Action Pulp!

Please introduce yourself.

I’m Nancy Hansen, married for 43 years and counting, mother of two adult sons, grandmother of three. I’ll be 69 this Friday (April 3rd). I’ve lived in beautiful, rural, eastern Connecticut all my life. I’ve been writing since the late 1980s. I was a stay-at-home mom at the time because my oldest son was identified as learning disabled and started in the local elementary school’s pre-K intervention program, so he had special education support all through school. He struggled at times in elementary and then the local middle school/highschool, though to a lesser extent in college. It was mostly with social skills, though he had trouble focusing on things that didn’t interest him or following complex verbal directions. Eventually the state recognized high-functioning autism when he was in 5th grade and he was the first in this area to be diagnosed. The school system got outside professional support to come in regularly for my son, which also helped our family and the educators and administrators learn how to effectively deal with him. Over those years there were a lot of meetings to attend and constant contact with his teachers and aides and the outside specialist. I handled most of those meeting solo and monitored homework every night to keep him on task. My husband was working long hours with an over 40 mile drive one way, and he’s not a patient guy, so I didn’t mind making myself available instead of returning to work. I gardened a lot to put up food for freezer and canned, and we had chickens for fresh eggs for a few years. In the off season though, I wanted something else I could focus on, but it had to be home-based because I was always on call in case my son had a meltdown and we needed to pull his team together. After dabbling in music (I sang and played rhythm 12 string guitar) and art, and then trying a craft vendor business, I knew I needed something I could do at odd hours and still be available on short notice. I’ve been an avid reader from about 4rd grade on, so writing seemed like the way to go. I took a couple of mail-in correspondence courses I could do at home or carry with me when waiting somewhere, and in spite of being a rotten typist, I started working on material back then that I’ve refined into novels and short stories over the last couple of decades. Along the way I learned to use a computer and then the internet when it became available in our rural area. The internet really opened the world for me, and within six months I was actually moderating a couple of bulletin boards online. That was well before the social media sites became a thing, so I learned to use VPN based moderator tools and chatted via ICQ in its beta stage with folks all over the US.

What genres do you write and why?

I enjoy variety so I will tackle just about anything that interests or challenges me, though my first love will always be fantasy. I’ve read a lot of fantasy, so go figure! However I have an ongoing pirate adventure series in a historical setting that I pitched to a publisher that now has 10 novels in print and I’m currently working on the 11th. They’ve been collecting every 4 novels into a print-only omnibus featuring a new title and cover, with all the original interior illustrations (9 for each novel) inside, and the original covers for the books featured on the omnibus back cover. I get invited into projects regularly, and if I see something opening up that catches my eye, I’ll throw my hat in the ring for a chance to write for that. I’ve written a somewhat weird western, dabbled in horror, romance, private eye yarns, and sci fi, and have authored several stories in a world setting that features Kaiju-type monsters as the big threats instead of nuclear missiles. I’ve written about mummies, supernatural investigators, and an alti-verse where things are cobbled together from steampunk in a land where dinosaurs still roam and famous personages from history have interesting new lives. I’ve written several other stories for my pirate novel publisher because they’ve had a Harryhausen-style Sinbad The Sailor adventure series with an eclectic cast that I’ve enjoyed working with. I’ve written about monster hunters and a post-apocalyptic world where The Rapture has come and gone and the remainder humanity struggles on with various otherworldly issues. I’ve recently written a Domino Lady tale. I was first welcomed into the burgeoning New Pulp community back in 2010, so high action material is no-problem for me. I even have a children’s series of 6 books that I’ve co-authored with 2 dear writer friends from the bulletin board days that feature mischievous little mini-dragons that each reside with magically skilled adults in a world where chocolate has replaced oil as the major economic force, Atlantis exists as a resort, and skilled writers can create viable other-worlds just by how convincing their prose is. It would be a paradise if not for those HAACK writer/enchanters who keep trying to take over those magical worlds. We have so many bad puns in these books, it’s become a regular feature! Those are sadly out of print now as are my fantasy novels, my private eye collection of stories, as well as the collection of tales featuring Lorelei the Siren come back to the modern world as the head of a team of scum-busting anti-heroes from history. So yeah, my writing is all over the place, and I enjoy every minute of that.

What is your earliest memory of reading?

I was a good student but a poor reader up into third grade. My very patient classroom teacher, who understood how important reading is, tried to find me interesting books on library days that might help spark my ability to read. He also regularly read to the class after lunch and recess, either from Hightlights Magazine or books he thought we’d enjoy. He knew I was struggling so spoke to the school librarian about finding me books I’d try harder to read from. I remember her asking me what I would like to read about and I told her I like stories about horses, dogs, and cats. There weren’t too many cat books back then, but with the 1960s government’s funding of school libraries she managed to start stocking Walter Farley and Marguerite Henry’s horse books and Colonel S.P. Meek’s dog and horse books. I read them all, and by fourth grade I was an avid reader. Thank you Mister Holland and the librarian whose name I have forgotten, because those books and your efforts allowed me to learn to read not only well and independently, but voraciously. Reading really turned my life around and by the time I was in the upper grades (that school was K-8) I read 4 books every 2 weeks—two I checked out and two my (4 years younger) sister checked out only because she had to. So she brought home books I liked. I was a big fan of Walter R. Brooks’ Freddie The Pig series. When we got encyclopedias, I’d pick one up and read random entries. I started reading newspapers. When our town opened a library, we went there every 2 weeks. Over the years my dad often said that if you couldn’t find Nancy, look behind a book.

When did you know you wanted to write? How did it happen?

While it actually dawned on me as an adult mom with two sons, when I look back, I can see this was inevitable for me. Writing was something I actually did well, I was that kid who never freaked out over book reports or essay questions on tests. I always had something to say and could bluff my way through any writing assignment. In high school English, I once got a passing grade on a book report explaining why I didn’t finish reading the book. Another time I plagiarized a story I’d read in a magazine and rewrote it convincingly enough that even though I admitted what I’d done, the teacher was impressed and talked to me about staying in school (I was skipping out a lot) so I could go on to college. Then there was the time we were reading Dicken’s Pickwick Papers and everyone had been assigned an aspect from the book to research. I had been out playing hooky for a while (again), so when I came back I was assigned to write about ‘debtors prison in England’, something the top gal in the class had researched at length at a couple local libraries and the nearby college library, and could find nothing much about. We weren’t allowed to use encyclopedias and I could not go to libraries outside of school because I had no ride. We lived miles away and my Dad worked second shift and my mother didn’t drive. I found only a tiny bit of info in our Britannicas, and not much in the high school library, so I made up the rest to fill in the blanks. The English teacher was astounded with what I turned in, and the girl who first took that assigment was extremely suspicious because the sources I cited she had already searched and found very little that was useful. I have a feeling I got a good grade for my sheer inventiveness. Looking at the online material on debtors prison now, I wasn’t too far off in my ideas.

What’s one of your favorite scenes in one of your books?

That’s hard to pick, but I have to say one of the most memorable that I always enjoy sharing comes from the second book of my Greenwood fantasy novels. A bunch of barmaids face off with mercenaries hired by a local sheriff who acts as tax and tithe collector for his duke. One of those barmaids is my main character and happens to be pregnant at the time. These would-be tax collectors are armed and threatening to shake down the owner/proprieter of this frontier inn with a popular taproom for more than he owes in taxes so they can pocket something for themselves. A free-for-all fight starts when one barmaid is coming down the stairs from retreiving a stack of metal trays and sees her employer being held at sword point by the leader of the group. She drops them on the agressor’s head and then all the other girls whip into action, using whatever tools they have on hand—a bung mallet, the metal-edged dasher of a butter churn, and a sooty broom from the hearth. Eventually the entire town gets involved, disarming the men and sending them off in their ‘small clothes’ downriver on a raft in late fall. I had a ball writing that one and every time I’ve read it to a group, people absolutely love it. I’m dying to get those four books back in print along with the fifth manuscript that never got turned in. I’ve been picking away at the sixth one.

What makes a good character? A bad one?

Believability and depth to characters makes them someone you can relate to. I don’t tend to write one dimensional heroes or villians. Good intentioned characters don’t all have to be superheroes; they can just be regular Janes and Joes, muddling through as best they are able to, though there has to be something compelling about them to keep the reader turning pages. I have them doing whatever they have to in order to survive or save someone or something they believe in. They can be tall, short, plump, skinny, any race, any ability, even non-human! I want them to seem like people you might meet anywhere and would want to get to know better. Some are really flawed but still quite likeable. Some are sweet and kind, others snarky, lazy, self-involved and unfeeling—until pressed to do the right thing. As far as villianous characters, I want them to have depth too, so that there’s no evil for its own sake. They truly think they’re right and justified in what they are doing because these are damaged people or beings. It becomes their mindset that they must follow this darker path. So their deeds become decidely evil, though you might feel a twinge of understanding or remorse because you’re also getting their version of what made them who and what they are now. There is a dark side charisma to a really evil mastermind character that you will gingerly explore as a reader even while you feel revulsion—if you can understand how this individual got so twisted in the first place. That depth makes the reading so much more interesting.

What moves the story for you?

I need to invest myself into who I’m writing about and what’s going on for the characters in order to get a project underway. But I am a working writer, so when I accept a writing gig from someone, I consider it an honor to be chosen and I give them my very best and strive to have it in on time within their parameters. Once you’ve written long enough,you find that you can get into almost anything you’re assigned as long as you have even at least vague story idea floating in your mind. I’m a panster by nature, so I don’t do outlines, but I will have some sort of general synopsis of the main event in my head before I start getting words on a page. Then I just let it flow out as it wills. I seldom have anything even resmbling writer’s block that way. You have to learn to trust in your process. That said, this is what works for me; all of us are different and there’s no right or wrong way to tackle something as long as what you are doing keeps you working at getting something written.

What is your favorite book and why?

I’m assumimg you mean by other authors. I have many favorites, but I have to say Tolkien’s The Hobbit along with The Lord of the Rings trilogy are likely at the pinnacle of that list. Four paperback copies were handed to me for the first time in my teens by a dear friend who was going away for the summer as a church camp counselor. I had expressed some remorse over not seeing her for three months, and she said, “Read these and we’ll discuss them when I get home.” I was told what order to read them in and then I set them aside for a while. When I got bored enough, I picked up The Hobbit, and went to sit on the ground underneath the burgundy leaved Japanese maple on the family front lawn. To this day, I recall opening that paperback for the first time and reading the initial sentence: In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. What was a hobbit? Why did it live in the ground? An entire world of wonder opened for me with those books! I’ve read them 5 times, worn out a couple copies, and read them to my two sons when they were both old enough to listen. The boys both did independent book reports on Tolkien in elementary school for the same teacher a year apart, and she asked me, “What’s all this with Tolkien at your house?” Well… there’s something really special about a shared experience that makes you want to tell the world about it. That has now passed to a third generation, because I bought my voracious reading younger grandson an illustrated hardcover copy of The Hobbit for his birthday last year. Plus we’ve got DVD copies of the Rankin/Bass and Ralph Bakshi animated versions his dad and uncle enjoyed as kids, and my sons and I sat together in theaters watching all of Peter Jackson’s live action movie adaptations—which I also have in extended versions on DVD/Blu-ray. When Jackson’s Return Of The King ended in the theater, that was the first time I ever saw the entire audience leapt to their feet and applaud a movie, and I was proud to join them. They were my tribe! I’ll admit, I teared up when they used that same opening sentence that had captivated me so many years ago in the initial hobbit movie opening scene. I have to say that while my gift of writing in general might come from various sources, my love affair with epic fantasy was definitely influenced by those unforgettable books, and that gradually motivated me to write stories of my own that might someday captivate others.

What do you want to say to your audience?

I write to provide quiet entertainment for others in the way I always enjoyed it—creating something exciting and maybe even uplifting or thought-provoking to carry us away from our own lives for a while. We live in a very hectic and sometimes overwhelming era, where there are so many things blaring at us all day long, and everybody’s opinion is on display wherever you go. Reading for pleasure is still important, and I hope that the majority of you reading this understand why. For me reading was the great escape. I was an unpopular, poorly dressed, fat kid from a low income, rather humdrum existence, who was constantly picked on and ridiculed for how I looked. Yet I could get away from it all with a good book in some quiet space, and that saved me from going down the rocky roads to dark places teens can get into when things are at their worst. I could disappear for a while into a story and when I came back out the world around me seemed a little less stressful, tawdry, or downright nasty. Books taught me that it’s okay to dream of being swept off my feet and transported to magical, mystical, alien places where the determined underdogs can and do triumph over evil in the end, though the heroes have to sometimes sacrifice themselves in order to make it happen. We have to keep believing that things can be better, that there is goodness in the world, and that love triumphs over hatred. That’s why I write the stuff I do and strive to share it with you all. I want you also to have a better place to go to when it gets too damn real outside.

What advice do you have for new writers?

I only have a 12th grade education and yet here I am. Actually it took me 6-1/2 years to get that high school diploma because I kept staying back due to absences along with the two times I dropped out. Sometimes I skipped classes and hid in the high school library where the two librarians let me stay because I was safe and just reading. All of this because of the constant bullying I had endured for most of my school years. So I’ve had to reinvent myself as a writer in my middle years. That is something I really wanted to do, so I worked at it. I’ll tell you now, the only writing rule that applies to everyone is that if you don’t write at all, you’ll never get published. You learn mostly by doing in this business, not as much by books or seminars, though they can be helpful. You must write as often as you can manage to. As for me, I don’t find time to write—I make it. If you honestly don’t have the time, maybe scribble some notes or dictate ideas into your phone. It tells your brain you did something important today, and that’s incentive to keep at it. You can use those notes later, just get them into a form that won’t disappear if the electronic device dies. I recall retyping 100 pages of a manuscript that somehow got deleted, though I was lucky enough to have a dot matrix printout on fanfold tractor pin edged paper (yeah, I’m dial-up old). There were no scanners back then! Also, I find having a setup routine before I write gets me in the groove. I get out my material, set up my online sites I use, and out come two squares of 90% dark chocolate for those “little gray cells”. Then I go to the bookmarked section I’ve been working on and start re-reading and adding stuff. Personally, I enjoy the writing process, but it can be overwhelming at times too, and you have to expect that. So break off from that one story that is twisting your brain into knots and write something else. Or talk to a sympathetic friend or family member who will patiently listen about how frustrating this is—oftentimes I’ll work out my issue as I explain it. Learn your craft as best you can, but you must read a lot as well. Read all kinds of things, not just what you truly enjoy or want to write. When you’re watching something entertaining on a screen, think about how small elements of that can be used in a story. Oh, and my first correspondence course taught me to keep a college level dictionary and thesaurus on hand—plus they gave me a copy of Strunk & White’s ‘The Elements of Style’. Not bad thing to have, it broadens my knowledge of words and punctuation and how to use them. That was the dinosaur days of the late 1980s, you can get much of that info online easily enough now. Last of all, once you know what style works best for you, trust it. There’s no wrong way to write if it gets words on the page that makes you feel accomplished.

Do you have anything else you would like to add?

Writing is a lonely business because we’re trapped in our minds during the entire process. Non-writers don’t get it, sometimes they think the books just pop out of our brains fully formed like Athena. It’s also not glamorous until you hit the big time, then you can’t go anywhere without someone coming up to gush over you when you’re just trying to have a nice dinner or a night out. We all have our clay feet too. Most of us aren’t making enough to do more than buy pizza for the family. Many have day jobs and steal time from family, chores, skip outings, or lose sleep to get writing in. Yet we still do it because it is something we love and want to share with the world—even while it’s frustrating and eats up time we could be binging streaming series. All we writers ask is that once you’ve read what you bought of ours, please leave a review. Reviews are so vitally important, because it tells us that we sold something, which boosts our fragile egos and encourages us to keep at it. From reviews we learn what we’re doing that seems right and what didn’t work, but also they boost a book’s potential readership each time someone leaves one because it gets bumped up a notch in the countless numbers of other books out there. It’s good for the rest of the team too, the artists who do covers, the publisher who takes a chance on this tome, the editorial staff who strives to make it shiny and easy to enjoy, and the seller platform that offers it. A review doesn’t have to be in-depth or fancy, just why you liked or didn’t like a book or story and why. It helps us keep at it and get better at what we do and tells us it’s worth writing again.