Interview With Howard Seaborne

(We are proud to present this exclusive interview with Howard Seaborne)

TSM: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your work?

HS: There’s a photo of me at age 6 holding my birthday cake. There are no candles on the cake. Instead, it displays a plastic airplane. I have a spiral notebook containing the first novel I wrote at age 10. Those two worlds inevitably collided. The question asks me to describe my “work,” but writing isn’t work for me. Second, only to the feeling of opening the hangar door to go flying is the feeling I get when I open my laptop. I’ve been a professional pilot since age 18 and soon after that went pro as a writer in the advertising world, never straying from the sideline of writing fiction or the passion of flying. DIVISIBLE MAN is the cake and frosting of both.

TSM: The Divisible Man novels follow a charter pilot who can vanish and defy gravity, and you said that you got the idea for the series while daydreaming at your kids’ elementary school, imagining what it would be like to float above the audience unseen. From that initial idea, how did you go about developing the story as a whole?

HS: My favorite question is: “And then what?” Imagine that you can vanish, and when you do, gravity ceases to affect you. And then what? Can you fly? What’s your means of propulsion? How do you control speed and direction? Do your clothes vanish? Objects in hand? If yes, why? The story developed by challenging me with logical questions. As those questions are answered, new ones arise. The answers to those questions reveal the character and the story.

TSM: Similar to the main character in the Divisible Man novels, you also have experience as a pilot. Do you have any interesting flying experiences/stories? 

HS: Every flight is a new and interesting flying experience for the pilot. The kind of flying experiences/stories that interest non-fliers tend to be emergencies. I don’t like to paint aviation as scary, but I am willing to admit to leaving the sky unexpectedly six times in my flying career. Each time, skill and training kicked in and contributed to a successful outcome. I deploy a few emergencies in the DM series, but never in ways that my fellow pilots would criticize as “stupid” or unrealistic. I can safely say that every bit of aviation in the DM series is realistic. I would add that if you’re looking for true heart-pounding terror, hop on the freeway for the drive to the airport.

TSM: What’s your favorite place that you have flown to? 

HS: In DIVISIBLE MAN: THREE NINES FINE (the seventh novel), my characters fly to Mackinac Island, which lies at the intersection of three Great Lakes. The description of the approach and landing at the airport is entirely real, as is the description of the island, which is my favorite flying destination. Except for aircraft landing on the island’s single runway, there are no motor vehicles on Mackinac. As described in the book, a horse-drawn taxi picks you up at the airport. No other vacation stop offers such a serene conclusion to a beautiful flight.

TSM: How did you first fall in love with flying?

HS: Something about flight has been magnetic to me since childhood. Paper airplanes. Model airplanes. Visiting airports. All of it, to this day, is like a drug to me. Describing Will’s passion for flying in the DM series is the easiest thing in the world.

TSM: The Divisible Man series currently has ten novels, with at least two more on the way. How do you balance such a large ensemble of characters over such a long period of time? 

HS: The cast of DIVISIBLE MAN seems to take care of themselves. The DNA of each cast member dictates their action, dialogue, and interaction with other characters. That’s true whether the scene is at the police station (where Andy interacts with other officers or her boss), at the airport (where the Essex County Air Service gang works), or even at the Silver Spoon Diner on Saturday mornings (where Will mingles with luminaries of local society). I would add that, at times, because of who they are, the cast commands the direction of the story. They can surprise me.

TSM: How do you track all the plot points and overarching themes?

HS: I don’t feel like it’s that hard. Once the framework for a character is established, they do the bulk of the work steering their character arc. The overarching themes are a little like the national highway system. Once you pick a destination, you simply choose the route. I don’t use index cards or a written outline. I’ve tried the outline approach, but my characters keep screwing it up. Mostly, I watch the movie in my head and then take notes.

TSM: You have also said that there are no unresolved plotlines across multiple novels, so how do you come up with new ideas for each novel in the series?

HS: In the shower, mostly. The daily news provides an endless supply of villains. I simply imagine what they’re up to and then ask myself how Will and Andy would bring them to justice.

TSM: The Divisible Man series also has a cast of interesting and unique characters. Besides Will Stewart, the main character, we have many characters, such as his wife, Andrea, and others, such as Pidge and Rosemary. How do you go about creating such interesting characters?

HS: I’ve met them all. Every character in the DM series is a Frankenstein creation from the body parts of people I’ve met, known, clashed with, loved, hated, or been indifferent to in my life. I simply invite them to play a role in the stories that unfold.

TSM: You have also stated that your love of writing stemmed from a love of embracing “alternate truths.” How do you think that fiction, aka “alternate truths,” can lead us to learn real truths about ourselves and the world around us?

HS: People have tried to politically legitimize the term “Alternate Truths” lately, so I’d like to be clear: I was referring to LIES. Alternate Truths are simply lies. For a brief period in my childhood, I tried lying as a shortcut answer to hard questions (like “Did you do that?”). It did not work. I learned that lesson before I was five. It astonishes me that grown men and women today have not learned a lesson that a five-year-old has mastered. In the sixth DM novel, the character Earl Jackson is quoted: “Lie to me once, you’re on my shit list. Lie to me twice, we’re done. Lie to me a third time, I’m coming for you.” That’s a task I’m happy to assign to my friends in the DM series, a process that pursues and produces TRUTH in the end.

TSM: Reviewers such as BookLife have praised the Divisible Man series, calling the first installment a “striking and original start to a series” and the latest installment “as exciting as the first.” How did you handle writing the sequels knowing that the first installment was well-received? How did those expectations challenge you?

HS: I will never be able to express my full gratitude for the positive reviews I’ve received for every DM novel to date. I hold my breath every time I send a new novel out for review. That said, I don’t factor reviewers’ comments into a new story. Each new tale takes off on its own fuel mixture of ideas and characters. If I ever find myself writing to reach a bar set by a previous review, I hope I will have the good sense to stop.

TSM: What are some of your favorite thriller novels/authors? How have they influenced your writing style?

HS: Boy, I hope they have. I dream of mastering language the way Stephen King has. Of writing with diamond-cut clarity like Elmore Leonard. Of having the story imagination of Clive Cussler or of bringing procedural worlds to life like C.S. Forester. I hope to be as prolific as Michael Connelly, with stories that stay as strong. I would love to master the storytelling skills of non-fiction writers like Stephen Ambrose or James Holland. I want my characters fleshed out with the artistic idiom and sense of place found in Eudora Welty’s writing. My writing aspirations reflect my flying. Every flight is a concentrated effort to perform one degree closer to perfection. The same goes for writing.

TSM: What is one piece of advice that you would give to any beginning writer?

HS: Stop. Give it up. If your sole aim is to be a “writer,” you’re wasting your time. But if you have a story in you or characters you cannot stop thinking about or a TRUTH (one that you have challenged and double-fact-checked!) that you must share, then write. Write. And write more. And then seek out the harshest critic you can find to mentor you. And when you give them your precious baby to tear to shreds, hang your future on every slashed word, cut paragraph, and crossed-out line of dialogue. You will not learn from the gems you write but from the gutted wreckage of properly edited writing. And remember that the most exciting thing about finishing a story or novel is that you are now free to start a new one.

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