This week’s interview is with Cameron S. Currie, who I met at Ad Astra a couple of years ago. We were on a couple of panels, and did a reading together and that was a lot of fun, so here’s his interview.

Interview: Cameron S. Currie

What is your quest?

To seek the Grail? Seriously, though, I think the fabled ‘meaning of life’ is hidden in the Hero’s Journey… most of our big problems, and their solutions are represented there. I try to show that to people, preferably in a way they haven’t seen before, and I hope it hooks them into that. So yes, the Grail. Also, books are cool.

What is your favorite color?

Anything dark, preferably with humour (excuse the Canadian spelling) to throw it into sharp relief. I like my heroes deeply flawed, and my villains deeply villainous. There are very few bits in the real world that are 100% shiny and pretty, and anyway conflict is the basis of all that is interesting. Soooo… black. No, blue.

What is the average flying speed of an unladen paint brush?

Editing is the nastiest trial to face, because you never get everything. There’s always some tiny error that slips through to the final, printed product. My advice here is that whenever you think you have nabbed every issue, put it all aside for a week or two and then DO IT AGAIN. It still won’t be enough, but it will be better.

What are the powers of your personal Holy Hand Grenade?

My HHG powers are probably creating interesting characters. Typically, I’ll go over each character’s dialogue and actions and ask myself if it sounds like the character in question. One character was particularly laconic, so I went over his dialogue and removed as many words as possible. Villains I tend to make worse with each pass until they disturb me (if they can’t disturb me, how can they do so to the reader?).

Lightning Round

• Favorite Muppet? The guy with the boomerang fish. Lew, I believe. I always thought the fish should explode, though. In a perfect world…
• Crunchy or Creamy? Crunchiness is next to godliness.
• Favorite Sports Team? Errrrrrr… the Bad News Bears…?
• Cake or Pie? PIE. But in general, I do not have much of a sweet-tooth.
• Lime or Lemon? Lemon. Sour is good. When life hands you lemons…
• Favorite Chip Dip?  Dill Pickle. Sour is good. My publishing imprint logo has three jars of dill pickles in it.
• Wet or Dry? Any way I answered this question would come out more suggestive than I intended. MOIST.
• Favorite Musical Performer We’ve Never Heard Of? Possibly Jackyl… the lead singer plays the chainsaw once or twice an album. Especially good in a live performance.
• Whisky or Whiskey? Obviously Scotch, but I can never remember which is which. It’s wasted on me anyway.
• Favorite Superhero? This merits more discussion than we have room for here. I tend to go for ‘realism’ over infinite power- more impressed with imaginative uses of minor powers, but there aren’t many common examples of that. It’s not the hero, it’s the way they’re portrayed. Sooo… Deadpool…?
• Steak Temperature? Medium. I want to like rare, but was raised on well-done. This is as far as I’m willing to go.
• Favorite 1970s TV show? Twilight Zone (I think they made these at that time… so many remakes and reboots… ugh. They were at least on in reruns).
• Winter, Spring, Summer, or Fall? In Canada, there is only Winter and Construction, and I am not a fan of snow.
• Favorite Pet? I have two rescued cats with PTSD I inherited from my father. I don’t like them, they don’t really like me, but I clean up their puke and they don’t suffocate me in my sleep.
• Best Game Ever? Video Game: The really old DOS version of Space Hulk you could get on 3.5 floppy. Super tense… scariest application of Genestealers I ever saw, and lots of boltguns.
• Coffee or Tea? Coffee, except when… nope. No exceptions. Coffee is better, and when you run out of coffee, JUST FIND MORE.
• Sci-Fi or Fantasy? Yes.

What question(s) would you like to ask me?

I dunno questions… I am kinda jealous of your education in history, I’m mostly self-taught, which leaves gaping smart-holes… The questions I probably should ask are somewhere in the smart-holes where I can’t articulate them. But I know the general grey area that I would come to you with if I got a question sorted out, you know, what with that edumacationism and stuff.

Rob’s Answer: Uh, I’m not educated enough to answer that properly 😀

Tell me again where we can find your stuff? 

• My web site is at http://cameronscurrie.ca/ , where you can get all my stuff.
• I’m posting e-books back on Amazon over the course of the autumn, so stay tuned for that!

And where can we find you?

I’m currently not scheduled for much, but you can always find me at Ad Astra in Toronto every year. I expand this whenever I can, but usually at the last minute. You can also find me on Facebook or Goodreads.

Do you have a creator biography?

Cameron S. Currie lurks in the deepest, darkest jungle of Ontario, where he spends time raising his two autistic children and publishing science fiction & fantasy books. His works include A Human Number, My Name’s Not ‘Girl’, and Depends on the Strength of the Yes. He has no real spare time, but when he gets some he plans to either overthrow the earth or make coffee.

Final question for you: What should I have asked but did not? 

You should have asked about my current WIPs, which would be A Map of the Inner Skull (the fourth book in my fantasy series) and The Starship Rumplestiltskin (which is taking way, way longer than I intended ‘cuz Sci-Fi research takes FOREVER). AMotIS will be out this spring, hopefully TSR will also be out sometime in 2019.

My fantasy series (currently untitled, but I’m thinking ‘The Book of the World’ for the second editions) is thrumming along pretty well. I’m very proud of them, they’re fairly genre-busting and full of awesome characters that show up in every book. I keep them coming out regularly enough that there’s no ‘Game of Thrones’ style multi-year gaps.

I have two volumes of Extremely Large Showcase (so far) which contain excerpts from each of my books, lots of short fiction, and art and are a great deal at $3 Canadian for 50+ pages of content.

Thanks to Cameron for taking the time to answer my questions.

If you have any suggestions or comments about this interview format, let me know so I can keep tweaking it.

Thanks for reading. If you’re interested in any of the other interviews I’ve done, you can find them all here: https://robhowell.org/blog/?cat=326.

If you are a creator, especially an independent creator, and you want to be spotlighted in a future interview, email me at rob@robhowell.org.

Also, if you want to join my mailing list, where I’ll announce every interview, as well as what’s going on in my life, go to www.robhowell.org and fill out the form (Name and Email Address) or drop me an email and I’ll add you.