Interview with Fred Waren

November 17, 7:56 AMWriting ExaminerTiffany Colter

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Today we are interviewing author Fred Waren. His first novel, The Muse, is available through Splashdown Books.

After a 22-year career in the U. S. Air Force producing innumerable military reports and analyses, Fred Warren decided to cut his imagination loose and try his hand at writing the science fiction and fantasy that he’d enjoyed reading his whole life. With over fifteen works of short fiction appearing in a variety of print and online
publications, and his first novel, The Muse, debuting in November 2009, he’s feeling pretty good about that decision, though he admits he’s still got a lot to learn. Fred works as a government contractor in eastern Kansas, where he lives with his wife and three children.
 

The Muse: Stan Marino needs a muse. He’s written himself into a corner…again. A shot of inspiration is all he needs to finish his story…where is he going to find it? Stan doesn’t realize that inspiration has found him, and it’s about to take over his life.
Ripped from reality, he must lead a band of lost souls into a life-or-death battle with a merciless enemy. Stan has found his muse, but will he survive it?

Fred took a few minutes to talk about publishing from a writer's perspective with Tiffany Colter.

Tiffany Colter: Upcoming projects?
Fred Waren: I'm constantly writing short stories, and I've got a couple of new ones coming out around the end of this year. There’s The Silver Tree, which will be in a print journal called Kaleidotrope in December or January, and The Chamber of Doors, which will be appearing in the April 2010 edition of Bards and Sages Quarterly, an internet publication. On the novel front, I'm working on a science-fiction adventure/romance with lots of explosions, and I'm also getting ready to start on a sequel to The Muse, a story that will focus on one of the secondary characters I want to spend some more time with.

TC: How do you market yourself and your writing?
FW: I just try to spread the word as best I can. At this point in my writing life, I'm trying to push a lot of stories out to a variety of markets to help people become familiar with my work. As I mentioned earlier, I submit short stories on a regular basis, and I also maintain a writing blog at http://frederation.wordpress.com. I do a little social networking, Facebook, Twitter, etc, but I've found I have to be careful with that because it quickly consumes time I should be using to write. Working with Grace on The Muse has really broadened my horizons with regard to marketing and forced me to put myself “out there” a lot more and do the sorts of public things I’ve mostly dreaded my whole life.

TC: Who has really influenced you?
FW: It's almost cliché for someone who writes stories with Christian themes to say they were influenced by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, but it's true. Lewis more so than Tolkien, because I discovered Lewis earlier in my life, and his belief that myths and legends reflect some eternal truth at their heart really resonated with me. On the secular side, Mark Twain, for his wonderful sense of humor, Ray Bradbury, who brought poetry and science fiction together, and finally, William Tenn and Fredric Brown, two great short-story writers with a gift for delivering a huge punch in a small package.

TC: Anything else you'd like to add?
FW: Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share a little about my book and my writing.

Read more of Fred’s interview here at Writing Career Coach.

YOU COULD WIN!
Leave a comment on this posting and you could win a copy of The Muse. The drawing will take place on Nov. 24, 2009. This give away is for US residents only. There is no fee to enter.