Blog Tour Interview with Chris Panatier – Author of STRINGERS

Welcome to my stop on the Stringers blog tour! I’m thrilled to bring you an interview with author Chris Panatier, who is proving to be one of the best speculative fiction writers out there. You may have caught my review of Stringers earlier in the week, and today I’m delighted to have Chris on the blog, talking about his new book. So grab a jar of pickles¹, sit back and enjoy!

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Let’s start out with an easy question (although now that I think about it, maybe not so easy!) What is Stringers about and what can readers expect?

Thanks for having me, Tammy. Like you say, this one is hard to describe. There are people known as “Stringers” who are born with all sorts of random and crazy knowledge (we later find out why). Others (bounty hunters) have figured out that while this knowledge is most often useless, sometimes it can be valuable. Ben, one of our co-main characters has a mix of both. For his entire life, he’s been plagued by animal sex and wristwatch trivia hurled at him by his brain. However, he also knows something about the “Chime.” He doesn’t know what exactly it is, but he knows vaguely where it is. And some folks really want it (again, bounty hunters). This premise gives rise to a vast space opera filled with laughs, found family, and hopefully some heart-pang beats.

I found the worldbuilding to be fascinating and complex. What inspired the idea of Stringers, stringhunters and the dredge?

Thank you! The entire premise was the basis of a daydream where I wondered if I could come up with a plausible and intriguing reason that would explain a person born with pre-loaded facts. As a lifetime fan of potty humor, the knowledge I first gravitated to was the hilarious and fecund world of bug sex. Stringhunters were a natural outgrowth of the initial premise, once I decided that Stringers would sometimes be privy to extremely valuable information in addition to the useless. Ben can tell you that sea cucumbers breath through their butts, but no one would pay to hear it.

I’m so glad you asked about the dredge. This has got to be one of my favorite parts of the story. I needed a way for stringhunters to extract deeply buried information from Stringers and/or information they didn’t want to give up. The usual candidates were intimidation, interrogation, drugging and the like, but I wanted every part of this story to be as new to readers as possible. Eventually, then, I came up with the neural dredge, something that Ben described in an early draft as a “video-game coffin.” Basically, the dredge creates a link between the subject’s brain and the glass lid of the coffin. It presents all sorts of imagery and prompts in order to churn up “glimmers” of information from the subject’s brain. Saying any more will probably spoil, so I’ll stop there. But the dredge is a super fun, and hopefully engaging, piece of the worldbuild.

Lots of readers are comparing Stringers to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and I definitely agree with that comparison to some extent. Was the humor in the story easy for you to write? It sure felt effortless as I was reading:-)

For better or worse, the sense of humor in the book is unapologetically, unfiltered Chris Panatier. It couldn’t honestly have been done any other way. I wanted to drain every moment of laughs so long as it fit the story. Humor has always been my go-to strategy for adversity, conflict, and awkward social situations (often of my own creation), so it came naturally here.

The comparisons to Hitchhiker’s are an absolute blessing since it’s such a beloved book. I never would have thought that I could produce something even in the same multiverse. Seventh-grade Chris would be out of his mind right now. At the same time, it’s also hazardous territory! Hitchhiker’s is beloved. And so sometimes when people go into a book that’s been compared to one they adore, there’s a natural predisposition to be critical. There’s only one Hitchhiker’s, you know? 

I will say that I think they are similar in that they are funny space operas. But they are entirely different stories. Even the humor is of a different quality. I think Hitchhiker’s was built for a larger audience. So, I don’t mind if people say Stringers isn’t Hitchhiker’s because it isn’t. And it would have been presumptuous (and foolish) of me to try and duplicate that story. Lastly, I’ll just say that there’s a palpable empathy and love that Douglas Adam put into his characters. I think that’s one reason it’s been so successful. I tried to do that here. To create fun, but compelling people.

My in-progress fantasy is just like Lord of the Rings by the way. Exactly. Begin comparisons now. ☺

LOL! Stringers couldn’t be more different from your last book, The Phlebotomist. What was your inspiration for this change in direction?

Here’s a funny bit—I was actually about 150 pages into the story that became Stringers in 2018 when I got the idea for The Phlebotomist! I set those pages down and wrote the first draft of The Phlebotomist in two months. So Stringers, at least the very early conception, came first and was shelved for the shiny pink book!

As for what stories come out of me, it’s not very calculated. I don’t try to write to trends or “saleability”. I’ve been lucky that my ideas aren’t so avant garde that they weren’t marketable. But if I have a compelling premise that I can’t stop thinking about, I’ll probably end up trying to make it a book. As a newish author I want to come up with something different and hopefully surprise each time. I know that when I return to a writer I love, I always hope to be surprised.

Of course, everyone is going to be talking about the fascinating (and frankly, gross!) science behind the story. Of all the bits of knowledge you could have chosen for Ben, why insects and their mating habits?

I knew that if I was going to bless Ben with useless knowledge as part of his Stringer profile, it had to be engaging in some way. Funny, obscure, and educational bug facts seemed the way to go. Also, he’s able to pull from it later in the story in order to understand the Scythin. So, not entirely useless!

Believe it or not, one of my favorite parts of the book was the footnotes, which can be risky if not done right. In this case, I thought they added a lot to the story. Why did you decide to include them?

So you’re the one who likes footnotes! Lol. Footnotes might be the most controversial thing in publishing today! Personally, I am fine with footnotes. If they are necessary to the story, they can really add another dimension. That’s what I was trying to do here. The footnotes are instances of ben’s brain interacting with him. They also have the added benefit of serving as punchlines to some of the jokes and gags. 

The only hesitation I had with the use of footnotes was that I knew some people just hate them. But at the end of the day, this was the best way to achieve what I’d set up as the premise. I had to put the art first! There’s another Stringer POV (Naecia HyRope) but she’s third person, so the reader gets a footnote reprieve during her chapters.

There are so many great characters in Stringers, but I particularly loved the friendship (or bromance!) between Ben and Patton. It’s messy and uncomfortable at times, but you can tell these two love and support each other. Were you inspired by a real life friendship when you started writing about them?

Thank you! I wasn’t thinking about any of my friends in particular when I wrote Ben and Patton, but I can say I’m fortunate to have a handful of friends that would throw themselves in front of an oncoming ice cream truck for me (not to order ice cream, but to save me), and I them. That’s the mentality I took into the story with me for these two. They absolutely love each other, even though there are some rough moments. I put them both through absolute hell in order to strain every fiber of that relationship. Hopefully it also made for good reading.

Some readers may not know this, but you are also an extremely talented artist. How do you manage to balance writing, art and family time? And is it true you’re also a trial attorney? Do you sleep at all?

I am basically a distractable octopus, only less intelligent. I get interested in something, watch a Youtube video on how to do it and then charge out into the world. But yeah, I’ve done art forever, mainly album covers for metal bands and some book covers too. I’ve been a trial lawyer for 21 years now trying to hold companies responsible for poisoning people. I actually became a better manager of my time and more productive after my daughter came along in 2014. I started writing when she was 9 months old. (Tammy’s note: Follow Chris on Instagram for more of his fantastic artwork: @chrispanatier)

Now that Stringers is about to be published, can you give us a hint of what you’re working on next?

My first fantasy! Something different every time, right? It’s a very, very, dark fantasy about “angels” stealing energy from the human realm and bringing it back to their world.

Ahh it sounds amazing, I can’t wait! Thank you so much for joining me, Chris!

Thank you as always Tammy!

CHRIS PANATIER lives in Dallas, Texas, with his wife, daughter, and a fluctuating herd of animals resembling dogs (one is almost certainly a goat). He writes short stories and novels, “plays” the drums, and draws album covers for metal bands. Chris’s debut novel, The Phlebotomist, was on the “Recommended Reading” list for Bram Stoker Award 2020. Plays himself on twitter @chrisjpanatier.

About Stringers:

A genius is abducted by an alien bounty-hunter for the location of a powerful inter-dimensional object. Trouble is, he can’t remember a thing.

Ben isn’t exactly a genius, but he has an immense breadth of knowledge. Whether it’s natural science (specifically the intricacies of bug sex), or vintage timepieces, he can spout facts and information with the best of experts. He just can’t explain why he knows any of it. Another thing he knows is the location of the Chime. What it is or why it’s important, he can’t say.

But this knowledge is about to get him in a whole heap of trouble, as a trash-talking, flesh construct bounty hunter is on his tail and looking to sell him to the highest bidder. And being able to describe the mating habits of Brazilian bark lice won’t be enough to get him out of it.

Find the book: Goodreads | Amazon | The Book Depository | Bookshop.org

Read my review of Stringers

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¹One of the running jokes revolves around a jar of pickles Patton brings with him on their adventures.