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  • Issues
    • See You in Another World (2023) >
      • Editors' Note (2023)
      • Voices of the Summer Night
      • Lightning Glut
      • All The Little Things
      • From a Distance
      • Confined
      • The Night Hours
      • A Contrapuntal for the Girl in My Dreams
      • Go Back (before they do)
      • Snippet of Thought
      • The Darkness
      • Her Nature
      • I Listen
      • Stranger In The City
      • What Music Does
      • Fallen Stranger
      • The Black Dress
    • A Fire of Words (2022) >
      • Editors' 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) >
      • Editors' Note (2021)
      • 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) >
      • Editors' Note (2020)
      • Two Weeks' Notice
      • A Curious Man
      • An Eternity Swathed in Cobwebs
      • Hidden Memories: A Villanelle
      • A Better Place
      • Conscription
      • Just Breathe
      • Akko
      • The Hungry Dark
      • And Then Something Shuffled
      • Deodorants are a Girl's Best Friend
      • The Old House
      • Willow
      • Perfection
      • She Will Be Queen
      • Nothing But Space
      • a wicked thing
      • Anthony
      • Cheesecake
      • Za
      • Coco
      • Coexist
      • der böse Mann
      • Feeding
      • Catharsis
      • I HAD TO RENAME THIS POEM DUE TO COPYRIGHT ISSUES
      • For All The Kids Who Were Told They'd Never Make It... and Believed This
      • i Will Always Love You
      • Our 4
      • Rainy Day
      • Space
      • The Ocean Cares Nothing of Man
      • Sickly Sweet Love
      • I call the eating disorder hotline
      • Bright and Sunny Day
      • Grandma in the Moon
      • Interminable Education in Seventeen Syllables
      • Macrocosmic Creation
      • Middle Class Psyche
      • My Sister
      • From a Park Bench
      • Rain
      • A Recollection of Our Memories
      • Sadie Got Me in My Feelings
      • Uranium Rose
      • When I Grow Up - Paige Rhoads
      • Who am I?
      • 49-53
    • Words Become Reality (2019) >
      • Editors' Note (2019)
      • Bear Down: A Sestina
      • Kidnapped & Killed
      • Lemonade
      • Rise
      • Someone Who always Pays
      • A Simple Story
      • The King's Battle
      • Aftermath
      • Aging Population
      • Can we still be friends?
      • Carpe Diem
      • Coffee
      • Day to Day
      • Do Not Hold me Closer, Let me Go
      • Gift of Time
      • Love Everlasting
      • A Message to the Youth
      • Peach
      • Randy
      • The River & The Earth
      • The Show Goes On
      • Summer Love
      • Sundae
      • Waiting for the Bell
      • West Coast Wishing
    • Watch Every Second (2018) >
      • Editors' Note (2018)
      • White
      • eleven eleven
      • Growing Up
      • Claustrophobia
      • The Cage
      • The Soldier's Return
      • Spacing Out
      • Depression
      • Mona Lisa
      • Childhood Cancer
      • Puberty
      • Languish
      • A Magical Ending
      • Life
      • Barter
      • Descent into Space
      • Red Water
      • The Short Film
      • Starting Line
      • And I Am From?
      • Such a Foreign Concept
      • You Say
      • My Creator
      • The Most Common Illness
      • Reflection in Time
      • Ode to My Mirror
      • Time
      • See Me
      • Consequences
      • Where I'm From
      • Unstoppable
    • Her Voice Remains (2017) >
      • Editors' Note (2017)
      • Alone in the Halls
      • Ideal Love
      • Cliff at Dusk
      • I Will Never Forget You
      • Lost
      • OCD
      • Cannibal Animal
      • A Poem for Grandpa 2
      • Solvent
      • Risky
      • Shannen and Graces’ Long Road
      • Dear Bubbles
      • A Tree in the Air
      • Losing Myself
      • ABC's Poem
      • My Glorious Flight
      • Birth Giver
      • Flat Line
      • Eternal Beauty
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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
help me write my paper link
5/21/2018 12:57:22 am

I can feel your passion in writing. With this, you are able to contribute and share your works to the world. By this, people will remember you and even the next generations. I wish you all the best in life. I wish you happiness and good health. May you able to touch more hearts and change lives. I am moved by your great works, hoping it will be the same for others. I am happy for you because you are able to enjoy life and find your happiness and become successful in that way.

Reply
resume planet link
5/29/2018 10:03:30 pm

Great interview! I'm a big fan of Sci fi genres and I really hope your novel could be turned into a movie. You're a big inspiration to every aspiring writer too, who wants to their works to be published. I hope he makes more novels to come and become a masterpiece of their own rights. He was such a marvelous author to look after. Wishing all the best luck in your next project! I'm sure your fans are so excited!

Reply
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3/7/2020 01:52:48 am

Another way to be absolutely free without doing anything is our code generator without investigation or human verification

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