Ask the Author: Eliot Baker
Answered Questions (6)
Eliot Baker
My most recent published novel, my debut, The Last Ancient, came to me a year after I'd left Nantucket Island as a journalist. I was working in Finland as a teacher and between classes I got nostalgic for the island as the early sunset slanted through the windows. I thought back to my time covering hunting season on the island and just typed, "Gun shots crow across Nantucket." It opened a portal into an alternative Nantucket full of arms dealers, mythical beings, and murder. Still really proud of that book, and I hope to re-visit with prequels and sequels some day.
Eliot Baker
Time alone. I have long commutes, and I often spend three nights at a time without my family for work. It's during this time that story ideas really hit me and I have the quite to pursue them. When I wrote The Last Ancient, I buried myself in a completely isolated cabin for multiple writing getaways, and just hammered away. It worked. I need to really lose myself in my worlds or I have trouble getting on track.
Eliot Baker
Too many things. I have a YA paranormal thriller/horror thing about five kids from around the world brought together by personal tragedy and and ancient prophecy --and their own frightening gifts--in the same demon-ridden high school. I'm tentatively calling it, Golden Crow.
Then I have in various stages of planning and completion: A speculative fiction piece on a future where all of our wearable technology data, combined with new AI technology, is on the threshold of telling us precisely when we'd naturally die--and gives clues to how murder victims died unnaturally.
A father-daughter road trip through a zombie apocalypse.
A high seas whaling adventure with sea monsters and alchemists and an encroaching ice age.
A Roman paranormal gladiator thing with a couple unlikely historical figures I can't give away.
A Eurail coming-of-age road trip saga with a 40-year-old divorcee and a younger woman.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Pick a genre. Story of my life.
Then I have in various stages of planning and completion: A speculative fiction piece on a future where all of our wearable technology data, combined with new AI technology, is on the threshold of telling us precisely when we'd naturally die--and gives clues to how murder victims died unnaturally.
A father-daughter road trip through a zombie apocalypse.
A high seas whaling adventure with sea monsters and alchemists and an encroaching ice age.
A Roman paranormal gladiator thing with a couple unlikely historical figures I can't give away.
A Eurail coming-of-age road trip saga with a 40-year-old divorcee and a younger woman.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Pick a genre. Story of my life.
Eliot Baker
In the beginning, write your ass off. Try to be disciplined about it. If you don't instill good habits in the beginning, you'll be in trouble later down the road. As you master your craft, you'll be able to choose whether you're a seat-of-your-pants writer or a grinder (write a whole novel in two weeks, or grind out 5 pages a day for 3 months, respectively). But I think you need to be able to have that core ability to sit down and write--or re-write, or edit, for that matter--even when you'd rather go play outside or go watch House of Cards.
Eliot Baker
Your dreams never die. Your whole life you're developing in some way, either the craft aspect of writing or your writer's perspective. So just because you haven't nailed critical acclaim of best-selling status by 40, you always have that (fairly realistic) optimism that if you keep writing, keep living, keep developing, you'll write the book you've always wanted to, and people will recognize it as being a valuable addition to the shelves of literary history.
Eliot Baker
I live life as fully as possible. I know that eventually I'll get back in front of the keyboard, and writing is always easier for me if I have more life-material to draw from. That can be from things as mundane as getting really into cooking or watching new TV shows, or throwing myself into new challenging projects at work, or doing wilder things like traveling or trying a new sport or rocking out with my band.
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