Crit Kincaid
Chandler, Arizona USA
Good morning and welcome to Vision and Verse, the place for Art and Authors. Tell us a little about yourself and what you've written.
Crit Kincaid,
actually I was born Christopher Evan Kincaid. Believe it or not I was actually
named after Christopher Marlow. But family wisdom (my older brother couldn’t
pronounce Christopher) shortened my name to Crit. So I’m Crit Kincaid. And, as
there are so many other Christophers and Chris’ in the world, I stuck with
Crit.
My novel is
called A Wounded World (Available at
Amazon for Kindle and Softbound). It’s a story about an emotionally wounded boy
who is hiding from the world that hurt him, and the girl who must learn about
love in order to help him realize that there is life after death.
What is your favorite
genre to write?
I have gone
through many phases over the years; children’s (when my niece and nephews were
born), mystery, scifi and fantasy. But I could never really gain traction. Then
the main character in A Wounded World
took root in my consciousness, and his story became basically a Young-Adult
Literary Paranormal Romance. So the shorter answer is I really don’t have a
favorite. I trust that the story and characters will tell me what genre they
belong to.
Favorite food.
Guacamole
(mana from Mexico) and anything Carne Asada.
Tea or coffee?
Coffee! No
milk, no sugar!
Pizza or ice cream?
I do like
pizza. But if you have caramel sauce, then it’s ice cream.
Wine or beer?
What? No Jack
and Soda?
How old were you when you started writing?
How old were you when you started writing?
I’ve a memory of a small boy sitting in front of an old Royal typewriter, literally pounding on the keys, trying to write a story about a teddy bear and the family dog. The machine had to weigh more than I did!
Where would you like to visit?
Scotland,
maybe Rome someday.
Ahh, both are fabulous. Go now. Don't put it off. Rome in September is magical. It's less crowded and the weather is still warm, but the mornings are slightly crisp, great for a walking tour of the city. Scotland, anytime. Bring a raincoat. Okay, back to business. Favorite musical
artist. Do you listen to music when you
write?
I prefer
songs to artists, and mostly early rock like Aerosmith or Foreigner. Anything
with good guitar riffs. I wrote A Wounded
World to Foreigner’s I Want to Know
What Love is. I also listen to movie soundtracks and symphonic classical
music. If I had to pick one particular piece as a favorite, it would be The
Doors version of Albinoni’s Adagio in G
minor.
What makes you laugh?
Almost
anything. The way the world is these days either you laugh or cry. The only
humor I dislike is any that requires a victim, especially a specific victim. And
that seems to be all the rage these days.
Favorite work of art or
sculpture.
I love art
and wish I could draw a straight line. In galleries I seems to be drawn more to
sculpture and if there was one piece in particular I would love to see in
person it would be Michelangelo’s Pieta.
Describe your perfect
evening.
Probably one
where I’m playing and laughing with my family.
We rarely all get together these days.
Where do you get your
inspiration?
I try to keep
my eyes and ears open to all the possibilities.
But it’s also important to keep your inner eye open. Your subconscious
eye sometimes sees possibilities that your conscience eye fails to register.
Imagination and dreams are the links to those possibilities. At least that’s
what I told all those teachers who caught me daydreaming in class. I don’t
think they believed me.
What do you do when you
get a writer's block?
Suffer…whine…complain! Then just work through it. Sometimes it helps to kill someone off.
Who is your favorite
author?
Hard one! There
are so many; Tolkien, Eddings, Herbert, Rowling, Heinlein, Asimov, Clark,
Dick…It depends on my mood and emotional need.
Best book you ever
read.
Again, so hard,
so many. Easier to tell about the one and only book I actually threw across the
room. This was a novel called Venus on
the Half Shell by Kilgore Trout. Good and bad is so subjective. I may have
been so pissed off at the ending this story that I threw the book across the
room, but I still remember that book to this day.
Last book you read.
“The Cat Who
Walked through Walls” I’ve been re-reading Heinlein lately. By the way, I love
re-reading books, especially books that take place in strange and wonderful
worlds and/or have vivid characters that dare to take life off the page.
What would you do for a
living if you weren’t a writer?
If I could go
back in time and change my major…again…I might study Anthropology, Archeology
or maybe Paleontology. I’d always write, but study writing as duel major or
minor.
Yes! I can see you as Indiana Kincaid. Who is the one person
who has influenced your personal life the most and why?
My family is
the making of me and each one of them, in their own way, has influenced who I
am right now and who I will continue to become. But I walk a path of my own
choosing. And I’ve encountered angels and demons along the way that have mentored
or distracted me, but it’s always the voices of my family I turn to when I feel
lost and alone.
If you could sit down
and have a conversation with ONE person, living or dead, real or fictional, who
would it be and why?
Lazarus Long,
Heinlein’s favorite character. Because, more than any other character he has
written about, talking to him would be like talking to Heinlein’s inner mind.
What advice would you
give someone who aspired to be a writer?
I had a
writing teacher who, during his fiction workshops, would very patiently wait
until all the other students had shared their opinions about your story and
then ask; “Now tell me why I should care about your main character, why should
I care about what happens to him or her?” Then he would sit back and watch you
sputter, rationalize and justify. Very few could answer the question. It took
me almost 25 years to find my answer. The reader will only care when you care,
truly care, what happens to your main characters!
For a reader to care about a fictional
character an empathic connection needs to be made. When the character hurts,
the reader needs to feel the pain. And yet how can I, the writer, expect the
reader to cry if I don’t cry, laugh if I don’t laugh, or be afraid if I don’t
feel the fear first? For the last twenty-five years, with all my various
attempts at writing, all the start and stops, I finally came to a conclusion
that whenever I came up to an emotion I froze, or worse turned away from it.
With A Wounded World my goal, from word one, was to “turn into the emotion,” take the emotion
to its limit. A Wounded
World is that emotional journey. This made those characters
real to me, so real that I still call them my children.
My advice is to find that empathic connection,
don’t be afraid to feel what your character’s feel. If you aren’t seeing what
your characters sees, feels what they feel, fear what they fear, then did deeper.
Dig deeper within yourself and find that vision, that feeling, that fear. Once
you do that, then your reader will see, feel and fear it all.
Thanks for being with us this morning. We at Vision and Verse wish you continued success in all your writing endeavors. Come back and see us anytime. Before you leave, do you have some links for us to follow you?
Book US Link: https://amzn.com/B00IJB8RIE
Book UK Link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00IJB8RIE
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