New interview with writer Jonathan Maxwell

I have a return visitor today. Jonathan Walter Maxwell stopped by last year to talk about Murderous Intellectuals and today he's sharing a bit about his new book Piltdown Man and Other Hoaxes.

Welcome back to Reviews and Interviews, Jonathan.

Thanks for having me back!

Please tell us a bit about yourself.

I’m a Georgia-based author and public speaker. I’m the author of Murderous Intellectuals: German Elites and the Nazi SS, which received the 2011 Allbooks Review Editor’s Choice Award in the category of Best Non-fiction Book. My latest release is Piltdown Man and Other Hoaxes, which was released by American Book Publishing in April 2012. I hold a BA in English from Berry College. Currently, I am earning my MA in English from Jacksonville State University in Alabama.

Please tell us about your newest release.

Piltdown Man and Other Hoaxes and is a lighthearted examination of scientific frauds through history. It examines such mysteries as the Missing Link Hoax, Bigfoot, the Yeti, crop circles, sea monsters, ESP, and the like. It also explores the ongoing debate between supporters of evolution and supporters of creationism. Finally, it asks if science and religious tradition can be reconciled with one another. The book is entertaining, I think, but it’s thought-provoking as well.

What inspired you to write this book?

I’ve always had an interest in scientific mysteries. As a young boy, I loved reading about Bigfoot, the Abominable Snowman, sea monsters, and other strange phenomena. After completing my first book, I wanted to write about something lighter, something fun. Then, I remembered my fascination with myths and legends, and I suddenly had solid ideas for a book. Of course, approaching the material as an adult is much different from approaching it as a starry-eyed child. Now, I view the material with a great deal of skepticism, perhaps even cynicism at times.

What’s the next writing project?

My third project deals with the Rolling Stones and their experience at Altamont. Back in late 1969, they decided that they wanted to have their own Woodstock. They invite such acts as the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane to play with them at a free music festival at Altamont, which is just outside of San Francisco. Unfortunately, the Stones made the fatal mistake of hiring the Hell’s Angels—the notorious outlaw biker gang—to provide security at the event. During the festival, half of the Angels apparently decide to wage war on the hippie concertgoers. They beat them with their fists and with bats. The other half of the gang sells the concertgoers hard drugs like heroin and cocaine. What were the results of such a costly error? The results were one cold-blooded murder, three other deaths, hundreds of physical assaults, and perhaps thousands of drug overdoses. Many social commentators insist that the Altamont debacle ended the spirit of the 1960s and the hippie movement. I would say that the social commentators are pretty right on.

What is your biggest challenge when writing a new book? (or the biggest challenge with this book)

The greatest challenge, I think, is dealing with the enormity of the project. Writing a book is the intellectual equivalent of running a marathon. It can take months—perhaps even years—to write one. It helps if you just take it day by day. Otherwise, you get overwhelmed.

If your books require research – please talk about the process. Do you do the research first and then write, while you’re writing, after the novel is complete and you need to fill in the gaps?

I think it’s best—and I think that most other writers would agree with me—that you do your research first, and then concentrate on the writing. Research helps to give your writing direction and a point of view. Trying to fill in the gaps later on can be a mistake. When I was a fledgling writer, I would try to do that. I would write from a particular perspective. Later on, I would perform the research, and I would find that it gave me an entirely different perspective on the subject at hand. You always have to remember that research provides the foundations for your writing. It’s every bit as vital as the writing itself. Sadly, a lot of beginning authors don’t realize that.

What’s your writing space like? Do you have a particular spot to write where the muse is more active? Please tell us about it.

Generally, I write at my desk in the study room. I like to keep it casual. While writing, I like to wear t-shirts and shorts. I tend to go barefoot. Very often, I listen to rock music while writing.

My writing habits can get somewhat schizophrenic. Sometimes, I’ll be especially creative, and I’ll write fourteen or fifteen hours a day. At other times, I’ll have severe writer’s block, and won’t write anything for three weeks. I don’t try to force anything—when it comes, it comes. I’ve found that writing when you are uninspired will produce work that is uninspired. A lot of writers would disagree with me on that, though. They insist that a writer writes daily, and I’m sure that there’s a lot to that. Such a strategy develops discipline. The approach never worked for me, though.

What authors do you enjoy reading within or outside of your genre?

It’s funny, but my favorite authors are fiction writers: Joyce Carol Oates, Ernest Hemingway, John Updike, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, and George Orwell. I always loved fiction, but for some reason, I could never write it.

I read just about everything: political columns, reviews, poetry, essays, biographies, magazine articles, what have you. For me, the genres don’t matter all that much. What matters for me is the quality of the writing. I like simple writing that gets to the point and that always has a distinct point of view.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers today?

To struggling writers out there: don’t give up! All hard-working writers get published eventually. I’ll always believe that. I never thought that I would ever get a publishing contract. I never thought that I would ever get to do book signings or radio interviews, or speaking engagements. I never thought that I would receive reputable awards for my writing. I got all of these things, though.

Thank you for coming back to Reviews and Interviews, Jonathan!

Interview with author Jonathan Maxwell

Jonathan Maxwell is a Georgia-based writer and public speaker. He is the author of Murderous Intellectuals: German Elites and the Nazi SS, which received the 2011 Allbooks Review Editor’s Choice Award in the Category of Best Non-fiction Book. In addition, the online publication Author Exposure rated the work as being one of the “20 Most Memorable Debut Books of 2010.” Jonathan holds a BA in English, along with a psychology minor and a paralegal certificate.

Jonathan, please tell us about your current release.
Murderous Intellectuals: German Elites and the Nazi SS examines why so many well-educated professionals, such as doctors, lawyers, scientists, and the like, willingly joined the Nazi SS, the notorious group that spearheaded the Holocaust.

What inspired you to write this book?
In part, I wrote the book to correct some of the misconceptions that people have about the Nazis. Many persons believe that this organization was full of street brawlers and misfits who lived on the fringes of society. To a considerable degree, this was true; Adolf Hitler himself exemplified the “social failure as Nazi” stereotype. However, the organization was also full of intellectuals. Such figures included:
·Johannes Stark. Stark was a German physicist who won a Nobel Prize for his work. He also became a fervent Nazi. He helped to rid German universities of liberal professors. He sent many of these educators to the concentration camps, where many died.
·Philipp Lenard. Lenard was another German physicist who garnered a Nobel Prize. Like Stark, he was a devoted Nazi, and he wrote much anti-Semitic literature.
·Otto Ohlendorf. This man was a death-squad commander who operated in the Ukraine. He and his men shot down about 100,000 Jews over a period of about six months. Obviously, Ohlendorf was a dangerous, fanatical criminal. He was also superbly educated: he held doctorates both in law and in economics.
·Oskar Dirlewanger. Dirlewanger was another death-squad commander. He operated in the former Yugoslavia. He openly encouraged his men to commit atrocities such as plunder, rape, and the murders of civilians. Like Ohlendorf, he was a dangerous felon. He was well-educated as well, possessing a doctorate in political science.
·Josef Mengele is the most famous SS doctor who performed experiments on people within the concentration and death camps. He came from a respected upper class family and held doctorates in medicine and anthropology. By no means was he the only one, though. There were at least 200 doctors who engaged in such inhumane practices, and they often graduated from the best European universities. In addition, many German doctors regularly killed thousands of mentally ill or mentally retarded individuals as part of a “euthanasia program.”
·The SS was full of architects. One such architect was Paul Blobel, a death-squad commander. At a Russian ravine called Babi Yar, he and his men murdered some 35,000 Jews over a two-day period. Another architect, Albert Speer, was a slave master who was responsible for the deaths of millions of forced laborers. He came from a respected upper class family.
·The SS was also full of lawyers. One such lawyer, Ernst Kaltenbrunner founded Mauthausen, one of the most brutal of the concentration camps. Another attorney, Hans Frank, became the governor-general of Nazi occupied Poland. His tenure there was marked by mass murder, graft, plunder, and corruption.
·Robert Ley was a slave master. He possessed a doctorate in chemistry.

These individuals are not particularly exceptional: one-third of SS officers possessed at least a bachelor’s degree. The truth, then, is much more disturbing. Many of the Holocaust’s practitioners were otherwise rational, accomplished individuals. Ultimately, I hope to convey to the reader that evil can come in many forms. It can come from thugs, but it can come from professors and engineers, too. I also hope to convey to the reader that the ideas of social elites need to be questioned from time to time. Sadly, average Germans during this period did not do so. They simply assumed that such leaders and intellectuals were always right. They failed to consider the fact that evil can corrupt social elites as well.

What exciting story are you working on next?
My second book is called Piltdown Man and Other Hoaxes. It’s much different from my first book. It’s a fun work that is designed for both adults and children. It’s about scientific hoaxes through history, including those involving Bigfoot, the Yeti, lake monsters, and Atlantis. It explores why hoaxes are perpetrated, and why people keep falling for them. Piltdown Man and Other Hoaxes is controversial (people tend to have strong opinions about such subjects), but in a light-hearted way.

It's schedule for release this summer.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I finally considered myself to be a professional writer when I received my first publishing contract about three years ago. I wrote for decades, but I had always been hounded by self-doubt. During the writing of Murderous Intellectuals, I had these sad thoughts: am I just a wannabe? Am I just fooling myself? Am I a phony? I don’t suffer from self-doubt much anymore.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I write full-time. That being said, my writing schedule is schizophrenic. I operate much like a painter or a sculptor. I have these periods when I get really inspired, and I’ll write thirty pages over a day or two. Then again, I have these periods when I can’t write for weeks on end. I don’t advise such a strategy; ideally, one should write every day. That never worked for me, though. I have found an effective way of dealing with it, however: simply do other writer-related tasks. You can send out queries or book proposals, you can arrange interviews, you can create and then send out press releases, and so on. To be a successful writer, you don’t have to write every day necessarily, but a writer should always stay busy doing one thing or another.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be a writer, but I never thought that I could ever become one. My father was a truck driver. I thought that to be a writer, you had to have graduated from an ivy-league college and to have come from the upper class.

The reason why I wrote my first book is because I had been laid-off from work repeatedly. In between sending out resumes, I decided to write a manuscript. After all, I had a lot of free time on my hands, and it sounded like an interesting challenge. At the time, I simply wanted to prove to myself that I could do something like that. At no time did I ever feel like I could ever sell the book. My mother read it, and urged me to send it out to publishers. I was amazed that I received a contract. In addition, I never felt that I could do book signings or arrange interviews or public appearances. I’ve been pleasantly surprised time after time.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
Readers can find my title on www.amazon.com, www.borders.com, and www.barnesandnoble.com, as well as at independent booksellers. They are also invited to contact me on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Thanks!