Interviews Of The Winners

ChristopherOpyr

Assalam o Alaikum and hello friends and fans!!

I'm your host and dost Kounj Muzafar. Today we have another honorable and lovely Author and winner of a Freedom Award ChristopherOpyr.

Thank you so much Chris Hutton for agreeing to this interview. So I will start now...

Tell us a little something special about yourself and your background?

I grew up in Richlands, NC, a small town on the eastern coast of North Carolina, a town that thrived off of farming and the military. As I grew up, I left for Raleigh, North Carolina, and then eventually headed out west to Los Angeles. There's nothing inherently special about any of this, but it does have a major impact on my writing. Much of my non-space-related fiction is set in one of these three locales, and the diversity to which I have been exposed both from growing up in the rural South and from living in one of the largest cities in the US has had a major impact on the characters through whom I choose to tell my stories. Diverse perspectives and life experience are a pivotal and recurring feature of my writing, both as that I find that any true future in space would be a multi-cultural future, and because it is seemingly ever more critical to modern times that we as a society come to understand and accept diversity and the unique lens through which various cultures and subgroups experience the world.

What's your age, your date of birth and zodiac sign?

36 / Feb 17, 1981 / Aquarius

Which genre did your winner book belong to? What draws you to this genre?

I won science fiction with my short work, Ablation. The genre has intrigued me for a long time, but I came to it rather late as a writer. While I have always enjoyed the strength of science fiction as a parable to our reality, as a commentary and a warning to our potential future, I only began to write for it after my career led me to science. Over seven years ago now, after leaving a story producing job in reality television, I found myself working for a corporate citizenship team at a rather large entertainment company, and landed myself on a job as a copywriter and digital media specialist on an environmental education competition within that department. Since that time I have worked in the environmental education space and my love of science has been rekindled. That being the case, it only seemed natural to combine my passion for writing with my fascination with science - in particular with the subject of space flight.

What do people hate the most about you?

Most likely my over-analytical, overly honest nature.

What's the most strangest thing you have done?

I don't know about strange, but likely the most uncharacteristically risky thing that I have done is catch a ride with a stranger in a small valley town in the remote mountains of Italy. In fairness the buses in this town had gone on strike, I was alone, and there wasn't much buffer between then and my flight home, so options were limited - especially with the language barrier.

Do you ever get writer's Block? Give one tip on how to get through the dreaded writer's block?

I think we all find ourselves in a block at one time or another. Usually when I find myself in that space, I remind myself that Stephen King writes every day, and that if I want to be a writer, I have to treat it like a job. Whether I feel like it or not, I have words that are due, and I have to sit down and write them. Sometimes they might be crap, but usually I find once I start typing the story eventually begins to flow.