Ask the Author: Benjamin Radford
Answered Questions (8)
Benjamin Radford
There are many, but perhaps the most interesting might be my research into the chupacabra mystery! It's one of my best known mysteries, and took me from a TV show in San Antonio to the jungles of Nicaragua looking for the beast. There were many surprises along the way, and of course when I began the research I didn't know what I would find. With the benefit of hindsight it all came together, and when you read my book on it ("Tracking the Chupacabra"), I think it reads well, but at the time and for several years I didn't know what twists and turns I'd take. Though I was skeptical, I thought it was at least possible that I might actually come face to face (or face to snout) with a vampire... you don't know if you don't look! So the whole process, which in real life took about five years, might make a good plot for a novel. I'd like Jeremy Irons to play me in the film adaptation, if that can be arranged!
Benjamin Radford
Hmmm. Good question... Probably Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher! I love the classics, and Twain characterizes them so well!
Benjamin Radford
I am still in the process of promoting my new book "Bad Clowns," so I have back-burnered my next writing project. In book promotion you have about a 3 month window around the time of publishing where your book is new and interesting, and after that it get harder to have people notice it. I can't speak for the larger New York publishers, but that's my experience with mid-size and university presses. Later this year, or early next year, I hope to complete a book on ghost investigation, so keep an eye out for that!
Benjamin Radford
My best advice for aspiring writers is to put yourself out there and not give up. Writing can be a very solitary existence, full of hours of self-doubt and staring at a blank page or computer screen. Some people love it, and those who hate it don't last long as a writer; writing is a harsh mistress and requires enormous amounts of time, effort, silence, and concentration. Family members and loved ones often are relegated to secondary status, at least for the final few weeks or months of finishing a book. It takes a lot of self-discipline, but the rewards can be great.
Benjamin Radford
Being a writer is in many ways a mixed blessing. There are many benefits and drawbacks to it (the subject for another time), but one of the best things is that your work can ideally stand on its own, and over time. Obviously some writers crank out dreck that is soon obsolete or ignored (think of "quickie" books published to capitalize on a celebrity death or scandal, for example), but for the most part if you write a solid, well-researched book then it will continue to be read and referenced years, decades, or possibly even centuries after it was published. Most my books cover topics that no one else has done before, or that are have very little credible research. My books "Tracking the Chupacabra" and "Bad Clowns" are perfect examples: I'm the first person to fully investigate and solve the mystery of the Hispanic vampire beast, and I'm the first person to write a full-length, scholarly book about the evil clown character. I'm not bragging, it's just a fact. It's not that no one else could have done it, it's that no one else did it. There may be other books in the future that discuss chupacabras and evil clowns, which may or may not be better than mine. But those books and authors, in order to demonstrate due diligence and scholarship (i.e., they didn't just cut and paste off the internet but did some research), will need to reference and quote my work. And that's kind of cool thing about being a writer: doing original research and putting your fingerprint on a subject.
Benjamin Radford
I actually rarely get writer's block, in part because of good preparation. I make an effort to save news stories (either print them out or electronically) that have some relevance to things I am writing or researching. Because of that I have dozens (or hundreds) of bits and pieces of information, leads, new ideas, and so on to work from. This mostly applies to non-fiction but to a lesser degree fiction as well. You don't really get writer's block because you have a file folder full of material to work from: If you get stumped, just open it up, look at the top clipping, figure out how it applies to the book structure, plug it in, and go!
Benjamin Radford
I primarily write non-fiction (though check out my political satire novel "The Merchant of Dust") and I have a broad and diverse range of interests, from folklore to mystery, science to skepticism. It's probably fair to say that there's very few things I'm entirely uninterested in, which actually creates a problem for me when I read the newspaper (yeah, I come from a family of journalists, and I'm old school) because there's always something interesting to read or clip out. So I have filing cabinets full of clippings and ideas to inspire me, whether bits and pieces for a book idea I have, or elements to a character for a novel.
Benjamin Radford
Clowns tend to be polarizing figures-- most people love or hate them, and I've encountered few people who are ambivalent about them. I had the idea for this book about 10 years ago and began doing interviews for it (look closely at the dates in some of the references), but it got shelved when I was busy with grad school and writing other books. After the (modest) success of "Mysterious New Mexico," my publisher UNM Press asked me, "So, any ideas for another book?" and I replied "bad clowns." I was fascinated by all the bad, evil, and scary clowns in pop culture and the media, and when I revisited the idea 10 years later I found to my surprise that no one else had written a book about it, so I figured I'd do it--and bring scholarship and a unique perspective on it.
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