Will Lavender

I was lucky, and honored, to be able to contact Will Lavender, a New York Times and international best selling author, and have him answer some literary questions for me.  Will's novels have been described as "puzzle mysteries", rich with intrigue and creative story-lines that keep the reader guessing until the very end.   Currently, he has two published novels "Dominance" and "Obedience", both which you can check out from the library! 

I want to take the opportunity to thank Will again, for indulging my fangirlness and taking the time out to answer these questions.  You can check him out at his website and like his Facebook Page.  

1.  Firstly, one of our staff members would like to know what your favorite breed of cat is.

  

I do not own a cat, sadly. I do however own a dog who is oddly sort cat-like—she hunts the grounds around our house in an odd way, she tends to dislike most living things except humans, she spends most of her time curled up on a chair. She’s basically a cat with a bigger appetite and a weirder smell.

2.   When did you decide that you wanted to pursue a writing career?  What inspired you to do so?

I was probably around seven or eight years old. I wanted to write because I discovered a family friend was James Howe, who became famous for the “Bunnicula” series of books in the 1980s. I read those books and was enthralled; here was someone I knew telling stories for a living. I have always been intrigued by stories—both written and those told to me—and when I reached my teens I naturally began reading everything I could, mostly fiction. I’ve really never wanted to do anything else but write fiction.

3.   How do you set about outlining your novels, since the plots are intricately woven together?

People are always surprised when I tell them that I don’t outline. That isn’t entirely true, really—when you sell a novel that isn’t finished it needs to have an outline attached to it. But generally I dislike outlining. I like when my own novels surprise me, when the characters do things I never intended when I sat down at the keyboard that day. I’ve found that when I write from an outline, I’m generally not surprised by what happens. 

           4.   If you could go on an “author tour” with any three other writers, dead or alive, who   would you chose and why?

Stephen King, Michael Connelly, and Gillian Flynn. All three of these writers I think are among the best fiction writers in the field today. King in particular has had a transcendent, profound impact on my own career. I write different kinds of stories, but I owe virtually everything I’ve done to his books. Everything I write is an attempt to transport my reader the way King’s books transported me back when I discovered him at 15, 16 years old.

      5.   Would you rather eat a bowl full of spiders, or a plateful of worms?

Tough one. It would depend here on if the worms were living or dead. I can’t tolerate a live worm wriggling. This is why I don’t fish. The texture alone of a worm would be a deal-crusher for me. However, I can’t image the feeling of living spiders scurrying around inside the throat would be pleasant. So if I have to pick in a gun-to-my-head kind of way, I think I’m going with worms on the hope that they’re dead or that my teeth could sort of mash them into submission before swallowing. 

       6.   I read in the bio on your website that you use different authors for inspiration for your writing style, but where do you draw inspiration from for your books in terms of your characters, the locations, and the events in which you place them all in?

I get inspiration from everywhere virtually all the time. My first novel, “Obedience,” was based on a real event that occurred in Mt. Washington, Kentucky, which is a small town where my wife taught high school English for a few years. One afternoon a man called a McDonald’s restaurant there and claimed he was a police officer, and he asked for a manager. The manager got on the phone with him, and the man proceeded to tell her that she had an employee who had stolen something. He ordered the manager to bring the employee into a storage room, and what transpired next was literally hours of psychological torture. This story was at once bizarre, heartbreaking, and fascinating, but for me it opened up a window into this very human desire to do what people of authority tell us to do. My book wasn’t specifically about the Mt. Washington hoax case, but that event is very much a part of why I wrote that novel.

            7.   What element do you feel is the most important in fully developing when writing (characters, plot, etc)?

For me it’s plot: I tend to not be able to write full-bodied stories if the plot isn’t solid. But I think generally people really fall in love with books that have strong characters. Some writers have a tremendous knack for creating characters readers want to get to know; some writers—the great Michael Chabon comes immediately to mind—seem to genuinely love their characters. These writers are the ones you see selling thousands of books, having movies made from their books, etc. Character is the lifeblood of a story and it’s what makes a book go from just okay to something magical.

8.   What is your favorite part about writing / being an author?

I think it’s that I get to make the rules. In fiction there really isn’t anything hard and fast that says you have to do things a certain way. Some of my favorite novels completely defy convention; they twist and turn and wind around in ways that are totally new and brilliant. I’m always trying to do this, and what makes it easier is that there’s no handbook for the way this must be done. Anything goes as long as it’s interesting.

9.   What three books would you say have left an impression on you as a person?

“Oblivion,” by Peter Abrahams; “Plainsong,” by Kent Haruf; and “Graveyard Shift,” by Stephen King.

10.   What is the best advice you can offer to someone that is thinking about a writing career?

Read. Read a lot. Read with an eye toward learning how to write. Read books that are similar to what you want to write and read books that are dissimilar. Read until you have a grasp on your voice, and then begin to hone that voice. Hone that voice by reading some more. Writing creatively is something that we all have the power to do if we know how to form sentences. It isn’t something you have to have a special degree for; it isn’t something you have to have a certificate to accomplish. You don’t need to apply. You can just sit down one morning and begin. But the thing that separates the good from the bad, and the thing that allows some writers to break out while others never get published, is that the best writers know how to read and incorporate what they’ve read into their own style. Everything, in the end, is osmosis, and the best writers are those who are willing to be sponges.