Eric Red chats to Kendall Reviews

Coffee is ready…

KR: Could you tell me a little about yourself please?

I’m a Los Angeles-based film director and screenwriter and novelist. I started in the motion picture business thirty years ago and have been writing novels for six years now.

KR: What do you like to do when not writing?

I love spending time with my wife and dogs and seeing friends. Otherwise I’m reading or watching movies.

KR: What is your favourite childhood book?

The Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit. I also loved the Dr. Suess books.

KR: What are you reading now?

Just finished Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, and Without Fail by Lee Child, my favorite contemporary author, and am starting Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama.

KR: What is your favourite album, and does music play any role in your writing?

Hard to pick a favorite album but The Beatles are my favorite musicians. I have all their records on a playlist on iTunes I listen to constantly. When I’m writing, I listen to a lot of movie scores, especially by Jerry Goldsmith and Elmer Bernstein. Maybe it’s my movie background but film music inspires me when I write and gets me into the zone.

KR: Who were the authors that inspired you to write?

As a young author, in no order, Richard Price, Jim Harrison, John Irving and William Goldman. Given my books and films, those are probably not the authors people would expect, but these were the writers whose books spoke to me on a very deep level and made me want to be a writer.

KR: Do you work to an outline or plot or do you prefer to just see where an idea takes you?

I’m methodical. Because of my screenwriting background I’m a structure wonk rigorous about working out the story beats—for me character flows from story, not the other way around. First I come up with a three- or four-sentence summary of a novel because all books must begin with a great idea in my opinion. Then I write a one-page synopsis, after which I write a ten-page outline with a beginning, middle and end. Once I have that, I’m ready to start the book. And during this time I’m making pages and pages of notes, because ideas start coming to me constantly for a novel I’m hot on.

KR: What kind of research do you do, and how long do you spend researching before beginning a book?

The short answer is all the research necessary, but that depends on the book and the subject matter. My third novel IT WAITS BELOW was a science fiction thriller involving a submersible sub that dove to the bottom of the ocean, so I spent months interviewing one of the top pilots of those kind of subs and oceanographic scientists to get all the details right. On the other hand, my first novel DON’T STAND SO CLOSE was a high school coming-of-age thriller and most of the research involved remembering my own high school experiences.

To read the rest of the interview, go to http://bit.ly/2IxLMBT