Author Interview With Joesph Picard

Happy Friday everyone! This week I caught up with bonkers Canadian born author Joseph Picard...no not Captain Picard...Joseph...nevermind. 

 

Anyway, Joseph spoke to me about his life, how he got into writing and his books including forthcoming title, The Rubberman's Cage. Read on! Joe's humour is infectious and his stories are intriguing. 

 

1) Can you please start by telling us a little about yourself? Where are you from and how did you get into writing?

I was born on the east end of Canada, and have moved a ton of times (more than 20 before I was 16) back and forth before settling down on the west end, in a suburb outside of Vancouver.

I used to write when the whim hit me, for as long as I can remember. I always liked making things that other people can (hopefully!) enjoy. I've done music composition, I've dabbled in groups to create video games, I've put out a lot of art, but a few things got me focused on writing above all other undertakings.

I was struck by a car while cycling to work in 2001, and became a paraplegic. I suddenly had a lot more time. I was also suddenly on some really heavy medication, making dumb ideas look suddenly reasonable. I had slightly improved my art, leading to my favouring some drawings with long descriptions, and they kept piling up, and getting longer. Eventually I decided I had to organize them in my head with a short story about the characters who had been getting drawn so much.

Poof, short story. But I really liked the characters, so poof, sequel. And another. And a prequel. These four stories were edited together to form one book, which eventually became Lifehack. Suddenly the idea of a book wasn't so far out there. And it's just kept going like that.

Also, when I became a father, I knew I had to give up a lot of hobbies for the sake of time. Music and art lost; writing won and now I have two kids. As a stay at home dad, when people ask about writer's block, I can't help but chuckle. People with writer's block have free time. While I'm making lunches, changing diapers, making runs to the school, etc, etc, I have plenty of time to consider the next turn in my current project.

 

2) How many books have your published to date and what genres are they?

Three. Lifehack, Watching Yute, and Echoes of Erebus. They're science fiction and some have been called them "hard" sci-fi, though they're fairly character-based. The three books are a series, though they vary in tone and theme a bit. They all take place in the same country, and deal with the same over-reaching flow of events- nanotechnology, and abusing it to some nasty results, such as zombie-like critters. I took pains to make them all readable separately, though of course some things can be better appreciated if you've read them all. Echoes of Erebus marks the end of the series, and the next book is its own entity.

Oh, and I should mention the recently released "13 Bites". It's a supernatural-themed anthology by 10 authors, and I have two short stories in there. One of them relates to Lifehack, (but can stand alone) and the other is a contemporary story about an office worker who turns to some darker Romani powers to get a little revenge. The rest of 13 Bites is by writers I've met on Facebook, and they range from girzzly to heart-warming.

3) Can you tell us a little more about your latest book? What is the story and what inspired you to write it?

Echoes of Erebus. The hero, Sarah, finds out that her life, and her own mind and body, are a simulation. She finds this out when at the perceived age of 22, her 'father' (reduced to only an A.I.) begins educating her about his crimes from Lifehack. He intends to do something good, to create her as something positive to put into the world. He builds her a body, (mostly out of dead fish,) using nanotechnology, and guides her in his own way to find a place in the world. To do this, he moves his mind into a corner of her brain to keep her company. ('Helicopter' parenting much??) Despite early successes in making friends and getting a job, difficulties arise because she's made out of technologies that have been strictly banned. Similar technology is still being abused, linked to gruesome pit fights, and a variety of massacres.

And there's a friendly lizard.

4) Are you an independent published or a traditional one? What made you decide to take that route and would you recommend it?

Indie. When Lifehack was coming together, I researched traditional publishing and found that I could submit to my favourite 50 publishers-  in various formats, some double spaced, some single spaced, some 1.5 spaced, some 1.354536 spaced, some on tapioca coloured paper, some want the whole thing, some want the first chapter, some want chapters 2, 3, and 7, some wanted a kidney, blah blah blah,.. all of them on paper back then, no one wanted a file...then mail them off! Then wait up to a year before hearing if any of them even received it! No thanks! So, indie it was to be. The plusses and minuses are many but so far I haven't been tempted to go over to traditional for any future projects.

5) Have you got anything new that you are currently working on?

Yup! I'm half way through Rubberman's Cage. The protagonist "Lenth", lives in an apartment-sized environment with three "brothers". They have no idea that there's an outside world, and very little understanding that other people exist. And no idea what a woman is. They have a room where they work a job with an unknown purpose, they eat the same cakey-things every day, lock themselves in cuffs to sleep, and the silent, rubber-suited person in the ceiling electrocutes them when they don't do what they're supposed to. And this is what normal is. Always has been. Until one of them dies, and Lenth starts to wonder. He ends up exploring above the Rubberman, in places he didn't know existed, meeting people with different ideas of where they are, why, or how things are supposed to be.

And they're all wrong.

 

Joseph can be found on Facebook here and his website can be found here.

Cloud Atlas Movie Review

This week I finally got around to watching Cloud Atlas, a mash-mash of six individual movies thrown together to tell one overarching storyline. The screenplay was based on the David Mitchell book of the same name and was written in part by the revolutionary film makers behind The Matrix - the Wachowskis.

What makes Cloud Atlas different from other films is that it tells six seemingly unrelated stories over different times that ultimately tie together into one. We have Edinburgh in the First World War, a post-apocalyptic world inhabited by tribes and Seoul in a high-tech neon future thrown into the mix. Or in other words; Shaft, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Fifth Element, a desert lacking version of Mad Max and other ripped off movies. I will admit that I liked Cloud Atlas. The sets and visual effects were well done - especially in futuristic Neo Seoul. Yet altogether it did not quite work.

The point of the film was simple; we are all connected, both to the people who came before us and those who will come after us. What happens to those people and what happens to us is affected by decisions made in the past and ones yet to come. The only problem is the film didn’t need to spend more than two and a half hours explaining this when the concept became clear within the first half hour. Also some of the stories, while linked, are so loosely connected that they ultimately feel like pointless padding.

The constant lurching between different plots also makes it difficult for any character development. There were some good set-ups early on, like the nuclear power threat or a mysterious key one of the characters carries with him as all times. But these never mounted to anything. These could have easily been taken much further and tied the stories closer together.

When it was released a lot of critics praised Cloud Atlas for being a brave piece of film making, others went as far to say that it would redefine cinema. Brave, yes. Defining, no. The cast and crew did well weaving six completely different genres of story together but the film failed to deliver any ideas I’ve not heard or seen before. Just because you stitched six movies together into one does not mean it’s a masterpiece. The same effect can be achieved by channel hopping to random programmes on my TV.