DeAnna Knippling first came on my radar with the 2010 publication of “Choose Your Doom: Zombie Apocalypse,” a choose-your-own-adventure featuring the undead. I was an instant fan! Since then, I’ve learned that DeAnna is one of the most hard-working writers out there and immune to rejection. (That’s a real superpower!) Her latest novel is “Alien Blue,” a science fiction tale about extraterrestrials and beer. Check it out!

I recently talked to her about writing, social media and, of course, zombies…

You’re an incredibly prolific writer. How do you keep going?

Being prolific is a skill that you can develop as an author. One, write every day. (Sorry; you’ve heard this advice before, but it’s true.) Two, develop writing speed by observing how many words you can write in an hour, setting deadlines much closer than you think you can reach, and doing crazy things like NaNoWriMo. Three, and this is the part that most people miss when they try to do this, allow that writing is not the sanest activity in the world and your normal judgment process is flawed when it comes to writing, so there’s no point in second-guessing yourself while you write. Your internal editor will be there, and you can’t shut it off, but you can ignore it and play in your sandbox anyway.

What is your writing schedule like? Your writing process?

I freelance, so I’ll tell you before-freelancing and after-freelancing.

Before freelancing: I started out writing once in a while, then built up to 100 words a day (no joke, I was so proud), and gradually increased my word count. I discovered that I had to have days where I take a break — not from writing per se, but from whatever Big Project I’m working on. Blog, write book reviews, work on something completely different…whatever. Then I did my first NaNoWriMo (in July, because I was afraid I’d fail). That was a huge boost, and I knew that I could write 1.5-2K a day without killing myself (although I did irritate my family). Eventually I got it up to 1K a day, average.

Then I went freelance, which was a whole new set of chops to build, and I spent a lot of time trying to learn how to balance writing and business (business likes to take over). I kept doing NaNoWriMos and built a speed of about 1K an hour over two years, which I can hit now regularly except on this romance that I’m writing, because I don’t write a lot of romance, and that’s about 500-750 wph. With horror and other things I’m closer to 1.5K.

Trying out multiple things to balance out writing and the business side of things has led me to realize that I, personally, have to do my fiction first before anything else. I always have a resistance to going into story world, because my sane brain is terrified that I won’t come back; everything I do in story world points to crazy (hallucinations, multiple personality disorder, schizophrenia). So I make bargains with the sane part of my brain: a word count or a time cutoff. I can only write so much, and then I have to come back. I usually write on my stuff from eight to noon now (in 50-minute writing, 10-minute-break cycles), then switch over to freelance writing, formatting, answering emails, etc. Weekends I spend with my family and tie up whatever loose ends I couldn’t get to during the week.

This is a big issue for me. How do you decide when your story is finished?

If you’re talking about when it’s good enough, I don’t. I let the readers do that — either my first readers (critique group and others), the editors when they either accept or reject, or readers for my self-published stuff. If people don’t like it or it’s not selling, I look at it again. Learning to trust your readers is another skill you can pick up…mostly by giving them a chance to tell you what they think, and not defending yourself from their comments. Part of developing as a writer is putting your work out in the world and getting feedback.

Not that you have to do what your feedback tells you. But you do have to listen.

If you mean, “I just write by the seat of my pants and I’m never sure when to stop,” then you have to do some work studying plot to do :)

Do you have any tricks for overcoming writer’s block?

Writer’s block is usually one of two things: one, the sane part of my brain scared to go back into a story, scared that I won’t be able to finish it or that it’ll suck when I do; two, I’m headed down the wrong path, and my story brain wants to go somewhere else. In both cases, the answer is to listen to story brain. Whatever it is that you do to get to your story brain, do that. Write at 2 a.m. Write listening to special music. Delete the last page and rewrite it. Brainstorm. Imagine that you’re watching a movie…and come up with the most predictable plot and don’t do that.

Writing is about accessing a crazy place in your brain, and nobody else’s tricks will work for you…unless they do. You just have to keep trying new tricks until you find ones that work more or less reliably.

My tricks? Set a deadline. Set a goal. Try something foolhardy.

What is your secret to dealing with rejection?

Soak up so much of it that it seems normal :) It’s just another skill.

How has social media helped your writing career? Hurt it?

Well, it’s a time suck. But I do enjoy it…I don’t know. It’s a good resource for testing ideas. A good way to stay bathed in what’s going on around me. Writers are addicted to praise, really, so it can be a quick fix when you really need someone to say you don’t suck, too.

It’s important, especially for an indie writer, to build a online network. What are three things a beginning writer should keep in mind when starting their platform?

1. You’re asking people to give you their money. Give them things…share yourself. No guilt trips, no begging, no self-pity: just awesomeness as you see it.

2. It’s slow. The new kid doesn’t become the most popular kid in class just because they’re new. Make the first move to make new friends.

3. Don’t force yourself. You have to do it consistently for a long time, so don’t push yourself to do more than you want to do. Besides, it’s the people who fill up your stream with stupid crap that get booted. It’s better to tweet less and do it well than more — as long as you’re doing it regularly.

Do you have any advice for beginning writers that you wished you received when you were starting out?

When it comes to advice, I tend to need the two-by-four to the head, so these are pretty direct and tactless…this *is* the advice I wish I’d received. At a bare minimum. So when I say “you,” I mean “me.”

1. As a creative type, the way you like to spend your free time is what you should create. Don’t focus on poetry if you never read anybody else’s, for example. If you spend most of your time watching TV, then writing fiction is not your game.

2. You have to write about a million words before you start to get published regularly, ten million to get to the national/international level. It’s doable, but stop screwing around.

3. Don’t sum up. Write what’s happening now for the characters. They can let their thoughts ramble…but it has to happen in real time. You have to be really, really good to write good backstory or to sum up. So skip it until you get that good, like another 30 years down the line (still learning this one).

4. Any writing program that isn’t based on you writing over 1K a day is a waste of your time and is probably mostly there to teach writing professors, not working writers. And if it’s a bunch of wannabes and people taking the class just to get credits they need *and* they get to criticize your stories? RUN. Real writers don’t write by committee, and they don’t write by rewriting, and they don’t write by talking about other newbies’ writing.

5. This attitude that some books are worth more than others is bullshit. Does it get the job done for the readers? Yes? Then it’s a good book. Conversely, write what you want. I guarantee that if you write it well enough, there will be someone as demented out there as you who wants to read it. Literature and hack fiction both boil down to “Did the readers like it?” Read both.

6. It’s not about someone saying you’re worthy to be a writer. There’s no prize for “being a writer.” It’s about the books and about taking someone’s brain and putting it where they want it to go, maybe even challenging them to go a little further. But you? If you can’t get the job done without wasting the reader’s time, go home. “But it gets good in chapter three.” Hey, you just stole two chapters from your readers…jerk.

Do you remember the moment when you decided to commit to a writing career?

Yes. I was bored of being a technical editor…and trying to convince myself that I wanted to do more on the computer side of things. After beating my head bloody studying for A+ Certification, I was getting fed up with computers, though. Finally I cut loose one day in front of my husband and said, “You know what I really want? If I had the money, I would quit *today* and write full time.” “Why don’t you?” he said. I just about passed out. I saved up for the next six months and then quit. I never did take the A+ exam.

Bonus question: If you were a zombie, which movie, book, TV show or video game would you like to roam around in?

Probably “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” Because really, even zombies want to be understood. I don’t really want to infect the world, and I can pick up brains at the butcher’s. Although I have to admit that I have an imp of the perverse that wants to wreck almost every movie with zombies. Batman and zombies! Really I want a zombie movie where the movie set of a zombie movie is infested with zombies. “The Sound of Music” and zombies! My mind wanders during movies, although it rarely does during books. Kung fu zombies. “Risky Business” and zombies! Ferriss Bueller and zombies…yes, the world is ready for a John Hughes movie with zombies in it. Cats and zombies. Freddy vs. zombies. Camelot and zombies.

Website: deannaknippling.com

THE GREAT PULP HEROES
Don Hutchison
Book Republic
Pub Date: April 24,2007

Before Superman and Batman, there were Doc Savage and The Shadow. The Spider and The Phantom Detective. Tarzan and Captain Future. They were gaudy, glorious, larger-than-life heroes who fought for justice and truth. But these pulp do-gooders weren’t afraid to pump a bad guy full of lead either. They lived in the pages of such pulp magazines as “Black Mask,” “Argosy,” “Jungle Stories,” “Amazing Stories,” and “Adventure.” And in the 1930s and ’40s they were everywhere. It was the golden age of short stories and heroes, and inspired hacks churned out millions of words during that time. It was, as author Don Hutchison writes, “the greatest explosion of mass entertainment via the printed word that a thrill-seeking public ever experienced.”

In “The Great Pulp Heroes” (revised edition), Don Hutchison chronicles the rise and fall of these old-time do-gooders and the hard-working wordsmiths who brought them to life. It’s an exciting ride that makes a 21st century fanboy wish he lived through the Great Depression.

The preeminent hero of the pulps was The Shadow, that mysterious, caped man who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. But his origin is far from inspiring. He was created after publisher Street and Smith decided to capitalize on the popularity of the mysterious voice, who went by The Shadow, on their radio program. The assignment has handed to a newspaperman and part-time magician named Walter Gibson. He was given no outline or character description, just the task of writing a 75,000 word story about someone named The Shadow. Gibson did so, under the pen name Maxwell Grant, and the magazine soon began to sell 300,000 copies an issue. Then, like Superman years later, The Shadow became the standard that every pulp publisher tried to reproduce.

That led to pulpdom’s second major character, Doc Savage, who himself would be copied, but to much greater success. Doc, who made his debut in 1933, was a clean-cut, all-American hero whose real name was Clark Savage Jr., but he was also known as the Man of Bronze and when things got too tense he liked to retire to his Fortress of Solitude in the Artic. Any of this ring a bell? No doubt, we have the pulps to thank for Superman.

But the most interesting and sinister pulp hero of them all had to be The Spider. The Master of Men was really Richard Wentworth, a millionaire philanthropist. He wore long wigs and fake fangs to scare evildoers, and if that didn’t work he killed without mercy and then would use his cigarette lighter to brand the foreheads of the murdered thugs. The Spider, which was a favorite of the young Stan Lee, was such a frightening character that he wasn’t depicted in his true form on the cover. Instead, artists drew him as a mundane hero in a domino mask. The Spider’s web crumbled in 1943, because of a paper shortage and a general decline in readership.

More and more readers were turning to comics and other forms of media during the ’40s. By the 1950s the pulps had vanished. Street and Smith, publisher of “The Shadow” and “Doc Savage,” had discontinued its pulp magazines in 1949. In 1957 American News Company, the primary distributor of pulp magazines at the time, went bankrupt, and the exhilarating ride came to an end. But the influence of the pulps has been immeasurable. The burgeoning comics industry lifted most of its ideas from the pulps, and every adventure story of today owes something to the pulps. Without the pulps, there would be no Superman, Batman, James Bond, Doctor Who, or Indiana Jones. The pulps are much more than distant memories; they are the lightning bolts that brought the adventure story to life.

“The Great Pulp Heroes” is an invaluable resource of that heady time when the wildest adventures could be bought for just a few cents, when imagination ran riot on the newsstands. After reading “The Great Pulp Heroes” you’ll want to pick up all 283 “Shadow” novels.

Kurt Vonnegut, 84, the author of such classic satirical sci-fi novels as “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle,” and “Breakfast of Champions,” died yesterday.

His wife, photographer Jill Krementz, said Vonnegut had suffered brain injuries after a recent fall at his New York City home.

Vonnegut was born on November 11, 1922 in Indianapolis. He wrote at least 19 novels as well as dozens of short stories, essays and plays.

“I will say anything to be funny, often in the most horrible situations,” Vonnegut once told a gathering of psychiatrists.

He had been retired from fiction writing in recent years, though he continued to publish short articles and, in fact, had a best-seller with 2005′s “A Man Without a Country,” a collection of nonfiction.

Vonnegut once quipped that of all the ways to die, he’d like to go out in a plane crash on the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Sure, Elmore Leonard is in his 80s. So what? The guy is getting better with age. Over a six-decade career, he’s written more than three dozen novels — most of them classics — and even a children’s book (A COYOTE’S IN THE HOUSE). The latest, THE HOT KID (available in paperback today), may be his best.

The setting is Depression-era Oklahoma — a hornet’s nest of outlaws, speakeasies and gun molls. But wait! There’s a new gun in town: Carl Webster, who’s fast becoming the most famous lawman in the land, thanks to True Detective writer Tony Antonelli. Soon Webster’s hot on the trail of Jack Belmont, the sociopath son of an oil millionaire who wants to usurp Pretty Boy Floyd as Public Enemy Number One. Bullets are flying. Bodies are dropping. And Carl Webster’s legend grows. Throw in a little red-head named Louly, who might be even deadly with a gun than Carl, and you have the perfect blend between Leonard’s early Westerns and modern crime tales.

THE HOT KID is Elmore Leonard in top form: cooler-than-cool characters, pitch-perfect dialogue, and a page-burning plot.

I can’t wait to see what Leonard’s writing in his 90s.

Part biography, part anthology, part social commentary, “The R. Crumb Handbook” is an insightful and entertaining introduction to the weirdo cartoonist.

Robert Crumb was a founder and leader of the underground comics movement that began in the 1960s. His sexually and politically outrageous work influenced scores of artists over the years, and some of his cartoons, such as Fritz the Cat and Keep on Truckin’, have even crept into the mainstream.

“The R. Crumb Handbook” weaves photos, images, and comics through Crumb’s narrative of his evolution from a tormented child to “America’s best-loved underground cartoonist.” Crumb also discusses the influence of other artists, such as Carl Banks and Will Eisner, on his work, and his thoughts on media and comics.

The book contains reprints of Mr. Natural and Fritz the Cat as well as new work. There are also reprints of record covers, oil paintings, and scultptures created by Crumb.