Tell me a about yourself. What got
you started in writing?
My name is Robert James Schultz.
I’ve lived in Sugar City, Idaho for the past 30 years. I’m married with five grown children; two
bookend girls and three boys in the middle.
No grand-kids… yet. I enjoy water
sports, motorcycles, hiking, camping and RV camping with my wife. I love doing Triathlons. I work for BYU-Idaho University in Rexburg,
Idaho as the Video Systems Engineer for the AV Productions and Broadcast
department. I work part-time at the
local airport as an avionics tech, doing installations and certifications on
aircraft avionics. I love flying and
have a special interest in WWII aircraft.
I got started writing at 14 in 1976 right after Star Wars came out. I so loved that universe that writing myself
into it was the best way for me to join in the adventure. I wrote several of my own stories having my
own unique plot-lines, characters and worlds.
Since then, I’ve written many short stories that helped to channel and
focus my attention. Most of those aren’t
worth a whole lot other than to illustrate the process of learning. But life takes you away sometimes and I had
to set writing aside while I raised a family, but in 2012 I took it up again. I credit my youngest son for me starting
again as he pulled one of my short stories out and had it transcribed into
digital format, thus began the huge undertaking of writing it into a proper
novel.
How do you schedule your writing
time? When do you write?
While I was writing my first book in 2012, I had also signed up to
complete an Ironman Triathlon. The time
requirements for each was incredibly demanding and combining that time strain together
was a careful balance that inevitably tipped occasionally. Most of my writing was done in the evenings
after the workouts were over. There were
many times when I would be formulating a scene during my long workouts. Sometimes writing this first book would take
me into the early hours of the morning.
Sometimes, I was too tired to do anything with it. Now, I’ve made writing my way of unwinding
after work; sort of a decompression time.
Come home, watch a little TV, help my wife with dinner, clean up and
then I’m at my desk going at it until bedtime… or I get tired.
How and where do you write? Do you
prefer a lap top or some other method of getting your words down?
We have a smaller room in our house that was never really suited
well for the kids to sleep in, so Lola and I made it our office. At first I had this sprawling huge corner
desk that rivaled any roll top desk, (I’d kill for one of those, but my wife
would probably Shanghai it), but my wife wanted to go back to college and get
her BA and I promised her that I’d put her through school when we could afford
it, so I gave up the desk for her to accomplish her goal. Problem was, I never got it back! My desk is this tiny little unfinished preteen
girl’s amour tucked in the corner of the room surrounded by shelves of my
wife’s books on both sides. My one
saving grace is I get the window. I
don’t like Laptop computers. They are a
valuable tool and work well for others, but I much prefer a desktop with a
separate keyboard, mouse, monitor and a nice sound system.
What's your favorite part about
writing? Your least favorite part about writing?
My favorite is the creative piece of writing. Seeing it spill out onto the screen and
realizing that, in my mind, I’m actually there experiencing what my characters
are going through. The cherry on top is
filling in the detail of a scene and then leaving it for other parts of the
project and then coming back to it maybe weeks later and rereading it. You get giddy just reading it and
experiencing the scene brand new. You
know a scene is working really well when you have that feeling.
Making the story line mesh seamlessly with
the rest of the story is a pain in the neck, but I have to say editing
corrections are the part I hate the most.
Some of it is a silent battle with the editor. “What do you mean that doesn’t make any
sense? IDIOT! A four year old could understand that! Did you even read the part above?” Sometimes it’s not a silent battle, but a
carefully worded and tone controlled “discussion”. I’ve had a few arguments with my editor that
were both vocal and heated, but we retreat to our respective corners, cool down
and apologize and try to come back at it from a different perspective.
How did you come up with your book
idea? How long did it take you to write your book?
I have several projects in the works right
now, but TG, “Thulsa’s Gate” was my first brought to print. TG was originally called “Snow Contact”, then
“Time Storm”. The idea originally formed
from an old black and white movie I saw as a preteen, called: Paradise Lost. I mixed the idea with a couple of movies I
saw in my 20s and then compiled it together adding in my love interest at the
time. It was rather dismal as a writing
feat. Characters had no development and
the writing style was dripping with unrealistic sarcasm and basic functional
words. As it was written in long hand it
was nearly impossible to read. Don’t know
how my son managed to get it transcribed.
But this piece had a great plot idea and I took that idea and ran with
it in 2012. I think it turned out pretty
good; I know it would make one heck of a movie.
The hand written manuscript took about a month and half to write, then
it sat in a box locked away for 30+ years.
When I started writing it out correctly, it was early February 2012 and
I finished the writing portion on December 31, 2012. Almost a year. It took another year to edit, revise and
correct. I submitted without a cover in
July of 2014 and finally got the cover in late September 2014.
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| Get the Book at Amazon |
What types of marketing do you do
to promote your writing?
While TG was officially released in
early October of 2014 and has great published reviews on Amazon and Barnes
& Noble and sold out at the BYU-Idaho university bookstore, it has seen no
further success due to an acute lack of marketing funds available. It was hoped that its release would generate
enough funds to purchase some marketing and hopefully propel it into
self-supporting status online and in bookstores. Even though Indie publishing is easy and
available to everyone, you still shoulder the burden of everything and that
includes the money it takes to get it out there to everyone. I originally wrote TG to just be a personal
accomplishment to have on my shelf. But
nearly everyone that has read it have encouraged me to take it further. But alas, without what makes the world go
round, sales don’t happen.
What are you currently working on?
Do you have a new book out?
I’m just finishing up another project
that started in similar fashion. Earlier
we discussed what got me started writing and the stories I wrote, ultimately
creating my own universes. I decided to
bring those stories forward like I did TG and get them in front of people. “Starbird” is set to be a three book Science
Fiction series.
Do you have a project on the back burner? Tell me about it.
TG has a companion book called “Baker’s
Two Bits”, TB as I refer to it. It
provides a lot of back story to some of the characters in TG and actually runs
a little parallel to the story line of TG, ending up intertwining the two
together at the end and then a final book is planned after that. I have the whole plot-line figured out in my
head, I just have to get it written.
That’s that fun part, right?
What would you tell a beginning
writer who wants to publish but doesn't believe he/she has enough talent?
Hogwash! Poppy
cock! Rubbish! Get off your pity wagon and “gitterdun!” It ain’t never going to happen if you don’t
try and even if everyone else thinks its junk, you have to know that you are
not junk and so anything you create can’t be junk either.
Creation is one of the single most eternal
principles we as humans have and enjoy, yet it is dismissed so casually and
abused so blatantly. What a wonderful
power we have to create anything, especially in our minds.
A question for me:
How serious should any writer
take the “Trending writing standards” that appear in so many blogs and
forums? Seems like if you don’t write a
certain way, using certain words and punctuation construction, you’re frowned
on and dismissed as not measuring up. I
know a few “would be authors” who don’t write or submit because of this
mindset. As an author, you become an
artist in writing, you write what you feel.
I can’t figure out why Van Gogh was such a success. Looked like something he did in third grade to
me.
I love this question because my own books don't fit into the "trending writing standards" library either. I write what comes to me, what I feel good about, what works for me, and that may make some readers wonder what's up, but for the greater number, they appear to like that I have my own style, my own way of getting the 'word' across.
Can a writer do any less?
Perhaps that's why I publish my own books, though I didn't start out that way. Anyone who knows my publishing journey, also knows that my first book was published by a local publisher. When the rights were bought back years later (by my sweet brother who bought them back for me because I couldn't afford to) I was able, for the first time, to really have the freedom to write and to publish to my heart's content. That doesn't mean I don't have editors, beta readers and such, but that the end result is always, always what I have envisioned.
***
Thank you, Robert!
Learn more about Robert at the following sites:
Learn more about Thulsa's Gate at:
This book is printed through Ingram
Spark and is available through any of its partner distributors worldwide.
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