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Dennis L. McKiernan is the bestselling author most known for his high fantasy Mithgar series (The Iron Tower, The Silver Call, Hel's Crucible, etc.) and his "Once Upon" faery series (Once Upon... a Summer Day, a Spring Morn, an Autumn Eve, and a Dreadful Time). Dennis served in the U.S. Air Force and received a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Missouri and an M.S. from Duke University.
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This episode originally aired on 01/14/2010 with the following authors:
Note: The following interview has been transcribed from The Author Hour radio show. Please excuse any typos, spelling and gramatical errors.
Interview with Dennis L. McKiernan | | |
Bonus Question(s) that Didn't Air on the Live Radio Show
Note that you can also listen to this while you read it.
Matthew Peterson:
Now I have a bonus question for you. What advice would you give an aspiring author?
Dennis L. McKiernan:
[laughs] Okay. I would say to an aspiring author, there’s a business of writing, craft of writing, and the art of writing. The business of writing has to do with trying to sell your story and everything that goes into that. The craft of writing is the learning rules of grammar and spelling and all of the things that people should learn in English class but many don’t. And the art of writing is the magic or writing: whatever it is that you put in there that makes this special. ‘Kay? And you need to remain special throughout the story. And so my advice to an aspiring writer is to master the craft, hope you have the art--the talent--to tell a story in such a way that people can hardly put it down, and finally the business is when you decide that you’re going to go to a publisher somewhere, then get lucky.
Matthew Peterson:
[laughs] Yep, I think there is a lot of luck involved.
Dennis L. McKiernan:
Yeah, there’s a tremendous amount of luck.
Matthew Peterson:
And who you know, yep.
Dennis L. McKiernan:
But you know, “story” tells the whole thing. Story trumps craft; story trumps everything else. And by that I mean the art, potentially the magical part that you put in the story. That trumps everything.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah, because years later, that’s what people will remember.
Dennis L. McKiernan:
They remember that, yeah.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah.
Extra Material That was Cut from the Show Because of Time Constraints
We're still transcribing this, but you can listen to it right now.
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