We’ve done one of these before and we’re thinking, since people seemed to like it last time, that we’re going to do them more often. I’m talking about interviews, and today I’m interviewing Mara Johnstone, who recently published her work with us in issue #7, titled, “Quicker Liquor.” It was a really funny story about a goblin who takes this speed potion, and it was just super fun and I knew that I wanted to talk in depth with the author.
When I put out a call for people interested in being interviewed, Mara was one of the ones who threw her name in the ring and I jumped at the chance. I just knew she seemed like a funny and interesting person and, you know what, I was right. We had a really good conversation and I really hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed being able to sit down and have this talk with Mara.
Mara: I’ve been writing forever and I enjoy doing creative things just in general. Writing, drawing, making stuff. And I’ve always really enjoyed just the whole process. I remember learning that some people didn’t really like writing so much as they liked having written and that just seems very sad to me that they don’t enjoy the whole thing. I enjoy everything and like sharing it with people.
Annaelise: Yeah, I totally get that. It’s kind of funny when you see these writers who always complain about, like, “Ugh, I hate writing,” and it’s like, well, why are you doing it?
M: Right? Surely there’s something else you could do that you actually enjoy.
A: Exactly. So many creative outlets if you need to be creative. Now, you did say that you’ve been writing for a really long time, so do you have, kinda one of those “when you first picked up a pen” stories?
M: Not really. I’m told that I’ve been telling stories since I was little. My mom tells me that my first story was a single sentence: “I was walking down the road and I found a fish. The End.” Which is lovely. [Laughs] And I remember deciding in fifth grade that I probably wouldn’t get to do all the cool things in reality that I liked reading about. I probably wouldn’t meet aliens and ride dragons and learn magic and all that, so I would write about it instead. And that is a decision that I have stuck with.
A: I can definitely relate to that, as writing is kind of a form of escapism. You know, getting to do things that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do.
M: Sure, and I love science-fiction and fantasy and that’s full of stuff that I’m never gonna get to do in reality, so why would I not love that?
A: There was another thing that I especially wanted to hit on, because it was something that when you put out your short story with us at Prismatica, something that I thought was just so amazing was your bio. It said, “Mara grew up in a house on a hill, of which the top floor was built first,” and I think that a captivating bio is something that a lot of talented authors tend to struggle with, but you’ve shown that it can be done, that it can be fun and interesting and kind of...weird. So, how many versions did it take for you to arrive at this one?
M: Quite a few, and I’ve written some at different lengths. I’ve got a document of “okay this thing wants a bio that’s really short, this one wants a long one,” and I can just go back to those. But, yeah, it definitely took a lot of practice and figuring out what I wanted to include. And it is definitely an art of putting the interesting things, the relevant things, really succinctly and I like that particular detail because it’s eye-catching and it’s interesting and it kinda says a lot about me in general: that I like to take a different approach to things. And it starts conversations! Like, “wait, wait, how does that work?”
“Well, it’s on a hill and, uh, we started with the top floor and then my dad and some people dug out the bottom and underneath the deck, they made another floor, kind of offset from the other one.” That meant that the top floor of the house looked very antique and old-fashioned and the lower floor looked much newer, and it made for a very interesting place growing up, which I would not trade for anything.
A: A lot of people think that writing is an individual-centered career, but a lot of the time being an active member in a writing community can be very helpful in getting your stuff out there, especially when it comes to the publishing industry. So, how do you use networking and interpersonal skills within the community?
M: Well, I do have the local group, the local writers club, and that’s a really big group, so I’m really lucky there that they have a lot of things happening and it’s a really awesome resource for me, because I’ll go to the meetings, I’ll submit stuff to anthologies and contests, and I’ll just get to know other local writers, so if someone’s putting together an anthology about this niche thing, like “hey, yeah, absolutely, I’ll do stuff with that.” And it’s similar online where I love talking to people about writing and other fun ideas to write about and lately I’ve started reaching out to people to do some writing challenges and exchanges where we’ll both write about the same writing prompt and see how different our stories come up. Then we can both share them or cross-promote each other and just have fun with it. And I want to do more of that, because that is really fun.
A: So, when it comes to the literary community, do you happen to recall where your first acceptance was at a literary magazine?
M: Well, it depends on how you define it. I got a poem published when I was eleven, and there were a couple of college ‘zines that probably don’t count ‘cause they don’t exist anymore. But probably one of the first real-official-adult thing was this short story that got published in an anthology from the local branch of the California Writers Club. They do a lot of anthologies and neat things and it’s very cool to get something in that. I was very excited about it.
A: And what about your first rejection?
M: That was probably the second novel-length book that I wrote. The first one I did not bother to submit to anyone because I knew full-well that it wasn’t going anywhere, ‘cause that was just kind of an exploration of ideas that somehow just sort of followed together. But the second one was much better, and I thought it had a chance, and I was mistaken. But maybe someday I’ll come back to it. Probably not, but it’s a possibility.
A: I recently saw that you commented on it slightly on Twitter but we’d really love to hear about your experience with self-publishing and whether you’d ever consider using a traditional publisher in the future.
M: My understanding of it in a nutshell is that self-publishing is great, especially if you have a fanbase of some sort because it’s only real failing is that it doesn’t have the built-in advertising clout of a big publisher. So, if you have a bunch of people who are ready to buy whatever you put out there, then fantastic, you are all set, but otherwise it is going to be a challenge, an uphill climb, to really get anywhere because it is very hard to advertise for yourself if you don’t have all those industry connections and all that money. Otherwise, it’s very easy to get things out in the world, it’s easy to talk to people. You can get local stores to carry it if you do it right and you don’t have it just on Amazon. So, there’s a lot that you can do and it’s pretty cool, but it is just hard to get famous, let’s put it that way.
A: And how did you build up your following?
M: The slow way. Just starting with people that I know and did a lot of networking and meeting people online and in-person and I went to all the local bookstores and did my research. I pretty much did everything that I could that seemed like a reasonable opportunity to take. I got a little YouTube video that played on local TV stations and all kinds of stuff, whatever I could find, really. And they say that nothing advertises the first book as well as the second, and well, in progress. Everything takes time. I did all my research and did everything that I could feasibly do. And all you can do, is all you can do.
A: That’s awesome. And how do you split your time between doing that sort of networking and writing, on top of having just your own life that you’re running?
M: It is a challenge, definitely. In particular, in recent past I haven’t had as much time as I want, but it’s really the kind of thing that if you’re determined to do this, you have to carve out time and dedicate it to it. You have to make time, you can’t just wait for it to come around. So, I got better at just sitting down and writing whenever I had time. I’d plan things out ahead of time and just work with what I had to work with, really. That’s all you can do, is to make time, ‘cause if it’s important enough then you gotta make it happen sometime. And it isn’t going to necessarily be enough time, but you do what you can.
A: Yeah, I mean it was Toni Morrison who, for her first book, she would write for the last fifteen minutes of the day or something like that before she went to bed. Definitely, if you want it, you can carve out that time, even if it is only fifteen minutes a day to write down something.
M: Yeah, and that can be really hard. I mean fifteen minutes hardly enough time to do anything unless you know exactly what you want to say, but man, you can make it work one way or another.
A: What’s the longest period of time that you’ve gone without writing since you’ve started to really get into it?
M: I don’t know. I don’t think it’s that long. I do NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, every year and I’m always going to be doing something in between. Either little short stories ‘cause there’s a contest that sounds fun or because there’s an idea I like or because there’s just something that needs to be written one way or another. Writing is one of those things that’s always on the back of my mind, so I’m always going to get back to it and I’m always taking notes of ideas to use, so it’s not something I put aside for long because it’s a pretty big part of the inside of my head.
A: And when it comes to novels versus short stories, what do you tend to prefer?
M: I like novels as, like, the main thing that I want to do, as the career option, but short stories are also a lot of fun and they are faster because they are shorter and that’s great. I can just whip out a short story and then it’s finished and I can share it with people, hooray! And there’s plenty of opportunities to do something with them, submit them to stuff and share them online. So, both of them are really good, just in different ways, and I’ve had a lot of success in exploring an idea through short stories and then realizing later that I actually had enough to build a book out of. They coexist really well. With short stories, there’s no pressure. You just do a little bit of idea, little bit here and there. Then here’s another idea and then you can do that and you’re done. And sometimes you can tie them all together and it’s fantastic.
A: Have any of the novels that you’re working on stemmed from a short story?
M: The main one that I got self-published did, actually. ‘Cause I wrote the draft of the novel during NaNoWriMo but the original idea came from a song that was on the radio and I was like, “That’s a cool idea. I don’t have enough to make a book out of at all, but I can maybe make a short story out of that.” And a bunch of writer friends at the time had decided, “Okay we’re gonna get together and do this challenge where we all write a little bit of something each day for a month, and I was probably the only one who actually did it each day, but by the end of the month I was writing each day about the same character and the same story because I’d come up with a different thought that tied in to the last idea and for like a week I just built on that, and by the time I got to the end of that, I had enough ideas there that I could actually start building an actual novel from it. And I’m so glad for it because it was a great story and I never would have gotten to the book without exploring it in the short stories.
A: So, it sounds like having that community is a pretty big part in your creative process?
M: It does help, but I can certainly just write things on my own, too. I just need an excuse to do it, basically, and community is a great way to come up with ideas and deadlines. You know, you could write something every day, but why would you unless someone else wants to see it?
A: Yeah, I think that having someone expecting you to do it is definitely a big push to keep going.
M: Yeah, and I’ve done my own writing challenges like that later one where, okay, I’m going to write something every day all by myself and...I can do that, it’s fine...but it’s lonely if there’s no one to share it with. [chuckles]
A: And with NaNoWriMo being kind of your main novel writing time, how much do you prepare for it?
M: A pretty good amount. A lot of worldbuilding and just general, where I want the book to go, and some idea of what’s going to happen in the first scene. At the beginning of everything, I’ll have just a rough skeleton of an idea, like okay “here’s the high points of what this book’s going to be about” and just a clear idea of the first scene and then the day before I write each part I gotta figure out kinda what’s going to happen. It’s the whole thing about taking a drive at night where your headlights light up just a bit in front of you but you can make the whole way there. I think that was a Neil Gaiman quote* and it definitely works, especially in NaNoWriMo where you’re writing quickly and gotta figure out the part in front of you and don’t worry about the rest yet.
* [Editor’s Note: this was an E.L. Doctorow quote]
A: Another thing when it comes with NaNoWriMo is something that I constantly struggle with, ‘cause I’ve tried it about four times and succeeded once. I have to go back and edit, and I know you’re not supposed to do it. Is that something you struggle with too?
M: To some degree. For me it’s mostly, it’s like the sentence-level, like the typos are going to bother me unless I’m going to fix them, but that’s pretty quick. What I’ve found works best for me is that I have a separate document of what actually need fixing because if I can’t just do it in a minute or two, if it’s gonna take time to fix, then I’ll just write it down with very clear notes on what it is, on what page it is, and I’ll come back to it. That can be little things like, “Okay, I didn’t actually say this person’s name until now, I need to make that clear somewhere before then,” and it can be bigger stuff like, “we’re gonna change this entire part here to this other thing,” and I’ll just keep my running notes document of what to do with the edits later, and that way I don’t have to worry about trying to fix it right away.
A: This kind of reminds me of something you said in a previous interview about finishing Sweeping Changes. You said it worked for you because you weren’t worried about it being good, just about having it finished. If a successful first draft is having a completed piece of work to show, how would you characterize a successful second draft?
M: Well, I look at it in artist terms, like, the second one doesn’t have any sketchy parts that are very obviously out of place. It tends to flow and look like you meant to do that. There’s no spots where there’s like “okay, notes to fix this later” or “then they did a bunch of stuff.” That’s a pretty good second draft.
A: And what is the most work you’ve put into a project that you ultimately scrapped?
M: Probably that second novel. I wrote the first draft pretty fast and then I spent a while working on it, making it longer. I added a whole detour to the plot, which is tricky. Just did a bunch of editing and all that and...it didn’t really go anywhere. But the nice thing about writing is that it doesn’t necessarily have to be done for good. You can just put it in the trunk, as they say, and maybe come back to it later, but not anytime soon.
A: Have there been any projects that you shelved that you eventually did take back out?
M: There’s one in particular, and it’s the one I just finished editing that I wrote the original a long time ago, but I was bad at it, apparently, because I came back to it and found all kinds of things that were surprisingly bad. It’s been very difficult to work on it when it was that old because it had a lot of flaws that I didn’t remember being there. Like, some little things are easy to fix, if it’s just punctuation, but if it’s larger stuff, like the structure of the story, that’s harder to change. I don’t know how well I’ve done it. Hopefully I’ve made it good enough but it’s been more difficult than I expected.
A: Yeah, I’ve definitely been there. There was one piece in particular that I tried to go back to, and I had no idea how bad it was. I was like, “what, I wrote this?” It was embarrassing to me and nobody was even reading it.
M: There’s also the surprises that get you. I went back to a science-fiction thing that I wrote, not that long ago, I thought, but the technology was outdated ‘cause they were talking about CDs and 3D printing. They were talking about something like 3D printing as if they’d never heard of it, because they hadn’t, because I hadn’t! It seemed very, very old fashioned and I didn’t think enough time had passed for that to be old fashioned.
A: It’s pretty amazing, when you look at science-fiction from even the past ten, fifteen years, the amount of things that have become real; the different contraptions and whatnot.
M: I think we live in a time period where technology is just making incredible leaps all the time, which of course makes it difficult for science-fiction writers, but still it makes it exciting to see where everything goes. I was thinking earlier, “Hey, we have video phones.” When I was in high school, we didn’t have them and they seemed so far in the future but they’re very easy and casual and common now and we’re absolutely living in the future.
A: So, as a fantasy and science-fiction writer, what is a piece of technology that you predict is the most likely to come to fruition?
M: I’ve always liked hover-boards and hover-cars and things, and I know people are working on that, but I don’t think it’s going to happen any time soon. I know they’ve come up with things that are very loud and they blast all this air and there’re these things you can use over water but they haven’t come up with anything that’s really quiet yet. I know they’re working on it, so maybe that will happen. I would love a hover-board someday.
A: Like the pink Matel hoverboard from Back to the Future.
M: Exactly. Even if it’s a horribly childish color, I will be all over it.
A: Wasn’t that supposed to have taken place like a couple years ago?
M: I think that is the nature of science-fiction, to always get things wrong in terms of how fast things are developing and we always reach the day where the time was predicted to have all these amazing things and, well, we don’t have any of those but we do have this other thing that you didn’t think of. In Back to the Future, they did not have cellphones that can do eleven billion different things in your pocket. Like, no one thought of that one. We have gadgets that can do everything, and that’s pretty awesome.
A: Yeah, what is it, the computing power of your iPhone is more than what got us to the moon?
M: Right? There’s a long, long list of things it can do, it’s astounding. It can translate, it’s a flashlight, it’s a camera, all kinds of stuff. And it’s the biggest encyclopedia in the world that you just talk at and it tells you things. Old-style Star Trek would be jealous. I like to take note of all the cool things of this time period, because there are cool things, you just gotta notice them.
A: Yeah, a lot of people tend to look at technology as sort of a bad thing and it’s part of the evils of the world, but it’s so incredibly helpful.
M: Yeah, but they’ve always thought that. When books became a thing, when the printing press came out, people were up in arms about it because then people would, their memories would fail. They wouldn’t be able to remember as much stuff because they had this crutch. And, I guess that’s true, but on the other hand, look at all this knowledge we have written down that we wouldn’t have been able to keep otherwise. That’s always how it goes: someone complains and that’s the way of things.
A: It’s always older people complaining about the newer stuff but we’re always going to be there. Someday it’s going to happen to me. I’m gonna be one of those old people that like, “ah, nowadays!”
M: “You kids and your holograms! Do real things!”
A: How much research do you tend to do when writing these things that don’t exist?
M: A pretty good amount, not a huge amount, but I will invent an aliens species and base them off of existing animals and I’ll research that animal to come up with stuff I wouldn’t have thought of. That can be really fun, so I’ll read a bunch of articles and take all my notes and go from there. Like, I’m gonna base this alien species off of dinosaurs with feathers, the ones that are shaped like ostriches, so let’s research how ostriches live. Let’s see what we can do to build a species and a society from there. There’s so much interesting stuff in the real world that you can easily extrapolate from into speculative fiction.
A: Oh, definitely. It’s pretty insane when you see these creatures that just look like they should be aliens. Especially when it comes to stuff at the bottom of the ocean or in the jungle. Like, how is that real?
M: There’s so much that’s really interesting one way or another and it’s just a matter of taking note, like okay, that’s really interesting, I’m going to write that down for later […] I think it’s emus that are apparently bad parents and they lose track of which babies are theirs. The father emus are the ones that watch out for them and whenever they find another family, the father emus fight each other and the babies all scatter, then they follow whichever adult feet they find first. So, any random gathering, there will be a family with one father and a bunch of kids of all different ages ‘cause they’re not related. That is so absurd and so funny that I want to use it in something, so I write it down.
A: You know, that actually happened to me when I took my daughter to the park. I came home with, like, five other kids.
M: It’ll happen, yeah! Go to the store, they’ll follow you. [laughs] Now, I have not yet figured out how a civilized society will do that but I’ll figure it out.
A: Now, something that you do very well, which is difficult to do in such a short period of time with short stories, is the worldbuilding, and fantasy takes a lot. I often find that that is what most writers have the most difficulty with, is fantasy short stories because there’s so much worldbuilding within fantasy. So, what’s your approach to worldbuilding?
M: It’s a lot like creating a species. I’ll do research and take notes of what’s relevant and make up my own stuff. It’s the kind of thing that you can get lost in and just build every little detail about the world but I’ve found, especially if you’re writing the first draft, that you don’t really need everything; you just need the basics. Some interesting details and build on that.
Anything that seems fun, I’ll explore, and the stuff that doesn’t really matter, I’ll figure it out as I go. I always want to make the world interesting to me. It’s very easy to do something where, “okay, well, standard fantasy conventions, go.” That’s easy enough, but it can be more fun if you can add some little details from what people expect, and I very much enjoy taking tropes and turning them sideways.
A: Are there any tropes that you find annoying or are tired of?
M: Oh, tons. Prophecies are kind of annoying. I’m only going to write a prophecy if I can change it into something where the characters don’t think it is. Like, “no man or woman can defeat me,” okay, then that means it’s a nonbinary person who defeats you. Or, “I cannot be killed by any mortal-made weapon.” Okay, cool, you’re getting beaned in the head with a rock. I don’t like things that are boring or things that have been done a billion times.
A: What are some novels you like that are successful when it comes to worldbuilding?
M: I like stuff written by Wen Spencer; she’s done some really cool things. Two of her books in particular have really good worldbuilding. One of them is A Brother’s Price. It’s in a world where men are rare, which is an interesting premise that’s been done before, but the way she does this one is really impressive and fascinating. It’s not that men are the ones in charge, it’s more that they’re the ones that stay at home with all the kids and if one family has a brother in each group of sisters, they get to trade it with another family. They’d swap brothers, so that’s how marriages happen: one boy marries a group of sisters and each generation goes down to be a group of mothers. The whole society is very unexpected and interesting.
The other one, Endless Blue, is a futuristic thing where spaceships disappear if they set their warp jumps to zero. If you put the coordinates in at zero, everything knows you disappear. And then you’re gone forever. Turns out, they actually go somewhere and that place is really interesting and the worldbuilding is very fascinating. It’s like an inside-out planet where the ground is on the outside and all the rules of physics and society are totally different and she had to make it up from scratch and it’s so cool. A lot of her stuff is creative and it’s been an example for me to follow.
A: I love that planet idea, like if M.C. Escher was to create his own planet.
M: Yeah, and you look up and you don’t see sky, you see more ground and the light comes from somewhere in the middle. And there’s aliens species in there, too [...] One in particular that really stuck out to me, ‘cause they’re a lot like minotaurs, and their society is built like cattle. For them, the only one in the group that talks to any outsider is the dominant bull and, at one point, we see this little family that crashed and it’s just a group of siblings that stole the ship and took it for a drive. The little boy of that group is pushed to the front to talk to everyone because he’s the only bull there and the only human that knows how their society works is this rather small female who has to pretend to be a bull and do all the body language and it’s really funny.
There’s another thing where their society never really did livestock the way we do; because they eat plants, they didn’t need to have any actual animals living with them, so they understand humans’ relationship to pets. They don’t understand a lot of things that are just basic to how we live, because they never needed to have a pet or any animal in their society, and that’s such an alien view of things.
A: That’s probably one of my favorite things that science-fiction does. It’s more introspective on us as a society and I love that idea of looking at why do we do things the way that we do, and why do we think it’s weird when it’s not that way.
A: What is some advice you’d give to a writer that is trying to break into the literary scene?
M: I would say to expect it to take longer than you want it to, so be ready for the long hall and be determined and all that. Also, have as much fun with it as you can, remember why you’re doing this. The more about it you enjoy, the better the entire process is going to be. Obviously, if you’re having more fun, you’re having more fun, but writing tends to go better when you enjoy it. That’s absolutely been my experience. Particularly with all these writing challenges where there are no high stakes, it doesn’t have to be good, you just have to write it. That makes it so much easier to write something silly or something that’s just a fun idea, something that I enjoy, if it doesn't have to be deathless prose, very-important-stuff. It can just be funsies! And then the fun things tend to turn out really good because it’s something that I enjoy and others will enjoy [...] If you like it, you’ve made your first reader happy, and that’s the most important one.
A: On the flip side of that, what is a piece of very common advice that you see people give authors that you think should be ignored?
M: I think people misinterpret the “Write what you know,” advice, because, a lot of the time, people assume, “Okay, I need to write about a character living the exact life that I, myself, have lived and I shouldn’t write about experiences I’ve never had. That’s not the point. That’s writing what you’ve experienced, not writing what you know. If you research properly, if you talk to people who have had those experiences, then you can know about it and you can learn about pretty much anything to some degree. As long as you’re being respectful about people who have actually lived those experiences that you haven’t, as long as you’re doing it right, then you can write about anything and have it be something that you know. Obviously, you wouldn’t know it to the same degree as someone who’s lived it [...] I’d say it’s “Write whatever you want to spend enough time getting to know.”
A: I love that. “Write what you want to spend enough time getting to know.”
M: Yeah, you want to enjoy the headspace that you’re gonna be in one way or another.
A: The last thing I wanted to say is, you’ve got an anthology coming out. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
M: I don’t know if you’ve heard of the trope that has been popular in the last couple of years online where, in science-fiction, the humans are not the boring little weakling aliens, that humans are the interesting ones. It’s been something that’s been really fun to play with. Just the idea that it’s a multispecies spaceship and humans are the ones that everyone else is either befuddled by or afraid of or there’s just something that makes us exceptional, because there’s so many ways that we can actually work with this. On Earth, we’re actually really good at endurance for walking or running a long distance. Only dogs and horses can really keep up with us, and we used to hunt that way. We would follow a deer until it falls down in exhaustion and that’s how we would get food. And we’re really good at throwing things. Even other apes, their shoulders aren’t built the same way as ours, so on that spaceship, if there’s an invading alien, we can pick up a rock and throw it and impress everyone. Just extrapolating from real things and going with stuff like, we work with eyesight. What if we’re meeting a species that doesn’t do that? What if they see some other way? How do we explain this to them? Like, “I can look at that jar and see that the medicine is moldy.”
So, it’s a really fun idea to play with and a lot of people online have been exploring this and there’s already one anthology out there that is focusing on humans being valuable and showing how good they are. It’s a good anthology; I have a copy. But I want to put together an anthology to focus on specifically how weird we can be. Like, compared to the other aliens, there’s something about us that’s different than the others, and I want to explore the different ways that we can be strange. This is going to be open for people to submit to. The current thought is having May and June when you can submit things. With the state of the world being what it is, that may extend a little bit, we will see. I just put together a page on my website with details on it. Maralynnjohnstone.com has a section that has all the details.
Mara Johnstone (she/her) grew up in a house on a hill, of which the top floor was built first. She split er time between climbing trees, drawing fantastical things, reading books, and writing her own. She has a master’s degree in Creative Writing an continues to write, draw, and climb things. To read more of Mara’s work, check out her website maralynnjohnstone.com or follow her on Twitter.
Twitter: @MarlynnOfMany
Chandra Montez (she/her), also known as Chandra Vess, lives in Tucson, Arizona, where she lives with her girlfriend as a stay-at-home partner. She is the co-founder of Lazy Adventurer Publishing and heads both press's magazines, Prismatica Magazine and Collective Realms Magazine as Editor-in-Chief and Publisher.
Her work can be found in the two magazines as well as Selcouth Station Press, Chaparral Press, and Theta Wave Magazine.
Twitter: @chandra_vess