2025 - 04/2025 Meeting

Page Created:  04/13/25.  Last Updated:  06/21/25.

JOHN WISWELL

ONLINE

Website:  <https://johnwiswell.blogspot.com/>

SOCIAL MEDIA

Bluesky:  <https://bsky.app/profile/wiswell.bsky.social>

Instagram <https://www.instagram.com/john_wiswell/>

Twitter:  <https://x.com/Wiswell>

Meeting Date:  April 12, 2025.

Meeting Site: Bergen Highlands United Methodist Church.  Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

Attendance:  16 + 27.

Meeting Program:  Talk / Q & A w/science fiction writer.

Notes:

Eight people attended the pre-meeting Ice Nine discussion and chatted about cartoons and popular history, Monty Python, the Mad Max movies, RAN, the custom of shrouding the dead, and other matters.  Seven people went out to the diner afterwards.

Newsletter Account:

The following account is reprinted with permission from  THE STARSHIP EXPRESS  Copyright 2025  Philip J De Parto:

The April 12, 2025 General Meeting of the Science Fiction Association of Bergen County was held at the Bergen Highlands United Methodist Church in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.  Fantasy author John Wiswell was our speaker.

Our guest is the author of two fantasy novels, SOMEONE YOU CAN BUILD A NEST IN and the forthcoming (June 2025) WEARING THE LION, both from DAW Books.  His short fiction has appeared in UNCANNY, F&SF, LIGHTSPEED, REACTORMAG.COM, and other venues.

John was born with defective lungs and other medical conditions which nearly killed him.   Reading helped him get through the bad times.  "I refuse to die.  I need to know how this book turns out."

More information  appears at the club website under 2025 - 04/2025 Meeting.  Our thanks to everyone who helped with the set up / clean up, and other tasks.

Meeting Notes:

Growing up:

.....Wanted to watch more TV

.....Was a younger brother

.....Read Incredible Hulk stories in the basement

.....Grandmother told him Slavic folk tales

Health:

.....Defective lungs

.....Bronchitis every two weeks

Reading:

.....Escapism is a great gift

.....Gives a child the will to live

.....Wanted to know what was on the next page

.....After he recovered he wanted to write like that

Attended Bennington College, a small liberal arts college in Vermont

?Lots of...God Bless...Wayne?

Felt there was a liberal arts spirit when he visited the school.

Likes being a playful Grinch of literature.

Most English Professors there hate genre fiction.

.....Glad he evaded becoming a literary fiction writer.

.....There are some very good authors writing literary fiction.

.....Likes James Baldwin, Colson Whitehead, ?Rio Anidigrage?

.....Reading different genres can expand one's empathy.

He appreciated literary fiction & converted some lit fictors to genre fiction.

Final exam - Read humorous story about a serial killer.  Dead silence.  But in the notes, everyone said, why is no one laughing or applauding?

Sometimes it's not that he can't read the room, but that the room is illegible.

Favorite genre to read is horror.

Loves horror but doesn't write it.

The discomfort of horror reveals one's vulnerabilities.

15 years of writing short stories.

Open House on Haunted Hill in DIABOLICAL PLOTS was his breakout story.

About a sympathetic haunted house.

John Gardner's GRENDEL changed his life.

Monsters are the political class.

Brom Stoker based Dracula on openly gay Oscar Wilde.

Wiswell has written 8 unpublishable books.

Took him a long time to learn how to write novels.

Is autistic / neurodivergent.

SOMEONE is about a horrible flesh-eating monster who falls in love with a wholesome girl.

Fun dynamic.

Around this time started doing short stories about relationship dynamics.

CUJO is gut wrenching if you have ever petted a dog.

CHRISTINE is much more a haunted house than a car.

SOMEONE:  What is the monster's internal life?

Desire for companionship.

Loved book JOHN DIES AT THE END.

SOMEONE - A science fiction book masquerading as horror (Charlie Jane Daniels).

DRACULA is a diary of blood.

Wrote faux Clarkesworld submission about a vampire family with an angry gay skeleton and an alien shapeshifting werewolf archeologist.

Two books before SOMEONE, he thought he had a truly salable novel.

No bites, but several agents said, send me your next book.

So he wrote his most me (personal, idiosyncratic) book.

Got good rejections.

Drove one agent to quit the business because he considered it a great book that was unsalable.

Current work in progress has a main character who is autistic as hell and in constant pain.

Make monstrosity normal - it is taking.

SOMEONE - fan mail from people in hospitals.

New book is about the labors of Hercules and identity.

.....Kills his children.  Goes on labors to atone.  How does that change you?

.....Be put on path of redemption

.....What is Hera's arc for causing this?

Superhero comics taught young Wiswell to read.

Researching agents:  Find kindred authors.  Find agents of those authors.  Query in batches of 8 - 12 agents.

He is represented by Hannah Bowman of Liza Dawson Associates.  Two agents were interested in representing him for SOMEONE.  He contacted clients of each agent.  Everyone kept saying that Hannah was the most trustworthy person in the business.

Two editor were interested in the book before he even had an agent.  Both declined to make an offer.  Speculates that sales gave it a thumbs down because they couldn't market it.

Waves of publishers turned it down.  Then one made an offer, which led to a four-way bidding war.

Artists - James Fenner for US edition; Stephen Player for UK edition.

Very polarizing book.  People either love it or hate it.

A lie means you are never alone.

Asks beta readers when do they start liking his characters.