Meet the Talented and Luminous Clark Chamberlain

I'm convinced that books are filled with powerful magic. Some terrify. Others inspire with romance, introspection, courage. The most magical have the ability to transport us back through time from adulthood to the days when we were children and the world was a vast, wondrous place fraught with mystery, danger, and adventure. One such book is Clark Chamberlain's newest page-turner, Hank Hudson, the story of a young boy growing up in Depression-era America who accidentally gets left behind when his family moves cross country to California. On his long journey to reunite with them, Hank and his loyal companion Dog encounter oddities, get involved in a treasure hunt, and face off against a dark power eager to possess the boy.

I first met the man behind the magic of Hank Hudson after my short story submission to his publishing company's dystopian anthology, A Bleak New World, was accepted. Since becoming one of Raven International Publishing's authors, it has been my pleasure to get to know Clark and his work. Clark wears many hats ("Writer, Illustrator, Publisher, Father, and part-time Good Guy," according to his upbeat daily podcast, a must-listen to for any writer seeking inspiration) -- he helms the excellent The Book Editor Show with fellow scribe Peter Turley, and teaches a course with perhaps the best title in the history of writing seminars: Punch Them in the Gut: Writing Fiction With Emotional Impact. Meet one of my favorite writers and friends, Clark Chamberlain.

I’m always fascinated over where a writer’s ideas originate. What sparked Hank Hudson?

Hank Hudson really came from three things. First, my childhood was anything but normal. Often times I’d find myself living with relatives while my parents were between houses. And of course when you’re a kid being exposed to different and even odd families it shapes you. So I had always thought of a story about a boy living like a gypsy, traveling from town to town always getting into new adventures. Second, I have a brother-in-law, Cameron (the book is dedicated to him), and in all the home movies of him as a kid he’s often in the background, sometimes people telling him to get out of the way so they can record the cute kids. I thought wouldn’t that be interesting that if middle children weren’t just forgotten about because of the number of kids but if a middle child actually turned invisible on accident.Third, I like that spark of excitement that comes from the unknown. That feeling there really is this secret history and that the life we find so normal is just a shell concealing the real world in the background.

(Clark Chamberlain putting down the words)

You’re working on a sequel, correct? Please share with us the broader Hank Hudson mythos.

As Hank sets off to catch up with his parents in the first book, he has no idea he’s part of a bigger world. A secret world. So in the second book we get to explore that deeper and he gets to learn what this world is really about. We have the ley line energy that grants certain powers and Hank can absorb those powers for limited amount of time. He needs to learn how to use them if he has any chance of standing up to the dark monster, the Apep, which wants to use Hank as a vessel so it can have a physical body again. In Hank Hudson and the Anubis, we get more secret history. Why did Roosevelt create the New Deal? In order to hide away the fact that the US is trying to control this energy and the Apeps that were released in the Great War. It really is so much fun to build a world like this. And the farther along the path Hank walks the more questions come along. Like how can he talk with dogs. Why his friend Stin doesn’t seem to age, sweat, and always can produce things from his pockets. At the center of this story it’s about friendship, family and the desire we all have to be accepted and loved.

Talk about your previous writing work -- Another Day Another Name, for instance.

Another Day Another Name was an exercise in understanding more about myself. I wrote it while in Iraq, serving with the US army. It was my go to place to unwind and put down the questions I had, that I really didn’t feel I could talk about with others. It was also a fun place to play what-if. When I first arrived at the US base in Baghdad, I thought there would only be US soldiers. There weren’t. In fact we were outnumbered by contracted security five to one. So that question came to my mind what if the government privatized security in the US? It made a great backdrop for greed and corruption to tell the story of four very different people. Each one of them, Henry, Mabel, Mateo and Steven are neither right nor wrong. The world they live in and what they do is very grey, like the real world. I liked that. The sequel to that, Another Day Another Deception, has been put on hold while I was writing the Hank Hudson books, but I promise that I’ll get back to it soon! And if you thought the first book was intense, you ain’t seen yet. I also enjoy writing comics and telling stories visually. I like playing in the world of Smugglers Inc, my sci-fi comic, and in my son Jonah’s Monster Prison (which we hope to have a few issues out in the first quarter of 2016). I love storytelling. The power it has to shape lives and the way it can connect us together. I’ve seen some bad things in the world and a lot of it comes from seeing “others.” We see the differences and make choices out of fear. Good story can show us the other side. It can help us to understand that we are the same.

(Clark helming the bridge at Raven International)

You knew you were a writer when…

A year after coming back from Iraq. I understood that this was my calling, the place I fit into the world. It let me use my best talents to the fullest of my ability. When I felt that connection to writing and storytelling things started to click in my life.

What's up next for Raven International Publishing?

There are four big projects in the works, Peter and I are building an editing course. Moving forward on a marketing program for authors. And I'll be announcing an open submission for a middle grade book. We've got a superhero anthology due out next year. I need to have better infrastructure before moving into another anthology. I'll be bringing on a couple of interns as well and hope to find someone to move into a full time position.  

Finally, Clark's son Jonah has a chance to go on the American Heritage Tour. To help raise funds, for a $15.00 donation, Clark will send you a copy of Hank Hudson. The link is posted below: https://www.youcaring.com/jonah-clark-454829/update/385334

BEHOLD -- A BLEAK NEW WORLD!

In June of 2014, I gave myself a much-needed permission slip to free write, the act of putting pen to paper to be transported wherever stylus and imagination chose to lead me. It turned out being more fun than I'd expected, and highly productive -- some ten stories, short and long, written over the course of almost two weeks. Among the completed story drafts was one titled "Third World", in which a young girl in a dystopian future society labors in a factory job to survive. I was deeply affected by the character's travails, and the bleak world into which she'd been born. There wasn't a whole lot of the usual prep work that goes into the creation of my writing, no story premise or outline jotted down on a note card, no dreaming up the starting or ending scenes. I simply sat on my sun porch with iced coffee and trusted the muse to get me from Points A to Z. And it was more fun than should be humanly possible.

Like the majority of the stories written during that marvelous spell -- a western, a SF tale, several horror efforts -- I later edited the draft of "Third World" for submission to publishers and sent it out the door. This particular tale went to the fine folks at Raven International Publishing, who were reading for a dystopian-themed anthology, A Bleak New World, where it was soon accepted. This week, the anthology debuts, offering dark glimpses into possible futures best avoided apart from visits to within the covers of this wonderful reading experience. Bleak is the brainchild of RIP head honcho Clark Chamberlain. As any familiar with Clark's fiction writing work, daily podcasts, or his stellar The Book Editor Show, Bleak's subject matter is a fair departure for the publisher's normally upbeat vibe. So why did he go the dystopian route for RIP's first multi-author anthology?

"I choose to be upbeat and positive. I have slogged through a lot of life, death of children, divorce, crises of faith, and then there was Iraq," says Clark, a former and still part-time soldier. "What I did there and what I was willing to do there really made me look at myself in a negative light. When I got home I was drifting, had thoughts about killing myself or at least going back to the war. Some of my persona is a mask to hide that darkness, or at least keep it down. I want peace so badly in this life because I've seen the darkness. I feel that we need to confront those emotions and feelings and really look hard at ourselves. Through story we have that opportunity. And on the business side, my then partner and I thought the sci-fi community would be a good place to dive in."

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World was the inspiration behind Bleak.

"I read that and thought this isn't much of a dystopia," Clark adds. "Being satisfied with your lot in life, that sounds pretty great. I'd much rather live there than 1984. So I wanted to see what others could come up with and I was pleasantly surprised."

Several of my fellow authors in A Bleak New World's Table of Contents shared the back-stories behind their stories.

Andrew J. Lucas on "Day Worker": "In recent years I’ve moved from frontline employee positions in call centers to management and supervisory positions.  This has given me a unique, well sort of unique, perspective on my workplace.  Being asked to mold the behaviour of employees or hire employees with a specific skillset has let me see how potentially interchangable any of us are.  In point of fact we are all just a set of skills, behaviours and responses to various stimuli.  Heck, my day job runs itself via a set of processes and protocols.  One of my peers made the offhand comment that you can’t teach good customer service skills but what If you could simply download them?  What would the world look like if you didn’t need to spend five years in university to become a doctor?  What would an employment agency look like in this ‘utopia’ where everyone was as skilled as everyone else when they wanted to be?  What if it all went wrong?"

Eileen Maksym on "Incarnation": "I majored in philosophy in college, and followed it up with a master's degree in theology.  One of the things that intrigued me in my studies was the mind-body problem. How much of what makes us ‘us’ is physical? How much of it is metaphysical, be it called a soul or a more hand-wavy consciousness? I would often confront friends (and acquaintances...and people at parties...) with this question: if you were to switch brains with a friend, which person is you and which is your friend? Or are two new people created in the melding of minds and bodies? My short story ‘Incarnation’ is a meditation on that question.  What happens when a mind is put into a new body, and that body's urges are diametric to the principles of that mind?  And in the end, it raises the inevitable question: how is that any different from the war between the mental and physical that goes on within so many (perhaps all) of us?"

Nemma Wollenfang on "GOD is in the Rain": "We all look forward to that bleak dystopian possibility and we all picture it in different ways. Some imagine it as a cataclysmic natural event, some lean towards a fatal clash of opposing military powers. Mostly violence and panic reign supreme and the remnants of humanity are lawless and brutal nomads. In ‘GOD is in the Rain’ I wanted to depict a future where the decline of humanity was not a sudden and violent occurrence but one that was slow and creeping and almost gentle, however ultimately destructive. One where the survivors could not afford brutality. The basic bones of the story had been rattling about in my head for a while, though I didn’t think of giving them flesh until being unintentionally prompted to by a reader of my online story. This individual has always been very encouraging and supportive of my writing… and just happened to have an almost identical username to my working title. It was fate, or perhaps divine providence. Simply seeing their name led me to sit down and type it out. So this one’s for you, reader. Thanks for the inspiration."

(Raven International Publisher Clark Chamberlain)

Sealey Andrews on "Touch Piece": "The idea for my story first took shape while watching an episode of Storage Wars where they discovered an antique medicine doll in a storage unit. I'd never heard of them before and was instantly intrigued. (If you don't know what they are, you can find out more here.) ‘Touch Piece’ is my envisioning of the aftermath faced by a world that's been devastated by rape culture. I wanted to play with the concept of technology progressing toward touch applications, while sexuality moved in the opposite direction -- hands off. I drew on tropes from classics like The Handmaid's Tale and A Clockwork Orange.  Blade Runner was my inspiration for the noir mood and atmosphere."

Josh Schwartzkopf on "Elysia": "Irony has a peculiar interest in our society.  It’s akin to standing in an elevator, waiting for the door to close when someone cries out, ‘Hold the door!’ instead you let it shut, snickering your way to the next floor -- and then the elevator breaks down.  There’s a morbid fascination with ironic situations.  I feel that was the basis of this story.  It’s ironic that these poor colonists have traveled millions of miles to reach a new home planet with a misspelled name only to find themselves living in the same squalor that they left behind on Old Earth.   Even more ironic they are being targeted by an invisible enemy who is killing them off one by one and they are powerless to stop it.  And the final irony, they are religious fanatics who despise technology and abhor artificial intelligence, so, of course, the only thing that can save them is that which they cannot abide.   I’m thrilled that this story has been included in A Bleak New World and through this experience (and Clark’s vote of confidence), I was inspired to flesh this story out into a full novel which I’m currently shopping around among various literary agents." 

Chris Galford on "Clinging": "Tragedy is a staple of the apocalyptic. Not just tragic situations, but tragic characters forced into them. It makes sense for a world that is as unforgiving and unrelentingly dangerous as these visions of the future -- but what is more terrifying, more profoundly heartbreaking, than a character hiding from themselves? I have always danced with threats external and internal alike in my works, but it is the internal which most fascinates me -- the duel we all dance on a daily basis of us against our own minds. In my writing I have the tendency to take this to extremes, exploiting the fragility of the human psyche under fantastical situations. What better chance to explore the fight against the beast known as grief than when one also has killer robots nipping at their heels?"