Ten questions with Erik Hoel
Erik Hoel’s debut work has the rare distinction of winning rave reviews from both literary critics and neuroscientists. Like his protagonist, Hoel is a neuroscientist and his debut features a fantastic plot while simultaneously exploring human consciousness. I first learned about Erik Hoel when he was described as “a major new talent” by Crime Reads. We are thrilled to feature his interview.
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1. Please tell us about your debut novel.
The Revelations is a literary murder mystery set in the world of science. Young scientists come to New York to study consciousness, and one dies under mysterious circumstances. The others form an amateur investigation into the murder, until eventually the mystery of the murder entwines with the scientific mystery of consciousness itself.
2. I’ve read that only 4% of the people who start a novel, finish writing it. Why do you think you beat the odds?
I think one has to become obsessed (and of course have the time and circumstances to capitalize on this obsession). There’s always an intense push in writing a novel when you move from like 40,000 words to around 100,000. My last year of graduate school, when I was getting a PhD in neuroscience, I wrote the title in big red letters across every mirror and window of my apartment, so it would be the first thing I saw when I woke up in the morning and the last thing at night.
3. Was your debut novel the first book you wrote? (Any prior efforts hiding on your hard drive?)
It was, at least in full.
4. What helped you become a better writer? Any books or resources you found helpful?
Reading is the best practice for a writer, and also reading closely what you’ve written if you’ve given it a couple months. Time will give you the distance that good editing needs.
5. What was your process like getting an agent?
I don’t have an MFA, which for literary fiction is becoming almost required. Ultimately, I got my agent because I moved to New York and got lucky winning an award, and my agent came to a reading of mine for the award and we talked afterward. But moving to New York and getting lucky is a ridiculous requirement for publication. I wish I could say the industry is fair, but it’s not. I can’t really offer advice beyond just a lament at its current condition. I am confident that most great writers in America are unknown, which is a sad state of affairs.
6. How did you celebrate when you learned your book would be published?
I ran around at night in Boston looking up at the stars.
7. What was the most exciting moment involving the publication of your debut novel? (The moment you first saw the cover? The call when you learned when it was being published? When you cashed your advance check?)
Definitely the call from my agent that there was an offer on the manuscript, it came out of the blue.
8. What’s your best advice for someone who wants to be published?
Even if you are published, that’s not the end of the journey at all. So take a very long term view that doesn’t get frustrated about reaching some arbitrary “finish line” in time. There is no finish line.
9. What are you currently reading? Or, what's one of the best novels you've read lately?
I’ve been really enjoying the Gormenghast series, which is basically Harry Potter for adults, but written in the 1940s by someone whose vocabulary is out of this world.
10. What are you working on now? Any projects coming out soon?
I’m working on a nonfiction book about consciousness, science, and dreams. But I feel like I write fiction with a different hemisphere and that one is already brainstorming parts of my next novel.
If you want to learn more about Erik Hoel and his work, check out his website or find him on Twitter
To learn more about his debut, check out his glowing Crime Reads review.