Sci-Fi Author Troy Suesse is in THE HAVEN!

Author Troy Suesse joins V. Helena in THE HAVEN for a discussion on his new novel, Maximum Capacity. Reminiscent of the Hunger Games, V. Helena gives this book a 10 on the sci fi dystopian scale!

Episode Transcript

(00:54):
Hello, dreamy people, and welcometo another exciting day in the writers heaven.
This is the Helena back with anothershow you will not want to miss.
Joining us today is Troy Cease.Troy is the author of sci fi
dystopian novel Maximum Capacity. Raised inthe suburbs of Annapolis, Maryland. I'm

(01:15):
so excited that he's a native ofthe area. Troy has developed an appreciation
for the planet and is inspired byscience, nature and outer space. He
has generated a unique adventure that playsout in his book. This is your
first book, his first book,So please join me and welcoming Troy Cease.

(01:38):
Thank you so much for being here, Toroy, it's all my pleasure.
Thanks for having me on your showtoday. Absolutely would not want it
any other way because this book ishot and I have so many questions about
it. But first I want toask you the basic question of what is
it about? For our audience,I want you to just give us a

(02:00):
quick author summary of your book.So here you go. There's a couple
underlying themes to Maximum Capacity. Itactually started out as a space oddity odyssey
because really, if you think aboutit, things are finite on Earth,
limited resources, and eventually overcrowding mightcramp us a bit. So a thousand

(02:20):
years into the future is where we'reset to, where the Earth is so
overcrowded it cannot sustain a population growth. So we're gonna be space traveling a
little bit, hoping to find anotherEarth like planet out there, and we
find some interesting planets and interesting lifeforms out there along the way. But
that's just a piece of what's goingon in maximum Capacity. The other piece

(02:43):
is the dystopian piece, inspired bythe Hunger Games from movies from about six
or eight years ago. What's happeningis if we can no longer sustain a
population growth on Earth, what arewe gonna do. We're gonna run out
of resources, So how do wehandle that? Well, for every baby
born, another human must die.That's the conundrum we're in. So this

(03:04):
is a sci fi dystopian novel thatplays out on Earth primarily, but we
do some space traveling as well.Now these themes are intertwined, and it
bounces back and forth from Earth tothe space travel peace inspired by the Hunger
Games. I tell you because theway we figure out who has to go
be Helena is those with the highestviolation counts those who steal and pilfer and

(03:31):
kill and things like that, Well, society finds that unacceptable in a thousand
years from now, and it's whatwe do. We have to round them
up every so often, and weput them in giant cages and its fight
to the death before a live interactiveaudience. Because folks whose family members they've
killed and things like that can avengethem by influence to killing killing devices within.

(03:53):
That's how they check the population back. So unfortunate scenario there that we're
heading towards a thousand years from now. But the hope is that this universe
is so vast and wondrous that there'sanother earth like planet floating around somewhere that's
just like planet Earth, and ifwe can find it, well maybe we
can get there and expand the populationthere and survive into the future. Awesome,

(04:18):
thank you for that summary. Sowe round up the bad people?
How do we do that? DIs it? Are we hunting the bad
people the good people are hunting thebad people? Or how how was that?
So it turns out we're not freehunting. What we do we have

(04:38):
a society that's run by what Iterm the venom society. This is a
ruling body a thousand years into thefuture. They decide who gets resources.
They also decide who gets to beinserted into the expulsions what I call that
event that I describe to you.So every so often they'll go around and

(04:59):
find folk with the highest violation counts, and they know who they are because
they have databases that monitor that,Okay, And the reason they know is
because when the babies are born,we put little chips in them and one
of the factors that plays out ontheir chip is their violation count And so
they can see at any point intime who has the highest counts and where
they're located. And so they'll roundthose folks up, and that's when they

(05:25):
bring them to the event. Andwho is the they? Who's the controlling
hierarchy in this world? That isso amazing. And I want to talk
a little bit about how you evenconjured this in your brain, but answer
that question. So, the conceptof the Fight to the Death was inspired
by the Hunger Games, but Ididn't want to be the same as the

(05:47):
Hunger Games. I wanted to bemy own things. So I've created this
adventure that goes on on Earth.But I needed a ruling body that was
different than that. Now, whenI wrote these characters in I'm very vivid
in the way I describe them,how they think, how they feel,
what they wear the garb, ortheir movements and things like that. And
they're a very distinct and unusual setof characters. So the plot will play

(06:13):
out and describe exactly why they appearunusual to you and I and different,
and we'll figure that out at theend of the story. But in the
meantime, they are the ruling body, and you don't cross them because they
at any time could take you andpluck you and make you part of the
big show. You took these elementsfrom different movies and screenplays, and you

(06:40):
did not duplicate them, but youwere inspired by them. I was inspired
by them and develop my own sortof reflections of those things in Maximum Capacity.
But mind you, Maximum Capacity isa whole different ballgame than any of
those. Okay, so let's talkabout your process for writing the But how

(07:00):
long did it take to write?Oh, that's a good question. I
actually started writing that many years ago. But you see, I have a
day job, and so writing forme had to come in my evenings and
weekends. Well, that's okay,and well, but when you have three
children in your averreer involved in theiruh activities, and right there righting activities

(07:23):
and school activities and all these thingson the shelf for a second, because
life happens and you have to dealwith it. Because it was my first
time through, my process was alittle ad hoc, a little convoluted.
And I found this out the hardway, cause when I figured I was
getting close to a full manuscript thatI could take in pitching query to literary
agents, I found that I stillhad a lot of work to do.

(07:46):
And I found that out take anywriting classes. I've taken some writing classes,
you know, in in college andthings like that, but I always
had a a good command of theEnglish language anyway, because I I was
studious in school and did my homeworkand did my extra credits and things.
Well, the reason why I askedis because it's it's very well written,
it it flows very well, itis captivating, it's a page turner.

(08:11):
And this is your first book.Yeah, and so y, you don't
have I guess what they would callformal training necessarily as a writer. Correct?
Did you work in the f sfield of science as you're nine to
five to also kind of glean fromfrom that experience or totally different. So

(08:33):
I work in a professional world,and I've had jobs over the years that
require me to write some also andto put out instruction and information to large
tardical writing, not creative writing,more on the technical side, informational side.
So I've gotten a lot of practicethat way. Yeah, but I
was never a writer by trade.That wasn't my day job per se.

(08:56):
But I always had, uh,that passion that I wanted to do that
in my off time and and publish. Well, this is this is a
very impressive first book, tha uhand a great start in your profession as
a writer, a professional writer.And kudos to you for publishing because and
I can't remember what the stats are, but it's pretty grim those who start

(09:22):
and actually finish a book. Then the numbers of percentages is very low.
So you completed this wonderful novel allbut four hundred r two hundred and
yeah, sixty seven pages of it. Yeah, tell me what a as
you were in the process of writingthe book. What were some of the

(09:43):
challenges that you faced in writing it? Because I'm very fascinated about this world
that you've created. It's it's notlike, you know, your ordinary kind
of thing that a person would writeabout. B and based on the reality
as we know it as a dayto day. I mean, you had
to reach into areas to kind ofpool this imaginative world universe together a thousand

(10:09):
years from now. So so tellme how you were able to do that.
So for me, the ideas andinformation flow came pretty well. I
had been thinking about doing this along time. I had had, uh
a fascination for our our space andand earth and things for a long time.
Uh So I had ideas brewing fora long time. What was a

(10:31):
little more difficult for me was projectinga character, a character set into that.
Okay, character development, character development, and no novel is as great
as it can be without likable charactersthat your audience can sort of associate with
and the ones we like to hate. True true. So you wanna try

(10:52):
to get and this was my firsttime through, so you wanna try to
get a flavor of both of those. You wanna have the antagonist thing going
on. You wanna have the protagonistsomebody you can pull for. So that
was one piece that I found thatI had to sort of work heavy at
But I found also that the wayI approached writing the book was haphazard over

(11:15):
the years. And you know,in the sense that I'd come home from
work one day and I would havean idea that I knew I wanted to
data dump. I wanted to getit from here into here. Mm hm.
So I said, you don't dolonghand you type. So I started
out writing on pencil and paper,and then I found after I got about
thirty pages into it, I'm like, yeah, this is going to be

(11:37):
a lot of typing, so maybeI should just start doing that now.
And I backstepped a little bit totype all that in and then from there
I would just sit at the worddocument and kind of poke things. Okay,
so you do it in word.You don't use any of the other
writing tools, which is great,yep. I know there's some good ones
out there. I haven't ex rentedwith them yet, maybe next time I
will. But I found out thehard way that when I thought I had

(12:01):
things in order, I had enoughdown on paper per se too, to
come up with a novel and agood story. When you say had it
down, you mean you had itdivided into chapters, kind of divided into
chapters and events and things like that, but it was all over the place.
And so I hired well, whenI got selected to partner with my

(12:26):
my writing partner, well my companythat I published with, Oh okay,
okay, they said, yeah,we'd like you to go through a developmental
edit. Okay. I said,okay, what's that? They said,
well, here's some names, youknow, contact them and basically, instead
of just doing a line at it, you really need to like develop the
plot and for what happens first,the where you go with it and how
it finishes kind of thing. AndI said, yeah, I kind of

(12:50):
got that, but I see whatyou're saying. I need some work on
that. I hired an editor,a professional editor who does that full time.
She was wonderful. Now she livesout in Tennessee. So we had
to work over Google docs and youknow, pass some things around and it
took a little time and things likethat, but boy, I learned a
lot from her. And she wasvery good at describing, you know,

(13:13):
how to set the exposition, howto to to dramatize the setting, how
to immerse your reader into this societyA thousand years from now what it's like,
so they know, like they're sittingthere in it looking around, right,
how to be descriptive in the characters, how they think and feel and
move and things like that. Introducethe antagonist and protagonist, and things like

(13:37):
that, key characters, things thatwill spawn off later on. Those were
things as a first time author Istruggled with because I hadn't been through it
before. Now, if I haveto go through it again, well,
I have a little bit more experienceto help me to help me out with
that process, and I think whatI would do this time is sort of
think bigger picture first, Bulletize somethings first, kind of think about where

(14:03):
I wanna start out, some ofthe events I'd like to have play out,
and where I wanna end up withthings, and then start digging a
little bit deeper into those. Yousee, the first time around, I
kind of did it in the reverse. I knew what certain things I wanted
to play out. I'd come homefrom work and say, I gotta get
this idea out of my head intothe computer, and I'd do that,

(14:24):
but I didn't really know where itwas gonna be right in the final grand
scheme of things. Yeah, Thereare a lot of writers that write that
way. I can think of afew that are actually New York Times Bestselling
authors and one Awards. And thenthere are the people who outline the whole
entire story, chapter all the waythrough and then they start writing. And

(14:46):
and there's one particular author that Ilove. She will outline and then she
may write chapter one today, andthen she'll skip to chapter five cause she's
feeling chapter five right, and she'lljust skip around and t so she finishes
the whole thing. So I'm like, is that a hybrid, because you
know, she's she's not writing,you know, from cradle to grave,

(15:07):
from start to finish. She's justkind of, yeah, bouncing kind of
like a panster, but not reallycause there's sch organization and structure right to
the writing. That's the key.There's organization and structure. And I didn't
really have that when I was bouncingaround. I didn't have that one outline
that k kind of guided me throughthe whole thing from a thousand feet up

(15:28):
m I was kind of missing that. I kind of had it in my
head a little bit, but Ididn't really start out writing that way.
I started out writing, you know, in this book that I'm working on
that I wanna write. I havea great idea and I'm gonna write a
chapter on it right now, soI don't forget, and I'm gonna make
it really really good. Problem is, later on, when I had a

(15:48):
manuscript coming to fruition, it neededto be reworked and things needed to be
moved around in time a little bit. That's all finding good, except when
you move things around after they're alreadywritten complete chapters. Yeah, then all
of a sudden, you gotta reallywatch. You can mess a lot of
things up. You can. Youcan, especially if you start tweaking chapter

(16:11):
seven. But there's something in chapterthree that could impact chapter seven, and
you gotta go back. And thenyou're like, oh my god, I
feel like I'm rewriting this whole thing. And then you start adding other chapters
cause you gotta add y. Youhave this character, you want to develop
him a little bit more, soyou add a chapter that really focuses on
him. But how does that overthe whole story? Yeah? Impact yep,

(16:33):
that insertion and that much information,yep, how does it all tie
together? But we love it asrogers, don't we? You know?
I mean it's like, you know, people think may think, oh,
you're it's it's such a undertaking,but it's such a great, fun,
rejuvenating, inspiring, amazing undertaking,and so we do it and we love

(16:57):
it and then let me finish.So let's talk about the finish. So
you finish the book, and thenwhat did you go directly into the business
of writing? Because the creative processis done now, so what was your
next step? Well, that's anotherthing. I was never really a social
media above. You have to becomeone. You have to become one if

(17:22):
you're going to be an author andyou're trying to entrepreneur your book and become
successful with it. So that's numberone. You got to get out there.
You have to be public facing.Before you get there, of course,
you have to decide, well,how are you going to publish?
How are you going to get thisgreat piece of work that you have on
your computer out there so everyone elsecan see and enjoy it. So what

(17:42):
options did you look at? Threebasic options before me were the traditional publishing
company houses the hybrid houses, whichare very much like the traditional houses.
And most of the time most ofyour authors, especially first time authors,
are thinking, yeah, I'd liketo get to some of the traditional houses.
They're the biggest ones, they've beenaround the longest, they can get

(18:03):
my book, the most widespread andand most visibility and things like that.
Uh huh. Problem is you can'tjust go and talk to them as a
first time new name author. Ifyou're Tom Clancy or JK. Rowling or
something like that, maybe they'll pickup the phone and talk with you.
Other than that, you have tohave a literary agent. So that's part
of the process too. Was thatpart of your process? It was okay.

(18:25):
In fact, for me, Ispent quite a quite a while uh
pitching or querying to literary agents,and that involves sitting down and trying to
find them. Google becomes your friend. Yeah. You find the uh agents
and the agencies, and you tryto read over the bios of the agents
that are there and try to decide, well, who can you show your
work to and what they call pitchor query them, right, and especially

(18:49):
focusing on the ones that are lookingfor work that is in a genre that
you write in. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely, that's critical because they may
be looking for romance novels and that'sall they deal with. That's not what
you have, that's not what Ihave, so I would have to bypass
them and go to the next person. This takes time, takes hours,

(19:10):
as you know, takes time.And this was again something I'm doing in
my evenings and my weekends as bestI could. One hundred and twenty seven
times, Helena, Okay, okay, James Patterson was two hundred and something.
I remember rejection letter. Yes,I know it was too something.
Yes I still remember the exact number. But yeah, that was inspiring when

(19:32):
I heard that. I'm glad youmentioned that. And actually about half the
time you get nothing back because they'refolks like you and I. They only
have so many hours in a week. They already have their client list,
they call their list, and they'relooking for one specific thing extra to put
on it. And if you're noton target exactly, you just go into
the slush pile with everyone else andit's no thank you. Yeah, those

(19:55):
first few pages are critical, Yeah, and you have to give them what
they want, exactly what they want, where they'll throw you in the trash
as well. So one hundred andtwenty seven times I pitched and queried and
got no thank you. But havea nice day. And it turns out.
Remember I mentioned the social networking piece, Yes, it turns out.
On my social network I befriended someonewho was somewhat influential in the Philadelphia area,

(20:21):
a writer and an entrepreneur, aproduction producer, and he knew someone
who was very influential in the writingbusiness, the publishing business. So because
I knew someone who knew someone,I got into a conversation online about publishing
fiction. And the person that Ineeded to get to mentioned to me,

(20:45):
Hey, why don't you pitch yourquery to my fiction recruiter, And so
I did. Well, one thingled to another, and they had a
you have to go before a boardand be voted in or out, and
I was voted in and lo andbehold, my one hundred and twenty eighth
query was successful for me in partneringwith a uh New York based hybrid publishing

(21:10):
company. But as you know,that is a long process. Yeah,
I how long did it take fromthe time that you finished to the time
that you were actually signed? Abouta year and a half, About a
year and a half, And ittakes two to three hours on average probably
for one query, one pitch.By the time you find them online,

(21:30):
by the time you read about themonline and go to the website and learn
about them, by the time youdecide who it is that you might n
resonate with, and you put togethereverything that they want and are asking for,
and you send it off. It'sa good two or three hours per
per query. And like I said, I I queried one hundred and twenty
seven times with a whole with aa thank you for contacting me, but

(21:52):
it doesn't fit my list. Wishyou the best of luck. Right,
that's about all you get back.Right, So, with the publisher that
signed you, from the time thatthey gave the nod to the time that
it hit the stands, what wasthat time frame? They will tell you
anywhere from nine to eighteen months,depending mm hmm. If you're normal gam

(22:18):
catchers. Yeah, if your manuscriptis in great shape and it doesn't need
a ton of work, you're morein the nine month range. If you
need a rewrite in the sense ofa developmental edit, that's gonna take an
extra four to five months or whateveradded to that nine months. But the

(22:40):
thing is, and you know,behind the scenes, there's a lot that
goes in to getting a book tolook the way it does when it's sitting
on the shelf and people think,oh gosh, I'm gonna sign with Simon
and Schuster, random House, andyou know, I'm set. I don't
have to do anything but just youknow, this glamorous life of of getting
out of the limo and walking intoyour book signing. Dreamcatches. That ain't

(23:04):
how it works, that's not that'snot. Uh. I know so many
authors who are very very well intotheir careers, they're doing it full time.
They're they're signed with big houses,and they're people, not the publishers
people, but their people are theones that are scheduling, you know,

(23:26):
the book tours where they're gonna beyou know what. Now. Of course,
having that brand behind you helps onethousand percent, yes, and and
they do have you know, theydo have some equities and weigh in into
all of that. Yeah, Butmany times it's the authors and the writers

(23:47):
that are also very very much involvedin that process and the social media dream
catches. You're doing your own socialmedia, whether you're with the traditional or
with the hybrid or on demand thatthat kind of stuff. You but you
want to because you wanna control thenarrative that has to do with you as

(24:07):
a writer, your persona, becausemany times people follow the name, they're
going to follow you as an author. And then secondly, your book,
especially if your book is you know, just drops and it is just a
mind blowing bestseller. So now it'slike, okay, well, anything that

(24:29):
Troy puts out there, Troy,because he's the writer, he's the one
that that did this phenomenal job onthe first book, I'm gonna buy it
anyway. And then at that pointdoes it really matter who you're signed with,
right, because now it's about youthe author, the success that you've
put into your branding, and peoplepicking up your book from the shelves because

(24:52):
you put in all that work.So it's very very important that you focus
on the there's a process. Thisis the creative process within the business side
of it as well, is soimportant. Yes, very important point.
Yes, thank you and very wellsaid. Uh. And it's like you
said, the days where you signwith Simon and Schuster or Hatchett or McMillan

(25:15):
are one of the big houses.Mmmm. And then you sit back and
you watch things all play out foryou. Yeah, if they ever existed,
I think we're well past that now. No, matter who you're signed
with m it's work. It's work, and it's time and its effort.
And but for now, I wannathank you and we will stay in touch
because I want to be a witnessto how wonderfully successful this book will continue

(25:38):
be. And for your upcoming projects, I wanna support them and have you
back on the show. Absolutely,Dreamcatchers, thank you for joining us today
and keep watching because we have somuch more to share with you this season.
You can stream this show on anyof our nine streaming platforms including iTunes,
Spotify, iHeartRadio, YouTube, andthe number one network on the CO

(26:00):
which is the American Legacy Network.You can also find us on one of
our twenty three channels, and youcan find all of that information on our
website. And I'm also very excitedto announce that The Haven will be globe
trotting. That's right, we aretaking this show on the road. Our
show will be taped at some ofyour favorite destinations. And if you want

(26:22):
to join us as a professional writeror as a DreamCatcher again, go to
our website at www dot Writers Havenshowdot com for more information. I want
to see your faces in the places. You can also go to our website
for information on where and how totune into our broadcast. So that's all

(26:45):
for now and until next time,catch fire on purpose. Its axe is

(27:15):
not sad that the Donasa