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<\/h2>\n<\/h2>\nInterview with Harrison Fountain<\/strong><\/p>\n Tell us a bit about yourself.<\/strong><\/p>\n My Korean students learn English through Dungeons & Dragons-type lessons; we have a story time and they contribute while fighting off the vorcabulary or drawing their characters of various fantasy races. The orc is pretty cute. She has glasses and big teeth. Wants to be a cartoonist or fashion designer. Prickle Butt, my hedgehog, is a little poop machine that likes making me clean her plastic ball out but if I\u2019m not paying attention, sometimes a gross little slug clinging to the top loses its grip and falls in her spike. I give her a lot of baths. The filthy cutie hates every one of them but never empties herself before her ball adventures. Currently in a custody battle with my parents over who loves our Black lab more and it\u2019s tearing the family apart. I\u2019ve been writing since 1st<\/sup> grade and I\u2019m in a long distance, star-crossed-lovers relationship, which features in my second novel coming out 2018 but for the impatient, there are sample chapters on my site (http:\/\/orangepeals.com\/untitled). Chapter One is probably the best thing I\u2019ll ever write and hopefully the hardest thing I\u2019ll live through.<\/p>\n Tell us about your most recent book.<\/strong><\/p>\n When TK dies in a car accident, the Grim Reaper gives him a second chance at life, but he says it\u2019s more fun being a ghost. As he haunts his small Iowa town, his sleek shell of sarcasm cracks to a terrified lonely inner self. Find out why he\u2019d rather be dead\u2014that\u2019s straight from the back of the book, but it\u2019s also a slice-of-life exploration of a kid who, when he was alive, didn\u2019t see the future as more than something to get through. Will the story change him? Probably a little.<\/p>\n Who is the villain or antagonist in your story and what is he\/she like?<\/strong><\/p>\n There isn\u2019t one. And our protagonist TK isn\u2019t a knight of the round felling thousands of enemies with his mighty swings as if they\u2019re toddlers riding around on sheep. TK is a college kid. Until the most recent election, college kids weren\u2019t dealing with evil. They had dozens of adults each month asking them about the future and that was about as evil as it got. TK\u2019s just hanging out with family and friends and a Grim Reaper, all who are trying to help in their ways. TK\u2019s main enemy is his own reluctance to confront his past.<\/p>\n Is one of your main characters a supernatural creature that is traditionally considered “evil?” If yes, how does this character break that traditional stereotype? <\/strong><\/p>\n The Grim Reaper isn\u2019t exactly evil but sometimes gets cast as such. Mine, Anita, has to deal with an unseen otherworldly bureaucracy with paperwork while she requests a second chance for TK, but generally Grim Reapers are always these ageless beings that have grown callous to the plights of people. Mine\u2019s more recently enlisted, some time since the invention of the smock and art classes. She\u2019s sympathetic to the living and the dead. And she gives TK a chance to play Reaper so he can learn that death, even suicide, is always hard but not evil.<\/p>\n What was the most difficult part of writing about this character?<\/strong><\/p>\n Anita has to make the story happen. TK is the story, but he\u2019s got about fifty feet of crap between what he says and how he really feels and Anita has to open that up while also slow rolling her tragic past to the audience, but TK, being a self-centered prick, never catches on that he should pry. TK starts as the mystery box\u2014what happened to him? Why does he get so touchy sometimes? Why doesn\u2019t he want his life back? But it shifts to Anita and that gets resolved if you really pay attention.<\/p>\n To you, how important is a good antagonist?<\/strong><\/p>\n Depends on the story. Depends on the characters. I love Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars and wish Darth Maul had been kept around in the prequels\u2014those are straight villains versus good-guys-in-their-own-stories antagonists, but some stories neither are necessary. The antagonist is the culture or environment or the character\u2019s self. Sometimes it\u2019s just about the protagonist and the antagonist is there for the surface-level conflict.<\/p>\n What is one of your favorite paranormal creatures and why?<\/strong><\/p>\n Narwhals. They look majestic af flying through space.<\/p>\n Author<\/strong>: Harrison Fountain<\/p>\n Genre:<\/strong> Literary Fantasy<\/p>\n When TK dies in a car accident, the Grim Reaper gives him a second chance at life, but he says it\u2019s more fun being a ghost. As he haunts his small Iowa town, his sleek shell of sarcasm cracks to a terrified lonely inner self. Find out why he\u2019d rather be dead.<\/p>\n Harrison Fountain said, \u201cIn Kindergarten, Mrs. Augustson sent me to Special Ed because of my speech impediment, the result of a 4-year-long ear infection that garbled the input and so a few letters needed the pronunciation corrected. I had to work on my Ss, Cs, Ks, Ws, Rs, Bs, Ps, Ts, Qs, Ds, Xs, Ls, and Ns.<\/p>\n Every year in elementary school, Scholastic gave students a hardback book with empty cream pages for us to scribble in as part of a school-wide contest. I never won. The kid in my grade who did plagiarized If You Give A Mouse a Cookie <\/em>and those biased, paid-off judges didn\u2019t even mention my amalgamation of the Silver Surfer and the Human Torch.<\/p>\n Still, I kept writing, finishing my first novel in my 7th grade Physical Science spiral notebook where the narrator\u2019s best friend was an orange alien with green hair named Carrot. My next novel about a boxer, I started in high school before I\u2019d ever even watched boxing, and fighters called out their moves (\u201cThe Double Rocket Upper\u2014no, wait! It\u2019s a TRIPLE ROCKET UPPERCUT!!!\u201d) like they were Pokemon.<\/p>\n No one taught me to write until my second year at college when Mr. Johnson called me to his office as he did with all his creative writing students and then he bloodied my first draft of a character sketch claiming his marks were \u201cjust ink.\u201d I almost cried. A few visits later, I\u2019d written a character sketch about my sister\u2019s divorce and the family dog. He crossed out a lot like usual. Told me why. Then he scrawled an A at the top. It\u2019d be my first published short story (http:\/\/www.orangepeals.com\/short-stories\/loving-a-mutt\/).<\/p>\n The pride felt earned for once.<\/p>\n While studying in Wales without satellite TV or an Xbox, I started a blog called\u00a0Nothing Fazes a Ghost<\/em>, where I posted weekly chapters. Those 10,000 views with ad revenue earned enough for a pizza. After a few years and a few drafts, it became Eidolons<\/em>.<\/p>\n I also teach English to adorable Korean kids who, in turn, teach me cutie poses.\u201d<\/p>\nAbout the Book<\/h2>\n
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Title<\/strong>: Eidolons<\/p>\nAuthor Bio<\/h2>\n
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These author bios are generally in third person, right? That\u2019s a little weird for me so\u2014<\/p>\nLinks<\/h2>\n