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MEET MEL GILDEN
by Bonnie O'Brian

What books influenced you most when you were growing up?

Mel Gilden

Anything with a spaceship in it. The juvenile novels of Robert A. Heinlein were the ones I enjoyed the most, and I still admire his work..

Did you write stories when you were growing up? At school? Or at home as a young child, or as a teenager, or both?

In elementary school each of us had to write a little story using that week's spelling words. Most kids in my class groaned when this assignment came around, but I always enjoyed it. When I graduated from elementary school, my grandmother gave me a typewriter. I used it to write my first stories at home. They were not necessarily good, but they were very sincere.

Was your first book accepted immediately? or did you experience a number of rejections?

I did get a number of rejections -- most of them form letters, and some of them saying things like "We like this a lot. Good luck with it elsewhere." I still occasionally get rejections like that, and I never understand them.

Do you focus on fiction or nonfiction? Which do you prefer? Do you find one easier than the other?

Though I will do research if I must, I would much rather make stuff up. That, I suppose, is the main reason I write fiction. I understand that some writers feel exactly the opposite way.

Where do you get your ideas?

I could tell you that I get them from a PO Box in Schenectady, but that would just be a joke. Actually, my ideas come from phrases I mishear, or from things I see when I'm not wearing my glasses. Also, people sometimes say clever things without knowing it. Sometimes the clever thing is a slip of the tongue. I even do this myself occasionally. In any case, the important thing is to be aware of the world around you. Ideas drop from the sky when you least expect them to.

Have any of your books earned special recognition?

In 1999 my first CYBERSURFER book (written with Ted Pedersen) won the prestigious Italian award, the Selezione Bancarellino, for children's fiction. OUTER SPACE AND ALL THAT JUNK was a Junior Library Guild selection.

Have any of your fiction stories been about real people or events?

While most of my books have a fantasy or a science fiction element, the characters in them are often people I know or have observed. In my early work, the central character -- a nebbish who hoped for more adventure in his life -- was usually me. Most events are created for a particular book, but often, each of them is also an exaggeration of something that really happened. After all, my imagination has only the stuff that actually happened to chew on.

Do you write every day and do you have set hours that you work?

I like to write in the morning, and I bang away at the work until I've completed a set number of pages, usually between three and five. If the work is going well I fall into a sort of trance, but I'm not usually that lucky. I'm always leaping up to get a glass of water or going to the bathroom -- I suppose one follows from the other.

Do you like to include humor in your stories? Or adventure? Or mystery?

My stories always include humor, and most of them seem to develop into mysteries of one sort or another. Adventure? Yes. Even stories which have no car chases or explosions are adventures for the characters involved.

When you do school visits, what question do children ask you most?

They generally ask easy question such as, "Are you married," or "What's your favorite book?" or "How much money do you make?" My favorite question, though was "Why is it in your books the good guys always win?" This is a profound question, and in some ways it is the fundamental question about any work of fiction, whether the good guys actually win or not.

Has anyone ever written you a fan letter that you’d like to share?

I've written a few Star Trek novels, and I assume that they are read for pleasure. I was surprised to receive a letter from a young lady who told me that a good friend near her own age had just died of some terrible disease. The adults around her kept telling her to buck up, tough it out, get on with her life -- all of which she found impossible to do. She claimed that my book had taught her that grieving was OK, and that she could face her fears. I was delighted that I was able to help in some way, but I was also surprised. Apparently, this young lady had taken a lot more out of my book than I had put into it. I think this is the essence of fiction, that the reader is not just a passive viewer, but a collaborator with the writer.