Books and Ideas Podcast

BOOKS AND IDEAS PODCAST

With Ginger Campbell, MD

Episode #35

Interview with Podcaster and Best-Selling Author, Scott Sigler

Aired February 26, 2010

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INTRODUCTION

Welcome to Episode 35 of Books and Ideas. I’m your host, Dr. Ginger Campbell. My guest today is best-selling author, Scott Sigler. I’ve been a fan of Scott’s writing since I read the hard cover version of his book, Contagious.

Back in Episode 32 when I interviewed Sheril Kirshenbaum, the author of Unscientific America, we talked about the challenges of portraying science accurately in fiction. Because Scott does such a good job of this, I wanted to get him on Books and Ideas, so we could get the perspective of a storyteller.

As always you will find show notes, links, and episode transcripts for every episode of Books and Ideas at booksandideas.com. You can send me email at [email protected].

Before I play the interview, I have to apologize to you and to Scott, because this episode has a few sound problems. There were some clicks and squeaks—mostly on Scott’s track—that I wasn’t able to remove. I hope these won’t distract you too much.

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 1 Please stay tuned after the interview, because I have an important announcement about future episodes of Books and Ideas.

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INTERVIEW

Ginger: It’s my pleasure today to welcome New York Times best-selling author and podcasting legend, Scott Sigler, to Books and Ideas. We’ve been trying to get together for quite awhile. Scott, it’s a great pleasure to have you on my podcast.

Scott: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Ginger: Some of my listeners will be new to your work, so I thought you might start out by just giving us a brief overview of your career as a writer.

Scott: Well, at this point, as you mentioned, I hit the New York Times Best- Seller list with my last book, Contagious. And before that I had Infected out in hard cover. That’s the phase I’m at now, which is getting the big hard cover books into the book stores. And that’s a whole lot of fun.

I do hard science horror, is what I call it. It’s kind of horror thrillers, with a hard science, or science fiction backdrop to it. So, I try and create all the fear, and terror, and suspense of a Stephen King novel, but with actual science, instead of the creepy, woo-woo, magical type stuff.

I started out—I think it’s almost five years ago now—giving away my books as podcasts. The first one I gave away was Earthcore. I was the first person to do a podcast-only novel—which means it was just like serialized TV. It was like a radio drama of the ‘40s and ‘50s—you put out an episode every week; if you wanted to hear what happened next in the story, you had to tune in next week.

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 2 Then I got quite a few subscribers to that first one, and followed that up with a podcast novel called Ancestor. Then I was podcasting a book called Infected, and when I was doing that, we put out Ancestor as an indie book from a small Canadian publisher called Dragon Moon Press.

And Ancestor was the number two fiction book on Amazon.com. It was only there for a few days, but it really kind of showed the New York publishers that there was something going on with online media, with social media, and podcasting that they didn’t understand.

But they understood it enough to want to give me a book deal. So, I wound up getting a three-book deal with Crown Publishing. We are in the middle of that right now, and getting ready to put out the next book, Ancestor, on May 4th.

Ginger: And you’ve inspired quite a few other writers to use podcasting as a way to build their audience.

Scott: I think so. It’s good to have the one early example out there that it can work. I’m also really happy with the kind of example that I am setting, because I make it clear to everybody all the time that I have really been busting my butt on this for five years now. And this is not a quick fix in any way, but it does work.

If people have good stories, and they’re committed to using this format, they can actually build an audience on their own, without having to rely on publishers, or marketing budgets, or anything like that. They can really take control of their own destiny as an author, as an entertainer.

Ginger: Can you tell us a little bit more about your background, and how that has influenced your writing?

Scott: I went into journalism in college, and wrote a newspaper for a few years. Unfortunately (because at the time, writing was just so easy for me) I thought,

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 3 ‘This will be like stealing, if I get paid to do this.’ And, having come from an athletic background, I was also of the mind that the more you work at something the better you get at it. So, I wanted to put myself in a position where I was writing all the time, and figured that my skills would develop accordingly. And that really did work.

And then I got out of the journalism industry, because it’s a really depressing place to be, and to be a really good reporter you kind of have to be a jackass. You have to feel that you’ve got the right, and prerogative, and duty, even, to pry into people’s personal lives, and to go after people. And if you’re not comfortable with that, you shouldn’t be in journalism in the first place, because it’s a really vital role in our culture. But I wasn’t comfortable with that, and got out of it after awhile.

I went into marketing. I wound up doing marketing for a software company that wrote programs for a newspaper. So, it was a logical progression. I spent 10 years in marketing, and understanding more about marketing really helped me when it came time to spread the word about the books I was giving away for free online.

As far as the hard science side of it, it has really all just been largely pop culture consumption—reading National Geographic, Discover, watching things on TV, taking a lot of classes in it in high school and in college, but never really pursuing a degree in that field. So, it has wound up being a cool hybrid, because I’ve developed the writing skills, and I have a real good background in basic science.

But because I haven’t gotten too advanced with that knowledge I’m sort of able to be an intermediary communicator. So, I can write about scientific type stuff in a layman’s language that translates to people who only have a surface interest in it, and I’m able to communicate the really cool things that I find.

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 4 Ginger: Yes, I think that’s really important, because I’ve found when I try to read hard science fiction that’s written by actual scientists, it tends to get bogged down in the technical detail, and the story suffers. Isaac Asimov was a prolific writer, and to tell you the truth, I love his non-fiction; but I could never read his sci-fi, because his characters just weren’t compelling.

Scott: I always found that, too. And I haven’t read a lot of the classic sci-fi guys, because you read them and it becomes very clear in a lot of these books that the characters are there to facilitate the science, and the plot is merely there so that they can put some kind of dramatic element around this real cool scientific concept that they have.

And if you’re really into that, then it’s a fantastic read. But if you want to be pulled along by the story, it kind of makes it difficult to consume the story, as you just said. In a lot of ways that has wound up being a great sweet spot for me, because I’m about a concept, and a story, and a plot, and characters that follow this along, and then the science is there to bolster that, and make it real, and make it believable.

But it’s still about the story, it’s about the suspense, it’s about making you want to turn the page to see what happens to the characters. Then, if I’ve done my job, you really are invested in these characters, and you want to see what happens to them, and you feel the danger that they’re in. Some of the old classic sci-fi doesn’t do that as much.

Ginger: Do you pay much attention to the issues that are going on right now in the world with the problem of science’s diminishing respect in our culture? I recently interviewed one of the authors of a book called Unscientific America, and they talked a lot about this problem. Are you aware of that, having been a journalist in your past?

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 5 Scott: It’s something I’ve kind of been hiding my head in the sand about. I feel like a lot of people are doing that. It’s just so counterintuitive for people who have an understanding of science, and see that science is all around us. It’s in our medical system, it’s in our extended life spans.

I mean it’s just everywhere. It’s in every ounce of our society. The fact that there are people who don’t see it, and a lot of the science that’s going on around us has become totally taken for granted, that seems to be having an impact on our education and the perception of science in the general populace.

So, yes I do see it as a very troubling thing. I think it’s going to force a shift in the evolution of science. It’s a product, like anything else. And people have to start understanding that you can’t just assume everybody out there sees what you see: You have to go out and find ways to express to people this is what’s really making our lives better.

A lot of the other things are not making our lives better, or not making our lives worse, they’re just there; but science is actually adding to our life spans, it’s making life better in a lot of different ways. And getting out there and communicating that is going to become more and more important.

I get to do that a lot in my books. It’s a thing I’ve just sort of stumbled upon. I’m not beating people over the head with ‘science is good, religion is bad’—that message. It’s a way to show people, look at all the science that’s going on around us; and immerse it, again, with characters. Covering arguments from all different perspectives really helps people see that there are some cool things out there.

Ginger: You have an important contribution to make to this, because the authors of Unscientific America, and also the filmmaker, Randy Olson, who wrote a book called Don’t Be Such a Scientist, emphasize the fact that scientists not only need to learn to communicate with regular people, but need to

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 6 understand what you just said—that in order to make science part of the culture, storytelling is the key.

I mean that’s really how we learn. If you think of the stuff we know from when we were little kids (some of it was true, some of it wasn’t), it was almost all learned in the context of a story; not these facts as X, Y, Z—that just doesn’t stick in most people’s brains.

Scott: X, Y, Z and facts do stick in some people’s brains, and it’s great to communicate that. But I think that the books you’re citing, and the studies that show that science’s perception in our culture is dropping, it’s a big wake up call. Because part of the problem with the specialization of knowledge is that you lose sight of the fact that people don’t know as much as you. A lot of what you totally assume to be given, or to be common knowledge, other people have no exposure to that, and you kind of have to go back and explain things.

Sports is another good example of that, because the deeper you get into knowledge of a sport, when you try to bring new people into that sport, it’s a wake up call. Like I have to go back and explain the very fundamentals of the scoring system—how many points is a touchdown, what is a field goal, if I’m using football as an example.

And science, a lot of times, is in the same ball park. If people want to communicate the value and the critical importance of science, and accepting the basic scientific method, then they’re going to have to go back and learn how to communicate from square one. Not everybody has the same background of knowledge that you have.

Ginger: I admire what you do, because I’m good at explaining things in plain English—that’s what my podcasts do—but I don’t think I could write fiction if my life depended on it.

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 7 I want to focus some more on your writing, not talk so much about podcasting and the stuff you usually get asked. But I do have to ask you one question: Given the amount of time that you do spend promoting your work—which is an absolute must in today’s publishing climate—how do you find the time to write? Do you have a really structured work schedule?

Scott: I do have a very structured work schedule. Now, I co-founded a company called Dark Overlord Media, and my partner in that is a woman named A Kovacs, and she is a professional project manager. So, we’ve kind of found two halves of the same brain: I’ve got the creative side of things, and then she’s helping to structure that.

So, at least for me, finding a business partner out there who can put in a little bit more structure is good. I’m very easily distracted, very ADD, and always coming up with all these ideas. And, of course, every idea is equally as important as the last idea; so, setting a prioritization on things has helped an enormous amount.

I’m recording anywhere from probably one to three hours’ worth of audio every week, writing a book, editing books—it’s a ton of work—and then all the promotion. Fortunately, with the publishing deal I signed with Crown, I am able to do this full-time. And that is an enormous amount of help, because basically my job is to write the books and promote the books.

So, those are the two biggest factors: being able to do it full-time—which took about 15 years to get to that level—and then surrounding myself with people who do certain aspects of the job better than I do, and listening to what they say.

Ginger: You mentioned you started out as a journalist. Have you always wanted to be a writer?

Scott: Oh, always. I remember (I think it was the third grade) I went to see the 1976 King Kong movie, and was absolutely terrified, and screaming, and crying,

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 8 and wanted to leave—which my dad thought was very funny, because we had paid to see the movie, so we weren’t going anywhere.

And then, when we left—I was just a little kid crying, holding my dad’s hand—as soon as we left I wanted to know when we could go see it again. I was very young, but that was a very definitive moment. I was like, wow, it’s really fun to be scared in these controlled environments, and I want to do that to other people.

I started writing monster stories in the third, fourth, and fifth grade, and then discovered Stephen King in about the fifth grade, I think. It’s largely been a one- track mind ever since. Everything I have done in my various careers has been how do I use this to facilitate me getting to the point where I tell stories for a living.

Ginger: Scott, obviously you’ve gotten interviewed by just about every podcaster out there, but I have to say that the interview that made me want to have you on my podcast was the one that Steve Riekeberg did for Geek Cred. I think he’s a very underrated interviewer. But he asked you a question I just can’t resist stealing—the one where he described your writing as a cross between Michael Crichton and Stephen King. How do you feel about that comparison?

Scott: I love that comparison. That’s actually what I use to describe my work to new people I meet, or people who say, ‘Well, what is your stuff like?’ Because, in my opinion, Stephen King is the absolute master, of a couple of generations, of character and how to in just a few very minor brushstrokes make someone come to life off of the page.

His philosophy is very simple. He’s like, ‘I just want to make characters that people actually care about, and then put them in the pot and see what happens.’ And he knows that if he makes a character that you feel a connection with, as soon as that character is in danger—almost regardless of what kind of danger it is,

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 9 no matter how crazy or supernatural, etc.—you keep turning the page, because you want to see what happens with that character.

The other thing that he does, that a lot of people just won’t do—just don’t have the courage to do—is he’ll kill any character at any time. And so, he creates characters that you believe in, and you’re invested in, and want to see what happens to them, and then he instills in you the knowledge that this character could die at any point they get into trouble.

Those two things together are what I have learned keep people on the edge of their seats, and keep you up until 4:00 in the morning to finish his book—unlike, say, Robin Cook novels, which are wonderful stories, but the same four people live in every book. I can’t read those anymore, because my life is short, and I don’t have time to read a story where I already know how it’s going to end.

So, Stephen King, on the storytelling side, and the scary side, and the willingness to do whatever it takes to put the characters in danger. And then, over on the Michael Crichton side, he’s another person that, I don’t know if he gets enough credit for what he has done. He is a hard science horror writer. I mean he takes hard science concepts, molds them and twists them a bit, but really bases his stories in fact.

And he’s a fiction writer. Sometimes he gets bagged on because his science is out there, or over the top. He’s writing fiction stories. He’s using hard science and actual physical things as a basis, or a foundation. And what that does is it creates that sense of believability. Even though you know it’s fiction, and you know it’s fake, he has given you enough things that you’ve already heard about, that you allow yourself to fully buy in to the story.

Jurassic Park is the best example of that. You’re pretty sure we’re not going to have cloned dinosaurs rampaging around the countryside, but the way he sets it

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 10 up, a lot of people were fully in with that story because it was believable. The thing that he does that I try and emulate is, it may not be a hundred percent scientifically accurate, but you could see it happening. That’s what I’m going for with that.

So, I try and combine Michael Crichton’s sense of ‘I could sort of see that actually happening, I can see where the logic is,’ with Stephen King and characters that you really want to see survive—put those two together, and see if I can tell a really good story.

Ginger: Well, I think that in your recent books you’ve succeeded, because I, for one, am not really a horror fan. I read Stephen King only for the characters, and I feel like the horror just makes a great place to see what a character will do. And so, I feel the same way about your books.

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I want to take a moment to remind you that Books and Ideas is sponsored by Audible.com. I have been a subscriber since 2003, and I just finished listening to Stephen King’s latest book, Under the Dome. If you are new to Audible and sign up for a trial membership, you can get your first book for free. Just go to audiblepodcast.com/booksandideas.

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Ginger: Let’s talk a little bit more about the challenges of combining hard science fiction with horror.

Scott: OK. One of the things that’s really difficult is what I write are basically suspense, or thriller plots that have a lot of horror elements to them; but because of the hard science, and trying to make believable characters that act like regular

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 11 people would act, you really have to follow this linear plot, and things have to make sense, one flowing into the next. Things have to be foreshadowed.

You have to do a lot of establishing work, so that when you get to the fantastical part that goes beyond accepted science, the reader doesn’t care. At that point you already have the reader, and they’re happily being led along by the nose, and gleefully embracing whatever you put in front of them. That’s why they paid for your book in the first place—they want to be deluded, and want to enjoy the story, and a part of them believes that it’s real.

That creates a humongous set of challenges that you just don’t have in supernatural horror fiction. I really like what I do, and probably wouldn’t do any other kind of fiction. But I often watch a lot of horror movies that involve the supernatural—ghosts, goblins, vampires, werewolves, demons, etc—or read those books, and see how, literally, the author could just make stuff up as they go. ‘Now the devils can do this. Here’s a teleport gate. Oh, I forgot to tell you that the vampires can actually shape-shift into mist, and seep through the cracks.’

Ginger: Or, that character wasn’t really dead.

Scott: That character wasn’t really dead. Or, ‘You know that little girl you saw two chapters ago? She’s actually a demon in disguise.’ Stuff like that, that when you read and enjoy that kind of fiction, you buy into that format of storytelling too. You’re ready to be totally shocked. You’re shocked because there’s no way in hell you could have ever seen the stuff coming, because the author literally made it up as he or she went along.

A lot of Stephen King books tend to falter at the end, because he’s totally making it up as he goes, and he gets to the end and he goes, ‘I’ll turn this can of peanut brittle into a magical doorway to Heaven’—things like that. And I read these

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 12 books, and I’m very envious of that storytelling style, because I just can’t allow myself to do that.

So, the challenge for me is setting up a plot structure similar to M. Night Shyamalan’s, The Sixth Sense, where maybe you didn’t see it coming, but when you get to the end, you look at the end and you go, ‘Oh, he told me that was coming all along.’ And maybe you go back and re-read the book, or re-listen to the podcast, and then you can start to see all the little clues, and steps, and blocks of the foundation that were put into place.

So, that’s really the challenge. There are not a lot of people I know of writing that kind of horror, where you are trying to scare people, but do so in a scientifically sound, and logical storytelling fashion.

It’s a bear, because I write the book, and then I’ve got about five or six science consultants who cover everything from physics to biology, and military consultants that go over these things, and they push back and say, ‘That would never happen; this is good; this is OK; and you have to change this like I’m telling you here, to make it realistic.’

But every time you do that, you’re totally changing the house of cards, and a lot of things have to get completely torn down, and you have to start over. So, the writing process is very long, and it’s very brutal to tell a story in that fashion.

Ginger: So, even though for you writing is easy, the method you’ve chosen makes it hard.

Scott: Yes, it’s really hard. I kind of describe it now as the first draft is the fun part. That’s the first year of dating someone, and you can’t wait to spend every second with them, and you pine for them when they’re not there. And then the second drafts, and on, are where you’ve been stuck in a bad marriage for 20

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 13 years. You’re just wishing for a meteor to come in and hit someone, so you can get free of it.

That’s the love-hate relationship with a lot of my manuscripts. And then, when they’re done, I feel much better about them when they’re finished. But still, every time I read one of the books I’ve written, I’ve gone back and thought, I should have put more stuff in here, I should have put more stuff in there. So, the first draft is really the big joyful part of the process.

Ginger: So, when you podcast your writing, like you’re doing now with The Crypt, does that represent somewhere around the first draft level of things?

Scott: Yes. I’m getting better at it. Originally I did four books, and some short story collections. So, I did Earthcore, Ancestor, Infected, and The Rookie. And all of those had been through anywhere from 5 to 15 full revisions. They were really solid—the kind of stories I’ve been talking about, where everything is linear and lines up very well.

Then I ran out of stuff to podcast. But I think it’s critical that you keep putting out stories in the feed every week, if you want to keep growing your audience. So, I did a book called Nocturnal, and I told my fans this was going to be an aggressive first draft; meaning, I’m thinking the story through, but this is not the kind of polished story you are used to.

It was very successful with the audience. It puts a lot of demands on you, though, because normally if you write a first draft and you get to Page 150, and you’re like, ‘Oh, if I foreshadowed this back on Page 20, that would be awesome,’ you can’t do that, because you’ve already podcast Page 20. You cannot go back and make changes. It’s a very rigid format of storytelling when you are podcasting as you write the first draft.

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 14 The Crypt has been a little bit different so far. I’ve learned from Nocturnal, and now I’m just doing character sketches. So, I’m setting up characters, and their backgrounds, that they’re going to go be in this setting. It’s a far future military tale, and they will be on the warship as part of the crew.

So far I’ve been able to avoid the really deep plot connections, and the foreshadowing, and making sure that it’s a linear thriller-style story by just giving these character sketches. That’s going pretty well so far.

However, I am to the point now where I have to stop telling that story, because now we’re getting into the real hardcore part of the story where all the connections are being made, and the proper foreshadowing is being set up. I’ve got to stop, and step back, and kind of write that first draft, so everything plays out well.

Ginger: There’s one question I’ve wanted to ask you ever since I read your best- seller, Contagious: And that is, are you from Detroit?

Scott: I’m from Michigan, yes. I’m originally from northern Michigan up in Sheboygan, which is just south of the Mackinaw Bridge, which is the area where Infected was partially set. And Ancestor is set heavily in Lake Superior, in the Upper Peninsula. And I spent a lot of years down in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and in and around Detroit. So, I’m from the area.

Ginger: But you don’t really have something against Detroit?

Scott: No, I don’t have anything against Detroit.

Ginger: I’m not going to give anything away. I’m just going to say that Detroit doesn’t fare that well in Contagious.

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 15 Scott: I don’t have anything against it, but part of what I’m doing is I feel like I’m making an investment in my fans, and an investment in my storytelling, in showing the people who read my books that I’m willing to do anything in a story. And if there’s a threat afoot, you’ve probably got an even chance that that threat is going to become a reality, and not necessarily the Jack Bauer save everything at the last possible tick of the clock.

So, I’ve done a few shocking things in the stories, because a lot of times you read thrillers or suspense novels, and they set up these horrible consequences, and then the horrible consequences are always narrowly avoided, so that the author doesn’t have to deal with the ramifications of that in future books. I’m just not going to go there. Sometimes bad things are going to happen.

And I think that’s going to pay off, so people who read book 1, 2, and 3, etc., when they get to book 9 or 10, their enjoyment of the story is going to be much deeper, and much more visceral, because they know that I will pull the trigger on a character or on a situation. So, Detroit had to go through some bad times, but nothing bad against Detroit at all.

Ginger: I’m a big Joss Whedon fan, and, of course, every Joss Whedon fan knows he’ll kill anybody at any time, too.

Scott: He will; but he’ll bring them back to life.

Ginger: Yes, that’s not fair, really.

Scott: I used to be a Joss Whedon fan, and I really love what he does storytellingwise. But I have no more suspense when I watch his shows, because the whole Buffy thing—and even the Angel series, which I just adored for the longest time—when his characters get into danger, they’re either going to get out of that danger, or they’re going to die and just come back. So, there are no ramifications for his suspense.

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 16 And just in my personal taste in storytelling, I want to know that there are those consequences, so that I can delude myself into enjoying that story and watching how things progress. But the second time he brought Buffy back, I was done. There’s no point in watching this, because there are no consequences for these characters. Why would I be in suspense if Buffy is in danger? Because I know she’s going to get out of it, or she’s going to come back from the dead.

Ginger: Another thing I appreciated about Contagious was that one of the characters in the book was a woman scientist. And in the character sketches you’ve been doing for The Crypt there are a lot of female characters. Would you talk a little bit about how you go about writing your female characters?

Scott: I largely pull them as composite characters from people that I know, and people that I read about. I don’t have any of the stereotypical ditsy blonde, or whatever you want to call it. There are no females in distress that need to be rescued by the man. That’s going to happen sometimes, because if it’s a physical confrontation, there are certain situations where a man is just more optimally suited because of more strength and more size.

But those situations are really rare in our culture, because of guns, and weapons, and things of that nature. So, I tend to approach it that people are people, they’re all pursuing their own self-serving interests until they get sucked into the larger plot, and then it really depends on the character.

I mean in my life I know men who are more emotional than some women, I know women who are more go-getter and aggressive than some men, and it just kind of runs the gamut. I really don’t tend to focus things on is this something a woman would do, is this something a man would do?

But at the same time, there are some stereotypes that are there for a reason. And a lot of times women are more emotional than men. A lot of times men are more

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 17 obtuse than women—in certain situations. So, I don’t create any stereotypes, and I let the characters be themselves, like people that I know.

But I also try not to shy away from something that might be construed as, well, you’re just painting the men as pigs, or you’re just painting the women as weak. Because sometimes the sexes do what the sexes have always done for thousands and thousands of years, and you just let it ride.

Now, in The Crypt, in that story there are a lot of female characters, and they’re all military-based characters, and they get to be just as bad-ass as the male characters get to be. And the only time you’re really going to see any battle of the sexes, or any division along X/Y chromosome lines is probably going to be in the relationship category. And I’ll figure that stuff out when I get to it.

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Ginger: Scott, I just finished reading The Rookie a few days ago, even though I’ve had it for a few months (I just don’t usually find time to read fiction). But I’d like to spend a little bit of time talking about it, if you aren’t burned out from your recent tailgate tour.

Scott: No. Go ahead.

Ginger: You self-published The Rookie, right?

Scott: Pretty much. We started a small imprint called Dark Overlord Media— that’s part of that. But, yes, it’s totally self-published at this point.

Ginger: I get the feeling that this book is really a labor of love. Is this book special?

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 18 Scott: It’s really special to me. My dad is a football coach, so, I’ve been around football all my life. My earliest memory is literally of sitting on my dad’s knee while he was watching 16 mm football films, scouting a game. My brother is a high school football coach. I played high school football for my dad. I’ve been around that culture as long as I can remember.

So, it’s special from that perspective. And what The Rookie does, is it takes football, puts it 700 years in the future, brings in different alien races, based on phenotype, to play the different positions. So, it’s also special from that perspective because, as a lifelong athlete, I feel that sports does not get nearly the credit it deserves for being the primary integrative force in our Western culture.

And so, by using the metaphor of when we go out and meet aliens, are we going to just actually get along, or are we going to kill each other, I’m pretty convinced we’re going to kill each other. Because that’s just what humans do now, and we all look almost exactly alike.

So, I’m using football as an analogy to show that sports is something that can make people of different backgrounds work together, because you forget about that different background, and your only concern is the game, and supporting your teammates, and the team. So, it’s really special from that perspective to me.

And the final area it’s special in is trying to use my growing influence as somebody who can actually sell books to present alien races in more of a biologically-sound perspective. The aliens are not people with different color skin and bumps on their face—I mean these are some really strange critters—and trying to show humans interacting with strange critters, while at the same time, not trying to do it like some hard scientists do, ‘Well, this sentient race is actually a giant cloud the size of a galaxy.’

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 19 I can’t relate to that, and having some knowledge of biology, I don’t see sometimes where those things are going to develop into sentience. There are certain basic fundamentals of biology that are going to lead to something becoming a sentient creature. So, all of my creatures in the book have some human elements to them—types of physical locomotion, certain types of sensory perception. And so, it’s special in that regard, too, because I feel it’s a much more honest portrayal of what kind of life we might run into out there.

For all those reasons it’s great, and it’s awesome, and it’s also the one area where you know the main character is actually going to live, because he’s the franchise quarterback. And in a lot of ways it’s a throwback to the stuff that I really liked when I was a kid, which is a series of books written for boys, where you would follow one guy’s sporting career, and you would follow him along in his progression.

It’s rocky in book form. It’s rooty. It’s all the classic sports stories and sports movies. And I kind of get to write mine, and have that conceit where maybe good things will actually happen.

Ginger: Did you have to rewrite it from the original version in order to make it appropriate for younger audiences?

Scott: I just removed the cursing. Originally, having a football background and knowing what language is like on a football field, I wanted to make it as realistic as possible. It’s a violent game played by very intense individuals. If you are on a successful football team, it’s a fun place, but it’s not a nice place. You’re in there actually trying to physically injure other people, and trying to impose your will on another human being.

In that there’s a lot of four-letter language in there. There’s a whole lot of it. It’s a massive part of the culture and the experience. And trying to communicate

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 20 that, and trying to communicate the culture of football players, it was a very honest look at that set within the crazy sci-fi setting.

But when I wanted to turn it into a young adult novel, I largely looked at the story. There are a lot of difficult situations the characters get in. There is a lot of violence. But football is a violent game. I was able to just remove the bad language, or alter the bad language.

And I used Battlestar Galactica as a model for that. That’s a show that did a great job of showing really adult situations, very real situations in this wild science fiction setting. And they were able to communicate a lot of the emotions that you bring across with bad language, by just making up their own words. So, I did that to a large extent. The only censor at the time was the Apple iTunes store, because I put it up as an iPhone app. It seemed to make them happy.

And somewhere along the way, I was educated by some high school English teachers that this is the kind of book that a lot of their students would like to read, because nobody’s written anything like that. There’s really nothing for the athletes, or the people interested in sports who are having trouble reading. There’s nothing that’s going to instill passion in them to want to read a book and continue on with the series.

It was worth it to me. I had to go through and take out the language, and modify a few things. I was able to keep the story exactly the same. And hopefully, as the series progresses, I’ll have a chance to influence people, and get a few more people reading.

Ginger: I was glad that you did that promotion before Christmas, because I bought a copy and sent it to my niece, who has two boys, one of whom is just totally in love with football. I don’t know if he reads or not, but she gave me some pretty good feedback.

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 21 And I have to say that now I just can’t wait for The Starter to come out. I’m almost glad I waited awhile to read The Rookie, because I assume it’s still going to be awhile before you get the sequel, since you’ve got so much other stuff going on.

Scott: The sequel will be out in September of 2010. It’s a pretty aggressive deadline that we’ve set up over at Dark Overlord Media. But I’ve got kind of this vision with the whole world of social media and the Internet, where I’m going to put out seven books in this series.

My goal is that by the fifth book we’re able to pre-order 50,000 copies on the first day it goes up for sale. So, part of getting to that level is consistency, and getting people to understand that every time there’s a new NFL season coming around there’s going to be a new Rookie novel from Scott Sigler.

And if I’m able to kind of glom onto that massive cultural force that the NFL is in America and around the world, associating with that is going to parlay into people just thinking, ‘I can’t wait for the next book. It’s football season—when is the next Rookie book coming out?’ In order to do that, I’ve got to deliver every year. So, The Starter will be out in September, by hook or by crook.

Ginger: Well, down here in Alabama, it’s all about Alabama football—not the NFL.

Scott: Yes. We’ll start working on that, too, and associating it with the colleges —which is what we did when we did The Rookie tailgate tour. We tailgated mostly through cities that didn’t have NFL franchises, and we tried to get to the colleges.

Because, from a marketing perspective, same thing. I’m trying to associate that when you start thinking about the Crimson Tide’s new season coming up—you’re looking at all the freshmen signings, who are the recruits who are going to come

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 22 up, and all the great things that happen in that culture—you’re also going to be thinking, ‘Oh, cool, there’s going to be a new Sigler book coming out.’

College football, and pro football, and football in general—even high school football—people who aren’t into that culture really don’t understand just how many millions of people, that’s a major part of their life each year is participating in that wonderful culture. So, I’m trying to glom onto that, timing the book’s release to coincide with the opening of football season.

And it’s also strategic from the opening of football season. Because if you are, say, a Detroit Lions fan like myself, the only time you’re actually excited about the football season is before it begins. Because once it begins, your dreams are once again crushed, and your team sits in the basement. I’m trying to associate The Rookie series with that pre-season optimism—when everybody thinks that everything is possible—and then deliver a book.

Ginger: If you were talking about The Rookie to somebody who didn’t know anything about football, and thought that they wouldn’t be interested in a book set in a futuristic football universe, what would you say is its main asset other than football?

Scott: I describe the novel as Star Wars meets The Godfather meets Any Given Sunday; because it is a football league, and the characters are involved in a team, but that’s largely a backdrop to a classic science fiction story: Let’s take the boy from the backwater system—the Luke Skywalker type character, who’s never had exposure to the bright lights of the big city and the shiny planets—let’s throw him out into this culture and see how that impacts him, and see how it changes him.

That’s really the focal point of the story: taking someone who is from the backwater area, or from a really small town that is very one-dimensional in a

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 23 cultural scope, and putting him into the bigger city, and watching his experiences, and watching him grow and struggle.

The other thing I do to pitch it is that it’s got aliens, but these alien races do not get along at all. There is a huge amount of cultural tension between them. What that results in is, to stop particular planets or systems from just pulling over a team bus and killing the aliens inside, these teams have diplomatic immunity. They are able to go from system to system. They can’t be pulled over by the local police, or the local military.

That’s very logical within the context of the story. But, also logical is that organized crime discovers this, and moves right in, and starts buying up all the franchises, because it gives them kind of a free rein to move in and out of systems. So, that’s where The Godfather element comes from.

So, it’s very much a space opera sci-fi, but combined with a very gritty, realistic look at crime, and crime’s influence on sports in our culture. And then all of that just so happens to take place in a football league, on a football team. The book covers a lot of bases. And if you’re a sci-fi fan, you will absolutely eat it up.

When I first put the book out, in my podcast I very simply asked my fans, ‘I know a lot of you don’t like football, because you read me for my science fiction; just give me four episodes.’ So, anybody who gets this book, invariably, if you are a sci-fi fan, or you’re a fan of gangster movies, you’re going to wind up liking The Rookie just as much, or more.

Ginger: And coming back to the subject of character, I have to say that Quentin Barnes, who is the main character in The Rookie, at the beginning I really couldn’t stand him. But he really grows up. So, it’s also a coming-of-age novel.

Scott: I draw from a lot of things. Even going back to Alabama football—there was a time in America where, if you were playing college football, you were white,

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 24 and that’s all there was to it. There wasn’t any way around it. Then at some point the schools became more integrated, and it became football is very much a meritocracy.

Well, the teams that have black players are doing well. Then everybody all of a sudden opens it up, because the most important thing to a football team is winning games. Because that is the most important thing, all the other things, like racial hatred and prejudice, have to fall by the wayside if you want to be successful—which is one of the primary points of The Rookie.

So, it’s a bit of a parallel to that story. You take this kid—Quentin Barnes—who is absolutely dominant in his backwater football league, where none of the alien races are actually playing. And he’s arrogant, he’s conceited, he’s horribly racist, because he’s really had no experience with other cultures. And he’s my primary character.

So, when he opens up the book, your experience is just like everybody else. I mean everybody is like, ‘I hated that character, and I almost couldn’t continue with the book, because I just could not stand that I was going to be in this character’s head for the whole book.’

But it draws on a lot of my personal experiences—people I went to high school with, when they got to college it was the first encounter they ever had with people outside of our very narrow white culture. And watching their opinions and perspectives change drastically the first time they had any exposure to other cultures was really cool to watch. It gave me a lot of faith as an American that we can overcome just about anything.

That’s Quentin Barnes’ character arc. He thinks he knows everything, because he hasn’t experienced anything. And then when he gets out into the bigger world, all of his preconceived notions have to change. And why do they have to change?

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 25 Because he is first and foremost a football player; and if he wants to win, that has to become his focal point, and all the other notions in his head have to take a back seat, and he has to start accepting other people, simply because they can help him win football games. And then everything falls into place from there.

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I want to take a moment to remind you to check out the iPhone application for Books and Ideas. It will allow you to listen to episodes on your iPhone or iPod Touch without using iTunes. And you can read episode transcripts right on your device. This feature will be even better when the iPad comes out.

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Ginger: I know that before we close you want me to remind everybody to visit scottsigler.com. But is there anything else you would like to talk about?

Scott: The Rookie is a limited edition 3000 copy hard cover run, and we have 16 pages of color inserts inside. It’s like a football game day program, with pictures of all the different helmets for the races, and the different teams, and rosters. It’s a really cool piece. And then we also have a 16-page timeline in the back of the book, because all my stories are interconnected—it’s our time now, moving forward 500 and 700 years.

There are still copies of that limited edition left, and we’re going to set up a discount code if anybody goes to scottsigler.com/therookie and wants to snag one of these. The discount code will be ‘Ginger.’ They can get some money off on the book, and snag it.

Right now there are about 400 or 500 copies left. When they’re gone, they are gone. Eventually we will move back into paperback, but for right now we’re a very small company, and we’re trying to move out the product that we have.

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 26 Ginger: Well, I’m going to hope that I can help you sell it out. But that does remind me of one question I forgot to ask you. I read through the timeline that’s in the back of the book, and I’ve been listening to pieces of The Crypt. And I’m not really clear on where in the timeline The Crypt falls.

Scott: The Crypt is 2457—right in that ball park. It’s roughly in the 500-year ball park away from where we are now.

Ginger: So, about 200 years before The Rookie?

Scott: Correct. The Crypt takes place right about 2540 or so, and then, as we move into The Rookie, The Rookie is much more advanced—we’re into 2682. So, it’s anywhere from 100 to 200 years past the stories you’ll see in The Crypt.

The focal point of that is, I write The Rookie and, much like our modern American or European cultures that are heavily integrated, there was a time when that clearly wasn’t the case, and we were all at each other’s throats a lot more. The Crypt is a parable for that time, when we are just literally killing aliens because they look different from us, and we can’t communicate with them.

So, it’s much more of a brutal, savage, mean place than The Rookie universe, which is 200 years later, where we all get along with each other, at least enough to go play football. So, that’s what we’re going for. The Crypt gets me to tell my ‘aliens are really scary and will kill you’ stories, and then move 200 years in the future to The Rookie, when we all can get along, at least to some degree.

Ginger: You can see a lot of the present in The Rookie, even though it’s set so far in the future.

Scott: I think so. Yes.

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 27 Ginger: In the tradition of sci-fi, sci-fi should be a commentary on the real world. All the best sci-fi has been. And I think The Rookie does that very well.

Scott: Thank you. I strive for that. And a lot of the stories in the subtext that you’re seeing in The Rookie are things that are going on in our own world. It really is a different slice of science fiction for a lot of hardcore sci-fi geek heads— because I’m one of those people, and a lot of those people look down their noses at organized sports and at football. So, if you embrace The Rookie just from the pure science fiction, space opera, classic sci-fi storytelling aspects, it winds up opening up this whole world.

One of the really cool sections in The Rookie—I forgot to mention—is I go through the passing tree that a professional quarterback has to process in anywhere from two to four seconds, and the amount of computation they have to do in their head, and the amount of variables and things that they’re trying to calculate on the fly, while really large creatures are trying to get to them and kill them. That has been such as eye-opener for so many people who didn’t really understand how complex, and how heavy the math is inside of a football game.

It’s been wonderful, because a lot of people have emailed me and said, ‘I picked it up just to try it. I had no idea there was so much going on in the football field. Now I actually understand the game enough to sit down with my brother, or my dad, or someone, and understand what’s going on.’

It has created a lot of enjoyment of the sport for people who otherwise would have never really known that there was so much going on. It’s an incredibly complicated game. And if you haven’t had an exposure to that, there’s no way you could know it or you could see it, until you start to see the X’s and O’s, and what really happens on the field.

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 28 Ginger: Yes, I’ve been a football fan since I was a kid. But, of course, being a girl, I never really had a chance to play past the age of 12. So, sometimes my husband will stop and go back and show me exactly what has happened on a play that I wouldn’t have appreciated. The stuff that the linemen do is so complex, too. I mean the stereotype of the dumb lineman is just so inaccurate.

Scott: A thing I try and show with that book, and in general, is the stereotype of the dumb football player is an archaic, long-gone thing. In high school you can be a guy who doesn’t have a whole lot of smarts, and succeed because you’re big, or you’re strong, or you’re just fast. When the people move up into college, everybody is big, and strong, and fast, and the difference-maker largely becomes how smart you are on the field.

For the rare, select individuals that make it to professional football, it’s really difficult for people who don’t know the sport to understand that these guys are really smart. They go through play books, that are as big as a phone book, every week. They’re watching films, they’re studying physical tendencies, watching the way people move. They are practicing and trying to emulate what the other team is doing. There’s just no such thing as a dumb jock in the NFL anymore. So, if I can convey that with this book, that’s really nice to communicate.

Ginger: I like the part at the beginning when the coach is making him learn all about the opposing team, and he thinks, ‘Well, I don’t need this.’ And then he learns real quickly that he does.

Scott: Well, that’s what happens to a lot of kids who play in their small towns, and they just totally dominate, purely from physical ability and a natural mental processing speed. And then as soon as they become the little fish in the big pond, and everybody is just as talented as they are, that’s when things really change. And kids have to learn that, ‘I was born blessed with these few physical

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 29 parameters, and now I’ve got to get to work, and learn how to master the mental aspect of this game if I want to succeed.’

Ginger: I think we should make The Rookie required reading for every would- be college football player.

Scott: I would love that. I think it should be required reading for everybody in high school, actually—particularly high school athletes. So, it would be great.

Ginger: Well, I will be sure that people use that discount code, ‘Ginger.’ I think that one will be easy to remember. Even if you don’t like football, I think you will enjoy this book.

Is there anything else you’d like to say before we close, Scott?

Scott: Just talking about The Rookie. It is my favorite thing right now. It is my passion right now. And the emails I’m getting from parents and from kids along the lines of, ‘My kid doesn’t read; this is the only book they’ve read, and they can’t wait for the next book,’ that is such an exciting and satisfying thing as a creator, to know that you’re influencing people that way.

So, this is a great book to spread around if you know kids that you want to get into reading. It’s not that kids don’t want to read. It’s not that teenagers don’t want to read. It’s just that, for some people, sparkly vampires and wizard kids are not their thing.

And those books are absolutely fantastic. I mean what Stephenie Meyer and J.K. Rowling have done for reading in our culture is immeasurable, and those two women deserve a massive debt of gratitude. But there’s a whole other range of kids that you’ve got to find the right book for them, and they would be happy to immerse themselves in a story. So, if you know people in that category, go check out the book and see if it’s something for them.

Scott: It’s in the iTunes Store. You can search for The Rookie, or Scott Sigler in the iTunes Store, and you can read it on your iPhone or on your iPod Touch, which a lot of people have, as well. The whole book is on there, with color graphics in there, etc. It’s still available also as a podcast over at podiobooks.com. So, there are a number of different formats in which you can get it.

Ginger: Well, Scott, I really appreciate your taking the time to talk with me, and I look forward to seeing you, hopefully, again this year at Dragon*Con.

Scott: I hope so, and thank you for having me on.

[music]

I want to thank Scott Sigler for taking the time to be my guest on Books and Ideas. You will find links to his website and his books, including The Rookie, at booksandideas.com. Don’t forget to use the coupon code ‘Ginger’ to get a discount.

During the interview Scott mentioned that you can get The Rookie as an e-book for the iPhone, but after this interview was recorded Scott released an iPhone app that allows you to get all of his audio stuff right on your phone. Another great place to sample Scott’s work is podiobooks.com.

But I have to mention that I actually prefer reading Scott’s books as books. I started with Contagious, and we didn’t talk much about Contagious during the interview, but I highly recommend it to those of you who like writers like Michael Crichton and Robin Cook.

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 31 All the characters are compelling, and while the science is integral to the story, it never gets in the way. Another thing I appreciate about Scott’s writing is that the scientists in his stories are real people. It’s not hard for me to imagine his writing inspiring a new generation of scientists. I’m really glad that I was finally able to get him on the show.

This brings me to an important announcement. As some of you know, I have begun producing a premium version of my main podcast, the Brain Science Podcast. For reasons I won’t get into here, this is actually quite a time- consuming process, which is one reason why this episode came out behind schedule.

The good news is that if you are a fan of the Brain Science Podcast, you will be able to get the premium version of each episode before the free version comes out, starting on March 1, 2010.

Unlike Scott, I am doing everything—recording, editing, website—everything except the episode transcripts, myself. And I’m still working as an emergency physician. That’s why I have decided to put Books and Ideas on hiatus until I can get all the elements of my new project up and running. I expect this to take several months, so I hope you will stay subscribed.

If you would like to be notified when the next episode is posted, so that you don’t miss it, you can sign up for the newsletter at booksandideas.com, or join the Books and Ideas Fan Page on Facebook.

Many of you are already signed up for the Brain Science Podcast newsletter, so you know how that works. This newsletter will cover everything I’m doing, but if you are already signed up for the one for the Brain Science Podcast, you won’t get duplicates.

Copyright Virginia Campbell, MD 2010 32 In the meantime, please continue to send me your suggestions, since I am more likely to put out an episode in the next few months if I come across something really compelling.

Don’t forget, you can send me email at [email protected], and I am also Doc Artemis on Twitter.

Thanks again for listening. I hope to talk with you again very soon.

[music]

Theme music for Books and Ideas is “The Open Door,” by Beatnik Turtle. Be sure to visit their website at beatnikturtle.com.

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Transcribed by Lori Wolfson

All errors or omissions responsibility of the transcriber