As an amateur scholar and die-hard enthusiast of everything to do with Alice in Wonderland, I have launched a podcast that takes on Alice’s everlasting influence on pop culture. As an author who draws on Lewis Carroll’s iconic masterpiece for my Looking Glass Wars universe, I’m well acquainted with the process of dipping into Wonderland for inspiration.

The journey has brought me into contact with a fantastic community of artists and creators from all walks of life—and this podcast will be the platform where we come together to answer the fascinating question: “What is it about Alice?”

For this episode, it was my great pleasure to have Tom Schulman join me as my guest on this episode! Read on to explore our conversation and check out the whole series on your favorite podcasting platform to listen to the full interview.

FB

Let’s talk about the Writers Strike and the work you did on the negotiating committee. Our friend Ed Dector told me that you got a standing ovation for the work that you guys did, and the concessions that you got from the studios. What do you think? How do you think that’s going to translate moving forward? I believe you guys ratified it yesterday. It seems universal that you guys came out on top with almost all of the items that you were looking for.

TS

Obviously, you never get everything you want but I would say we got the vast majority. We certainly got something in every area we were asking for, which is unusual. There was nothing we put on the table that we didn’t make gains with. We didn’t leave any of the writers behind. As often happens with these negotiations, the companies figure out the comedy-variety writers are a very small minority of the Guild so the Guild would never hold out just for the comedy-variety writers so they tend to not give them anything, and the people who are making the deal, the negotiators for the Guild, essentially have to leave them behind. But that didn’t happen this time.

FB

What I’ve been hearing, though, is that the producers are going to be looking for smaller budgets. Which makes some sense because they were running rampant with their production costs. How do you think that’s going to affect the writers and the deal they have moving forward?

TS

They’ll blame it on us, of course, they’ll blame it on the WGA strike and the SAG strike. But this was happening anyway so I don’t really think it’s strike related. If anything, the strike was an opportunity for the companies to all contract at the same time, which is hard for any one company to do. It made it easier for them to all say, “Netflix has to contract, we all have to do it”. This was something that was coming.

FB

Your latest film, Double Down South, is a high stakes gambling movie about keno pool. I’ve known you for a very long time and you’ve written some amazing movies, but can you describe writing a script that you know you’re going to direct? Is the framework a little bit different?

TS

No. I write everything as if I were directing it as if I were making the movie on the page. To the extent that I feel like I need to describe things if it were just a script for me, maybe I’d leave those things off. But it’s gonna go out to artists, crew, actors, and so forth so it needs to read exactly the way a regular script would read.

FB

This story is really about an outsider breaking in. That’s a very popular trope, especially if you do it well. What do you think it is about the underdog story that resonates with viewers?

TS

We are all in that situation at some point in our lives, at least most of us. People can relate to those feelings of being on the outside looking in and having to struggle to find your way in a world that is not as familiar as it hopefully will be at some point. That sense that everybody knows everything about this except you so you’ve got to somehow find your way through all that.

FB

Describe the movie for the listeners. I didn’t know anything about keno pool until I came to your screening. What was the inspiration?

TS

The inspiration was that I used to play that game back in my youth when I would visit pool halls. It’s an unusual game. It lasted about 100 years from the early 20th century to the end of the 20th century and it was banned in 17 states because it was such an intense gambling game. They put a very thin board on the top quarter of the table and the board has holes drilled in it for every ball in the pool rack and a double hole in the middle. There’s a little ramp up off the felt of the table onto the keno board and the board is very, very smooth. The holes in the board are drilled precisely, so unless you hit the hole exactly, the ball will loop out. It’s by far the hardest shot in pool, there’s nothing that even approaches how difficult it is to get a ball in its hole.

What’s diabolical about the game is this double hole. If you make a double on the break, the bet doubles, and you get paid double, and you get to break again. If you double on that break, the bet doubles again, and so forth. So, a novice, like I was the first time I played, can get into real trouble. The first time I played it, the guy who had won before it got to break and made a double. I got ready to give him $1, which was a lot of money to me at the time, and he said, “No, you don’t understand you owe me $2. It’s double.” So, I gave him another dollar. He makes another double and he said, “That’ll be $4.” And I’m like, Oh my God, $4. I said, “If you win on the break again, do I owe you $8?” And he said, “You’re a smart kid.” I said, “Well, I don’t have $8.” He said, “Well you got that watch you’re wearing.” Fortunately, he missed and I got ready to shoot, and somebody if I missed it’d be his turn again and then it starts all over. So, the first time I played I didn’t get to shoot.

FB

So, you really didn’t play.

TS

There was this woman who came into the pool hall every so often and played keno with all those guys. I was fascinated by her and made some notes very early in my career about her and then just forgot about it. Then right when COVID hit, I was thinking about what to do and I remembered her. I started making notes and then the story came to me about this woman who’s trying to make it in the man’s world of keno pool, which in this case is played at a falling apart plantation house way out in the sticks in Georgia, where the best come to play keno pool.

FB

What was terrific about it was the blending of suspense and drama with some comedy. What were you striving for in terms of tone for this film?

TS

I worked from story first. Story will give you those elements of tone but I think there’s always humor in any story because the interactions between people are going to create that. But those things give themselves to you as you write, staying on story, figuring out the dynamics between the characters, and so forth. As the story evolves to get to the ending is really all I do, and the humor just hopefully comes in the middle of that process.

FB

How was getting back in the director’s chair after many, many years?

TS

It was scary. Years ago, when I made 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, which I know bazillions of people haven’t seen, you deal with things like lack of sleep, feeling like you’re playing chess with the universe every day because the elements change so abruptly. You’re constantly rewriting for that sort of thing. So that really worried me and the lack of sleep on 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag was just a killer. I was getting three, or four hours a night and getting pretty frazzled. Some of the difficulties making that movie just made me really afraid to direct again. But this time, we had a great crew and a great cast. I still only got four hours of sleep, but I was never tired.

FB

But Double Down South is an independent film so it was a little smaller than 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, which was a studio movie, so you probably had more freedom on this one. But then with independent films, you have all these budgetary restrictions, which is what I confronted with Wicked. It was really fun to be making the movie and making the moves wherever you needed to make them but it was mistake after mistake and they compounded each other. On the studio movie, you have all these resources, and you have longer days and more staff and crew. So how did that play out in terms of the budget and the number of days and how you could make your days?

TS

It was really scary. We had nothing in the budget for overtime. You’re shooting a day and when that day is over, you’re out for the day and if you can’t get this done in 22 days, without overtime, then start figuring out what you can jettison.

FB

What happened on locations where you had to move and you were trying to get shots? Did you ever have to reduce the amount of coverage or did you get really creative?

TS

We were really only in three locations, the interior of the plantation house was one location, the exterior was several hundred miles away in South Carolina and we shot it in Georgia, and then the third was pretty close to that house in South Carolina. So, when we moved to South Carolina for the last four days of the shoot, it was pouring down rain, which is great for the atmosphere but hellish when you’re trying to shoot, and we had shots with moving cameras on cars, and the lens just got soaked. Fortunately, I had a cinematographer, Alan Caudillo, who has to be one of the fastest in the business. We’d be talking about whether I’d gotten all the coverage I needed on one side of the room and Alan would say, “Don’t even think about it. Let’s flip it and if you need something else, I can turn it back around in about four minutes.” That was a huge help. He had a great look at the same time. I also had a whole assistant direction department who would say, “Unless we bother you, you’re doing fine.” They took a lot of pressure off and it was terrific to not have people hitting their watches and going “We’re in trouble,” more than twice throughout the whole shoot.

FB

You also had a good friend in Kim Coates as the star, a friend of ours who we’ve golfed with for many, many years. I’m assuming based on what you just said, the schedule didn’t allow you guys to play any rounds of golf during the shooting. But Kim, as a good friend, I’m sure was a great collaborator.

TS

Kim was a prince and we had four or five days of rehearsals, which you sort of have to have in a movie like this. If we had had to spend time each morning during the shoot figuring out the scene and rehearsing it, we would have never made it on that schedule. So, a week of rehearsals allowed us to make the movie in the way we did and Kim was 100% there the whole time. The actors all stayed in the same Victorian bed and breakfast and bonded, which helped to create the dysfunctional family that is in the movie.

FB

You discovered the lead actress, Lili Simmons, right?

TS

She had already been discovered to a certain extent. She had a big part in a series called Banshee, a really terrific show which was not as successful as it should have been. She’s been working since she was 18 or 19 years old and has done a lot of great stuff.

FB

She really did an amazing job and captured the essence of that sense of the outsider in that character. And she really pulled off the pool playing.

TS

Our friend Matt Craven, is an actor and also a phenomenal pool player, volunteered to spend as much time as necessary to teach her how to play pool. They played every day for a couple of weeks and she got pretty good. She made a couple of doubles.

FB

You went on a film festival tour and won the Audience Award for Best Feature at the Omaha Film Festival and the Jury Award for Best Feature at the Cordillera International Film Festival. Congratulations. What was that like?

TS

It’s so exciting. In this day and age, it’s not typical to even get to see your movie with an audience at all. In this case, I’ve seen it at five or six festivals, and it’s really fun to see a crowd react to the movie.

FB

Years ago, when I read the script for 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, it made me laugh out loud, and I thought it was going to be really successful. Then you had a really difficult experience. What happened on that movie in terms of, the little 1000 cuts that took away from the vision you had originally created in the script, which felt so funny and vibrant? Was it a casting thing?

TS

We cast a part that was not the lead first, over my objections and way early. To make a cast work, you’re always making sure that chemistry is right. We might have cast Andy Comeau, who plays the lead, anyway but we ended up casting opposite this other character. Ultimately, that was driving all the decisions about not only the casting but the writing, which had to change to accommodate the casting. It was infuriating and quite obvious to me that you cast your lead first and then everybody else is in orbit around the lead. I would say that was the biggest mistake.

FB

I think people are interested in why movies turn out so bad. The point is you make these early choices and you can’t catch up. I mean, I think it was Hitchcock who said, “90% of a successful movie is casting.” So, you had a 10% chance and that’s really unfortunate. Then I guess because you’re a first-time director, people feel like they have more leverage and power over you. But then you’re the one who’s in director jail as if you made all these creative mistakes and you don’t get to direct a movie for 10 years.

TS

I remember the night after the movie premiered and the studio, Orion Pictures, pretty much dumped it because they sold itself to MGM two weekends before we opened. On the Monday before the movie opened, I got a call from the head of marketing at Orion, who said, “I just want to say I’m sorry. I can’t tell you right now, but you’ll know by the end of the week.” It was really painful. Then of course, the morning after it opened, my phone rang at 4:30 in the morning and it was my ex-agent who said to me, “Schulman. Five years.” And I said, “What do you mean?” He goes, “Director jail. Five years.”

FB

That’s terrible. Let’s go back to when you first came into the business because you had a really crazy successful run in the late 80s and early 90s. Is it true that Dead Poets Society was your first produced movie?

TS

I had written two movies that I sold as spec scripts that ended up being made at ABC as movies of the week and bear very little resemblance to what I wrote. Then I sold a script called Love at Second Sight about a psychic detective agency solving crimes that haven’t been committed yet. But that got eviscerated too and just plummeted into the ocean maybe six months before Dead Poets came out. My parents came out here and we went to a screening of Second Sight at Warner Brothers. In the end, my dad just leaned over to me and said, “You better find something else to do with your life.” Well, well, wait,

FB

Tell me about your mom and dad and your writing and your aspirations versus theirs. What did that look like at the dinner table?

TS

My parents were great about that. My dad was a doctor and I had gone to college as pre-med. I was doing well and I said to Dad, “I think I’m gonna go ahead and commit and go to medical school.” He said, “You grew up with me as a doctor. Do you really want to do that? Did you pay close attention to what my life was like, in the early days, and how little I saw of you? I’ve loved part of it, but I haven’t loved it all. Think about it.” And I thought to myself, “Maybe I don’t really want to do this.” So, two, three years later, when I started getting interested in making movies, they were like, “Writer? Director? You’ve never been a particularly good writer. You make Bs on your essays. But if that’s what you want to do, give it a shot.”

I got into USC film school and came out here and was kind of too cool for school and quit. And they were like, “What’s going on? What’s happening with you out there?” It was a dozen years of being in the wilderness, waiting for something to happen. My parents were supportive and worried at the same time.

FB

Let’s talk about those dozen years and where story comes from and the ideas you mentioned at the top of the show. At the beginning, what was coming to you in terms of things that you thought would make good movies?

TS

I started writing horror films. I had gotten very lucky that after I quit USC, I was sitting on a wall trying to figure out what to do and this guy walked up to me and said, “Little Tommy Schulman? I was a teacher at your high school. I heard you were out here.” I told him what was going on so he sent me to a place called the Actors and Directors lab that was run by Jack Garfield, who had been a theater and film director, and brilliant teacher, and I enrolled in that workshop the next day. The first class I was at, I was sitting in the back just trying to figure out what the hell was going on and one guy walked in and said, “I just got a contract to make 75 educational films over the next three years and I need a crew. Anybody in here done that?” I had worked making commercials in Nashville so I raised my hand and I had a job for the next five years. We’d make the film in three weeks, take two weeks off, then do it again.

So, I had two weeks in between every cycle to write and about two years into it, his wife met some people who wanted to finance a low-budget movie. He came in one Monday and said, “I need a script by Friday. Can anybody write a script by Friday? I’ll pay you $5,000.” I raised my hand and they asked what I wanted to do. I said that if we were gonna make a low-budget movie, let’s make a horror film. He said, “How about a mummy movie?” So, I wrote a script called Sarcophagus about this mummy that is brought to a university atrium. It was pretty scary and my boss liked it but the backers were Mormons and said they couldn’t back a horror film. Eventually, they came to me and said they liked the script, they just couldn’t do it but they offered to pay me to write another movie. So, I wrote a script called Mondo Jocko with my friend Paul Davidson, which was sort of Kentucky Fried Movie or Everything You Want to Know About Sex but in the world of sports. The Mormons loved it and they let me shoot a day of it as a test. But the night after they screened it, the lead producer died of a heart attack, and long story short, it never got made. But now I had this little horror film Sarcophagus and Mondo Jocko as sample scripts. I sent them out and ended up getting an agent, Bettye McCartt, who, as it turned out, was one of the important people behind the scenes in the making of The Godfather. She was Al Ruddy’s assistant at Paramount and she knew the ropes at the studio. Anyway, she became my first agent. Then it was writing spec scripts, mostly thrillers, horror films, and stuff like that.

FB

You’ve had a number of comedies like What About Bob? and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. But then you had this major drama, Dead Poets Society, that you won an Academy Award for. After that, did the folks in town want you to write other dramas? How did that all work?

TS

They wanted comedies. Honey came out a few weeks after Dead Poets came out and Honey made more money and was more reproducible. They consider movies like Dead Poets Society, as a kind of one-off, so if you have another idea that sparks them or really hits them in the gut, they’ll do it. But they wanted more comedies, more mass-market comedy.

FB

Did you have an actor in mind when you were writing Dead Poets Society? Or was it just the story, as you said earlier?

TS

That story started working its way into my brain in the late 70s, early 80s. I had a girlfriend and we would go out for sushi many nights a week, and I would start telling her about that story. She kept saying, “Keep working on that. I love that teacher.” I wrote a draft in maybe 1983 and it was all about the teacher and it didn’t work so I put it in a drawer. Two years later, I woke up and went, “Oh, it’s about the students. It’s about his effect on the students.” And then the story started to really put itself together.

My agent sent it to Steven Haft in the early going. Steven had made a movie with Robert Altman and was trying to get stuff made. He read it and liked it and then nothing happened. What happened was a director named Jeff Kanew had a deal at Disney to make a musical. He was looking for somebody to write an ensemble movie and an agent sent him Dead Poets Society. He called back and said, “I don’t want to make this musical anymore. I want to direct that.” So, the studio bought it for him. Then came the problem of casting it, his ideas and theirs were different. He couldn’t get Robin Williams at the time to say yes. Robin wouldn’t say no but he supposedly had some misgivings about the director, which turned out to be true. But anyway, it didn’t work. So, Disney eventually gave him the chance to set it up somewhere else with other actors who were not well known. He couldn’t get that done and then it reverted to the studio and they eventually got Peter Weir to direct it.

FB

How lucky all of these little steps along the way were to get to the final product, which won the Academy Award for you.

Were you on the set rewriting because Robin Williams was so known for improvising? How was all that managed?

TS

The bizarre thing was that, from the first day, Robin was always so on script. He knew it word for word. It just didn’t have any life to it. I was panicking and we only had Robin for one day and then he was going off to do a play in New York for two weeks, and then we would get him back. I was standing by Peter after each day going, “Oh, my God.” And he goes, “I know, I know. Just be quiet. We’ll fix it.” And nothing happened. So, Robin left, and I said to Peter, “What are we going to do?” He goes, “We got two weeks to figure it out.” So, when Robin got back to set, Peter had him do an improvisation. We were in the classroom and improv was, “If you wanted to teach these kids something, what would you teach them?” He decided to do Shakespeare and he did that improvisation that’s in the movie where he’s John Wayne doing Macbeth. As soon as Robin was improvising, he understood what he was not doing with the script, which is that the dialogue is just like stand-up, you’re looking at the kids to see if they’re getting what you want. You’re teasing them, you’re cajoling, and doing all that stuff. He just got it immediately after that and it was full of life, and problem solved.

FB

When you were talking with your girlfriend and you were working on the character, in the original script, how much of your history is in it? Because it’s a movie that’s about nonconformity. Your father actually pushed you away from following the path of conforming to what he did. It seems like those two came together to, at least mathematically, really tell a personal story.

TS

I write to understand what I think. That’s what happened here. You just start writing this teacher and pretty soon you figure out what he’s about. I always knew he would be in this tightly wound institution. The rebellion against that environment came naturally.

FB

And the casting of the of the students was really magnificent. They all felt so lived in. Your characters often feel lived in. How do you get to that point? What are you thinking, and trying to create that has that feeling? Because they were some of the most lived-in teen characters that I’ve ever seen in cinema.

TS

It’s partly the writing and partly the direction and the casting. From the writing standpoint, once I understand the function of a character in a story, I cast around in my mind for people I know from my life. It could have been somebody in kindergarten or in college or after college, but who do I know that would fit the role of that character? Enough that I can put their face and their person in that character. Every character is cast out of my life that way. They’re behaving the way I think they would behave, and maybe that gives it more life.

FB

You did take acting classes for a while. I’m assuming you were taking acting classes not as much to become a great actor but to improve your writing or directing and how to work with actors.

TS

I understood the mechanism. I certainly did not have the courage or the sense of freedom to be able to just let go in front of even the small audiences we had. When I started the Actors and Directors lab, I told Jack I wanted to direct and he said, “Then you’re gonna have to act.” That was forced on me and for good reason because the process of acting and the process of writing and directing they’re all very connected.

FBIndecent Proposal was an unusual development process in terms of you didn’t write it, but you optioned the book.

TS

My next-door neighbor was Alex Gartner, who at the time was working for a company that was making an early version of The Handmaid’s Tale. Alex was reading Indecent Proposal, and he would come over every morning at like seven to play ping-pong for an hour before he went off to work. And we would talk about the book while we played. The basic premise of the book is a billionaire paying a woman a million dollars for one night. It seemed like a really interesting idea, but the way it was worked out in the book, not so much. Alex and I had optioned the book for next to nothing and I took it to Teddy Zee at Paramount, who was a junior executive there, and Teddy loved it and bought it. Alex and I both thought we needed a woman writer for the project, it should be told from the woman’s point of view. So, we hired Amy Holden Jones to adapt the novel. By the time we turned in the script, Teddy had moved to Sony, the regime who bought it were no longer there, but the new guys really wanted to make it.

They inadvertently tipped their hand as to how much they wanted it because they didn’t know that they owned it when we turned in the script. So, they called me on Monday and said, “Oh my God we have to have this. What do we have to pay for this?” So, just being kind of impish I said, “Well, I’m gonna have to think about it.” They said, “Oh, please don’t do this to us. Please have lunch with us.” So, we met in the executive dining room and I just tormented them before I finally said, “You know, you own it already.” They really really wanted to make the movie so we had some leverage.

FB

That’s an amazing experience. Other than that, what would you say are the most enjoyable moments that you’ve had either working on a set or writing a script where you felt so in the zone or having an actor take your script?

TS

There have been so many good ones. Obviously, the Dead Poets Society experience was so amazing, having Robin and that cast and Peter, who was so collaborative. He just said, “I want you here. Feel free to say anything you want.” Robin was just such an easy person to work with and such a good guy. That would be the standout. Double Down South was a great experience, as well. I love the cast; they were just all so involved. It was a pretty small crew, only about 40 people or so. Everybody was really working together and they were so supportive. A great way to get this thing done. As a director it was unbelievable. I did have one scene that I had to reshoot because I woke up in the middle of the night and went, “Oh, my God, I blew that scene.” The A.D. department just said, “We don’t know how, but we will make this work. We’ll get you in there.”

FB

What was your first introduction to Alice in Wonderland?

TS

I’d read Alice in Wonderland, probably freshman year in high school. I had a teacher who essentially told us, this is almost like a puzzle within a story within a puzzle. Then in college, I took a class where Alice was on the curriculum, and we read a book called The Annotated Alice. Which is, oh, my God, you can tell every word, every phrase, every sentence, every paragraph, every character. The depth of the thing is staggering to the point where you can’t really even absorb it all. It’s so amazing. So, I knew Alice had been written by a genius, and therefore, I was too intimidated. It’s a book that’s almost a key to a whole universe that is not there on the page. So how do you absorb that? Hats off to you for taking it in this other direction with The Looking Glass Wars.

FB

I know you’re into politics, and I don’t know if you’ve seen how many headlines there were during the Trump Administration that said “We’re down the rabbit hole. We’re through the Looking-glass. We’re all mad here.” And Kushner just came out and said the best way to contextualize the Trump presidency was through Alice in Wonderland.

TS

Absolutely. Metaphorically, Alice in Wonderland has probably been used in that way as much as any modern text out there. It stands the test of time that way. Nothing like it has really survived, has it?

FB

Think about Winter Wonderland, and how often we’re using it to describe magical places. I suppose Middle Earth or Oz, are equivalents they use a lot. But Wonderland is really part of our language.

TS

But once you get to Middle Earth, and you understand the rules, then it’s consistent. Wonderland is always changing. It’s always morphing. You can’t really feel grounded there. It’s hard to find something like that but it’s so ungrounded that people could stick with it.

FB

This is why there have been very few Alice in Wonderland adaptations that have been successful, except Tim Burton’s. But the second movie didn’t really work because there’s not a grounded logic to the world, which is what I’ve attempted to do with The Looking Glass Wars. I wanted to bring a kind of Middle Earth style where there are rules and governance and logic to it.

If you were to describe your golf game using Alice in Wonderland as a metaphor, what would that be?

TS

I would have to say I’m like the Mad Hatter.

FB

You’re not Humpty Dumpty?

TS

I’m the Mad Hatter with the notion of a little bit of anger all the time.

FB

Thanks for sharing all those great stories and the ups and downs of the creative process. And congrats on your new movie. Where can where can folks see Double Down South?

TS

It’s going to be at the Three Rivers Film Festival in Pittsburgh in mid-November, and then it’s coming out in about 60 cities in mid-January for about a month and then it’ll be on all platforms.

FB

Well, it’s a terrific movie and I’m sure audiences will find it. Thanks for coming on.

TS

This was so much fun. I’m so glad you had me on the podcast.

For the latest updates & news about All Things Alice,  please read our blog and subscribe to our podcast!

As an amateur scholar and die-hard enthusiast of everything to do with Alice in Wonderland, I have launched a podcast that takes on Alice’s everlasting influence on pop culture. As an author who draws on Lewis Carroll’s iconic masterpiece for my Looking Glass Wars universe, I’m well acquainted with the process of dipping into Wonderland for inspiration.

The journey has brought me into contact with a fantastic community of artists and creators from all walks of life—and this podcast will be the platform where we come together to answer the fascinating question: “What is it about Alice?”

For this episode, it was my great pleasure to have Jendia Gammon join me as my guest! Read on to explore our conversation and check out the whole series on your favorite podcasting platform to listen to the full interview. For the full transcript with exclusive content, please join our private Circle community.

FB

I need to clarify something. Dianne Dotson, is that your real name?

DD

I have two pen names. The self-published pen name is J. Dianne Dotson and I also have Jendia Gammon. Jendia is a combination of Jennifer and Dianne and Gammon is my maiden name. I had self-published under J. Dianne Dotson and I had a couple of book deals before I got an agent. Those books are out this year, The Shadow Galaxy and The Inn at the Amethyst Lantern, and are under J. Dianne Dotson but that will not be my name going forward. I have a lot of projects already out under Jendia Gammon. I have a story, “Copper”, in the latest Interzone Magazine, which is a wonderful magazine that everybody should subscribe to. I have stories in multiple anthologies coming out as well as magazines. My traditional pen name going forward is Jendia Gammon and I won’t be going back to Datson. But with the new release coming out, you can still find me under that name.

FB

Let’s talk about the theory behind a pen name because it’s hard to get one’s name out there ever, let alone with multiple names. If you’re a super-famous writer, sometimes that happens, but what’s the thinking for you in using these pen names?

DD

Doing the split from indie publishing to traditional is one factor, but it isn’t the only one. I have lost both my parents. My mother passed away earlier this year and I really wanted to dig back into my heritage, the Gammon family from East Tennessee with our Irish ancestry. In a way, I’m honoring my parents and their memories. I wouldn’t be the writer I am without my dad, who was a storyteller and indie-published author. My mother worked in publishing and it was sort of destiny that I would not only become a writer but I would also eventually form my own publishing company, which I am doing with my husband, Gareth L. Powell.

I really wanted to distinguish between those two phases of my life. I self-published The Questrison Saga and then got a couple of deals under my belt before moving forward with traditional publishing. I have books on submission right now with my agent, one of which is a high-fantasy dragon and the other is a sci-fi horror thriller. I’m also working on a very campy, Southern California-based horror novel due in December which is very raw and funny. I’m writing in multiple genres for multiple age groups.

For my purposes, changing my pen name was a split of meaningful life moments, and returning to my heritage and Jendia was an old nickname. I liked it for SEO purposes for the web because Jendia is more unique. I’m a content manager for a biotech career-related website so that’s at the forefront of a lot of my thinking. Also, I know a couple of British authors who have three pen names. One of them is John Courtney Greenwood. Then there’s the author Stark Holborn, who writes science fiction under that name but uses two entirely different names for two other types of books, one of which is historical fiction, and the other is for cozy mystery. I think it’s important that if you’re going to write something wildly different from your primary genre, you might want to consider a different pen name because you develop a certain persona for each one. But then again, I also do feel strongly that as Jendia Gammon, I want to be like Neil Gaiman and Stephen King, and write everything I feel like writing. I do feel though, that science fiction, fantasy, and horror are my brand. That is the Jendia Gammon brand.

FB

Do you think of being gender-neutral when you’re picking a pen name? I’ve noticed some authors do that because they’re writing a lot of characters who are not their gender, or they’re writing in a sci-fi space that is historically prejudiced against certain genders.

DD

I think traditionally, in the 19th century into the early 20th century, quite often you would have initials only if it was a woman writer so they could pretend to be a male writer because you weren’t given the same space. Although Mary Shelley, bless her, bucked the trend on that one, and without her, we wouldn’t have modern science fiction as we have it, and maybe not horror either. But then I think of one of my favorite authors, L.M. Montgomery. She didn’t have to be L.M., she could have been Lucy Montgomery. But, in the early 1900s perhaps it was more favorable for her and maybe she actually liked that. But I do feel that it isn’t necessary to do that today. I view the The Questrison Saga as a success and I was J. Dianne. The reason I picked J. Dianne was because I love L. Frank Baum.

FB

One of my favorites.

DD

Those original Oz books had a huge influence on me and my wacky worlds. Lewis Carroll and Alice in Wonderland did as well. Those two definitely shaped me and my early reading history particularly.

FB

Tell me about Alice and your early influences. Was it something that your parents introduced to you? They seem to have been very influential. I can feel how important that upbringing and your parents’ influences have been on you and how you want to honor that. You also seem to have really honored it in your work ethic and in the stories you’re telling.

DD

Thank you. They were quite different people. I’m much more my father’s daughter, but at the same time, I certainly have my mother’s pragmatism. My father was the dreamer, the journeyman, and the writer. My mother was down to earth. She was the editor, the lineup type operator.

A lot of the mythology that I read was directly due to Dad’s love for mythology. But then again, while I don’t have the same attention to detail that my mother had, I know how important it is and I’m looking at everything that way. But they didn’t introduce Alice to me. My sister did. I’m the baby by almost 10 years. I had three older siblings who were teenagers starting in the 70s, so it was a hot mess when I was born. But my sister would read to me when I was a little bitty thing and she read Alice in Wonderland to me many times. I had crazy white blond hair so instantly I was like, “Oh, I’m obviously Alice.” It was also important for me to have adventures on my own, separate from these legendary older siblings, who are all dynamos in completely different ways. Of course, I identify with Alice in that regard, having your own adventures and being independent was huge to me. I loved Alice for that, and I loved the dreamlike and strange qualities of Wonderland and the Looking-glass world. I actually really love looking Through the Looking Glass. When I was in sixth grade, I performed “The Jabberwocky” in front of the entire class.

I was a super nerd and to be up in front of these kids and just be full of gusto was just absolutely horrifying but empowering at the same time because I was doing something related to something I loved. But that was absolutely the first moment of like, being a true dramatic person.

FB

You talked about the whimsy of Alice in Wonderland, but a lot of people interpret the story as horror, because of what happens with Alice. You have the same interpretation I have which is, that there are all these creatures and there’s all this chaos but in the middle of it, Alice is keeping her head, as long as the Red Queen is not around. I did not read it as horror yet quite a few people have, what do you make of that?

DD

The thing about Alice in both stories is that she’s finding out about herself and that can be very scary, no matter your age. Using the mirror, as a comparison, she’s looking in a mirror and reflecting upon herself. That’s her looking glass. A reader coming into that may not be quite ready to look in the mirror. There might be monsters on the other side of that glass that they haven’t slain yet or dealt with or escaped. I think that’s where the horror interpretation is coming from. How comfortable are you with yourself and your journey? Some of it is frightening on paper. The Jabberwocky is quite terrifying. You would not want to run into that fella in a dark alley. But at the same time, knowing there’s this allegory within the journey is what matters more to me. But not everybody is comfortable going into that space.

FB

The journey of self-discovery in the story is really powerful and has always resonated with me.

DD

It’s probably because of Alice that I channel that in a lot of my characters, who are going through a journey of self-discovery, at times, it is terrifying, and other times, it’s wonderful in ways they didn’t anticipate. Like in The Inn at the Amethyst Lantern, the main character has to become a leader. She’s a 14-year-old in this futuristic lunar punk society that is faced with a threat from our time that she has no point of reference for and she’s got to rally not only herself and her own insecurities, but an entire team of teenagers to stop another apocalypse.

FB

Do you think that’s why Alice has resonated for over 150 years? Thematically it is very adaptable to a new era and we keep re-inventing it to reflect what’s going on right now. For me, the world is so upside down and so chaotic. Facts are not facts and logic is not logic. So the illogical world of Wonderland and the adventure that Alice is on feels exactly like what’s going on.

DD

Looking-glass too, because I’ve heard the phrase so many times in the past few years, “We’re really through the looking-glass now.” With any fracture point in human history where there’s been a massive event, such as a World War, political crisis, or pandemic, we have the instant reaction of wanting to cling to something familiar. But then we look at that thing and we suddenly see a new meaning in it. We see ourselves in it again, but not as children. Maybe we could see ourselves as children starting over again, because we’ve had to reboot and reboot and reboot, again through major loss on a big scale. A lot of people don’t want to look at it like that. They want to go back to their regular world, they don’t want to be in this weird new world again. Then other people thought their old world was crap and they want to be in Wonderland or make their own Wonderland. I think some people have really tapped into that, which is what I’ve been doing with my stories. We just were attaching meaning because we feel like we’re dangling so we need to grab for something. Finding all these different interpretations fascinates me but it makes sense in the context that we’re just trying to figure this out as a society and as individuals.

FB

You hear Winter Wonderland a lot because it represents a magical, happy, beautiful cloud, the idea of escaping into a better place. You hear “down the rabbit hole” and “we’re all mad here all the time.” Interestingly, it finds its way into politics and pop culture. Alice seems to be a muse for us creators and writers. Mine’s pretty direct but in all the people I’ve interviewed, they’re often talking about just what you suggested, a time in your life where you were introduced to it and you took that inspiration, that theme and you put it into one of your stories.

DD

Sometimes that wasn’t even intentional. Sometimes I look back and go, “Oh, my God, it’s obvious now.” There’s this sibling relationship. There’s this girl who has to go into an unprecedented situation with a lot of monsters and weird stuff. The line is right there. That template of having that at a young age is so interesting. I wonder what it must be like as an adult to discover Wonderland. It would be amazing to get that perspective.

FB

I think people pull this collective history of Alice into their thinking, so you can’t separate all these years of influence. So usually people are, they’re trying to figure out the influence. Is it really the original? Or is it the Jefferson Airplane song plus the Beatles song plus The Matrix? It’s a tapestry.

DD

You hear the phrase “red-pilled” all the time, right?

FB

And it was “eat me” and “drink me” in the Lewis Carroll stories. So it’s gonna continue to morph and influence culture. You talked about The Wizard of Oz and Gregory Maguire’s Wicked was a big deal. I called Gregory when I started writing The Looking Glass Wars for advice and he told me to do a musical. Because, with the first novel, he had sold about 500,000 books, which wasn’t anything compared to what happened with the musical.

DD

That was a true phenomenon. It’s interesting to think about how stories eventually become myths. It’s quite possible that Alice is starting to enter mythology, as is Dorothy. These are new myths, as is Luke Skywalker. These are our new fairy tales versus ones that are ancient. So, these become the new myths and the new fairy tales.

FB

I’m glad you brought that up because I’m interested in myth and folklore in storytelling and I do like that idea of a new myth. One of the archetypes is obviously good and evil. But lately, I’ve been thinking about what people are looking for thematically. Yes, good and evil. But it seems to me that people are wondering what’s real. Because the world seems so fake and when facts are not facts, then what do you have to hold on to? What do you think?

DD

I’ve seen both things going on, where people go back, but then it’s all fantasy because nostalgia tricks us. It’s the pill we take when we choose to not want to believe reality. Our own stream of reality, what we’ve been through in our lives and culture is itself a constantly evolving and nebulous thing. If we stopped the present, what are we now? But we often think in terms of, “Oh, that was a better time”. But if you really were there and you experienced it, was it really a better time? It’s a matter of kind of collectively wanting to forget, wanting to toss the sting and sip the honey. So there’s that coming into play. Now we have the “wonderful” A.I. coming on. Say nothing of taking some of our writers and artists’ jobs. But, like in Blade Runner, we’re very much questioning what makes us human. How do we retain our humanity in a world in which AI is increasingly prevalent? Technology has unified us in ways that would seem miraculous, but at the same time, it’s easier to split off into our own little pockets.

FB

You have a deep background in science, you write science articles, and you work for a biotech company. You write space operas, I think of Star Wars or Dune, which is one of my favorites.

So how do you take that technology and cultural relevance and craft your worlds?

DD

The Shadow Galaxy is a collection of short stories and poetry and there are sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and some fairy tales, set in Appalachia. One in particular is relevant right now, and it’s called “Roder” and it’s a heartbreaker story. It involves a human woman who discovers a robot she falls in love with, like the movie Her. But we become attached to these artificial people and science fiction, it’s often a trope, but it’s understanding our own humanity by considering the other of the artificial person. I think that building from the grounding of, you always want to appeal to someone’s humanity, no matter if you’re writing something that’s set in deep space, or underground in a cave, or in some strange realm that appears on a foggy night. But you also have to introduce that feeling of uncertainty and to do that you need to think ahead in terms of, what if this fantastic thing happened? Or what if this really terrible thing happened? How do we react? I always like to frame the science in everything that I write, because I like to insert ecology in fantasy, science fiction, and horror. In fact, in the dragon book that’s on submission right now, there’s a lot of ecology to it and there’s a lot of environmental interaction between different species. Frank Herbert’s Dune is a good example of using ecology. I don’t always stick to what I know but I like a grounding, just so a reader can connect with something that exists in the real world, even if they’re being transported to another place.

FB

I like how you mix science fiction with fantasy. But how would you describe the difference between high fantasy and sci-fi? Obviously, there’s all the space and alien components but from a world-building perspective, in terms of whether it’s creating the magic or the technology behind the weapons or the science, what’s in your head? Do you do a lot of research?

DD

It depends on how grounded you want to be. For example, I took a long sword class because there was a character who has to learn how to wield a sword and I needed to know how that feels and what you would need to do. So, there is research that you need to do if you’re doing a sword and sorcery story but the technology in most fantasy realms is magic. That is the main form of technology but you do have other forms of tech. You have swords and staffs and things like that. It depends on what level you want to play in. Is it a magic sword or just a regular sword?

A lot of times people like to say that magic is technology we haven’t invented yet, and there’s something to that. We’re often inspired by these fantastical stories to come up with something that would have seemed like magic 100-200 years ago. That was one thing that I thought Star Trek did really well because on the face of it, it seems like science fiction but they were doing some pretty fantastical things. But it’s nice to come around the world thinking that way. I’ve got technology and physics, or the skewering of physics depending on how hard sci-fi it is, versus introducing any fantasy element into the sci-fi. The spectrum of strictly adhering to science as we know it, versus projecting something that could be that we just don’t know yet.

Because I have a science background, I have a bias toward wanting to get more of that into my work no matter what genre it is. However, my husband, Gareth L. Powell, does not have a science background, and he writes science fiction novels so you can do some research. I do encourage it because scientists love it when you ask. For the thriller I just recently finished, I had to talk to somebody at NASA about something they’ve been working on because I needed to have a real-world parallel or at least a comparison and I wanted to make sure that I had some things right. So they don’t mind at all, reach out to them. It depends on your level because I do know some sci-fi writers who have never done the research and that’s gutsy. I wouldn’t be able to do that. But at the same time, they might be coming up with things that project their other perspective onto something that could potentially help us in the future that scientists could then take.

FB

What about the characters’ dialogue? If it’s a sci-fi story and you’re dealing with scientific topics or eccentric things that are going on, you’re going to be putting words in their mouth. Then in a fantasy world, it could be a language or terminology that you completely invent. But at the heart of it, how do you pierce the humanity in the magic and the technology? That’s what people really care about in the melodrama of the space opera.

DD

I like to tap into characters who are trying to figure out who the heck they are. So I keep going back to that well and asking each character who they are. A friend of mine will set up a fake interview of each of his characters to ask them what their favorite things are, and what scares them. I think that’s a brilliant idea for building characters because it really grounds them as part of the world, that is world building is making a great character. You could have the most incredible setting out in the stars or another fantasy realm, but it does not matter if the characters don’t capture the imagination. You have to add that human element and the interactions with other species or people depending on your worlds and give tension or distrust, or friendship or love, or whatever it is. It’s so incredibly crucial to any story that you write.

FB

That’s what we humans crave. That’s what we relate to.

We met in 2017. We talked on the phone and I don’t recall how we met each other but I do recall you asking for advice. I want to tell my listeners that as a writer who’s been published and who traveled a lot, I have a lot of aspiring writers who’ve asked me for advice and told me about their books. And I never heard from them again. But for me to see your books start to come out over the years and you build up your portfolio of work and your readers has been really quite delightful and a joy. So, what were those words of wisdom that I shared that motivated you to this deep level of writing?

DD

I had written the bones of The Questrison Saga when I was a young teen. After years of tumult in moves and then becoming a parent, I finally came back to it and finished it. But then I was floundering. What do I do with this thing? How do I get this out there? So then a mutual friend of ours was like, “Oh, you might want to talk to Frank Beddor.”

I had no idea of your history at all, so here we are having this conversation, and you said, “Tell me about Heliopause.” So I just tell you about it and you go, “That’s the best verbal pitch I’ve ever heard.” I was like, “Oh, cool.” But then I realized, “Oh my God, he’s a producer. He hears pitches all the time.” So that was a real confidence boost. I felt boosted anyway, but then coming back around and realizing that you hear pitches all the time, it was really wonderful. I really thank you for that because it did give me confidence and you read it in a very rough state. You encouraged me. You said there was a good story here and to get it polished and get it out there.

I originally wanted to self-publish because I knew we were at a state in which we could have a very high-quality self-published book and I knew nobody would want the saga the way I wanted it. But I did, after much cajoling, go through the court process and became close with several agents. But finally, I decided, “Not with this series. This is too close to me. I have to do this my way.” And I didn’t realize how much work that would mean and how much self-promotion but I’m glad that I did it because I got myself out there. You have to get yourself out there for readers to find your work if you don’t have a big publishing house behind you. So it was a lot of work and very satisfying. It taught me a lot about publishing which will be essential in starting my own imprint.

But you gave me such a great push at the right time and I thank you forever for that. Then we reconnected in 2019 when I was attempting to get some work in Hollywood and, at that time, we were talking about show bibles and that was good practice to come up with those things. It helped me think differently about making characters and describing them. That became relevant for making synopses for being on submission with an agent.

FB

The process of creating a synopsis and a mini-bible for a TV show is almost exactly the same for a book and a publisher or an agent. There are all these things that they want you to do on spec to get their attention. I’m happy I steered you and was one of the many people influencing your success.

But let’s go back to that first book, Heliopause. What were the choices in terms of being an independent publisher of your own books? I was really struck by the quality of your cover and the way that you dealt with the fonts and the title. These are really delicate, important issues that help people choose your book and publishers get really anal about their influence on that because I ended up using a lot of the artwork that I had commissioned and Penguin had to license the art for me to put it on my cover. But I was so thrilled because I love the artwork and I thought it was better than anything they could have come up with. But they’re also really good at it and I’ve made a few bad mistakes by trying to influence covers, especially in Germany, where I saw their artwork and I told them that can’t be the best artwork you could come up with but turns out, that’s what Germans like.

DD

Tapping into culture is a really good point and something that I have to consider when I start publishing other authors’ books. For my purposes, I already had a very defined sense of what I wanted. I wanted to give a nod to Vincent Di Fate and John Berkey, classic sci-fi covers that looked painted. I didn’t want them to look too CGI. I wanted a classic look that was really vivid and gorgeous. The artist Leon Tukkar did the front and the back of these paperbacks. It’s a wonderful spread of art.

What you want is you want it to look like something you would go and pick off the shelf at a bookstore. You want it to look as though someone else did it. I see a lot of people started to use AI art, which I’m not fond of, for multiple reasons, because I like to pay artists for their work.

FB

Was it digital only to start with or did you print them as well?

DD

I did paperback and ebook through IngramSpark Lightning Source because they have global distribution and it’s print on demand for the paperbacks, so it’s freshly printed and shipped off from the distributor directly each time it’s ordered. Then they upload multiple forms of ebooks, everything from Kobo to Kindle and all the other formats to all the major booksellers. It’s slick. Really straightforward and simple.

FB

It’s so satisfying to have the finished book and, now for you, the finished series. How was this experience? Was it primarily for the love of the series, the creative part of it? Or were you able to make enough money that you would do it again? Or is that why you’re going to a publisher now? Tell me about your thinking and the financial realities of something like this.

DD

The financial reality is that you will spend a lot more doing this than you would have imagined unless you’re only doing ebooks, and the royalties are better if it’s an ebook only because you don’t have to deal with the supply of paper and that sort of thing. All the costs that go into making a physical book have jumped significantly in the past couple of years. The benefit of self-publishing is that you do have complete creative control and that’s highly appealing. I don’t just slap stuff up, though. I had two editors and I paid them, which is not cheap either. I think it is the most worthy expense aside from the cover art because you need somebody to read through it and offer advice and copy edits, and then you need a proofreader.

Then beta readers for sure. Because they’re gonna find something that none of the rest of us found because we all have looked at it too many times. Usually, I like to send them the manuscript pretty early, once I have edited it a few times and read through it. You need BETA readers because when you’re doing it yourself, you don’t have this whole team working on getting these books out. It’s only you and you need to invest in the right people to help you make these books the best they can be because people will absolutely respond if it’s poorly made or if there are glaring errors.

FB

Now that you have a traditional publisher, having that experience, will you ever go back to self-publishing?

DD

That’s a good question, and a little complex, considering I’m starting my own imprint, which is primarily meant to publish other authors but theoretically I could put my own book out on my own imprint at some point.

The Shadow Galaxy came out on March 3 and was published by Trepidatio, which is an imprint of JournalStone and then The Inn at the Amethyst Lantern is out from Android Press. Lantern is my first young adult novel and it’s sci-fi fantasy mixed and Shadow Galaxies is cross-genre. I have a short story collection related to The Questrison Saga. I need to decide if I want to self-publish but to be honest with you, the goal now, having an agent, is to get a pretty big publishing deal and get global reach because it’s just a different world. I don’t have a publicity team and even if I did, it wouldn’t match Big Five publishing. It depends on what you want to do. If you’re doing this just for the joy of it and you want to do the small circuit and go to all the cons and have a table, there’s beauty in that. You can sell a decent amount but you will be capped in your potential for the audience and potential for income, and, of course, you have your own expenses to add in. So you have to think about that. Also, you’re more likely with traditional publishing to have someone discover it and perhaps option it.

FB You have a big sales team that visits the independent bookstores regularly and they talk up the book. But even that pales in comparison to what they ask the author to do in terms of building a community of readers and fans, whether it’s through schools, comic cons, or speaking engagements. That is really the most crucial thing. Because once you have that community, and those early adopters and those people that really love your work, you already have your foot soldiers when you release a new book. They’re your beta readers. They’re out there spreading the gospel.

DD

That’s something that you can do even if you’re not like me. I’m an extrovert writer but I know a lot of writers are introverts as well and there are still avenues to build that community. What’s really interesting to me is people discovered The Questrison Sage in multiple ways. I had some discover me at a table at a con and just literally selling, throwing out my pitch every other minute. You have to have that sales pitch down.

FB

How did you come to rent a space or a table at a ComiCon? Who inspired that? Because that’s something that I did in 2005 and I was blown away by how many people wanted to buy books because I thought it was a comic book convention only. People loved reading and I thought, “This is the place to launch novels. I don’t know why all the publishers aren’t there.” How did you realize that was such a sweet spot to get your book out?

DD

I’m a nerd myself and I have been to some conventions, also, I just asked other writers what worked for them. So looking to people who are successful and constantly gathering that information because it changes with time and we have to adapt. Obviously, in 2020, we couldn’t have in-person events so we had to quickly pivot to online. That actually turned out to be pretty great and those online events are continuing. People from all over the world will join and they’re paying to see different writer’s perspectives and to learn how to write books and publish and promote and all these different things.

I take notes at every convention I’m at and I haven’t had a table in a few years, but I’ve been a panelist and that’s another way of getting support. You’re gonna have a huge audience that has never heard of you or your work before. I’ve been on Star Wars panels. I’ve been on panels about how to write psychologically rich characters. I made a panel for the Nebula Awards, based on an article I wrote called “The Ecology of World-Building” for the Science Fiction Writers Association. I’m gonna be part of a pretty impressive writers’ workshop at a university this coming spring and I will be leaning into ecology for genre fiction. So you lean into whatever your specialties are. But in terms of the actual boots-on-the-ground sales you have to decide if you want to invest the money to be there because it costs a lot depending on the convention. I started out small and CondorCon in San Diego was intimate and there were a lot of book-buying visitors. Honestly, splitting the cost of a booth or table with another writer is the best thing because not only does it save you both money, but you also have a booth buddy.

FB

I’m a fan of the smaller cons. They’re creator-driven and they’re more exploratory and they’ll take risks and try things, especially when it comes to selling. But what you said about the pitch is so true. You have to get that pitch down to 30 seconds.

DD

You also need your display to be very visually interesting. It also doesn’t hurt, in my case, to have my double chocolate brownies. But you can have a poster made of your book cover so it captures attention. That’s how I’ve sold a lot of books. First, you draw them in and then you give your pitch. They go with it or they don’t, but that visual is essential.

FB

I normally ask people, if they were a character from Alice in Wonderland, who they would be and why. But since you and I are both fans of the 14 Wizard of Oz books if you were one of the Wizard of Oz characters, who would you be?

DD

That’s really hard because I love so many of them. I love Ozma a lot. I loved it when she was kidnapped. That sounds terrible but she seemed too powerful at that point. She had been tipped and went back and forth, been the boy and then the girl, and then took her role as leader of Oz and she seemed a little too locked up in herself. Then she gets kidnapped. A powerful fairy queen gets kidnapped. Pretty incredible. I actually loved that because you saw more of her humanity than her fairy side. Of course, I love Dorothy.

I also love Tik-Tok, one of the first robots in literature. He was a wind-up copper round bowl of a fella and influenced one of my short stories. “Copper,” the short story, is about a robot in the near future who develops an interesting ability after his person undergoes tremendous grief. It’s a touching story and it’s kind of wacky, just like the Oz books and Wonderland. Copper is a very interesting character. I love riding robots. There are robots in a lot of my writing. Even The Inn of the Amethyst Lantern has some really interesting house bots that perform multiple functions depending on the time of day or night. I’ve always been fascinated by robots so Tick-Tock is one of my favorites, although the Sawhorse is pretty great, too. I’ve always loved the dynamic between the Tin Man and Scarecrow, and, as flawed as she was, Eureka was fascinating. I have actually illustrated Ozma and Billina, by the way, in the Art Nouveau style. I love illustrating the Oz characters.

FB

I’ve really enjoyed this. I’m a huge fan of Carl Sagan and he has a quote about imagination – “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere.” You have used your imagination to carry us off in many different directions and stories, and I think my readers and listeners are going to enjoy discovering you and your work. I hope they’ll pick up some of your novels and enjoy them as much as I have. So, thank you for being on All Things Alice. It’s been a real pleasure.

DD

Thanks so much. It’s been great talking to you.

For the latest updates & news about All Things Alice,  please read our blog and subscribe to our podcast!

As an amateur scholar and die-hard enthusiast of everything to do with Alice in Wonderland, I have launched a podcast that takes on Alice’s everlasting influence on pop culture. As an author who draws on Lewis Carroll’s iconic masterpiece for my Looking Glass Wars universe, I’m well acquainted with the process of dipping into Wonderland for inspiration.

The journey has brought me into contact with a fantastic community of artists and creators from all walks of life—and this podcast will be the platform where we come together to answer the fascinating question: “What is it about Alice?”

It is my great pleasure to have Curtis Clark join me as my guest! Read on to explore our conversation and check out the whole series on your favorite podcasting platform to listen to the full interview. For the full transcript with exclusive content, join our private Circle community.

Frank Beddor

Curtis Clark. Welcome to the show. It’s always a pleasure to chat with you, especially about story and creativity.

I am very interested in how a man who is as creative as you are – writing television shows, comic books, movies, games – made his way from a farm in the Midwest to Hollywood. Were you always a very creative kid? You knew you didn’t want to be on the farm?

Curtis Clark

You hit the nail on the head there. I have two older brothers, six and four years older, and because of that I was constantly being introduced to films that were probably not appropriate for me at that age. I was watching Terminator when I was six. I watched a movie called Black Rain, which had a decapitation scene in it, when I was not old enough to be doing that.

At the same time, my brothers were working on the farm and I just couldn’t keep up with them. I think you go one of two ways in those situations. You either get really good at that thing because you have older role models, or you get so frustrated because you can’t keep up that you do the exact opposite. I just didn’t have the same level of interest because everybody in my family was doing it and they were better at it than I was. Also, I’m the third son, so I think for my father, there was less pressure to make sure that I was also going to be a farmer. So eventually I went the opposite way. As much as I love and respect the farm, I knew it was not going to be my future.

FB

Set the scene for me in terms of a dinner conversation with your parents and your brothers when you have the life on a farm. Then, this creativity, is it coming from mom or dad, both of them? Who nurtured it?

CC

Probably my older brother Peter the most, but I’ve also had the same best friends since childhood, Mark, Bryan, and Jake. They were also very nerdy like me so we were constantly bringing new things into each other’s lives. I’d be at the dinner table with my parents and brothers, and they’d be talking about the farm or whatever and I was 10,000 miles away thinking about playing Dungeons and Dragons with my friends or playing Final Fantasy, or Magic the Gathering or a comic book I was in the middle of reading.

We lived a very classic 80s-90s lifestyle. It was very standard. But then, my parents got divorced when I was 11 and everything changed. Suddenly, I was bouncing between households and all of that. I brought up my childhood friends because they were constant through all of that. They’re the thing that never changed.

FB

Did you find yourself taking solace in these games? Because you’ve mentioned games and books but with games, you’re able to really play with your friends, and talk about the game mechanics and how it works. Books are more solitary.

CC

When I was a kid, you weren’t playing over the internet, so we were all getting together and playing a video game or Magic the Gathering or Dungeons and Dragons. My games went with me as I switched between my parents’ houses. I’d take my PlayStation and play Final Fantasy VII. I’d take my Super Nintendo so I could play Mario Kart. I’d bring whatever book I was ripping through or my binder with all my Magic cards.

FB

Your childhood sounds like Stranger Things. I immediately flashed on those kids downstairs playing Dungeons and Dragons. Is that what it was like?

CC

100%. We had one window in our basement and we’d cover it up so it’d be pitch black and we’d play this game called the “Dark Game.” No joke, we would make it pitch black in our basement and just feel around the ground and when we found someone, we’d beat the crap out of them and run away. One time this kid named Vic Preston was in the basement and he turned all the furniture on its side. We got so weirded out because we didn’t know what we were touching and he was hanging off a bar stool and he’d dropped down on somebody and started punching them.

FB

Oh, that is the coolest story ever!

What I’m really curious to hear from you is how you took your passion for all these pop culture mediums and how that propelled you to want to have a career in the entertainment industry.

CC

I don’t know that I had a great plan. I was in college for public relations and I interned at a place called the Concept Farm in New York City. I was always interested in writing, but I thought writers were unicorns. They were these things that were born. I didn’t realize it was a tradecraft. I didn’t realize that it was just hard work. That was something that I had a great example of growing up, my brother Jake, my dad, and my mom, everybody worked hard.

So I go to Concept Farm and I’m on the top floor, and the floor below is where they did the creative production stuff. I’m down there one day and I’m talking to this guy and I find out he’s the guy who writes copy for the ESPN Spelling Bee commercials. And I was like, “You’ve got to be effing kidding me! This guy?!” There was nothing wrong with him but I couldn’t believe this guy was the unicorn. This doesn’t make any sense. That was the first time I realized that you just have to choose to do this thing. Writing’s always been a confluence of all of my interests. Whether it’s fantasy, science fiction, even sports, I started to realize that I’ve always gravitated to story and characters.

Playing with my cousins, John and Ben, we’d get all our G.I. Joes and do our little G.I. Joe missions. They’d have the good guys kill all the bad guys in five minutes. I’d be over on the other side, setting all these cars up in a line, like they’re moving like a Mad Max chase. The bad guys would have killed all but one of the good guys. The good guy would have captured the robot that the bad guys had and reprogrammed him and they would have fought back together. I had just seen Road Warrior so it was like 30-minute long Mad Max fan fiction.

So, I met this guy at the Concept Farm and was like, “Oh my God, that’s a writer. What the heck?” I graduated with my P.R. degree then turned around and got into film school at Grand Valley, which has got a decent film program. I met with this guidance counselor and he asked “Why do you want to go to film school? You already have a degree.” I said, “I want to be a writer.” He goes, “Look, you’re gonna go to school with a bunch of 18-year-olds, you’re gonna waste a bunch of money here. If you really want to try this, you should just move to Hollywood.” So, I come back out to the car and my girlfriend, now wife, asks how it went. I told her what the counselor said about Hollywood, which wasn’t even on the radar for me. We were gonna move to this town and live near my friend, Mark. It was gonna be a fun little thing. My wife asks, “Well, what are we gonna do?” I was like, “I don’t know. What should we do?” And she just goes, “Fuck it. Let’s move to Hollywood.”

FB

No wonder you married her. Not very many girlfriends would say, “Fuck it. Let’s move to Hollywood on the whim of a writing career.”

CC

By the way, at that point, I had written one screenplay and it was God awful. No one should ever see this thing. All your first work should be absolutely embarrassing to you once you get good enough at something. But we drove out here and got our first apartment, our monthly rent was larger than any bill we’d ever paid before, and I started out looking for PA work, background work. Eventually I got a job at a bar and settled into a routine where I’d write six to eight hours a day five days a week and work at the bar three or four days a week at night. My wife started going back to school and we built a life that way. I met you after maybe a year and somehow I got work. It was crazy. I fell on my face over and over again and got crushed by the boulder I was pushing up the hill like Sisyphus until I figured it out.

FB

I love doing this podcast because I know you, we’ve done some great scripts and projects together, but I didn’t know the story about what your wife said and the courage that you both showed to just hit the road, make the commitment, and see what happens.

CC

My dad thought I’d be back in two weeks. I got my first job through a Craigslist posting actually. I was a P.A. on this short film called Burying the Ex. It was my first time ever being on set, I worked 55 hours in three days for no money. I laid in an open grave, pressing up on a box like I was a person coming to life. I talked to a guy at the graveyard and distracted him so that we could do pickup shots in places we were not supposed to. The police almost put me in handcuffs because they didn’t understand why we’re outside this restaurant late at night. Then, at the end of it, they put me in the thing, because they wanted a guy in the scene who was as tall as the lead, who was John Francis Daley. Then they made me deliver a line. This all happened in the first weekend I was in L.A. All of these “only in Hollywood stories.”

FB

What was the first line?

CC

John Francis Daly’s character thinks that my girlfriend is this girl he’s supposed to be on a blind date with. He starts talking to her and I walk up like a jerk, which is hilarious, because I weighed like 135 pounds at the time. But I threaten him. I’m like, “Can I help you? No, no, no. Can I help you?”

FB

You never forget the first line.

You tell the story that you were upset with me because I didn’t get right back to you after we met. I was taking my kid to a bowling birthday party and you were working at the desk. How’d you get that job, by the way, working behind the desk at a bowling alley?

CC

I met a guy playing basketball at LA Fitness, which by the way, is a great place to meet people in Hollywood. So I met this guy and his friend worked at the bar in the bowling alley, so the friend got me a job at the front desk. I’d bring my laptop so I could write while I was behind the desk, so when you walked in you saw me editing a really horrible script and that’s how you and I connected.

FB

At that time, I was just getting in the mindset of, “I wonder if I can find some folks that might be interested in writing these comics that I had been considering.” I remember, almost hesitating, like, “Should I really ask him? I’m just gonna ask.” So, when I asked what you were working on, and you told me, there was just something authentic. Maybe it was the Midwest vibe that I picked up on. That started the conversation and, you tell the story much better than I do, because I didn’t know what was going on in your mind until you wrote that blog for me, which was very funny.

CC

I needed mentors. I needed access. I needed all sorts of things. I didn’t know my elbow from my ass. So, you came in and we talked back and forth and you gave me a business card. I was like, “Holy shit, a business card!”.

FB

That’s what’s so funny to me. Just your reaction now. I remember having business cards, but no one gives out business cards anymore. It made me chuckle that the business card was the thing that ended up, as you called it, leveling up.

CC

Business cards were my existence because there’s no ladder with this industry. Nothing makes sense. There’s no one way to do it. So when you get something tangible, when someone says, “Hey, man, call me, that is sometimes all you have to be like, “I’m not wasting my early 20s. I’m not moving away from my family who I love.”

There are tons of people who come out here to do a thing, say they’re gonna do it, and never do it. They’re here for like 10 years and they turn around and leave with nothing. It’s like the sirens in The Odyssey. It was a way for me to be like, “Hey, you’re you’re working. You’re trying.” I could talk to you know, people back home and say, “I just met so and so and I’m trying to do this thing.” The reason I was mad at you is because I dropped off a comic book I was working on at your office, which was at the Samsung building. First, the building looked like this giant castle. I’m thinking I’m going to climb the stairs to the castle because the wizard is up there. So I go up the castle stairs and I get to your office and I put my hand on the door handle, thinking “I’m gonna charm the shit out of this guy.” It’s locked. You weren’t even in the office that day. So, I had to slide the comic book underneath the door with a note like “Bowling alley guy says hi.”

FB

I remember that too. “Oh, fuck, the bowling alley guy actually followed up.”

CC

The worst part about that was I just slid it under your door and that was it. So the reason why I was getting frustrated is because early on, you’re clinging to these opportunities and I had run fast and hard in the wrong direction. Because when you’re starting out, especially, there’s so many bullshitters. This goes back to Eagle, Michigan. I grew up in a small town. My dad was a businessman, hired locals and worked with a bunch of landowners. Everything was a handshake. If you didn’t do what you said you were going to do, you were screwed because it would destroy your reputation. It could not be more different in Los Angeles. I didn’t understand that someone could lie to your face and not do what they said they were going to do.

FB

That was shocking to me as well, because my father was exactly the same way. It still startles me. I still underestimate the need for the deep set of paperwork.

CC

With you not getting back to me, it was probably the exact same time that a bunch of other things weren’t working out. To any young writers listening to this: That’s totally normal. Don’t be deterred. But what I did next is also totally normal. I kept following up. At one point, I told myself, no joke, that I’m not following up again. Because I think at that point, I just had other people not get back to me. But I followed up one more time and you emailed me back in like three minutes. It wasn’t like, “Hey, man, I got it. I’ll get back to you.” You said something like, “Come into my office, I might have a job for you.”

FB

I had read your comic book and really liked it. Then I thought, “I’m gonna hire this guy. This could really work out.” Then, you came into the office, and we started chatting. Did I ask you at the time if you were a fan of Alice in Wonderland or what your introduction to Alice was or if you had any interest?

CC

No matter what you would have asked me, I would have said yes. I don’t remember. But, at that point, I knew who you were and what you were about as best I could from the internet and from buying one of your books.

FB

Where does Alice in Wonderland fit, if at all, in the games and books you were reading growing up? It doesn’t sound like you’re kind of story based on the action and Dungeons and Dragons. But I could be wrong.

CC

I was aware of it. I saw the Disney cartoon. I knew the characters. I’d seen the Tom Petty music video. I was aware of its presence in pop culture but I wasn’t the type who was gonna get a Cheshire Cat tattoo.

FB

I think we did talk about it because I could have an answer for either way. If you loved Alice, I could say you’re gonna love my book. It takes a spin on it and it tries to honor the original but carve out its own space. If you didn’t like the original or you weren’t aware of it, my book is a whole new world with jumping off places from Alice in pop culture.

CC

Of course you have two takes, you’re a good pitch man.

FB

The deal with the comic was you can take as much time as you need, you can pick the story,  so it’s going to be your creativity. Here’s all I need. I need Hatter in the story. I need to feel like I’m into it. I had no idea that I was going to get a sports story. I certainly didn’t think I was going to get a baseball story. What piqued my interest was how you were going to introduce Hatter into a baseball story with any logic at all. But you did a very good job of him finding his way onto this team and him demanding to know where the lost princess was and the coach or one of his teammates says, “You’re gonna have plenty of time to talk to your female fans out there. Just get dressed.”

CC

Hatter’s mistaken for some schmuck who played on a team. He looked like the right fielder.

FB

The thing was you played into the fish out of water, but in a little bit of an awkward way for Hatter. He’s used to being this imposing figure and if anyone threatens him, he’s going to take you out. That’s the usual set up, we’re going to meet Hatter, somebody underestimates him and then he shows his skills. But in your case, you’re introducing the American pastime and he’s a fish out of water the entire time. He’s just trying to keep up. I absolutely loved it.

CC

It was my wife’s favorite thing that I had written up until that point. She liked the end of it, where he doesn’t find her but he sees how the crowd is so into baseball and thinks, “If this can exist on Earth, maybe she is safe.” It captivated the audience’s imaginations. So, I had a little button on it that was pretty cute.

FB

You seem to be pretty enamored with spies and heist movies because we did two heist movies together as well as the Crossfire graphic novel. I love that book so much. The cover, by Vincent Proce, is spectacular. Inside, Sami’s tone and color palette is really spectacular. You did a really great job on the paneling, and pulling out moments of action and suspense, which goes to this question that I’m asking you about heist movies and spy thrillers. Where did the inspiration come from?

CC

The thing about them is the genre. The wonderful thing about genre film is also the thing that some people hate about it, which is that it can be somewhat formulaic. But when you can get into the meta of it, then it becomes a lot of fun. The second of the two heist films we did is, I can’t give too much away as neither of us own it, but it’s telling the audience it’s one heist film, and using all of the structure to subvert the audience because it’s actually another film. That’s what I really like about genre. We didn’t get to do as much with that in these books, because we were introducing so much stuff, but we did enough of it. The thing I really liked about the films we did was it gives you a different set of tools, because the audience has such specific expectations. It’s the type of film where they want to out think you, they want to be ahead of it. But you can trick the audience and play their expectations off them and it’s a lot of fun.

FB

What I liked about the second story we developed is the father-son aspect of it and grounding it in something very universal. It’s especially the tension between a son trying to live up to the expectation of a larger-than-life father figure who’s very good at his job.

You did a great job. You’re really good at genre. You’re also really good at world creation. Understanding your background and the games that you were inventing on your own, it’s self evident, having worked with you now, why you’re so good at that. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to work with you on Crossfire and Under Fire, there was a lot of story to get out and a lot of concepts that I wanted to set up. But the revelation of Crossfire was the character that you came up with, Ovid, who is a former milliner turned spy. We used to call him the James Bond of Wonderland.

CC

You had done such a great job with the books, but there were a lot of pieces of Alice in Wonderland, a lot of characters that you hadn’t placed in your world yet, such as the chessmen, the house of cards, the Griffin character.At the same time, you’re also expanding to the Borderlands and Morgavia and all of these places. So to me, that was fuel on the fire. But, with comic books, you have a limited amount of real estate, so it’s challenging that way. I think each one of those chapters could have been its own book, to be honest.

FB

I agree with you, but I also agree that it was challenging. I also agree that we probably put more in both of those books than we needed to but I found what you did successfully was dropping in on the page. With comic books, you might get the stamp of the location and then there’s the dialogue bubbles, and then you’re like, “Okay, where’s this going?” You really have to be mindful of the art and how the panels are helping communicate the story, and what’s between the panels so that it sparks the reader’s imagination and you did that really successfully.

CC

It’s a different muscle than screenwriting. Comics are not screenplays and screenplays are not novels. All of it has to do with pacing and they all have their own limitations so it can be challenging. In the case of Crossfire, the scope, especially in the last chapter, where the invasion is happening, there’s like 10 different fronts and you’re dealing with the pawns and there’s all these different places. With Alice, you’re gonna jump from scene to scene, whereas the chapter with Ovid, it’s basically P.O.V. from him. And also, for Sami, it’s not always the easiest thing in the world to have these big macro pullback shots when you’re trying to establish so much in one static image, whereas, in a movie, you’d be panning across, and you’d be punching in on all of these things. So it’s just a different story vehicle.

FB

What was great was, you set up the stakes. We got the stakes from Alice’s husband. We’re using Borderlands and we’re introducing the tribes, which we’re actually putting into action, which was awesome. Then we understand where Alice is at and then when you drop into Ovid, the reason that chapter is so effective is because it’s smaller, it’s character driven. It’s his relationship with somebody in our world. So you still get the balance of being in Wonderland and going back to our world. It mirrors what I did in Looking Glass Wars. Then at the end, you still pull off this epic battle that plays into when you were a kid, doing the Mad Max stuff. I’m seeing all these muscles working in this book. In Under Fire, we had a lot less real estate and, again, you did a really good job of focusing on the House of Cards, and giving us the Dirty Dozen team of card soldiers and giving them all particular specialties.

CC

That was one of my favorite things. I thought of the House of Cards as a fantasy version of G.I. Joe. It’s not just a direct translation of G.I. Joe but the idea of them each having their own rank, number, and symbol, they clearly could be specialists. So it developed from there, the idea that you deal yourself the hand you need to win the game. That’s what the House of Cards is. The customization of that is like a good video game selection screen. That’s where it comes from. From my childhood, there was an actual G.I. Joe video game side scroller where you had five different Joe’s, and it was like, “Okay, I’m gonna use this Joe on this level and use that Joe on that level.” It just made too much sense to me that that’s what the House of Cards would be. Then when you said you wanted to do The Dirty Dozen, it was like, “Oh, yeah, let’s slap a bunch of misfits into this whole thing and go from there.”

FB

Then we started to think about all the stories that we could build out from there and it became endless, like G.I, Joe, or Magic the Gathering. The graphic novel definitely has that game mechanic too.

CC

100%. I don’t know where the level of success with it in terms of comics would have to be, but it’s already a game in my head. It’s Magic the Gathering meets G.I. Joe. You have this paramilitary element and then you have the customization of building a deck like Magic the Gathering. That should show through with the work I did on the graphic novel. I would play that game.

FB

The thing about working with you on this, and even in this conversation, is I get really excited. Let’s keep building this thing out. There’s such a strong story engine, and the characters, and the world creation aspects that you brought to The Looking Glass Wars really expanded the possibilities. Not just in Crossfire and Under Fire, but you also assisted me with Hatter Madigan: Ghost in the Hatbox. I was starting to think about what four year school life at the millenary would be like you just put your hand up, “I’ll run with that. I have a few ideas.”

CC

I wrote a 30 page curriculum, freshman to senior year with two undergraduate years. The thing that’s cool about that is I did all that work, but maybe only 15-20% of it made it into the book, and a lot has changed. But that’s how it works. That’s why you do the development work. It starts to take on a life of its own.

FB

You wrote a script called Run, which you’ve written a lot of scripts, and we’ve all written a lot that’s still in a drawer somewhere, thank God. But Run was a really great calling card for you. Why don’t you tell the listeners about that script and why it was a door opener.

CC

When I was younger, I was looking for someone to give me some guideposts when it came to writing. Starting out, I had written some stuff that wasn’t great. I had written some stuff that was okay. I had gotten some jobs and I just worked my butt off, but I didn’t have that great sample. I was getting by on work ethic and passion but then just failing. I needed something that was professional. I needed a business card. Something that ticked all of the boxes. So I read as many science fiction features as I could find and I said, “This is going to look exactly like those.” That’s what I did on the page. That was Run. And sure enough, that ended up being the script that got me my rep. That is the script that got me working with some larger people out here.

The funny thing about it is, it’s never gone to buyers. I polished it not that long ago and cut 20 pages out, because I’m better technically now. But it was a very simple idea. It was about two androids on the run with their seven year old daughter who doesn’t know her parents aren’t human. That’s it. That’s the movie. It’s sci-fi, but it’s a family movie, a four quadrant film. It’s PG 13. It works internationally. I got close with it one time. A person who had a deal with Fox wanted Fox to buy for them but there was a competing project. It’s still a good sample, but I’ve moved beyond it in terms of being a writer.

Stay tuned Part 2 of my interview with Curtis in which we talk more Looking Glass Wars, his passion for sci-fi, and the new graphic novel he’s working on now.

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