Meteor House has released A Hole in Wednesday by Danny Adams, a prequel to Philip José Farmer’s Dayworld trilogy. We have talked to Danny about the book and his inspiration.
Tell us about the Dayworld universe. 
By the last quarter of the 21st century, war, pollution, disease, and overcrowding have became so globally destructive that most people submitted to a conqueror who established a tyrannical world government. But then the conqueror’s son betrayed his father and tried to turn that world government into a more benevolent one that would save humanity by coming up with Thirteen Principles that, in theory, would uplift us. In the process, though, he created the Dayworld – where people could only live one day out of seven, spending the rest of the week in a suspended animation called “stoning” while six others lived their lives – in the same house, in the same job – on their own Days.
On the surface, the world appears to be a utopia where everyone has their needs and many of their wants met. But in reality humanity is stultified and is still dying, just more slowly. There are those who buck the system – daybreakers, who illegally live all seven days of the week. But daybreaking is considered the world’s worst crime, and is punished accordingly.
Wednesday’s main character, Jerry Carson, has no interest in daybreaking, rocking the boat, or doing anything to unsettle his comfortable life. He’s a history professor who’s glad he doesn’t have to live in the chaotic ages that preceded the Dayworld. But circumstances are about to thrust him into a downward spiral forcing him to become a daybreaker and fight a growing evil power in order to save the people and things he loves.
Is the Jeff Caird/William St.-George Duncan character still the main one in A Hole in Wednesday?
No – although I don’t think it’s giving away too much to say that Caird and Jerry Carson are connected. There’s also a familiar face from the original trilogy making a prominent appearance.
Philip Jose Farmer is your Great-Uncle. Has he influenced you as a writer? How?
For starters, by laying the foundation. I’d done a little bit of writing now and again when I was a kid, but I was mostly all about cartooning. Then I spent two summer weeks visiting him when I was 12 years old. He was in the middle of writing a novel – and he couldn’t stop his daily routine despite family being there – and watching him (unobtrusively) confirmed in a way what I thought about writing being practically a magical process, but made me realize that you could cast that magic in a disciplined way. That is, you might be writing from 9 to 5 like any day job, but doing so could invoke inspiration at need rather than waiting for it to fall out of the sky. As if the Muse saw you showing up every day and thinking, “Well, he’s serious about it, so I’ll show up every day too.” (Or at least nearly every day.)
Second, he’s perpetually influenced me in a fundamental way when it comes to the things I always want to keep in my stories. He didn’t just write the standard tropes into his fiction, of course, but he also included intellect, curiosity, and adventure. His characters, regardless of whether or not they were human, were brains as well as brawn. They seized life and ran with it, and even in the middle of a struggle they looked at life as something to be saturated in rather than endured. Not all of my characters are like that, but the ones who are – including the villains – tend to be my favorites.
What did you do about style in A Hole in Wednesday? Did you attempt to emulate Farmer in the way you wrote or did you write in your own style in a world of his building?
To a small degree I did consciously try to imitate his writing style. When I read over the new portions that I wrote, if I couldn’t his voice in my head when I was reading them, I’d go back and rewrite.
But most of the time I aimed for Farmerian themes, and Farmerian characters who used all of the resources available to them, internal and external, in their struggles to do what they thought was right. Most of the time when I wrote in the spirit of Farmer rather than trying to mirror the sound of his voice, the sound of his voice naturally followed anyway.
What’s your writing process? Do you start at the beginning, middle or end? Do you throw a lot away? Do you write every day? Are you a planner or do you fly by the seat of the pants?
Phil Farmer was my first example of a disciplined writer, and ever since I’ve tried to write in a disciplined way. Not every day – most weeks I probably don’t write more than three days a week, or for more than an hour during each of those days. But the discipline comes in by enforcing my personal rule that if I know I can write for an hour on those three days, then I will, without exception.
I start writing the book at the beginning, but typically by the time I sit down and type out that first line I already have a pretty decent outline – and, also at Phil Farmer’s recommendation, I always know how the book ends before I start it. (The ending may change by the time I get there, but one way or another I don’t like to leave things open-ended when I’m at the beginning.) If I have a big case of writer’s block (which is fortunately rare) I may skip ahead and then come back later to the part that was bothering me, but otherwise I plow straight through.
I don’t typically cut much. Actually I think my editors would unanimously say I don’t cut enough before I send manuscripts to them.
The last book I wrote before Wednesday was what I called My For Fun Fantasy Novel. The whole thing was just a big series of experiments, trying out all kinds of new ways of doing things – including seat of the pants writing – just to see if I could pull them off. (I gave the book that nickname so I could experiment without the idea of publishing constantly nagging the back of my mind.) I did eventually finish it, but it took several months longer than usual and it was gigantic. So I’ll keep outlining from here on out, but otherwise I did like the new things I tried and will incorporate them into future books.
What are you working on now? Will you return to Camelot, do some more work in Farmers world, or go somewhere completely new?
Yes!
Really, the answer might be all three. Camelot’s publisher went under last year, so I’m toying with the idea of doing a few small revisions on the book and self-publishing it. I have an idea for an historical novel set in Florida that was reinvigorated by a recent trip to St. Augustine. And my recent trek to FarmerCon in Columbus, Ohio, which was also my first-ever trip to its host convention, PulpFest, sparked an idea for an all-new novel using one or more of Phil Farmer’s characters.
So one way or another I plan to keep busy writing, which is just the way I like things.
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Interview by Jane Routley – SFFWorld.com © 2016
