Author Interview ~ Lars Walker

Lars Walker is the author of four fantasy novels, Erling's Word, Wolf Time, The Year of the Warrior and Blood and Judgment, all published by Baen Books.

He is a native of Minnesota and a graduate of Augsburg College in Minneapolis. He has worked as a crabmeat packer in Alaska, a mail clerk, a radio announcer and an administrative assistant. Currently he is employed as librarian/bookstore manager for the schools of the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations in Plymouth, Minnesota. He is editor of the Georg Sverdrup Society Journal and does Norwegian translation. He is also a member of a Viking reenactment group, the Viking Age Club and Society of the Sons of Norway (which accounts for the costume in the picture).




Tell us about your journey to publication. How long had you been writing before you got the call you had a contract, how you heard and what went through your head.

It’s a long story, and a dull one. I started the book that became Wolf Time back around 1971 as a short story that went nowhere. I started working on it as a novel in 1974, but gave it up for the pile of dreck it truly was.

Around 1980, when I was working at a genuinely awful job (rookie Country DJ in a small station in Wisconsin, and I don’t even like Country), living in a rented mobile home that I kept cold all the time because I couldn’t afford to heat it, I decided to finish the draft. I knew it was still dreck, and I was pretty sure my ending wouldn’t improve it. But I thought, “If I can just finish the thing, at least I’ll know I can write a complete novel. Someday I’ll be capable of writing a decent book, and when that happens I’ll have the confidence that at least I can do the physical work.”

So I did that, and then I put it away for a decade. At the end of that time I was living in Florida and I’d sold a handful of short stories. A day came when I just knew I could write a respectable book, and I knew how to make it work. So I sat down and cranked it out.

And a mere decade after that, my agent sold it to Baen Books. By then I was home in Minnesota again. I found a message from my agent on my answering machine when I got home from work, and I returned his call. This led to a fairly protracted period of negotiation before the contract was actually signed.

I was surprised by my reaction to the sale. It didn’t give me near the charge my first short story sale had given me. In fact I found myself a little depressed. Self-analysis is something I do too much of, so I thought about it.

I decided I was disappointed because I’d been carrying a lot of unconscious expectations about being published, expectations that went back to my childhood fantasies. I think I expected to be taller when I was published. I’m pretty sure I expected to be better looking. One never expects to be published and have pretty much the same life one had before.

Do you still experience self-doubts regarding your work?

Yes, and with good reason.

What mistakes have you made while seeking publication?

Letting myself quit for the day when I ran out of ideas. I’ve learned there are ways to come up with more ideas (sometimes).

What’s the best advice you’ve heard on writing/publication?

Your first draft will be garbage. Expect this. Don’t worry about it. First drafts are meant to be garbage. Just get something written. You can fix it in the rewriting stage.

What’s the worst piece of writing advice you’ve heard?

I can’t think of one offhand. All the advice I can think of was pretty good. Some of it I’ve even followed.

What’s something you wish you’d known earlier that might have saved you some time/frustration in the publishing business?

I’ve learned that I can put out a lot more words per day than I imagined when I began. Inspiration can be forced, to a certain extent.

Do you have a scripture or quote that has been speaking to you lately?

Reading in Acts, I’ve been struck by the small scale of Paul’s early results on the mission field. A few converts, and as soon as the thing starts to get off the ground there’s opposition—not just angry words but violence and arrest. But Paul seems to be oblivious to tangible results. He does what he does because he is what he does. “Woe is me if I preach not the gospel!”

Is there a particularly difficult setback that you’ve gone through in your writing career you are willing to share?

After my first book was sold to Baen, they offered me a three-book contract. It called for a fairly tight deadline for the third book, which I hadn’t yet started. But I signed it.

Life happened then (or rather death). My father, who lived in Florida, had surgery and asked me to come down and help him out for a while. Not long after that he died, and that meant another trip to Florida. During this period an aunt of mine, to whom I was close and whom I owed a great deal, began having health problems that eventually killed her. I ended up running over to St. Paul to help her out pretty frequently. There just wasn’t time to get the book done by the deadline.

I notified my publisher, apologized and explained, but apparently my message got lost. Anyway I failed to deliver, the book got delayed, it got poor distribution, and Baen passed (understandably) on my next manuscript.

What are a few of your favorite books? (Not written by you.)

I know I’ll leave off some I should have remembered. That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis is very special to me. I know lots of people don’t like it, and I entirely understand, but I think this book is a great achievement in moral fiction. He manages to avoid the pitfall of making evil look romantic, which is always a danger. The evil in this book carries all the banality and dullness of real-life evil, and you don’t see that often in fiction. But I’ll grant it makes stretches of the book hard to get through.

I love The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin, Jr., whom you recently interviewed. I love Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin. Peace Like a River by Leif Enger. The Lord of the Rings and the Narnia books.

I recently read and reviewed River Rising by Athol Dickson, which blew me away.


From that list, you’d think most of my reading is fantasy. In fact that’s not true. I actually read very little fantasy, since I find most of what’s getting written today unbearably hackneyed and P.C. (Stephen Lawhead’s an exception, though I don’t care for his extreme anti-Catholicism and Celtic enthusiasm. George R.R. Martin’s Ice and Fire books are also excellent). My recreational reading is mostly mysteries and thrillers. I like Michael Connelly and John Sandford among others.

Also I’m crazy about P.G. Wodehouse and Sherlock Holmes.

What piece of writing have you done that you’re particularly proud of and why?

All in all I think my first novel, Wolf Time (I wanted to call it Wind Time, Wolf Time, by the way, and I still think that’s a better title) is my best developed, fully rounded work. When it came together it sort of assembled like a Chinese box and everything fit.

Do you have a pet peeve having to do with this biz?

I think book signings are generally a waste of time, unless you’re Stephen King. And if you’re Stephen King you don’t need to do them. (I suppose there’s a middle stage I haven’t experienced.)

Can you give us a view into a typical day of your writing life?

I get home after work, work out, and then eat supper. I post on the blog I share, Brandywine Books , and then check the TV listings to see if there’s anything I want to see. I go to my office (I just moved into a house and finally have a devoted office in the basement) and do my writing while the things I don’t want to watch are on.

If you could choose to have one strength of another writer, what would it be and from whom?

I read a reminiscence about John D. MacDonald (one of my favorite mystery writers) years ago. A fellow—I think he might have been a fisherman—met MacDonald, and MacDonald proceeded to give him his total attention, asking smart questions and learning a great deal of what this man knew about his work. He was completely charmed, and afterwards he realized that MacDonald had used him as research, but it was enjoyable for both of them. You can see the effects of this kind of research in MacDonald’s brilliantly sketched characters. I wish I could do that.

Do you have a dream for the future of your writing, something you would love to accomplish?

I’ve wanted to write full-time all my life. Recently I got a job that means a lot to me, though (librarian at the Bible School of my denomination), and I think I might have a hard time giving that up. If I ever get the chance I’ll have to give the matter a lot of prayer.

Was there ever a time in your writing career you thought of quitting?

Most every day.

What is your favorite and least favorite part of being a writer?

My favorite part is putting a new story together. It’s almost as if the story is out there already, waiting for you to find it. I love it when I sit upright just as I’m falling asleep, saying, “Eureka!” having found a solution to a plot problem (hint: write it down. If you don’t you’ll forget it in the morning).

My least favorite part? Promoting myself. I was raised not to put myself forward, and I’m extremely shy. I’m sure I’ve undercut myself countless times by not putting my work out there as I should have.

How much marketing do you do? Any advice in this area?

My marketing has involved mostly buying ads in selected magazines, sometimes at my own expense, sometimes at my publisher’s. I’ve also done some lecturing (my shyness is of a strange variety that doesn’t include stage fright. I’ve even lectured on a couple cruises to Norway). None of these has been very effective.

Parting words?

The prize (generally) goes to the persistent. The formula for a story plot is, “Character keeps trying until he finds something that works.” The same goes for your writing career.