Interview with author Nathan Everett

Author Nathan Everett adds to his opus of literary fiction with City Limits, an unusual tale that captures the heart of small-town America. Everett travels the world, visiting towns and countryside to capture characters and locations for some thirty books published under different pen names. A true peripatetic author, tomorrow, he may be writing near you!

City Limits officially releases June 23, 2018. Pre-order at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DGMG4SQ

First Exit: We’re taking a different approach to today’s blog post. To celebrate the upcoming release of City Limits, we will be interviewing the author. And interspersing some pretty pictures into the works as well. Nathan, when did you first decide to become a novelist?

Nathan: Sitting in Mrs. Fites’ fourth grade classroom. That’s when I started my first novel.

First Exit: What did a fourth grader have to write about.

Nathan: I had a secret love. My very first and I still have a bit of crush on her, though I haven’t seen her in several years. But I also loved the ‘Classic Comics’ we had in the classroom. I read Ivanhoe, King Arthur, The Iliad, and several others. So, I decided to write my own. It would be about two princes and two princesses in neighboring countries who rode horses and had adventures.

One of my favorite spots along US 95 about 25 miles south of Coeur d'Alene, ID. This is where I imagine my princes and princesses riding their horses on adventures.

First Exit: Did you finish the book?

Nathan: Eventually. I had a problem with the fourth-grade draft. I kept getting confused about the number of esses in princess vs. princes vs. princesses. I ended up drawing a blank line in the manuscript every time I used one of those words. Eventually, though, about twenty years ago I finished the story for my daughter. She liked it and is still the only person who has ever heard the finished version.

First Exit: An author is born. How long between that and your first publication.

Nathan: Ouch. I continued to write a lot during school. My next unfinished novel was a science fiction piece that I wrote in Miss Sullivan’s classroom during recesses in fifth grade. As to publishing… Let’s say I got distracted. I wrote a lot, but my first fiction book didn’t come out until 2007—almost 50 years after my early attempt. Prior to that time, I was prolific as a technical writer and publisher. I wrote training programs for a variety of computer publishing software, homebuilding and real estate manuals, books on design and typography and the history of printing, trade journals, and newsletters. But For Blood or Money was the first novel I treated seriously enough to get published. As for writing, it was probably my tenth or twelfth.

Going from my campsite to Spokane, I travel along the Palouse Scenic Byway.

Interview: And that brings us to your involvement in National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo. Was For Blood or Money your first NaNoWriMo work?

Nathan: No. It was my third. It was probably the most pre-planned book I wrote during NaNoWriMo in the fourteen years I’ve been involved. At least until City Limits.

Apparently, Amazon has given up marketing my books to other people and is thinking that I might want to buy them myself! If you'd like to win a copy of The Gutenberg Rubric, enter the raffle at http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/402f96ad3/?widget_template=5ace39411b5c47c90d0a5316

First Exit: How did it come about?

Nathan: I did my first NaNo in relative isolation. My wife actually found out about it and recommended that I do it. I’d been laid off and I think we were all going stir-crazy in the house. She decided to participate as well and that year my daughter became one of the youngest NaNo participants. The next year, I was back at work at a corporate tech giant and a coworker who has become a great friend and a force to be reckoned with in the field of editing—Jason Black—said he’d participate with me if we could do something worthwhile with our books. (Visit Jason at http://plottopunctuation.com/) I also met fellow-employee Nina Tang who agreed. We wrote our 2005 novels and did a limited edition of about fifty copies, I think, that we had bound and sold as a fund-raiser for the Giving Campaign. We were extremely successful and gave the funds to the organization that NaNoWriMo supported that built libraries around the world.

First Exit: That was before For Blood or Money?

Nathan: Yes. We were pretty charged up and the next year recruited another couple of authors that we knew and totally conquered NaNo, including becoming their largest single financial donor ever (at the time). With the matching grant we received, we sent well over $5,000 to the Office of Letters and Light. And as a result of that success, Jason, a second co-worker and friend named Gary Syck, and I started our own publishing company, Long Tale Press. It happened that we had an immediate success with another author and decided that in order to fill out our catalog we’d each contribute one of our own books, to be carefully edited by the other two partners, and publish them. For Blood or Money became my first standalone paperback novel.

Not all the crops out here are green. Fields of yellow flowering canola.

First Exit: You said that was your third year in NaNoWriMo and that you’ve completed how many???

Nathan: Fourteen, not including the several times I’ve participated in Camp NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy. A couple of years, I wrote two different books during NaNo. On average the past five years I’ve completed the equivalent of a NaNo goal every month—50,000 words.

First Exit: And you publish all of them?

Nathan: No, though all six of my published Nathan Everett books were drafted during NaNoWriMos. Four others were published under a different name along with four from Camp NaNo. I’m still a strong supporter of NaNoWriMo and encourage people to participate. That’s what got my daughter writing. It’s what has fueled my long-smoldering passion for writing novels.

First Exit: Since there is such a big division in NaNoWriMo circles between what are called ‘plotters’ and ‘pantsers’, why don’t we talk about planning a novel the next time we get together.

Nathan: It’s obvious from where I live that I’m not a pantser. But how to plan or not plan a novel is always a favorite topic.

I'll be at a meet and greet at Sun Meadow during the Skin to the Wind Festival of Fun on July 14. Check out my events page!

First Exit: Read more about Nathan’s books, his short stories, and his upcoming events at http://www.nathaneverett.com.