This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Bishop & Fuller will be awarding a $25 Amazon or BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.
Why do you write in your genre? What draws you to it?
We’d be relieved if we knew what genre we write in: “dissociative identity,” maybe. Usually, as with BLIND WALLS, there’s a paranormal element, but it doesn’t fit readily into what fans of urban fantasy might expect. Life doesn’t really conform to “genre,” even to the genre of realism. And we’ve never been able, even in very serious pieces, to exclude our instinct for comedy—maybe because we’ve always felt laughter as a needed survival skill. BLIND WALLS isn’t a laugh riot by any means, but emotionally it’s all over the map.
What research or world-building is required?
For BLIND WALLS, it was mostly boring stuff about Victorian architecture and the fundamentals of carpentry, but also two tours through the Winchester House; a well-researched book, CAPTIVE OF THE LABYRINTH, that questions key elements of the “legend;” and memories of previous tours through monumental thingamabobs.
Most of our “world-building,” though, is in the same terms as we explore a scene as actors. How do these characters find their way through the scene, how do they react? Certainly their “world” affects all that, but the point isn’t to create their world, it’s to create the scene. A little world goes a long way, even in SF/fantasy.
We should warn readers, though, of a risk we take. Sometimes it’s not clear if we’re in the 1890’s or the 1970’s, as the characters themselves are confused on the issue. It’s all seen through the sometimes confused vision of a blind tour guide on the verge of retirement. That might reflect our own confusion of what world we’re in.
Name one thing you learned from your hero/heroine.
How fortunate we ourselves have been in having a mad obsession that’s shaped our lives and hasn’t resulted in disaster.
Do you have any odd or interesting writing quirks, habits or superstitions?
We work in very different ways. Conrad is usually the one who sits at the keyboard, and his work is regularly scheduled but comes in short, spastic bursts, probably due to many years of work when writing was subject to interruption by small kids, the dog, the phone, travel, and the many, many unpredictables involved in running a theatre company. For Elizabeth, both as writer and composer, her focus is absolute: one thing at a time, far into the night. With collaborative meetings, we split the difference: regularly scheduled and time-limited.
Quirks? Only the dumb faith that we’re doing something of lasting value.
Are you a plotter or pantser?
Meaning do we plot out the story or just start and see where it goes? Yes, we plot. That comes in part from our many years of writing plays, where time is a critical factor, whereas novels—unless they’re tight suspense—can usually afford a lot more “ramble.”
And it’s the story that attracts us, or a strong sense of a story implicit in the character. So a lot of our collaboration happens in working out the story outline and the plotting—what scenes happen when—and lots of surprises come in that process. As with BLIND WALLS, the story that attracted us cross-pollinated with a totally different story—a different reality in fact—as it continued to evolve.
Still, we always try to keep ourselves open to the “see where it goes” mindset, and we make many changes through the many drafts. It’s not sufficient just to keep driving north and ignore the curves in the road. The story has to keep feeling like it’s finding itself moment by moment, even though you know where you think you’re going.
Look to your right – what’s sitting there?
If we look, there’s nothing there, except maybe one of the cats and a pile of unsorted crap. The trick is to imagine what’s there without looking.
Anything new coming up from you? What?
Multiple projects. Two years ago, Elizabeth did a solo show, SURVIVAL, and we’re planning to do a video of it as soon as the weather gets warm enough for us to use our studio without a monstrous heating bill. And we’re writing a new duo show based on the Lewis Carroll ALICE books. We’ve mounted versions of this several times, and it always seems to be a good means to address whatever current societal mad-hatterdom is afflicting us.
We’re in the fifth draft of a new novel (working title MASKS), charting the odyssey of a family of traveling players during the Middle Ages. It draws a lot from our many years of cross-country performing, though we had the benefit of freeways and a Dodge maxi-van rather than a donkey cart, and didn’t have to worry about pirates. As with BLIND WALLS there’s a paranormal element, as spirits begin to manifest out of a hamper of masks.
Do you have a question for our readers?
How far outside your favorite genre do you venture, and how often?
It's a monstrous maze of a mansion, built by a grief-ridden heiress. A tour guide, about to retire, has given his spiel for so many years that he's gone blind. On this last tour, he's slammed with second sight.
He sees the ghosts he's always felt were there: the bedeviled heiress, her servants, and a young carpenter who lands his dream job only to become a lifelong slave to her obsession. The workman's wife makes it to shore, but he's cast adrift.
And the tour guide comes home to his cat.
The pairing of Bishop and Fuller is a magical one. . . . It’s a brilliant opus, melding the past, present, and future with intimate, individual viewpoints from a tightly arrayed cast of believable characters in as eerie a setting as might be dredged out of everyman’s subconscious searching. . . . Blind Walls offers a weird alternative world, featuring a blind man with second sight and an acerbic wit as its charming, empathic hero.
—Feathered Quill
These characters are so well developed that one has to think of them as live people – laughing with them and crying with them, even getting old with them. This is an amazing story based on the Winchester Mansion and told with such quiet, compelling, raw humanity that the reader simply can’t stop until the entire tale is told. A wonderful, spooky look into others lives and what may or may not happen on any given day.
—Dog-Eared Reviews
Bishop and Fuller have constructed a story rich with imagined detail and visionary ideas about life’s possibilities. The cast of ghostly characters, servants, workman, and family light up the story with dramatic effect as their actions and choices are observed. . . . The authors’ prose is effortless and moves easily from humorous to weighted seriousness. The dialogue is perceptive, giving voice to compelling characters and particularly to the tour guide whose second sight he confers on the readers. The latter will not want to look away from the myriad rooms of Weatherlee House.
—US Review of Books
Read an Excerpt
I was surprised at the old woman’s humor—far better than mine. Ghosts are known for their moans and clatters but not for their jokes. She should be the tour guide, I thought, and I the haunted heiress.
We had walked miles from the sealed-off wing. Burrows branched like arteries meandering out from the beast’s dead heart. A blank wall twenty yards ahead would dog-leg toward another blank wall twenty yards ahead. I led, they followed—an odyssey within a hamster wheel. In my bones it was precisely 4:53 p.m. but each minute took years. My ghosts were aging fast.
The corridor bent, doubled back, made a squiggle of jogs, then opened to a hall that stretched like the endless trudge between airport terminals. When had this vast new suburb come into being? Had Weatherlee House consumed orchards, colonized neighbors, licked whole valleys with its thick coated tongue? Or might we be in those underground shadowlands where they store the great bombs for Last Judgment? I could hear the deep whine of missiles rising.
I saw a dim figure, an ambient smudge whom I seemed to be following. It was Chuck, a silhouette in a well-tailored suit. His gait was lumbering, tense, as if pretending calm while pursued by a bear. At intervals he passed through sharp light and I could see his rigid face. A lamp shone at the end of the passage. He paused, entered the room. I came forward with my breathless gaggle of goslings.
About the Authors:
They host a weekly blog on writing, theatre, and life at www.DamnedFool.com. Their theatre work is chronicled at Lwww.IndependentEye.org. Short videos of their theatre and puppetry work are at www.YouTube.com/indepeye. Bishop has a Stanford Ph.D., Fuller is a college drop-out, but somehow they see eye to eye. They have been working partners and bedmates for 57 years.
Website: http://www.damnedfool.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/indepeye
Conrad Bishop Amazon Page: https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3AConrad+Bishop&s=relevancerank&text=Conrad+Bishop&ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1
Elizabeth Fuller Amazon Page: https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3AElizabeth+Fuller&s=relevancerank&text=Elizabeth+Fuller&ref=dp_byline_sr_book_2
Conrad Bishop Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4352.Conrad_Bishop
Elizabeth Fuller Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4350.Elizabeth_Fuller
Conrad Bishop Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/conrad.bishop
Elizabeth Fuller Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lizful
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/indepeye/videos
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Thanks for hosting!
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