Fatal Illusions: Interview with Author Adam Blumer

Adam Blumer

I’m interviewing Adam Blumer, who lives in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula with his wife, Kim, and his daughters, Laura and Julia. Adam works full-time as a freelance writer and editor. A print journalism graduate of Bob Jones University (Greenville, SC), he served in editorial roles for fourteen years at Northland Baptist Bible College (Dunbar, WI) and Awana Clubs International Headquarters (Streamwood, IL). He has published numerous short stories and articles. Kregel Publications (Grand Rapids, MI) plans to release his first novel, Fatal Illusions, on March 31, 2009.

Western Fiction – Using unusual facts

Millions of unusual facts are buried in the history of the American West. Some of these facts are well known, but many are not well known at all.  Any writer who desires to write a novel about the American West has this huge body of information to draw from in constructing his or her western story.  As writers, we tend to want to draw from those facts that are commonly known and easier to obtain. Sometimes, using well known facts is good. It gives the reader something he or she can identify with quicker, and lends itself to the authenticity of your work. Most good writers will incorporate some well known facts into their story.  However, sometimes it’s a greater challenge to look for unusual facts and incorporate those facts into your story.

For example, most almost all Western fiction novels take place completely in what is commonly known as the Old West. When I did a novel, Bloody Wes Teague, a few years ago,  although it began in the West, the story quickly moved  to New York City. I looked for some unusual facts that I could  incorporate into the story.  I disovered two facts that  were unusual, in that they were not commonly known. One was that New York City, at one time, had a disposal system which consisted of pigs roaming loose in the streets. This was New York’s bizarre garbage collection system. Another fact was that on hot, dry summer days, there would be huge clouds of manure dust hanging in the air. This was caused by the many horses and carriages in the city driving over dried piles of manure.

Every writers ought to look to incorporate  some unusual facts in your stories. These facts ought to be based on historical facts. It will make you a more interesting writer and will definitely make your novels more interesting to your reader.

Inventing Language for a Sci-fi Book

In my new Christian Sci-fi book, Wearer of the Gold, I tried out some techniques that I’d never employed before in my writing. First of all, I had to have some exotic words. These words needed to be nearly impossible to speak, but not entirely. They had to be words that did not exist, or needed to exist for a meaning we do not have a word to describe. That was not an easy task, but I reasoned that if humans speaking English had a word, a very strange word not found in their language, what would we do? Well, we’d adjust it somewhat to enable us to pronounce the word, and we might even use the phonetic sound of the word to create the word in our language; or, in some instances, we may just render a word that we cannot say, into something we can say that has nothing to do with phonetics, but just meaning.

In later portions of the book, Wearer of the Gold, the main character, Cubal, meets an alien race. They are strange in many ways (including their love for human flesh). I had to have an unusual name for them, so I invented the name A’rkji.  This would be a name that could have come from the complete inability to say the real name of this species, phonetically speaking, “Abjt-ssha-katta-malibk-jlissi.” Thus, the shorthand version, A’rkji.

Here is a short scene from that section of the book:

Opening Scene

In my new book, Wearer of the Gold, I wanted to set up a scene that clearly let the reader know this was another world. The objective is to go off-world immediately with the reader. I also wanted the reader to feel the tension and develop an interest in continuing with the story. (It is essential that you draw the reader into the story.) The scene opens like this…

Into another world…

Welcome to Fiction Slices, where discussions about Christian fiction, particularly Christian sci-fi, will be a regular feature. This blog is mainly devoted to my new book coming out next year, entitled Wearer of the Gold (though I’ll discuss other writings, too)