{"id":14818,"date":"2012-07-19T06:37:55","date_gmt":"2012-07-19T10:37:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=14818"},"modified":"2012-07-19T06:37:55","modified_gmt":"2012-07-19T10:37:55","slug":"hornshaw-hurwitch-the-terribleminds-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2012\/07\/19\/hornshaw-hurwitch-the-terribleminds-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Hornshaw & Hurwitch: The Terribleminds Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Behold! A two-fer! A BOGO! A real steal! Today in the electric chair we’ve got Phil Hornshaw and Nick Hurwitch, authors of the wildly hilarious and deeply irreverent So You Created A Wormhole: The Time Traveler’s Guide To Time Travel<\/span><\/a>. <\/strong>I met these two miscreants and deviants at the LA Book Festival, where they came tumbling out of a police box eating Sumerian churros. And I said, you must swing by and submit to an interview! And they said, “Not before we travel back in time to ensure that the aliens never enslaved us in 1832,” and I was like, “Right, like you can make that happen.” You can find these gents at timetravelguide.com<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, or at their individual Twitter locations — @PhilHornshaw<\/strong><\/span><\/a> and @heWIZARD<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n

This is a blog about writing and storytelling. So tell us a story. As short or as long as you care to make it. As true or false as you see it.<\/h3>\n

“Winky Finger”<\/strong><\/p>\n

This time, when he came out the other side of the wormhole, Delbridge Langdon III found himself about 12 feet off the ground and whipping through the air. He landed on his back and slipped like a stone on a still pond across intermittent patches of snow and thin grass, coming to a stop a second later with a groan that rumbled in his lungs and pain that rippled across his limbs.<\/p>\n

\u201cCrap,\u201d Langdon moaned, knowing that his high-velocity re-entry was 100 percent his own fault. When you jump through time, you leave a planet moving at around 30,000 kilometers per hour (a number he\u2019d discovered by Googling it) \u2013 and so you are traveling at 30,000 kilmometers per hour. And then you have to land on a planet also traveling that speed, but of course, since you\u2019re moving through time, the planet is obviously somewhere else: somewhere else in its orbit, somewhere else in its rotation, and generally just moving at a high rate of speed. He must have fudged the calculation on the last one \u2013 what was this, jump five? \u2013 and come out of the wormhole slightly at odds with the motion of the world beneath him. Now he had a bruised head and probably a paper mill\u2019s load of slivers in his ass.<\/p>\n

He brushed himself off and stood up. Hell, at least it was light out this time. But he still had no idea where he was, and he was running out of scratch paper to do calculations. Before long he wouldn\u2019t be able to keep up this idea of searching for civilization to study through random acts of temporal dislocation.<\/p>\n

Five jumps and he was nowhere nearer to figuring out the practicalities of time travel. Sure, he was time traveling, but all the issues he\u2019d been warned about by the greater scientific community \u2013 displacement, temporal drift, planetary reciprocity (er, velocity), potential injury \u2013 were affecting him exactly as he had been warned. \u201cDon\u2019t time travel,\u201d they\u2019d said. \u201cIt\u2019s incredibly stupid,\u201d they\u2019d said. \u201cIt\u2019ll get you killed,\u201d they\u2019d said, \u201cand there\u2019s nothing much you could really learn anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet here he was.<\/p>\n

Still, he hadn\u2019t wound up in orbit yet, so at least the Googly information was accurate, Langdon thought.<\/p>\n

He started walking. This was the second part of the routine: land first, walk second. The idea was to find a settlement, maybe meet some locals, maybe explore the past. Maybe trigger a paradox (Wouldn\u2019t that be something, Langdon thought, giggling. Suck it, naysaying Science jerks!). So far he hadn\u2019t found anything but trees and vegetation in various states of growth. One time he\u2019d almost fallen over a desert cleft. While he wasn\u2019t technically traveling through space, the movement of Earth beneath him made his landing locations haphazard at best.<\/p>\n

This time, as he walked, Langdon\u2019s face fell into a frown as he breasted a hill and found himself standing at the edge of a wooded valley. Pines or some approximation thereof formed a thick, endless army, standing at strict attention or chittering in the wind for miles in all directions. A steep drop waited ahead of him \u2013 nothing but forest in all directions.<\/p>\n

Defeated, Langdon let himself drop like a moppet with cut strings. Nothing. Again. He figured if he could find a settlement, he could puzzle out an approximation of the year. As it was, with no point of reference, he had no real way of calculating the return trip back to his proper temporal casaba. Er, casa. Home.<\/p>\n

That was weird, Langdon thought. Spanish? He didn\u2019t even know Italian. He\u2019d taken German in high school and they said that if you knew Latin you could speak all the Bromance languages, but even then, he\u2019d only pulled down a C in Bromance anyway.<\/p>\n

He shook it off. His brain was doing weird things, probably because he\u2019d just jarred it (Next time, wear a helmet, Langdon thought. Ooh, a pink one with tassels.)<\/p>\n

Pulling off his pack, he had another bite of the granola bar he\u2019d been nibbling as slowly as possible for something like six hours. It tasted like cardboard and farts, which he imagined approximated hamster food, and in his frustration, Langdon threw it over the ridge. Littering somehow felt empowering, and he considered what else he could throw to soil the booty he was seeing before him as he pulled out the last of his notebook paper to make another set of jump calculations.<\/p>\n

Langdon paused, lifting the pen off the paper and staring at the numbers. They looked all\u2026wonky. As if there was something wrong with the way he was writing them. And the pen felt strange in his hand, now that he was thinking about it. Like it was smaller than he remembered.<\/p>\n

Shifting the pen into his other hand (What was French for pen? Was it le pen? That sounded right\u2026), Langdon held up his right hand in front of his face and spread his fingers. He eyed each digit carefully, looking for any abnormalities. Had be broken one of his fingers in the fall?<\/p>\n

No\u2026all six seemed straight as always, if a little try and cracked. Although his winky finger felt a little tingly.<\/p>\n

He dropped his hand. What about that seemed strange?<\/p>\n

Raising his other hand, Langdon looked first at one, then the other. No tumors that he could see, which was good \u2013 you never know what might give you a tumor while time trebling. Although, wait\u2026 something was off. Something about his winky finger.<\/p>\n

Winky finger. What the hell is a winky finger?<\/p>\n

It hit Langdon like a kick to the groin and he almost puked from the force of it. What the hell was a winky finger and why the hell did he have one on his right hand? Holy shit holy shit holy shit hol\u2014<\/p>\n

He leapt up, looking around frantically. Should he cut it off? Yes. Cut it the hell off. It was probably a tumor that just looked like a finger! Langdon grabbed it with his other hand to see if it felt gooey like he imagined a time travel-induced finger-like growth would probably feel, but it felt like a finger \u2013 which is exactly what a winky would want him to think, he thought.<\/p>\n

Spinning around and attempting to dart away from the ridge in panic, Langdon ran himself straight into a tree. It was exceedingly helpful.<\/p>\n

Lying on his back, for a second, the haze cleared from his mind. The bad calculations. The winky finger. The weird words darting through his mind. He had discovered something on this trip after all: some kind of chronological displacement that occurred among cells in his body. Probably his brain was all miswired just like his hand was. Who knows what had been duplicated or expanded or smashed together as he was hopping through wormholes; somehow, traversal from one time point to another was screwing him up at the molecular level.<\/p>\n

Well then. Time to just relax a bit, Langdon told himself, somewhat self-satisfied with his successful time travel discovery, although the iron \u2018e\u2019 was not lost on him. No reason to be too hasty. He\u2019d need time to work this out.<\/p>\n

He wished he had his granola bar.<\/p>\n

Someone offered him a hand and Langdon took it readily, pulling himself up. As he reached his feet, he was somewhat confused to see himself staring back at him. He looked back down at the ground where he\u2019d lain \u2013 no, nobody there \u2013 and back at the face of the kind stranger, Langdon.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowdy,\u201d Langdon chirped, grinning and offering a short wave. \u201cHow\u2019s it going?\u201d<\/p>\n

Langdon\u2019s brow furrowed as he offered a few tiny twitches of his wrist and palm in return.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel weird.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, that\u2019ll pass,\u201d Langdon offered, squeezing Langdon\u2019s shoulder. \u201cIt gets essayer.\u201d Noticing the winky finger, Langdon offered a slanted smile. \u201cWe\u2019re stuck with him, though, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow\u2019d you get here?\u201d Langdon asked. \u201cDid the winky send you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn, like, 20 minutes, I decided to try jumping again, so try to remember what I say to you. Because you need to say it to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOr you could just stay,\u201d said Langdon with a shrug. \u201cI think we ought to build a criminalization. These woods kinda suck.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, okay,\u201d Langdon replied, still a little confused. \u201cHey, isn\u2019t that dangerous? With paradoxes or something?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEh,\u201d Langdon frowned back. \u201cI don\u2019t see any butterflies around.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess there\u2019s a good pint,\u201d Langdon said, scratching at his chin with his winky and looking down.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey,\u201d he piped up as a thought hit his brain like a bullet. \u201cDo you have a granola bar?\u201d<\/p>\n

Langdon shook his head. \u201cWe threw it away, remember?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh,\u201d returned Langdon, trying not to show his disappointment.<\/p>\n

Why do you tell stories?<\/p>\n

Phil<\/strong>: We all tell stories. Everything we do is about telling stories. When you think about it, all of human society is built on stories, from religion to law, culture and art, all of it is about sharing the experiences we have with others. Some of those stories are a little less interesting than others, but they all serve a purpose. Somebody needs to tell stories that include zombies, robots and insane machines. If we don\u2019t step up, who will? Lots of people, that\u2019s who, but they might not have enough zombies. But for me, it\u2019s what being human is all about. I love hearing stories and I love telling them because it\u2019s the most powerful way to connect with anything and anyone. Whenever I read something it just makes me want to write something, to keep pursuing that connection with other people.<\/p>\n

Nick<\/strong>: If I\u2019m being honest with myself? Because to be really good at something, you have to choose. Growing up I was a nerd, but loved and played sports. I could get lost in a book, or spend the weekend at the movie theater. I took every art class I could, but couldn\u2019t get enough of AP Biology. Without getting all Wonder Years on you, Phil and I were editors in chief of our high school paper together. Our adviser, who had just had a baby, told me she hoped her son would be as \u201cwell rounded\u201d as me. I wasn\u2019t sure how to take that at the time, because well rounded might easily imply \u201cgood at many things, great at none.\u201d I wanted to be great at something, dammit! Then I realized it was very much a compliment: I had the ability to choose. Eventually, you have to put your head down and dedicate yourself to something. Telling stories is the thing that affords me the greatest opportunity to combine all the things I love in any way I see fit. Brain magic!<\/p>\n

Give the audience one piece of writing or storytelling advice.<\/h3>\n

Phil<\/strong>: There\u2019s buckets of good writing advice out there; a lot of it can be found right here on this blog. The one thing that\u2019s benefited me more than anything else I\u2019ve ever been told about telling stories has boiled down to a simple axiom: show, don\u2019t tell. It\u2019s so stupidly simple that it\u2019s kind of annoying, but in the years I spent as an editor, in the classes I took in college, it really was the one thing that the most writers I came across really needed to know. Don\u2019t tell people what happened, show them. Play out those scenes you\u2019re breezing past. Avoid summarizing. You\u2019re a writer — so write.<\/p>\n

Nick<\/strong>: The oldest one in the book is, \u201cWrite what you know.\u201d But the flip side of that axiom is the more important one: \u201cKnow more about what you\u2019re writing.\u201d It\u2019s one thing to set your story in the streets of 1920s London. It\u2019s a much greater thing to actually know what those streets were like, geographically or otherwise. It\u2019s one thing to write a story about computer hackers. It\u2019s quite a different thing to know how computer hacking is done. Research can be daunting, but you know what\u2019s worse? Presenting only the tip of the iceberg because that\u2019s all you have, and your reader can seeing right through your melty facade.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s great about being a writer, and conversely, what sucks about it?<\/h3>\n

Phil<\/strong>: We both are lucky enough to work as freelancers, and that means we both spend all day writing, every single day. That\u2019s basically the dream — spending all day, every day, dumping out your brain onto a keyboard and rearranging it. Sometimes really amazing stuff comes out, even if you\u2019re the only one who finds it amazing. All the time, though, it\u2019s just about sitting around and playing pretend in some form or another, whether it\u2019s imagining characters and then ruining their lives or trying to find the deeper meanings of the ending of Mass Effect 3. We\u2019re professional thinkers, basically, and we get to constantly challenge ourselves to do it different, do it better. What\u2019s a better job than thinking?<\/p>\n

The very worst thing? It becomes mechanical. For a long time I worked as a copy editor for a real estate website, and it quickly became a mind-numbing exercise in discovering just how many times I could replace the same incorrect phrase. Writing for a living boxes you into a space where you either have to be clever on command, which is never easy, or in which you find yourself tapping out the words in the proper sequence without really giving it the portion of yourself that it deserves. Writing as a job can destroy itself if you\u2019re not careful, and then everything great becomes terrible. It\u2019s like being an architect who only designs prefabricated subdivisions. You need to explore when you write. It\u2019s a must.<\/p>\n

Nick<\/strong>: My favorite writing-related quote (with the exception of the contents of \u201c500 Ways To Be A Better Writer\u201d) comes from German writer, Thomas Mann: \u201cA writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.\u201d There are a lot of people who will just say (to writers in particular), \u201cI can\u2019t write.\u201d But the truth is, neither can writers. The difference is that writers make themselves write. No matter how good, how bad, how successful, or how unheralded, all writers have this in common: they have to sit there and make the next word come. This sucks. It never gets any easier.<\/p>\n

However, this is also great. Because eventually, those words become sentences and dialogue and books and scripts and then you have it there, projected onto the backs of eyelids and the insides of imaginations. Over and over again you get the satisfaction of making something that didn\u2019t come easily. So if you happen to be a writer and someone ever tells you, \u201cOh, I can\u2019t write,\u201d say, \u201cNeither can I. I just do.\u201d<\/p>\n

How’d you two find or know one another? Also: what is the secret to good collaboration with a creative partner?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Phil<\/strong>: Nick and I have been best friends since elementary school. We lived close by one another in the Metro Detroit area and we\u2019ve been nerdy about all the same things, including writing, since roughly the third grade. So one secret to collaboration has been that we\u2019re friends, we like the same things, we think similarly about a lot of things and we have a collective history that we can draw on of things we liked, things we\u2019ve done, and so on. That makes writing a lot easier, because we\u2019re often on the same page really early in whatever process were in.<\/p>\n

The other secret, I\u2019d say, is trust, We\u2019ve been working together for so long now, on so many things, that I know I can bring an idea to Nick and find out if it\u2019s actually a shit sandwich or not, and hopefully vice versa. I help Nick identify his latent reverse-racism and he helps me keep my crippling fear of pirate peg-legs from coloring everything we create. But more than that, I trust that if I really like something but it doesn\u2019t work, Nick will let me know. He won\u2019t pull any peg-legs. And then we can talk it out, fix it, throw it away, whatever — it helps not to be married to ideas, but more than anything, I think we do a good job making each of our ideas better. Even when we\u2019re not collaborating, I run most everything I write past Nick and he brings me stuff for notes all the time.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost an extension of \u201cKill your darlings.\u201d Collaboration means you\u2019ve got to be willing to kill darlings, like, all the time. It\u2019s a darling holocaust out there. Ideas are constantly getting aborted. But if you trust your collaborator, you know that they\u2019re there to make the work better, and you can part with ideas, the result is always a genetically superior supersoldier.<\/p>\n

Nick<\/strong>: Though I\u2019m sure we knew each other beforehand, my first memory of Phil is from the 4th grade. We were walking down the hall with a mutual friend, and Phil was deriding me for my lack of knowledge regarding slang terms for \u201cpenis.\u201d A lifelong friendship was forged (and I have long since surpassed him in this field). We once spent the summer between 8th and 9th grade writing a sci-fi\/fantasy book, which we realized pretty quickly after completing was just an amalgamation of all the stuff we thought was cool at the time (Final Fantasy games played a big role.) We went on to become terribly well-behaved teenagers, were editors-in-chief of our high school newspaper together, and eventually I convinced him to follow me out to LA.<\/p>\n

Writing partnerships are difficult. You can\u2019t just throw any two creative people together and get a new, better result. It has to work<\/em>. Even beyond the creative, the process of working with someone else whose ideas get equal weight requires deference, patience and an open mind. The writing process is almost by definition one of seclusion. Shutting out the world to make the voices in your head louder. People assume we sit in the same room and write together–we don\u2019t. And in fact when we try we don\u2019t get very far. We\u2019ll have lunch or drinks and brainstorm, or outline, and from there it\u2019s really about volleying things back and forth until one of us has set the other for a spike.<\/p>\n

My favorite knowledge nugget about writing partnerships comes from Terry Rossio & Ted Elliot, the writers behind movies like Aladdin, Shrek and Deja Vu (sorry, guys). It\u2019s something to the effect of, \u201cFor a writing partnership to work, both parties have to feel like they\u2019re getting the better end of the deal.\u201d It may be as simple as that.<\/p>\n

Phil<\/strong>: I don\u2019t remember that penis conversation.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tell the world why everyone ever should buy So You Created A Wormhole. No modesty. Put your book-balls on the table and slap them mightily.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nick<\/strong>: \u201cThe book is fucking funny.\u201d –Chuck Wendig<\/p>\n

But also–it is everything you think is cool wrapped into one book. As the first and only field manual for the intrepid time traveler on the go, So You Created A Wormhole<\/em> will teach you everything you need to know to time travel. And even though the tone is zany and off-the-wall, we did do actual research about the science(iness) of time travel, wormholes, blackholes, potential paradoxes, making batteries that run on the electricity-producing microbes in dinosaur poo, etc. The parts of the book I\u2019m most proud of are those that manage to take really out-there concepts, like special relativity, or paradoxes by inaction, and explain them in lay terms. And because you\u2019ll be laughing the whole way, it doesn\u2019t even feel like learning!<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also a book for the meme generation. We pull from and riff on the tropes of a lot<\/em> of pop culture–pretty much anything that relates to time travel, space travel, mummy fighting and dino riding. Okay, one more pitch: It\u2019s like The Zombie Survival Guide <\/em>only it doesn\u2019t take itself seriously and with time travel<\/em> instead of zombies. And I don\u2019t think need to tell any of your readers how much cooler time travel is than zombies.<\/p>\n

Phil<\/strong>: Nick pretty much covered it, but allow me to add: it\u2019s illustrated. Hilariously.<\/p>\n

Nick<\/strong>: By Aled Lewis! Who is amazing. And British. Everyone should check him out.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

The book *is* fucking funny. Forgive the impossible-to-answer question but, how the hell do you “be funny?”<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Nick: Firstly, thank you. I means a lot to us whenever we hear that. And to your question: turn your filter way the fuck down. Better yet, turn it off–you can polish yourself back up to an acceptable level of decorum during editing. Or not. You may even surprise yourself. I think the thing that worked best for us was to just let go and be ourselves. The book has a very particular tone, but a lot of that was cultivated from two decades of friendship banter. The best part of writing this book was passing sections back and forth and making each other laugh. If we could do at least that much, we were on our way to making other people laugh, too. I think it\u2019s a lot more difficult to say, \u201cMan, we need a joke here, let\u2019s be funnier here, hey, do you think other people are going to laugh at that?\u201d When you let the humor flow naturally from the material, you\u2019re going to have much more success.<\/p>\n

Phil: I obsess over this all the time. When Nick says, \u201cTry not to ask \u201cIs this funny? We need a joke here,\u201d that\u2019s me, I\u2019m the one who\u2019s looking at it from a standpoint of needing to improve, be funnier, make better, and I\u2019m constantly worried about it. Nick\u2019s right, you need to just throw it all out there and let the editing cut back the things that don\u2019t work, but for me, I find myself analyzing a lot. What makes this funny? What about it is unexpected?<\/p>\n

Volume is definitely important, and self-censorship doesn\u2019t help anything on the first pass. But I think the ability to analyze, to break down a joke or an idea and say, Here\u2019s where it works, is really important for anyone who wants to do humor. I\u2019ll readily admit I haven\u2019t mastered it.<\/p>\n

Make yourself laugh. Focus on that. Then see if it makes other people laugh. For comedy, I think, it\u2019s about feedback.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Obligatory time travel question: if you could time travel, where would you go and what would you do there?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Nick<\/strong>: I would wake up, make myself a Dodo omelette, and sling myself back to the Late Cretaceous period. Then I\u2019d make nice with some herbivores and ride a triceratops. We\u2019d laugh, roll around in the grass, then fight a T-rex because we have horns and your arms are short, I don\u2019t care how big your mean, razor-tooth face is. We\u2019d grab a late lunch at Trike\u2019s favorite grazing field, then we\u2019d say our goodbyes and I would fling myself forward several million years to the year 3000 AD. I\u2019m hoping that by then, if we haven\u2019t all killed one another, humanity will be pretty well on its way to galavanting around the galaxy, and science will have solved the most trying issues of our times, like having sex in anti-gravity, and space suits that bend at the elbows. After a nice, long dinner on Kepler-22b, I\u2019d come back to my own time–only, about 30 years earlier. See, I\u2019ve got really curly hair, so I\u2019ve always figured the fact that I didn\u2019t live as an adult through the \u201880s was some kind of galactic miscalculation. Plus, I\u2019m pretty sure I\u2019d get a lot more writing done before the invention of the Internet.<\/p>\n

Phil<\/strong>: First, to the future, where I would procure my free complimentary spaceship, since everyone from the future has one. Then, it\u2019s time to form my ragtag team of heroes, aliens and robots from throughout time. Bill and Ted had the right idea, but they didn\u2019t go far enough — first, you get Lincoln, Napoleon, Socrates, an assassin droid, an alien concubine, Billy the Kid and King Arthur together. Then, you fight evil. Naturally. Probably it would be us hunting down and stopping evil time travelers, but I\u2019m not really willing to limit the scope. There are adventures to get into, and I want to get into them. Also space travel. That doesn\u2019t really need to have an actual goal behind it. My life as Star Trek<\/em> would be just fine.<\/p>\n

Favorite word? And then follow up, favorite curse word?<\/h3>\n

Nick<\/strong>: Lately I\u2019ve been combining fruit with well-known curse words. Asspineapple comes to mind. Cucumbernuts. Kumquattwat. Really, though, I doubt I\u2019ll ever outgrown a good old \u201cFuck.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for favorite word, I think it\u2019s hard to go wrong with cupcake. My guess is that most writers would go with something more descriptive, but there are few words that can be separated from their meaning completely and still remain sweetly satisfying. Go on, say it. Cupcake.<\/p>\n

Phil<\/strong>: \u201cAnthropomorphism.\u201d Not only is it fun to write and to say, but it gives you an inflated sense of your intelligence in most situations. Plus the very concept is exciting — giving human traits to things — in this fantastical way. It always conjures up the idea of magic and hidden characteristics for me, the kinds of things that trigger your imagination when you\u2019re a child and as you get older turn into the underpinnings of horror stories. I love the idea of fantasies turning to nightmares and vice versa.<\/p>\n

Curse words are something else entirely. I can\u2019t say I have much of a vocabulary in that department because I routinely circle back to old standbys. A biology teacher once told me I should use \u201ccloaca\u201d because in birds its a catch-all area that handles basically everything gross, but there\u2019s no elegance in it. I think I prefer \u201cshit.\u201d It sounds as bad as it is in all cases. The more disgust you put into the word, the more disgusting the situation you\u2019re describing. It\u2019s not often that a word can reflect the exact amount of emotion you invest in it.<\/p>\n

You said the magic word: Cupcake. What is your favorite kind of cupcake?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Phil<\/strong>: …Red. Brown. Red and…brown, I guess. I\u2019m sort of unclear on the idea of \u201ckinds\u201d of cupcakes. A cupcake appears, I eat it. They are indistinguishable.<\/p>\n

Nick<\/strong>: Yeah, same here. My entire life I have battled a devastating illness known as \u201ca massive fucking sweet tooth.\u201d But for the sake of affability, I\u2019ll say red velvet. Oo! Or confetti! Or–<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Phil<\/strong>: What the hell is a confetti cupcake?<\/p>\n

Favorite alcoholic beverage?<\/h3>\n

Nick<\/strong>: I\u2019m a whiskey guy. If I\u2019m in a cocktail bar, I\u2019ll treat myself to an old fashioned. Anywhere else, Jack & Ginger (Jack Daniels & Ginger Ale) is my standby.<\/p>\n

Phil<\/strong>: I wish I could claim a favorite. Sadly, I know nothing of alcohol, having failed to use my college education to its fullest. Now I drink cheap things I mix with other cheap things. As I answer this, there happens to be Bacardi here, and Coke Zero, and thus that is my favorite drink until my next drink. Also whiskey is good.<\/p>\n

Recommend a book, comic book, film or game: something with a great story.<\/h3>\n

Nick<\/strong>: I\u2019m also [secretly] a filmmaker, so I\u2019m gonna go ahead and recommend a film. This Argentinean movie that won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film a couple years ago, The Secrets In Their Eyes, is one of the best movies to come out in the past decade in any country. It\u2019s this epic, winding, well-structured, beautifully shot, dual storyline suckerpunch that manages to be utterly harrowing and funny at all the right moments. The soccer stadium scene will make you crap your pants. The rest will keep you trapped there in your own squish until the final frame. Watch it now.<\/p>\n

Phil<\/strong>: I\u2019ve been spending a lot of my time consuming time travel fiction over the last year, both as research and out of curiosity. There\u2019s a film I stumbled on at one point, this horror movie called Triangle, that\u2019s just dynamite. Everything else I\u2019ve been into lately has been pretty mainstream; Triangle has a bit of a cult classic feel, it\u2019s a little bit obscure, and it\u2019s pretty mind-bendingly phenomenal.<\/p>\n

What skills do you bring to help humans win the inevitable zombie war?<\/h3>\n

Phil<\/strong>: Of course, a viable knowledge of zombie survival, having spent a vast amount of time considering the situation. Zombie survival situations inevitably break down out of issues of panic, ineptitude, or complacency. Your one true advantage over a zombie is your brain, so while others might have survival skills or impressive braun, we have the ability to know not to wander off alone, how to keep quiet in heavily populated areas, what kind of structures are best to reinforce, where the most viable locations for repopulating the planet will be, which other survivors are poisoning the group with their idiocy and so forth. We\u2019re the guys who you can turn to when you\u2019re wondering, \u201cShould I throw a molotov cocktail into that crowd of undead?\u201d We\u2019re there to tell you, \u201cNo, jackass, zombies don\u2019t feel pain and then they\u2019re going to wander around aflame, setting everything on fire.\u201d We\u2019re integral to the winning of zombie wars.<\/p>\n

Nick<\/strong>: I consider myself a pretty good judge of character, which means I\u2019ll be the one deciding who lives and who dies. There will be no room for racists and narcissistic sociopaths with twitchy trigger fingers in the new zombie apocalyptic reality. You\u2019re welcome.<\/p>\n

You committed crimes against humanity. They\u2019ve caught you. You get one last meal.<\/h3>\n

Nick<\/strong>: It would be some kind of coconut, olive and mushroom puree souffle, because I hate all of those things with a passion, and fuck the sadistic onlookers, that\u2019s why. Also it would be pretty funny if I puked on the executioner\u2019s kicks.<\/p>\n

Phil<\/strong>: Something with a cyanide tablet. Or what was that drug McCoy gave Kirk so Spock would think he\u2019d killed him? Whatever that was. Put it in a baked potato. Obviously we still have supervillainy to take care of, seeing as we\u2019re all about committing crimes against humanity in this scenario, so staying captured is not an option. There\u2019s no time for dinner!<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next for you guys as storytellers? What does the future hold?<\/h3>\n

Phil<\/strong>: There are plenty of half-formed ideas in test tubes right now, but so far we\u2019re just riding the So You Created a Wormhole wave and trying to get the word out about the thing. We\u2019re thinking about a couple of follow-up ideas — books seem to work well for us, so we\u2019d like to keep at them — but really we\u2019ve got ideas across lots of different media, and it\u2019s not even all time travely. Although, admittedly, we do have a TV pilot draft we need to work on that is, in fact, all time travely. Also steampunkish. And gunslingeresque. On the whole, I think we\u2019re both ready to do something more narrative than Wormhole. That book tells something of a meta story of time travel, but I for one am itchy to develop some characters and make them miserable.<\/p>\n

Nick<\/strong>: I\u2019ve got one short film under my belt (My Barista) and the trailer for Wormhole, too. I\u2019d like to shoot another short by the end of the year and finish another feature script or two. We also have a 10-episode season of webisodes based on our book written, which we\u2019d like to shoot once we get some financing. It\u2019s sort of our take on the buddy comedy, set inside a secret time scientist laboratory at QUAN+UM (our fictional governing body of time travel). They\u2019re tasked with sending regular dispatches to time travelers in the field, often with disastrous and hilarious results. Getting our first book published is a drunken conversation come true, but we\u2019re always looking at new ways and different mediums to tell our tales. Hopefully in the future, we\u2019ll be doing a lot more of that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Behold! A two-fer! A BOGO! A real steal! Today in the electric chair we’ve got Phil Hornshaw and Nick Hurwitch, authors of the wildly hilarious and deeply irreverent So You Created A Wormhole: The Time Traveler’s Guide To Time Travel. I met these two miscreants and deviants at the LA Book Festival, where they came […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[77],"class_list":{"0":"post-14818","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","7":"tag-interview","9":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-3R0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14818"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14824,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14818\/revisions\/14824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}