Ask the Author: J.J. Zerr
Answered Questions (3)
J.J. Zerr
I am working on a ghost story. It's set in a haunted chateau in Belgium in 1990. The chateau was built by the Habsburgs in the 1700s. A US Navy captain assigned to NATO and his family move. The ghosts are a WW II Gestapo sergeant and a nine year old Jewish girl. I hope to have it out next year.
J.J. Zerr
The question, as posed, looks for a general broad based sort of an answer, like, I get such a sense of accomplishment from finishing a story or something along those lines. Me, I write because I do not want to abide with the notion of not writing. I will say the best experience I've had with writing has been the two principal editors I worked with on "The Happy Life of Preston Katt." One, I'll call the story structure architect, gave me insightful, incisive criticism on the tying of the story together. I fixed those items, and then the grammarian took over. I felt I had a Vulcan-meld going with those two people. It was a great experience, and the book is so much the better for work we did together.
J.J. Zerr
I generally have a couple of projects (stories) I am working on at one time. I use a white board to plot them out. If I am blocked on one, I can—usually—go to another story and my brain is happy to plow fresh ground. But the white board is really important to how I work. Besides outline and plot, I make notes of things like changing the name of a minor character because I wound up with too many characters whose names started with the letter M, say. My problem is not so much block, rather, it's will I live long enough to get much of it written. I'm just so full of it, I guess.
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