Goodreads Choice Awards 2025

Ask the Author: Lee D. Thompson

“Ask me a question.” Lee D. Thompson

Answered Questions (7)

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Among your influences, I've read all but McElroy. I've reread Barthelme recently and delightedly, and am heartened by you and others reading The Waves, for me Woolf's most difficult book. There's George Saunders but I wonder whether you think the element of (post)-mod invention and play is as central to contemporary fiction as that in Joyce, O'Brien, Pynchon, Barthelme as well as Borges and Calvino?
Lee D. Thompson That's a great question, Richard, and I'm not sure I have much insight there, primarily because I haven't read much - not nearly *as much* - contemporary fiction as the older post(modern) work... I think play has always been there, centuries of it, and certainly had new bloom in the past century, but maybe now the bloom is off that rose? Then again, were I just beginning to discover authors new and old, the way I did 30+ years ago... I'd likely feel different about new work and invention/play... The only new author who's delighted me the way Barthelme and O'brien did is Keith Ridgway... some Saunders but to a lesser degree. McElroy's idea of play is something else altogether, and not for everyone.
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It reminds me of those dreams I often have where a small molecule of reality exists, but the remainder is fantastical, like playing croquet with my psychiatrist. ?!
Lee D. Thompson Reality is all around us, so why reproduce it? Why be safe? I like sudden left turns, feeling lost and trusting the author. Dreams influence my fiction, influence any art I do. Take the grain, that fluctuation, and create a world from it.
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What are you currently working on?
Lee D. Thompson A short fiction collection and getting another collection and two odd novels published.
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What’s your advice for aspiring writers?
Lee D. Thompson Read widely, get feedback, experiment.
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How do you deal with writer’s block?
Lee D. Thompson Write something else, or don't.
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I'm reading "mouth human" and I have to wonder where the initial idea for the theme came from?
Lee D. Thompson I have to wonder, too. Can't say I remember, Jim, but it's fairly typical for the type of fiction I write (animals and human animals behaving strangely).
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When did you realize you wanted to be a writer? Were there any books/authors that inspired you towards becoming a writer?
Lee D. Thompson Hi Jim! In my mid 20s - really wasn't a fiction-reader before then, and the only writing I'd done was songwriting. I started reading science fiction and that love for adventure turned into a love for all kinds of adventurous fiction (including language, plot, structure). Very early on it was a science fiction novel The Mote in God's Eye (Niven/Pournelle), and, a little later, Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, which may have had the greatest influence, but I was already writing by then.
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