Lance Pearson came late to writing, but when he did, he published another book. The first, A Byte of Charity was published by Mayhaven.
A Bythe of Charity was your first book. Tell us about the other titles.
Reel Pressure followed and used the same three characters. The book starts with Brent and Sydney inheriting an extensive estate which includes majority ownership of a small West Coast movie studio with problems. The two go west to try and sort the problems out with their characteristic blend of cleverness, persistence and technology until justice is done and the studio has introduced dramatic new technology into the movie business. If I get time and energy, I am halfway through A Double Standard and part way through a screenplay. The characters are not carried forward in A Double Standard, choosing to introduce new characters instead.
Before writing…what did you do?
I had a long career in industry successfully running the operations of a troubled national manufacturing business and, with others, growing it successfully into a business that was very profitable. By 53, I had achieved my goals in business and wanted to spend time writing, sailing and with photography and arranged to do so. I was able to enrich my free time with stints of part-time economic development for the state and teaching AP English to the Math Science Center high school students full time one fall and sail with four others on a boat to and from Bermuda. We made some trips to Mexico and back as well. These were enjoyable things I did not have time for before while working in industry.
Where did you grow up?
I grew up outdoors hunting and fishing, water skiing, ice skating and shooting BB guns, .22 rifles and a shotgun in Washington State. I was on both the coast and east of the mountains until high school. Then I spent a year in Phoenix and three years going to the Maine Township schools in greater Chicago where Harrison Ford, Harry Ford to us, and the now junior Senator from New York, Hillary Rodham attended about the same time. My undergraduate work was in Naperville at North Central College followed by graduate work at Loyola University in Chicago with subsequent courses at William & Mary and University of Virginia, in Virginia, where we have lived since 1981.
Did you read a lot?
Television came to our house in 1951 and was both rationed and not as pervasively available as current offerings. I seem to always have had a lot of, for lack of a better expression, intellectual curiosity, and that meant reading-everything I could lay my hands on. It allowed me exposure to knowledge beyond my vision about people, events and places far from wherever I was. I was convinced through college and well beyond that those who wrote books were considerably more intelligent than I was and people on pedestals to be admired. An intimidating view of authors, actually. A favorite possession of ours is a signed copy of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. There was nothing in the science fiction libraries in Phoenix that I didn't read as a freshman in high school. I even waded into Ayn Rand though generally don't read women authors after trying Dorathy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie, etc., which seems to be an unusual posture since I admire strong and independent women in general.
Did you have a favorite book?
Not a favorite book, just a favorite author among favored authors: Dick Francis, British author of mystery novels and one time Queen's Champion steeplechase jockey. My reading is eclectic in fiction and nonfiction and follows the threads of interest that tweak my curiosity. I also like Stuart Wood's Santa Fe Rules and am now reading the light but interesting fiction of James Swain. Grift Sense is one example which deals with mysteries in an unusual setting: the gambling casino environment in North America. With a grandson we've recently begun to read more about growth and development and anything that John Rosemond(e) writes for practical parent and grand parenting.
When was that the first time you thought about writing?
I read novels on airplanes to pass time for years since I flew somewhere in the world every week and could see that most best sellers were mediocre. By the time I was in my late forties I also began to realize I had more creativity than I had previously thought. Somewhere during this period I developed an idea and plot for a book that rolled around inside my head and percolated into a story with no thought of publishing, just the pressure to get it out of my head and down on paper. The spillway rush over the dam for me was the realization that I could join those who wrote books that I had admired and assumed were all more able than me. Once decided, then the idea had to be turned into a book to get it out of my system. When the draft was done it appeared in rough form to be at least no worse than many that sold widely which encouraged me to seek a publisher. I now have some best-selling author friends who have read my work and are very encouraging and supportive though I have recently taken a hiatus from writing to focus on more care of my wife, Karen, who has a serious, though not life threatening, long-term illness.
In A Byte of Charity, the setting was close to home.
I believe fiction doesn't have to be perfectly accurate, but is more believable if you write about things you know something about. The story wasn't hinged on where the characters were as much as the pressures they faced and how they faced them and interacted so I used the places I knew-loosely. The geography could have been any western civilization.
On the surface your characters might seem ordinary. They certainly are not. How did you develop them?
In my case, I had a point of view: clever justice outside the legal system; found a problem to support that; developed a technique of offsetting pressure to brunt the illegal activity; and then created and tied characters into that set of principles and took the story over a six or eight week time frame. I believe actions speak louder than words so the young man, Brent Hayes, has a name that is quiet. His eventual second wife is succeeding in a man's competitive world so her name needed to reflect that: Sydney Mara. The older woman with the problem, Laurel Hill, got her name from something that the plot hinges on and which focused her life and lead her to the present. The characters interact as normal people do, on several levels simultaneously and form bonds, etc. just like regular, bright people do. The characters grow in knowledge, toughness and cleverness while learning to trust one another and finding affection through spending time together, sharing risks and tasks. I'm no Shakespeare but I think we still read him because his characters act out universal human themes as ordinary, if clever, people. My books are just stories set in ways that don't force the reader through mental gymnastics or Byzantine plots to demonstrate the author's talents but rather tell stories about simple but somewhat universal human themes. I probably could write that way but find that process distasteful for effective communication.
I'll be working on that for years to come and probably never achieve competency!
I recently won a short story “local” contest in S. Africa with a story about a woman living in the restrictive, male dominated culture in North Dakota entitled “Serendipity in North Dakota.” That was fun to write but hasn't been submitted anywhere else.
The most interesting character to me in A Byte of Charity was the older woman. She is very colorful. Was she based on someone you had known or observed?
Laurel was a composite of values that I admire; toughness, intelligence, determination, willing to risk, resolute when others follow the crowd, guarded with her affection until trust is earned and so on. I would say that in my mind she probably looked and sounded a lot like Lauren Bacall, had the values, personality and activities of Katherine Hepburn-and some of the very best professors I ever met who were women. If I could sculpt, I could fashion her but in person, I never met her as one individual. She is someone who has passed through life's rougher patches and emerged tougher for the experience and much, much wiser without giving up on the human race.
There is some romance in A Byte of Charity.
Part of life is romance including sex and since I'm not writing for a children's audience, if it is part of what happens in life it is included in proportion and hopefully not in bad taste. My wife read the completed manuscript and when I came home the day she read the chapter with the modest sex scenes as Brent and Sydney realize they are in love she told me and I asked what she thought. Her answer was: “Come here, big boy, we have to talk!” I won't tell you the questions she asked me.
The story revolved around the use of a computer for, well, less than usual reasons.
The plot was conceived to satisfy a principle and then the mechanics were needed. I'm considered computer literate and it seemed to me like it was a perfect tool to use to create the pressure needed to blunt the blackmailing of Laurel Hill. In addition, it gave a dimension to Brent that made him less ordinary, less “inside the rules,” and resulted from a reaction to a hurtful circumstance caused when his first wife left him since he wasn't rich or wasn't going to be, working as a teacher. It helped flesh out Brent's character in the story and was slightly ahead of it's time though not unreasonably so. In my second novel, technology in the movie business that I invented for the plot is now slowly being adopted and used on a daily basis by studios to shave location costs. Our world is technical so to communicate human values it takes some technology to be current. A Double Standard uses the opposite approach: technology is now so ordinary that to be extraordinary and different the problem is ultimately solved with instinct rather than science-by a man with an American Indian heritage, T.C. Jack, for Two Crows. The first two parts of the name are from an actual Sioux Indian tribal registry list from a friend in Washington D.C. who runs the agency.
In A Byte of Charity there were plenty of twists-including sailing. Tell us about that.
The sailing isn't important by itself but the act of going sailing puts Brent and Sydney together in close quarters and allows him to share with her in ways that began to bond them together and it allows her to see him in more ways than a simple consulting relationship or set of contacts. Again, knowing something allows you to be a little more accurate while you use it to develop various points with the characters.
Have you altered your writing style as you have gone along?
Significantly so. Yes! Dialogue is easier, editing is more brutal, and sentences are shorter and less complex. David Lee Robbins, a friend of mine, shared one of the secrets of what he considered his best editor with me over dinner one evening and I've tried to adhere to that more and more. The lady editor was absolutely brutal with his work, she told him that if it didn't advance the plot or the character to get rid of it-and he did!
You cannot have a thin skin and be an author!
The process for me is the same whether it's a novel or a short story, starting with a principle I want to communicate. I realize that the first draft is getting your thoughts down and that editing is refining them so the reader can follow them sufficiently and that diction, syntax, detail, tone and style all make coherent sense. Of course, the process includes new thoughts at every turn which can be reviewed and incorporated as well. That helps the plot details and the characters evolve in my experience. I now know why books have “first editions,” “second editions,” etc. The editing between publishing runs never ends and you can continue to change things virtually forever. With today's software, change is far simpler than ever as well. I think the time to publish is when both the author and the editor are sick of doing it-print it!
Are you working on something now?
Yes. As I said, I am 50,000 words into A Double Standard and am partially done with a screenplay adaptation of A Byte of Charity with the idea of selling it as a 90-minute television movie. Unfortunately, the last nine months have put all that aside while we focused on my wife's medical needs. The work is there and won't go away and can be completed when the mood and time is right. The process of creating and completing is a cathartic one as many other authors have said before me but one that requires the right frame of mind to do at all well.