Apex Book Company

Featured Interview with Sara King
interviewed by Jodi Lee

Sara King was born in Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1982, when the temperature was 40 degrees below zero. Since then, living with the snow, hail, freezing rain, fog, floods, black ice, and Chinooks her home state hasn’t seemed too bad. Sara was four when she discovered writing for the first time. Since then, her world’s never been the same.

While clapping my hands in glee - no, really - after hearing Sara would be the featured writer for February, I immediately began formulating questions that I thought would best suit this truly forthright personality. I can’t be more pleased with the responses… Ms. King is definitely an asset to our Global Domination plans.

Jodi Lee: First off, I want to thank you for “The Moldy Dead” (Apex Digest issue 11). It was an absolute pleasure to read with just the right mixture of aliens and horror…particularly at the end. What was your inspiration for the story?

Sara King: A badass antagonist from my 4-book After Earth sci-fi series. I have this Geuji mastermind, Forgotten, take the stage in Books 2 and 4 to slap the other aliens around. At that point in the timeline, Forgotten is the only Geuji not imprisoned on bullshit charges-charges levied because the other aliens were afraid that if a Geuji got free, it would slap them all around. I usually do my world building backwards, so once I had the fact that he was a sentient mold with a real grudge against the rest of the world, I decided to go deeper. “The Moldy Dead” was a story about how his people have been screwed over by Congress since very first contact, when they deliberately almost annihilated the Geuji’s entire race. As I learned from Donald Maass’s Writing the Breakout Novel Intensive Workshop, you’ve gotta make every character sympathetic…even the bad guys.

JL: I know this is probably a redundant question by now, however - what did you think of the cover of issue #11, being representative of your story?

SK: It’s perfect. However a reader pictures a character in their head, that’s exactly how I want it. On that same vein, I don’t give a damn how a reader pronounces Geuji, Ooreiki, Huouyt, Jahul, or any of the other alien terms in any of my works. People think I care, but I don’t. However they pronounce it is the way it was meant to be, because reading is an individual experience and doesn’t need to be uniform or even similar.

JL: I for one was floored when Jason informed us it was your first sale. Things seem to have moved pretty fast for you in the last year or so - how excited are you?

SK: I’m actually impatient. Things aren’t going as fast as I’d like. I mean, I’m 25. A third of my life might be gone already. It’d be nice if we could speed things up, people. (Claps hands.) But really, I’ve got to say I’m thrilled that my cover-letter went from “Hi, I’m a new writer…” to “Hey, you may remember me from such publications as…” I’m also tickled about the editorship with Aberrant Dreams. Who woulda thought that lil’ ole me, with no copyediting experience and only a high cchool diploma under her belt, could beat out 50 other authors in an editing test? Oh, and yeah. There’s that agent thing. That got my little heart pounding. I think they probably heard the squeal in space.

JL: For those that haven’t read your work outside of “The Moldy Dead”, you have a story in the last issue of Blood, Blade and Thruster (alongside our own Jason Sizemore), titled “Fairy.” Is this story set in the same universe as gave birth to the Ooreiki, Jahul and Huouyt?

SK: Absolutely not. “Fairy” is a Millennium Potion short story, along with “Parasite”, which won Honorable Mention in the Writers of the Future Contest and is available on my website (www.kingfiction.com). The two universes are vastly different, with Millennium Potion having only two alien species, both nearly extinct due to human encroachment, and the After Earth series having, literally, thousands. (Though, thank God, I’ve only had to detail a dozen or so over the course of four books…)

JL: Your Apex Online story “Twelve-A” is rather heavy, emotionally; on one hand, Marie fears for her life, but on the other, she seems to have maternal feelings for the one that could kill her. How hard is it for you to work the emotions through the stories to wrench the hearts of the readers?

SK: I’ve been chewing my cud on this one for three hours and I still don’t have a good answer, so instead of continuing to give my computer a bovine stare, I’ll just do my best. I’m a little bass-ackwards in my writing methods. For me, emotion’s always the easiest part. It’s the first thing I try to define in a story. Once I have the overriding emotion, I can get a feel for the characters. Once I have the characters, I work on their wants and desires. World building always comes last, and Twelve-A is another example of world building backwards, using the characters and their actions in the novel to determine their histories in the short stories. Tension-which is mostly emotion anyway-is pretty easy for me in general. World building-the setting, the history, the details-is my biggest struggle as an author. If you noticed in “Twelve-A” (I’m gonna poke holes in my own story now), the lab was barely described, the corridors and rooms vaguely labeled, the characters little more than their actions. I find this, not emotion, the most difficult part of writing, and it’s incredibly hard for me to work those kinds of details into a story without leaving it clunky. I truly admire writers who can, and I’ve asked several of them how they do it, and they always give me a look like I’m some sort of poor, crippled lizard-for them, scene comes before emotion, which gets worked in later. I can’t picture myself ever writing that way, so that’s the biggest thing I hope to overcome with six weeks at Clarion. That, and my Cheetos addiction.

JL: Your bio says you’ve written 11 novels, and are now working on the 12th. Are they in a series, and if so, can you tell us a bit about them?

SK: Heh, I’ve got a very dark and scary closet where I keep about five of those, a couple of which I wrote before starting high school. Still, I count them because damn it, I did write them, and damn it, even though they sucked, they had a beginning, middle, and an end, and they were over 120k words. Of the six that remain, the ones I believe are publishable are the four After Earth novels (which spawned “Moldy Dead”) where aliens discover Earth and forcibly induct it into a universal Congress, Millennium Potion (”Fairy”) where space pirates seek out the cure for immortality, and Gamers, where activists fight a gaming company’s stranglehold on society and end up fighting addictions of their own. My current project, a fantasy called The Rockfarmer’s War, is my first attempt at making a true multi-POV storyline that (big surprise here) details a society devolving into war, a la George R.R. Martin. It’s been a real breeze…now I’ve just gotta find a way to reign in my 6 POV characters, keep the conflict between the 11 different factions from spiraling out of control, and at the same time pull an ending out of my ass that won’t leave my readers wanting to kill me in my sleep.

JL: Congratulations on securing representation with the Donald Maass Agency. What will you be tempting readers with until we get our hands on your novels?

SK: Actually, you can get your hands on one of my novels right now. Millennium Potion has been put on the back-burner while I work on my fantasy and I’ve been sending the current draft out to anyone who asks to read it. Just email me at thundress@hotmail.com. It serves a dual purpose: I get some great feedback for the next draft, and readers get a fun romp through space. Other than that, I’m still cranking out short stories, one of which will soon appear in Cemetery Dance Magazine, and another that will be in Aberrant Dreams. And, for those of you who are really daring, I’ll be launching a free program in February where I’ll be writing a new sci-fi adventure novel exclusively for readers on my mailing list. If you’re interested, the sign-up email is kingnovel@gmail.com.

JL: Sara, as I recall, you’re working towards acceptance to the Clarion Writing Workshop. How has that been going, and what would it be like for you to attend the next session?

SK: Omanomanoman. It would be fantastic. Then I could actually go up to the program administrator and ask (I actually plan on doing this) what he/she was thinking when they passed me over last year. I mean, (scoff), can’t they recognize true genius when it bites them in the ass? It would be the Great Alaskan Nose-Thumbing, and it would take place sometime near the end of the workshop, after I’ve fantastically wowed them all with my fabulous works and there’s very little chance of being kicked out.

JL: Imagine you’ve just made your first big sale to a well known and well respected publishing house. How would you celebrate, given your location?

SK: Ummm. There’s not much to do in Alaska in the winter except drink and fu– Whoops. Umm… Yeah. I’d snowshoe around the house, indulge in a few snowball fights, go sledding in the snow, make snow angels, watch the Northern Lights reflect off the snow, and check the weather to see if it forecasts more snow. Then I’d probably go absolutely mad with joy and call everyone I know and babble about how they’re gonna tromp through the snow to their cars right now and go buy their copies, and no, I don’t care that it’s snowing.

JL: In my poking around while prepping for the interview, I came across… your blog! Hehehe. Do you find yourself (really, truly, seriously) worrying if other editors or writers stumble across it? For what it’s worth, I had a good chuckle.

SK: No, I don’t care what they think. If people can’t take a joke, they have self-esteem issues and I laugh in their general direction.

JL: As a writing editor, do you find yourself sympathizing with the writers of rejected stories more often than not? With the editors?

SK: Aw, man, you had to bring that up. Being an editor is horrible in two ways. First, I hate rejecting people. Second, I hate reading bad stories. I’m the tear-it-in-half-and-throw-it-in-the-fire-if-the-ending-doesn’t-please-me type of person. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work too well with a computer. But it’s got its good moments, too. I actually like going through the slush, in a crazy sort of way. I read each story all the way through (gasp!) and every once in awhile I find a real honest-to-goodness gem. Further, I learned how important it is to make a story just as good as it can be before you submit. I found there’s lots of stories out there that are really close, right on the cusp, but it seems like when you ask for a rewrite, they have no clue what you’re talking about. So, with reluctance, I stopped asking for rewrites. I’m sure a lot of other editors have had that same experience.

JL: At the end now - can we hope to see more from you between the covers of Apex Digest?

SK: Depends on whether or not you recognize genius when it bites you on the ass.

---

Read Sara’s work in Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest issue 11.

Sara King is a 24-year-old Alaskan sci-fi writer who wrote her first full-length novel at the age of 12. She’s written 10 novels and 26 short stories since, and her story “The Moldy Dead” appeared in issue 11 of Apex Digest (her first sale!). It takes place in the same world as the sci-fi series Donald Maass is representing for her in NY. Sara King has sold stories to Cemetery Dance, Blood, Blade, and Thruster Magazine and Aberrant Dreams. Check out her website at www.kingfiction.com.

Read Twelve-A by Sara King