Allirea’s Realm, Coffee and Conversation with Jason Gurley

 

I am very happy that Jason agreed to subject himself to this interview.  We grabbed our favorite beverages and discussed any and everything.  

 Jason Gurley is the bestselling author of Greatfall, among other novels and short stories. By day he’s a designer, and by night he writes and designs book covers. He lives with his family in Oregon, where he is currently writing a novel about a girl named Eleanor. He loves meeting readers, and often gives them free books via his newsletter: http://jasongurley.com/free-books/ 

Are you a coffee drinker? What is your favorite coffee beverage? (If you don’t drink coffee, then tell me your favorite beverage.)

I don’t drink coffee! I never developed a taste for it. I’m not really drawn to beverages that take time to develop a taste for, actually, which is probably why wine and beer are also on the list for me. No, any time I’m in a coffee shop, I’m a hot chocolate kind of guy. I have a soft spot for hot chocolates, actually. My wife and I met, in a way, because of hot chocolate.

Would you tell us the ‘hot chocolate’ story?

When I lived in California, I visited a Starbucks near my workplace from time to time. Then I noticed a girl who worked there, and I visited more often. I was too shy to really talk to her — this usually surprises people who know me, since I’m not often all that shy, but in this case I very much was. She was beautiful and cheerful and outgoing, all the things I’m not. It took more than six months for me to work up the nerve to actually talk to her. I think I needed something to actually talk about, and finally, what did the trick, was this off-the-wall event that I helped organize at my job: Top Gun Day. One of my coworkers had discovered an online store with Top Gun-themed T-shirts, so we all chose a character and ordered different shirts. I’d chosen Goose.

Top Gun Day, of course, wouldn’t have been complete without a disorganized rendition of “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’”, and since I was Goose, that meant I was singing backup for another coworker’s Maverick. (I won’t share the link here, but anybody industrious enough might find a YouTube clip of this off-kilter serenade somewhere online.)

Well, that was a unique enough story to finally get me to open my mouth and talk to the beautiful barista. We went on our first date shortly after, and we’ve been together ever since — seven years now, married for almost four, with an amazing little girl. The two of them are the best part of my life.

What is your favorite genre?

I’m all over the map, actually. I tend to read a lot of similar books in spurts, then change things up. Science fiction is one of my great loves, though. Most of the books that I consider formative are, in one way or another, science-fiction. But I’m a sucker for a good story, no matter the genre. My favorites lately are human stories that play out against a texture of genre — the film Her is a good example of this, or Another Earth. Very character-driven stories that just happen to take place in an environment we might consider sci-fi for one reason or another.

Do your family and friends read your books?

I don’t know, actually. I don’t usually ask, and while I certainly hope that everyone reads and loves the books, I can understand why they might not. Sometimes it’s difficult to get excited about something created by someone close to you. Novels are mysterious to so many people, so when they discover that you’ve written one, it tends to unravel that mysteriousness. I know that I don’t often read books that my friends write, and it’s usually because I’m too close to that person to see past them to their creation. Strangers are usually the best readers, the most apt judges of a work. And to that end, I’m very grateful for the past year, because it’s introduced me to an awful lot of readers who otherwise I never would have met.

If you could live anywhere, where would it be?

In space. But I’d have to be immortal, or at least something close to immortal, to really get the most out of that, wouldn’t I? Otherwise I’d be dead before I got anywhere near the unknown. But here on Earth — I really don’t know how to answer that question. For the longest time my wife and I wanted to move to Oregon, and now we’re here, and in a lot of ways it’s not quite what I expected. I think that’s just a lesson that takes people like me a long time to learn. I tend to romanticize these kinds of things, and reality never quite works out that way. It loves to deconstruct the things that we build up for ourselves.

If you could change one thing from your past, what, if anything, would it be?

I was going to say ‘nothing at all’ — because so much of who I am and what I’ve become is informed by the past — but then I realized that’s not true. There’s one thing that I’d change: I’d have gotten one last chance to talk to my grandfather before he passed away. He’s been gone now for nearly eleven years, and I wish that I could have said goodbye. Other than that — do I have regrets about things? Sure, of course. But regret and failure teaches you an awful lot about the person you don’t want to be. I’m still figuring that out. But I’m getting better at it.

Tell me the one character in your books that is most like you.

No one character really represents me — but there are aspects of many of them that would apply. While Steven Glass in The Man Who Ended the World is fundamentally villainous, and does some terrible things over the course of that book, he does them just because he deeply prefers to be alone. If I’m not spending time with my lovely wife and amazing daughter, then odds are I’m on my own, and very content that way.

Eleanor, the heroine of my current work-in-progress, once shared a number of qualities with me. That novel is my most personal work, and when I started writing it fourteen years ago, it was almost like a mirror, reflecting a number of things about me that I was trying to work out. Over the years it’s changed, and doesn’t have to shoulder that responsibility, and Eleanor has been free to become her own character. So we have less in common now than when she was initially conceived.

I will say, however, that a number of my books are written because they reflect some deep facet of who I am and the things that I think about. The Man Who Ended the World is an expression of solitude — admittedly, a darkly comic take on that topic — while The Settlers and The Colonists are a reaction to one painful, terrible truth that I often think about: that I won’t be around to see what happens to us as a species. If I could become immortal — if I could undergo the Soma treatment that Tasneem Kyoh undergoes in those books — then I absolutely would, if only to know what happens to us, what we become. It’s enormously unsatisfying to me to realize that I won’t get to know so many of the things that I want to know about us.

Have you ever been recognized in person as an author?

Not in the way you might mean. I recently participated in a few panels at a Portland comic convention, Wizard World, and afterward a reader came up to tell me how much he had enjoyed my novel Greatfall. That was a stunning moment for me. A year ago, I didn’t have a single reader. Now there are people I don’t know who are reading my books all the time. But I’m also still very much anonymous and unknown, and I don’t mind that at all. Maybe that will change one day, and maybe it won’t, but either way, I don’t really mind. I’m happy knowing that people are reading. I’d rather them enjoy the books than worry much about me.

What is your favorite hobby unrelated to reading/writing?

I think all of my hobbies are related in some way to storytelling, actually. I love movies, but I often am drawn to them for the strength of their stories. While some people are drawn to movies because of who stars in them, I’m pulled into a theatre by writers. I also design book covers, and that’s an exercise itself in telling stories. By day I’m a designer, helping software users get what they need out of the applications they use, and that’s enormously gratifying as well — that directly affects someone’s ability to do something, to make something. In effect, what I do helps them construct their own stories, however large or small those might be.  I also love baseball and its grand narratives. I’m not a religious person, but a small-town baseball stadium or a movie theatre are often the closest things to a church that I have.

But my favorite thing ever is to spend time with my family. My wife and I have the most incredible little girl, and every moment I spend with her puts everything else I could do to shame.

When did you first, without hesitation, call yourself an author?

Oh, I still hesitate. I’m not sure why that is. I do call myself an author — I’ve written books, therefore I’m an author — but I also have a very fulfilling career as a designer. I’m by no means just an author, which is maybe where the hesitation comes from.

As an indie writer, how do you promote your books?

I don’t really do that much to promote them, to be honest. What I do instead is try to make connections and real relationships with my readers. I haven’t paid for ads or anything. Now and then I’ll announce a price break on the books, but that’s about it.

The best thing I’ve done so far, I think, is to give back to my readers, particularly those who subscribe to my newsletter. My subscribers are usually the most passionate readers, and I try to treat them right. Many times when I’m about to publish a new book, I’ll give it to them for free a few days early, just to thank them for supporting indie authors like myself.

Name a US city that you have never been to that you would like to visit.

Park City, Utah. I’d love to spend some time there during the Sundance Film Festival, just taking in the experience and seeing a lot of movies. But if not there, maybe Fort Myers, Florida — which is absolutely not my kind of climate; I don’t function well in warm or hot weather. But that’s where my favorite baseball team spends spring training, and I’d love to head down there sometime and see the Twins get ready for the season.

Describe your personality in one word.

Reserved.

Ask your wife to describe your personality in one word.

Well, I did that. She’s at home right now, and I’m working from a coffee shop, so we talked about this via text message. It might be easier to just transcribe the conversation we just had about this, so here goes:

Me: So what is your word?

Felicia: Haha, tell me yours first.

Me: I’m probably going to say something like ‘reserved’.

Me: But maybe I should lie and say ‘fabulous’.

Felicia: Hahaha!

Felicia: My first thought was ‘introverted’.

Felicia: And for laughs I thought ‘crotchety’.

Me: Ha!

Me: Okay, that’s good.

Felicia: How would you condense ‘old soul’ into one word?

Me: Oldsoul.

Felicia: Ha!

Me: Maybe ‘fermented’.

Me: Wait, no. I was going for something like ‘well-aged’.

Me: ‘Fermented’ is all wrong.

Me: I AM STINKY CHEESE.

Felicia: Hahaha. Ew.

Felicia: If you go with ‘fermented’, you might as well say ‘pickled’.

So there you go, I guess — my wife’s one word for me is introvertedcrotchetyoldsoulpickled.

Thank you, Jason for a great discussion.  It was great getting to know you.  Best of luck in all that you choose to conquer.

For more, visit Jason’s website.

Get his books from Amazon US, Amazon UK, or Barnes & Noble.