Ask the Author: Aaron Reynolds
Answered Questions (3)
Aaron Reynolds
I finished Chuck Wendig's Wanderers, which I loved. I'm halfway through Michael Benson's Space Odyssey and it is already one of the best making-of books I've read. Astral Weeks by Ryan Walsh is up next. And I've been casually re-reading Stan Sakai's superb 30 year run of the comic book Usagi Yojimbo. It's astonishing that a comic can be that consistently great for that many years.
Aaron Reynolds
I'm always writing more Effin’ Birds for the internet. I have a lot of stuff in snippets, but the projects that are most solid right now are:
Vin Diesel Is Hamlet, a comic book about what happens when you replace the Prince of Denmark with a corona-swigging, muscle-car-driving Dungeons and Dragons fanatic. Spoiler: it has a happy ending that only Vin Diesel could supply.
Tinseltown, a noirish crime drama set at the North Pole where an idealistic police detective from Los Angeles crosses paths with the Big Man himself, Santa Claus.
Untitled Pirate Project, in which a con man starts a for-profit university and hires out-of-work and retired pirates to teach classes to wealthy adventure seekers at the end of the golden age of piracy. Daniel Defoe is the villain.
And finally, Rattlequake, a screenplay about a massive subterranean mating ball of rattlesnakes that has been disturbed by fracking, causing snakes to fire up through fissures in the earth.
Vin Diesel Is Hamlet, a comic book about what happens when you replace the Prince of Denmark with a corona-swigging, muscle-car-driving Dungeons and Dragons fanatic. Spoiler: it has a happy ending that only Vin Diesel could supply.
Tinseltown, a noirish crime drama set at the North Pole where an idealistic police detective from Los Angeles crosses paths with the Big Man himself, Santa Claus.
Untitled Pirate Project, in which a con man starts a for-profit university and hires out-of-work and retired pirates to teach classes to wealthy adventure seekers at the end of the golden age of piracy. Daniel Defoe is the villain.
And finally, Rattlequake, a screenplay about a massive subterranean mating ball of rattlesnakes that has been disturbed by fracking, causing snakes to fire up through fissures in the earth.
Aaron Reynolds
I'm a big believer in sitting down to do the work, whether or not I feel inspired. I have written some of my absolute best stuff on days when I didn't want to write at all or felt really down about my capabilities or creativity.
If I'm stuck, I go for a walk with no headphones and no phone, just a pen and notebook in case something strikes me.
I do keep a list of prompts for each project that I'll go to if I'm extra stuck. What's in the list varies by project; for Effin’ Birds it is a list of things that bothered me this week, and for this pirate thing I'm working on it's a series of character bios. If I don't know what happens next, I invite one of the characters into the scene and see what plays out in my head.
If I'm stuck, I go for a walk with no headphones and no phone, just a pen and notebook in case something strikes me.
I do keep a list of prompts for each project that I'll go to if I'm extra stuck. What's in the list varies by project; for Effin’ Birds it is a list of things that bothered me this week, and for this pirate thing I'm working on it's a series of character bios. If I don't know what happens next, I invite one of the characters into the scene and see what plays out in my head.
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