Ask the Author: M.J. Carlson
Answered Questions (7)
M.J. Carlson
That's easy. I'd live in the world described by Jacque Fresco, industrial designer and futurist and Peter Joseph, founder of the Zeitgeist Movement. This world doesn't rely on the monetary system but is a resourced-based economy, and there's no need for banks, advertisers, stockbrokers, politicians, lawyers, judges, police, priests, rabbis. I would write, design and build more efficient free housing for everyone, spend more time with the people I love, and not have to work as a wage slave at a soul-sucking, money-based boring day job to recycle fake money that only serves to give the wealthy 1% more.
M.J. Carlson
Hmmm, Waking Up by Sam Harris, A Manual for Creating Athiests by Peter Boghossian, and Secrets in Death by JD Robb.
M.J. Carlson
Old episodes of Police Woman and Dragnet.
M.J. Carlson
Read. By that, I don't mean read for pleasure - deconstruct books, make notes in the margins about how this author did that or how it could be said better. Then read a dozen good "how to" books, like Story Engineering, or Screenplay, the Foundations of Screenwriting by Sy Field, or Writing Fiction for Dummies by Randy Ingermanson.
M.J. Carlson
By outlining the story ahead of time. Like painting, preparation is key. I find by working with an outline, if I'm stuck on one section, I can always find another that interests me.
M.J. Carlson
All the wild parties and hot sex... Oh, wait. I thought you meant being a character in a book. Being a writer? Sitting alone in a room with my back to the window, listening to Internet radio and typing for hours at a time. Really, though, the best part? When a stranger says they enjoyed something I wrote.
M.J. Carlson
Why, my next book, of course. The editing is coming along. It's a story about a molecular biologist whose house is blown up and who's framed for the murder of his business partner and identified as a terrorist when he discovers the gene for psychopathy in a presidential candidate's DNA.
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