Q&A with Ed Grabianowski

​Welcome Ed! First, a few quick-fire questions: What do you listen to when you write? Who is your favorite villain? And which movie ending do you wish you could go back in time and rewrite? 
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If it’s quiet around me, I like the quiet. If I need to drown out some neighborhood kids or something, I might use nature sounds, film scores, or jazz. 
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​Rarely, if I really need to get fired up for something or I’m struggling to get something done late at night, I’ll put on some rock or metal. The Who’s Live at Leeds album is a real good one to light a fire under your ass. Favorite villain is definitely Roy Batty, because you understand the motivations behind his brutal actions, and even come to sympathize with him quite a bit. Yet he’s still scary as hell. Honorable mention goes to the Serpent Society from Marvel comics, just for being a bunch of awesome weirdos in snake costumes. I would rewrite the end of the Avengers to include the Serpent Society.
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"Favorite villain is definitely Roy Batty, because you understand the motivations behind his brutal actions,
​and even come to sympathize with him quite a bit. Yet he’s still scary as hell."
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Many newer authors are intimidated by the idea of sharing their work. What gave you the confidence to put your creative projects out into the world and what advice do you have for those who might be nervous about sharing their art?

​If you want to write on a pro or semi-pro level, you have to and there’s no way around it. Some people aren’t going to like your stuff, and sometimes they’re right and sometimes they’re wrong, but all that matters is improving your craft, going through those trials by fire until you get better and find the right editor and sell some stories. Then you build on that confidence.
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"Some people aren’t going to like your stuff, and sometimes they’re right and sometimes they’re wrong..."​

A little while back you were part of a project to turn one of your stories into a short film. What were some of the joys and challenges of adapting your story as described in prose to the big screen?
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I discovered that I love screenplay format. That mode of storytelling really worked for me, just in terms of the way you have to describe things in a visual way, and you have to be concise and clear. I also got to travel to England for more than a week!

"I discovered that I love screenplay format. That mode of storytelling really worked for me,
​just in terms of the way you have to describe things in a visual way, and you have to be concise and clear."
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​One thing that I think we made a mistake on was, we would have these meetings where me, two producers, and the director were in a room going over the script and rewriting in real time. And that was impossible, just to have four people going “How about this?” and writing by committee. That’s not to say that a writer shouldn’t get feedback and revise a script based on that, but getting script notes and going back and working to fix certain problems in the script is very different from literally building it word by word as a group project. 
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Writing screenplays is a fairly competitive market, but sometimes the right tool can give a writer the edge on their competition. What platform would you suggest for writers who are interested in adapting their novel for film? 
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The industry standard is a program called Final Draft. I’ve never used it, it’s damn expensive. That said, screenplays have very specific formatting demands, so you need something. I discovered that Scrivener, a piece of software originally designed for organizing and writing novels, has a screenplay mode with a bunch of shortcuts that make screenplay formatting incredibly easy. And it’s got a very reasonable price. No one has ever looked at one of my Scrivener screenplays and said, “Why wasn’t this done in Final Draft?” I don’t think anyone would know the difference. 
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"I discovered that Scrivener, a piece of software originally designed for organizing and writing novels,
has a screenplay mode with a bunch of shortcuts that make screenplay formatting incredibly easy."
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You are also a part of a band called Spacelord with several albums available on Bandcamp. Do you see writing music and writing SFF as separate creative endeavours or is there cross-over influence in your work? 

​They’re separate in the sense that there are very different sets of skills involved and totally separate paths to (and measurements of) success. But they’re very connected in that the things I’m interested in and influenced by affect both of them very deeply. My songwriting is heavily influenced by Tolkien and Robert E. Howard and Blade Runner, and my fiction is influenced by Dio and Led Zeppelin and The Sword. And of course every independent creative person is trying to build an audience for their work, and I think there’s a connection there as well. Someone who likes Spacelord is likely to be into my fiction too.
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"My songwriting is heavily influenced by Tolkien and Robert E. Howard and Blade Runner,
and my fiction is influenced by Dio and Led Zeppelin and The Sword."
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You wrote an article for Gizmodo back in 2013 titled “What's the connection between heavy metal music, horror and fantasy?” One of my current ‘most listened to’ bands is Brothers of Metal who pull heavily on the Norse myths for lyrical content. Why do you think metal bands are drawn to mythological themes?
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​I’m going to approach this from the opposite direction: mythological themes have resonated with people for literally thousands of years, because so often those stories hold some insight into the problems and trials we encounter in our lives: betrayal, hubris, guilt, love and lust, power and frustration. But they’re all elevated to this epic, blockbuster action movie level. Given that we’re going to continue to tell these kinds of stories, what better way to tell them than via metal? Who better to explore epic mythology than bands whose singers sound like demons or gods, with drums like marching armies and guitars that evoke the mightiest heroes battling nameless beasts from the Underworld?

"Who better to explore epic mythology than bands whose singers sound like demons or gods, with drums like marching armies and guitars that evoke the mightiest heroes battling nameless beasts from the Underworld?"
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You’ve got quite a range of experience when it comes to music and writing. What has been the focus for you recently and what can readers look forward to as your next big project? 
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On the fiction side, there’s a novel in progress, and some short stories. I seem to bounce back and forth between horror and epic fantasy. On the music side, Spacelord was literally days from starting the recording of our third album when the world ground to a halt. So right now we’re working on an acoustic EP of all new songs, with our guitarist and I sending sound files back and forth so we can get it done without ever actually being in the same place. We’re moving fast on that and I hope to release it by the end of April.
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"On the fiction side, there’s a novel in progress, and some short stories.
I seem to bounce back and forth between horror and epic fantasy." 
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Where can readers find more of your work and stay up to date on your latest publications?
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Well, I’m pretty terrible at updating my website, so people should probably just follow me on Twitter.
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You heard the man! Follow him on Twitter.