Author Interview: Jeff Pearce
By Angela Roberts
May 25th, 2011
Award-winning author Jeff Pearce has worked in both journalism and fiction. He’s also the owner of new small press publisher, Gallivant Books. Some of his most recent books are alternate history SF Reich TV, paranormal fantasy Bianca: The Silver Age, and the horror novel, The Karma Booth. We met Jeff when he was our neighbor at Ad Astra in Toronto, and he sat down with editor, Angela Roberts, for a witty conversation about writing, Can Lit, and writing professionally.
Warning: Occasional swearing.
Angela: How did you get started as a writer?
Jeff Pearce: Depends on what age you want to go by. I was eight years old, and I had to read a story in front of other kids, and I went, “I’m hooked. I like this.” Then I had to wait another eleven years before I got the chance to do that. I got started in journalism because, at the time, the myth was perpetuated that journalism was a good place to learn writing fiction. That’s bulls**t, you can’t really learn writing fiction from journalism; you can learn basic composition. I sold a few short stories, but I really wanted to do novels, and it took me a healthy long time to get there. So I took a long way around.
A: Do you have a writing routine?
J: Yeah. I write. No, to be honest, that’s what it comes down to. I speak to a lot of neophyte newbie writers, and they go, “Well, I’ve got kids; I’ve got this or this.” I’m sorry, but if you want to write, write. Apply ass to chair. And just write.
Whether you do it in the morning, or whether you do it in the evening, or whatever, just apply ass to chair and type away. One guy said he was going to take an entire year off to write, and he had a circle of fans around him at a party. I got a little annoyed by this because this is my profession, and I said, “How often do you write now?” He says, “Well, I’m working really hard, my job, I’m lucky if I can fit in an hour.” I said, “You want to take a year off and do this professionally, what makes you think you’ll make a go when you’re not busting your ass now to find the time?” You know, when you want to do this to make your own groceries. So no, I don’t have a routine. I just write when I have to.
A: What’s your favorite genre to write? To read?
J: That’s a question that’s going to guilt me because I read a lot of thrillers. A good thriller, you get into easily. But I don’t really have a preference as to genre, because you can see [among my novels] there’s science fiction, there’s thrillers, there’s fantasy, so I don’t have a favorite for writing. For reading, I probably would pick up a thriller first before I pick up anything.
A: Who are your favorite authors? What are your influences?
J: Harlan Ellison had a huge influence on me. I nearly hired him once, and that‘s a whole other long story. Huge influence on me, because if you read anything by Ellison, the language is just like if someone takes a branding iron and shoves it into your brain, and goes, “Now feel this!” And you do.
Theodore Sturgeon… There are a whole score of others that I could rattle off, but those are the top guys.
A: So, do you remember your first sale? How long did it take and what was your experience?
J: In fiction or journalism?
A: Let’s go with fiction.
J: Fiction was interesting because I applied for a lark for the Toronto short story contest and, at the time, they had 7000 entries from around the world, and I placed really highly, so my first sale not only won a prize, but they paid me $500 and I wrote it in a day. I wrote it in a day on a government salary in an Ontario office, so I got paid twice. Which is a nice way to write, so that the civil servant bosses don’t realize that’s what we’re doing. So, yeah, I do remember that.
I also remember photocopying the cheque more than I do photocopying the story. I’m that kind of writer.
A: What do you find is different about being a Canadian writer? Do you ever feel pressure, even writing speculative fiction, to make your works reflect national ideas?
J: Oh, that’s a beaut of a question.
A: The “national pressure” sort of thing.
J: As long as you like being faithful in quoting me, I don’t mind answering that question at all. Allow me to piss off your patriots. I have absolutely very little respect for Canadian literature as a whole. Most of Canadian literature is crap. It’s crap because it’s young. Of course it’s going to be crap. We’re a young country. There is an incredible amount of snobbery in this country over genre fiction versus literary fiction. I don’t have a lot of respect for the literary authors who are, frankly, subsidized. Let’s face it; there are certain realities about Canadian literature. Canadian literature doesn’t make its profit here at home. It goes off and sells in the UK, in the States; that’s how they make their money. There are only 35 million people in this country. If they had to live off their royalties in this country, they would starve.
So you have fantastic writers like Robert J. Sawyer and Guy Gavriel Kay floating around, and they don’t get any attention from the mainstream media; they don’t get the TV time, they don’t win the Giller Prize, so as far as I’m concerned the Canadian literary establishment can go f**k off. No, you can quote me on that.
In a book I wrote (you can get it on Amazon) called How to Make Love in a Canoe: Sex in Canada, I point out that the most popular publisher in the world is Harlequin Romance. They’re based out of Don Mills. They don’t give a damn whether you’re Canadian or not; they don’t care about setting your story in wheat fields or in Guelph. They do genre fiction. And they sell all over the world. Their latest market that they acquired, I think, was Turkey. Oodles of success.
And yet the Walrus magazine, which has a circ. of 60 000, wrote this dismissive nasty article about them, knocking their fans. Well, in one year, Harlequin Romance outperformed its parent company, Torstar, in revenue, so the Walrus can kiss their ass. Really. Like, take a hike. You’re a subsidized magazine which gets government grants and other financial support from groups. They make a profit, they sell.
So, no, I don’t feel any pressure at all to be, you know, writing for a Canadian audience. If I have Canadian fans, so be it. But a Canadian bestseller is 5000 copies. My first American reprint of a British-sold novel sold 8000 copies. That was in the States. And that was an erotica novel written under a pseudonym, which had no advertising support. You do the math. Who do I want to sell to?
I’m a patriotic Canadian, but do I want sales in the States? Yeah. Do I want the Giller Prize? No. Give me the money, but spare me the snobbery, spare me the literary establishment that marginalizes great science fiction, thriller, and romance writers. We’ve got romance writers in this country that nobody’s ever heard of. Who make a very nice living, thank you very much, and they’re completely ignored.
So, I’ll stop there because you can see the steam coming out of my ears and I’m going to spontaneously combust. Whenever somebody asks me about Canadian literature, I just want to start chewing a table leg.
A: Do you have any advice for new or young writers? Other than what we’ve already talked about?
J: I’ve started a new publishing imprint called Gallivant Books. We’re going to have new authors, but the thing is, new authors have to recognize certain realities. They get told conflicting advice. Somebody, who shall remain nameless, said, “Don’t even try the traditional publishers.” Well, I disrespectfully disagree. I’ve been published by mainstream publishers. It’s not that it’s impossible, it’s just harder. What happened was that the slush pile got moved over to the agents, so now you have to get an agent, and now agents are getting increasingly harder to get. So, now comes along the eBook revolution. Now there are all kinds of small companies that can rise up and get their wares out there through Kindle, epub, Mobi, whatever.
What that means for a new author is you should be polishing your craft and looking very carefully, selectively, commercially, at who is going to best display your product. Don’t just go with some, you know, little operation, because you got accepted. No, go with a publisher that does a professional product, that pays you a decent royalty, an advance if you can get it; although with eBook publishers an advance is pretty rare. DO NOT pay companies to publish YOU. And I get asked this. “You mean I’m not supposed to pay them?” No! Be careful. But, you know, persevere.
If you want to be a professional writer, and make money at this, write. Don’t give me the speech of “I have the soul of a writer!” Writers write. Writers apply their ass to chair and type. And then they revise. The worst thing a publisher wants to hear is, “Well, but my friends like this,” or “I’m happy with this draft.” NO.
Also, think in terms of, [for example,] there was a young woman here earlier and she said she’s been working on the same book for ten years. Yeah, well, with all due respect to her (maybe it’ll be a really good book) but if I buy your book, I’m working on the idea of you as an investment. I want to see you deliver three books, five books. Maybe you’re like [the writer] of To Kill a Mockingbird and I can make a fortune off you forever, but I’d much rather invest with you as a brand name built up with an audience of your own, so that people go, “I want to go and read so-and-so. I want to go and get that. I want to read their books.”
So, it’s about that. You want to think in terms of this as a career. Which way do I want my career to go? And forget about the squabbling on GoodReads, forget about fan fiction bulls**t; it’s nice to get test readers, but ultimately the only one who matters is the publisher that buys your book. And I get some people that say, “You should pay higher royalties.” Get this: I pay a designer for a cover, I pay a production guy for formatting and typesetting, I pay printers for printing costs, I pay a website guy for the website. 95% of the investment is on the part of the publisher. So please, never bitch to the publisher. If you can get a really good rate, shop around and get what you can get. Because, yeah, there are some operations that will pay you 90% off of eBook sales. We will never do that. Because we can’t afford to do that. I’d rather pay you a very good competitive rate, off of secondary distribution, than say, I’m going to give you half. That’s ridiculous.
It reflects in the cover design and the quality standards of what you see. They grind it out, but what you want to do is find someone whose products that you admire. And go, “I want to go with them. I want to target them,” and you can get as literary as you want. But, quite frankly, at the end of the day, you are here to write a book that sells, that connects with readers. If you’re just writing for yourself, leave it in the drawer, because I’m not interested. And that sounds harsh, but I want him to read this, and him, and her, and I want them to go, “Oh yummy. Can I please have some more?”
A: Can you tell us anything about what you’re working on now?
J: Yes. I am working on the company surviving. The focus of Gallivant is going to be, as the year gets to the halfway mark and towards the end of 2011, to find some good authors that I can have in a permanent sense, that I can go, “OK, that person I really want to bring back. That person I really want to have them write two or three books.” So I’m scouting for talent very selectively. We’re not taking submissions yet, but we will be next year.
You can find more information on Jeff Pearce and his works at his blog.
Also, you can find more information about his publishing imprint and their titles on Gallivant's website.