Welcome, travelers. Our stop in the Otherworld today brings us into some of the darker parts of our world, as we’ll be spending some time with an author who knows how to paint with shadows. Join us as we enter a hearty discussion with author Greg Tulonen, and as we learn about his pulp sci-fi story, Dr. Xivray and the Presidential Peril, as well as the slew of other projects he’s worked on throughout the years.
Tellest: Greetings Greg! I wanted to thank you for introducing me to your story, and for the opportunity to get to know more about you through the many other projects you’ve passionately crafted. It’s not too often that you get to see the tremendous range of work that someone like you has, and it seems like it’s growing all the time. I’m excited to learn more about you, and to introduce readers and viewers to you.
Greg Tulonen: Thanks! It’s great to have an opportunity to meet you and answer your questions.
T: In order to get to know the people I’m interviewing, I like to know where they’ve come from. Many of my interviews start with a pretty standard question: What was it that inspired you to take on the role of a creator? Did you have a favorite author or entertainer growing up? Or did you have other family members, or people in your community that helped to foster a creative spark?
GT: When I was six years old, I had to go to the hospital for some sort of scan or test. I’ve forgotten what it was, but I do know that I had to void my bowels before we could get started, and to that end (so to speak), I was given a chalky milkshake to drink, which was supposed to expedite that process. (Bear with me. I’m getting to the answer to your question, I promise.)
My mother and I sat in a waiting room for a very long time, waiting for the urge to strike me, which it kept on not doing. To pass the time, a nurse gave me some paper and crayons. I wasn’t a great drawer, but I drew a random curly line, immediately noticing that there was maybe something there I hadn’t intended. Without thinking too much about it, I turned that curly line into an eyeball and feathers, and from there I sketched a giant bipedal bird.
I liked my giant bird. I showed it off to my mother and the nurse, who duly praised it, both of them probably wondering why I hadn’t pooped yet. The nurse said the bird looked like a Dr. Seuss character, and while that hadn’t been what I’d been aiming for, I couldn’t disagree.
The next day, I brought the picture into school to show to my teacher, Miss Carlson. She said it was great, and then she said: “You should write a story about it.”
You should write a story about it. Her words sank into me like a stone dropped into a deep lake. I should write a story about it. Yes, that’s exactly what I should do. I should write a story about it. It was a revelation. Not a stone sinking in a lake, but a key turning in a lock. From that moment—that exact moment—I have never wanted to be anything other than a writer.
There ought to be Congressional medals for people like Miss Carlson, who changed my life with a single off-hand remark. And yes, maybe I would have gotten there anyway, but she was the one who sparked it, just by saying, “You should write a story about it.”
Over the next couple of weeks after Miss Carlson’s comment, I wrote and illustrated a multi-page story, “Great Bird,” about a boy named Jack who encounters a giant bird named Great Bird in a place called Big Land. After that, I never looked back. I’ve been writing stories ever since.
T: Considering how young you were when you started, I’m sure your journey to now has been an interesting one indeed. A lot of people have anxiety about starting to write something, but because it may have been so intrinsically in you, you may not have had that same experience. Have you had any stops along the way where you’ve had any doubts, or has it always been the kind of outlet that you’ve enjoyed?
GT: I don’t have a lot of anxiety anymore about starting a project. Sure, the blank page is just as daunting as it’s ever been, but it’s always possible just to start. There have been plenty of projects that were never finished or never came to fruition, but that’s rarely about anxiety or doubt. It’s usually because I can’t find my way into the story or simply can’t find any story at all. That said, I did once have a pretty bad period of doubt, but we’ll get to that in a later question.
T: Before we get into the main project that we’ll be talking about, let’s just talk about the absolute volume of work that you have to show throughout your lifetime. You’ve got a collection of things that you’ve worked on that absolutely eclipse what many creators manage to put out into the world. How do you find the time to accomplish everything, and what keeps your creativity churning after all this time?
GT: Establishing a routine is essential. They say it takes three weeks to form a habit, though that might just be a myth unsupported by scientific study. A while back, I pledged to write at least 250 words a day, every day. This is, admittedly, a very modest goal. Barely a page, double-spaced. Ten minutes of writing, maybe less. Practically nothing, but—crucially—slightly more than nothing.
I’ll admit that sometimes, 250 words is a struggle, a thorn in my day that makes me annoyed at my past self for making such a stupid pledge. But really, it’s only 250 words. Totally doable, even if I’m feeling cranky about it. Even if, for example, I spend most of the day in the ER after accidentally pouring a pot of boiling water onto my bare feet (real-life example). Nothing I write has to be final-draft quality, just so long as I’m sitting down every day, actually putting the ink down on paper—or, you know, the pixels up on the screen.
Lots of times, I find myself on a roll, banging out far more than the promised 250 words—which is great, but the next day, 250 more words are due. Weekdays, weekends, rain, shine, Christmas, my birthday. Every day.
If you stick to that 250-words-a-day goal for a year, you’ll have 91,250 words.
That’s a novel.
T: Surely pouring boiling hot water on your feet has to be great fodder for a story to be told.
GT: You’d think so, but it’s actually a pretty mundane story. I had made spaghetti for my children, and I was pouring the cooked pasta into a colander in the sink—but there was a ladle in the colander, and the ladle rerouted the boiling water like a fountain aimed directly at my feet. I had blisters the size of grapefruits on both my feet for about a month after. (Okay, it’s also a pretty gross story.)
T: And now you can credibly write a story about something like that happening to one of your characters. It was research!
GT: Ha! It’s true. Like most writers (I think), I’m constantly folding real-life incidents and conversations into my work, sometimes without even thinking about it. When I was ten, the wind blew a door shut too quickly, lopping off the end of my right middle finger. That moment—all the details, everything I remember—found its way into Dr. Xivray and the Presidential Peril. But I forgot to give my mom a trigger warning before she read it.
T: I think it’s wonderful that you have a goal that you keep yourself to, and I think it’s the kind of thing that a lot of writers struggle with (myself included). While your goal is certainly attainable, what kind of advice would you give to someone to ensure that they take those goals seriously? Do you gamify them some way, saying, reward yourself if you reach that point each day? If you find yourself at the end of the day, do you refuse to let yourself go to sleep until you’ve drowsily set that 250th word to the page?
GT: Absolutely! There have been plenty of times when I’ve forgotten all about it until I crawled into bed at the end of a very long day, only to groan and dig out my laptop to bang out the bare minimum 250. The key is to never let yourself off the hook, not once. There’s no acceptable excuse, except maybe being in a coma, which hasn’t happened to me (yet), so it becomes all about keeping the streak alive.
T: It sounds very much like a lifestyle change, like the way people say you can’t diet, you just have to reroute the way your brain works. The fact that you even think about it at all after a long day is a testament to the fact that your storytelling is somehow top of mind, even when you’re ready to turn in.
GT: For me, the purest way to facilitate communication between strangers is through stories. I’m a sucker for stories, and I can’t resist the allure of the narrative. It doesn’t matter how good or bad a story is. The pull of “what happens next?” is a force I often can’t resist. If I’m flipping channels and happen to catch thirty seconds of an old “Charles In Charge,” I can become overwhelmed with the need to know if Charles will defeat his fear of public speaking in time to help his friend Buddy, who’s lost his voice. (Spoiler alert: He will.)
T: A lot of what you’ve worked on is a collaborative effort, and I find that finding the right team is a skill that a lot of people are unfortunately lacking. It seems, however, that you surround yourself with the right people in order to make your vision come to life. What would you say is the special formula to developing that collaborative flow, and fanning the flames of creativity together successfully?
GT: There’s a rule in improv comedy called “yes, and …” which suggests that an improviser should accept what another improviser has stated (“yes”) and then expand on that line of thinking (“and”).
This principle is a terrific rule of thumb in any collaboration. Shooting down an idea doesn’t generate any forward momentum. It’s important to work with people who are willing to “yes, and…” and to always be willing to “yes, and…” yourself.
At the same time, it’s equally important to leave your ego at the door. If you’ve got a great idea, but somebody else in your group has an even better idea, you have to be able to recognize that, and let your great idea go without any bitterness or acrimony. The quality of the final product is what’s most important, always.
T: In a perfect world, you’re always yes, and-ing to bigger and better things, but what do you do in a situation where someone’s idea might not be strong enough to pitch forward or build off of? Do you ask that person to refine their idea, or attach it to another project? Does it build a life of its own and spin off in strange directions?
What about in a situation where you might not vibe the right way with a person? How do you navigate moving on from a potential professional creative relationship?
GT: Yeah, I painted kind of a utopian picture above, didn’t I? I should clarify that there have been plenty of disagreements in all of my collaborations, instances when two opposing views are both vigorously argued for (or against), with no clear resolution. On one script, a collaborator deleted a line I loved every time she took a pass, and every time I took a pass, I put it back in. This happened over and over again, a silent battle between us that neither of verbally acknowledged. In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll reveal that the line in question was (for reasons far too complicated to get into here), “Do you like sardines?”
The line stayed in, I’m happy to report.
Sometimes, the choice is made by popular vote among the group, but more often, there’s one person spearheading the project, because it was his or her original idea or script or concept in the first place, in which case that person gets final say. For a group to be effective, everyone has to take it in stride if their idea is voted down. Once again, the quality of the final project is more important than your ego. If I ever work with someone who can’t do that (and I’ve been pretty lucky; this rarely happens), I just won’t work with that person again. Not in a hostile way or anything. I’ll just beg off any projects they’ve got going, and won’t happen to invite them to collaborate on any projects I’ve got going. This has worked out fine so far, with no hard feelings lingering on either side (as far as I know).
T: I do pretty much the same. It’s like professional ghosting. We didn’t work out, but there’s no hard feelings. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. There’s plenty of creatives in the world. You’ll line up with the ones who are right with you if you keep your eyes open.
GT: Agreed. Fortunately, I’ve cultivated for myself a reliable stable of collaborators, all of them extremely talented and (almost always) emotionally well balanced. Actors, writers, musicians, camera operators, sound techs, editors, and artists. Anywhere you go, there’s a thriving community of talented people who are looking for projects to work on. You just have to get out there and find them. They’re all so good, my people, all of them, and all of them are awesome to work with, every last one. Alysa Avery, the insanely gifted artist who did the Xivray cover, is also the artist for the vampire graphic novel series I write for, Night Is Falling, a project that literally could not exist without her.
T: Let’s get down to it and talk about your big new project, Dr. Xivray and the Presidential Peril. It’s a pulp sci-fi adventure that’s sizable but breezy, and it’s earned a decent amount of praise since its release. And while it has the “pulp sci-fi” qualifier, it’s definitely not schlocky—it just leans into the kind of sci-fi that feels…classic.
How did you come up with the story, and how did you go about bringing it to life?
GT: From a very young age, I’ve been nostalgic for the kind of stories popular before I was born. Tales from the ‘30s featuring intrepid heroes who, even when they find themselves in fantastical circumstances, often have no superpowers save their own wits. Zorro. Flash Gordon. John Carter. The Shadow. Doc Savage. I eat that stuff up. At the same time, I recognize the inherent racism and misogyny that are often baked into those stories, an unfortunate byproduct of the time in which they were written. I set out to write a Doc Savage-style adventure, but to update those pulpy tropes for the twenty-first century, making room for feminism, cyberpunk, humor, and a sweet same-sex romance. It’s a pastiche of and a love-letter to a bygone genre.
T: Since history often repeats itself (or at least rhymes), we may very well be coming up to a point where people are clamoring for these kind of pulp sci-fi stories. But at the same time, you mention aspects of your story that should be celebrated and explored but are often not, and certainly were not during that time. How do you deal with the absence of, or worse, the demonization of those concepts in a way that keeps you grounded and sane?
GT: There’s a popular idea that once the race, gender, and/or sexual orientation of a character is canonically established, it should never be changed (as if canon isn’t messed-with all the time). A female Starbuck? Sacrilege! A black Little Mermaid? Scientifically unsound (an actual criticism I read). “Create a new character!” these folks always say.
Here’s the thing. “Create a new character” is great advice, and yes, we should be doing that. But so much of our cultural bandwidth is spent revisiting, remaking, rebooting old properties, and like it or not, most if not all of those properties originated in eras when the default human (for storytelling purposes) was the straight, white man. So, if we are going to spend that much bandwidth resurrecting older IP (and I see no sign that we’re going to stop doing this), I think we have to be open to mixing things up a bit, deviating at times from the original creators’ intent. Otherwise, we’ll be forever mired in all of those outdated sensibilities, defaulting to the straight, white, male character because…well, that’s the way it’s always been, which is a lousy reason. So, a black James Bond? Sure, why not? A gay Captain Kirk? Yes, please. A female Doctor Who? Wait, they already did that, and what do you know, the world didn’t end. (Admittedly, those seasons were pretty bad, but that wasn’t Jodie Whittaker’s fault.) As for how that applies to my own writing, I once wrote a film script called “Derrick & Boyd,” about two thieves who are best friends. When an elderly man dies (of a heart attack) while Boyd is robbing him, Derrick and Boyd spend the rest of the movie trying to dispose of his body. I liked my script, but it seemed a little…familiar, the kind of story we’ve seen many times already. At some point, I decided to make Derrick and Boyd women (“Derrick” and “Boyd” becoming their last names), and that’s when everything fell into place. The resulting short film took home top prizes at multiple film festivals around the country.
Dr. Xivray and the Presidential Peril was deliberately written to confront and update those outdated tropes for a genre I still love, despite its outdated sensibilities. Now, whenever I start a new project, I use gender-neutral names at first, and I try to stay open to the idea that any of these characters could become a different gender before I’m finished.
T: You find this wonderful balance in your story of making something that is funny yet grounded, a bit dark with the occasional light shining through. With some of the stories in pulp sci-fi, it’s tough to get immersed, but your book captures the attention from the flip of the cover. How do you thread the needle so well and give readers something that so captivates them?
GT: Essentially, I tried to write a book I would have devoured as a kid. Writing it, I thought of it as a young adult novel, even though it touches on some adult themes. This is exactly the kind of book I would have loved as a kid. I’ve since discovered that most people who read it don’t consider it a young adult novel, simply because it does not have a young adult protagonist, which is apparently a requirement of contemporary YA literature. But everything I read as a kid (or almost everything) was exclusively about grown-ups doing grown-up things. I was interested in The Muppets, not the Muppet Babies. There’s a listener review on the Audible version of Xivray that’s mostly positive, but does contain this critique: “My one minor issue was that there were times when the author seemed unclear on exactly what *type* of story they wanted to tell: there was some vacillating between noir, snarky comedy, and moving exploration of serious topics revolving around identity and technology.” Even though that’s a criticism, it pleased me enormously, because those were exactly the various tones I was going for. I wanted it to be messy, a swirling stew of themes and ideas I’ve been chewing over for decades.
T: That’s also not a bad criticism! If you were the sort of writer who would have wanted to sort of change the direction you wanted to go in, that’s great advice to have. And even now, as you mentioned, it sort of validated the direction you are going.
But on the flip side of things, there are some critiques that we get that are just downright unproductive. How do you react in the face of those sort of putdowns of your creative expression?
GT: A couple weeks after I started pursuing my Masters in Fine Arts (MFA), a dear friend of mine was killed by a hit-and-run driver in New York City. Within weeks, I had written a thinly fictionalized account of his funeral in Abilene, Texas, titling the story “Ash Paradise” (after a phrase my friend had once used in a poem).
Flash forward to the first day of my graduate school writing workshop, when the professor passed around a sign-up sheet for students to choose the dates they’d be submitting stories for review. I was sitting directly to her right, but she passed it left, and when it got to me, I saw that no one had signed up for the very next class. There were other, later slots open, but I figured SOMEBODY had to go first, so I wrote my name down in the first slot and submitted my draft of “Ash Paradise.”
The next class, my professor, inviting no comment from students, spent the first two hours going over my story line by line, calling it out for its ineptitude and so-called “fraudulence” (a word she kept coming back to). Now, there’s evidence that such a teaching approach can be effective, and it’s supported by popular culture (see the films “The Paper Chase” and “Whiplash,” among many others), but I can tell you right now that it soured me on writing anything at all for about a year, and I still consider it the worst educational experience of my life.
Also, if I may: This was pretty clearly an autobiographical story about a terrible (and recent) event, which, I must emphasize, should not make it immune from criticism, but maybe…tread lightly? My number one goal when I was teaching writing was always, “First do no harm.” In my professor’s written comments on my story, she advised me to throw it away and make no attempt to revise, because it was that wretched. Yikes!
After her two-hour demolition that day, the professor opened the floor for class discussion, but I think everyone was so shell-shocked, only the most tepid of exchanges followed. After class, my classmates took me out for a drink. Actually, several drinks.
A satisfying postscript to this story is that two years later, my revision of “Ash Paradise” was published by The Madison Review, a fact I was able to note in my thesis defense, which this professor chaired.
(Boy, I sure am giving you a lot of very long answers to very simple questions.)
T: Yeah, but now I’m invested (and I’m sure readers will be as well)! Did the professor have anything to say once you had revised it and presented it? Did you just catch them on a bad day when they originally eviscerated the work?
GT: She didn’t have anything to say about that at all. She was on my thesis committee by necessity, since she was the program chair, but she didn’t speak a word during my defense. She had never warmed up to me, or my writing. Sometimes it’s like that. There are some teachers you just never click with, and it’s nobody fault necessarily, though in this case it was definitely her fault.
Coincidentally, she and I went to the same undergraduate school, though she graduated about a decade before I arrived. Shortly after I finished my MFA, I won the annual college alumni fiction contest, and it pleased me to think about her receiving in her mailbox the alumni magazine containing my prize-winning story. (But trust me, it’s not like I’m bitter or anything. I’m way too well-adjusted for that.)
T: As this has been one of your bigger projects, it had possibly the opportunity to go off the rails and surprise you the most. Did you ever encounter a scenario where any of your characters wanted to act differently than you had expected? Did you end up pursuing any of those decisions and have to pivot accordingly?
GT: Sure! I think any fiction writer will tell you that your characters take on a life of their own, and sometimes actively resist the path you, the writer, are pushing them down. You have to listen to your characters in those moments, and decide if they’re right, or simply frightened to go where they absolutely need to go. I realize that answer might sound ridiculous, giving agency to characters who don’t exist in real life. But honestly, that’s exactly how it feels.
T: Well, you also have a lot of experience on the stage side of storytelling, and to that extent, I would imagine you have the perspective of an actor as well. Sometimes writers will tackle their characters from the outside, but it sounds very much like you try to get in their heads—not to pilot them, but to see through their eyes and appreciate something from their perspective.
GT: Well, casting myself in any of my projects is always my last choice, but it’s sometimes necessary. But yes, I like to think I do get into the heads of all of my characters. When I was producing the Audible version of Xivray, the woman who would be narrating read the book, and then asked me about every single character with a speaking role, even if that character only appeared on one page. I was surprised to discover that I already knew all of their backstories, personalities, and sensibilities, had internalized all of that without ever consciously thinking about it.
T: That’s the sign of another good collaboration. It’s great that she asked, and it’s great that you were able to bring the receipts, so to speak. There’s a whole world beyond the few lines we sometimes make for our characters. Sonder is the sort of concept that everyone had a life as vivid and complex as our own, and I like to think that characters that we discover are the same.
GT: Me too. The film director Jonathan Demme once said something about casting that has stuck with me for years: “You have to cast every part with extraordinary care,” he said, “because if you’re going to cut to somebody—maybe it’s just the clerk at the convenience store—they own the movie now. For one second, five seconds, the movie is in the hands of whoever you’re cutting to.”
That’s just as true in writing, I think. If a character is on the page, you have to make that person fully realized, and compelling enough for the reader to keep reading.
T: Let’s keep things rolling while we’re talking about stage, and beyond. We’ve talked a bit about your big fiction project, but you’ve been doing a little bit of everything. If one was to look at your resume, they’d see a lot that you have worked on. What is it like bouncing from one style of storytelling to the next? Do you feel like you have to get yourself back into the swing of things? Or does it feel like riding a bike no matter what sort of project you’re working on?
GT: Each medium offers its own opportunities and challenges. I love dialogue, but graphic novels work better when the dialogue is pared down, letting the visuals take over. I love audio dramas, but you have to find creative ways to make sure the audience understands what’s going on. If you find your character saying things like, “Hey, why are you, my wife, wearing a hospital gown and pointing a gun at me here in my office?” it’s time to regroup and think of better ways to convey the action. When hopping from one genre to another, it can take a minute to get back into the swing of things, but I always get there, eventually (knock wood).
T: With so many projects that you’ve worked on, it’s probably not a surprise to be asked if you have ever thought to do a sequel with one of your stories. Dr. Xivray especially feels like something that could exist as part of a series. But even if you didn’t want to keep Dr. Xivray in the spotlight, it feels as though a spiritual successor would be something you would excel at. Have you ever had those urges scratching at the back of your mind?
GT: Yes, absolutely! I’ve started a Xivray sequel called Dr. Xivray and the Alternate Astronaut (thus revealing the series titling convention I have in mind). But the truth is, despite the fact that the first novel has been incredibly well received by those who have read it, the number of folks who have read it is still dispiritingly small. I’d like to see a larger audience before I labor too intensively on a sequel.
Still, a theme of the novel is ordinary people discovering that they can be heroes, that they must be heroes in order to ensure equity and fairness in the world around them. There is no higher authority that can be relied upon to dispense justice. People must be prepared to do it themselves. This applies to people in outsized science fiction adventures, but also to people who live ordinary lives in the real world. That will always be a theme in my work, no matter the genre.
T: To that end, do you think that we are currently living in an era that might be a little devoid of heroism, and that could benefit from thematic stories like the ones you are writing?
GT: Definitely! We all grow up on stories that feature noble superheroes, brilliant doctors, brave police officers, and dedicated politicians, all of whom are standing by, ready to step in when things go wrong. But when we grow up, we realize that no one is coming to save us. There are no superheroes. Doctors barely listen to us before they move on to their next patient. Brave police officers can often be part of a pretty toxic culture, making things worse instead of better. And dedicated politicians? Well, if you find one, let me know.
In these times especially, more than any other time in my life, I think more individual, on-the-ground heroism is needed—from all of us—to square off against injustices that are happening all around us, every day.
T: With such a vast collection of things you’ve already worked on, it stands to reason that you’ll have plenty more to come. If fans wanted to discover more about Greg Tulonen or any of the things you work on, where could they find you online?
GT: My website, gregtulonen.com, contains descriptions of and links to my recent projects, which include novels and screenplays, short stories and comic books, web series and audio dramas, fiction and non-fiction, and an occasional play. There’s also a link to ask me a question, send me a message, or just say hi.
T: Greg, I wanted to thank you for sharing your time, and inviting us into your world, and into the many worlds you’ve then created. It was great to speak to someone who is so passionate about their craft, and I’m very hopeful that people will see how dedicated you are to weaving stories of all kinds into existence.
GT: Thank you! I’ve had a blast talking to you.
T: Fellow travelers, I’d like to once again offer up my appreciation to Greg Tulonen for sparing some of his time between working on his many projects. I always feel incredibly lucky to be able to chat with someone who follows their creativity and allows it to build to something entertaining and expressive. If you’re interested in the author’s work, be sure to check out his website. You can also check out our recent promotion for Dr. Xivray and the Presidential Peril. And do be sure to check out Dr. Xivray and the Presidential Peril on Amazon today!
Michael DeAngelo
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