Interview
Q&A with Chris Panatier
To start with, would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself?
Thank you for having me! I live in Dallas, Texas, where all the heat in the world comes from. I spend most of my time being a dad to my six-year-old, and I fill the time gaps writing, drawing album covers, and practicing law.
From artist to storyteller, can you tell us what drew you to writing The Phlebotomist?
I’d been writing novels for several years when I had the idea for The Phlebotomist, though none of them had been published. In fact, I was in the middle of writing a different book when the premise for this one came to me. I was upset about the fast-moving, malignant blend of aristocratic authoritarianism that was spreading through our government and a premise came to mind. I didn’t want to write a straight-up political screed, so I couched it in a dystopian story and tied it to a well-loved trope that I’m not going to disclose because spoilers! Sorry!
Q&A with Michael Mammay
To start with, would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself?
I started writing late in life—in my 40s. I’d wanted to be a writer since my late teens, but that was more in theory. I liked the idea of being a writer. But I never did anything about it. I cut myself a bit of a break about that, since I was pretty busy being an army officer. But I started thinking about it more, and I started writing some really bad fantasy. The thing is, I didn’t know how to write. But I read a ton of books, and how hard can writing one be, right? This culminated with me sending a very much not good manuscript out to a bunch of agents and getting a lot of quick rejections. And right about then I discovered this writing contest called Pitch Wars. So I entered. And even before they picked their winners, I’d already learned that I wouldn’t be one. Because for the first time I had met some other writers and let them read my book. That’s right…I entered Pitch Wars with a book that nobody had ever seen but me.
Spoiler: I didn’t get selected. But I did meet some great critique partners, and I learned a lot about what I was doing wrong. So I started studying. Specifically, I studied plot structure. And I started doing critique for other people, and in doing that, I started to see what they were doing wrong, and more important, I was having to explain to them not only that it was off, but why. And learning to do that helped me figure out my own writing. It was a very cool time for me, as a lot of the people I worked with now have books sitting on my shelf.