Ask the Author: Shannon Peil
[J. Bradley / February 4th, 2011 / Interviews ]Shannon Peil’s Sam appears in the December issue and he talks with us about balance, voice, names that should be banned and other matters.
1. What is your middle name? What would you like your middle name to be?
My middle name is Grant. If I could pick anything, I would probably make my middle name “Leonardo.” After the Ninja Turtle.
2. How do you balance being a publisher and a writer?
With amphibi.us I tend to treat running it as just part of my daily routine and since the site is such a small operation, it doesn’t tend to get in the way or soak up any of my “writing energy” day to day. Actually, editing tends to feed a lot of my own work, the same as reading a good book – anything that gives me that feeling of “holy crap I gotta write something” is awesome for me and I try to keep those things around me as much as I can.
3. What names would you like to ban people from to give their children?
Nature-based hippy nouns like Rain, Sky, Star. White trash standby names like Crystal, Destiny, Hope. I would probably outlaw the various ‘creative’ spellings of more standard names too. There are only so many ways you can force i’s and y’s into a name or switch them around and I don’t see the point. Oh, and Tiffany.
4. Why did you choose a third-person omniscient voice to tell Sam’s story?
I don’t think telling Sam’s story from her perspective would have had the same feeling as I had intended, so I told it in a really subjective, dry third person. I didn’t necessarily want to spell out any of Sam’s inner monologue for the reader, I wanted to leave it open to interpretation. I think I accomplished that by writing out the events of that day as simply as I could from outside of her.
5. What’s your day job?
I’m an IT monkey for IBM. I do security administration work and sit in a cubicle.
6. Tell us in fifty words the state of literature in Colorado.
There are lot of grad programs in the state and creative writing classes, but unfortunately every reading or class I’ve taken a look at have been less than impressive. I think I’m very lucky to be around at this point in time and take advantage of the internet.