This short interview was conducted as an assignment for my MFA in Creative Writing program. John McAllister is a fellow student and aspiring speculative-fiction writer. I’ve included a couple of additional questions as well.
John McAllister: What was your favorite childhood book and what is your favorite book as an adult, and why?
Adam R. Patrick: I must have read a million books as a kid, but the only ones that stand out are R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps series. And I don’t know if it was my favorite or not, but the only title that I can recall is something like The Tower of Terror – after double checking, I discovered it was actually called A Night in Terror Tower – and I even remember the short story it inspired me to write: “The Hall of a Thousand Heads.” They were just awesome scary stories, I loved them.
As an adult, if I had to choose a favorite, I would say Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I read it during my Advanced Literature Studies class, and getting to analyze it that deeply gave me such a different perspective and whole new appreciation of what Mary Shelley did with it.
JM: Who are your biggest influences within your genre for this story in particular?
ARP: I’d say my earliest influences were the Goosebumps series and TV/film adaptations of Stephen King’s work. Before I was old enough to develop an interest in his books, I loved movies like Needful Things and Pet Semetary; we used to watch them every time they came on TV. Stephen King taught me that horror stories weren’t just scary for the thrill of it, but there was also an underlying message. That has probably had the biggest influence on my writing.
More recently, I’ve been influenced by authors like Nick Cutter and Chuck Wendig. Cutter writes the most vivid descriptions I’ve ever read, and he’s a literary author by trade, so there’s a certain tone to his horror that a lot of commercial horror doesn’t have. Wendig creates great characters and really stuffs you inside their heads, so you have no choice but to experience the story from the characters’ perspectives. He also uses a lot of humor – like wry, sarcastic humor – which I like to do too.
JM: When were you inspired to write this and what were the unique ups and downs of that journey?
ARP: Funnily enough, there have been a lot of ups and downs. I started this story several years ago; I don’t even know when it was. One of my biggest struggles is focusing on one story, and I was going through a particularly difficult time choosing a story to commit to last year. I’d even completed an entire outline for a different thesis novel in a previous class.
I was looking through old Google Drive folders and found this manuscript that I barely remembered working on – a lot of it came back to me as I was reading it, and it already had almost 30,000 words. I liked it so much, I couldn’t imagine why I hadn’t stuck with it. And all these new ideas flooded in as I recalled where I’d been going with it. It was originally a horror, but as I read it with fresh eyes it sort of transitioned into a dark psychological thriller. So, I committed to sticking with it.
But once again, I’m struggling to find momentum. At any other point, this is where I might shift to a different story, but I’ve settled on this as a thesis novel because I know there’s something to it. It’s just a matter of getting in on paper.
JM: Writers often have several story ideas circling in their head. What made you choose this story above the other contenders?
ARP: I’ve got way too many circling at any given time, it’s one of my biggest challenges. And most of them are in various stages of completion – some have 20,000+ words, some have 500, and some are just notes and assortments of ideas.
I think I stuck with this book because I’ve had the clearest vision for it. I know where I want it to go and how I want it to get there, and it’s got the best twist I may have ever come up with, I’ve just got to pull it off. So, part of it is because I have such a clear vision, and part of it is the challenge of executing it perfectly so the twist has the most impact.
The MFA program requires us to take a “plotter” approach to our thesis novel. Do you typically take a “plotter” or a “pantser” approach, and how has the program changed your approach?
I’ve always been a “pantser,” (for those of you who don’t know, that’s someone that writes “by the seat of their pants”) mostly because when I try to outline, I get frustrated. I try too hard to meet all the requirements of an established story structure, like the 3-Act Structure or Saves the Cat beat sheets. When I can’t come up with something, it becomes overwhelming and I find it more difficult to just write the story.
So, when we had to create an outline for our thesis novel in a previous class, it stressed me all the way out. Mostly because the novel I’d intended to become my thesis novel was a little out there — it had a weird structure and I didn’t even know if it would work. The instructor had miles of critiques and she was super rigid about sticking to established structure norms, so I had to make a lot of changes to the story. Eventually, the ending was changed so significantly it didn’t even resemble the novel I’d set out to write, the novel I was excited about.
Well, guess what I needed to do in another class when I decided to change my thesis novel. That’s right, an outline *facepalm*. But this time, I had an idea. Unlike the first thesis novel, I knew how I wanted to hit almost every beat of this story. So, I just wrote the story out in one big long sprint like a child telling a story: this happened, then this happened, then this happened, and this. Then I pulled up a beat sheet and started cutting and pasting. That allowed me to shake the bones of the story out of my head, and then place them into the appropriate positions relative to the whole.
It was a really helpful method, and one I haven’t seen discussed in a lot of the research I’ve done. I look at it as kind of a reverse outline, and I plan on expanding on it in a blog on my website.
What does the next year of writing and publishing look like for you?
I think I have about a year left in my MFA, which means at the end of this year I should have a completed and polished version of my novel ready to submit to agents, but I want to get it finished much sooner than that. My goal is to complete the novel by June so I can get it to beta readers for feedback as I’m continuing the process of refining through the MFA.
Ideally, I’d like to start querying agents by September. Which means I have until then to get a couple publishing credits under my belt and build my social media platforms. I just had a story accepted by Appalachia Bare, which will be published on 5 March — my first paid publishing credit. My goal is to get at least one more before I start querying.
JM: What can you say about your novel that may surprise someone that’s never read one of your books, or doesn’t read your genre?
ARP: Maybe that I use a lot of real places in my writing. I’ve always loved where I grew up in Southeastern Kentucky – everything from the landscape to the customs and the people. Like Stephen King or Chuck Wendig, I want to create my own little universe that incorporates a lot of where I come from. So, you can expect to see recurring people and places in future stories.
I think they might also be surprised about how intentional I am. Nothing happens by accident or coincidence in my stories. There’s always some relevance or clear underlying message. My themes are pretty simple, and they may all boil down to being present. It’s been said that depression is caused by living in the past and anxiety is caused by living in the future. I’ve been plagued by both in my past — those are the monsters that hide in my closet — so I often bring them to life in my stories, and explore how different characters handle it. I have no problem creating a main character who isn’t able to overcome those obstacles; at least not at that particular point of their story. So readers may also be surprised about how things turn out for a character they’re rooting for. But they may also be surprised to discover in future books that the character’s story wasn’t over…
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