Today's Author Interview is with Tim Susman, who is celebrating the upcoming release of his queer furry alternate history, The Revolution and the Fox.
Deborah J. Ross: Tell us a little about yourself. How did you come to be a writer?
Tim Susman: I was encouraged to read by my parents, both English majors, and I read everything I could get my hands on. Eventually I found that I had stories in my head that I wanted to work out on paper, so I joined my college’s science fiction magazine and started writing short stories. After college, I kept on writing, and reached a point where I wanted to do more with it, so I took some writing workshop classes at our local university. I started writing novels, and when I got laid off from my tech job some years later, my husband encouraged me to write full time. I’ve been doing that for ten years now, and it is the best job I’ve ever had.
DJR: What inspired your book?
TS: This is the fourth (and final) book in a series inspired by the idea that coming-of-age stories play out in our lives at many different scales, that a country’s war of independence is a coming-of-age story, that a magical race created by a human sorcerer can, like any child, also have a coming-of-age story. The fourth book specifically grew out of two ideas: first, the idea that what a person or country does with their independence is as interesting as how they achieved it, and I wanted to explore that both for my protagonists and their new country; and second, that the magic system I’d built for the British Empire wouldn’t necessarily be the same system used all over the world. I wanted to explore other cultures and give the reader a sense of how different magic might be outside of Britain.
DJR: What authors have most influenced your writing? What about them do you find inspiring?
TS: Stephen King for his ability to create a mood. David Mitchell for his ability to find the perfect little details to describe a character, whether in narrative or in the character’s voice (also for his use of language and the craft in the endings of his books). Kazuo Ishiguro for the fragility of perception and memory (and also for his lovely characters). Susan Cooper’s Dark is Rising series and the way she brings real people to meet epic moments will always be in the back of my head, as will much of Madeleine L’Engle’s work for the same reason. For this series specifically I often thought back to Kevin O’Donnell, Jr.’s Flinger series (Caverns, Reefs, Lava, Cliffs) because he so ably portrayed a protagonist growing up with powers he needed to constantly build on in order to fight the forces arrayed against him for no logical reason other than an accident around his birth.
DJR: Why do you write what you do, and how does your work differ from others in your genre?
TS: I write furry fiction, meaning my stories usually have animal-people of some kind in them. I like that aesthetic and the idea that culturally we invest certain animals with certain traits; furry fiction is the logical extension of that. We think foxes are crafty; what if you had a whole group of fox-people who would be viewed as crafty? That’s the literary explanation, but it may be more of a justification after the fact of my having seen Disney’s Robin Hood at a young age and wanting desperately to live in that world.
I also write queer fiction because I think there needs to be more queer fiction, and also because I love to see the breadth of ways in which people find love and identity. I’m old enough to remember when I thought the world was divided into straight and gay, and to see people come forward year after year to show us how diverse the world is, and how blurred the distinctions are that we once thought so sharp, has been just a continuing source of joy.
As for what differs from others in my genre, I think what I try to bring to each of my works is a sense of optimism that everyone can find out their truest self and can express that. I hope that reading my books will give readers confidence that they too can find who they are and live their best lives.
DJR: How does your writing process work?
TS: Currently it goes something like this: I get an idea. It sits around in my head for anywhere from one to six months so I can see if it’s something I’m going to want to stick with. Eventually I’ll make a rough plot outline so I can figure out the beats and what the heck is going on, and get a better idea of the characters (usually the idea is centered around characters and the plot is what I have to work out). Then I’ll write the first draft all the way through—currently I use Scrivener for most projects but I do still occasionally use Word. The first draft sits for a period of time and then I go back through it to catch the inconsistencies and embarrassing mistakes that I don’t want to inflict on my beta readers. Then it goes to them, I have a round of critiques, and sometimes I’ll have a second round of beta readers after that, depending on the book (that’s how I did it with this one).
DJR: What have you written recently? What lies ahead?
TS: I write a lot of my furry fiction under the name Kyell Gold, and as Kyell I recently wrapped up another series called Love Match, a trilogy following a young jackal as he studies at a tennis academy and then enters the world of professional tennis while navigating gay relationships and other dramas.
Coming up next for Kyell is a return to a Renaissance-era world with a gay romance about making up for the mistakes of your youth, called Return to Divalia, and next for me is a fantasy story in a multi-cultural world about a thief who signs on to help a mysterious woman reclaim a kingdom that’s been stolen from her; by the time he figures out that she’s the evil queen from the old fairy tales he knows, he’s been turned into a weasel and needs her magic to get back to his human form.
DJR: What’s the strangest or most touching fan mail you’ve ever received?
TS: I have gotten a couple letters from people who have said that my books were an anchor for them when they felt suicidal, which is far beyond what I’d even imagined my stories might do for people.
DJR: That's wonderful! Books can indeed change and save lives. I think the most moving fan mail I've gotten was a letter from a reader who used one of my books as a way of coming out to a parent.
DJR: What advice would you give an aspiring writer?
TS: Be stubborn but not unwilling to learn. Read as much as you can, write as much as you can, and—as much as this is possible—write for yourself, not for other people.
Tim Susman started a novel in college and didn't finish one until almost twenty years later. In that time, he earned a degree in Zoology, worked with Jane Goodall, co-founded Sofawolf Press, and moved to California, where he lives with his two partners. He has attended Clarion in 2011 (arooo Narwolves!), published short stories in Apex, Lightspeed, and ROAR, among others, and recently concluded his award-winning Revolutionary War-era fantasy series "The Calatians" with the fourth installment, The Revolution and the Fox. He's won a Coyotl Award for his writing and another for his editing, three Leo Awards, and under the name Kyell Gold, he has published multiple novels and won several more awards for his furry fiction. You can find out more about his stories at timsusman.wordpress.com and www.kyellgold.com, and follow him on Twitter at @WriterFox.
DJR: What advice would you give an aspiring writer?
TS: Be stubborn but not unwilling to learn. Read as much as you can, write as much as you can, and—as much as this is possible—write for yourself, not for other people.
Amazon (US): https://www.amazon.com/
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.
IndieBound: https://www.indiebound.org/
Powell's: https://www.powells.com/book/
Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/books/
Publisher's site: https://argyllproductions.com/
IndieBound: https://www.indiebound.org/
Powell's: https://www.powells.com/book/
Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/books/
Publisher's site: https://argyllproductions.com/
Tim Susman started a novel in college and didn't finish one until almost twenty years later. In that time, he earned a degree in Zoology, worked with Jane Goodall, co-founded Sofawolf Press, and moved to California, where he lives with his two partners. He has attended Clarion in 2011 (arooo Narwolves!), published short stories in Apex, Lightspeed, and ROAR, among others, and recently concluded his award-winning Revolutionary War-era fantasy series "The Calatians" with the fourth installment, The Revolution and the Fox. He's won a Coyotl Award for his writing and another for his editing, three Leo Awards, and under the name Kyell Gold, he has published multiple novels and won several more awards for his furry fiction. You can find out more about his stories at timsusman.wordpress.com and www.kyellgold.com, and follow him on Twitter at @WriterFox.
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