“Roll, roll, roll in ze hay.” - Inga, Young Frankenstein

PJ Haarsma, author of The Softwire and creator of Rings of Orbis is taking his ideas beyond the world of young adult books into multiple forms of media. There is already a beautifully executed online role playing game, a comic book series is in the works, as well as a movie. Here, he talks to Pink Raygun about his plans for the series.

Pink Raygun: Is science fiction something you’ve always enjoyed, even as a child?

PJ Haarsma: It was. I actually started reading horror. I went from comic books to horror novels and then I got my hands on an Orson Scott Card novel, Ender’s Game. After that, it was all about science fiction for me. In school I was a big science geek - I have a degree in science - but I was lousy in English; it was my worst subject. I wanted to be a doctor, so as soon as I could stop taking English, I did. I didn’t like what they made me read and I couldn’t spell. Therefore, the whole idea of writing, especially in the sci-fi world, always felt like something that was out of my grasp. That’s what other people did. But, when I was pushing 40, I really wasn’t happy with what I was doing, and asked myself what I wanted to do with the second part of my life. The answer for me was to go back to those things I loved, and science fiction was one of them. I decided to write the science fiction book I wanted to read when I was a kid, and that’s how The Softwire started.

PRG: I have a lot of students who have stories inside them, but they have writing difficulties and are afraid to even try. I’m always looking for examples of people who overcame something similar to share with them and help them over that block. How did you overcome that writing difficulty and write a novel?

PJH: It was actually my teachers that told me I couldn’t write. I remember arguing with my grade 10 English teacher and with my college English professor. It was very discouraging. I did, however, have some teachers who loved my writing. They would make me stand up and read my stuff out loud. This was confusing to me and I couldn’t figure it out. Since I had my heart set on being a doctor, I just let it go. It was no big deal but the writing came back to me much later when I started journaling.

My two year old little daughter is fascinated with books. It’s amazing to watch but when I go do my school presentations, I see how that love of books starts to dwindle the older the kids get. One of my theories is that as kids get older, books become presented to them solely by authority figures like their parents or teachers, and it often comes with some sort of chore like a test or book report. The idea of just reading for fun is gone. It simply disappears and books are seen as chores.

In my experience, I feel the publishing world doesn’t market directly to the kids. They market to booksellers and librarians and parents - straight to the authority figures. I was told once by someone in publishing that, “Boys don’t read anymore. You can’t get them away from TV and video games and movies.” I have twenty years of advertising experience and I know that those people market directly to the kids. Kids know what movie they want to see when they walk up to the theater, they know what video game they want to buy when they walk in to the store. But, when they walk into a bookstore and are confronted with hundreds of thousands of books that are all spined out, they don’t have a clue what to buy. It then becomes a decision process and science has proven that making a decision is physically painful for a human being. Therefore, we avoid it whenever we can. But, when you see a book catch on fire by word of mouth, like Harry Potter, the kids gobble it up. I believe the industry as a whole has some issues to get over as far as getting books to kids. That’s why I created the game and I try to get in front of as many kids as I can. But, that’s my “inexperienced, first-time author” theory. I’m sure there are people who will tell me I’m crazy, but it seems to working so far.

Virus on Orbis 1 by Pj Haarsma (2006)

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The Softwire: Virus on Orbis 1 (Softwire) by Pj Haarsma

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PRG: You mentioned that you do school presentations surrounding The Softwire. What is the reception like for those?

PJH: Phenomenal. I’ve had them chase me out of the parking lot like I’m the Pied Piper. It is hard though for an author to break in at first. The schools don’t know the quality of your presentation or even if you’re an axe murderer or not. You can’t blame them for that. I started my visits in Canada because I’m from there. I bullied my way into my sister’s school and my wife’s aunt’s school. I performed two presentations and one librarian put it out on their internal network. Suddenly I had nineteen school presentations lined up. I sold almost a thousand copies of The Softwire to the kids, and the game just exploded. They loved it. They simply went nuts.

My presentation is very different than most authors. I don’t read the book. I illustrate their location in the universe. I make them question what we’re doing to the planet, and I demonstrate the hurdles we’ll have to overcome if we ever need to leave it. Then I show them how books can become their favorite movies and show them how to play the game. I bring them video clips and get them to participate throughout the presentation. I also tell them the story about what I witnessed as a kid and how I used that to inspire The Softwire. I even come equipped with an alien artifact in a metal case and a body guard. It’s a multi-media extravaganza that just hooks the kids. It’s been extremely well received by educators, parents and kids.

PRG: Where did this story of The Softwire come from?

PJH: This is the story I tell the kids. When I was younger, we had a cottage in Canada and there was this bully I was always afraid of. I was fishing one day and this weird little boy asked me if I wanted to see a dead bear. He took me over this pile of rocks. I looked under the rocks and I was convinced I was looking at an alien, not a dead bear. That’s where the whole the concept started. That event sparked that question, “what if”? That’s the question I always ask myself. What if we had to leave this planet? What if were invited to a place where the rules were very different? I love “what ifs”.

PRG: One of the things I’m always interested in is how a writer works. When you’re ready to start writing, do you work in a linear or non-linear manner, and do you work from some sort of outline?

PJH: With the first book, I basically started with page one and went right through to the end. I didn’t have an outline. I’m constantly getting visions, and little clips of conversation, which I write down on notecards. When it came time to write the second book, that’s when I wrote my first outline, but it wasn’t really even a true outline. It was just sort of a path that took me to the end. Then I sat down again and wrote from page one to page three hundred. I can’t write independent scenes. It all grows from me as I’m writing. As long as I have a path, I’m fine. My outlines are basically about what the characters want, their struggle from the beginning to the end, and tons of pictures. I use images that I tape in my notes to trigger what I saw in my head.

PRG: You used to run a production company. How difficult was it for you to make the jump from producing something very visual, like a movie, to producing something that is purely verbal?

PJH: I think the biggest hurdle for me to overcome was the transfer from the image in my head to the words on the paper. I’m not the best wordsmith, I’m not a flowery writer. I skip that stuff over when I read and I don’t put it in my books. But, because I’ve been looking through a camera for so long, it’s very easy for me to visualize something in my head. I simply close my eyes and look around. People have commented that the book is very visual, but if you read The Softwire, it’s extremely light on description. All those years of visualizing shots in my head paid off I guess. Making the words flow and making it “writerly” was where I started to run into my hurdles. My editor helped me a lot. She really did a great job.

PRG: How many books do you have planned for the series?
PJH: They bought four and I have seven behind it if things go as planned.PRG: You’ve expanded this into an online role-playing game. . . PJH:Yeah, which has really been a pleasant surprise in a lot of ways.

PRG: How has it been surprising?

PJH: The demand for it, the size of it, the reward let alone the amount of work it takes to run a game. I was told that I needed to have a web presence. But who looks at author sites. If they do, they only go once. I thought, what if I created a world where kids could go in between books? I had all this great art from Stephan Martiniere, Igor Knezevic and Dwayne Harris. Stephan worked on Star Wars! I wanted to use that art in the game. The game is built in the fashion of a text based MMO, but I took the text and replaced it with the art and used Flash and other effects which made it quite beautiful. Now it’s a monster that needs to be fed and people want new stuff all the time. I work on that way more than I work on my books!

PRG: OK, so four books, seven more in your head and a role playing game. How far do you want this series to go? Do you want to maybe expand it into comic books?

PJH: I’ve written the first script for the comic book and am putting a team together. We’re working on it now. The comic takes a character from the game and a character from the book and shows what’s going on behind the scenes on the Rings of Orbis before the kids get there. It’ll collide with the third book and then one character will spin off and the comic will just be about him.

I’m talking to a company in Canada about making a Saturday morning cartoon and I’m working on a movie with Frank Beddor.

The Rings of Orbis is a huge universe. The game has helped open that up, too. I’m also working on the philosophy of OIO: the art and science of cosmic energy. This is what the Keepers believe in. I have sixty pieces of alien art that my wife Marisa created and we’re making a box of cards with them. Each card illustrates an element basis of the Keeper’s beliefs. And there is also an art book to go along with it. It’s so much fun creating a new universe.

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