Avid Readers Who Write
 Thomas 'Sully' Sullivan "Pulitzer Prize nominee Thomas Sullivan has been a gambler, a "Rube Goldberg" innovator, a coach, a teacher, a city commissioner, and an All-American athlete. Self-described as “well-ranged if not deranged,” the itinerary of his life is as eclectic as his writing. Having lived in a dozen countries by the time he was six, Sullivan is at home in many cultures and across the literary spectrum from mainstream to genre. Labels mean little in describing his writing. The constant is that he writes “people stories,” timeless tales of individuals and relationships whether caught in fun-house mirrors or in the twists of thrilling intrigues. It is not unusual to find his books and stories reprinted in several categories as well as contemporary mainstream. Or as he puts it, “When you don’t belong anywhere, in a sense you belong everywhere.” Over eighty publishing credits in all fiction categories, his work includes seven novels in sixteen domestic and foreign editions, journalism, non-fiction and active film options. His short stories have appeared in nearly every market from Omni to St. Anthony Messenger. Likewise, the literary awards and prizes have been extremely diverse, ranging from a Hemingway Days Literary Award to a Writer's Digest listing in the Top Ten Horror Stories of All Time to a Catholic Press Association award in their Best Short Story category. An avid swimmer, blader, cc skier and canoeist, Sullivan currently lives on a lake in Maple Grove, Minnesota, writing full-time and lecturing across the country." INTERVIEW EF: Hello. Thanks for being with us today. SULLY: My pleasure. Thanks for building a bridge for writer/readers -- and all who bask in the magic of words -- to meet one another. EF: That’s very gracious of you to say. Thank you. I'm sure your fans from both groups would like to know what you’re currently working on. SULLY: Um…er…uh. Working? Hey, there is snow on the ground and my skis are waxed -- does that count? Alas, I've been filling the well for a long time -- too long -- but that's in part because I parlayed carp ‘n’ tuna surgery into a planned broadening of my career. Actually, I would very much like to revisit the mainstream landscape of my first hardcover novel, THE PHASES OF HARRY MOON. That said, I also have a new thriller nearly ready. Set against the eerie history of puppetry and religious iconography, it's called THE SHADOW SHOW. More immediately, however, I'm engaged in a bizarre historical novel that explains how a nation went insane for 12 years. CASE WHITE follows two unusual characters through Germany's darkest era from Nazi occultism into the anti-intellectual Third Reich. I've recently published a story of that name, adapted from the ms, which has received multiple recommendations for a Stoker Award. EF: Outstanding. Yes, I would call that working. Congratulations and good luck. I’m sure we’re all anxious to get our hands on that. How can we do that, and keep updated on your currently available musings or publications and future publications? SULLY: I have three active avenues. First there is my website, which you kindly have listed. Secondly, I put out a monthly e-mail newsletter that began as a pretty humble response to a few readers but now goes all over the world. The welcome, if astonishing, jump in its popularity has obliged me to morph it into themes and stories which I guess you could call inspirational. This is probably the best resource, and I'll be happy to put any of your readers on the mailing list for free if they email me at mn333mn@earthlink.net. The original intent of the newsletter was simply to link to the other source of info I put out, an on-line column (usually the 16th of each month) on http://storytellersunplugged.com/thomassullivan/. That column deals broadly with writing, inspiration and creativity as a part of life in general but with particular emphasis on writing. Past columns and newsletters are archived on my website under News & Articles. And, of course, there is Twitter. My tweets tend to be a wee bit wry and philosophical. There is no obligation or intrusiveness to those who like to follow, and the link is: http://www.twitter.com/thomassullivan EF: Thank you. I can vouch for the refreshing quality of your amusing and thoughtful Tweets. Now I would like to be more specific. Can you tell me your favorite character, and why they are your favorite? SULLY: Hmmm. Probably Mr. Toad. Not just the "Wind in the Willows" version, but the one refined by Disney. Which is to say the less refined Mr. Toad. With his sudden crazes and profound falls from grace, Mr. Toad is wonderfully innocent, obsessive-compulsive, energetic, cyclothymic, a terrific vehicle for passion, regret, redemption. There is a regular diaspora of such characters in literature, a declension that ranges from Huckleberry Finn through Billy Budd, Candide, Prince Lyov Nikolayevich Mishkinand others. Love them all. Love their antithesis, as well. Though that is harder to define. Perhaps best embodied in the dark character of Stavrogin in Dostoyevsky’s "The Possessed"... EF: You have just reaffirmed my belief that the best writing comes from readers of great literature. For those fans who are also writers, what advice can you give them for creating the most memorable stories? SULLY: Create memorable characters. Plots are only scaffolds for your characters to climb on, perform tricks, and rise and fall from their heights to their footings and back up again. And do not hesitate to hang a few of those characters, whether innocent victims or evil incarnates, by the neck from the top level. Ingenious plots are a help, but if they don't happen to SOMEONE, they pass through the mind of the reader and miss the heart, sort of like a gulped meal that goes from mouth to gullet without leaving a taste. EF: Since stories are about people, how can a writer create the most unforgettable characters, the ones you think about long after you put the book down? SULLY: …good segue question, considering my answer to the last, thank you very much. Of course, a writer’s ability is limited to how much a student of life they are. So the models for the characters we portray are necessarily in our experience. Quite obviously those real life models can be mined for fiction. Only slightly less obviously, they can be re-aggregated to yield composite fictional characters. And here maybe I can suggest something in that area of being a student of life. If you simply observe life at a Things & Events level, you probably will present characters with no more depth than that. So, I think a writer really owes it to themselves to understand, parse, and analyze human motivation in the people they meet. And if you want to be a universal writer, then you need to do that without judgment. If you insert judgments, you end up with versions of yourself in your work. It is important to empathize/sympathize with whatever comes across your bow, no matter how strange or distasteful, in order to present convincing characters. We all feel justified whatever our choices. So analyze... think deeply about what you see and why it is, connect the dots, and understand the world as best you can. Insight is a work-in-progress in its own right. If you already have all the answers -- if you have an agenda -- then you are best-suited for preaching to the choir. Fiction is an exploration. Give it room to discover. EF: Where do you get your story ideas? What inspires you? SULLY: Life is overt. It is not an omission. Yet, whatever overtness happens is a narrowing of the possibilities. It is something specific that happened, therefore excluding everything that didn't happen. Your job as a writer is to take that thing that happened and examine its near cousins, the "what ifs" of what might have happened, or how something might have turned out if a variable is altered. By shifting these variables you come up with your ideas. All I'm really describing here is imagination in gear. Consider the possibilities, the variables. Do it thoroughly -- however improbable a given "what if" might seem -- and you will be a very creative and imaginative person indeed. Inspiration is a broader issue for me. I guess you're asking about a very specific inspiration, germane to a story, and I've answered that. But I also think it's important to be inspired in a general way, to make inspiration part of your personality, your profile, or your configuration as a thinking human being. You need to be an open door for two-way traffic when it comes to inspiration -- getting it and giving it. Getting it may be the harder of the two. For that you have to live a life of interaction with your environment that goes well beyond passive. Go where "it’s at" every day. Find the microcosms as well as the macrocosms. Think, feel, celebrate what is there but which you don't see. What you don't see is what came out of your mind. You created it. You added the dimension and made something visible in the abstract. That's a description of being inspired... EF: Eagles founder Glenn Frey used a line from your novel THE PHASES OF HARRY MOON in his hit song "I've Got Mine." What's the story behind that? SULLY: What would you say if I told you that Glenn Frey shepherded the free use of the complete lyrics of "Desperado" in a novel of mine? Because he did just that when we were complete strangers, gaining permission from Don Henley who co-wrote the song with him. That is unheard of in the world of intellectual properties and an example of the kind of anonymous generosity I've seen from my eclectic friend of 20 years now. We are different in many ways (damn, and I wanted to be a rock star), but in some very rare and intangible ways we are kindred souls with a maverick sameness and a bedrock rapport. You come to recognize that in a person's passion for perfection, and Glenn’s honoring me by using that line from my novel was part of that process. You could've knocked me over with a feather when I received a recording of the song and music video and saw that they were dedicated to me. We slip easily into each other's life whenever the opportunity affords, and there have been some memorable ones. The best things in life -- the best friends you make -- seem always to have a quality of something instinctive and indefinable known only to your inner radar. EF: You are a beacon for souls who recognize the shining muse within you. I have one final question for your fellow writers. What is your writing process? What are the usual steps you go through when writing a new piece? SULLY: I could give you an example but not a formula. Could claim that my writing process is a clever design, but the truth is I fly by the seat of my pants. Play it as you go. It's just the nature of creativity, and maybe my reflexes, to trip the light fantastic with whatever stimuli and inspirations are at hand as a project unfolds. That doesn't mean I don't have fixed reference points and cardinal values. On the contrary, I'm rather dogmatic, can be highly organized and systematic, and I solve problems with logic and analysis way beyond what you might think possible until there is just no way to reason any further. But you do come to a wall eventually where patterns and logical possibilities have maxed out, and that's where wildcards come in -- quantum waves of imagination. Maybe that's just another way of saying that you have to reach further afield into the "What ifs." In any case, there are patterns even in this free-wheeling non-method I'm describing, so let me cull some truisms about my writing process together: I tend to write about things and events better in the morning, while emotions and sometimes dialogue flow better at night. Given my druthers, I prefer to work in the morning and I write very fast once a manuscript is underway. On the other hand, I edit forever. I call the editing process "layering," with each revision or layer vitrifying the book a little more, like when the optometrist adds another lens as you try to bring the eye chart into focus. But once a manuscript is published, my insatiable self-criticism is suspended. In fact, I seldom read anything I've published. (God help me, if the reading public ever follows that lead :-)). Another odd thing about my editing is that I try to make at least one revision while I am sleepy, sugared out, or feeling particularly stupid (lots of opportunity there). Can't tell you exactly why I do that, except that I think that trying to understand your own writing when you are at your dullest probably informs you as to where you need to be clearer and simpler. Overall, editing does shorten and simplify the final product for me. Last but not least, I believe that essential writing pretty much takes place away from the keyboard. Plot twists, character decisions, blocking out scenes -- all that tends to happen for me before sitting down to write. Which is good, because that establishes a minimum acceptable plan for me. Yes, I may change it once I get in front of the computer, but I won't change it unless I think of something better than what was minimally acceptable. For the most part, the physical act of writing thus becomes pure wordsmythery for me, rather than plotting or narrative development. EF: Thank you so much. You know I agree wholeheartedly with author Loren Estleman who is quoted on the jacket of your novel, The Martyring, as comparing your artistic detail to Fitzgerald or Nabokov, and your page-turning suspense to John Grisham. And he speaks nothing but truth when he admits that you are indeed a national treasure. You have been very helpful to fellow writers and avid readers alike. Sully, it’s with humble gratitude that I’ve figured you among my own circle of cherished friends--lo these many years. Knowing you has enriched my life, and I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say it’s been a pleasure having you share your insights and work with us. Is there anything else you would like to share with us? SULLY: Thanks, Elizabeth. You have always been more than an insider, which of course you are. Few writers can double as literary liaisons, but you perform that role very well. Write on… Read more about Thomas Sullivan at: http://www.thomassulllivanauthor.com | Multiple VoicesReaders, writers and art enthusiasts of all media will enjoy this diverse venue. ArchivesCategoriesAll  |
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