Jay Lake

[November 5th, 2008]

You Really Should Read: Escapement

Portland sci-fi/steampunk author Jay Lake is almost irritatingly prolific, having turned out six story collections and five novels since 2003. Plus, about half his novels have a God complex—or maybe just a complex God of clockwork, a key-turned Earth and planets on toothy tracks around a lamp. Everyone forgives him. In 2004 he was named best new sci-fi writer on the block, and his novel Escapement (2008) was nominated for a Hugo: that biggest, baddest daddy of sci-fi adulation. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. 10:30 am Sunday, Nov. 9 with David D. Levine. Community of Writers Portland Stage.

What’s your personal writing ritual?
My MacBook on my lap, a bottle of water nearby, and someplace to loaf. That’s about it, no lucky hat, no special coffee mug, nothing. I can write almost literally anywhere—I have done so on the sales floor of bookstores, on a panel at conventions, as well as the more usual places, such as airplanes, the back seats of cars and crowded restaurants. I tell people that I could write during a bar fight, but I have yet to test this theory. (Volunteers are welcome.)

What are your favorite themes to write about?
I don’t write to theme on purpose—I hold a well-earned horror of didacticism—but it’s not hard to look at my work and see themes of personal responsibility, the difficulty of choosing, emerging sexuality, belonging/outsiderdom. Basically, I suspect all my work is about growing up at some deep, inner level.

The most beautiful word in the English language is: Boustrophedon. (Or, possibly the phrase, “paid in full.”)

What authors made you want to pick up a pen in the first place and why?
Gene Wolfe’s Shadow of the Torturer. It’s the first volume of his Book of the New Sun cycle, and I think it ought to be required reading for anyone who aspires to beauty in fiction.

Fight Club time: If you could fight one author (or critic), who would it be and why?
Ernest Hemingway, because he couldn’t hit back.

Name a book that you think is highly overrated. Be honest.
Anything by Clive Cussler.

Dream project:
The novelization of the Lord of the Rings movie scripts. I would be the most hated writer in science fiction and fantasy. Think of the fame!

Most recent nightmare:
Sell through!!!

Your cure for writer’s block:
What is this writer’s block you speak of? I made my most recent novel deadline even while fighting cancer. If I can do that, I can do anything.

Pessimistic question: Will you keep writing even after people stop reading?
I wrote for years before people started reading. I don’t know why I’d stop just because people stopped reading me.

Optimistic question: Kittens? Discuss.
Vampire zombie pirate ninja kittens. On airships. With romantic leading men draped from the deck rails with their hair flying like chestnut flags in the chill autumn winds.

Please paste a short paragraph from a story, poem, article, blog post, etc., you’re currently working on below:
Gashansunu stepped aft while Paolina watched the impending battle. The sky was just lightening. A few thousand feet below them, a beach gleamed along the ocean reflecting the last of the night’s stars. The interior was sullen mud flats and the textures of jungle by night, except for the scattering of fires that marked the remains of the British presence at Cotonou. Away from the shore, the sea glittered, spiderwebbed with the lighter silver of the peaks of the waves.