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MEET THE AUTHOR
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Author
Interview Chuck Lyons was born, raised, and educated in Central and Eastern Washington, the son of a high school English/Literature teacher and the stepson of a family-farmer. His blood father, a flight instructor and manual arts teacher in a public school, died in a small plane crash when he was ten months old. Like most young boys growing up--particularly one with an English teacher mother--he avoided writing like the plague! After graduation from college, he designed the World's Largest Gantry Crane for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation at Grand Coulee Dam. Chuck says, "It's my only entry in the Guinness Book of World Records." He also holds two patents for agricultural harvesting equipment. Chuck is a retired mechanical engineer and project manager, who spent most of his career with a major Pacific Northwest aluminum producer. During the1982 economic downturn in the aluminum industry, he took a thirty-month construction superintendent's job in the oil fields of Eastern Saudi Arabia. When asked about that moment when he knew he wanted to write a novel, Chuck said, "In 1983 I was in my 9 ft. x 9 ft. dorm room in the bachelor construction camp at Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia, and to prevent boredom--there wasn't much else to do to wile away a person's 128 hours of spare time each week--I was reading a paperback novel from the camp library. I became so frustrated with the quality of writing and the shallow, 'contrite-ness' of the plot, I threw it across the room, saying, 'I can write better stuff than that!' This wasn't the first novel to which I'd given physical flight, but it was the one that caused me to purchase a computer on my next trip out-of-country and to begin writing." He says his first attempt ran seven hundred pages, had one hero and 8 heroines, and fatal plot problems. It still remains in the bottom drawer of his desk. But, he says, "For all its faults, it was better than the book that precipitated it." When asked when he first considered himself to be a writer, Chuck had this to say, "I had already written technical and legal documentation for ten years as part of my day job before I tackled fiction writing. At that point, I already considered myself a writer, so it was more a matter of learning to write fiction. I began with short stories and worked up to novellas. When I completed my first novel-length manuscript, I found I enjoyed and intended to continue writing novels, and reached the point where I felt I at least understood--although had not yet mastered--plotting." Chuck says he seldom has trouble with writer's block when writing fiction but admits that writing non-fiction is another matter, particularly when writing technical documentation. He says his solution in both cases is to sit himself down and write something, even knowing it may well end up in the trash. He says, "That sets my mind free, and after a session like that, I usually find I have a rough draft of something pretty good. The concept for my next novel surfaced in just such a situation." His writing deeply probes characters and their relationships with one another. When asked about his fascination with relationships, Chuck said, "When in college during the 1960s, the relationship novels of Robert H. Rimmer held great interest for me. I don't think these novels qualify as the greatest literature of all time, but they do provide 'outside the box' insight into how relationships do and should function. Shortly after college I chanced to read the novels and philosophic tracts of Ayn Rand, which provided the basic validation for what I had come to believe is the proper relationship between people. Nearly every potential plot situation I come up with ends up being about a relationship." When asked what inspired him to write Shanghaied Heart, a romance novel, Chuck says, "This novel, like most of my plots, began as a flight-of-fancy 'what if': What if the only Black girl—the only Black student in my small rural high school and the surrounding area—needed a husband in the worst way. What would she have done? The more I thought about the answers, the more fun the plot became and the more I realized I was looking at the opportunity to construct a meaningful relationship between this girl and her conscripted husband, then present that stressful relationship as a parallel to events in the concurrent Civil Rights Movement. It was too good an opportunity to pass up." This led to the next logical question: How does a man survive in a woman's world of Romance Fiction? Chuck said, "I joined Romance Writers of America and its Inland Empire Chapter almost two years ago. The other chapter members, all ladies except one, are the only writer's group in my area that concentrates on long fiction. And these people are professionals. To most of them, writing is business, not merely a hobby. Well over half are multi-published in one or more of the Romance sub-genre; several have in the order of forty books on their 'ego shelves.' "Roughly half the world population is female and a disproportionate percentage of the fiction market is women. Over a lifetime of writing, a good share of a writer's characters and market will be female, so a romance writer better get his characters right. And my ego is not so big that I believe I understand the opposite sex. I benefit from my fellow member's critique of my female characters, they benefit from my male perspective—the estrogen outlook vs. the testosterone. I am continually amazed by the misconceptions women have about how men think, and vice versa." When asked about his background in writing, Chuck said, "I took the required composition, English, and literature classes in high school and college, but hated them all and hated writing, so did as little of it as possible. Once I began writing technical and contract law material, I discovered I enjoyed it, grew to be pretty good at it, and best of all, got paid for doing something I enjoyed. I think the precision required by technical and legal writing helped me immensely when I began writing fiction. And of course, technical writing must be grammatically correct because if not so, the desired meaning gets lost. So technical gave me a lot grammar practice. The next step was learning to develop character and a plot. There's nothing like attending writer's group classes and working with a critique group and good editor to help you learn characterization and plot construction." To develop his plot and characters, he says he usually begins by writing an opening scene, to see what direction the 'what-if' he's following will lead. Once that shows him a direction, then he develops a story that builds in that direction and corresponds to the classic 3-act structure. Chuck says, "As I'm doing this, I look at what sort of characters are required to support the story. No character survives but by what he contributes to the story." When asked how he comes up with
ideas for his writing and why he chooses some over others, Chuck says,
"I choose whichever story idea interests me the most. I have such a
backlog of interesting 'what-ifs' that sometimes it's tough to choose!
That's one of the nice things about novels and fiction. You are less
likely to be required to write something you don't care about." --Build an active website (His next non-novel project is to get it designed, written, and running. His website URL will be chucklyonsauthor.com) --Teach/instruct/mentor other aspiring writers --Speak and promote reading and writing --Work on a tie-in to Martin Luther King, Jr. and present day status of the Civil Rights Movement --Explore potential tie-in to today's news: out-of wedlock pregnancy --Work to promote ebook
technology When asked, How do your friends and family feel about your writing venture in general? Chuck had something to say, to which many writers can relate. "Other than my 'writing' friends, most don't understand and don't much care what's involved or what drives a writer. Many don't take me seriously, as if desiring to be a writer is impractical, like wanting to be an astronaut at age 50, or The President of the U.S., or the King of England." What does Chuck do to unwind and relax? He says, "If I'm unwinding from something else, I'm likely to write. I think 'unwinding' means getting away from things you don't control. The nice thing about writing is you have control—complete control of your writing world—even if the result ends up going nowhere but the trash can. "But if I'm getting away from writing, then an activity related to my interest in antique trucks and tractors, steam engines, 'contemporary classic' cars, aviation, carpentry, sailing, machine design, shooting, political economy, or philosophy may be my choice." When asked the question, If you had to do it over again, would you do anything differently? he said, "Had I known how much fun it is, I would have begun writing fiction earlier." His advice to writers just starting out: "Write something that's fun. Write what you're interested in. And don't for one second believe you can't. Anyone who is capable of thinking is capable of writing—writing is nothing more than thinking on paper. If you don't have the technical expertise with words, get it and then write. Most people tell stories every day. And always remember: Writing is merely telling stories on paper."
Shanghaied Heart
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