Ask the Author: Nick Ellinger
Answered Questions (6)
Nick Ellinger
It's not so much an inspiration to write -- I write each day whether inspiration comes or not.
The inspiration of what to write comes from exploring what ripples move outward from one significant change. Underling can be described as "what would be different if a Bond movie were from the perspective of the guard that knocked out halfway through Act IV?" Two that I'm noodling around with right now are "what if ownership of a football team was passed down to a numbers guy, not a football guy?" and "what if you found out that your recently deceased husband was a Batman-like vigilante?"
The idea of one thing going differently, with significant impact, is what interests me.
The inspiration of what to write comes from exploring what ripples move outward from one significant change. Underling can be described as "what would be different if a Bond movie were from the perspective of the guard that knocked out halfway through Act IV?" Two that I'm noodling around with right now are "what if ownership of a football team was passed down to a numbers guy, not a football guy?" and "what if you found out that your recently deceased husband was a Batman-like vigilante?"
The idea of one thing going differently, with significant impact, is what interests me.
Nick Ellinger
I don't know -- it's been a while since I haven't been writing.
Nick Ellinger
I have a blog about nonprofit direct marketing at directtodonor.com and update that every business day. For fiction, I'm working on a superhero and a football book (two different books -- it is not about superheroes who play football). For nonfiction, I'm playing around with an outline about traffic safety.
Nick Ellinger
Writers write. You can flex all manner of different writing muscles. What you would write for your novel is different from your poetry, which is far different than that memo for your boss.
So write and write for quality in whatever form you can, see what feedback you get, and revise.
So write and write for quality in whatever form you can, see what feedback you get, and revise.
Nick Ellinger
My goal is simply to write during the time I have dedicated to writing. If I have writer's block on one project, I'll simply move on to another writing project. I'm not yet popular enough that people are craving my next book on a particular timeline, so I have a few different books going that I rotate through.
Nick Ellinger
My son started into liking Batman at a young age. He loves Lego Batman and dressed up as him for Halloween. However, he refers to the Arkham video game Batman as "scary Batman." It got me thinking about the view of heroes from the other side; to an average guard, Batman is Freddie or Jason or Michael Myers -- he will pick you off one by one until there is no one left.
As an avid Bond fan from way back, it got me thinking about what life in a volcano/moon/underground satellite dish base would be like. How did you get into this business? What are your advancement opportunities? What posters are in your breakroom? And, most of all, what is office politics like in a place staffed almost exclusively by hired killers?
So that's how the story began to take shape -- the life of a guard in an iceberg base. From there, it was layering on influences, both from everyday office life (what is an evil empire's HR department like?) and from other popular culture (Office Space + Redshirts + Austin Powers all shaken about).
The thing I didn't expect was to find sympathetic (at least to me) characters. I'd originally thought of it as a story of black and grey morality without heroes and I turned out liking some unlikely characters.
As an avid Bond fan from way back, it got me thinking about what life in a volcano/moon/underground satellite dish base would be like. How did you get into this business? What are your advancement opportunities? What posters are in your breakroom? And, most of all, what is office politics like in a place staffed almost exclusively by hired killers?
So that's how the story began to take shape -- the life of a guard in an iceberg base. From there, it was layering on influences, both from everyday office life (what is an evil empire's HR department like?) and from other popular culture (Office Space + Redshirts + Austin Powers all shaken about).
The thing I didn't expect was to find sympathetic (at least to me) characters. I'd originally thought of it as a story of black and grey morality without heroes and I turned out liking some unlikely characters.
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