Joe
Bonadonna is one the many friends I've made online who I wished I
lived closer to so that we could spend the whole day just hanging out
and talking about writing, books, movies and pop culture. Which would
probably means that neither one of us would get much work done and
thereby deprive you guys of a lotta good reading.
But
interviewing him is the next best thing and here we are with another
one. You can find previous interviews I've done with Joe HERE and
HERE. And now, go on and enjoy this one!
Derrick
Ferguson: What have you been up to since we last talked?
Joe
Bonadonna: Let’s see now, quite a lot has happened in
the last two or so years. I tried to get a sword and planet sequel to
my space opera, Three Against The Stars
completed, as well as a second “Mad
Shadows” novel. But other things got in
the way. First, in 2014 I wrote “Sinbad and
The Golden Fleece,” which appears in
SINBAD: THE NEW VOYAGES, VOL. 4, published
by Ron Fortier and our good friends at Airship 27 Productions.
Then
I wrote “We the Furious”
and “Undertaker’s Holiday”
(with author Shebat Legion) for POETS IN HELL,
volume 18 in the long-running Heroes
in Hell shared-universe series, created
by author Janet Morris in 1986, first published by Baen Books and now
published by her own Perseid Press. In 2015 I wrote two more novellas
for Perseid Press: “Hell on a Technicality,”
for DOCTORS IN HELL,
volume 19 in the Heroes in Hell series,
and “The Dragon’s Horde,”
for HEROIKA: DRAGON EATERS, the
first volume in Janet Morris’ new Heroic Fantasy anthology. Then I
went back to working on my novels. However, I got sidetracked once
again. In 2016 I wrote “The Pirates of
Penance,” a very long novella for PIRATES
IN HELL, volume 20 in the Heroes
in Hell saga, which is set to be
published sometime in early 2017. Then Shebat Legion and I wrote a
quirky little tale called “Samuel Meant
Well and the Little Black Cloud of the Apocalypse” for
the next volume in author/publisher Michael H. Hanson’s
shared-world series, SHA’DAA. Meanwhile,
“To Save Hermesia,”
a short story I wrote with Dave Smith, was accepted for a new sword
and planet shared-universe called THE LOST
EMPIRE OF SOL. 2016 also saw the publication
of my humorous, modern-day Lovecraftian tale, “Queen
of Toads,” which you can read for free
at Black Gate Online Magazine.
Somehow I managed to write another novella for LOVERS
IN HELL, the 2018 volume in the Heroes
in Hell series. (Hopefully, that will be
accepted next year.) Miraculously, 2016 ended with the completion of
two novels: The MechMen of Canis-9,
(the sword and planet sequel to my space opera, Three
Against The Stars) which has been
accepted by Airship 27 Productions and will, hopefully, see the light
of day sometime in 2017.
The
second novel, Mad Shadows II: Dorgo the
Dowser and The Order of the Serpent was
recently published by me, with the help of the incredibly talented
artist and author, Erika M Szabo,
and her Golden Box Books Publishing Services.
Not only did Erika design my cover and the interior look of the book,
she turned my original, poorly self-drawn map of Dorgo’s world into
a thing of beauty. She set up everything for me: paperback through
CreateSpace, and Kindle through both Amazon and Smashwords. So a big
shout and thank you to Erika, who came along like a Guardian Angel
just when I needed one.
DF:
You've published a new Dorgo The Dowser novel. Tell us about it.
JB:
As mentioned above, the title is Mad
Shadows II: Dorgo the Dowser and The Order of the Serpent. This
time around, it’s more of a novel than its predecessor, Mad
Shadows: The Weird Tales of Dorgo the Dowser, which
consisted of 6 novellas. Old friends from the first book return, and
we meet a few new friends, as well. This time around, Dorgo falls in
love with a witch known as the Girl Who Loves Ghouls, battles
creatures from another dimension, and meets one very special cat
named Crystal. It’s also the first time he hears about an ancient
death cult known as the Order of the Serpent. Then, after a young
woman is murdered and a dangerous book of arcane lore is stolen from
her, Dorgo comes closer to learning more about this secret Order. But
first he must battle both humans and demons in order to find and
destroy The Book of Echoes.
Finally, Dorgo squares off against a horde of fiends born of dark
sorcery when he tries to help a young girl who became trapped inside
a powerful spell while attempting to destroy someone calling himself
Ophidious Garloo. Racing against time, Dorgo the Dowser uses every
trick he knows to uncover the secret identity and learn the True Name
of Ophidious Garloo —who may very well be the deathless leader of
the Order of the Serpent. The novel has all the magic, murder,
mystery, monsters and mayhem you’d expect from a Dorgo the Dowser
novel.
DF:
Are we going to see more of Dorgo?
JB:
I hope so. I have about half of a third novel in
first-draft form, and if possible, I’d like to do a fourth book,
but return to the type of picaresque novel I wrote first: six or
seven separate novellas. Who knows? Only Time will tell.
DF:
You've been keeping busy doing some editing work as well, I hear.
What are the challenges of editing?
JB:
Keeping my eyes open for typos, missing words, and such.
I don’t do story editing: I may, on occasion, suggest that a
sub-plot or story thread be placed here or played out there, but
mostly I just spot-check for typos. I don’t consider myself a
“real” editor, and I always suggest that authors find some
professional editing service, if they can afford it.
DF:
Did you find yourself using a different set of creative muscles
editing?
JB: In
a way, yes. Since my editing consists mostly of proofing, I have to
keep my mind away from thinking: I’d write this scene differently,
I’d play out this subplot in a different way, I’d add another
character or take away an unnecessary character; I’d go in this or
that direction; I’d kill off this character or that character, etc.
I try not to think about how I would write the story, and I never
suggest anything about plotting unless that is something I’m asked
to do. I will give tips on things like giving every character his or
her own voice and way of speaking, and I always tell people to watch
certain movies by certain directors and screenwriters who were
masters of dialog. I hate reading books where every line of dialog
sounds like the stilted, all-too-unnatural, Biblical style you hear
in many Cecil B. DeMille movies. Writers like James M. Cain, Raymond
Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Paul Cain, Chester Himes, Leigh Brackett,
Cornell Woolrich, Elmore Leonard . . . these authors really knew how
to write natural-sounding dialog.
DF:
Think you'll do more editing in the future?
JB:
Perhaps, if I’m not too busy at the time and a friend
needs help with a short story. But I am not a professional editor,
nor do I play one on TV. I really don’t like editing. Editing is
not something I would do on a regular basis . . . not for love or
money.
DF:
Tell us about AZIERAN ADVENTURES PRESENTS ARTIFACTS AND RELICS:
EXTREME SORCERY
JB:
This is a shared-theme anthology, available only on
Kindle right now, published by Heathen Oracle.
The idea behind it was to come up with some “artifact or relic,”
write a brief history of it, and then write a story around it.
Azieran is the world author and publisher Christopher
Heath created for his own stories of his
mage-warriors, the Malkan Knights, and this was his brain-child. We
were given total freedom to do what we wanted, with only two rules:
use an artifact or relic as the story’s McGuffin, and make it pure
sword and sorcery. Part two of my new Dorgo novel, “The
Book of Echoes,” made its first
appearance in this anthology, although for my novel it was greatly
changed, revised and expanded. This anthology was published back in
2013, featuring stories by such authors as James Beamon, David J
West, John M Whalen, and Christopher Heath, to name a few, and even a
reprint of “The Mad Abbott of Puthuum,”
by Clark Ashton Smith. It’s a pretty darn good anthology of sword
and sorcery tales that needs more recognition.
DF:
What keeps you motivated during creative slumps?
JB:
Family, friends, old movies, and reading non-fiction
books, such as biographies, film studies, and even doing a little
research — especially for the Heroes in
Hell series. Writing for this series
requires a lot of reading up on real, historical characters, as well
as characters from legend, mythology and pre-1900 fiction —
provided we can find a link to a real personage. While my two main
characters in Hell are Victor Frankenstein and Quasimodo, both of
which are pre-1900 characters, I found links to real people. At the
time Mary and Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron were traveling through
Geneva, Switzerland, there lived a doctor and vivisectionist: Doctor
Johann Conrad Dippel (August 10, 1673 – April 25, 1734) who was a
German pietist theologian, alchemist and physician. Dippel was born
at Castle Frankenstein near Mühltal and Darmstadt. He is often
credited as being the inspiration for the infamous doctor we all know
and love. As for Quasimodo . . . back in 2002 or 2003, workmen at
Notre Dame Cathedral broke through a wall and discovered the bones of
a hunchback, dating back to Victor Hugo’s time. There are some
accounts that there was, at one time, a hunchbacked bell ringer at
the cathedral, and that Hugo might have known him.
DF:
What do you do with your free time when you're not writing?
JB:
Due to health problems that have cropped up over the
last few years — especially in 2016, which seems to have been a bad
year for so many — I
am now fairly limited to what I can physically do: no more helping
out friends rehabbing houses and such. I spend a lot of time going to
doctors and physical therapy. But I do spend time with family and
childhood friends, many of whom I’ve known since around 1960. I do
a little reading, but my mind tends to wander to what I’m working
on or want to work on. I watch a lot of old movies, too, and by old I
mean 1920s through 1950s. In the future I hope to spend as much time
as possible in Arizona and Las Vegas during the winter months, going
back and forth occasionally, and not officially returning to Chicago
until May or June. Mostly, I take it easy, and discuss writing with a
lot of young people I’ve met on Facebook.
DF:
Tell us about your upcoming projects. Anything you're working on now
that you can tell us about?
JB:
Other than plotting and working on that third Dorgo
novel, and taking notes for a possible horror novel, I may try my
hand at something autobiographical. But the big thing planned for
next year is to put out a second and revised edition, totally
self-published with Erika M Szabo’s help, of Mad
Shadows: The Weird Tales of Dorgo the Dowser, which
will give me total control of pricing, giveaways and other things
over which I currently do not have.
Derrick Ferguson: Drop some Words
of Wisdom on all the young aspiring writers out there reading this
and thirsting for your knowledge.
Joe
Bonadonna: LOL!!! The Old Guy speaks, right? Well, I’m
still learning. Every day I learn something new about writing and the
publishing business. Some advice I would give is: read and know the
genre you write in, but read beyond it, too. Read a bit of
everything: true or fictional crime, history, romance, sci-fi,
horror, erotica, espionage thrillers, biographies, etc. Read the
novels of Bronte, Hugo, Verne, Wells, Austin, Dumas, Stevenson, and
Poe. Read the great plays by Clifford Odets, Tennessee Williams and
Lillian Hellman. I also suggest that writers read screenplays by the
masters: Preston Sturges, Billy Wilder, Ben Hecht and Charles
MacArthur, for example. Watch and study their films, as well as the
films by people like Howard Hawks, Ernst Lubitsch, Fritz Lang, Raoul
Walsh, and William Wellman, to name a few. Books like Strunk and
White’s The Elements of Style,
and especially The Chicago Manual of Style
should be on every writer’s desk; they
have helped and taught me a lot.
Lastly, if any of your
readers are interested, one of my stories from Mad
Shadows: The Weird Tales of Dorgo the Dowser, called
“The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum,” has
been in the top ten list of fiction on Black Gate Magazine for almost
six years now. You can read it for free, right here:
And if anyone would
like to read a light-hearted horror story, they can read my “Queen
of Toads,” also at Black Gate magazine:
I’d like to, if I
may, give a shout-out to Erika M Szabo, in case anyone out there
might be interested in her and Golden Box Publishing Services:
Once
again, thank you very much, Derrick. I hope to be interviewing you
fairly soon, too.
