From Pulp to Prose: An Interview with Randall Moore, author of A World Without Men

Randall Moore hails from Boise, Idaho, after living most of his life in Southern California. After a decades-long hiatus, he returned to fiction in 2013, and to date has completed thirty-one novels. He’s a rabid reader and lover of history, and peppers his tales with historical references while striving to make the details as historically accurate and pertinent as possible.

While he has extensive writing experience—poetry, personal journals, newspaper articles, songwriting, and advertising copywriting—fiction has become his mainstay. He’s self-published fifteen novels, just published another with Atmosphere Press, and is working on his thirty-second and thirty-third.

Randall published a weekly column for a daily newspaper on wine in the 1990s and was a contributing editor for The Underground Wine Journal.

For more information please visit his website at randallmoorefiction.com.

You can buy A World Without Men here.
Are you a writer, too? Submit your manuscript to Atmosphere Press.

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

The title was part of the process from the beginning. Once I had the title I began to write.

How did it feel when you first saw your book cover? Or when you first held your book in your hands?

Working with the staff at Atmosphere on the cover was stimulating and rewarding. While I had a cover ready to go that evoked a feeling that resonated with me, the cover Atmosphere’s artists came up with is really outstanding. Very inventive and insightful. I’m more than pleased with it.

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

Storytelling has been part of my life since childhood when I made 8mm movies and recorded stories I made up on the fly on an ancient reel-to-reel. I wrote songs and poems followed by journaling. In college, I took a creative writing class called Writer’s Roundtable. The only requirement for an A was to turn in a thousand words a week, double-spaced. If we missed one week, we received a withdrawal.

In 2013, I was inspired by itinerant pencil salesman Edgar Rice Burroughs who surmised he could do no worse than the authors that were in the pulp magazines he was advertising in. While my own success lags far behind him, I still take inspiration from him. What an imagination!

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

My first job was paperboy, selling door to door a daily paper from another town. Then I would deliver it and collect. Getting stiffed as an eight-year-old was a little tough to take back then, but I learned valuable lessons from the process. Then I worked at McDonald’s for a few years, earning enough money to pay my father back for the electronic organ and amplifier he bought for me.

Since then, I’ve worked in graphic arts, for insurance companies, and for twenty years as a wine salesman. I also wrote a wine column for a daily newspaper, composed original music for an Equity Waiver production, and acted as a one-man orchestra for a production by the same company, composing and recording a couple of film scores to boot. Before that, I directed the gospel choir in a Baptist Church, and a show business revue for a church retreat. During that era I composed and produced many songs and musical compositions.

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

I don’t know about a soundtrack, but one scene has The Ride of the Valkyries, followed by This is a Man’s World by James Brown, and Bach’s Adagio in D Minor for Strings.

What is one thing you hope readers take away from reading your book? How do you envision your perfect reader?

I want readers to experience what I experienced while conceiving of and writing it. It’s mostly adventure with a few thoughtful concepts mixed in. My primary goal is to entertain and amuse. If someone gleans larger meaning from what I’ve written, so be it. I strive to avoid polemics, preferring to make my point through the actions of the characters.

What new writing projects are you currently working on? Or, other projects that are not writing?

I have several irons in the fire, including a dystopian trilogy, several mysteries, a sci-fi, an urban paranormal, a domestic thriller, an action thriller, a medieval thriller, a fantasy, and more. In between, I write short stories of varying situations.

How was working with Atmosphere Press? What would you tell other writers who want to publish?

I enjoyed working with Atmosphere’s people, and would enjoy doing so again. To all the people who worked with me, I thank you with all my heart for your help.

You can buy A World Without Men here.
Are you a writer, too? Submit your manuscript to Atmosphere Press.