Today, I'm interviewing Alex Azar, who wrote "The Taste of Copper" for Strangely Funny. It's a good bit funnier than the first story I read from him, "No Lights" in
Isolation (Post Mortem Press).
Q. Am I correct that you chose the story idea for your submission by taking a poll on your blog? What were the other contenders?
You are correct. It just so happened that at the time the call for submissions for Strangely Funny came out, my blog was about to hit 100 posts. I thought a fun way to commemorate that was with my first poll, allowing followers to choose from several different ideas. The other options were, a geriatric monster hunter in a retirement home still hunting his one that got away (imagine a werewolf with a walker being chased by an old man in a wheelchair), and the final option was the a story about the slow build of preparing for a zombie apocalypse, that turns out to only consist of a single zombie.
- Side note: the werewolf with the walker would have been a good sell, too!
Q. Many writers know what they are from a young age, but your bio suggests you had a grand "Aha!" moment instead during college. Tell us a little more about that. I started in electrical engineering myself, but that was after I was informed I couldn't major in something as impractical as comic book writing.
I had always been a budding author. I still have notebooks from elementary school filled with early attempts at comics of my own. However, it wasn't until after I spent two years at college studying to be an electrical engineer that I realized I hated math. More to the point, I took every English course the college offered. That was my "Aha" moment when I realized maybe writing was a viable profession for me. Telling my engineering father I was going to be a writer wasn't an easy conversation, but he's now my biggest fan.
Q. Are you a plotter or a pantser? (
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pantser )
And here I always thought a pantser was someone who dropped other people's pants. I'd like to claim that I'm a plotter, but reality hits every time I begin a new project and realize that the three lines of "cool" dialogue I've jotted on a post-it note don't really amount to much of a plot.
Q. What is your latest writing project? Tell us a little about it.
For the past several years I've been writing the cases of a paranormal detective, James S. Peckman. The stories are told from James' recollection after he's lived through decades worth of misery and adventure. In his older state, the cases aren't told chronologically, painting an interesting tapestry that can't be fully appreciated until he's finished his tales. The hope is to publish his various cases in two collected editions.
Q. Who is your favorite author, and what do you enjoy most about his/her writing?
There's certainly a few contenders for favorite author like H.P. Lovecraft, C.J. Henderson, and Stephen King, but I'd have to say my absolute favorite would be Edgar Alan Poe. Aside from his writing being so visceral and emotionally driven, his style was the most influential to the development to my writing. In fact, the first story of mine to be accepted for publication, was actually written for a 'disciples of Poe' anthology. The company went out of business before I even heard back regarding the submission, but I sent it elsewhere, and it started a trend that continues with "Strangely Funny" containing my tenth publication, "The Taste of Copper".
Thanks for visiting with us!
Learn more about Alex's current projects (and possibly vote on them) at
http://azarrising.blogspot.com .
Check out Alex's story in
Strangely Funny, now available in
print,
Kindle, and
other e-book formats.
The first: History and Mystery, Oh My! is an anthology of historical mystery stories. I had many, many good submissions for this book, so I chose a wide variety of detectives over a wide variety of years and cultures.
