Interview with contemporary novelist William Campbell Powell

Contemporary novelist William Campbell Powell chats with me about his new LGBTQIA+ road-trip romance, Teardown.

During his virtual book tour, William will be giving away a $20 Amazon or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card to a lucky randomly drawn participant. To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit his other tour stops and enter there, too!

Bio:
William lives in a small Buckinghamshire village in England. By night, he writes contemporary, speculative, historical, crime and other fiction. His debut novel, Expiration Day, was published by Tor Teen in 2014 and won the 2015 Hal Clement Award for “Excellence in Children’s Science Fiction Literature”. His short fiction has appeared in Metastellar, DreamForge and other excellent ’zines. By day, William writes software, and in the twilight, he sings tenor, plays guitar, and writes songs.

Welcome, William. Please tell us about your current release.
Teardown is the story of (non-binary) Kai, a drummer in an obscure blues band, desperate to escape the dead-end existence of living in a small Thames Valley town (in England). When their singer quits to join a boyband, Kai needs to salvage their upcoming tour of Germany. On the basis of an internet demo, Kai recruits Dom, whom they only get to meet face-to-face en route to their first gig.

As Dom and the band begin to gel, their performances veer from disaster to transcendence. By the time they reach Berlin, though, the band is rock solid – but there’s other ‘gelling’ happening, with Kai being drawn both to Dom and to Lars.

If Kai can hold the band together, the bright lights beckon. But Dom is hiding a secret, Lars is reeling from Kai’s rebuff, and the dream of stardom looks ready to shatter.

What inspired you to write this book?
There were a couple of ideas that came together. The first was to write about a band getting abducted by aliens to tour the galaxy. The second was to write a love story told without revealing the gender of the main character – I remember talking about the second idea with my then editor at Tor Teen, who was unimpressed (because it wasn’t the sequel to Expiration Day she was hoping I’d write). Then I got a vision of my first scene – the aftermath of a gig, with Kai-to-be and Dom wandering the streets, desperate for shelter. That was what got me writing.

Excerpt from Teardown:
So I pulled the mic stand around to the side of the kit, set it up so it didn’t get in the way of the hi-hat, and we gave it a go. I picked ‘I Come from the Blues’, which was one of Clay’s compositions. It had fallen out of the set sometime in the last six months, but I loved Clay’s soft, jazzy butterscotch vocals on it. If it had been up to me, it would still be in the set, but Clay had said he wanted to move on.

Where did I come from? I come from the blues.

Where am I going? I’m going to lose.

Where is my future? I’m sure I have none.

Where is my hope? My hope is all gone.

I’ve always sung along—off-mic and under my breath—so I didn’t have any trouble fitting the words in the right places. And I’ve got decent pitch and rhythm. So I think I did all right.

Now, Jamie wouldn’t meet my eye.

“What?” I demanded. “What was wrong with that?”

He mumbled something.

“I can’t hear you, bro. What did he say, Jake?”

Jake looked away. He didn’t want to get involved in any squall between me and my brother. Besides, he’d used up all his words for the day.

“I’m not sure how to put this, Kai. You’ve got a good voice. It’s, well…not very, well, rock’n’roll. No…grit. Too pure. Sorry.”

“I see.”

“Look, we’ll ask around our friends. Social media. There’s got to be something online.”

I didn’t say anything. I was thinking lots though. About how I’d discovered that this was something I really wanted to do.

What exciting project are you working on next?
I’m currently working on a novel, working title ‘Magissa’, about Jessica, a project manager who discovers she’s the daughter of a witch-queen in a parallel world. Her mother is dead, executed by her own sister, who now rules. Pursued by agents who want to see her dead, Jessica needs to discover her witch-powers and reclaim her mother’s throne.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I think most writers suffer from imposter syndrome – at least, until we meet other writers face to face, and discover that either we’re all imposters, or none of us are. For me, that moment came when I went to the World Science Fiction Convention in Spokane in 2015. For writers, they offered a discount if you go on five or more panels, so I told the organisers to ‘push my boundaries’. I got on loads of panels, met a few other newbie writers and old hands – they were ordinary, just like me. But I felt accepted. I was a writer, no longer an imposter.

Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I’m recently retired after a career in the software industry. I still write software, for recreation – it’s something that helps keep my mind sharp. I’ve been a musician since my teens – part of the inspiration for Teardown – so writing and recording the music from Teardown has been a feature of the last months.

Writing-wise, I’ve always got several projects at different stages, so as well as writing Magissa, I’m also revising a couple of other novels and sending them out to agents. I also run a writers’ group for science fiction authors. And I read, because that’s the foundation on which writers build, how we improve ourselves.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
For Teardown, that quirk was to write Kai without ever using pronouns that might hint at Kai’s gender. Of course, in order to write Kai, I needed to get into Kai’s head, and in Kai’s head, gender is not personally relevant. That’s why the book had to be written as a first person narrative, but also written in a way that friends of Kai don’t accidentally reveal how Kai presents.

And the challenge is to write all that in a way that seems natural.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I really enjoyed science as a kid – and I had the burns and scars to prove it. So I wanted to be some sort of white-coated scientist, doing experiments and discovering things. But the world changed before I got there, and I discovered computers and programming.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
When writing Expiration Day I learned about copyright, and why authors shouldn’t quote lyrics to other performers’ songs if they don’t want to be sued for royalties. So I wrote one original song for that book. Teardown has six original songs, and I’ve been composing tunes and recording demos as part of the writing process. Now I don’t have a voice like Dom’s (for obvious reasons) but I’ve put those demos up on my website. They’re only demos – they’re not production quality – but I hope they’ll help you get into the music of Teardown. You can find them at https://bit.ly/TeardownMusic .

And if you’ve got your own band, and you’d like to play or record them, get in touch – I’d love to hear what you do with them.

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