C.B. Strul | Author
C.B. Strul is the founder of Odom’s Library and author of two novels: The Ancient Ones and CONNECTIVITY. He also has in print three novellas: Spinners, Forget the Complex, and What Grows from the Stump of a Tree? His short play, Leading the Blind, was produced in Los Angeles by the former artist organization ImageneseFree…
Read more about him here!
1. What inspired you to start writing/creating art, and how has that inspiration evolved over time?
You know, it’s funny, but I think my writing came out of my desire to perform as a child. There was this moment when my brother and I were talking about Robin Williams playing Peter Pan in the film Hook and I registered in my mind that I understood he was an actor and that I liked his performance. FYI, I’m a millennial, so Robin Williams was basically my entire early childhood. Once I realized that what Robin Williams was doing was a job that somebody could have, I wanted to be that guy. By the time I went to college at the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts, I was mostly still trying to act. But I found there was a clear dissonance between my own expectations and those of my peers. I had been writing for a little while — back from freshman year of high school — but it hadn’t occurred to me that I preferred the writing process in general to being an actor until that New York realization. For what it's worth, I always loved Sci-Fi which requires a great deal of description and set dressing which is all literary fodder, so I probably should have connected the dots a lot sooner.
2. Can you share the story behind your latest work? What was your creative process like?
CONNECTIVITY is my second novel. It comes out on December 3rd, 2024. The story of how it came to be is a little long winded, so I’ll try to pare it back as much as possible. Essentially, I had been sitting on this concept of “The Gaming Class” for several years. That idea came to me when I was working a dead end job at a local Los Angeles movie theatre that has since gone out of business. I was struggling to cope with the corporate mentality and wished that the benign tasks that the company wanted me to perform could be done in a way that was… perhaps… more fun or entertaining. Thus, in my mind, I created “The Gaming Class,” a subgroup of society that plays video games in order to actively impact the development and upkeep of public infrastructure.
From there, I began to build up the video games themselves. What kinds of games could be used? How could they evolve with the city itself. And from that thread was born ClearBridge National City. This was all before Covid and I was fighting to write screenplays at the time. There was a particularly impactful night when I was sitting on a couch with a woman I used to date and had a kind of eureka moment about the character relationship that becomes the core of the novel. A mother and son who are so invested in their work that they keep missing each other in the real world. Essentially, failing to communicate.
I had a director and a pair of producers on the hook with the original screenplay for CONNECTIVITY. But we failed to find funding quickly enough and… well… the pandemic put a stop to most productions… especially the kind that came from out of the corner of nowhere and were being created, at the time, by absolute unknowns.
I moved out of my home in North Hollywood and moved in with my fiancee’s family a bit farther northwest in the San Fernando Valley where I took some time away from the screenplay that had almost become my big break. I wrote my first novel, The Ancient Ones. And I began to wonder if I had more in me. For what it’s worth, I’m pretty driven when it comes to story telling and, as I’m sure you can tell, I eventually moved forward with CONNECTIVITY once again. I wrote the entire novel over a three month span while I waited for my editor to get her notes back to me on The Ancient Ones. I actually hand wrote it in the same mantra journal I used for the first novel as well. I would type up what I had written the next day before sitting down to add more. That process gave me a sort of ramp for take off each day, and to be honest, I’ve used basically the same process on all of my projects since then. My fiancee has been great the whole time. She’ll make sure I’ve eaten and that I’m not just wasting away and I’ll read to her whatever I’ve written at the end of each day so she’s always up to date and she helps me out a great deal by giving me notes in the moment.
3. What themes or messages do you aim to convey through your work, and why are they important to you?
How do we communicate with one another? Where are we missing each other? Why can’t we emotionally reach the other person just across the room without having to wrestle with petty stubbornness?
These questions sit at the very center of everything I write. Yes, it is hard Sci-Fi. But I find the core of my work is always grounded in that particular conversation. Why can’t we as human beings hear and accept the others that we are close to without a fight?
4. What advice would you give to aspiring authors/artists who are just starting their journey?
Understand that it’s not going to simply happen over night. Make a point of honing your craft at least a little bit each and every day. Communicate with people about your desire to create. Learn to express what a finished project might look like if you were given the time, money, and man power. You, as an artist, are not alone in a desert, though it may feel as if you are. Be kind to yourself and accept that it only needs to take a little bit of consistency to develop and finish a project. With each session you get a little bit closer to a completed product.
5. What role has self-publishing or independent production played in your career, and what have you learned from the process?
I’m solely self-published. Up to now, my first novel has received only five star reviews. It means so much to me when someone I’ve never met feels like they need to write about my work on the internet. I hope the trend continues. Regardless, I can honestly say I’ve had a very exciting time self-publishing.
6. How do you connect with your audience, and what has been your favorite moment of reader or viewer feedback?
The coolest experiences usually come when I’m doing book signings. I meet people that I’ve never seen before and tell them about my book and they nod and occasionally their eyes brighten and they start asking questions and I get to talk about the things I love the most in this world with individuals that share those common interests with me. It’s nerve-racking to meet new people when you’ve kind of got everything on the line, but it’s worth it because it’s very likely you’ll find a curious reader who’s willing to take a chance in that book store.
There was this one fun moment though… not a book signing but, my fiancee and I were en route to the airport to attend my sister’s wedding out of state. We arrived at the Flyaway and I had brought along an “emergency copy” of The Ancient Ones and there were these two women in line with us and one of them had forgotten to bring her book for the plane. Madison, my fiancee, asked them if they read Sci-Fi and we got to chatting and they bought my “emergency copy” before we even made it to the airport. You never know when you’re gonna meet a curious reader or make a connection with a potential fan.
7. How do you handle challenges like writer's block or creative burnout, and what motivates you to keep going?
My motivation is the story. Sometimes you’ve just gotta power through. Sometimes… you’ve gotta take yourself to the local garden. I love museums and I love books and video games and if I’m ever feeling less creative I go ahead and bury myself in art and life experiences and… honestly, it’s tough for me to get 100% through with some good piece of external art before I start chomping at the bit to get back to my own work.
8. What’s next for you? Can you share any upcoming projects or future creative goals you’re excited about?
Absolutely! I have CONNECTIVITY coming out December 3rd of this year and I can’t wait to see what everybody thinks about that book. Beyond that, I’ve got drafts lined up for the next three and a half novels. Every novel I’ve written to date exists in the same Odom’s Library universe, but they don’t necessarily require a reader to have experienced any of the other works in order to enjoy one individual novel. It’s a fun and exciting way for me to develop stories and keep myself grounded while still allowing myself room to explore.
9. Who are some of your biggest creative influences, and how have they shaped your work or style?
CONNECTIVITY is an interesting circumstance. I was influenced by authors like Orson Scott Card and Isaac Asimov. Scott Card obviously gets the video game concept to his credit with Ender’s Game. Asimov’s influence is a little more bizarre in this instance. In Asimov’s second robot novel, The Naked Sun, there is this obscure moment when the detective is reading a piece of spacer prose. He recognizes that the material must be very impactful to a spacer, but a human of earth would have trouble really understanding the emotional through line of the material. I feel like, in a really awkward kind of way, CONNECTIVITY attempts to play with that idea. It’s not exactly how the story pans out in the end, but the intent is that these people are so bad at communicating face to face with one another that they are forced to use programs to help them to make a connection… then again, as I reference that, it occurs to me that it’s not particularly dissimilar to the world we currently live in.
Beyond that, I reference Spike Jonze’s Her and Andrew Niccol’s GATTACA as huge influences for this particular novel.
10. How has your personal life or experiences influenced your writing/art, and are there any particular moments that stand out?
Sure. Every single day I find I touch on something that inspires my work. I write because I don’t know what else I would do with myself if I couldn’t explore worlds outside of my own reality. Often, I’ll read a section of my latest work to Madison and she’ll say to me something like “That’s so cool! We just saw a documentary about that the other day,” or “That’s like the exhibit we went to last week. Is that what you meant to happen?” I’m usually aware of the immediate connection with our real world experience, but every once and a while, she’ll point it out and I’ll be like “Oh yeah! I didn’t even realize!” I think the moral of that story is: make a point of living your life and give yourself the freedom to use what you experience in your work because it will allow even the strangest of universes to feel grounded. When a fictional world is grounded, the audience can tag onto what they recognize and allow themselves to flow more freely through the pages of unknown without having to struggle in the same way. It’’s kind of like a life raft of truth for a reader as they explore a sea of otherwise playful non-reality.
