Hot Dish Magazine
  • Home
  • About
  • Staff
    • Staff 2021 -22
    • Staff 2020
    • Staff 2019
    • Staff 2019
  • Issues
    • A Fire of Words
    • Editor's Note 2022 >
      • The Floor Wallows Lower
      • Cornflowers
      • Erudite
      • That One Morning
      • mom, im afraid
      • selenophilia
      • Roses and Rainbows
      • If a poisonous snake bites itself, will it die?
      • Rochester
      • Crown of Branches
      • Stairs to the Sea
      • A Poem Written Entirely From Advertisements
      • Pyromania
      • silhouette of a bird against winter stars
      • thunderstorm in the bedroom
      • A Night in Recovery
      • sleeping gypsie
      • paper dolls&goodbyes
      • We Are Women
      • Village Air
      • Sunshine's Laughter
      • the male gaze
      • The Forensic Entomologist
      • Lacking
      • Drowning
      • Adelie
    • Create the Wonders We Dream (2021)
    • Editor's Note >
      • Zove
      • I'm Sorry
      • Fake Smile
      • My Friend the Balloon
      • Eyes Intertwined
      • Perfect
      • Only a Moment
      • A Dangerous Word
      • My Dreams
      • The Last 100 Meters
      • The Green Void (Villanelle)
      • The Whimsical Galaxy (Sestina)
      • The Silent Kindness
      • Pressure
      • Table on the Hill
      • The Yukon
      • The Shore
      • Repentance
      • Her and I
      • Infections of the Soul
      • Threads
      • Dream of a High Schooler
      • Empty
      • little flame
      • scars
      • black and white
      • The Cat
      • Joy
      • Sweet Honey Bee Stings
      • If There Were One Day
      • Delete
      • Our Hearts to Central Vietnam
      • him or Him?
      • Ocean
      • Es Llaner Beach
      • Sewn Together
      • Rain
      • Yes, I Like
      • The Legacy of the Moon
      • The Wind Whimpers
      • From Here I See
      • To Feel Clean
      • Red
      • Survival
      • Substance
      • Golden Lies
      • Midnight Tango
      • Ode to a Spleen
      • Modern Siren
      • The Night's Diamond Tears
      • Beats In Double Time
      • A Day in the Flight
      • Carved By Venus
      • Lifeline
      • Everest
      • Education
      • How Much of Reality Can Be Observed
      • What is a Spork
      • What is the difference between love and in love
      • What would you have wanted? me to say
      • Planet Caravan
      • The Journey of a Minute
      • The Circus of Scars
      • Mosaic
      • Color
      • Love and Acceptance
    • Colors I Never Knew Existed (2020)
    • Her Voice Remains (2017)
    • Watch Every Second (2018)
    • Words Become Reality (2019)
  • Blog
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • Home
  • About
  • Staff
    • Staff 2021 -22
    • Staff 2020
    • Staff 2019
    • Staff 2019
  • Issues
    • A Fire of Words
    • Editor's Note 2022 >
      • The Floor Wallows Lower
      • Cornflowers
      • Erudite
      • That One Morning
      • mom, im afraid
      • selenophilia
      • Roses and Rainbows
      • If a poisonous snake bites itself, will it die?
      • Rochester
      • Crown of Branches
      • Stairs to the Sea
      • A Poem Written Entirely From Advertisements
      • Pyromania
      • silhouette of a bird against winter stars
      • thunderstorm in the bedroom
      • A Night in Recovery
      • sleeping gypsie
      • paper dolls&goodbyes
      • We Are Women
      • Village Air
      • Sunshine's Laughter
      • the male gaze
      • The Forensic Entomologist
      • Lacking
      • Drowning
      • Adelie
    • Create the Wonders We Dream (2021)
    • Editor's Note >
      • Zove
      • I'm Sorry
      • Fake Smile
      • My Friend the Balloon
      • Eyes Intertwined
      • Perfect
      • Only a Moment
      • A Dangerous Word
      • My Dreams
      • The Last 100 Meters
      • The Green Void (Villanelle)
      • The Whimsical Galaxy (Sestina)
      • The Silent Kindness
      • Pressure
      • Table on the Hill
      • The Yukon
      • The Shore
      • Repentance
      • Her and I
      • Infections of the Soul
      • Threads
      • Dream of a High Schooler
      • Empty
      • little flame
      • scars
      • black and white
      • The Cat
      • Joy
      • Sweet Honey Bee Stings
      • If There Were One Day
      • Delete
      • Our Hearts to Central Vietnam
      • him or Him?
      • Ocean
      • Es Llaner Beach
      • Sewn Together
      • Rain
      • Yes, I Like
      • The Legacy of the Moon
      • The Wind Whimpers
      • From Here I See
      • To Feel Clean
      • Red
      • Survival
      • Substance
      • Golden Lies
      • Midnight Tango
      • Ode to a Spleen
      • Modern Siren
      • The Night's Diamond Tears
      • Beats In Double Time
      • A Day in the Flight
      • Carved By Venus
      • Lifeline
      • Everest
      • Education
      • How Much of Reality Can Be Observed
      • What is a Spork
      • What is the difference between love and in love
      • What would you have wanted? me to say
      • Planet Caravan
      • The Journey of a Minute
      • The Circus of Scars
      • Mosaic
      • Color
      • Love and Acceptance
    • Colors I Never Knew Existed (2020)
    • Her Voice Remains (2017)
    • Watch Every Second (2018)
    • Words Become Reality (2019)
  • Blog
  • Submit
  • Contact

Interview with James Zarzana

4/23/2018

3 Comments

 
Picture
by Abigail Fellin

James Zarzana was our guest blogger of the essay "Madness" and the author of the  Marsco Saga (which can be found on Amazon). Below is a collection of excerpts from an email interview with him over his experience with literature and writing.

Why did you decide to study literature?
I committed to studying English in my undergraduate days…But, I love stories. I love the way a story can bring the reader into a life or taut situation, and the reader comes away understanding “life” and possibly themselves better. (Yes, I’m that type of idealist.)
Loved Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens. I leaned toward British writers. At first, I was going to specialize in the 18th Century British lit with its urbane and witty verse, but once I dug into the 19th C British novel, I was hooked.
 
I read on your website that after retiring from teaching, you took on the full-time job of writing. Why writing?
You know, when a student would ask me “why?” my response often was, “well, why not?” I was in the classroom or at an administrator’s desk for 41 years. I wanted to retire “early” (by only two years) so I could devote myself to fulltime writing. I had one Marsco novel published by then, it was getting great reviews, and I wanted to be flexible about my writing and my time to present. I wanted to focus on my writing while I was “young” enough to finish all the works I had in draft form.

I have always written something. I wrote a novel in college, which looking back, I realize now was “fan fiction,” a term that did not exist in 1970. (Exist to me, at any rate.)
So, why write? Why not? I have these stories to tell, they are timely—a megacorporation takes over the world, sound too much like today. Alt-news, the end of our democracy, violence everywhere, rule of law gone. As Wilfred Owen, the great World War One poet, wrote, “All poets can do is warn.” I write to warn.  
 
While “Madness” is a short essay, you typically write longer fiction novels that have more of a futuristic feeling to them. Why do you like to write in this genre?
Marsco came naturally to me. I just started writing it, just jumped in. Now, I organize more, I outline ahead, and think about my characters much more before I write than when I jumped into Marsco. As a teen, I read a good deal of sci-fi from HG Wells to Julies Verne to the modern Americans (Bradbury). I was a high school junior when Star Trek started on TV. (“Live long and prosper!” I was a trekkie before there were trekkies.) I was teaching high school and finishing my MA when Star Wars hit. And yes, I stood in line for three hours to see it during its opening weekend. This was before Netflix and movie rentals, but I managed to see it seven times over the next few months, including once seeing it as a pirated copy shown at a pizza parlor—grainy and with poor audio.

Sci-fi gives the writer a chance to set all the rules. If I wrote a Civil War novel or a World War II novel (and I have outlines for both of these), then to be accurate, I would have to limit the role and condition of women, for example. Although the Federal Army fought to free the slaves, they were hardly thinking of racial equality the way—I hope—we think about it today. So, writing set in another era has to deal with all that era’s dust under the rug.

With my sci-fi, I can set my own agenda…Sci-fi also allows me to write about today without directly doing it, naming it.  
 
You have already published two books of your four-book saga. What challenges and rewards have you come across along the way?
The rewards are that I do have a print copy I can hold up. My work is available as a Kindle download to any Kindle-ready device. I have had people read it on their phones, on Nooks, on laptops. You can order a print-on-demand copy. So, it’s rewarding in that sense. I received a very favorable, stared review from Blue Ink Review, which reviews mostly self-published writers and is used by libraries across the country to highlight self-published authors like myself. I noticed my sales to libraries spiked. So, that’s good.
 
I went with self-publishing after years and years of trying to secure a literary agent. Self-published writers are growing in number, and the publishing world and book sales world is changing as that number grows. Amazon commands the market, not brick-and-mortar stores like Barnes and Nobles. So, publishing as I do, any reader can find it anywhere in the world if they can get to the Internet. So, no one from North Korea is reading it, but I have had sales in Europe, in Canada, in the US.

So, challenges: seeking an agent and not finding one. I sent out over 100 query letters. Very frustrating. When I do my next sci-fi novel, my non-Marsco novel set in London, I will again seek an agent. But, now, with half the series self-published, it is hard to find anyone interested in me. I’ll try fresh with my next series. Who knows? Maybe I’ll ride an elevator with Steven Spielberg and he’ll make Marsco into a movie.

Another reward is that, with the two books in print, I have the cred to speak on writing. I love giving Q&A format discussions about my work, about writing in general. (Several of these are on YouTube under James Zarzana.) I also present a workshop titled, “Getting Started Writing Ficton.” I have given that at libraries, like ours in Marshall and up in Alexandria, Minnesota.


3 Comments

    Archives

    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    March 2020
    February 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Nourished in the Heartland. Served across America.


E-mail

hotdishmagazine@bvu.edu