Love Bytes Reviews welcomes Guest Reviewer LenaLena and author Cecilia Tan for an exclusive interview about Daron’s Guitar Chronicles and the Kickstarter project for Daron and his friends.

 

Most people that are going to be reading this are going to be unfamiliar with Daron. Can you give us the tl;dr version of how he ended up with his own webserial?

 

So, I started writing Daron’s Guitar Chronicles when I was a teenager in the 1980s. Most of what I wrote in those early days was not from Daron’s point of view. It was from every other character telling us about Daron. But in grad school I started telling it in Daron’s voice. Daron tells his story in bits and pieces, a conversation here, an afternoon rehearsal there, a bus ride, an argument, a memory. The changes that are happening to him are visible in this slice of life format. All these little scenes add up to many more words than a standard novel, which makes it unpublishable for a commercial publisher, but perfect for serialization on the web.

 

Why choose to write about an undersized, introverted guitar prodigy full of self-hate?

 

I don’t think I chose Daron. I think he chose me. Now, having been writing about him for over thirty years, I can look back on it somewhat and realize that when he stepped, fully formed, into my consciousness, he was probably a big part of how I processed stuff in my own growing up and coming out. I’m bisexual and always have been. When I was a teenager in the 80s I was grappling with both where I fit in a homophobic society and also with how my sexuality and my self-identity were integral to my creativity and my writing. I didn’t realize it at the time, but those are Daron’s struggles, too. Only in Daron’s life, the struggles are much more dramatic and visible and difficult than in mine. Being bi and introverted isn’t really a detriment to being a writer, but in Daron’s world, the world of commercial rock music, things like masculinity and image and freedom of expression are life and death issues.

 

How about Ziggy?

 

Daron walked into my head sort of full blown, a complete character, and I’ve merely been learning about him ever since. Daron took a while to open up and tell me things, but the things were all in there–I’m just discovering them. Ziggy was like that, too, but he didn’t come along until maybe two or three years after Daron. One day he waltzed in and was like, hey, I’m here. Which is probably why he’s

introduced to Daron’s story the way he is: kaboom. Ziggy is one of those people where before you meet him you don’t know people like him exist, and after you meet him he’s a part of your life forever. In Daron’s case, he was hard to get to know because he was lying to himself so much. In Ziggy’s case, it’s because he’s lying to everyone else. They each have layers that need to be peeled away before you get to the core–which is another reason for such a long serial. The core is great, but the layers are interesting, too, and taking the time to peel them away one by one has been a big part of the story of both of them.

 

The part you ended up writing in that first go in the nineties was volume 1-3, correct? That took how long to post? At what point did you decide to write a follow up?

Yep. 300,000 words, 200 chapters, I had started it in grad school, kept writing it for six years, and then forced myself to stop at a plateau in the plot. That plateau, though is like that pause at the top of a big hill on a rollercoaster. I knew that at the time but I forced myself to cut it off there so I could submit it to publishers. Two separate agents and five or six publishers all told me the same thing: it’s great, but could you give us just one 80,000 word chunk that stands alone as a novel? I tried and tried but the story just wouldn’t work that way. I started posting them as a serial after the manuscript had literally been in a drawer for ten years, in 2009. Posting those 200 chapters as a serial took almost two years, but I had an inkling after the first year that I was going to keep going, because of the readers of the site. People really took to Daron and his story, and I figured if there’s an audience out there, why shouldn’t I write the story arcs that I had planned way way back and just hadn’t gotten to yet? I took a few months off just to make sure I had the new material flowing, and I’ve been posting nonstop from November 2011 to the present (April 2014)!

 

Were the reasons to do the follow up financial, creative, fanservice?

 

Creative mostly. I knew the big cross-country tour would be what came next, and I knew a ton of things that were foreshadowed in those first 200 chapters needed to come to light. Knowing that there were fans who missed Daron when he wasn’t posting and who craved knowing what happened next was also great motivation. For most of the history of literature, fiction writing has been a solitary pursuit and the only source of validation came from a publishing house, and maybe if you were really popular, from some fan mail. Nowadays with the Internet, though, a serial like this can build a community of readers around it. I get feedback instantly on whether my writing has had the desired effect or not! It’s wonderful. And now after four and a half years of growing that community, the financial side is starting to grow, too. I posted the financial details on the site a few months ago (http://daron.ceciliatan.com/archives/3137), and it’s finally reached the point where last year Daron’s Guitar Chronicles was a third of my writing income. (And writing income is about half of my total income, the rest is freelance editing.)

 

How old were you when you started writing volume 4? Was it odd to go back into the head of a twenty one (two?) year old?

 

I was forty-something when I started writing volume 4, but of course I was building on ideas that had gelled when I was in my teens and twenties. It wasn’t odd at all to put myself back into Daron’s 21-year-old head. Daron himself goes back and forth between being older and wiser and being caught up in his memories of how young and stupid he was. He tells his story in a reminiscent voice. He’s narrating from his own future. But he gets caught up in the moment sometimes, and he re-experiences both the moments of pain and the epiphanies. He’s also aware that he’s telling a story, and that in the act of telling, he figures stuff out about himself and his life that he might not if he didn’t write it all down. There are a lot of levels to the narration. But ideally the reader is only dimly aware of that and gets caught up in the storytelling itself.

 

Do you think your own ‘advanced’ age has influenced where the story went after the restart?

 

I don’t think my own maturity has changed the path of the story. One thing that probably has is the direction that gay rights and gay tolerance and acceptance has gone. When I started writing this story, you couldn’t say the word “gay” on television. The one gay character on TV was played by Billy Crystal as a problematic comic relief character on a show called SOAP. Now we’ve got whole gay TV networks, Ellen Degeneres, Will and Grace, gay marriage… I just about cried when Obama said something about gay-inclusiveness in his speech to the DNC. I think he used the ridiculous and yet inclusive phrase “gay Americans.” Okay, I lied. I cried like a baby when he said that. So did my mom.

 

What is it like to write a story on such a massive scale? Aren’t you tempted sometimes to just do a bunch of hand-wavey stuff, cut some corners and have everybody end up where they are meant to be? After all, that is typical romance novel procedure.

 

That’s what I hate about romance novels, and why I swore I would never write one! Famous last words: now I’ve written nine? ten? But I can’t abide the hand-wavey stuff or the contrived situations to put the characters in the right place at the right time and still have it all wrap up in EXACTLY 80,000 words. (That’s what the publishers want.) Even in my romance novels, anything the characters get, they have to EARN. To me, there’s no point in pasting on a “happy ending” if when you get there it feels fake or forced. Then it’s like getting to the end of a gourmet meal, getting ready for dessert, and then someone

hands you a bowl of Jell-o and says, “oh yeah, they said we had to serve dessert. Here you go.” I don’t want to hear that back in the kitchen they were “cutting corners.” Do it right or go home.

 

The best part about writing such a massive story is that I can build up immense emotional payoffs. (Both for Daron and the reader.) I can leave stuff in the pressure cooker much longer before I blow the lid off. Also, the better readers get to know Daron, the more they gain the ability to see through him when he’s bullshitting, and the more they feel the impact when he reaches those high (or low) points in the story.

 

How important is the interaction via the comments on the website for you?

 

So, so important. All Daron’s wanted all this time is an outlet. The website gives him one. He likes answering comments even more than I do–and I like it a lot! There’s nothing more gratifying to me as a writer than to see people reacting to what I wrote. If I had convinced a publisher to put it out as a book series, I don’t think they would have sold well, and so they wouldn’t have let me keep going. If I just self-published them as ebooks? I also don’t know if there’d be enough demand to keep me going after 3 or 4 books.

 

When Daron replies to reader comments, is that 22 year old Daron or 46 year old Daron?

 

Depends on the comment. If the comment appears to be to then-Daron, he answers as if he’s then, and if it appears to be to now-Daron, he answers as if from the 21st century. He seems to have no trouble distinguishing between them.

 

Some of the people who comment (yes, including me) on DGC chapters relate their own experiences with relationships when Daron is going through a rough patch (or is being particularly dense). How is that? Do you sometimes feel they don’t ‘get it’? Or that people project too much?

 

I don’t think there’s such a thing as projecting “too much.” There’s no one “right” way to interpret the story. People are complex, and the mysteries and pains of life are even more so. It’s flattering to realize that I’ve created a story so full of layers and nuance that so many readers can see themselves in it! And it’s such a diverse readership now, spanning a wide range of ages, genders, and sexual identities. I’m also really honored that people choose to share parts of their lives with me. Some aren’t comfortable

leaving a public comment so they email me. Some say Daron helps them get through their own rough patches. That’s pretty wonderful.

 

Do you read reviews on amazon or Goodreads? The negative ones too? What is the most common complaint? What do people seem to like the most about this series?

 

I do read the reviews from time to time. I’m always curious what people have to say. There aren’t very many negative ones, so that makes it a more pleasant experience than it might be! Most of them say really nice things and make me think, wow, they really understand what I’m trying to do. They really GET it. The negative reviews are usually people who didn’t get it. The most common complaint is that it’s “too gay.” Like people don’t read the description before they buy, they assume “guitar player” means “straight guy,” and then when he turns out to be gay they’re like “This book gave me gay cooties! Ew!” I have to laugh when I see those reviews.

 

 

How do you pick the songs that form the chapter titles and that you post YouTube links to at the bottom of the posts? What comes first, the chapter or the song?

 

It’s funny: a lot of people ask me about this. I write the chapters first. I usually write 2 to 4 chapters in a day, which gives me some flow and then gives me a chance to tweak them and fix them up before they go live. The last thing I do before I post them is figure out what titles to put on them. I used to just pull titles out of my head but I got more systematic about it at some point because for one, I couldn’t remember what I’d used before, and two, I was getting some of the titles wrong. So I made a massive list of songs I liked from the 80s, crossed out all the ones that I had used, and the rest are there for me to cherry pick when I need them. I add to the list all the time. I’ll be listening to the radio or hear a song in a movie and think, hey, I don’t think I’ve used that one. And I’ll add it. Lately I got even more picky about the songs, though, so when the band was on tour in 1989 I used 90% songs that were released in 1989. Now I’m writing a section in 1990 and I made a new list of all songs that were released in 1990. Because that transition from what music was like and how it was changing right at that point is part of the story. I figure most readers will never notice that, but it’s important to me anyway!

 

What are your own experiences in the music business?

 

When I was a teenager I was founder and president of Chiquititas International, the largest Menudo fanclub in the world and I managed to parlay that, while I was still in high school, into both my first freelance writing gigs (I wrote columns and articles/interviews for Superteen and Teen Machine) and also a weekly on-air spot on WPLJ radio in New York City. Yes, I was 16 years old and on the air at the biggest radio station in the world. I was suddenly a music industry insider. All the descriptions of BNC’s offices? Those are all real places inside what was then the RCA Building on 6th Avenue. Backstage at Madison Square Garden? Been there. When I went to college I worked at WBRU in Providence, also, and was active with the local music scene. I worked crew for the Brown Concert Agency. I learned to do club DJ-ing and spun records sometimes at a roller rink in New Jersey and at parties in Providence. I was also a manager for an alternative rock band in Boston called Sexploitation. Man, what DIDN’T I do?

I figured all through college that I would go into radio and records. That I’d become either an A&R rep for a record company or that I would go into publicity. Then six months before graduation I woke up one day and said, hang on, do you realize that to succeed at any job, ANY job, in the music business you have to lie? Everyone, from the radio DJs to the CEOs of the record companies has to lie in order to fulfill their job description. I thought to myself, well, that will be fun for about five years and then I will be sick of it and have to change careers. So maybe I should just not go down that road. So I went into book publishing instead.

 

Do you know where the end of this story is or is it just going to keep going until you no longer feel like doing it?

I think the story will reach a natural stopping place, and we’ll know it when we get there. But also that we won’t know UNTIL we get there. It’s going to be hard to leave it behind, though, because writing the chapters is as much an addiction for me as reading them is for the audience. We’ll all have to go to rehab, I guess.

 

Will we get our fucking HEA?!?

No spoilers!

 

Come on! You can’t event tell us if there will be an HEA? Or HFN? I am not asking if it will be a white picket fence, a Volvo and 2.3 kids, I’m just asking if all the agony you put them (and the readers) through will be worth it.

You’ll just have to trust me.

 

What made you first decide to do a Kickstarter for volumes 1 through 3?

 

Honestly, it was fans on the website who acted like I was holding out on them somehow by NOT doing a paperback edition. It’s totally the normal way web comics work, right? You serialize for a while and then every so often you collect into a graphic novel. I had vaguely thought about doing it but when some fans were like “hey, we DESERVE a book version, don’t we?” that I realized I had better get on the stick! So in 2012, voila, I finally had the book I had been dreaming of since the early 90s in my hands.

 

What did you learn and do different with this current Kickstarter for volumes 4 and 5?

 

I learned through the first one that you have to talk about your Kickstarter EVERY DAMN DAY for 30 days. On any day when you don’t tweet or post or Facebook about it, you’ll get no donations. It sounds simple but I hadn’t realized just how direct the connection is. You think everyone who follows you on Twitter or Facebook has seen you mention it 500 times, but they haven’t. The lifespan of a tweet these days is under ten minutes before it is washed “downstream” where most of your readers won’t ever dig down to, and Facebook is the same. So it’s kind of relentless but there’s no shortcut, no way around it. I’m not doing much different, since last time was successful! I added some nifty prizes at the upper range ($100 and up) and that’s really helping us to jump more quickly toward the goal, too.

 

Will the T-shirts for the current Kickstarter have the tour dates on the back too?

I wasn’t planning to, since we did that once already, but it occurred to me we never did a shirt for their “warm-up” tour, the one where they drove themselves around the country… *ponders*

 

This Kickstarter is an excellent opportunity for readers unfamiliar with Daron to get their hands on not only the ebooks (there are some nice bundles to be had as rewards) and the paperbacks, but also the bonus stories that continue after the books (and the webserial) fade to black (in other words, they contain the actual sex)!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ceciliatan/darons-guitar-chronicles-second-omnibus-paperback

 

Cecilia is graciously offering an e copy of all the five books

Good Luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Check out LenaLena’s guestreviews on book 1-3 here:

https://lovebytesreviews.com/2014/04/28/review-darons-guitar-chronicles-1-3-by-cecilia-tan/

on book 4-5 here:

https://lovebytesreviews.com/2014/04/29/review-darons-guitar-chronicles-volume-45-by-cecilia-tan/