If you could go back and give advice to the sixteen year old T.C. McCarthy, what would it be?

You’ll be bald by 36 so enjoy having hair now.

Give a brief arc of your writing career; how’d you get started?

Look, I’m no different than any other writer; I’ve always written.  But what’s more important is that I’ve always read.  Magazines, comic books, graffiti, and books, you name it and I’ve read it.  Childhood meant California – bay area – and our mom had this thing about no television so she threw it away, which meant we could either go home with a latch-key, or trip-it to the library (riding a bike) where we’d read for a while then throw water balloons at cars.  There was a lot of running from neighborhood bullies too, and, after that, more reading.  So by the time I picked up a pen (we didn’t have computers in the 70’s and early 80’s, and forget about having access to a typewriter) I’d already gotten that sense of story.  Constant reading branded it into my brain.  And story-sense provided enough juice to keep me going through the early stages when writing was about fumbling with words more than working with them, but to be honest, the story-sense was a curse at first.  I knew the kinds of stories I wanted to write.  But that’s not the same thing as being able to put the words on paper, and it took twenty five years of practice before I wrote anything worth reading, let alone anything someone would buy.

What’s the best advice you’ve been given when it comes to writing?

To not become a writer.  George Plimpton gave the commencement address at my high school so what did I do?  I walked right up to the guy and said Mr.-Plimpton-I’d-really-like-to-be-a-writer-can-you-give-me-any-advice?  Like he’d never been asked that before.  Well George gets this look on his face, like he needs to find the can, and then takes a deep breath before shaking his head.  And that voice; you know the one: pompous and arrogant but with the chops to back it up so you just let it steamroll.  “Don’t do it,” said George. “There are far too many of us in the world already and you’d be better off going into banking, or being a doctor or lawyer.”  What-in-hell did you say to something like that?

Except…

Plimpton was right.  UVA’s creative writing program denied me entry (I submitted science fiction as a writing sample, which apparently was a big no-no), so the Dean gave me permission to drop out and surf Australia; I gave up on the whole English Major/MFA thing.  Still, here’s the thing: I wrote.  Never stopped.  By then someone had invented a thing called a PC, then the laptop, which made writing easy, and my eventual path as a PhD student and scientist primed me with all kinds of material that I never would have gotten had I concentrated on being “a writer” from the first day of college.  Here’s to you, Plimpton.

You’ve written short stories for literary, horror, and science fiction venues.  What gives?  Can’t you just pick one?  Which do you like best when it comes to short stories?

First let me caveat my answer: I have a lot to learn.  There are plenty of writers out there who can define what literary fiction is, and I’ve read the blog wars over the Academy snubbing genre writers, etc., but these discussions are beyond me.  So right now, none of that stuff matters; I write and read.  Sometimes I feel a mainstream/literary story in my gut, and it just comes out, and I’ve had success with those, having published in Per Contra and Story Quarterly.  I’ve only written two literary shorts, so that’s a 1000 batting average!  In fact, I wrote my first literary story because my SF had been rejected so often from pro-venues that I was furious and decided screw it – time to write something else.  In contrast to the SF venues, a professional-rate online magazine bought that short story within a month of my submitting it.  What the hell does that mean?

And no, I can’t just pick one genre and don’t have a favorite – anything goes.

Who is your favorite author?

Here are my favorites by country:

USA: Ray Bradbury, Michael Herr, Joe Haldeman

UK: Hector H. Munro, George Orwell, John Christopher

France: Guy Sajer

Russia: Artyom Borovik

Kazakhstan: Kanatzhan Alibekov

Israel: Ron Lesham

You have a day job and a family; when do you write?

On my days off, but usually between eight and eleven pm, and four and seven am.  I get very little sleep.  Maybe that’s why so many of my stories and books tend to be dark.

The protagonist in Germline is an interesting character with some major flaws; how did you choose that guy and what went into fleshing-out Oscar Wendell?

I’ll never reveal everything about that process; it was personal.  But Oscar is like a lot of people I’ve known growing up, especially in a world where children are exposed to drugs at an early age.  For guys like Oscar it’s too great a temptation.  I mean, of course people will get take or drink “stuff” that makes them forget that they’re embarrassed to dance in public, makes them uninhibited when it comes to talking to the opposite sex, and makes them, essentially, fearless.  These, however, are lies.  In the case of Oscar, addiction prevents him from learning fundamental principles “normal” people take for granted, like the fact that using war as a springboard to fame is insane.  Oscar, however, is lucky.  I’ve known plenty of people who go down a similar path and don’t make it back alive, or, if they do, are just damaged goods.  I wanted a character that overcomes all that; in a way, Germline is a coming-of-age story (albeit an unusual one).

What book is in front of you right now?

Counterinsurgency Warfare, Theory and Practice, by David Galula.  I have to stay sharp, you know?