Interviews

May 2019 - Interview with J.C. Gunn (WillFlyForFood)

A "classical" Science-Fiction story (if Sci-Fi can ever be considered classical) "Earthrise" features an amazing discovery of faster than light travel that gets humans to the stars many years before they were due. Due? Well, somebody's been watching. Read the fantastic story about a gifted engineer and a clever physicist who break through the boundaries.

Adultfiction: First things first. Your username is quite special. Care to explain?

WillFlyForFood: Thanks again for asking to interview me, it's quite an honor. As for your first question, I'll give you a funny answer to a funny question. When I first joined wattpad there were many authors who used clever and amusing usernames. A couple who come to mind are @DoNotMicrowave, @MorrighansMuse, and @twilightpeaks. Anyway, I decided that was the way to go. @WillFlyForFood is taken from an old fighter pilot joke. I fly for free, they pay me to put up with the BS from headquarters!

Adultfiction: Ah okay. I do remember those names as well! Maybe I should have gone for something more exciting myself. Okay, too late. Life is full of regrets. Right. Now we got that out of the way, let's get to the serious bit. What prompted you to write "Earthrise"?

WillFlyForFood: Earthrise: 2176 is the third novel I have written and posted to wattpad. The first was The Boy With Glue in His Hair. It is a coming of age, romantic comedy. My second novel was Johnny and Kimi: Off the Grid which is a mystery/thriller where two young lovers witness a gangland murder and are then on the run from various crooked politicians, bought and paid for FBI agents, Ukrainian hitmen, Chicago gangsters and the like. As I was finishing that novel, I needed a break from bad guys and killers! So, I dusted off an old outline left over from my days at college. [University for those of you across the big water] It was narrative only short story with the working title of 2176. It was to be written in the style of Arthur Clarke.

In my original outline the two main characters were a physicist and the engineer who helped him invent the thing. I started writing the story and posted it to wattpad as a work-in-progress. I wrote and then immediately posted each chapter every 3 to 5 days. Somewhere in the first few days, Mynah was born. Instead of a generic white coated 2-D character, she became the main focus of the story.

About that time, the read count started to pick up. I had gone from 20 reads a week to 20 in a day. So I just kept writing. Before I knew it, on one single day Earthrise got over 5,000 reads and that was way before it was finished. Okay, back to your question. Why did I write the novel Earthrise? I wanted to write a science fiction story with the following themes. An accidental discovery (FTL), alien artifacts discovered in deep space and of course, First Contact. Within that framework, the main theme in the Earthrise Universe is that space is explored by real people with real relationships.

Adultfiction: What sort of research did you do? Or are you a clever physicist working on interstellar drives? J

WillFlyForFood: Indeed. I wrote Earthrise with a few of my old textbooks open and I always had a calculator nearby to make sure the math was right! All of the numbers, terms, units and science are as real as possible. In my misspent youth I got my pilot's license and earned a degree in aerospace engineering with a minor in physics. I took a few graduate classes in quantum mechanics, hypersonic aerodynamics and nuclear reactor design. After that I flew fighters for the USAF for 24 years. All of this came in handy when writing hard-core science fiction. For example, when the starship Feynman refuels in the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan, every bit of it was as accurate as possible. Earthrise: 2176, like Andy Weir's The Martian gives the reader the opportunity to care about the science and the techno-babble. But in both of these stories, the reader can move on to the much more important human drama. Space is explored by real people that the reader can relate to. As for the last part of your question, if my current research in time travel were to work out as I expect, we will or will not have had this discussion last week...

Adultfiction: Time Travel? Oh wow!! If I suddenly find the clock moving backwards do I blame you, right? As to relating, well i work in the space sector, so I do have a basic idea about certain things, even if I'm not a tekkie myself. But time travel we don't do. I also find your aliens intriguing. Not only do they seem to be gender- neutral, they also have a special way of thinking. How difficult is it actually to write about alien minds?

WillFlyForFood: Wow, a most excellent question. All too often in science fiction or popular fiction, aliens are depicted as what I describe as some guy in a lizard suit. Think Chewbacca, the Gorn from old Star Trek, etc. So the challenge is to make the aliens, truly alien. I have attempted to do this by proposing that one species evolved on a very hostile planet. [think Cretaceous Park] This amphibian race are all born female and the few that survived to middle age metamorphose into males. One of the other alien races I have created is made up of cloned triads who are so identical that they have a limited form of telepathy between the three. [these guys also look like the classic LGM]

Adultfiction: How does this novel fit in with the rest of your work?

WillFlyForFood: Earthrise is the core story in a science fiction universe. In that universe I have written a prequel novel Lost Somewhere in Time and several short stories. My current project is Earthrise: 2115-First Contact. It is a 30,000 word novella which I will post about the same time that this interview goes live. I have a few notes for a true sequel called Earthrise: Colony. But that project is on the back burner for now.

Adultfiction: I found there was a deep vein of humanity and positiveness running through your novel. It gave me hope. Any comments on that?

WillFlyForFood: Yes, that is quite an insightful question. I was inspired to write this style in which the universe is the antagonist by authors such as Jack McDevitt and Nathan Lowell. All of the characters are regular people that readers can readily identify with. They all have jobs to do, families back on Earth, pay bills and like to share a cold pint at the pub with their crewmates. This type of story does not require space battles, laser blazers, killer cyborgs or bug eyed aliens in the ventilation system (Adultfiction: Or cats!!! Must have cats on spaceships. Sorry, got carried away there) . It is based on the people and their interactions with each other and with the challenges posed by the universe. I also enjoy writing characters with as much diversity as possible. Wattpad readers are from all over the planet and I want each of them to be able to see a little bit of themselves in one or more of the characters I write.

Adultfiction: A bit more about writing per se. What made you take up writing novels? Especially sci-fi? Or have you been doing this forever?

WillFlyForFood: Like many writers on wattpad I have been writing since I was a kid. At first, all I wrote were short stories in the style of Clarke, Serling, and Matheson. I had to teach myself to write dialogue and use a traditional third person past tense. While writing my first [romantic comedy] novel I soon found that writing dialogue was my favorite part of writing. I have written entire chapters simply so that a character could deliver a funny/insightful/profound one-liner.

Adultfiction: What role did or does Wattpad play in your writing journey?

WillFlyForFood: I could not have written six novels without the positive feedback from wattpad. Like most watty the authors, it started out very slow. It took 30 days to get the first 100 reads, 90 days for the first 1,000, 204 days for the first 10,000 and 338 days for the first 100,000. Each and every comment on my books encouraged me to keep writing. My favorite ones were those that said something like. I love this book, when will you be posting the next chapter?

I have also very much enjoyed my interaction with other authors. The watty author community is a great place to get feedback, encourage each other and understand that you are not alone in the journey to become a published author.

Adultfiction: What is your goal? What do you wish to achieve? On Wattpad or off it.

WillFlyForFood: [See above comment!] I'm going to finish my current six novels, edit, edit, and edit some more, get brilliant young artists to create some awesome covers and self publish on Amazon, iBooks and all of the usual places. After that, we shall see where the journey takes us!

Adultfiction: Anything else?

WillFlyForFood: I would remind everyone on wattpad to be nice to the other kids, share their toys and don't throw sand!

This interview was conducted by lhansenauthor who has since left the profile. Should you have any questions, please tag her.