Author
Writer's Block Isn't the End: How to Keep Finding Your Next Idea
Wes Cambron shares his journey from screenwriting to urban fantasy author, discussing his unhinged characters, book series, and the wild stories behind his writing process.
Episode notes
Wes Cambron calls himself the uncle of unhinged urban fantasy, and this episode shows why. His Unbalanced saga follows Damien, a human raised by werewolves in Orlando, who makes every supernatural problem everybody's problem. Book one, Unbalanced and Unprepared, involves vampires opening a nightclub. Unbalanced and Unemployed goes after troll fighting rings, Unbalanced and Uncharted takes Damien and his stoner werewolf brother to New Orleans, and he is working on Unbalanced and Unhinged.
Wes pushes back on myths about traditional publishing: he says that both paths are legitimate, and that his publisher mostly asked him to change theme park names and one word for a body part. He also answers readers who refuse to read men, explaining that his wife is his alpha reader, his editor is a woman, and women have a hand in every page.
The best story is why he writes at all. Stuck at a hotel front desk and asked whether that was the job he wanted for life, he went to MegaCon 2022 to meet his hero, Kevin Smith. It took him nearly four days of lines, delays, and missed chances. When he finally reached the table, he cried and forgot his own name. His takeaway became his mission, and his advice to stuck writers follows from it: the creative spark that started you never goes away, and one idea always leads to another.
I want to be someone's Kevin Smith.
Wes Cambron
In this episode
- Urban fantasy built on stoner comedy
- Traditional versus indie publishing myths
- Writing about women as a male author
- Meeting Kevin Smith at MegaCon 2022
- Going from screenwriting to novels
Books mentioned
- Unbalanced and Unprepared
- Unbalanced and Unemployed
- Unbalanced and Uncharted
- Unbalanced and Unhinged
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