Nat Russo
Pflugerville,
Texas (suburb of Austin)
Good morning, Nat. Welcome to Vision and Verse, the Place for Art and Authors. What have you written?
I’ve written
a yet unpublished fantasy, titled “Necromancer Awakening”. I’m currently writing
several synopses for it and will begin querying agents and publishers in
January of 2014.
What is your favorite
genre to write?
Fantasy is my
primary genre, though I’d feel comfortable in any type of speculative fiction.
I find the power of speculative fiction lies in its ability to let the writer
point a finger at certain elements in society without the reader necessarily realizing
it.
Favorite food.
I grew up in
a large Italian family, so pretty much anything Italian.
Tea or coffee?
One cup of
coffee every morning. No more than that, though. I do drink tea when I’m not
feeling well, however.
Pizza or ice cream?
Pizza. It’s
all about the carbs for me!
Where would you like to
visit?
One city I’d
love to see is Moscow. I’ve always been fascinated by it. That’s probably
because I grew up during the height of the Cold War.
Favorite musical
artist. Do you listen to music when you
write? What?
This is a
tough one, because I love all music. However, if I had to pick one band/artist,
I would choose Genesis. Their lead singer was Phil Collins, and he would be my
second choice. Their music is unlike most rock bands (they are technically
“progressive rock”) in that it is carefully orchestrated. It’s as close to
classical music as rock can get, in my opinion.
I don’t
listen to music as I type, because I’ve found it disturbs my focus. I do,
however, listen to music when I’m imagining scenes (in the planning phase) and
trying to get a feel for the overall emotion.
What I listen
to depends on which emotion I’m trying to channel. I’ve found that Heavy Metal
allows me to channel anger, and it helps me envision fight scenes very well.
Progressive Rock is a cornucopia of emotion, so it’s a great all-purpose music
for me while planning.
What makes you laugh?
You can never
go wrong with a good pun! Oh, and my beagle. He tells great jokes.
How old were you when
you started writing?
The first
story I wrote was in high school, and it was an absolutely horrible bank heist
story. I was fifteen years old at the time. It was “edgy” because it had cuss
words in it. That was almost thirty years ago.
Describe your perfect
evening.
Romance,
romance, romance! Wine, fireplace, soft music, the woman I love, and more wine.
The rest I’ll leave to your imagination.
Where do you get your
inspiration?
Inspiration
is an interesting thing. It’s rare that I have some epiphany in which the universe
plants a story in my lap. What I’ve found is that I usually have seemingly
unrelated threads of thought going on for years at a time. Then, something
happens and they all converge. That’s how “Necromancer Awakening” happened, and
it’s how some other untitled projects I’m working on happened as well.
What do you do when you
get a writer's block?
Writer’s
block is usually a symptom of spending too much time with a particular project,
for me. It happens to me every six months or so, then I step away for a couple
weeks. When I come back, I’m fresh and ready to go for another six months.
Sometimes
it’s less drastic than that, however. Sometimes you get stuck on a specific
scene or situation. When this happens to me, I fall back on the “try/fail”
cycle and create more trouble for my characters. If I’ve done my job of making
my characters living, breathing people, then they’ll always react.
Who is your favorite
author?
If I was
pressed to choose only one, I would choose Raymond E. Feist. He was responsible
for turning me into a reader when I was 12 years old, and he’s a large part of
why I’m a writer as an adult. I’ve been fortunate enough to forge an electronic
friendship with him over the last 20 years, and he never hesitates to answer my
questions.
Other
contemporary writers I absolutely love: Terry Goodkind, Tom Clancy, Brandon
Sanderson, J.K. Rowling, Ernest Cline, Frederick Pohl.
Best book you ever
read.
The last one.
Ok, I feel
like that was punting (though there’s some truth to it). Some will laugh, but
I’d have to place Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone toward the top of the
list. It was pure story on every page.
Who is the one person
who has influenced your personal life the most and why?
When I was
growing up, my best friend’s father, Bruce, became my martial arts instructor
(Tang Soo Do). More than that, he became a second father to me. When I was
going through the worst time of my life as a teenager, pulling away from the
world as a result of a horrible car accident that I caused, he wouldn’t give
up. He pulled me out of the shell I was crawling into and helped me step back
out into the world.
If you could sit down
and have a conversation with ONE person, living or dead, real or fictional, who
would it be and why?
As strange as
this sounds, I would love to have a bona fide conversation with one of my main
characters, Mujahid Mukhtaar, an amazingly powerful necromancer…and all-around
good guy. He’d be a good friend to have.
What advice would you
give someone who aspired to be a writer?
Writing is a
craft. Like any craft under the sun, you can practice it, and you can get
better at it. When you first start down the road, your writing is going to be
horrible. Don’t let this discourage you! We were all there, right where you
are, writing crappy prose and worse stories! But what separates a successful
writer from an unsuccessful writer is the successful writer never quit. And
while I’m on the subject of success, you need to define success for yourself.
Never let another person define it for you.
Do you have any links for us?
Here are my
social media links:
