How long have you been writing?
Since I was ten years old, so nearly 50 years
Which writers inspire you?
Great, tough question. The guys who inspire me are the ones who never quit, actually, like the screenwriter of “The King’s Speech” (Academy Award at, what, 65?). The productivity of some of the pulp writers, like Lester Dent (“Doc Savage,” among others).
So, what have you written?
Poems, short stories, plays, screenplays, novels.
Each of those forms tended to be dictated by what would be the best way to tell the story. Novels, though, through the miracle of self-publishing, offer me the most control over the story (the tales of screenwriters and committees of MBAs who never written a thing giving you “notes” are true). And, it gives me the best chance of getting my stories read. Funny thing, that.
I have two novel series out. Six-volume historical fiction series, “By the Hands of Men,” which most readers seem to like a lot.
An English Lieutenant and an immigrant Russian nurse meet scarcely a mile from the bloody trenches of World War One France, where they witness the hell that the hands of men can create.
The memory of their brief weeks together will follow them for years as they cross a world staggered by war, revolution, and duplicity.
Epic historical fiction, the six-book saga sweeps across four continents in a gripping tale of fate, loss, redemption, and love.
I’ve just gotten back the rights to my first professionally published series, “The Lonesome George Chronicles,” which is an alternative history that imagines what would have happened to America if Al Qaeda got their act together and hit us with coordinated attacks. I’ll reissue that…sometime, but I’m a little busy right now…
What draws you to Superversive writing?
It’s like comedy. Comics who tell the truth (creatively) will get a laugh almost every time. In our current world of literature, with the beady eye of the Cultural Commissars ever vigilant for ThoughtCrime, telling the truth (to borrow from the Blessed Oracle Orwell) is a subversive act.
I write fiction, but I try to make it true…honest in an emotional sense and true about human beings.
Also, the most subversive thing I do, “literature-wise,” is I reject the nihilistic horse-shit that is currently popular which claims people are garbage, life is meaningless, there is no point to existence, the Man is keeping us down, we have no control of our life and we should all just quit trying.
My undiplomatic response to that is “Mother-fucker, unless you’re chained to the wall of a North Korean prison, you have a hell of a lot of control over how your life turns out.”
But I digress.
What are you working on at the minute?
Book 1 of a new comic fantasy series. My other novels tend to be kind of serious, so this is a departure. But I like the creative challenge, and I do have a goofy side. I created and co-wrote the web-comic “Truesbury” (pimped by Instapundit, ah, fame you fickle creature) until Trudeau lawyered up on us. People liked that one, too.
Do you read much and if so who are your favorite authors?
Richard Adams and Ray Bradbury, along with a healthy dash of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
“Watership Down” is pretty much my favorite book in the world. How could that guy write a story about rabbits––RABBITS––that was full of drama, action, world-building, mythology, honor, and love? I try to re-read it about once a year, to study it…but I get drawn into the story every. Damn. Time.
Bradbury just for the damn beauty of the images he could conjure and the emotion he could generate in a few pages…(I have some Ray Bradbury stories, ask me about those).
Burroughs…because his “Princess of Mars,” at age ten, showed me the first real magic I’d ever seen when I picked one up and was transported to Barsoom. For hours at a time, I left behind the unhappy home I was, the strangers that surrounded me. When I emerged from the book, I declared “I’m going to be a writer.”
How can readers discover more about you and your work?
My books are on Amazon. My website is “roymgriffis.com.” I’m also on Facebook as “Roy M. Griffis – Storyteller”
The Helicon Society 