Ask the Author: Jacques Carrié
Answered Questions (9)
Jacques Carrié
Yuri and Lara in Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. They bravely kept a nearly impossible love relationship aglow through the tumultuous years of the Russian Revolution and beyond.
Jacques Carrié
The Last Wolf by László Krasznahorkai
Spain in our Hearts by Adam Hochschild
Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien
Hotel Florida by Amanda Vaill
The Battle for Spain by Antony Beevor
Spain in our Hearts by Adam Hochschild
Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien
Hotel Florida by Amanda Vaill
The Battle for Spain by Antony Beevor
Jacques Carrié
Hard Contacts, my most recent book, which is a collection of inventive, funny, offbeat short stories, mostly allegorical fantasies and speculative gems stranded in time, born in extremely boring corporate office cubicles and unemployment agency waiting rooms.
Jacques Carrié
The French Volunteer, an epic, both cruel and romantic, novel based on the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39.
Jacques Carrié
Read, read mostly critically acclaimed novels. Write, write one novel after another to fine tune your skills and absolutely never give up!
Jacques Carrié
Yuri and Lara in Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. They bravely kept a nearly impossible love relationship aglow through the tumultuous years of the Russian Revolution and beyond.
Jacques Carrié
Looking around me and seeing the terrible things people do to each other for selfish gains, greed, power, fame, jealousy, hate, and a bunch of other undignified reasons. Things may click while reading a book, watching a movie or TV show, chatting, working, walking, jogging or practicing a sport or hobby, observing your relatives or friends or foes, visiting wealthy neighborhoods or poverty-stricken areas, and so on.
You can’t miss it—it hits you in the heart or mind: social injustice, police brutality, human absurdities. For my stories, I look for contrasts and favor the anti-heroes, downtrodden people, outcasts with bizarre personalities, unusual social events, Mother Nature, impossible situations, complex journeys, controversy.
My inspiration to write usually happens in my car. That’s where all my novels and short stories originate. Even my essays.
I love driving and drive a lot. California is ideal for that—the beautiful sea coast, the breathtaking mountains, the challenging freeways and awesome back roads.
I think a lot, too, when I’m driving. At any moment, something pops up in my head, usually a simple dialogue between two or more persons…revealing something bad in our government, society, church, school, police force, home, you name it, that needs fixing…or at least addressing to the masses in a big way.
Most likely it’s a social issue…human rights, injustice, inequality, unfairness…racial discrimination, crime, corruption, child abuse, drug addiction, prostitution, human trafficking, elderly neglect, domestic violence…indifference, hypocrisy, bigotry, bullying, etc. Political issues also pop up. So do economic and arm race issues. Somehow this mental dialogue in my head holds the key to solving the problem or starting the process of solving it.
Whatever, I immediately slow down the car, pull off the road (if on the countryside), wait for a traffic red light to stop or look for a place to park (if in the city)…and jot down a few notes, which I might continue expanding during my driving (more stops and quick notes) or later on another driving occasion. This is usually very intense and exciting. I, of course, always carry two or more pens and notebooks. Sometimes I’m in the car, parked somewhere, engine off or idling…waiting for someone (my wife, daughter, or a friend). That’s terrific! It gives me an opportunity to beef up my story-in-progress or work on a nagging part of an already developed or almost finished story. If lucky, it will help me nail my difficult or stubborn spot in the story. I’m always looking for those exquisite driving moments!
Eventually, I’ll transfer those bits and pieces of literature to my PC and expand even further, dealing with whatever story structure I’ve chosen and ongoing plots. I’m talking about the first draft. Other drafts will follow. It’s a long, complex process, especially if I’m challenging myself with multiple layers of narration and plots and subplots and a minefield of symbols…like I chose to do in Octiblast, Octispin, and Octifate (Book 1, 2, and 3 of The Octidamned Trilogy).
Between the car experience and my PC there’s a special journey, which can be very short or very long (and dramatically exhaustive).
Octiblast’s special journey, for example, covered countless hours spent this past decade at McDonald’s booths and tables in countless places across greater Los Angeles and nearby towns…as far as Paso Robles and San Louis Obispo (going north along the coast) and Escondido and Oceanside (going south), all populated with my in-laws, friends, teachers, coaches, and business contacts…sharing my napkin-written thoughts with veggie salads, coffee refills, and drifting faces…while waiting for my young daughter’s return from her usual social school events, shopping rendezvous, tournament tennis matches, birthday parties, or film auditions. Here, in this fertile broad-based writing zone, the raw Octiblast manuscript grew to the point where it needed a permanent home. Such place was my PC.
Properly housed, finally, Octiblast expanded further into what it turned out to be, for better or worse--the daringly provocative product of my imagination.
Please check out my June 22, 2013 groundbreaking interview on Clancy Tucker’s Blog (www.clancytucker.blogspot.com.au/2013...) – Australia’s finest – where most of the stuff written here and a hell lot more first appeared.
You can’t miss it—it hits you in the heart or mind: social injustice, police brutality, human absurdities. For my stories, I look for contrasts and favor the anti-heroes, downtrodden people, outcasts with bizarre personalities, unusual social events, Mother Nature, impossible situations, complex journeys, controversy.
My inspiration to write usually happens in my car. That’s where all my novels and short stories originate. Even my essays.
I love driving and drive a lot. California is ideal for that—the beautiful sea coast, the breathtaking mountains, the challenging freeways and awesome back roads.
I think a lot, too, when I’m driving. At any moment, something pops up in my head, usually a simple dialogue between two or more persons…revealing something bad in our government, society, church, school, police force, home, you name it, that needs fixing…or at least addressing to the masses in a big way.
Most likely it’s a social issue…human rights, injustice, inequality, unfairness…racial discrimination, crime, corruption, child abuse, drug addiction, prostitution, human trafficking, elderly neglect, domestic violence…indifference, hypocrisy, bigotry, bullying, etc. Political issues also pop up. So do economic and arm race issues. Somehow this mental dialogue in my head holds the key to solving the problem or starting the process of solving it.
Whatever, I immediately slow down the car, pull off the road (if on the countryside), wait for a traffic red light to stop or look for a place to park (if in the city)…and jot down a few notes, which I might continue expanding during my driving (more stops and quick notes) or later on another driving occasion. This is usually very intense and exciting. I, of course, always carry two or more pens and notebooks. Sometimes I’m in the car, parked somewhere, engine off or idling…waiting for someone (my wife, daughter, or a friend). That’s terrific! It gives me an opportunity to beef up my story-in-progress or work on a nagging part of an already developed or almost finished story. If lucky, it will help me nail my difficult or stubborn spot in the story. I’m always looking for those exquisite driving moments!
Eventually, I’ll transfer those bits and pieces of literature to my PC and expand even further, dealing with whatever story structure I’ve chosen and ongoing plots. I’m talking about the first draft. Other drafts will follow. It’s a long, complex process, especially if I’m challenging myself with multiple layers of narration and plots and subplots and a minefield of symbols…like I chose to do in Octiblast, Octispin, and Octifate (Book 1, 2, and 3 of The Octidamned Trilogy).
Between the car experience and my PC there’s a special journey, which can be very short or very long (and dramatically exhaustive).
Octiblast’s special journey, for example, covered countless hours spent this past decade at McDonald’s booths and tables in countless places across greater Los Angeles and nearby towns…as far as Paso Robles and San Louis Obispo (going north along the coast) and Escondido and Oceanside (going south), all populated with my in-laws, friends, teachers, coaches, and business contacts…sharing my napkin-written thoughts with veggie salads, coffee refills, and drifting faces…while waiting for my young daughter’s return from her usual social school events, shopping rendezvous, tournament tennis matches, birthday parties, or film auditions. Here, in this fertile broad-based writing zone, the raw Octiblast manuscript grew to the point where it needed a permanent home. Such place was my PC.
Properly housed, finally, Octiblast expanded further into what it turned out to be, for better or worse--the daringly provocative product of my imagination.
Please check out my June 22, 2013 groundbreaking interview on Clancy Tucker’s Blog (www.clancytucker.blogspot.com.au/2013...) – Australia’s finest – where most of the stuff written here and a hell lot more first appeared.
Jacques Carrié
For me, potentially communicate with billions of people across the globe.
Mostly fantasize, dealing with the human condition. Exploring its mysteries. Finding ways to express its importance to the world through groundbreaking novels and short stories…that will stand the test of time and leave my legacy behind (a must according to Ray Bradbury, Hemingway, George Orwell, Victor Hugo, Shakespeare, and others).
Groundbreaking novels and short stories? Yes! This is big for me. My greatest passion. Journeying through new techniques and new terrains. Playing with new tools. Shaping stories in different ways. Meeting the impossible head-on. In fact, I keep telling my friends, “I take more risks than a wild teenager would in Paradise.” So true! It pretty much sums up where my head is at when developing a story. The back cover of Octiblast (one of my novels), goes into that a little.
I once told Harlan Ellison (the renowned science fiction and mystery writer, winner of countless awards) at a Los Angeles Poets & Writers gathering many years ago, that regarding fiction writing I was “a little crazier than he was.”
A few years later he called me up at home to thank me for sending him a signed copy of my just published Intrepid Visions (collection of imaginative short stories). If I had made him smile the first time, now he was cheerfully intrigued. Of course, Harlan is also famous for editing Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions (perhaps the two greatest science fiction anthologies ever published).
Actually, my ultimate passion in writing is similar to Vonnegut’s and Grass’s—getting the artistry, humor, and social message across. Because of my unusual background (making it through the Spanish Civil War, French Resistance, WWII, South American Dictatorship, and Amazon Rainforest), I often prefer to call my fiction “journalistic fiction.”
I work with form as much as I do with substance, without neglecting the flow of words and sentences, although, unlike Updike and Flaubert, I won’t break my back trying to create the most beautiful sentences in the world. I save my energy for other aspects of my stories. More like Steinbeck, Conrad, Melville, and Hardy did in their generation, or Pynchon and DeLillo are doing now. Although I miss the poetic qualities of Durrell’s and Calvino’s enchanting offerings.
Mostly fantasize, dealing with the human condition. Exploring its mysteries. Finding ways to express its importance to the world through groundbreaking novels and short stories…that will stand the test of time and leave my legacy behind (a must according to Ray Bradbury, Hemingway, George Orwell, Victor Hugo, Shakespeare, and others).
Groundbreaking novels and short stories? Yes! This is big for me. My greatest passion. Journeying through new techniques and new terrains. Playing with new tools. Shaping stories in different ways. Meeting the impossible head-on. In fact, I keep telling my friends, “I take more risks than a wild teenager would in Paradise.” So true! It pretty much sums up where my head is at when developing a story. The back cover of Octiblast (one of my novels), goes into that a little.
I once told Harlan Ellison (the renowned science fiction and mystery writer, winner of countless awards) at a Los Angeles Poets & Writers gathering many years ago, that regarding fiction writing I was “a little crazier than he was.”
A few years later he called me up at home to thank me for sending him a signed copy of my just published Intrepid Visions (collection of imaginative short stories). If I had made him smile the first time, now he was cheerfully intrigued. Of course, Harlan is also famous for editing Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions (perhaps the two greatest science fiction anthologies ever published).
Actually, my ultimate passion in writing is similar to Vonnegut’s and Grass’s—getting the artistry, humor, and social message across. Because of my unusual background (making it through the Spanish Civil War, French Resistance, WWII, South American Dictatorship, and Amazon Rainforest), I often prefer to call my fiction “journalistic fiction.”
I work with form as much as I do with substance, without neglecting the flow of words and sentences, although, unlike Updike and Flaubert, I won’t break my back trying to create the most beautiful sentences in the world. I save my energy for other aspects of my stories. More like Steinbeck, Conrad, Melville, and Hardy did in their generation, or Pynchon and DeLillo are doing now. Although I miss the poetic qualities of Durrell’s and Calvino’s enchanting offerings.
Jacques Carrié
I have never suffered from writer’s block. There’s always too much in my mind to entertain myself with, massage my intellect, laugh away the pressures of our absurd world…to feel blocked in any way by anything. Once engaged with my story, a story that I love to death to begin with, dozens of relevant thoughts to follow play in my mind continuously…filtering the best ones is part of the joy of writing. I don’t write fast. If I did, I wouldn’t enjoy it. I don’t ever follow easy, popular, or recommended paths—that would bore me immensely. I challenge myself to confront the difficult, the unusual, the never heard of angles, the near impossible situations…and amazingly it works great for me.
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