What drives your art? What forces you, rides you, hustles you, controls you until its latest needs have been met? What really drives you to create speculative fiction art, be it words or images?

Unfortunately, I write in sporadic spurts when inspiration hits me. I’m not one of those pound-it-out writers (whom I greatly admire and look at in awe), who sets daily page or word quotas or writes at a certain time every day. I think it’s because it starts to feel like work for me if I do that; I don’t want writing to lose its appeal, and its appeal is in the fun of fashioning worlds and characters. Work is not fun.

But what drives me? Sometimes a story grows in me. I don’t know where it comes from, but it needs to get out, and I am truly restless until I put it to paper. When the words are pouring out, it’s like scoring the winning goal in the championship match of the World Cup. Lately, the page has been rather blank, but I’m hoping that will turn around soon.

If there was the possibility of becoming any speculative fiction character ever created (except your own), would you? Who? Why?

I don’t think so. I live a good and easy life that I quite enjoy. My problems are small, like crab grass and a bum knee. Characters in speculative fiction tales, on the other hand, are put through serious trials and tribulations (otherwise, why would we even read about them, right?). I don’t think it would be enjoyable to, say, have my hand cut off while learning the most sinister dude in the galaxy is actually my dad or to get stabbed in the chest by the ice-cold blade of a Ringwraith. Honestly, that sounds really painful and horrible. Living in another time and place would be a true adventure, and I’d welcome the opportunity to try it–but I think I could only do it for a while, and not as one of these characters who gets his ass handed to him on a regular basis. Besides, I’d miss my relatively pain-free real life–especially the people in it–far too much.

If you could only take one author’s works compressed on an e-book reader on a “one-bag-only” one-way trip to another galaxy, whose works would it be and why?

In the last year or so, I’ve read almost all the short fiction written by Chris Willrich. His bibliography isn’t long (maybe 8 or 9 tales), but I think his work would be my choice for this extra-galactic trip simply because it’s some of the most gorgeous prose I’ve ever read, the kind you want to read again and again. His tales of Imago Bone and Persimmon Gaunt, in particular, are like watercolors in motion, and range from moments of aching beauty to wry humor to pure insight.

Why Tolasun? What initiated his story and made you complete this particular tale?

Why Tolasun? I don’t really know where the old rascal came from. I do recall thinking it would be interesting to do a character study (along with plenty of action, of course) of a warrior at the very end of his days. As the end nears–when many show their true, less-than-beautiful colors–what pushes someone like Tolasun to continue to ascend to the heroic? Why would he care, especially if it appears as if his name and legacy will be lost to time?

I also recall instilling some of my father’s qualities in Tolasun as I developed the character, such as the way he ages with a rugged grace, his ability to shrug off pain, and his enormous capacity for stubbornness (at his own expense, but to the benefit of others).

In the privacy of your favorite writing nook, do you act out your protagonist’s actions? Do you know how to use his weapons? Do you wear his clothes? Do you talk like him?

Nope. All of this I keep in my head. I’m almost Platonic about it–my characters’ appearances and mannerisms and patterns of speech are perfect as ideas, and that perfection remains if the ideas go straight from mind to paper. If I acted out my characters before conveying ideas about them to the reader, I feel as if something would be lost in the translation to reality. Or maybe I’ve just lost the vivid imagination and play of my childhood; after all, some rather successful authors have virtually become their characters before writing about them.

Quick: List your first thought as your answers to these questions about the future of genre fiction:

Printing Methods: Offset or Print-on-Demand?

The big presses will, I hope, stick with offset to keep costs low for readers. However, I think print-on-demand is a viable option for small presses who can’t afford big print runs, especially since small presses often hit a niche market willing to pay a little more for the product.

Reading Formats: Electronic or Print?

Print is my preferred format, and I hope it lives on…and on and on. But electronic publications are great for the short form because an e-zine can be run at a much lower cost than a print pub–this means more markets and more exposure for short fiction. Thanks, Interwebs!

Book Tours: Physical or Virtual?

Nothing can replace the smile, the handshake, the reading, the signing (Just like politics).

Reading Habits: Dead, Dying, Alive, Growing?

The statistics don’t lie: Reading is dying a slow, painful, horrible death–at least in America. But we can save it by passing on a love of reading to our kids, as my mother did for me. No movie, no video game, no virtual reality experience can ever compare to the sights and sounds and emotions conjured by a child’s imagination as her eyes flit across a page overflowing with magic. All they need is that initial exposure, a little investment of time on our part, and they’re hooked; reading is a healthy addiction.

Length: Flash, Short, Novella, 1970’s novel (60k), 1980’s novel (80k), 1990’s novel (120k), 2000’s novel (150k)

I don’t care how long, just as long as it holds my attention.

Robert E. Howard, Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allan Poe, Fritz Leiber, Karl Edward Wagner, Louis L’Amour, Frederick Faust, Ian Fleming, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Rafael Sabatini . . . the list could go on. Some lived long lives, some flared and burned out young. All lived life hard. All wrote pulse-pounding action-adventure, often dipping into the many different genres they share, yet each eventually establishing their name within a specific one. What do you believe you have in common with these authors, and what makes you so sure speculative fiction – heroic fantasy fiction to be precise – is your genre? Or is it?

I can’t even put my name in the same sentence with those authors: it’d be like the finest Midwestern microbrewery having Bud Light Lime on tap. Heresy!

I do know that I love heroic fantasy. I wouldn’t limit myself to it in my writing or reading, but it’s the oldest form of storytelling there is, and I like being part of a truly ancient tradition. Not only that, but it’s absolutely limitless.

Thanks for your thoughts, Nik!

Fiction from Nicholas (Nik) Ian Hawkins appears in Magic & Mechanica (Ricasso Press, 2008) and The Best of Every Day Fiction 2008. He welcomes visitors at his blog, Trampler of Beautiful Phrases.

Review Praise for “What Heroes Leave Behind”

“…the strongest characterization in the anthology. [Hawkins] delves into a realistic portrayal of an aging hero…” ~ Ryan Harvey

An excerpt

…When Tolasun returned to the hall, the hearth fire had reduced itself to embers and only the light of the half-moon lit the room through its narrow windows. The air felt even colder than the night outside, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Wary, Tolasun scanned the hall. A ghostly puff of breath floated through a beam of light in the southeast corner. He was not alone.

A scuffle like leather soles sliding on stone echoed throughout the hall, followed by a soft but menacing cackle. A voice creaked from a throat dry with death. “You fool warriors are all the same. You think you can outrun me? Hide from me? Will me away from your soul?”

A man-shaped shadow moved through the dark. Another cackle drifted out of the gloom, but it was drowned out by the sound of a thousand fluttering, membranous wings. Swift as the wind, the shadow enveloped Tolasun, its claw-like hands grasping at his throat. It rasped again, “Sooner or later, you all must face me!”

A pale face emerged from the shadow’s hood, revealing a malign, toothless grin – an abomination of every old man Tolasun had ever seen, but surely not a man at all. It hissed with breath from the grave. Tolasun fell to his back and the aged thing pinned him to the floor. He turned his face away from the hideous stench and saw his falchion leaning on the hearth, just out of reach…

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