Ask the Author: Charles Justus Garard
Answered Questions (6)
Charles Justus Garard
When I was an undergraduate, I took science courses from a professor who later became my friend when I went back to that school to teach years later. I was an English major (which continued through two more degrees), so he tutored me in an independent study about sci-fi and science fact literature. He introduced me to the topic of Atlantis, and this grew into a fascination with the topic that never went away. When I got my MA in English, I wrote my thesis on Atlantis. This involved a lot of research, of course, which included the reading of many novels as well as New Age science stuff about the subject. My PhD dissertation was on a totally different topic (novels made into films), but Atlantis stayed in my background until I wrote a screenplay about it. I never did anything much with the screenplay (except for copying it for a college class I was teaching) until I decided I would turn it into a novel. While I was on a one-year leave from teaching in China, I was looking for a subject to write about and dug out the screenplay. I finished a first draft but didn't really get back to it until five years later after returning from China.
Recently, I finished a paranormal trilogy that is now available on Kindle as e-books, and the above-mentioned time-travel novel involving a dream corridor to a different dimension. Then I got back to the Atlantis story. This is the first of the latest efforts that does not involve other dimensions, but it does involve a surreal journey to a civilization in the distant past.
As for more specific ideas in the actual novel itself -- who knows? Ideas come from everywhere, even from dreams and the twilight state between dreaming and waking.
Recently, I finished a paranormal trilogy that is now available on Kindle as e-books, and the above-mentioned time-travel novel involving a dream corridor to a different dimension. Then I got back to the Atlantis story. This is the first of the latest efforts that does not involve other dimensions, but it does involve a surreal journey to a civilization in the distant past.
As for more specific ideas in the actual novel itself -- who knows? Ideas come from everywhere, even from dreams and the twilight state between dreaming and waking.
Charles Justus Garard
Good question. Ask me something easy. Maybe from two places: my father's very small-town movie theatres in western Illinois . . . and my grandmother's library. She would read books to me, and I would sit next to her and draw images from the stories. When I would play with rubber cowboys as a young boy, I would, for some reason, imagine that they were characters in a movie. As I mentioned above, I would draw comic books where I could invent my stories. When I got hold of an old typewriter, I started writing movie synopses -- creating my own stories from there. I was teased about being imaginative and immature in order to hide out from the real world, but that was my mind wanted to hide, in a world that I could control -- even when I got my first home movie camera. I could be the hero I wanted to be . . . and I still do this, but now as an adult. (I think. Or did I ever grow up?)
Charles Justus Garard
I am working on a time-travel adventure about a visit to the lost civilization of Atlantis. It starts out as an underground exploration adventure but soon becomes a visit to the ancient civilization itself. I keep wanting to go back and make changes or add new details -- even descriptions to bring it to life on the page (or e-book reader) -- because I never stop learning about writing.
My last e-book novel was OF TIME AND THE DREAMER, a time-travel mystery with a bizarre twist in that it involves not only visiting one's own past -- but doing so through a dream doorway that takes us to an alternate dimension where our past is still being played out.
The current novel FROM HERE TO ATLANTIS takes us, through an entirely different method of time-travel, to the mystical lost continent (actually a series of huge and small islands) where our characters find that it is not such an unknown place or existence after all. In fact, they see in these ancient citizens of a doomed civilization images of . . . well. . . you'll see (literally, I hope).
My last e-book novel was OF TIME AND THE DREAMER, a time-travel mystery with a bizarre twist in that it involves not only visiting one's own past -- but doing so through a dream doorway that takes us to an alternate dimension where our past is still being played out.
The current novel FROM HERE TO ATLANTIS takes us, through an entirely different method of time-travel, to the mystical lost continent (actually a series of huge and small islands) where our characters find that it is not such an unknown place or existence after all. In fact, they see in these ancient citizens of a doomed civilization images of . . . well. . . you'll see (literally, I hope).
Charles Justus Garard
Simple: if you love writing and don't look at it as a guarantee of making big bucks . . . don't give up. It will be tempting at times, but if you find yourself returning to it after a space of time because you cannot let it go . . . stick to it. You are not meant to let it go.
Charles Justus Garard
It is something that you almost feel was chosen for you -- that you were meant to be a writer. I remember coming across a journal that I was working on while in the seventh grade (elementary school) where I had scribbled in barely recognizable prose, that maybe someday I should be a writer. I also liked to draw comic books -- even red-and-green 3-D comic books. I think I just wanted to tell stories, as derivative as some of those early efforts were. The best thing about being a writer . . . is being a writer.
Charles Justus Garard
Writer's block has not been a problem. The problem is getting past excuses such as working on other projects and, instead, putting my ass into the chair in front of the computer. It used to be any notepad or journal, but the computer takes most of the heat. It is easy to become distracted in trying to promote one's writing (novels, in my case) -- particularly when an idie or self-publisher must do it all himself/herself. The one traditionally published book that I wrote was a critical work as part of my PhD requirement -- a dissertation that became internationally available -- but fiction writing is my first love.
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