Critique_This_WIP

The CTW 100 Followers Contest is officially over; today, the winners will be announced on CritiqueThisWIP! Want to know who won the prized critiques? Check the sidebar on the left side of our blog. That's right, over there ------>
**Winners will be posted by 8pm (CST).

Marc Vun Kannon was born in Bethpage, Long Island, and grew up with a complete collection of Oz books in his room, and Star Trek on the TV. After surviving his teen age years, he entered Hofstra University. Five years later, he exited with a BA in philosophy and a wife. He still has both, but the wife is more useful.

A series of minor jobs followed, which allowed him to enter Graduate School for Philosophy. Although he chose not to complete the degree, his studies inspired him to write his first novel, Unbinding the Stone. His wife inspired him to have children.

He went back to school, and completed a Computer Science degree. He also wrote his second novel, A Warrior Made, and a variety of short stories. Currently he is employed as a Tier One support engineer at Bottomline Technologies, a father to his three children, husband to his wife, and author to his books.

He, and they, now reside in Wading River, Long Island, New York.

Courtney: First off, you’re published! Can you tell us a little about which of your books made it to publication?
Marc: I have two novels, Unbinding the Stone and A Warrior Made. I also have a number of short stories published and more on the way. ‘Chasing His Own Tale’, ‘Boys Will Be Boys’, ‘Off the Map’, as well as ‘Struck By Inspiration’, ‘Ex Libris’, ‘Undermind’, and ‘Bite Deep’. ‘Bite Deep’ and ‘Ex Libris’ have already been out in the world in anthologies and will soon be released individually as e-book short stories.

Courtney: Very impressive! Did you use a pen name for publishing?
Marc: I use my own name, Marc Vun Kannon. If I was named Bob Smith I probably wouldn’t.

Courtney: When did you start writing?
Marc: About 15 years ago. I was attacked one night by some dreams. I told my wife about them the next day, since I usually don’t remember my dreams at all, and she said ‘That sounds like it would make a good book.’ At some point the first sentence appeared in my head and I built from there.

Courtney: Oh yes, I write from my dreams too. What’s your favorite genre to write?
Marc: Fantasy, although I recently finished a futuristic paranormal with some strong romantic elements.

Courtney: Oh, Marc! That’s the kind of thing I love to hear! As a matter of fact, I’ve recently started plotting a new book with those exact parameters—could this be fate? What’s your favorite genre to read?
Marc: Fantasy, although I will read anything with good strong characters. Fortunately my publisher, Echelon Press, doesn’t seem to produce anything else, which is good. I’ve read about 90% of the books they make, in all genres. And by the way, I don’t plot. I’m a complete pantser. Just so you know.

Courtney: How do you come up with your characters?
Marc: I don’t. They come up with me. Honestly I don’t know. Sometimes I turn around and there they are. One character actually did that to me twice. I don’t know where the story will go when I start, so I add people as required by the scene, but most of my books will start out with just one man doing one thing and grow from there. I didn’t intend for Candace to become a love interest, or for that little triangle to end up ruling the story the way it did. If my daughter hadn’t suggested putting the ghost in one scene it might not have happened.

Courtney: Haha, sounds like something out of a horror movie! I love when those characters just reveal themselves. You don’t need to worry about a thing—they know just who they are. So, where have some of you best ideas come from?
Marc: Dreams, or they occur to me while driving. Times when I’m not really trying to be creative but I’m ready to be surprised. I’ve had a number of ideas from reading other books, usually because I didn’t like what happened and I thought of something I’d rather have seen.

Courtney: I’m familiar with the feeling…some books would be such a waste of time if they didn’t help us to create a new book of our own. Back to the interview… what project or projects are you working on now?
Marc: I have a paranormal story currently being edited, a novel called St. Martin’s Moon, about a werewolf attack on a lunar colony. My novel WIP is a fantasy sequel in my series, The Flame in the Bowl. My short story WIP is a SF entry for the current PARSEC contest.

Courtney: Which of your characters do you most relate with (please give a brief explanation of why you relate to him/her)?
Marc: My main characters are Tarkas, sort of a Bard, and his nephew Janosec, who is a keeper of lore and a teller of tales. I relate to both, but probably Janosec most. Most of the time I feel as if my stories are coming from somewhere outside of me and I’m just telling them, as he does. All my characters are parts of me, though.

Courtney: I feel the exact same way about my own characters, whether it is good parts or the bad. But Marc, how do you name your characters? Do you spend much time finding their names?
Marc: Not much. Tarkas’ name I never thought of at all. It was in the first sentence that popped into my head, and I don’t know where that came from. Some characters got names that I took from friends, like ‘Lori’ became ‘Irolla’. As I got more experience I made them up out of whole cloth as needed. I usually have a naming convention defined, then I play around with existing names until something fits the convention while sounding ‘normal’.

Courtney: Now this sounds interesting. Can you elaborate on this for the readers (and me)? What is a naming convention and how does it work?
Marc: A naming convention is simply a loose definition of a name. For example, the hero of my first novel is named Tarkas tel Kwinarish, which looks like a lot. ‘Kwinarish’ is his village, and tel means ‘from’. His parents are Tarmel and Tarsis, so ‘Tar-‘ is the family name, and ‘-kas’ is the individual identifier. This tells you a bit about how the culture he comes from is structured, as names often do. They’re a very compact way of transmitting this sort of information.
Anyway, in the course of the story, he goes to a different realm entirely, with a different naming convention, and he ends up as Demlas Tarkas, where ‘Demlas is a clan name. I modeled this after a number of societies in our own world, often warrior cultures, where the clan or family name comes first, followed by the individual’s name. So Demlas Tarkas is actually three names.

Courtney: Wow, now that's really interesting. I have several different races in my paranormal series, and I can tell you, I absolutely hate finding the right name for a specific character. It's amazing how detailed your work is. How do you “get in the zone” when writing? What is your writing environment like?
Marc: I write in my living room, which is where the computer is. I usually write early in the day, when no one else is around. Having music or the TV on completely disrupts my process.

Courtney: Do you use critique partners, groups, or beta readers to help you with your story? Why or why not?
Marc: No. It never occurred to me to look for a group like that.

Courtney: Wow! I don’t know what I’d do without my crit partners. I really need to learn your “process”. It sure would cut down on my time restraints if I was CP-less. Just kidding girls! You know I love CritiqueThisWIP!! So, Marc, how do you respond to criticism? Love it? Hate it? Learn from it?
Marc: I’d like to receive more comments than I do. Most of what I hear is positive. I do learn from it when it’s bad, as I stated in one of my blog posts somewhere.

Courtney: Beta readers could help with that, and the Web is full of them. So, tell me, how many projects do you work on at once? Do you write one book at a time, or do you have a few going at once?
Marc: I have a few going, depending on what story feels like getting written that day. Sometimes I get ideas and I make a quick write-up for further work later. My novel WIP is open-ended, time-wise, but the short story I’m currently doing is for a contest, with a deadline, so I’ll try to push that one more.

Courtney: Most of us write part time. How do you spend your time when you aren’t writing?
Marc: I write computer software for my day job. Occasionally I do craft and gift fairs, or conventions, with my bookselling operation, Author Guy.

Courtney: Want to share a favorite line from one of your books?
Marc: “Events may be horrible or inescapable, but men have always a choice—if not whether, then how they may endure.” No, wait, that’s from Lois Bujold’s Curse of Chalion. From one of my books, let me see.

Courtney: Haha—I’ll let you get back to us with one of your own ;-) Would you like to share anything else with the readers before I wrap this up and put you out of your misery?
Marc: No misery at all, it’s been a pleasure. My website is http://www.marcvunkannon.com and I have several blogs. The one I write in most is http://authorguy.wordpress.com . Oh, wait, here’s a little scene I like, Marquand looking at Candace being happy, in St. Martin’s Moon:
Marquand indulged himself in beholding her, every brain cell in his head fogging its glasses simultaneously. "Well yeah," he replied, surprised witless. "Who hasn't?"

Courtney: Great websites, by the way. I had a chance to browse through them earlier, and Marc has some great “writerly” posts on his blog. Check out his post on “Loglines”.
Marc, thank you so much for volunteering to be a part of CritiqueThisWIP’s Author Interview series. I’ve enjoyed torturing—I mean, interviewing you. I know some of my questions got a little…nosy. You’ve been a great sport! Thanks for stopping by!

We love to talk shop with other writers. In fact, we have a series full of them--posted every Monday. If you'd like to be part of our Author Interview series, email us at critiquethiswip@gmail.com. We'd love to sit down and pick your brain =D