while they were out to sea. I read
them the acceptance letter and pretty much got a blank stare. Kind of awkward.
Plus I think something was lost in translation with Carnival’s satellite
internet. But they’ve come around since then. My parents don’t get how
publishing works, but they say they’re very proud of me anyway. When I
registered for my passport for the cruise we took in January, my profession
actually says ‘Author.’ Isn’t that cool?
Where does your inspiration come from for
your books?
Kind of everywhere. Originally when I conceived Pawn
Takes Rook, I wanted it to be told from the First Person POV of the brooding
hero Memphis Rook, but I realized the story would have been too dark and
depressing. The series overall deals with quite a few serious themes and has
some angst filled moments, but they’re softened through the happy rosy lens of
the sidekick Hogarth Dawson.
I’ve always loved superheroes. I grew up reading every
Marvel Comic I could get my hands on. I was actually quite fond of Wolverine,
Gambit, and a rather terrible character Shatterstar. Shatterstar’s gotten quite
the fantastic reboot in the last couple years, but believe me, when he started no one liked him. He’s also one of the
few gay characters in Marvel’s roster.
I also love the superhero tropes, just when you think
about it, how crazy dumb they really are. And I really mean that with nothing
but the very deepest love for the genre. Everything is bright candy colors,
s-curls, and big gleaming grins that sparkle. Pawn Takes Rook cranks the tropes
to 60. From character names so bad they’re good and Garth and Rook are our
everymen looking around and wondering if a Care Bear went on a bender and puked
and explosion of Baskin and Robbins.
How do you make the important choices when it
comes to writing your stories? Point of View? Voice? Theme? Title?
Hmmm. That’s a tough one really. I honestly don’t think
about such things too much. Usually these things reveal themselves in planning
stages. Usually when I get a new idea for an all new world and characters, I
say to myself ‘I want to tell a story about this kind of character. They’re
like this. They do this. They live here. This is their problem. The book is
what happens next.’
I feel the voice of a book kind of automatically works
itself out with the content of a book. If the book is about the grace and
elegance of a queen in a lavish palace, the book is going to be flowery and metaphor
heavy. If the book is about a brutal war in an urban environment, the voice is
going to be curt and direct and get to the point with brutal efficiency. In the
case of Pawn Takes Rook, I call it Stream Of Consciousness With A Plot. Because
it’s Hogarth narrating, and he has a quite remarkable way with ADD. How he gets
from Point A to B is a thing of beauty in its quirky way.
When I already have the characters all fleshed out I
decide all sorts of trouble they can get into. Like while on a romantic
vacation to the English countryside, the characters encounter a young homeless
woman living off the grid in the wild claims to have witnessed a murder, only
to discover said witness is a victim of a child abduction from 20 years
before—only she never knew she was missing. You’d want to read that story
wouldn’t you? And see how the characters solve it? Excellent because now I have
to write it.
As for the theme, the theme never is what I think it is.
Your readers will tell you what the theme is. Like a story about warring
nations of vampires and shifters is not survival of the fittest but actually a
statement on racism. A story about two lovers reunited 20 years later in an
epic war is not about love conquers all but about letting go of your childhood.
Pawn Takes Rook? I think it’s a story of self-discovery, and opportunity knocks
when you least expect it. That’s likely not at all what it’s really about. To
quote the writer George Saunders: What a book’s theme is doesn’t involve how
it’s made.
And titles? Sometimes they’re easy, sometimes they’re not
at all. Sometimes I give something a code label when I don’t want a certain
someone to know what I’m working on. And then so far down the line, calling it
that thing, that ends up being the title. Pawn Takes Rook, I can’t tell you how
I got there. It just fit. And it fits for a number of reasons that I could tell
you but then I’d have to kill you.
Are your characters purely fictional, or do
you sample from people you’ve met in real life? Which one of your characters is
most like you? How so?
Considering I don’t know any seven foot tall Thor look
alikes in my daily life that’s safe to say the cast of Pawn Takes Rook lives
safely in my head. I do sample people for some things. Like some of Rook’s ways
of expressing romance come from my older brother. Rook’s smoothness in flirting
is something I could only wish to have in real life and I think comes from
years of playing role playing games. Rook has also been cannibalized from
characters I had created when I was much younger, so he inherited a lot of
previous character quirks.
Hogarth has a lot of me sunk into him without being me.
He battles with being insecure, fearing of not living up to expectations which
are two of my huge buggaboos. He also rambles and is very excitable and talks just like me which terrifies people will
think Hogarth is a self-insert. Which no. He’s not. He also loves Nyan Cat. And
who doesn’t love Nyan Cat?
What do you consider your greatest
accomplishment as a writer?
Some people would say ‘Getting published! Doi!’ but I
think for me it was recognizing this is who I am and what I’m meant to do.
If you could co-author a book with any other
writer, who would it be?
This is going to sound so nerdy and journo of me, but I’d
adore to co-author a fiction book
with Anderson Cooper. Yeah. The CNN News Anchor guy. He wrote a memoir called
Dispatches from the Edge and I make a note to listen to the audio version at
least once a year. With all of his life experiences, I’m sure he could tell a
damned good fiction story. Plus I just want to shove a straw in his brain and suck
out his sense of word choice.
Check it out:
“As a boy looking at the globe, I grew up believing, as most people do, that the earth is round. Smoothed like a stone by thousands of years of evolution and revolution. Whittled by time. Scraped by space. I thought that all the nations and oceans, the rivers and valleys, were already mapped out, named, and explored. But in truth, the world is constantly shifting: shape and size, location in space. It’s got edges and chasms, too many to count. They open up, close, reappear somewhere else. Geologists may have mapped out the planet’s tectonic plates – hidden shelves of rock that grind, one against the other, forming mountains, creating continents – but they can’t plot the fault lines that run through our heads, divide our hearts.”—Dispatches from the Edge pg. 4-5
Oh. Em. Gee. Right!
What is the one book that you think that very
few people have read but everyone should read? What are you reading right now?
Hero by Perry Moore. Quite possibly my favorite book
ever. Young Adult tale of a gay teen superhero finding his place in the world.
Totally hits on all the superhero tropes and then some, and just when you think
you got it figured out you still have it the wrong way around. Also there’s
Gorran and he’s quite dreamy.
What do you find the most difficult part of
the writing process?
Of all things, getting over my insecurities that my words
are good enough. I think everyone deals with that in some way. Like being told
you’re beautiful and all you see is that your eyes are brown and not blue.
Pawn Takes Rook is a comedy, but most of the time I don’t
know when I’m writing something funny. They’re just words on a screen that
scroll by. Occasionally I’ll read back and get a giggle and see I had a moment
of cleverness but I never notice my cleverness as its happening. It takes beta
readers and critique partners to point out what’s funny.
What is a typical working day like for you?
Where do you write? Do you wait for inspiration? Do you set certain writing
goals? Are there any specific tools you use to help you write?
My writing day is anything but typical. I’m a firm
believer you can write anytime, anywhere, on anything. Also writing doesn’t
necessarily mean the act of putting
pen to paper or fingers to keys. I’m a college student and every new semester I
have to work my writing schedule around it. I’m a commuter student and parking
at my school is just insane so I have to go to class two hours early just to
get a parking space.
In this two hour block that I’m basically sitting in a chair
in the hallway in front of my classroom with pure uninterrupted time to do with
as I please. I’ve edited books, critiqued pieces for my critique group, and
actually have been able to spit out a good dent in my latest WIPS.
The only hard and fast goal I have is to write 1k a day
or if I set a deadline to have a book done by. My deadlines for the last two
years have been arbitrary because I was unpublished, but I was trying to
maintain a semi-professional schedule in preparation for the big day.
My tools of choice are rather simple.
I swear by Papermate Inkjoy pens. They’re cheap, write
effortlessly, and when they crap out I don’t cringe about tossing them. I also
go through a lot of pens. I’ve had pens crap out in two weeks for how much I
write. These are a godsend. Not great for pen snobs who want something
uberfabulous. A reviewer called it ‘Your Mom’s favorite pen.’ This pen is
awesome. I basically need a stick with a point to make my mark on my cuneiform
tablet. I don’t need something I can use in the vacuum of space and when the
hell am I going that opportunity? Like, never?
I use Moleskine notebooks for handwriting. Not out of
brand loyalty, actually I could care less about the status symbol of Moleskine.
Who gives a crap if they’re the notebooks of Hemingway? You still won’t write like Hemingway. I use them
because they’re small, durable, and light enough to carry anywhere. I use small
bags and it fits just so.
Other assorted items I have are an Arc Notebook by
Staples (http://www.staples.com/sbd/cre/marketing/arc/index.html)
that I keep as my ‘Project Bible’ where all of my notes on my projects. It’s a
fully customizable notebook system that you can define and refine just for you.
Said Project Bible is also the half-size model for easier carrying. Still I’ve
got the thing stuffed to the gills like a dictionary.
My digital tool of choice that I can no survive without
and am actually employing this very second to do this Q&A is the Pomodoro
Technique. I have an app for my phone that you can set a timer for twenty-five
minutes and you give your full attention to that task for twenty-five minutes.
The timer goes off, you get a five minute break, and then it starts again.
After four rounds of this you get a twenty minute break. It’s to help you stay
focused and more productive. I actually have two versions for my Android phone.
What is your greatest guilty pleasure
(literary or otherwise)?
Does coffee count? No? Okay.
Greatest guilty pleasure has to be actually of all
things, buying cat toys for my two meowing fur babies. You’d think a five year
old lives in my house with the toys everywhere. My Sis-In-Law maintains I’m one
cat shy of being a crazy cat lady.
And…last
but not least: What are you working on now and what can we expect to see from
you in the coming year?
What I’m working on right this second is getting the
third installment of Pawn Takes Rook drafted. School’s in session and I need to
work some things around to get it done on time. Ideally, I’m seeing six
installments to Pawn Takes Rook, some little misadventure that Rook and Hogarth
get into every time. The only problem I’m discovering are my installments are
getting longer than expected. I’m dreading the PTR crew gets a novel one day
because I promised myself to keep them short like issues of a comic. But now
I’m facing the issue of the constant ‘Special Double Issue!’
You can find her on those Facebook and Twitter things at:
Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/LXChaseTwitter:
http://twitter.com/Lex_Chase
And her blog at
http://lexchase.com.
Pawn Takes Rook Pop-Culture Hunt Clue:
#45 Jack Sparrow, Titans, and a tiny kitten dealt with this beast.
Email your complete answers with the full sentence the reference appears, the page number, and your reading device to: lex.chase@nomadchronicle.com
For Complete Rules and Prizes See Lex Chase's Blog here:
http://nomadchronicle.com/blog/pawn-takes-rook-pop-culture-hunt-official-rules/
One Grand Prize Winner will receive a $25 Visa Gift Gard and other fine swag. Deadline: March 30, 2013!
