WELCOME to this week's ANSA! This week it is my pleasure to bring back Ira Nayman - the man who always makes us laugh until we cry. See his first interview here. Ira just released a full length novel, so we're bringing him back to talk more about his journey.
Ira has been writing since he was a young boy. "The first stories I ever wrote (when I was eight years old) were parodies of the Sherlock Holmes stories I was reading at the time. I wrote them on the backs of my father’s legal-sized accounting sheets (the fronts had criss-crossing lines that made writing on them awkward). I wrote three stories in all, one per page. And, I remember thinking at the time, “How do people come up with enough ideas to fill a whole story?” Today, of course, I have far more ideas than I will be able to write in this lifetime. If you stick with it, writing gets easier."
Typically a short-story writer, Ira Nayman just released his novel Welcome to the Multiverse. The jump from writing short stories to a full length novel was...different. "Writing a short short story is like running a sprint. Writing a novel is like running a marathon. Trite, but true. Of course, if you compare the work involved in writing enough short short stories to get as high a word count as a novel, it will be about the same. However, the nature of the work is different.
Typically a short-story writer, Ira Nayman just released his novel Welcome to the Multiverse. The jump from writing short stories to a full length novel was...different. "Writing a short short story is like running a sprint. Writing a novel is like running a marathon. Trite, but true. Of course, if you compare the work involved in writing enough short short stories to get as high a word count as a novel, it will be about the same. However, the nature of the work is different.
When you have finished a short short story, you can go on to a completely different premise with completely different characters; the drawback of this is that you need a lot of ideas. In fact, the shorter the stories, the more ideas you will need. When you are writing a novel, by way of contrast, you don’t need as many basic ideas (although each chapter or even scene may require its own inspiration); the drawback is that you are always constrained by the characters and situation you have set up."
The idea for Ira's novel came from Alternate Reality News Service stories that he had been writing for years. He also wanted create a different type of science-fiction antagonist that is unlike any other. "For Welcome to the Multiverse, I wanted to create an antagonist who was different from most books, and whose goal was unlike anything that was being done. Without giving anything away, I think I have succeeded."
"The basic idea there is that there is a news service that sends reporters into other universes and has them write news articles about what they find there. Obviously, they needed a way of moving between universes, so I came up with the idea of Dimensional PortalTM technology. However, for reasons that are fully explored in the novel, I decided that movement should be restricted to a small number of people; for everybody else, I figured they could have the Home Universe GeneratorTM, which allows civilians to see into other universes without being able to actually travel to them (think reality TV with an infinite number of channels). Of course, if travel between universes is restricted, there has to be an agency that monitors and polices it; thus, the idea of the Transdimensional Authority was born."
When I asked Ira what his favorite scene from his novel was, this is what he said... "That’s such a tough question because there are so many wonderfully silly things going on in the novel. My first answer would be the scene where the main character, Noomi, discovers the 238th way to kill a man with chopsticks. Then, there’s the section where I discuss the military procurement process that almost thwarts the discovery of the 238th way to kill a man with chopsticks – written as a Seussian poem. Or, the Are We Going to Have Sex? scoreboard. Or…okay, let’s cap it at there and say that I really do like what I have written. :-)" Come on, who else almost died laughing!?!
"The basic idea there is that there is a news service that sends reporters into other universes and has them write news articles about what they find there. Obviously, they needed a way of moving between universes, so I came up with the idea of Dimensional PortalTM technology. However, for reasons that are fully explored in the novel, I decided that movement should be restricted to a small number of people; for everybody else, I figured they could have the Home Universe GeneratorTM, which allows civilians to see into other universes without being able to actually travel to them (think reality TV with an infinite number of channels). Of course, if travel between universes is restricted, there has to be an agency that monitors and polices it; thus, the idea of the Transdimensional Authority was born."
When I asked Ira what his favorite scene from his novel was, this is what he said... "That’s such a tough question because there are so many wonderfully silly things going on in the novel. My first answer would be the scene where the main character, Noomi, discovers the 238th way to kill a man with chopsticks. Then, there’s the section where I discuss the military procurement process that almost thwarts the discovery of the 238th way to kill a man with chopsticks – written as a Seussian poem. Or, the Are We Going to Have Sex? scoreboard. Or…okay, let’s cap it at there and say that I really do like what I have written. :-)" Come on, who else almost died laughing!?!
Book Blurb:Go watch the video about his novel below. Then tell me you how excited you are to read it.
Read more about Ira and his work over on his website, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon.
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