Listening In is a series of author interviews, featuring authors whose works have been transformed into audiobooks! The Glass Box is J. Michael Straczynski’s latest, described as “a hard-hitting, fast-paced sci-fi novel about the choices we make and the ramifications we face.” This title is narrated by Stacy Gonzalez.
J. Michael Straczynski is a New York Times bestselling and award-winning author who has written hundreds of hours of television, major motion pictures, and graphic novels. He is the widely acclaimed creator of Babylon 5, cocreator of Netflix’s Sense8, and writer for Clint Eastwood’s Changeling, which was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Screenplay. His other awards include two Hugo Awards, the SFWA Ray Bradbury Award, the Eisner Award, the American Cinema Foundation E Pluribus Unum Award, the Indie Book Award, the GLAAD Media Award, the Eagle Award, two Emmy Awards, and the SDCC Icon Award. The author of Together We Will Go, Becoming Superman, and Becoming a Writer, Staying a Writer, Straczynski lives in California.
Please tell us more about The Glass Box! Why should we listen to it?
Set in the near future, The Glass Box is a thriller about a young Cuban-Irish woman, Riley Diaz, who is arrested at a protest march against a newly elected fascist government. Given the choice between six months in prison or in a hospital setting that will help her to become a useful citizen, she chooses the latter, only to discover that this is about reeducation, programming, brainwashing and a conspiracy to take this program much wider. Riley has to take a stand against the system, tear down the program, and expose the truth to the outside world.
The audiobook, read by Stacy Gonzalez, is truly superlative. She gives each character a distinct, unique voice, and finds both the humor and the terror in the story. The pacing is great, and she gives Riley a depth and warmth that makes her even stronger than she is in the book.
Could you please tell us about your career as an author? What first drew you to writing?
For as long as I can remember, I’ve known that I wanted to be a writer. I started prepping as soon as I could read, around age four, so basically my first three years were a waste. I grew up under what can charitably be described as horrific circumstances, and stories were my escape from that world. There’s something terribly addictive about that, and I very quickly got hooked on stories and storytelling. I continued to prep by reading about writing and studying works by other authors; sometimes I’d memorize whole pages of material and, rather than focusing on my classwork, I’d spend my time loading those passages into my head and pulling them apart, sentence by sentence, word by word, to try and figure out how the writer achieved a particular effect. But I didn’t actually write, because I wasn’t ready. That didn’t happen until my senior year in high school, when the floodgates broke open, and I began writing short stories (which I sold here and there), plays (which were produced by schools and little local theaters), and articles (which I sold to newspapers and magazines in the area). And I haven’t stopped since.
We’d love to hear about your writing process. Please elaborate!
My process is a bit counter-intuitive from what I understand of other writers. I write an average of 8-12 hours a day, every day, including weekends and holidays. For me, writing isn’t what I do, it’s what I am. It’s how I define myself. So that schedule isn’t a burden, writing is the most fun I have during the day. I get to spend my time with these most amazing people, saying witty and profound things, whose only disadvantage is that they don’t technically exist. I’ve trained myself to write a ridiculously high number of pages every day because I don’t look at it as my writing these things; I get to know the characters so well that whatever situation I drop them into, my only job is to write down what they do and say. So it’s more like transcription or automatic writing than laboring to figure out what to write next. The writing just happens, almost transparently. This came out of years of struggling to find a good rhythm, when I finally realized that you don’t make art happen, you let art happen. Once you get out of your own way, amazing things happen.
What drew you to sci-fi thrillers? When did you know that it was the genre you wanted to write?
I’m actually kind of a mutt. I never work in just one genre. I’ve written mainstream novels (Together We Will Go), SF thrillers (Glass Box), superhero comics (Thor, Spider-Man, Captain America), historical movies (Changeling), and my next book is going to be this big thick horror novel. So yeah, all over the place. I find that this keeps me fresh as a writer, like crop rotation.
The Glass Box deals with many themes that are reflections of reality. In what ways does real life influence your writing?
It depends on the story, but I like to ground my work in reality, or at least something that looks like reality if you close your eyes and squint a bit, because that helps bridge the suspension of doubt dilemma. If it feels real, if the subtext and characters are logical, consistent and familiar, you’re halfway there. Even my most science-fictional work, like the TV series Babylon 5, drew heavily on real-world politics, technology, and ethical issues. It helps that I was a journalist for many years, so doing the research and injecting that into the narrative without being obtrusive about it comes naturally. The last thing you want is for the reader to feel you saying, “I did six months of research into this and you’re going to pay for it!”
How does your writing process differ when writing a novel versus a graphic novel?
It doesn’t. It’s all down to the characters, and building those out works the same regardless of medium.
Top 3 authors who influenced you the most?
Harlan Ellison. Norman Corwin. Rod Serling.
Where is your favourite place to write?
Anyplace where I have a keyboard and ten free minutes when I can shut out the world and open the window to whatever I’m writing that day. I’ve written in hotel rooms, airplanes, trains, the back seat of cars…but I do most of my work in my home office in Los Angeles, which has a great sound system, shelves for my past and future documents, awards, and gray faux painted walls that let me look into a distance that’s not actually there. The glass patio doors are double-glazed and the walls are double dry-walled, so I can’t hear anything outside that could be a distraction, and nobody outside can hear the screaming.
Describe your writing style in five words or less.
Lean but highly emotive.
Any advice for emerging writers?
Every successful writer starts from a position of being just awful. If you think, “I can’t be a writer, I’m not very good at it,” I’d ask: if you started taking wood shop today, would you expect to build St. Basil’s Cathedral on day one? Or would you consider yourself lucky if you managed to make a napkin holder that didn’t fall apart? We acquire skills with time. Why should writing be any different than woodwork? Don’t be discouraged. Keep at it. Perfect your craft. Be willing to stink if it gets enough words on the page to edit and rescue something in the end. Write about things that matter to you, that wind you up, excite or anger you. Figure out who you are and what you care about, because that unique perspective is literally the only thing you have to offer as a writer.
What do you do when you experience writer’s block or reader’s block?
Because I assign out the task of creating the stories to the characters who exist within that story, I’ve never had writer’s block. It’s all on them, so there’s no pressure on me. Further to the point: there’s no such thing as writer’s block. Do an MRI or CAT scan on a writer’s head and show me where the block is. It’s not there. What people call writer’s block is a combination of performance anxiety and, in many cases, a desire to control the story in ways that are actually interfering with the telling of it. The creative side of your mind is saying The story needs to go this way; the logical or ego-driven part of the brain says, No, no, the story needs to go that way. And you’re stalemated. Once you realize that you have to surrender to the creative voice, get out of your own way, and live inside the story, letting the story happen to you rather than trying to control it, the process becomes luminous, and easy, and no longer like homework.
What has been the most exciting part of having your novels transformed into audiobooks?
As someone who has worked in television and film, one of the most enjoyable and exciting moments is hearing a skilled actor give life to your words. Because they will find meaning and subtext that you never anticipated while the words were just on the page. Audiobooks are no different.
Stacy Gonzalez narrates this audiobook. Did you have any say in her initial casting? What made Gonzalez the right fit?
The folks at Blackstone narrowed down the field to three or four choices. I listened to samples from their previous audiobook readings, and by the time I was done there was no question that Stacy was the right choice. I described a little of her approach earlier, so I won’t repeate it all, except to say that the key factor in her selection was the easy, natural sound she brought to the characters. It didn’t feel like she was acting, but rather that she was just being. Readers, like actors, go through three stages: oratorial performance (just banging out the text in a clear fashion), cerebral performance (they’ve really thought it through but it’s often more a case of finding the emotion rather than feeling the emotion), and finally, intuitive performance, which is what we have here. She felt her way through the characters, the dialogue and the scenes, which makes it all feel authentic and real.
Please recommend an audiobook you absolutely adored!
I recently went back and re-listened to the audiobook of Greg Bear’s The Forge of God, read by Stephen Bel Davies, who did an awesome job of vocally creating the characters and giving everything in the story a sense of weight and importance.
What are you reading (or listening to) right now?
Ironically, most of my time right now is spent listening to Harlan Ellison reading his short stories for Harlan Ellison’s Greatest Hits, coming out March 26th from Union Square. I’m the Executor for Harlan’s physical and literary estate, and it’s been a long slow process of listening to all of his readings, many done off the cuff as well as in-studio, to find the best of the best. He was a master of this kind of thing (whereas I’m a terrible reader), and I think that when the audiobook comes out folks will have a great time with this.
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