Scott Meyer is an American author who specializes in comedy. Over the years he has published thirteen novels along with four collections of his webcomic, Basic Instructions. Scott Meyer has mastered the art of cleverly crafting characters that interact in interesting ways and never fail to entertain.
Meyer’s stories are unique and filled with diverse characters. Meyer’s series, Magic 2.0, contains six books, each with their own punny title (Off To Be the Wizard, Spell or High Water, Unwelcome Quest, Out of Spite, Out of Mind, Fight and Flight, and The Vexed Generation). The books follow Martin Banks, a man who stumbles across an editable computer program that allows him to manipulate reality. It takes him less than 48 hours to end up in trouble with the IRS for magically adding money to his bank account, so he has to resort to his back up plan: traveling back in time to twelfth century England where he gets into a whole lot more trouble. Tahlia Van Ess comments, “I think Magic 2.0 sounds interesting. I like the idea of a computer being able to twist reality and time.”
Grand Theft Astro is similar to Magic 2.0` in that it is a sci-fi/comedy. Grand Theft Astro is set in the far future when humans have spread to every corner of the solar system. The protagonist, Baird, is a famous criminal who has successfully dodged conviction her entire career. She begins working for an organization called the Toolbox when she is infected with a deadly virus leaving her with one week left to live. Or at least that is what the Toolbox tells her. The Toolbox puts her in stasis, only taking her out periodically in order to send her on increasingly complex missions across the solar system, each requiring her to use her cunning to steal an item important for her cure. Julian Lloyd shares, “This book renewed my interest in storytelling, would recommend.”
For something more modern, The Authorities and its sequel, Destructive Reasoning, are great picks (personally, these are my two favorite books). They follow Rutherford Sinclair, a Seattle cop who goes viral after an embarrassing video of him pursuing a suspect begins to circulate online. This attracts the attention of Vincent Capp, a billionaire who recruits Rutherford to his special team of detectives, all with their own unique role. Together they solve high profile murder cases, such as the murder of a renowned therapist along with a killing spree in Los Angeles that targets actors playing Sherlock Holmes’s right hand man, Watson.
O’Toole: Where are you from and how did you get to where you are today?
Meyer: I’m from a farming town out in the eastern desert half of Washington State. After some (but not enough) college, I worked briefly in radio, moved to Seattle, did stand-up comedy, met and married my wife, and started my web comic, Basic Instructions. Later, we moved to Florida to work at Walt Disney World. In my spare time there, I wrote my first novel, Off to Be the Wizard. With its success, I was able to quit the day job to write and make my comic full time. We moved to Phoenix for a few years, then moved to Porto, Portugal, where we currently live. To date I’ve published 13 novels, with a 14th on the way, and I’m working on #15.
O’Toole: Did you have any favorite books when you were a kid? Or now?
Meyer: There weren’t many novels in our house when I was a kid, but my father was a hunter and fisherman, and in his old Field & Stream and Outdoor Life magazines I discovered the work of a writer named Patrick F. McManus. He showed me the written word could be funny, and I read everything of his I could get my hands on. In my teens, I couldn’t get enough of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and anything else Douglas Adams wrote. He is still a favorite of mine, as is Hunter S. Thompson (though I wouldn’t hold him up as any kind of role model). I also very much like Catch-22, and the funnier of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books, the ones about the Night Watch, or the (unfortunately named) character “Moist Von Lipwig.”
O’Toole: What work of yours are you most proud of and why?
Meyer: My first novel, Off to Be the Wizard, for several reasons. I’m proud that I wrote it in the first place. There was no reason to believe that I could, as I had never tackled a project anywhere near that large before. Writing a novel is as much an act of stubbornness as it is creativity. I’m proud that people still seem to enjoy it. And though it is NOT perfect, and there are things I might do differently if I had it to do over again, I am proud that I can still read it and feel like I did a pretty good job.
O’Toole: What character of yours would you say is most like you? A self-insert, if you will.
Meyer: Well, my web comic has a character named Scott, who is drawn from photos of me, but I think you mean from my books. All of my characters are some small facet of me, even the villains. That said, I am mostly a hybrid of Phillip from the Magic 2.0 books and Wollard from Master of Formalities. In high school I listened to too much Phil Collins, had an obsolete (even at the time) Commodore Vic-20, and badly wanted a Pontiac Fiero, so there’s Phillip. As an adult, I can seem quiet and reserved, unless you get me talking about one of the subjects that I really know well (or think I do), which tend to be subjects others actively don’t care about, which is a lot like Wollard.
O’Toole: What advice would you have for aspiring writers?
Meyer: I would ask you to be honest with yourself about what you want. If you want to make a lot of money without doing too much work, I suggest you look into banking. Some people think writing is a ticket to fame and fortune, because the writers they can name are rich and famous, but that’s like thinking the lottery is a solid investment because you see the winners on the news. If you really just enjoy writing of any kind, and want to make a living at it, then I suggest technical writing or some other related field. There are jobs writing reports for any number of industries. It isn’t glamorous, but you can get steady work with benefits, and that’s not nothing. If you have a burning need to write something specific (in my case, humor), then I suggest you get used to the idea that you will probably end up writing it for free, find a career that will pay your bills, and get to work writing whatever you want on the side. I say this for three reasons:
[1] You’re going to write a lot of stuff that is not good before you start writing the stuff that is. Unless you are insanely lucky, nobody’s going to want to pay you for the not-good stuff, so you’re going to need a day job. If you feel the need to write, you will. If you get set up in your career and find that you don’t feel the driving need to create in your spare time, that’s a perfectly valid result, and nothing to be ashamed of.
[2] The desperate need to pay the bills with your creativity can lead to terrible decisions. I know this from bitter experience. In radio, I took a job I shouldn’t have because I was desperate for a paycheck. I ended up getting fired, and couldn’t get anyone else to hire me. In stand-up, the need to take paying gigs led me to spend all my time on the road, where nobody in the industry ever saw me, so I wasn’t going to get “discovered.” And I ended up with an act designed to pacify drunks in Montana, of which I was not proud.
[3] Spending time out in the real world will only make your work better. It will give you a unique point of view and opinions you could never have formed without your specific experiences. Michael Crichton was a doctor. John Grisham was a lawyer. John le Carré worked in espionage. The more diverse and specific experiences you have, the more unique your writing will be.
O’Toole: Are you considering a threequel in your The Authorities series?
Meyer: Absolutely! I would love to write more Authorities books. That said, when I finish a book and move on to the next project, I go with the best idea I have at that moment, whatever it is, and I don’t have an idea for a third Authorities book that meets that standard just yet.
O’Toole: If you can disclose this, what are you working on right now?
Meyer: I can’t get into any detail, I’m afraid, but I am swerving back into fantasy instead of the science fiction and procedurals I’ve been working on for the last few years.
