VAH: Today the third and final installment with Sam Slaughter as we talk about the writing life. Sam – are you a full-time writer?

SS: I am indeed a full-time writer, though what I write tends to range widely. I get paid to be a copywriter for a health and wellness company here in Central Florida. That is my Monday through Friday job and as far as writing jobs go, I enjoy it. It is the first (paying) writing job that I’ve held that allows me to work creatively and collaboratively and since so much of my other writing is done by myself, I revel in the atmosphere around me.  In addition to that, I try and write something else (creative work of some sort, or book reviews) every morning before work. I’ve found that trying to do so after spending all day in front of a computer never works so I gave up trying.

VAH: So how do you get going the page/screen is blank?

SS: Stubbornness, sometimes. A glass of bourbon other times. I read somewhere that Russell Banks suggests that three drinks is the perfect amount to drink while writing, if you are into that. Now that I write mostly in the morning, I don’t drink, but I have found it to be beneficial previously.  Running also helps me because it isolates me and the voices in my head, allowing me to focus on something that I could write.

VAH: “Voices in your head,” such a good way to describe an author’s head space! What is your process when working on a new piece of writing?

SS: I hear it or see it or whatever it in my head long before I put anything on paper. Usually it starts with an image or a line and I build it out from there using the typical journalistic questions of who when and most importantly why. As a writer I’m always observing (I think there’s a certain point when you can’t not people watch whenever you’re in public) and plenty of times I’m left going what the hell or why would he do that. Those are the moments I build off because I’d much rather make up a person’s life story using what I can see than hear what actually happened, truth stranger than fiction be damned.

VAH: Getting your work out there – do you have a submission system or plan?

SS: I take what was referred to somewhere as a Hydra approach. I’ll send out a story (usually I’m sending out two or three or however many are ready at the time) to three places. When I get a rejection, I’ll then send it out to two more places, like a hydra getting its head chopped off. I don’t know if this is effective or not, but it makes me feel like I’m being somewhat productive.

VAH: What does your typical writing day include?

SS: When I wake up and drag myself about of bed, I make some coffee and boot up my computer.  I’ll either start a new piece or pull up an old piece to edit.  By around 7:30 I get ready for work. At work, I work on various projects—whatever is needed. During lunch or if I have a free moment, I try and use those to read or write down some notes or sentences on whatever I’m working on.  Night time I usually reserve for reading and just letting my mind wander around whatever it needs to in order to be able to write the next day.

VAH: Sam, what would you like to share about your current work?

SS: Last year I finished my first novel, DOGS.  I am currently shopping it while I work on a variety of other projects, including a second novel. The working title of the novel is Alternate Frequencies and will be an exploration of communication and love, of the desperation born out of not being able to talk to your own child even when he is in the very same room, and the lengths to which a parent will go to show his love. When he is only two, Markus Van Dennen is involved in a serious car accident, landing him in a six-month coma. His father, Chuck, escapes with minor wounds.  Throughout his time in the hospital, Markus’s grandmother sits by his side listening to old time radio shows. When he finally does wake up, life is different for Markus. Whenever he is around people, he sees them talking, but he doesn’t hear what they’re saying. Instead, life plays out like a radio show for him. Some days are dramatic, some unfold like a detective’s mystery, some are just plain funny.  His family, already strained from the previous six months not knowing whether or not Markus would live, are knocked off balance when they realize Markus doesn’t really hear them. Chuck and his wife, Darcy, are at odds over what to do about Markus while their older daughter Jane tries to keep the family together no matter what. Daily, Chuck and Darcy fight over what to do. Both want Markus cured, but amidst their fighting not once do they think Markus might be happy how he is. Jane is forced to watch as Darcy offers an ultimatum, threatening to walk out of the family if Chuck does not agree with her plan. Chuck, forced to show where his devotion lies, must make a decision that will effect the rest of his and his family’s lives.

VAH: Thank you Sam, for taking some time with Three by Five and sharing about your writing life.

Sam Slaughter was born and raised in New Jersey and currently lives in Central Florida.  He was educated at Elon University and Stetson University. He has fiction and nonfiction published or upcoming in a variety of places, including McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Midwestern Gothic, The Circus Book, The Review Review, and Heavy Feather Review.  He is the Book Review Editor for The Atticus Review and a Contributing Editor at Entropy. He was recently awarded the 2014 There Will Be Words Prize and his first chapbook, When You Cross That Line, will be published in 2015.

Social Media:

Twitter:  @slaughterwrites
Instagram: @slaughterhouserising
Website: www.samslaughterthewriter.com

Sam Slaughter Sampler:

1) An excerpt from DOGS, published at Revolution John

2) Part 1 of the story “Fame in the Graveyard,” published at The Circus Book

Writer reads

VAH: Sam, who is your favorite author?

SS: It sounds cheap and like thousands of other white males out there, but I’d have to say Hemingway.  Having studied his prose as a grad student and having read countless stories and books by him, something about the prose always speaks to me. The parataxis is intriguing and his background as a cub reporter jives with my own, though I don’t have anywhere near the amount of experience that he did.  There are other things, but I feel I’d fall into super nerd fan boy speak and I’d rather avoid that.

VAH: Imagine you’re stranded in a snowstorm, or stuck on a deserted island. What books would you hope to have with you or hope to find?

SS: First, I’d rather be stuck on a deserted island—there’s something very literary and less freezey-to-deathy about that. The immediate thought is to bring something practical like How to Survive on a Deserted Island or 79 Military Practices to Keep You Alive. Beyond that, though (because who wants to be practical?), I’d bring The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor, Brillat-Savarin’s The Physiology of Taste, and if allowed, a set of encyclopedias. I’d also take the biggest tome of blank paper I could. I think all of those books have their various methods and, at least with the encyclopedias (and Physiology to an extent) there would be some practical knowledge to pull from them. I’d need a balance of practical and impractical to survive, I think.

VAH: What is the most memorable book, story or poem you’ve read?

SS: Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. Being named Sam, it comes up a lot in one’s life. When you combine that with the fact that I enjoy cooking, it is near inescapable. It’s memorable because of its omnipresence in my mind. (It doesn’t/does help that I have the character tattooed on the inside of my arm as well.)

VAH: What author or books keep you up at night because you can’t put them down?

SS: Like many others, I read the last Harry Potter book in a little under 24 hours. I also read the memoir Crazy For the Storm by Norman Ollestad in the same amount of time. There aren’t specific books or authors that will always keep me up. I once read the better portion of a book on Roman history in an attempt to fall asleep. It didn’t work, but I learned a lot about Nero that night.

VAH: I’ve actually not read Harry Potter, but I’ve done similar with Outlander books.

Which reader are you – always finish what you started or put it down and move on if you don’t like it?

SS: I finish books even when I don’t like them. Even if I hate it, I force myself to go on. The only explanation I have is that I’m a stubborn individual and don’t like losing, even if its to the voices in my head telling me I couldn’t follow through on something. It’s something I’m working on.

Sam Slaughter was born and raised in New Jersey and currently lives in Central Florida.  He was educated at Elon University and Stetson University. He has fiction and nonfiction published or upcoming in a variety of places, including McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Midwestern Gothic, The Circus Book, The Review Review, and Heavy Feather Review.  He is the Book Review Editor for The Atticus Review and a Contributing Editor at Entropy. He was recently awarded the 2014 There Will Be Words Prize and his first chapbook, When You Cross That Line, will be published in 2015.

Social Media:

Twitter:  @slaughterwrites
Instagram: @slaughterhouserising
Website: www.samslaughterthewriter.com

Sam Slaughter Sampler:

1) An excerpt from DOGS, published at Revolution John

2) Part 1 of the story “Fame in the Graveyard,” published at The Circus Book

More Sam Slaughter on the 13th of the month.

Welcome to Sam Slaughter, this month’s highlighted author.

Writer beginnings

VAH: Sam, let’s begin with why do you write?

SS: I write because at this point I can’t not. My mentor, Mark Powell, described it best, I think. He said at one point that if he goes for a long period of time without writing, he starts to feel physically ill. I’m going to steal that. I get antsy if I go more than a day or two without writing. Hearing stories and lines and whatever else in my head all the time, writing is a release for that, like opening a faucet or whatever other cliché you want to put in there. It feels good to write (even though it can be torture at times to sit in front of a blank screen) and so I keep doing it.

VAH: When did you start writing?

SS: I started writing because, as a kid, I always told stories. They were mostly to myself, in the safety of my own room as I played with my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures, but they were stories nonetheless. In public places, I would make stuff up constantly, wanting to sound more interesting than I was. Looking back, I can only imagine how crazy I probably sounded. In eighth grade I remember one particular assignment that really sealed the deal for me. We had our weekly spelling list—this may have been a marking period list, it was pretty long as I remember—and we had to write a story using all of the words. I wrote some fantasy tale

VAH: What are influenced your development as a writer?

SS: I have two different lists for this, really. First are the authors that I was reading when I was much younger—the ones that made me want to write in the first place. Among them, Brian Jacques, Jonathan Kellerman, RL Stine, Christopher Pike, and Caleb Carr come to mind. These writers wrote compelling pieces that were not hard to grasp. I read more because I was always interested. If I didn’t have that bunny hill education in reading, I probably wouldn’t have gotten to the point that I’m at now. If I would’ve jumped right into the canon, there’s a good bet that I would’ve hated reading and writing. I didn’t start reading a lot of “classics” until late in college, when I felt I was finally smart enough to understand them. I wasn’t in some cases, but what can you do? You can’t win ‘em all.

The second list of writers, after I started to actively pursue “literary” fiction writing, is the list more likely to pop up on my shelves these days. TC Boyle, Chuck Palahniuk, Flannery O’Connor, Kurt Vonnegut, Pinckney Benedict, Ricky Moody, Anthony Bourdain (his nonfiction, not his fiction), Steve Almond, and Rick Bass.

If I were to add any to that second list now, they’d be: Ron Rash, George Singleton, Ernest Hemingway, Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro, Karen Russell and Denis Johnson, among many others. I realize my taste in writers is terribly uniform and I’ve been working on changing that in the past year.

VAH: What do you remember about your first story or poem?

SS: The first story I wrote was about a bartender of a medieval tavern-turned-hero. I believe he had a sword that could either freeze an enemy or light them on fire. He saved a damsel at some point. Beyond that, I don’t remember anything else about it. I wrote it when I was in eighth grade for an assignment in Spelling, when we had to use a list of words in a story. At the time, I was into fantasy role-playing and, for some reason, I thought being a medieval barkeep was cool so all my heroes were bartenders.

VAH: What is the favorite piece you’ve written to date?

SS: My novel, Dogs, is up there because I learned what it meant to write a novel.  As far as pieces that are or will be published, I really enjoy my story “Welcome to Milwaukee” which will be out in 2015 in Midwestern Gothic. The idea came from a trip I took to Minneapolis one time and it stuck with me until I finally wrote it down.

Sam Slaughter was born and raised in New Jersey and currently lives in Central Florida.  He was educated at Elon University and Stetson University. He has fiction and nonfiction published or upcoming in a variety of places, including McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Midwestern Gothic, The Circus Book, The Review Review, and Heavy Feather Review.  He is the Book Review Editor for The Atticus Review and a Contributing Editor at Entropy. He was recently awarded the 2014 There Will Be Words Prize and his first chapbook, When You Cross That Line, will be published in 2015.

Social Media:

Twitter:  @slaughterwrites
Instagram: @slaughterhouserising
Website: www.samslaughterthewriter.com

Sam Slaughter Sampler:

1) An excerpt from DOGS, published at Revolution John

2) Part 1 of the story “Fame in the Graveyard,” published at The Circus Book

More Sam Slaughter on the 13th of the month.