We were lucky to catch up with John Foster recently and have shared our conversation below.
John, appreciate you joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
I was a terrible student, a big fan of “the Gentleman’s C,” but at the age of 11 I became an avid reader after discovering Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan and John Carter of Mars. I would sneak my own books into class and read them below my desk. I NEVER got caught. The unexpected result was that I began to ace my English classes and my writing approved of my own accord. By seventh grade, teachers were using the word “writer,” to describe me, which seemed an unreal thing. Me? A kid growing up in NH? This continued through high school and after considering a career in intelligence and a brief flirtation with the B.U. Theatre Conservatory, I dropped out of college and headed out west to Los Angeles to teach myself to write screenplays. This I did, again, by reading everything. I mean EVERYTHING. I read screenplays. I read about writing screenplays. I read biographies of writers and read the trades. I became a development assistant, where reading and assessing scripts was part of the job. I took one seminar, which was a disaster…the leader wanted to talk about Scientology. Finally, I wrote a screenplay about age 23. It was a terrible pastiche of “Seven Days in May.” Then I wrote a buddy action script that was utterly derivative (too much reading the trades for the young lad). Eventually I realized I had to write something that came purely from me and wrote a balls to the wall crime screenplay called “Rooster,” inpired by the Alice in Chains song. This attracted the attention of a literary attorney who was very generous with his time. He helped me clean it up and got it to a manager, who got it to an agent and my early career was born. (This screenplay was never produced, but I adapted it years later into the crime novel Rooster, published by Grey Matter Press in Chicago).
My learning process was pretty quick, the benefits of being an autodidact, perhaps, but I did get starry eyed and distracted by Hollywood for a bit. Sunset Boulevard? Limousines? Wine, women and song? That became too much of a goal beyond writing good stories and so I began following trends and listening too much to what other people wanted me to write…you know, the people who also wanted to cruise around in limos while drinking champagne. Had I been more grounded and learned to advocate for my own ideas strongly, earlier on and understood that business better, I suspect I would have shifted to writing novels sooner and developed my voice more effectively and earlier.
The skills I still need to work on revolve around patience. I drive myself up the wall when the writing is going slowly (like my present work in progress which is NOT DOING WHAT I WANT IT TO DO) and going through draft after draft…and oh lordy, does it take time to get the gears moving once a book is ready to send out to publishers. Aside from patience, I challenge myself to do something different with every novel, be it writing from a different point of view, from the female gaze as opposed to the male, or a single location story. Whatever I can do to keep stretching. Every book presents its own unique challenges and I often don’t know what knew learnings will come from a project when I begin…which is pretty cool.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I write horror and crime fiction because in my mind, these are the most dangerous genres. How so? In these, the hero is quite likely to fail, even die, which raises the stakes for readers. In fact, I often don’t know at the beginning of a story if my characters will win or lose, which makes the writing fun and fresh.
I became a writer because I love it. I want to do this despite all the pitfalls that come with the profession, particularly the need to balance emotional openness required of an artist against the thick skin needed for the profession. My route to being a writer was circuitous, however, and I’ve done everything from restaurant work to being a personal trainer on both coasts, to production work on movie sets and reading screenplays in more genteel surroundings. I spent years using my storytelling skills in the lucrative field of pubic relations, before leaving that to focus full time on writing novels.
I was born in Sleepy Hollow, New York, and have been afraid of the dark for as long as I can remember…which may explain a few things. I’ve lived in southern, NH, Boston twice, moved all over various parts of sprawling Los Angeles and now live in Brooklyn.
I’m the author of the crime thrillers Rooster and the forthcoming The Hard Six, as well as six horror novels, the forthcoming All the Teeth in the World, Hate House, Leech, The Isle, Dead Men, Night Roads and Mister White, as well as one collection of short stories, Baby Powder and Other Terrifying Substances. My short stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies including Dark Moon Digest, Strange Aeons, Dark Visions Volume 2 and Lost Films, among others. If you had asked me at age 11 when I became an avid reader that I would one day be a published author, I wouldn’t have believed you, but despite a lot of detours and scraped knees, here I am.
Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
Oh yes, conventions and writers groups. I really thought being a writer HAD to be a solitary thing, but there are entire communities of like minded people out there with similar interests, struggles and journeys. I now have a tight knit group of writers to help me with my work and a sprawling community of writers, editors and publishers across several countries who support me just as I support them.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
Unseriously (but seriously) when I’m traveling I want to find my books in airport bookstores. You know, just stumble over them…which is not terribly likely because of my chosen genres. My more serious goal is to improve with every book, which is why I challenge myself to add a new level of difficulty each time. I thin, for the most part, I’ve been succeeding in this.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://johnfosterfiction.com
- Instagram: @johnfosterfic
- Facebook: @JohnFoster
