Interview with Susan Helene Gottfried, author of ShapeShifter: The Demo Tapes (Year 1)

I'm thrilled to welcome my friend Susan Helene Gottfried to Diary of an Eccentric today! Susan is the author of ShapeShifter: The Demo Tapes (Year 1) (read my review here), and you can find her at West of Mars, West of Mars--the Meet and Greet, and West of Mars--Win a Book. Since this probably is my favorite of all the reviews I've done (Susan is a lot of fun to talk to, even if it's through email), I'm just going to jump right in.

How long have you been working on Trevor's Song?

ForEVER. Seriously. I came up with the idea for Trevor, Kerri, and Mitchell back in March of 2000. Yes, you read that right. Two Thousand.

I have pictures of me holding my infant son and writing Trevor's Song on the laptop.

How did the idea of ShapeShifter and the West of Mars site come about?

Now you're talking about two different things. Let me start with West of Mars first -- it's where I live. West of Mars. The people who live in my community always laugh when I give them my e-mail address. They get the joke -- Mars, PA isn't far from us. To the East, in fact.

And then there's the whole Men are from Mars thing. Anyone who spends time at my blog will see almost immediately that I'm a bit left of center. Left of center, West of Mars...

West of Mars is meant to be the portal to my world. I always envisioned something bigger than JUST an author's site. At some point, I'll be folding my Win a Book blog into the site, but I'd love to expand even further. We'll see what opportunities present themselves.

As for ShapeShifter... wow. Go back to March 2000 again, please. I was three months pregnant with my first kid. I'd recently broken up with my literary agent, and I'd not as recently given up my freelance copy editing career to concentrate on my fiction. So there I am. It's a Thursday night and the Tour Manager is out at his bowling league. It's me and VH1 -- and Metallica doing their S&M thing with the San Francisco Symphony.

I caught sight of the wedding band of one of the guys and my mind started spinning... who could love someone who lives the way they do? What would she be like, to be able to hang with them?

Then my brain took it a few steps farther: what if they are each other's muses?

And Mitchell and Kerri were born.

Trevor, however, sprang to life on his own, fully formed, cantankerous, and ready for mischief.


Can you describe ShapeShifter's sound and/or their musical influences?

They cite this band called Rat Catcher as one of Mitchell's main influences, but Rat Catcher's made up. That doesn't help, so let me use real-life bands. Mix together Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden... all the classics that a kid growing up in the late seventies and early eighties would be into.

As for their sound, it's a cross between Justice-era Metallica (I love that guitar sound) and Godsmack. Mitchell definitely has that deeper voice that Godsmack's Sully has. No offense to Hetfield, who is one of the great frontmen of all time, but ShapeShifter is their own beast, despite their wedding ring origins. Mitchell is moody -- or pretends to be -- and the baritone fits him better. Those deeper tones fit his perma-scowl and contrast nicely with his nudist tendencies.

I've always had a thing for guitarists. What's your preference?

Definitely guitarists, but I have a soft spot for drummers. That might get back to my own failure to be one; my musical talents are definitely NOT in the arena of producing music, just listening to it and writing about it.

So how and why I've managed to create this bass player -- Trevor -- who steals every scene he's in -- and some he's not in -- I don't know, unless it's that whole thing of working on a character and having almost no preconceived notions of who he should be.

What do you do when you're not writing about Trevor and the band?

Try to tame my Google reader! Man, that thing is out of control. I blame it on Blabbermouth.net, my source for musical news and inspiration. Otherwise, I'm a Mom. That ties up a good chunk of my day. Quizzing my kids on their math facts. And I've got these really weird orthopedic issues, so my mornings are generally spent working out, trying to minimize that. Good thing I get off on the endorphin rush of a good workout.

As the weather turns to spring... one day, maybe ... I'll be back outside. I've got two bicycles that feel neglected about this time of year. We love to camp and go hiking. For two people as plugged in as my husband and I are, we love to unplug and get out there. You should see the masterpieces we can create over a campfire! (for real. It's not uncommon for us to go camping and make chicken fajitas or beef kabobs while everyone else is heating up hot dogs. Then we toss the vegetables on the griddle, stick the apple cobbler in the dutch oven... I swear, I eat better around a campfire than I do at home with a stove and two ovens!)

Of course, I love to read. I'm off my high of 144 books per year and I miss that, but it's a worthwhile trade-off. Whenever I hear of someone reading The Demo Tapes, I get a chill -- the good kind. The kind that says I was right to follow my gut and release something that, convention says, has no commercial value.

Thanks to everyone who's helping me prove that convention doesn't know it all!

Do you have a playlist you listen to when you write? What are some of the songs? If you don't have one, what songs would be on it if you were to create one?

You know, I don't get playlists. Repetition drives me bananas -- ask my kids. I can't be in my office and not have the XM radio playing. I flip through probably four or five of my preset stations, hiding from bands I don't like. I've found a lot of new stuff that I dig this way, so that's even better than having a playlist. I love to have my horizons constantly expanded.

So what would I put on a playlist? Probably the stuff on my MP3 player -- Metallica, Disturbed, Godsmack. I need to get my hands on some Korn and Slipknot. I love Apocalyptica's latest. There's some Pantera, some Alice in Chains, some Judas Priest. Evanesence and Flyleaf and a local band called Brownie Mary bring the women.

Any other projects in the works?

Of course! There's Demo Tapes: Year 2, which will encompass all the fiction I posted on the Meet and Greet between April 2007 and March 2008. And I'm working on two different novels, one of which is the follow-up to Trevor's Song, and one of which features a woman who you may not have noticed much over at The Meet and Greet, but that's all I'm saying right now...It needs a LOT of editing.

Thanks, Susan! I'd love to have you back here to talk about The Demo Tapes (Year 2) and one day Trevor's Song!

What are you waiting for? Click here to buy a copy of The Demo Tapes (Year 1).