Good Morning Galaxy Interview

Here is my very first author interview, which was done in May 2007. By me. Silly, yes, but effective, especially since the phone was failing to ring off the hook with requests from David Letterman.

Good Morning Galaxy: You've compared your work to that of British author Douglas Adams. That's a bit cheeky, isn't it?

Rhonda Jones: Well, of course it would be terribly cheeky if I went around saying that my work was better than his or even as good. The truth about writing is, the writer is much too close to tell how good it is. Sure, you may put down a joke and think, "Well now that'll have people spraying Pepsi out of their noses," and then someone reads it and hardly notices, and they laugh at something you didn't want them to laugh at. Or you may think, "This is utter rubbish," and it makes someone fall out of their chair. So you never know, really, you just do your best until you have some sense that it isn't terrible, or at the very least, isn't boring, which to me is the worst sin a storyteller can commit, being boring. But when I compare my work to his, I'm referring more to the style and subject matter than anything else. I'm acknowledging him as someone who had a profound impact on my writing. I read the Hitchhiker's Guide series when I was eighteen, and it was one of those experiences--it's always wonderful when you can describe reading a book as an "experience," but that's what it was in this case. It was one of those experiences where you think, "This makes more sense than anything else," or you just have this sort of, "Yeah, me too" kind of feeling. And I don't get that feeling very often, so it was very profound for me. In the movie "Shadowlands," in which Anthony Hopkins plays C.S. Lewis, he says that we read so that we will know we aren't alone. The Hitchhiker's Guide series made me feel as though there was actually someone out there who also seemed to be having a very absurd experience in this universe of ours. Because there is so much of life that is absurd, and you just have to laugh at it.

GMG: Who, besides Adams, are your influences?

RJ: Kurt Vonnegut, of course. Also Doctor Who before the 1980s and Monty Python. British humorists in general. They know how to use wordplay and subtlety to get a point across. I really enjoyed shows like Are You Being Served and Fawlty Towers. Those were two of my favorites. As for American humor, there was M*A*S*H (the television show) and the Marx Brothers, which obviously informed a lot of the humor of M*A*S*H. You don't see shows like that anymore, that just get the characters involved in that kind of verbal dueling. I wonder if it's become a lost art or if tv and movie executives simply think that people don't want or understand that sort of thing. If that's the case, they're wrong.

GMG: They're wrong?

RJ: Of course they are. Audiences want to be treated like the intelligent beings they are. That's why "House, M.D." is so popular--because people are starved for something intelligent. That's why there's such a loyal "Firefly" following out there--because people saw something rare and they decided to hold on to it with all they had. But people in power are afraid to take a chance on something that may not appeal to the masses, so they create reality show after reality show and we forget that television and movies don't all have to be drama and explosions.

GMG: What made you want to become a writer?

RJ: An absence of things that I wanted to read, I think. For instance, I would think, "Well, wouldn't it be nice if there were a story that did this and this?" Or, "That's nice, but I wish they had done this instead." Then, of course, the inevitable thing is, "I'll bet I could do it." So then I'd try and I'd let someone read it and they'd say, "Ooh, I like that part." So then I'd try to do it again. I look back and think they were probably just trying to be encouraging and I took them at their word and look where it got me. The writing they were oohing and aahing over was pretty terrible stuff.

GMG: Where did the idea for Good Morning Galaxy come from?

RJ: Well, I've always wanted to do something like this, but I think I had some other things to get out of my system first. I'm not sure I could have written this story in my twenties, even if the concept had been given to me on a silver platter. It's a shame, because I think, "Look at all the fun I could have been having all this time," because writers tend to get caught up in whatever philosophies inform the work that they're doing at the time, and I spent about half of my thirties writing some pretty dark stuff. Now I feel as though I'm returning to something that's a lot more basic to who I am and how I really see the world. There was a period of time in my youth when I discovered Hitchhiker's and Doctor Who and Monty Python and the other British things that made me think, "Yeah, me too," and things made sense while I was reading and looking at all that stuff. Then like I said I had to go off and do other things for a while. So now I feel like myself again. I'm writing this funny stuff about how absurd life is and things make sense again. It's all in how you look at life, really.

GMG: What would you say Good Morning Galaxy is about? Any relevant themes?

RJ: Well, there's quite a bit in there about how people simply can't see what's in front of their faces. I don't write with themes in mind. I just sort of notice them as they fall onto the page. Or I hallucinate them. I haven't figured out which.

GMG: You've been writing professionally most of your adult life, is that right?

RJ: Yes, and it was a complete accident. I was what you might call an accidental journalist. I graduated from college and thought, "Ok, now I need a job. What can I do?" And after thinking about it for a while, I guessed I could read and write pretty well and so I began talking to newspapers. The first one I talked to hired me practically on the spot, so I guess I was right about being able to write pretty well. I had a lot of interesting experiences as a journalist. A lot of boring ones, too, but belonging to the press opens up a lot of doors. You speak to people you would never have gotten an opportunity to speak to, or that it would never have occurred to you to speak to. I had a nice conversation with Kurt Vonnegut on the telephone some years ago.

GMG: Kurt Vonnegut? Wow. What did he say?

RJ: He told me I didn't know anything because I'd been an English major in school and I should have studied science. He was probably right. He also told me he was too damned old to keep writing and he wasn't going to do it anymore. That was just after Timequake had been published.

GMG: Do you read a lot of science fiction?

RJ: Not really. I know people who read a couple of books a week and I can't get any writing done if I keep a reading schedule like that. I tend more toward studying the things I really like rather than trying to read everything. And I read such a wide range of things too. I'm going to re-read Tolkien's Ring Trilogy. And someday I'll probably re-read the Harry Potter series. I'm looking forward to the final book, by the way. I really enjoyed that one. I read the occasional Terry Pratchett.

GMG: Why did you choose to write Science Fiction?

RJ: The same reason I chose to write comedy, and the same reason I chose to write them at the same time. Good Science Fiction forces you to look at the world in a different way, the same as good comedy. And Science Fiction, from what I gather, has always been about ideas. I like ideas, thinking about the way things could be done, or what would happen if. I like to take an experimental approach to writing, put a bunch of characters together in a strange situation and see what they do. When you do that, things are always funny. Writing humor is just about recognizing it when it happens and getting the timing right.

GMG: What made you choose the online medium for the release of Good Morning Galaxy?

RJ: That's the word right there--"choose." The Internet represents a wonderful opportunity for writers, not just in what it allows us to do physically with hyperlinks and such, but just in getting our work out to the masses. You don't actually need a publishing company anymore to publish, and you don't need them to make money. They would like you to think that you do, or that you're somehow more valid as a writer if your work has their stamp of approval on it, but that just isn't the case. Internet publishing takes away the middle man, who is quickly becoming obsolete. And I think Science Fiction is the ideal genre to publish in this medium because Science Fiction is about possibility and the Internet is about possibility, and they are both about freedom. As for validation, you'll know you've written a good story if people respond to it.

GMG: Won't you make more money if you publish with a traditional company?

RJ: It's a possibility, but you have to be very, very lucky to do that, because it takes marketing to become popular quickly and the companies choose from the start whom they want to spend money on. So it's a lottery, and you have to be successful quickly. I'm not against traditional publishing and I'm perfectly willing to sign a contract with a publisher if someone offers me a deal that I like. I just think writers ought not be at their mercy. There ought to be choices, and there are a lot of pros to publishing like this--artistic control, for one. And for another, no one is going to yank this website off the shelf, so to speak, if it doesn't make hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first three months. It has time to be discovered and grow and evolve, and that is what art and artists should be allowed to do. Or else the same thing is going to happen in the publishing industry that's happening in the music industry, and that is disposable people. The Beatles never would have happened in today's world, because they were nurtured into existence. And the Stones aren't pretty enough, and never would have been given a second look by one of today's executives. Now it's very hard to find a band with actual musicians in it because musicians are more concerned with playing their instruments than with being pretty, which is as it should be. I think we'll get back to it though, and I think indie music is what's going to bring it back. The technology is there, so people don't have to be at the mercy of corporations. That's why I'm doing it this way. If a traditional publishing company wants to make a deal with me, I'll do it if it's a good deal. But I'm not going to sit around and wait for them to decide my work is worth looking at. It's good stuff whether marketing trends say it is or not.

GMG: What would you say to people wanting to make a living from writing?

RJ: I would say that it's very difficult and they'd better either enjoy it a great deal or have some sort of compulsion that forces them to do it. It's a difficult thing to do and it's something that everyone who doesn't write assumes is easy. And they also assume that money isn't important to you because you're "doing what you love," which is one of the strangest phenomena in the universe, I think, that assumption. And a lot of writers allow themselves to be cowed by people who are very good at making them feel guilty for actually wanting to be paid for their work.

GMG: And yet you've got free writing on this very site.

RJ: I've got samples on this site. Cookie companies give away samples to show people how good their cookies are. That's what I'm doing. The people who like it will buy the stuff that's for sale in the future, and the other people will talk about it to their friends, who will buy it. Word-of-mouth advertising is still a great thing. Word will get out and hopefully people will enjoy what they find here.

GMG: What in the world were you doing in Romania?

RJ: Writing mostly. As for the rest, I just wanted to see what was there.