We’ve talked to John Mulhall about his debut novel Geddy’s Moon and his views on the publishing industry.
Q: Can you tell us a bit about your book, Geddy’s Moon?
Absolutely. It’s a supernatural thriller about a man named Tyler who is suffering from amnesia. While on a quest for answers about his past, he finds himself in a small Kansas farming town called Geddy’s Moon. He begins to work on a farm there, make new friends, and get close to the local librarian and her son, and then his memory starts to creep back in the form of horrible visions, unsettling dreams. And Tyler begins to realize that perhaps he’d forgotten everything for a reason. He begins to fear that by remembering everything, he’ll introduce something sinister into Geddy’s Moon.
Q: It took you 20 years, why so long?
Well, thankfully it wasn’t a solid 20! I began developing the story when I was nineteen. I outlined everything, created all of the characters, and began to write, but then became discouraged fairly quickly and put it away in a drawer. I just don’t think I was mature enough at that stage of my life to do it. It was only recently, in mid-2012, that I revisited the old notes, all of the old writing, and thought, “hey this just might be worth finishing!” So, I started re-writing everything from the ground up using the original outline, and I finished in about two and a half months.
Q: How do you organize your writing?
I’m an outliner. I love to have the framework that a good outline provides. I have written professionally for a great part of my adult life, mostly on corporate video and event scripts, and the phrase that’s always stuck in the back of my head is “story is structure.” I think there’s a lot of truth to that. But, my outlines are loose enough that I’m still able to take detours, to allow the characters to breathe; they’re skeletons that I hang flesh on.
I write digitally, and my outlines often take the form of a Table of Contents page, sometimes with chapter titles that evoke what I’m feeling about each section. When I start to write, each chapter is a document, and gets filed neatly inside folders that pertain to the major sections of the book, as detailed in the outline. I’m fairly organized about my writing; it’s the left side of my brain asserting itself. But, that organization allows me to relax, and focus on the writing itself, and then my right side comes out to play and pushes the left side into the dust.
Q: What’s your thoughts on the publishing industry and how does it relate to you choosing to self-publish?
Well, it’s definitely an industry in transition, and I think everyone is waiting to see what the new model will be. I don’t pretend to have any secret insights, but my feeling is that the publishing industry doesn’t really understand the shift yet, and they’re struggling. There’s been “a way” of doing things for decades, and now they’re finding that that “way” isn’t working the same as it used to.
As a new author, I definitely don’t think traditional publishing is as appealing as it once was. You’re going to be expected to do a lot of the work to promote your own properties, regardless. Gone are the days where the author got an advance, the publisher promoted/advertised/marketed the book, and the author maybe did a book tour and then went back to the task of writing. Now, authors are expected to already have a social network in place, to take on much of the heavy lifting that publishers were once responsible for. Unless you’re a James Patterson or a J.K. Rowling or a Stephanie Meyer, publishing houses aren’t sure they’ll make money on your work. So, just like the movies studios, they put their focus on a small handful of tent-pole releases that are “sure things,” more or less. It’s totally understandable. They’re in the business to make money.
But at the same time, there’s a shift happening on the other side of things where authors can go direct to readers by way of digital publishing. There’s no middle man. It’s just this raw, direct relationship. And that’s fantastic. Not everyone is making a gazillion dollars doing it, like the Hugh Howeys and Amanda Hockings of the world, but it’s democratizing, isn’t it? I can put a book on Amazon or iBooks or Nook and sit right next Stephen King and Dean Koontz and Jim Butcher. The average reader doesn’t know – doesn’t care – what publisher is behind the book. The average reader just wants to read good fiction.
I’m hopeful that we’ll see more of these recent “print only” deals arise, such as the one Simon & Schuster made with Hugh Howey on the Wool series. I’m hopeful that they’ll see a worthwhile return on that, and then more publishers will be open to it with other self-published authors. It seems like a win-win to me. Many self-published authors have already established a readership, even a catalog, and that takes away much of the risk away from traditional publishers who decide that they’d be interested in promoting that work to mainstream outlets. That kind of hybrid relationship feels like the future to me.
Q: What kinds of books do you read?
I really don’t discriminate. I love books. I love fantasy and horror, of course, the “genre” books, but I also love straight fiction too. I just read The Cider House Rules, and I reread The Great Gatsby. I really am a big fan of well told stories. I tend not to read as much when I’m writing, but I’m trying to change that.
Q: What’s next?
I’m working on two novels right now, actually. One is the follow-up to Geddy’s Moon. I stop short of calling it a sequel; while it is, it’s very different is style and tone, definitely not a retread, by any means. The other is a standalone story, horror again, set in a hospital. I’m finding that one to be very elegiac so far. It may end up as a novella, I’m not quite sure yet. I outlined that one quite a bit less than I normally do, as I want it to have an extemporaneous quality. But, I’m really enjoying jumping back and forth, and I’m appreciating the differences in style between the two books. I’m hoping that at least one of them will be available before the end of the year.
I had previously been outlining a fairly ambitious novel with a Sci-Fi slant; that’s been moved to the backburner for the moment, but it will probably be the next thing I do, because I’m still very excited about it. Plus, I’m also working on a couple of short stories, which may go on my website, or maybe on Amazon as “singles.” All in all, there’s a lot happening, but I’m just excited I get the opportunity to write.
