Matt Forbeck was the first BL author to agree to be featured in Quote the Pro. I hope that he feels this act of bravery was worth the effort.
His latest Bloodbowl novel: Death Match was published in March 2006 the UK (and one month later in the States and rest of the world).
His excellent website: www.forbeck.com is packed full of interesting fiction, essays and a blog. It's well worth a visit.
1. How did you become a professional writer? Were you pushed or did you just fall into it?
From a young age, I knew I wanted to be a writer. My parents supported that, but they sent me to college to find a career that they hoped would pay the bills while I wrote on the evenings and weekends. At the University of Michigan I set up a customized degree program that would earn me a BS in electrical engineering and a BA in creative writing in five years.
Then I woke up one morning about two years into it and realized that I would never become a writer if I didn't toss myself in the deep end. After a long day as an engineer, it would be too easy to forget about writing and grab a beer instead. So I dropped the electrical engineering degree and finished with the creative writing degree in a total of three years.
When I got out of college, I fell into my other love, game design. I figured it would help me polish my writing skills too until I found some time to write a novel. I wrote a bunch of short fiction over the years, and I finally started lining up novels back in 2003.
My first was a CAV novella for Reaper Miniatures. That got the attention of Wizards of the Coast and the Black Library. I just signed for my eleventh novel last month, and I have a verbal agreement on a twelfth.
2. How did you land at Games Workshop back in 1989?
I wanted to visit Spain after I graduated from college, but I couldn't afford it. I looked into a student work visa, but Spain didn't have such a program for US citizens. So I looked for the closest country that had such a program, of which I spoke the language.
A few months later, I found myself on a one-way flight to the UK, student work visa in hand. I had a paltry $600 in my pocket, and I didn't know a soul in the entire country. From an ad in White Dwarf, I knew Games Workshop needed editors, so I phoned them up the morning I landed and got an interview set up.
On my second interview, I showed up with everything I owned in two duffel bags on my back and told the people at GW that if they didn't hire me I'd be on my way to Oxford, where a friend of a friend of a friend might be willing to put me up for a few nights until I found a job tending bar. But I got the job, so that never happened.
I worked there for six months, and GW offered me a permanent position. I turned it down to head back home to be with my girlfriend. She's now my wife and the mother of our five children, so that worked out better than I could have planned.
For those who want to know more, Matt has an essay called What Was I Thinking? posted on his website. Written for the charity jam anthology Horsemen of the Apocalypse (ed. Jim Dietz, Jolly Roger Games, 2000), It is packed full of interesting insights into his time at GW and his exploits the rest of the RPG industry.
3. Who are your biggest influences?
In life? My wife. She's fantastic, and she's always supported me in everything I've done. My parents always stood behind me too, even if they didn't always understand what I was doing.
Creatively, I'm eclectic. I'll watch, reach, examine, play, or read just about anything, as long as it's well done.
4. Could you give us a couple of examples of how the ideas for books came about?
For the Eberron novels, Wizards sent me a 12-page brief on their new D&D world and asked me for a pitch. The bit about the Lost Mark (the Mark of Death) intrigued me, so I decided to follow that as far as it would go.
For Blood Bowl, I sent Marc Gascoigne a dozen different short pitches for novels. Out of all those, he said, "Let's go with Blood Bowl. I like that." From there, the idea of a rookie working his way through the first three years of his career seemed natural.
The pitch for the Knights of the Silver Dragon series I created for Wizards took a bit longer. My editor there rejected my first two shots at it. Then I realized that, since other authors would carry on with the series, I had to treat it more like episodic television. So I set up a setting and characters that you could take down from the shelf and play with as much as you liked, as long as you put them back in roughly the same condition in which you found them.
5. What's it like to write novels for a game that you worked on fifteen years before?
Fantastic. I loved working on the Blood Bowl Companion. In those long-ago days, I got to crawl all the way inside of the game and explore every nook and cranny of it. Writing books that share that setting is a real treat and feels like second nature because of that initial immersion.
6. How many words a day do you write and how do you structure your day?
I used to write about 5,000 words a day, but now that the kids are a bit older I spend a lot of time carting them around town. I shoot for 3,000 words a day.
I get up and get the kids to school, then sit down to work in my office. I try to put in an eight-hour day, but it's not always possible these days. Many times I write, but other times I work on game design, game consulting, updating my website, setting up signings and convention appearances, and coordinating other projects I'm working on. Some days are given over to outlining books, revising text, or editing other people's work.
7. Which parts of writing do you find the most arduous and which parts the most enjoyable?
Selling the writing is always the hardest part, but I love doing it. There's something about pitching a book and watching it catch fire in someone else's head that's intoxicating.
I don't like writing under deadlines, but I also find that without that pressure I never get anything done. It's contradictory, I know, but all too true.
8. Would you ever consider stepping outside the fantasy genre and writing science fiction or horror?
I already have. My first published short story was set in TORG's Nile Empire, a blend of science fiction and pulp adventure. I've also written stories for CAV (science fiction), Vampire and Changeling (horror), All Flesh Must Be Eaten (superheroes mixed with horror), and Deadlands (western horror).
I've worked on games in just about every genre too. I don't think of myself as a writer in any particular genre. I'm a writer, full stop.
9. Who's your favourite non-BL writer?
William King, although that's a bit of a cheat, since he used to be a BL author. Bill was my flatmate in Nottingham when I worked at the Games Workshop Design Studio, and we've been best friends ever since, even crossing oceans to attend each other's wedding.
Beyond Bill, I couldn't choose just one. However, I follow Jonathan Lethem, James Ellroy, and Dan Simmons, as well as the many novelists I count as friends.
10. What books are you reading at the moment?
I try to focus on one book at a time, but I don't always manage it. I act as Conan guru for Conan Properties, so I'm reading an upcoming novel in a new Conan series. I just finished Freakonomics, which spurs me to ask offbeat questions and think in interesting ways. I'm also reading an unauthorized biography of Las Vegas casino king Steve Wynn called Running Scared. Next up is The Color of Magic, because I've never read any Discworld novels, and I need to fix that.
11. A lot of people will be surprised that you have never read any books by a best-selling fantasy author like Terry Pratchett. How come?
It's not omission by design. There's just so much great stuff out there that it's impossible to read it all. It's one reason I'm so flattered when anyone puts down hard-earned cash to pick up one of my books.
I did read Good Omens which Pratchett wrote with Neil Gaiman, and I loved it. His solo work has been on my to-read list for a long time, but I'm finally now getting around to crossing that entry off.
12. When you become Evil Overlord for the day, what rule would you impose on the genre?
I only get to affect the genre? I'd make all the editors cater to my own tastes, of course, which would include assigning a lifetime worth of novels to me.
13. Any practical advice for aspiring writers?
Stick to it. Read everything you can. Be skeptical about what people tell you. Always consider the source. Question authority. More specifically, finish what you start before you go back and revise it. You can always go back and polish a book when it's done.
Matt has another great little essay on freelancing as a writer in the RPG industry posted on his website. If you want to read The Freelancing Life, click here.
14. Having read your essays on freelancing as a writer, I get the impression that you think every writer has to go out and create their career, that they have to take control of their own destiny.
I'd say that's true of anyone in any walk of life. It's especially true for creative sorts of any kind, as there's rarely a defined career path in such callings. If you don't take up the oars and start pulling you just drift wherever the tide might take you instead.
So that's it. Thank you Matt for making the time to do the interview.
- Martin Belderson
