Tour Stop: The Childless Ones by Cam Rhys Lay - Interview - Giveaway!

TWO WORLDS...TWO ALTERNATING NARRATIVES...A REALIST RELATIONSHIP DRAMA...AN EPIC FANTASY...

In the "real world," we open with Jack Ampong just leaving a prostitute when he receives a phone call that his wife Sarah has been assaulted. With this incident as a jumping off point, we watch as Jack and Sarah deal with past guilt and regrets as well as their own ongoing struggles with relationships, infertility and parenthood.

In the "fantasy world"—ostensibly written by Jack—a bureaucratic Empire rules with an iron fist...an ancient sect of sorcerers have extraordinary powers but are cursed with the inability to have children... and a race of beings called the Mandrakar live lives one quarter the length of normal people, but have memories that are passed on to future generations through the last of an ancient breed of tree. Along the way, we meet a crotchety governor who just wants to do right by his granddaughter, a hardboiled, lesbian, dwarf detective who just wants another drink, and a villainous sorcerer whose motives form one of the central mysteries of the story.

Throughout the book, the two narratives echo off one another—often in surprising ways—ultimately commenting on the very nature of storytelling itself.

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Praise:

"impressively creates two vivid worlds, each with its own history and compelling characters, while also offering a meditation on the relationship between creativity, fertility, and shared memory. A stunning fantasy debut." -- Kirkus Reviews

Where do you get your information or ideas for your books?

Like every writer, there are certainly little autobiographical details in my writing. I also borrow from stories I’ve heard or that other people have told me about their lives. There’s one chapter in The Childless Ones where some of the characters are sitting around a fire telling ghost stories, and one of those stories was very close to an account a writer friend once told me. That said, my biggest influence is undoubtedly other books. As a sort of mental exercise I recently jotted down all the books from which I specifically pulled ideas for my own book. Needless to say, the list was really, really long. A few of the biggest influences were:

• Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad
• Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin
• Tolkien and George RR Martin
• Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian
• Stephen King’s The Gunslinger
• Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe books
• Rafael Bernal’s The Mongolian Conspiracy

Point is, there are a lot!

What does your family think of your writing?

I think some people in my family may have raised a few eyebrows when I initially left my well-paying job in New York to get an MFA in Kansas, but for the most part people have been supportive. My wife especially has been a really important part of encouraging me to keep writing and do what I love, even now that I have a full-time job again. But still, it’s a challenge to find the time with all the other demands of family and work and life. 

What do you think makes a good story?

I think the most popular answer to this question would be that great stories require unforgettable characters, and this is true to a degree. However, in my opinion, the most important element of a great story is that there is a strong narrative arc where characters change -- and where we see that change through characters’ choices. The reason why, say, Game of Thrones (and the books the show is based on) are so popular is because the characters are constantly evolving and we get to see that evolution through the choices the characters make. Static characters, despite how initially compelling they may seem, grow boring.

What is that one weird quirk about yourself, that no one else knows?

I don’t know if there’s too much that my wife doesn’t know, but one thing I think most people in my life don’t realize is how I sort of live this double life. For work I run marketing for a tech startup and I think most people who know me in that context would say that I’m a very objective, numbers-driven, logical thinker. When they hear that I’m writing fiction on the side they’re usually really surprised because they view fiction writing as all subjectivity and emotion and is sort of the opposite of how I’m often viewed.

If you had your time back what would you tell yourself about writing

I think everyone knows that writing a book is going to be a lot of work. I think what I underestimated though was just how much work there was between having a finished manuscript and having a book be released. Obviously there’s a lot of revising, but then there was working with a copy editor... working with an illustrator for the maps in the book... working with a designer and typesetter. And through it all there were tons of delays and frustrations that I don’t know I was fully mentally prepared for. So, back to the question, I think the answer would be that I’d tell myself that the actual writing is just the beginning of bringing a book to life.

Cam Rhys Lay received his Bachelors Degree from the University of Pennsylvania and his MFA from the University of Kansas. For five years, he worked as an Associate Publisher at The Easton Press in Connecticut. Currently he lives in Brooklyn, New York where he runs marketing for Skillshare, an online learning community for creators. The Childless Ones is his first book. To learn more about Cam and his writing, please visit him at camrhyslay.com.

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