Overlords’ note: This interview is a special to RGR by SFF Writer Chat, hosted by author-editor Bryan Thomas Schmidt(SFFWRTCHT). Thanks to Bryan and Ken for the great interview! We will spare your puny planet yadda yadda yadda.
Bryan Thomas Schmidt(SFFWRTCHT): Let’s start with the basics: Where did your interest in Science Fiction and Fantasy come from?
Ken McConnell: When I was a kid in the early seventies, I used to watch Star Trek reruns and then pretend I was Captain Kirk out in our backyard fort. But I didn’t really get into the genre until I saw Star Wars. That movie pretty much corrupted me and sent me looking for Sci-Fi novels to read. Star Wars combined two things that I was into at the time, WWII fighter planes and anything space related. I was never much of a Fantasy reader. I guess I always looked to the future for adventure, not the past. I have read more Fantasy later in life than I did as a teenager.
When I finally did start reading the genre veraciously in Junior High and High School, I read Asimov, Clarke and a bit of Heinlein. But my favorite author at the time was Alan Dean Foster. I really loved his Flinx and Pip series of novels and I read all of his novelizations of the great SF films of that era. My favorite Asimov novels were his early juveniles, the Lucky Starr books. Later on I got into the Robot books and the Foundation Series.
SFFWRTCHT: Who were some of the writers who inspired you?
KM: They say you tend to write like the authors you read in your teens. If that’s the case, then I suppose you can count Alan Dean Foster and Isaac Asimov as my inspirations. I love the rich, diverse universe that Foster created and I was fascinated by the Roman Empire influences in Asimov’s Foundation Series. Foster and Asimov heavily influence my own fictional universe. I really enjoyed Larry Niven’s Ringworld and his Draco Tavern stories. In recent years, I’ve been a fan of Tobias Buckell, Gareth Powell, Scott Westerfeld and Cherie Priest.
SFFWRTCHT: Did you study creative writing at all in school? How’d you learn your craft?
KM: I took creative writing in HS, but never studied it in college. I was a Film major, so I did a good deal of studying movies and writing screenplays in college. When I finally came to terms with the fact that I was not going to be the next Steven Spielberg, I all together stopped making movies and writing. I spent my later twenties and most of my thirties just living.
When I got serious about writing again, I read books on the craft and attended writing conferences. But the only way I truly learned to write was by writing. I spent a year writing two short stories every month. That year ended in two sales, one to SpaceWesterns.com and the other to an anthology called Barren Worlds, by Hadley Rille Books. That gave me the confidence to tackle novels.
SFFWRTCHT: So where did the idea for your Star Trilogy come from?
KM: When I was still in Junior High, my buddies and I used to make ten-minute Sci-Fi epics in Super-8 film. We built all our own models based on original designs and just had a blast filming them. As a result of all that fun, we ended up with a story about a Special Forces team tasked with a mission that took it deep into enemy territory. That kernel of an idea stayed with me and when I was stationed overseas in the Air Force and had lots of free time, I wrote it down. Ten years and many, many revisions later I released that novel – Starstrikers, through Lulu.com. I used it as a way to teach myself about how to make my own book. It wasn’t until a few years later that Self-Publishing really took off.
Starstrikers sold very poorly as a paperback and so I launched it as an ebook. Again, I was really just teaching myself a new skill set. I pretty much forgot about it as I started focusing more on learning my craft. I wrote a second novel, this one a Mystery. When I finally checked back on Starstrikers again, it was doing quite well. To date it has sold just shy of two thousand ebooks. It was at that point that I realized maybe I should be writing more Science Fiction.
I wrote a much more adult novel called Tyrmia, set in the same universe as Starstrikers and found that I really did enjoy writing Sci-Fi novels. That was when I decided to make the Star Trilogy. Starstrikers was always envisioned as the middle book of a trilogy. It took place in the middle of a thousand year galactic war. The first book would be about how the war started and the third book would be about how it ended. I got that start-in-the-middle thing from George Lucas. I told you that film corrupted me!
I just released the first book of the trilogy – Starforgers and now I’m preparing to write the third book, Starveyors.
SFFWRTCHT: You describe Starforgers as Firefly meets Star Wars meets I Robot. Obviously those were influences. How do the books reflect that?
KM: In the film business they like to pitch new movies by referencing other successful films. That’s where I got that description. Starforgers starts off as a Space Western, so it may remind some people of Firefly in that regard, but it rapidly zooms out to encompass a larger, more complex universe with good guys and bad guys; much like Star Wars in that regard. Starforgers also has a well-developed secondary story about sentient androids known as Silicants. That will probably remind readers of the Asimov robot books. But then again, Asimov never wrote about psychotic android pirate captains, near as I can recall.
SFFWRTCHT: How long did you spend writing the book before it was published?
KM: Starforgers took me the better part of 5 months to write. I had a pretty detailed outline to keep all my subplots straight and that let me write without much interruption. The remaining seven months were spent in revising, editing and finally converting it to ebook format. It usually takes me a full year or more to get a book from outline to your Kindle or Nook.
SFFWRTCHT: Do you start with character sketches or outlines or just let it 
unfold as it comes?
KM: I’m definitely an Outliner. But I usually have a handle on the characters, their arcs and how they move the story forward before I begin to write. For instance, I have already finished the story outline for the next novel, Starveyors. Now I’m layering in the characters and making sure they have motivations for doing the things they will do in the story. Characters sometimes morph into new and surprising people during this phase but by the time I’m done; I’m pretty familiar with them.
The heroine of Starveyors will be the daughter of the heroine in Tyrmia. So I’m weaving my stories together and attempting to make a very layered and interesting universe. You don’t have to read all the books and short stories but if you do, you will be rewarded with a richer experience.
SFFWRTCHT: What are the key elements in writing space opera? And how do you define space opera?
KM: Space Opera typically involves stories of political intrigue and military action, set on multiple planets and in space. The two most popular examples of Space Opera are of course Star Wars and Star Trek. These franchises are different in a way that few realize. The universe in Star Wars, while populated by humans, makes no reference to Earth or any historical events that happened on Earth. While Star Trek is most definitely a futuristic story in which Earth exists.
My Space Opera universe is more like Star Wars in that I have humans and they have home worlds, but those worlds make no mention of Earth or its history. For a writer, what that means is that I can’t have my characters quote Moby Dick and I can’t have my heroes hail from Iowa. I have to imagine my own worlds and their histories and that can take more time and effort, but there is enormous freedom to build your universe how you like it.
SFFWRTCHT: Did you plan multiple books when you wrote the first one?
KM: I always knew there would eventually be three “Star” books, but I also knew that most of the military action would be in the middle book. Starstrikers was the story we came up with as kids and was the most fleshed out in my head. So that’s where I started.
There will be many more books set in the same universe as the Star Trilogy. I tend to refer to the other books as Planetary Series books because they all seem to be named after the planets they are set on. Tyrmia is the first of the Planetary Series books to be published.
SFFWRTCHT: Each book has a different protagonist so far, correct? Will it be the same with book three?
KM: That’s right. Each of the Star Trilogy books is separated by about 500 years. So that means a new cast for each book. However, in book 3, Starveyors, we will see some of the same Silicants we first met in Starforgers. Androids tend to have longer life spans than humans, so I can get away with that.
SFFWRTCHT: When can we expect book three?
KM: I hope to have the third book out next fall. Starveyors will be about reconciliation. The main characters are all working towards healing the wounds of war and establishing peace. There will be plenty of action, but it will have a gentler tone than the other books. As I mentioned, some of the Silicants will return and the heroine is the half-breed Cyril, Szeredy’s daughter from Tyrmia. But there will be plenty of people who will stand in her way, including some old warriors who would rather continue fighting the long and bitter war than secure a lasting peace.
SFFWRTCHT: What kind of responses have you gotten from readers/reviewers?
KM: Responses to Starstrikers have been very positive. Reviewers seem to like what they see and are looking forward to reading Starforgers. I think those people brave enough to try a Self-Published book, will be pleasantly surprised. But I’m not concerned with gaining an audience at this point. Right now I’m focusing on writing and getting better, one book at a time.
SFFWRTCHT: Have you written short stories in the worlds in your books?
KM: Yes I have. I collected the best of them and put them in an anthology called Tales From Ocherva, Volume One. The title and cover art is meant to invoke the old time Western serials. Since the stories are Space Westerns, it all works quite well. I’ve also released each story individually on the Kindle for just a buck. Again, I’m all about offering the reader various windows into my universe.
SFFWRTCHT: What’s your writing process like? Specific time set aside to write? Grab it when you can?
KM: I write early in the morning while my family is still asleep, and I write during my lunch hour at the day job. I have a forty-five minute commute to work that I often use for mulling over story ideas.
SFFWRTCHT: What role do beta readers play for you in the process?
KM: My Beta Readers are the best. They are a mixture of fellow writers and regular readers who are not afraid to tell me when I’m straying off course or just plain screwing up. Some of them are SF/F readers and some are not. A few of them are engineers and they will darn sure let me know when I’m busting the known laws of the universe. Others are really great writers themselves who are in local writing groups with me.
SFFWRTCHT: Do you use special software? Music?
KM: I do most of my writing on Linux. I tend to avoid programs that only work on one operating system. So for me that means LibreOffice Writer. But I write in plain text editors too. It really doesn’t matter what I write in, as long as I’m writing. I will sometimes listen to classical or ambient music, but mostly I just write in silence. I find that lets me organize my thoughts better.
SFFWRTCHT: What projects are you working on for the future that we can look forward to?
KM: I’m set to begin writing the third Star Trilogy book – Starveyors, early next year. Currently I’m writing a short story for submittal to an anthology. It’s good to keep your name out there circulating with editors while working on the novels.
Ken McConnell works as a software release engineer and writes speculative fiction in his spare time. He has maintained a blog about writing and technology since 1998 and done such diverse jobs as being an assistant cameraman for indie films, building munitions for the Air Force and testing multi-function printers for HP. Unlike most computer geeks, he actually enjoys watching baseball and football. Currently a member of Partners In Crime, the Sisters In Crime chapter in Boise, he’s also on the board of The Popular Fiction Association of Idaho, and a member of the Speculative Fiction Writers Group in Boise. His favorite movie is Star Wars IV: A New Hope and his favorite color, blue. He can be found on his website: http://ken-mcconnell.com or on Twitter as @KenMcConnell
Bryan Thomas Schmidt is the author of the space opera novel The Worker Prince, the 
collection The North Star Serial, and has several short stories forthcoming in anthologies and magazines. His second novel, The Returning, is forthcoming from Diminished Media Group in 2012. He’s also the host of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Chatevery Wednesday at 9 pm EST on Twitter, where he interviews people like Mike Resnick, AC Crispin, Kevin J. Anderson, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. He can be found online as @BryanThomasS on Twitter or via his website. Excerpts from The Worker Prince can be found on his blog.
3 5-star & 8 4-star reviews THE WORKER PRINCE $3.99 Kindlehttp://amzn.to/pnxaNm or Nook http://bit.ly/ni9OFh $14.99 tpb http://bit.ly/qIJCkS.
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