Short SFF, Day Jobs, & Late Night TV
An Interview with William Ledbetter, author of THE LONG FALL UP: AND OTHER STORIES from Interstellar Flight Press
Interstellar Flight Press is lucky to have acquired the print versions of William Ledbetter’s bestselling audiobook series, The Killday Series. In November, we published Bill’s latest collection of short stories, named after the Nebula Award winning short story, “The Long Fall Up”. The collection is full of stories that meld high-concept science fiction with the character-based, emotional storytelling any reader will love. Managing Editor Holly Lyn Walrath interviewed Bill about his love of sci-fi, writing short fiction, and of course, pets!
INTERSTELLAR FLIGHT PRESS: Why science fiction? What about the genre is it that you love? How did you get into SFF?
WILLIAM LEDBETTER: I guess I started writing science fiction because I’ve always loved it. I grew up watching Lost In Space, Star Trek, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and those old late night, black and white movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still, Them, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Earth vs the Flying Saucers. When I started reading books for pleasure, I seemed to immediately gravitate toward science fiction as well. So much so, that when assigned the task of writing a short story for homework in high school, it was of course science fiction, and it received a lot of praise from my teacher and even a few classmates. I think I was kind of hooked on the idea of writing SF after that.
IFP: We know you’ve got a pretty science-heavy day job. Does your day job impact your writing, and if so, how?
WL: Most of my day job career has been in the aerospace industry, where I worked on interesting projects like the radiator system for the International Space Station, a new rocket launch system, and aircraft turbine engines. I learned a lot about the nuts and bolts engineering side of that industry and what was required to get big clumps of metal to fly in the sky and space. I’ve always been excited by that, so once I started trying to write science fiction for publication, I tried to make it as realistic as possible in order to make my fiction seem like something that was possible.
IFP: You’ve been writing short fiction in the SFF fields for a while now. What are your thoughts on the current state of SFF short fiction?
WL: I think SFF short fiction is in a good place. With the addition of online magazines that require only an internet connection to read and online submission systems that enable stories to be sent from anywhere in the world, we are seeing new and interesting voices emerge, telling stories from unusual and original perspectives. It’s an exciting time and I’m so glad to be a part of it.
IFP: All your stories are heavy on the tech AND the emotion of the characters. How do you balance the “hard” and the “soft” sides of science fiction when you’re writing?
WL: I try to make my stories about people, so I think the emotional core is the most important part, and it should drive the story, but I also think those hard and soft aspects are often complimentary. Cold, uncaring machines or those unassailable laws of physics are often the antagonists in real life and in fiction, can be used to make human problems all the more human. I think the best science fiction is really about how some future situation like an apocalypse or space travel, AIs, or alien invasion affects the protagonist in the story.
IFP: We know you love pets (and so does IFP) — can you tell us about your furry friends?
WL: We have three cats and a dog. All rescues. Two of the cats, Molly Murder Mittens and Princess Buttercup are sisters from a litter of five that we fostered (this is why we don’t often foster kittens.) They pretty much own the humans in the house. The other cat, Trixie, was a hungry, skinny stray that wandered up into my mother-in-law’s backyard during a family gathering about fourteen years ago. She is not a fan of the younger sisters, who pick on her all the time. Annie is our black lab mix who came home with us after a stop at PetSmart to pick up cat food. She believes she is a princess and expects to be treated as such.
IFP: Your novelette “The Long Fall Up” won the 2016 Nebula Award. What was it like winning the award? Did you have any idea your story was a contender before it was nominated?
WL: I have to say winning a Nebula Award is definitely one of the highlights of my writing career. Seeing my name on that long list of amazing writers who also won a Nebula is stunning and still amazes me. But yes, there were early indicators. “The Long Fall Up” received a lot of really good reviews. It did well in the SFWA recommended reading list for that year. One of my friends sent a text message cursing me for making her cry, and someone even asked my permission to use it as an example in a writer's workshop. I ended up on the shortlist with some amazing writers in my category, including my long-time friend Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam. This was both good and bad. I was pumped that people in the SFWA writing community felt my story was of high enough quality to be in that group, but also, upon reading those stories, I felt I had little actual chance of winning. So, when I did win, I was truly gob-smacked.
IFP: Can you share any advice for new writers, maybe specifically those interested in getting into short fiction?
WL: Even now, after having written multiple novels, short fiction is still my preferred form. It enables writers to stretch their wings and try new things without the huge time, dedication, and risk of trying them in a novel. I think it is also a perfect medium for new writers to hone their skill set and find their voice. Once you start selling short fiction to professional markets, that’s a good indicator that your novel can succeed. I also think short fiction has become a rather uniquely speculative fiction thing. Short fiction used to be popular across all genres and literary forms but seems to have dropped out of the mainstream consciousness in the past 10–20 years. If you tell someone you are a writer, they don’t ask where they can find your stories; they ask about your books. But shorts are still a strong storytelling vehicle in speculative fiction. Short stories are even picked up by Hollywood from time to time. Check out the story origins in the animated series Love, Death & Robots or the movie Arrival, etc.
IFP: What are you working on right now?
WL: I’ve recently sent my agent the synopsis and first three chapters for a new standalone novel. If he can find it a home, the story will be told entirely from the POV of an alien race as they try to save their planet. No humans at all in this tale. I’m also working on a few other short pieces I haven’t sent out to publishers yet. “Level Seven,” the third novel in my Killday series, will be published in audio on December 7 (then in print next year), and I have a new short story called “Enough,” about a graffiti artist taking on an illegitimate fascist government, coming out in the March/April edition of Analog magazine.
About the Author
William Ledbetter is a Nebula Award winning author with two novels and more than seventy speculative fiction short stories and non-fiction articles published in five languages, in markets such as Asimov’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog, Escape Pod and the SFWA blog. He’s been a space and technology geek since childhood and spent most of his non-writing career in the aerospace and defense industry. He is a member of SFWA, the National Space Society of North Texas, and a Launch Pad Astronomy workshop graduate. He lives near Dallas with his wife, a needy dog and three spoiled cats.
Grab a copy of THE LONG FALL UP today!
Interstellar Flight Magazine publishes essays on what’s new in the world of speculative genres. In the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, we need “writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.” Visit our Patreon to join our fan community on Discord. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
