Arthur Sánchez:  Typically I'll get my ideas from life.  Someone will tell me something or I'll see a scene and suddenly I'll be hit by a huge "WHAT IF."  Unfortunately, I think my friends and family have become a little leery of what I'll do with a passing comment or the details of a dinner date—especially when I write horror.

Arthur Sánchez:  Depends on the story.  Some stories pop into my head with a very clear storyline.  If I know what my story is ultimately about, I'll sit down and let the characters find their own way through the tale.  If I have a strong sense of the character but not of what he ultimately has to do, I'll let the story lie and ferment.  Revelations can come at the oddest times.  I'll be making dinner or taking a walk and suddenly I'll know exactly what my hero's problems are and what he ultimately wants to achieve.  I often wonder what part of my brain is responsible for working out those details since it's not always a conscious act.

Arthur Sánchez:   Keeping it short. For the longest time I wouldn't write short stories.  I was convinced that I couldn't tell a story in fewer than 10,000 words.  But then I discovered Flash Fiction, I took it as a challenge to be able to write something in under a thousand words.  At first it was difficult but it really taught me how to narrow my focus and choose the critical moment.

Arthur Sánchez:  "A Cold Day In Hell" was written in response to a market listing.  An editor was putting together an anthology of short stories featuring comical tales of Hell.  The hook was that each story had to take a well-known saying or phrase and use it as the title of the story.  I sat down and thought of every saying or cliché that named Hell.  I then tried to think of the obvious story to be written using that phrase—and tried to go in a totally different direction.  I mean, every other writer was doing exactly what I was doing.

I needed to stand out if I was going to sell the story.  The image of an imp trying to fix the heating system in Hell was the first thing to come to mind.  I then spent about a week exploring the story behind that image before I had my submission.  I just loved the idea of the Prince of Liars having a run in with a mechanic.  Ultimately, the story didn't sell to that anthology but the editor very graciously said that I'd made it to the final selection round.  I just didn't make it into the book.  Of course, I was then lucky enough to place the story with Alien Skin.

Arthur Sánchez:  The diversity.  It's fun to tell many different stories.  It's great to be writing about an old wizard one day and a young alien the next.  The worst part is marketing them.  It takes time to determine the best markets for your story and it's always a bummer when you get a rejection letter.  But there's no chance of getting a story accepted if you don't risk getting it rejected.  And the joy of having people read my stories greatly out weighs the pain of seeing:  "Not right for our magazine."

Arthur Sánchez:  I typically write in silence and with a pot of hot tea sitting on the stove.  I'll use the necessity of having to walk into the kitchen as an excuse to stretch my legs.

Arthur Sánchez:  My wife is my biggest fan.  She's completely behind me writing my stories. The rest of my family is quietly supportive.  Well, sometimes not so quietly.  When I sold a story to Chicken Soup for the Romantic Soul I ended up having to ordering 20 copies for friends and family.  They acted as if I'd written the entire book and not just one short story.  That was fun.  And I post links to my stories on my web site.  I know that a few of my relatives will check the site from time to time because they'll ask me about some of the stories.  I love it when one of them says:  "That story, about the old guy sitting in the bar talking about finding a fast horse, that was really good.  I could really see it in my head and I knew exactly what he was feeling.  But that poem you wrote, (slight shake of the head) I didn't care for that.  That wasn't so good."  Most of my relatives don't read speculative fiction so for them to make the attempt is a huge vote of confidence in me.

Arthur Sánchez:  Would it sound cheesy if I said:  Alien Skin?  The truth is that many of the ezines that are on the web today are a great source of inspiration.  There are some incredibly talented people being published on the web.  When I read their work, I know I'm in good company.  It's like a runner attending a race.  You look around you and see your competition.  But you're also seeing your community.  Here are people from all over the world who are trying to be the best that they can be.  That can only inspire you to be the best you can be.

Arthur Sánchez:  I have taken a writing class but it was too basic for me.  A lot of the materials they covered were things I'd already figured out.  But the class wasn't a bad experience.  Meeting with other writers and discussing the craft is a great thing to do.  Being forced to do the class assignments just meant I had no excuses not to work on my craft.  So a lot of good came out of the experience.

Arthur Sánchez:  My best short story is a yet unpublished story about a young boy who discovers the meaning of courage.  It's not speculative at all and semi-autobiographical.  I love the off-beat characters and their relationships.  Some of the writing is pretty good too.  My worst story?  (Deep sigh.)  Where do I begin?  I've written a lot of stories that weren't stories.  They were character studies or snippets of life.  It's hard to admit that something you've written isn't ready for prime time.  But everything gets filed with the expectation that one day I'll be able to make them work.

Arthur Sánchez:  My first novel is a contemporary fantasy set in present day New York City. It's about a 17 year-old Hispanic kid who holds the key to maintaining the balance between good and evil.  Problem is, he doesn't believe in either good or evil.  And he doesn't believe that a homeless man he meets is really a wizard.  The novel is about making choices and discovering not only who you are but who you want to be.

My second novel is soft science fiction.  It's about a robot who's acting as the security officer on a fully automated mining colony.  After three hundred years of being on their own, the machines on the planet are starting to act odd.  He needs to find out why.  When robots start dying, he's confronted with the possibility that this might be more than a simple malfunction.

My third novel is a tribute to Ernest Hemingway's, Old Man and the Sea.  My hero is an old fisherman who's fighting to save his way of life.  Of course, the oceans of his world are nowhere near Earth and he doesn't catch marlin.  The novel touches upon some ecological and economic themes as one of the threats to my hero's way of life is the arrival of a mega-corporation.

As for there being a series for any of these books, (laughs) I have to admit that I have plans for sequels to each of these novels.  My wife thinks it's just a dark sinister plot we writers have to sell more books.  And maybe it is.  But my natural inclination is to tell long stories.  For each of my heroes there's a journey of self discovery that doesn't stop with the resolution of their immediate problems.

Arthur Sánchez:  In one case I was inspired by a favorite book.  In another I wanted to write something that would feature my old neighborhood.  (Big grin.)  Yes, I did grow up on the upper west side of Manhattan.  And no, I don't own any magic swords.  My robot story began with a mental image of a solitary machine crossing a barren landscape.

My approach to writing was initially very instinctual.  I sat down and just wrote.  I didn't know where I was going.  I just trusted that I would get there.  As you can imagine that sometimes lead to some very time-consuming dead ends.  But I did learn a great deal about the process that way. Now, I try to give the ideas enough time to form a sort of road map in my head.  I hesitate starting a project without knowing where the story will ultimately end up.  I don't need to know every twist or turn (some of the best things to happen are unexpected) but I do want the high points—the major characters and plot developments.  I'll do a lot of fantasizing about how the story will go and accept or reject ideas before ever writing down a word.

Arthur Sánchez:  Initially, none.  But that was both a mistake and a blessing.  I would jump into a story and just let it develop in front of my eyes.  It's very exciting to see what happens but it can also be very frustrating.  Things often have to be reworked.  Now I try to have the general plot worked out on paper before I begin.  It isn't iron-clad but it does serve as guide for what has to happen.  As for characters, I was trained as an actor and as a result characters and dialogue come very naturally to me.  Since all of my stories begin with the characters, I'll know them intimately before I even start writing.  The amount of time I spend on these things varies from story to story. For me it's a question of reaching a critical mass.  When I feel that I know enough about where the story will go and the person taking the journey, I begin.

Arthur Sánchez:  Yes, I did research before and during the writing process.  Any detail that is based on actual locations, theories, or scientific principles, has to be verified.  Your readers will always call you on it.  And the moment you get caught with mistakes, that's the moment you lose the reader.  I've put down books because the author was blatantly wrong about a fact or obviously never saw a location.

Arthur Sánchez:  I tend to chart out the major scenes before I write.  It's very helpful to get a feel for the flow of the novel and to determine how exactly I plan to connect the dots.  I always complain that it's easy to say that in chapter one your hero wakes up in a hospital with no memory and then by chapter fifteen he discovers that he's a wanted criminal.  The hard part is getting your hero from chapter one to that revelation.  Because it's in the space in between that I have to get the
reader to care about the character.  It's in that space that I justify his actions after he discovers who he is.  The more scenes I can chart out the closer the dots become and the clearer the story is in my mind.

Arthur Sánchez:  I treat all of my villains as normal human beings (if they're human).  As a result, they tend to develop their own unique aspects.  You have to remember, no villain ever thinks of himself as a villain.  All villains think of themselves as perfectly reasonable individuals doing perfectly reasonable things to achieve worthwhile goals.  Placed in that context, a mass murderer might be fond of cats, a starship captain could be afraid of open spaces, and a dark wizard can believe that reality does need to be reshaped.  The more human I make the character, the easier it is to humanize the villain.

Arthur Sánchez:  My first novel took a decade to write and probably saw a dozen rewrites. The first draft of my latest novel took four months.  I'll be curious to see which one readers will consider better written.

Arthur Sánchez:  I am seeking an agent and I've been pitching the fantasy as a young adult book aimed at readers who want to step away from elves and dwarves but who don't want to abandon the idea that epic struggles between good and evil happen all the time.  Having grown up in N. Y. C., I'm pitching that I'm the perfect person to tell a story about a young Hispanic kid who finds himself in the midst of that struggle.

Arthur Sánchez:  I love the scale.  Being able to explore as much of my story as I can is a real joy.  The most challenging part is staying the course.  When you write a novel you have no idea if it'll ever amount to anything.  It's easy to lose faith and give up.  But when I realized that I was writing this story first and foremost for myself, it became much easier.  I'll worry about what it amounts to after I'm done.

Arthur Sánchez:  The first thing that I learned was that I could write a novel.  I also learned a lot about discipline and craft.  The second novel was much easier.  And everything since has flowed faster and with more precision.  I read where one agent always liked to read a new writer's third or fourth novel but never his first.  The idea is that the author should have learned a great deal from those first few novels that will make the third novel better.  I think there might be some truth to that idea.

Arthur Sánchez:  I have gotten stuck on chapters and discovered that the best way of dealing with them (for me) was to skip over them till I was ready to go back.  I'm not a person who always writes in a straight line.  Sometimes I'll write the beginning, a pivotal scene, what I think will be the story's climax, etc.  I'll hop around and write what's strongest in my mind.  When I hit a chapter I can't finish, I'll put it aside and write the next major scene.  Often, I'll realize that in order for that scene to work I'll need to do some set up in the chapter I skipped.  Pretty soon I'll have a list of things the difficult chapter has to contain. Suddenly, my road map is much clearer and the chapter can now be completed.

Arthur Sánchez:  Presently I'm working from home so I have a lot of flexibility.  When I wrote my novels, I was working a 9 to 5 office job.  Then, I wrote whenever I could get two minutes to myself. I did set a goal of so many pages per week and per day.  Since you never know how your day will go, I set what I considered reasonable goals.  If I exceeded them, I considered myself lucky.  If I fell behind, I'd put in the extra time to keep pace.

Arthur Sánchez:  My wife is what Stephen King called:  "My ideal reader."  She's the reader I'm trying to satisfy.  So she reads everything I write, proofreads it, critiques it, and keeps me on the up and up.  I don't always take her suggestions (much to her annoyance) but I always appreciate it.  If she gives me the thumbs up, I know I've done my job.  I also have a small circle of friends who I enlist from time to time to read a story.  Each person has a different perspective on what makes a good story so the reviews are always mixed.  But I know enough about what I want to do and what they want to see to balance the two.  And what one person misses another usually catches.

Arthur Sánchez:  I'd give the same advice to both a novelist and a short story writer—have fun, enjoy what you're doing.  I stopped writing for almost ten years because every time I sat down to write I would worry about how I was going to get it published.  There was no joy in the process so ultimately I gave it up.  First, you must write for yourself.  Tell a story you want to tell and revel in the pleasure of creating a world only you can imagine.  When you're done, then look for someone who will publish it.  There's a lot to be experienced and enjoyed in doing something few other human being will ever attempt.  (Everybody might have a novel in them but only a tiny fraction of the human race actually tries to write it.)  Give yourself the opportunity to enjoy it.

Arthur Sánchez:  The best part of writing genre is the freedom to explore big themes and even bigger characters.  Genre fiction lets you ask question about morality, mortality, and the place of the individual in the universe.  Every culture has its mythology.  When you look at the Greeks, the Aztecs, or the Norse Vikings, their mythology was filled with bigger than life characters dealing with bigger than life issues.  Genre fiction is our mythology.  It lets us step out of the ordinary and into the extraordinary.  Unfortunately, it's those very qualities that cause a lot of people to look down on genre fiction.  It rarely gets the respect it deserves.  But I find comfort in the fact that some of the greatest stories of literature are genre:  A Christmas Carol (ghost story), Dracula (horror), 1984 (sci fi), Tarzan (fantasy), Lord of the Rings, etc, etc, etc.

Arthur Sánchez:  Stephen King.  Terry Pratchett.  William Shakespeare.  J. R. R. Tolkien. Michael Crichton.  I tend to jump around a little.  I draw inspiration from many books and many writers.  I see what a particular author has done well and I try to understand how they were able to do it.  Sometimes, it's a unique ability and not something I can or want to emulate.  Sometimes it's a remarkable craftsmanship and I study their story the way a mechanic will study a restored vintage car.