Cover Issue Two

  

Interview

STZ: How did you become interested in writing fiction?

CB: Most of the writers I meet say they started telling stories before they were able to walk. My path was a little different because I grew up in an area where I had access to great sports writers from the Boston Globe, the New York Times, the Philadelphia Daily News and the Washington Post. It was a daily master class in how to tell stories, describe characters and turn a phrase. I also discovered that writing isn’t easy, but it does beat lifting heavy boxes for a living.

STZ: Do you enjoy writing in any specific genre more than the others?

CB: I am primarily a fantasy writer, because that’s what I most enjoy reading. Plus, unlike science fiction and detective stories, nobody says, “You’re wrong. That’s not how it works.” I can’t write horror – it scares me. Same for romance.

STZ: Where do you get inspiration for your stories?

CB: A lot of ideas come from reading. Not the details of a specific story, but because the story sends my mind spinning off in different directions. A short story about old friends discussing changing times morphed into The Ballad of Ceruliman Battlebeard. A second source is combining the mundane with the magical. The God of Minor Inconveniences inspired Doing a God’s Work. A final source is looking at the odd things in the world. I combined a testosterone commercial with a wizard with a problem in The Low Wiz Situation.

STZ: Who are some of your favorite writers?

CB: Sir Terry Pratchett is at the top of the list. Whenever I need inspiration, I open one of his books and read randomly for 15 minutes. He’s like Xanax for writing jitters. I’m in the middle of Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London urban fantasy series, although he keeps adding more books, and graphic novels and audiobooks, so I might not be as close to the middle as I thought.

STZ: I know your work as a short fiction author, but you had a newspaper career before that. Where did you work? What type of articles did you write?

CB: I started with my hometown paper, covering adult recreational baseball. Mercifully, that newspaper is no more and I have my fingers crossed that all the archives have been destroyed so no one can read my earliest work.

I worked in West Chester, Pa., where I covered high school sports, then college sports, and finally the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers. Next was Fort Wayne,Ind., where I wrote primarily about minor-league ice hockey. The Flint-Kalamazoo-Muskegon-Saginaw road trips convinced me to move to the editing side of business.

After that, I began my barnstorming tour of the South with jobs in Birmingham, Fayetteville (N.C.), Chattanooga, Savannah and West Palm Beach.

STZ: Do you bring your experience from the newspaper into you fiction works?

CB: Newspapers taught me that the more you write, the better you get. Also, you have to finish, and finish on a deadline. No one likes a sports story that ends in mid-sentence.

STZ: You have some very interesting characters in your stories. Some of their personalities remind be of real people I know. Do any of your character traits come from real people you have met?

CB: Most of them come from various parts of my own off-the-wall personality. I do crib some bits from real people, but my lawyer has cautioned me against revealing my sources.

STZ: What are your thoughts on the benefits of participating in writer groups?

CB: Writers are extraordinary people to hang out with. They are generous with ideas, resources, praise and criticism. If I were making a list of people to save if the world was ending, writers would rank right behind farmers and engineers. Lawyers and politicians would be last.

STZ: Can you tell us anything about a story you have in the works?

CB: There’s an untitled idea about a man who finds a woman in a bridal gown hiding in a very cold room. It has the line “When you go through the wedding rhyme of ‘Something old, something new …’ the something blue should never be the bride’s skin.” I have some hope for that one.

STZ: Where should we go to find your stories?

CB: They have mostly appeared in the annual Crazy Buffet collections. I have a goal of publishing my own collection or a novel while my father is still alive to see it. He’s almost 91, so there’s a bit of urgency.

STZ: Is there anything else you would like to tell the readers?

CB: I have the utmost respect for all of you. Keep reading.