Excerpt from Kenneth Nelson's interview with Lane Williams, Author

KN: What is it that interests you about science fiction and fantasy?

LW: I think it's the endless possibilities of science fiction that fascinate me.  It's predestined to be ahead of the curve by the very nature of its being, predicting things that have yet to be, you know?  People like H.G. Wells and Robert Heinlein really paved the way for a lot of the technological advances we enjoy today.  And at the same time I think it's very telling in a book of science fiction, or any book set in the near or far future, or any fable, for that matter, of the time in which it was written.  Guys like Phillip K. Dick were pretty good at capturing that, sometimes.

KN: What do you think about the Kindle and e-book craze and its concurrent backlash?

It's foreign to me because I can't afford to buy one.  It's like the early days of telephones or phonographs, there are resistances that people have, naturally, and it's a luxury only the upper or middle class can afford.  I think as it becomes more pervasive and affordable we'll see the real repercussions of it, the expectations consumers develop.  Nobody should say that print is dead, it's far too early to say that. I feel like the appeal of a book, something you can hold in your hands, something you can smell, something precious about that is irreplaceable, and anybody saying that a piece of plastic and silicon can replace that doesn't really understand the joys of reading.

KN: What is your writing process like? Do you have a formula or a system?

LW: I guess I sit with my stories for a long time, which is part of the reason it took me so long to finish This is a World.  Started as a set of short stories, then grew up into a novel.  I write down my dreams, call up flashes of inspiration in old notes from things I read and then expand on them.  There's no set schedule, a time of day that I prefer to work.  I'd prefer to remain organic in how my writing develops, no matter what it is.  I collect snippets of conversation I hear on the train, conversations I have with my friends.  I put things in context with an overarching plot that reveals itself to me as I cut up and rearrange the story as it demands.  I think every story, every fiction, demands a kernel of truth in it, or it will fall flat.  I prefer a cup of coffee or tea when I write, or cigarettes.

KN: Where do you start when you start writing?

LW: It depends on what I am writing.  If I'm trying to develop an essay, say, I need a structural basis, a skeletal framework that fleshes out with multiple revisions.  If I'm writing a blog entry I have the weight of an anonymous and mostly silent mass of readers weighing on me, so I usually approach that in a stream of consciousness or digressive manner, which shows up sometimes as pretentious trash.  When writing a short story or a novel I start with one scene or a collection of scenes and then branch out forward or backward from that scene as the story demands.  A writer's conversation with his or her work is essential, I feel.  For anything involving fictional characters as the focus I try to map out their arc, in general terms, beforehand.

KN: What writers inspire you?  What are you reading right now? Excited for anything that's coming out on the market?

LW: For me, Vonnegut's easy to fall back on.  Hunter S. Thompson was my hero growing up.  I've always had an affection for Italo Calvino and Grant Morrison.  I feel like certain comic book writers are fantastic, more literary in their approach, while others seem tied down in the trenchant divisions of the marketplace, genre work, which is fine, they often have families to feed and if a certain trope is the tried-and-true way to feed them, to satisfy editors and readers, I say go for it.  I discovered Roberto Bolaño not that long ago, a master of his craft.  Currently, I'm reading through the Hermetica for the first time, a work attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, the patron of alchemists.  I'm also rereading the Gnostic Bible, which inspires me quite a bit actually.  I don't know though, I don't keep up with current popular authors quite as much as a lot of writers I've met, so anything coming out this year or next is usually lost on me. I take things as they come.

KN: What is it about disjointed narrative that’s alluring?  Did you intend the novel you wrote to confuse the reader?

LW: When reading James Joyce's Ulysses I found a weird comfort in not knowing precisely what every inside joke or allusion or conversation meant, or even what character was saying what, what was happening, necessarily.  I feel the same way about David Lynch films.  I think that if the quality of the material can carry the weight for the reader, they can inhabit it, like an underwater cave, watching a storm from below, say, so that no matter how convoluted or obfuscated the story is, they are with it, running alongside it.  There's something about a straight linear progression in storytelling that seems contrived to me at times, unless it's elegant somehow, or clever, or has a funny formula.  I'm not writing to confuse the reader, though that may be a side effect of my approach to writing.  I'm not Dan Brown or Steven King. Or even Johnathan Franzen, for that matter. I'm not a writer that wants to be immediately accessible to every reader that picks my work up at an airport or a garage sale. I'm not interested in coddling a reader, neccesarily, you know?  I'm more interested in shaking the reader loose of their expectations of what a standard story might be, giving them something to return to again.  Maybe finding readers more interested in pursuing their investigation into the joy or horror of reading a little further than say, the reader that's snuggled up with a Kindle and a soy latte.