Interviews

SciFiChick.com was recently able to interview Kevin J. Anderson, co-author of the latest Dune novels along with Brian Herbert. Their latest release, The Winds of Dune, just came out this past Tuesday.

(Also, don’t forget to enter our giveaway to win a copy of the book along with a custom bag!)

Tell us a bit about yourself and your experience in writing.

I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was about 5 years old, and I kept practicing, reading, plotting, typing, submitting, and finally broke into print before I graduated from high school. My first novel, Resurrection, Inc., was published before I was 25, and just this year I publish my 100th novel. In addition to the many Star Wars, X-Files, and Dune novels I’ve written, my recent books include an epic sailing-ships and sea monsters fantasy, The Edge of the World, and another DC Comics novel, Enemies and Allies, about the first meeting of Batman and Superman in the 1950s.

How did you get involved in the Dune series with Brian Herbert?

I’ve always been a huge Dune fan, and I followed Frank Herbert’s series, book after book, as they were published, but when he passed away in 1986 after the publication of Chapterhouse: Dune, the story ended on a cliffhanger. About ten years after Frank’s death, when I had established myself as a successful and critically acclaimed writer, I contacted Brian to see if he had any plans to complete this great unfinished story. We hit it off immediately and brainstormed together…and since then we have written 12 novels — ~2 million words — together.

How does the creative process work when co-writing?

Brian and I have a lot of energy when we brainstorm together. Before starting a new book, we’ll get together and talk over the plot and the characters, map out the events, work up an outline, and then we divide the chapters in half, choosing assignments based on our personal interests and skills. We each write our own drafts, then exchange computer files and rewrite each other’s material, back and forth, until we’ve polished it as much as possible.

What other projects are you currently working on?

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SciFiChick.com was able to participate in a conference call Q&A session with Bruce Campbell and Sharon Gless, from USA’s Burn Notice. Here’s the transcript from that call.
And don’t miss the Burn Notice mid-season finale, tonight at 9pm.

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What sorts of methods and what type of influences do you use to in your portrayal of your characters? What do you draw upon to, in your characterization of Sam and of Madeline?

S. Gless: Bruce?

B. Campbell: Mother first.

S. Gless: Well, my husband said, when he read the script, chain smoking half the time. And he said, how lucky are you, they’re paying you to smoke. So he said, wow, you do all the things with the cigarette. I said, “Well, yeah, I already knew how to do that.” What do I draw on? I’ve never actually had children, myself, but I just connected with Jeffrey’s character and every week it’s different and as the show goes along, Madeline, my character, first she’s totally in the dark and very needy and very sort of just all sort of emotional things that are unattractive. And as time went on, Matt Nix said, “Sharon, she’s smarter than what I was writing.” And he gave me one clue, he said, “Remember, he gets his smarts from her.” I said, “Oh, okay.” So I just took that information and it gave me and my character a little more confidence. But I don’t know, how do you prepare for playing someone who’s manipulative? Is it built in? I don’t know.

B. Campbell: When you’re in show business, you know lots of manipulating people.

S. Gless: Yes, that’s true. But I try to do the manipulation with humor. Hopefully, that’s how it’s coming across.

Why doesn’t Sam Axe’s personality match the normal ex-military stereotypes? He seems really upbeat compared to how most shows depict characters that have been in serious military situations.

B. Campbell: I think my character is actually more accurate. I think I run into some of these guys. My first wife remarried a police officer, and I’ll tell you these guys like having a good time when they’re not working. They don’t sit around mopey dope, they sit around and crack gallows humor, lots of gallows humor, dark humor. Frankly, I think they’re happy that they’re alive most of these guys after going through all of this and they have a good joie de vivre that the average executive might not have. So I should think Sam is very indicative of the real guys, you know guys who are my age who have mustered out in their 50’s. Believe me, most of them are drinking beer and sitting around a pool cracking jokes about the old days.

S. Gless: In my experience in having done Cagney & Lacey many years ago, we had technical advisors on the set and we had detectives and police. Not exactly in the role that Bruce is playing, but these guys who see so much really do have a very macabre sense of humor. And I do think that’s how they stay sane.

Is there a beer or cocktail that Sam has yet to meet and enjoy and if there is, what is it and why haven’t they met yet? And Sharon, Madeline seems to go with the flow a bit more nowadays with Michael’s past. Will she eventually come around to just trusting him blindly or will curiosity get the best of her and she’ll find out on her own where her son has been for the past ten years?

B. Campbell: Go ahead, Sharon.

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SciFiChick.com was able to participate in a conference call Q&A session with Tony Shalhoub, star of USA’s Monk. Here’s the transcript from that call.
And don’t forget to tune in to USA on Friday night, August 7th, for the season premier of the final season of Monk!

What’s the lasting impression you want audience members to take from watching your show and watching you?

That’s a great question. I think, if I had to choose one thing, I would say that I would want people to take away this idea that sometimes people’s problems or neuroses are really the things that are kind of a blessing in disguise, and even though there’s, you know, sometimes there’s pain associated with these things that sometimes in the face of adversity with obstacles to overcome, people can really kind of soar and find their higher selves and I think that’s what we’ve tried to do on the show is we’ve portrayed this character as someone who turns his liability, his liabilities into assets per his life. And that there’s – and I hope that when we get to the end – I don’t know this for sure, but I hope when we get to the end of season eight that we’ll have seen some real healing from Monk, and I believe in that. I believe that there is healing and that there is change, and that all of those things are – they are just really, really key to all of our lives.

Do you have a preference to comedy or drama or horror?

Well, I don’t really have a preference, to be honest. In fact, my preference, my only preference is to have a lot of variety and diversity in the material that I work on. I’ve been so fortunate throughout my career, when I was doing theater, more theater than anything else, and when I was doing films that I got a chance just to do a broad range of things. In fact, a lot of my choices that I made were about that very thing. Every project that I had an opportunity to do or chose to do, I wanted it to be different from the last thing I did, and I think that’s why I have a good, you know, I had kind of a diverse kind of résumé. I’m really – it’s what I set out to do as an actor originally.

You talked about the character and what he sort of means, but what sort of legacy do you think this show leaves, and what do you take away from it?

Well, I think one of the things that will be remembered about this show, I hope will be remembered, is that at a time when there was, in a lot of television, especially with the onslaught of cable and in a period where television is kind of redefining itself, that there were precious few shows on the air that were suitable for a wider audience, like a younger audience, you know, people in their 30’s and then people like elderly people in the 70’s and 80’s. That there was a show that all those different demographics could tune into and appreciate, and would appreciate on their own level.

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