Nov 5, 2013
Kobo Writing Life Director Mark Lefebvre interviews Terry Fallis, multi-award winning author of The Best Laid Plans, The High Road and Up and Down. Mark and Terry talk about:
• How they met when Mark was a bookseller at
McMaster University’s bookstore, and Terry, a former McMaster
student self-published The Best Laid
Plans in 2007.
• Mark’s comparison of Terry’s writing to
John
Irving
• How Terry applied his knowledge of politics and
engineering to create the characters of Daniel and Angus (the main
characters from The Best Laid Plans and
The High Road)
• Terry’s original nativity when venturing into
the realm of self-publishing back in 2006/2007
• How Terry used podcasting to gain a worldwide
audience for The Best Laid Plans and was
the first Canadian to follow in the footsteps of such podcasting
pioneers as
Scott Sigler
• Mark’s original reluctance as a bricks and
mortar bookseller to carry The Best Laid
Plans or even read this satirical novel of Canadian
politics, but how, after a single page, Terry’s prose won him
over
• How, feeling “up” from the McMaster Bookstore
launch event led to Fallis deciding to submit The Best
Laid Plans to the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour
(which Terry won and which led to his book deal with McClelland and
Stewart)
• How Terry is thrilled to have Beverly
Slopen as his agent and Douglas
Gibson as his editor & publisher
• Winning November 2010’s CBC Canada Reads for the
Essential Canadian Novel of the Decade
• The importance of local community bookstores
and the great relationships that Terry has forged with so many
amazing Canadian bookstores (Canadian Booksellers Association
honoured Terry with the
CBC Libris Author of the Year Award in 2013
• CBC’s creation of
The Best Laid Plans miniseries (and having lunch
with the fictional Angus McClintock in Ottawa during filming)
- (which will begin airing January 2014)
• Terry’s use of humour and heartfelt moments in
The Best Laid Plans and The High
Road
• Terry’s membership in the “Write What You Know”
club – and how he takes advantage of that by writing about things
he already knows a lot about (public relations, politics, etc)
rather than spending more time doing research
• How Terry’s latest novel Up & Down seemed to
almost predict the incredible manner by which Commander
Chris Hadfield captured the hearts and minds of people who
again became interested in the space program.
• A bit of insight into Terry’s forthcoming
(spring 2014) novel No Relation – about a
writer with the unfortunate name of Ernest Hemmingway (although
spelled differently) who is trying to leave the family business to
pursue a writing career
• How Terry manages to write novels while working
full-time
• The importance of writing detailed outlines
(each outline approximately 65 page long) and how, when you know
that much about the story the efficiency of getting the manuscript
completed in about 4 months
• How, despite the detailed outlining, how at
least half of the comedic moments and humour comes to Terry during
the actual writing process
• Terry’s creative/musical family and the
dinnertime family tradition which included the goal of trying to
tell a story that would make his stone-faced father laugh
• The importance of being true to one’s own
writing and one’s own personality
• How there are likely some fine manuscripts
sitting in publisher slush piles right now and the opportunities
authors have to creating bold new opportunities
For this episode’s side-bar note, Mark reflects back on Terry’s
journey into publishing and how he and authors like Scott Sigler
used podcasting as a way to help find an audience for his
novel. Mark mentions the website Podiobooks.com and using programs
such as GarageBand (MAC) or
Audacity for
creating the audio files.
OTHER LINKS/RESOURCES
- Terry’s books at Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-ca/Search?Query=terry+fallis
- Terry Fallis website - http://terryfallis.com/
- Terry’s page for Up and Down - http://terryfallis.com/up-and-down/
- Terry’s podcast page for The Best Laid Plans -
http://terryfallis.com/the-best-laid-plans/tblp-podcast/
- Terry’s Video “An Unorthodox Journey to the
published land” - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-_zmv0MICU
- Scrivener (http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php)
- Podiobooks (http://podiobooks.com/)