Interviewing the Interviewer: a Chat with Andrea Johnson

I first met Andrea Johnson a number of years ago when publishing Bastion Science Fiction Magazine. I’d known about her work through Apex Magazine, having seen her author interviews. She was gracious enough to help us interview our own published authors. We’ve been friends ever since, and even got the chance to enjoy beers and dinner together at the 2019 StokerCon in Grand Rapids, MI. I had my own series of questions for Andrea, and she kindly agreed to thoughtfully answer them. I’ve always been fascinated by the ‘meta’ of writing, editing, publishing, and am only slightly annoyed with myself for not having though to pester Andrea sooner. Have a look, then, at how she approaches the underappreciated skill of interviewing.

You’ve interviewed some big names, including Maurice Broaddus, Brian Keene, Joe R. Lansdale, Tim Pratt, Cat Rambo, and dozens more. How did you get started?

I probably did my first interviews on my blog back in 2011? I got involved with doing content for SFSignal in 2013, and coordinating Mind Melds [Editor’s Note: “Mind Melds” were round tables with authors, editors, publishers, artists, and others within the speculative fiction community] was a fantastic way to learn how to do short interviews, and to learn how to do all the behind the scenes of text formatting and what a short bio should look like, and how to contact people I don't know, and all that. I did some longer interviews for SFSignal and more interviews at my blog, and then I got involved with doing author interviews with Apex Magazine in 2014, and now I'm doing author interviews at Nerds of a Feather. Strange to think about how many years I've been involved with this aspect of author promotion.

I still get starstruck. Still dance around and jump up and down when I find out who I get to interview.

As such a prolific interviewer, do you ever feel tasked with the question of how to keep your questions ‘fresh’? Or perhaps is it the opposite, where you have a subset of questions that you always like to ask?

A little of both, for sure! I have my standby questions, like “were there any scenes that were especially hard/easy to write?” and “what inspired you to write this?” My favorite part of the interview process is researching the author online—reading their website, maybe their blog, maybe other interviews they have done. It gives me all sorts of interesting facts about their life so I can ask them interesting questions about other projects they are involved with, their hobbies, maybe a recent award they won, and other topics they are interested in.

So many interviews (including this one) are done via text or email. Do you often get the opportunity to speak with your subjects via audio? If so, do you feel the format changes the dynamic of the interview? In what ways?

I've only done phone interviews a few times. The experience was wonderful, but terrible. Wonderful because I was starstruck the entire time (I'm talking to WHO on the phone??!!!), and terrible because I had to transcribe the entire thing, which took hours and hours. It's also much harder to predict what directions the conversation will go, when interviewing over the phone. I think podcasts are the perfect medium for audio interviews, podcasts seem to offer a more casual environment where the interviewers hope the conversation will go in all sorts of unexpected and unplanned directions.

I once conducted a phone interview for a radio show, and I planned way too many questions. It was a good learning experience, and everyone was very gracious, but the poor editor had to edit a 14 minute audio clip down to like 4 or 5 minutes.

Did you have any kind of mentor, or did you learn everything you know about interviewing on the job?

I mostly learned on the job, but also learned by reading other interviews, and paying attention to what kind of questions other interviewers were asking that elicited interesting and engaging responses.

The first editor I worked with at Apex Magazine, Sigrid Ellis, gave me a fantastic piece of advice that I still follow. She said something along the lines of “The interview should get a reader excited about reading that author's fiction.” So that's what I try to do. Ask questions that will garner interesting responses, and do so in a way that intrigues the person who is reading the finished interview.

I think an area I've really grown in, in the last few years, is writing the introduction to the interviews. Before publication, typically the only people who see the introduction is the editor and myself. So I need to write an introduction that engages the reader, and is also satisfying to my interview subject. The intro can't ramble on, but it also shouldn't be too short, and different publications have their own definition of too long or too short. It's trickier that I thought, but a very enjoyable challenge.

How much control do you feel you have over your interviews? Have you ever been ‘thrown off course’ by an answer?

I've certainly been thrown off guard by an answer, maybe I asked a question that I thought was very involved and would garner a long answer, and the person answered with a very short sentence. I've had a few times where I was interviewing short story authors, and I completely misinterpreted their story, so I was asking questions going in one direction, and they were like “No, the story is about this.” It was awkward, but you live, you learn.

Most of your interviews seem to be of folks that are invested in genre—speculative fiction. How much time have you spent interacting with authors who are more ‘literary’ (fully understanding how loaded that term is, and that so much genre/SF is absolutely of the highest ‘literary’ quality)? Do you find there’s any difference with their motivations, passions, histories, etc? You know, the broad strokes? In particular, I’m interested in the genesis of work authored by genre vs. literary authors. Do you find there to be much of a difference, or is a writer a writer?

I focus on science fiction and fantasy writers, and have interviewed a few authors who would be considered 'literary.' Broad strokes, I'd say there isn't much difference in their motivations and passions. Nearly all the authors I have interviewed, regardless of if they write genre or if they are on the more lit end or more mainstream end of things, they generally grew up loving stories and finding more stories to read and tell. Many of them had some experience as a young person that showed them the power of an amazing story.

The biggest difference I've seen, is between writers who write fiction, and those who write non-fiction (and many writers write both!). I'd like to interview more non-fiction writers in the future, just as an opportunity to learn more about how their craft is different than the craft of writing fiction.

Do you always read the works of an author prior to interviewing them? If so, do you find yourself influenced by what you’ve read, and does that show in the questions you ask?

If the author has recently published short fiction, I'll typically read a few of their recent pieces, or maybe some short fiction they won awards for, so that I can ask questions specific to their recently published work. In other cases, maybe the author wrote a novel a few years ago that I enjoyed but I don't have time to read their newest novel but I'd still like to interview them.

Currently, I'm interviewing authors at a much faster pace than I have time to read their work. I do my best to research the author and their work (reading other interviews by them, reading reviews of their work) to try to ask relevant questions.

Has an interview ever motivated you to read the author’s work if you hadn’t before?

Happens all the time. The worst thing that ever happened to my TBR was author interviews! When done well, and author interview can be an intimate look behind the scenes—what were they thinking when they wrote the book? What scene did they write first? Were there things they were thinking about that didn't make it into the final version? A well done author interview is like watching the “Director Commentary” on a DVD, but you haven't seen the movie yet.

As an editor and previous publisher, I always like to see who’s edited or published something. The editor can, among other things, instill within me a sense of confidence in a work if I know who the editor is. I might see something and think, ‘Eh, that doesn’t look too compelling,’ but then I’ll see that maybe Ellen Datlow was the editor, and it’ll make me pick it up. As someone who’s done so many interviews, do you ever find yourself looking at other interviews and paying particular attention to the interviewer? Or as another example: for audiobooks, there are a few narrators that will cause me to buy the book even if I had no interest because they’re that good. Do you ever find yourself coming across interviews, not really having much of an interest, but then reading anyway because you like the interviewer so much?

I've had similar experiences. For example, I'll read just about anything that's published by Mythic Delirium, the editor there, Mike Allen, he just speaks my language. In fact, even if Mike didn't publish it, if it's something he recommends, there's a very good chance I'm going to love it. Same with Clarkesworld Magazine, I'm drawn to a lot of fiction there, I must have similar tastes to Neil Clarke.

I really should pay more attention to my interviewing peers, and see who is doing what. I'm often reading interviews 'out of context', months or years after they were published, or I'll fall down a rabbit hole of Author Spotlights on Lightspeed Magazine or something, reading the interviews in a publication but not really paying attention to the interviewer. When it comes to radio interviews, then I will pay attention to who the interviewer is. I don't care who Kai Ryssdal is interviewing, I want to listen to that interview! He asks great questions, and I just love the sound of his voice. I listen to a handful of local radio shows as well, and there are a few local newscasters here that I'll watch for interviews that they conduct, regardless of who they are interviewing.

How do you find work? Do markets typically reach out to you and solicit your help with interviews, or do authors? Something else?

Thanks to social media, yes to all of these. If there is an author I'm keen to interview, and I haven't already interacted with them on twitter, I'll email their publicist or agent to try to set up an interview. Sometimes a publicist will contact me out of the blue and ask me I can do an interview with an author they work with. Sometimes an editor for a 'zine I'm writing for ask me to interview a specific author they are publishing. It really is all of the above and a little bit of everything. If it wasn't for author websites and publicists being on twitter, my job would be much, much harder!

If you could interview any author, who would it be? What would you ask them?

I'd go back in time to around 2004, and interview Kage Baker. By this point, she was half way through writing and publishing The Company series, and she probably knew what the next few books would hold, but her readers HAD NO IDEA. And I'd ask her everything about the series. Everything about Joseph and Lewis. Everything about living in California and all the famous landmarks she features in her books.

And then I'd hop back into my time machine, jump to 2008, and interview her again as a follow up. And I'd have to ask her how long she'd been planning that thing that happens to Lewis. I'd ask her what side characters need their own spin off series. I'd ask her who she'd cast in a TV show version of the series. I would relish every second of my interaction with her.

If you could interview any human (politician, celebrity, anyone), who would it be? What would you ask them?

Neil Armstrong. Or really, any astronaut. I'd ask them all the same questions they always get asked: what was it like to take off from Earth? Were you afraid? What was it like in zero-g? How did you go to the bathroom in space (Mary Robinette Kowal has a fantastic twitter thread on peeing in space, by the way). What was it like to see the Earth from space? Do you wish you could have stayed up there longer?

Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband too many books.

In 2010, she started her blog, The Little Red Reviewer, where she posts book reviews, author interviews, commentary and criticism, and even the occasional recipe or travel photo. She has been a contributor at SFSignal, Apex Magazine, and Nerds of a Feather. You can follow her on Twitter at @redhead5318.