November 2018
Steven C. Schneider
Your new book, Heart String Theory, was released today, from where did you draw your inspiration for this book?
I have had a life-long interest in the study of literature, science, history and philosophy, and have taken over 100 college level courses and read compulsively in these areas. I also have had a life-long passion for scienc e fiction. I take my life experiences and those of other real people, friends, family and set realistic character driven plots in a science fiction or magical realism framework based on science, philosophy, history, or even comics and random associations. I coined the term ‘science fiction memoir.’
Do you work from an outline or are you a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants ("pantster") kind of writer and why?
A combination; I start with a general idea or a life story and know where I want it to end up. Then I write everything as it comes to me, sometimes in dreams or stream of consciousness writing. I don’t judge random associations, just keep track of everything. Sometimes the characters make their needs and preferences obvious. Then, eventually I get an outline or framework where I hang the seat of the pants writing then have to stitch it all together. Heart String T heory is an example; where I had a number of independent story arcs that could have stood alone as short stories, much of which came spontaneously, then use a lot of craft to pull it all together.
What was the hardest part of writing this book and why?
The hardest part was weaving the different story lines in time and space so that they came together seamlessly at important plot points. I had alternate universes and the multiverse, all with different time conventions, so I headed sections with dates in these different reckonings to signal where and when the action was taking place. This also requires a lot of attention to continuity, like in a screenplay, so you don’t have a character, for instance, walking out of a room in one section and then still in the room when you get back to that plotline. Or, you start a scene in the spring and all of a sudden it’s August. T hat took a great deal of time, even after the book was completed.
What was your favorite chapter (or part) to write and why?
My favorite parts are where I work out my own conflicted feelings about life and have the characters resolve them, things maybe I couldn’t resolve in real life. Charlotte is based on a real girlfriend I lived with after high school. There is a part where she is observing her ‘widower’ from outside the space-time of his universe. She watches him deal with her disappearance, and work toward loving again with a completely different kind of woman. The chapter explores how a woman creates the man in her own image and how the man can accept this as a gift or struggle against it. So Charlotte, having watched this process, her husband’s rebirth, has to decide whether to go back to the moment of her disappearance and retake her life without a hitch, or move on and let these two lovers create a new life. It reflects what we all do in loving again in spite of the longing and regret for some imangined past perfection.
We all love a hero. Was there a real-life inspiration behind your protagonist(s)? Please explain.
Charlotte is the real hero. The real Charlotte helped to create a discipline called music thanatology for the end of life; this is explained in detail in Sweet Charlotte in the Higgs Field. She had done something that I couldn’t have predicted and then died without me knowing about it in 1997. In 2012 I learned of this story and interviewed her teachers, her husbands and read the books that she read, just as Dan Pritchard and the fictionalized S.C. Schneider do in the novels. The hero and the anti-hero, and other characters are drawn from different aspects of my personality as well as that of other people I have known. Some characters also have the same names as their real life counterparts and tell some of their life story. I have very tolerant friends.
Is there a clear villain in your book and if so, how did you get in touch with your inner villain to write this book?
Walter Brodie was not a villain in the first story I wrote about him; two guys who invent a star drive in a garage. He was brilliant and anti-social but not an evil guy. For the novel, I had to make him into a terrorist, but he's still a likable guy who loves his dog and cares about his friends. He’s very conflicted about his purpose and does change over the arc of the novel so he evolves and learns as he lives this story. In order to allow this change, I told of child abuse at the hands of his parents and siblings, the failure to fit in with the college physics crowd, and the compulsion to alway s work outside the system. So, he’s sort of lovable and pitiful and still able to commit the terrorist acts that drive the plot. By making him thoughtful and capable of change I was able to relate to him. There’s a saying in Buddhism, that even someone who seems completely evil, in his own mind, sees his actions as for the good. Only in that way can we have compassion for such a person.
What real-life inspirations did you draw from for the worldbuilding within your book?
In learning about the life of the real Charlotte, I studied the books she read and the philosophy she followed, as told by her husbands and teacher. One author was Rudolf Steiner, founder of Anthroposophy who had an economic theory meant to rebuild Europe after World War I and also taught about an afterlife and contact with the dead. This I wrote into the books, though the ‘dead’ were actually ene rgy beings and other states of being in the multiverse. I used the theology of Hans Urs von Balthazar for the religion based on love and longing, and the writings of Elaine Scarry on Beauty and Being Just. In the creation of these novels, since 2012, everywhere the thread of the story has led me, there has been a connection to the mentors, loves and obsessions of the real Charlotte; a series of Aha! moments. I came to trust in that synchronicity.
Is there a message in your novel you hope readers will grasp?
I hope readers see that there is an optimism in it for the Earth, humanity and relationships. And more than one message; that the universe and consciousness has to be more than what we can perceive, that getting past the stereotypes and archetypes of romance might let you succeed in building a lasting love and that there must be a non-destructive way to rebuild an Earth using the best talents and intentions of humanity, not in spite of humanity. I’ll settle for just one of those.
If you would like to contact Steven, drop him an email: ss@stevenschneiderlaw.com
"I love it when readers send photos of themselves reading my books. I post them on my Fan Page."
I have had a life-long interest in the study of literature, science, history and philosophy, and have taken over 100 college level courses and read compulsively in these areas. I also have had a life-long passion for scienc e fiction. I take my life experiences and those of other real people, friends, family and set realistic character driven plots in a science fiction or magical realism framework based on science, philosophy, history, or even comics and random associations. I coined the term ‘science fiction memoir.’
Do you work from an outline or are you a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants ("pantster") kind of writer and why?
A combination; I start with a general idea or a life story and know where I want it to end up. Then I write everything as it comes to me, sometimes in dreams or stream of consciousness writing. I don’t judge random associations, just keep track of everything. Sometimes the characters make their needs and preferences obvious. Then, eventually I get an outline or framework where I hang the seat of the pants writing then have to stitch it all together. Heart String T heory is an example; where I had a number of independent story arcs that could have stood alone as short stories, much of which came spontaneously, then use a lot of craft to pull it all together.
What was the hardest part of writing this book and why?
The hardest part was weaving the different story lines in time and space so that they came together seamlessly at important plot points. I had alternate universes and the multiverse, all with different time conventions, so I headed sections with dates in these different reckonings to signal where and when the action was taking place. This also requires a lot of attention to continuity, like in a screenplay, so you don’t have a character, for instance, walking out of a room in one section and then still in the room when you get back to that plotline. Or, you start a scene in the spring and all of a sudden it’s August. T hat took a great deal of time, even after the book was completed.
What was your favorite chapter (or part) to write and why?
My favorite parts are where I work out my own conflicted feelings about life and have the characters resolve them, things maybe I couldn’t resolve in real life. Charlotte is based on a real girlfriend I lived with after high school. There is a part where she is observing her ‘widower’ from outside the space-time of his universe. She watches him deal with her disappearance, and work toward loving again with a completely different kind of woman. The chapter explores how a woman creates the man in her own image and how the man can accept this as a gift or struggle against it. So Charlotte, having watched this process, her husband’s rebirth, has to decide whether to go back to the moment of her disappearance and retake her life without a hitch, or move on and let these two lovers create a new life. It reflects what we all do in loving again in spite of the longing and regret for some imangined past perfection.
We all love a hero. Was there a real-life inspiration behind your protagonist(s)? Please explain.
Charlotte is the real hero. The real Charlotte helped to create a discipline called music thanatology for the end of life; this is explained in detail in Sweet Charlotte in the Higgs Field. She had done something that I couldn’t have predicted and then died without me knowing about it in 1997. In 2012 I learned of this story and interviewed her teachers, her husbands and read the books that she read, just as Dan Pritchard and the fictionalized S.C. Schneider do in the novels. The hero and the anti-hero, and other characters are drawn from different aspects of my personality as well as that of other people I have known. Some characters also have the same names as their real life counterparts and tell some of their life story. I have very tolerant friends.
Is there a clear villain in your book and if so, how did you get in touch with your inner villain to write this book?
Walter Brodie was not a villain in the first story I wrote about him; two guys who invent a star drive in a garage. He was brilliant and anti-social but not an evil guy. For the novel, I had to make him into a terrorist, but he's still a likable guy who loves his dog and cares about his friends. He’s very conflicted about his purpose and does change over the arc of the novel so he evolves and learns as he lives this story. In order to allow this change, I told of child abuse at the hands of his parents and siblings, the failure to fit in with the college physics crowd, and the compulsion to alway s work outside the system. So, he’s sort of lovable and pitiful and still able to commit the terrorist acts that drive the plot. By making him thoughtful and capable of change I was able to relate to him. There’s a saying in Buddhism, that even someone who seems completely evil, in his own mind, sees his actions as for the good. Only in that way can we have compassion for such a person.
What real-life inspirations did you draw from for the worldbuilding within your book?
In learning about the life of the real Charlotte, I studied the books she read and the philosophy she followed, as told by her husbands and teacher. One author was Rudolf Steiner, founder of Anthroposophy who had an economic theory meant to rebuild Europe after World War I and also taught about an afterlife and contact with the dead. This I wrote into the books, though the ‘dead’ were actually ene rgy beings and other states of being in the multiverse. I used the theology of Hans Urs von Balthazar for the religion based on love and longing, and the writings of Elaine Scarry on Beauty and Being Just. In the creation of these novels, since 2012, everywhere the thread of the story has led me, there has been a connection to the mentors, loves and obsessions of the real Charlotte; a series of Aha! moments. I came to trust in that synchronicity.
Is there a message in your novel you hope readers will grasp?
I hope readers see that there is an optimism in it for the Earth, humanity and relationships. And more than one message; that the universe and consciousness has to be more than what we can perceive, that getting past the stereotypes and archetypes of romance might let you succeed in building a lasting love and that there must be a non-destructive way to rebuild an Earth using the best talents and intentions of humanity, not in spite of humanity. I’ll settle for just one of those.
If you would like to contact Steven, drop him an email: ss@stevenschneiderlaw.com
"I love it when readers send photos of themselves reading my books. I post them on my Fan Page."
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