As Martinus Publishing has some new contributing authors, I'll
be conducting interviews to help promote their anthologies/works. Today, I'm interviewing Ryan McCall, an excellent
author who contributed the short story Guns
of the Green Mountains to "Altered America." Thank you for taking the time to be
interviewed, Ryan.
MTI: Starting off,
could you tell our readers a little bit about yourself?
MTI: Now, getting
down to business; what first compelled you to weave fiction, and what's your
favorite type of story to write?
RM: Way back in my school days I loved writing
stories, mostly it was myself and my friends fighting monsters and exploring
new worlds. As I moved through my education and into working life I dropped off
on writing, but was still an avid reader. The first time I decided to actually
sit down and write more seriously was with the combination of a non-fiction
history book and a short scenario I had read online. That led to my first
novel, The Nanking War.
MTI: Tell me, if you
had to pick just one author who has influenced or inspired you, who would it
be?
RM: Harry Turtledove. Without him I highly doubt
I would even know of the alternate history genre and without my passion for
that, I wouldn’t have made the decision to try and write professionally.
MTI: Your story, Guns of the Green Mountains, appears in Altered
America, an anthology of alternate histories.
The fictional accounts in this collection let us imagine what it would
be like if something had happened differently at different points in
history. Tell us a little about how your
story changes history.
RM: It’s based on the Newburgh Conspiracy where,
at the end of the Revolutionary War, soldiers were concerned about not being
paid for their years of service. In our history George Washington prevented it,
but in my story it went ahead. The USA dies in its infancy and the colonies
don’t unite, creating several new nations, while the British take advantage of
the chaos to reclaim some of their losses. As one of the smaller nations the Republic
of Vermont ends up as a choice target for the British.
When you really study the
Revolutionary War, you realize just how lucky the Continentals were to succeed
in not only the war but in creating a stable USA in those early days.
MTI: If you could go
back in time and try to change any one historical event (aside from killing
Hitler/stopping WWII—almost everybody tries that), which would you choose?
RM: I think people take the Hitler choice because
it would save the most lives if you go by pure numbers, but in terms of having
a bigger effect I think I can trump it. I would stop the Germans in 1917 from
letting Lenin on the “sealed train.” Sure it worked out for them in the short
term, but had disastrous consequences for the rest of the twentieth century.
MTI: Conversely, name
a historical event that you would never want to see changed/would go back in
time to stop somebody from changing it.
RM: The Magna Carta. I see it as the first real
step that we took towards the democratic systems most modern countries have in
place today.
MTI: Shifting back to
your writing, can you tell us a little about what you're working on right now?
RM: I’m re-writing and editing the first book in
my fantasy series, Industry &
Intrigue and I’m somewhere between one third and halfway through a new
alternate history book set in current times, where Imperial Japan attacked the
Soviet Union instead of Pearl Harbor and established a large empire in Asia.
MTI: Other than your
story appearing in Altered America, do you have any other works being published
in the near future?
RM: I just a had a short horror story-‘Curious Soldiers’ published in Dark
Eclipse, a monthly e-magazine and I’ve submitted another story to Emby Press
for a deep sea Leviathan-Monster Hunter anthology.
MTI: On a lighter
note, have you watched any good television lately?
RM: A friend introduced me to two shows recently,
Banshee—a small town drama with a criminal who takes on the identity of the new
town sheriff and Utopia—a very weird and violent British series about
conspiracies inside a graphic novel. David Fincher is supposedly creating the
American adaptation. I’m also eagerly awaiting the next season of Game of
Thrones.
MTI: What sort of
music do you enjoy?
RM: I like a lot of R&B and dance music, but
while I’m writing I also like to listen to soundtracks of my favorite movies,
TV shows, and video games.
MTI: What are three
of your favorite movies?
RM: Jurassic Park, as someone
who grew up on dinosaur books it will always be one of my favorites. The Cabin in the Woods for being the most
clever genre-twisting horror movie I know. The
Mist—the sheer emotional brutality of the ending never fails to get me.
MTI: You have the
attention of potential readers? In
conclusion, do you happen to have any words of wisdom to share with them?
RM: Always get another set of eyes to read your work;
they can see things that you’ll feel stupid for missing
MTI: Excellent advice
for any writer. Thank you for taking the
time for this fine interview, Ryan.
Those who want to read his story and many other alternate history tales
can pick up Altered America.
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