Today, I bring you an interview with author G.M, Nair. He has written comedy for the stage and screen, while also maintaining the blog 'MakeMomMarvel.Com', where he watches the Marvel Movies with his judgmental Indian mother. (His own words from his Amazon page). I can appreciate a fellow author who likes to make people laugh. Let's find out more about this author and his work.
Tell me about yourself
Oh, good lord. Where to begin. I’m an aerospace engineer by trade, but am also a consultant, a sketch comedian, and, of course, a writer. I was born and raised in New York City, and side from a brief stint in college, have never really lived elsewhere. Mostly because I like the convenience of the big city, and I am lazy. And while I am deeply interested in science and technology, I’m just as interested in out-there science fiction and magic.
Do you have a favourite book?
I’d have to go for the obvious choice and cite The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Very few people have ever done sci-fi comedy right, and it’s certainly a masterclass in the genre.
How long have you been writing?
I’ve been writing since I was about 10, then stopped for a while around college and graduate school, since it’s so hard to write for fun while you’re studying. But once I got into the drudgery of the real world, around 2012, I started back up again, and haven’t looked back since.
What do you love about your chosen genre?
My chosen genre is ‘sci-fi/mystery/comedy’, so it’s really just taking three popular genres and mashing them up into a single genre that’s super niche, with a tiny audience. I like it because the whole milieu of the genre seems to just flow naturally for me, and, since it’s a comedy, people tend to take it less seriously and can unintentionally forgive lapses in storytelling. It works out really well for me!
Can you tell me about your writing process?
Well, it’s less of a ‘process’ and more of a ‘complete mental collapse’. I tend to come up with my titles first, and build a story to justify them - which is a process I absolutely would not recommend to anybody else. I try to use the titles as a springboard for ideas on how a story would go and then layer in all the stupefying events and character drama on top of it. It’s really a hot mess until I redraft and couple of times and let everything slot into places I didn’t even know existed when I started.
Your ‘Duckett and Dyer: Dicks for Hire’ series sounds funny. Can you tell me more about it?
Duckett & Dyer: Dicks for Hire is the first in a series of sci-fi comedy novels I’ve begun to will into existence. It stars a pair of bickering friends – Michael Duckett and Stephanie Dyer – who are continually at odds with one another. But when someone starts putting up ads for their non-existent Detective Agency, the two actually have to become detectives and sniff out the source, which – naturally – leads them into a conspiracy that spans both space and time.
What was the inspiration behind the books?
Duckett & Dyer: Dicks for Hire is pretty much a love-letter to a lot of the adventure stories that I enjoyed growing up. Indiana Jones, Back to The Future, Doctor Who, Agatha Christie’s novels and Sherlock Holmes all had various hands in influencing the story. But, most obviously, I pull from Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently series, but infuse it with the incomprehensible universe-spanning plots of modern comic book crossovers, which I consume by the truckload.
Who are your favourite authors, and how have they influenced your work?
As you might have gleaned, Douglas Adams is both the reason for and bane or my existence. I loved the guy. I loved his books and they obviously played a very large part in influencing me as a tween and/or teen, so I’d be remiss to say that he wasn’t a big inspiration for my work. But at the same time, I’m incredibly wary of being compared to him, because he left such massive shoes to fill. Literally. The guy was like 6’5” or something.
Are you working on anything at the moment?
I finished the second Duckett & Dyer book – The One-Hundred Percent Solution – around this time last year, but am currently losing ground on the third book The Mystery of the Murdered Guy since my self-imposed deadlines seem to be slipping right through my fingers.
What advice would you give a new author?
Don’t be afraid to write a crappy first draft. It’s a lot easier to fix a crappy thing than to write a perfect thing from the get-go. That, and don’t listen to some rando’s writing advice on the internet.
What do you like to do when you are not writing?
Sleeping, TV, Video Games, Sleeping. Mostly sleeping. And reading I guess. Did I mention sleeping? If not: sleeping.
Well, there you have it. It's comforting to know that I am not the only crazy author who often comes up with the books title, before I start writing it. If you would like to check out his work, click on the links below.
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