An Interview with Gene Turnbow

Gene Turnbow is a writer and editor, painter, musician, animator, and maker, and has worked in everything from game design to special effects, film archiving and restoration, to industrial robotics. He is also the founder and station manager of SCIFI.radio, the world’s only science fiction and fantasy-themed radio station.

He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Susan, his son, Charles, a scruffy little dog named Nemo, and far too many guitars.

Juniper Fairchild and the Alterwhere is his debut novel.

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What inspired you to start writing this book?

I just had this scene in my head, where a woman is careening through the middle of a medieval town in a Model T. The rest of the book just sort of grew up around that.

Tell us the story of your book’s current title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

The book was originally going to be called Hero, Interrupted, but I thought that if I was going to make a series out of this, then mentioning the lead character in the title made more sense. Besides, it sort of rolls off the tongue, don’t you think?

Describe your dream book cover.

One that I didn’t have to paint myself. I admire the work of Michael Whelan, and Carson Lowmiller, who did the cover for Legends and Lattes. If my book does really well, I’m going to try to hire Lowmiller to redo the cover for the first book in my series and then every one of my covers after that.

If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?

An interesting question, given that I run SCIFI.radio, the world’s only full-time science fiction and fantasy radio station. To be honest, though, I think I would want some original stuff written for it. I like the work of the Swedish composer Ludwig Göransson, and if my book had a soundtrack, it might be because it had been adapted to the big screen, and I think he’d be a wonderful choice to write it.

What books are you reading (for research or comfort) as you continue the writing process?

I just finished Gareth Brown’s The Book of Doors and loved it. I also just finished the advance reviewer’s copy of Brandon Long’s A Nightmare Called Home, which is urban supernatural horror, and Elizabeth Carlie’s Dragonheart, a reverse portal dark fantasy, and loved both of them, though I read those because I seem to be collecting authors who want me to publish their books through my new imprint, Helium Beach. After that, I love the works of Terry Pratchett, JRR Tolkien, Anne McCaffrey, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, and Lois McMaster Bujold. I want to read more by T Kingfisher and Seanan McGuire, since I’m told my writing style is similar to theirs.

What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?

I started my professional career as a sculptor and modelmaker, helping make Cylons for the Universal Studios Tour in 1979. I made models, miniatures, and props, with many of my pieces ending up on shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation, Knight Rider, and Buckaroo Banzai, to name but a few. After that, I became the first network administrator for Technicolor Videocassette. Those little dot matrix labels on the spine of every video cassette? Those came from software I wrote. From there, I went to film restoration, and restored Minnie’s Yoo-Hoo for the New York Museum of Modern Art, and was one of two guys timing negatives during the restoration of Orson Welles’ lost classic Othello, the film he was working on when he died. From there, I became a game programmer, and wrote bespoke games for the Metreon in San Francisco, and was lead level designer for Fairy Tale Adventure 2 from Dreamers Guild. After ten years doing that, I reinvented myself and became a 3D animator and went to work for Rhythm and Hues Studios, where I worked on such films as X-Men: First Class, Cat in the Hat, two Garfield movies, two Alvin and the Chipmunks movies, one of the Incredible Hulk movies, two Night at the Museum movies, and the first Percy Jackson movie, to name but a few. It was during that time that I founded SCIFI.radio, which I still own and operate to this day.

Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?

When I was fourteen years old, my father gave me the old Underwood portable he had used in college. I thought that the ability to press keys on a machine and put words on paper was the purest form of magic. After all these years, I still think so.

Where is your favorite place to write?

There are a few coffee shops around that I like, but one of my favorite places is cyberspace. It looks weird to the onlooker. I sit there with nothing but a mini Bluetooth keyboard and a Quest 3, but inside the headset, I have this sort of Tony Stark/Iron Man-style cloud of information panels floating in space in front of me, and I write on text panels that way. I must look like a supreme dork from the outside.

What advice would you give your past self at the start of your writing journey?

Start researching what happens to your book after you finish it well before you finish it. You’re going to need a lot more time to get it polished up, properly promoted, and ready to publish than you can possibly imagine.

What’s one thing you hope sticks with readers after they finish your book?

That it’s never too late to start becoming what you are meant to be. It’s possible to achieve your dreams even if you think you’re starting too late in life. The whole world is made of second chances for those who seek them out. Look at me for proof of this: I didn’t start writing my first novel until I was sixty, and didn’t get it published until I was sixty-seven. That’s the core theme of Juniper Fairchild and the Alterwhere: You can do anything you can imagine, if only you believe in it and yourself.

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