Just Lucky, I Guess

One of the coolest things I've done as a writer (if you'll grant me the privilege of calling myself a "writer") was interviewing Cycle World's Kevin Cameron for the Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly magazine. I've interviewed a few cool folks in my career, from product designers to musicians to business people and athletes, but I was more nervous about the interview with Kevin than I had been for several of my earlier interview experiences combined. The whole interview can be read here, since it's unlikely to be turned into another interview. This is my personal website and I don't do much to advertise it, but because it's the only place where whole interview lives I'm telling you about it now. It would have been easy to make three or four articles out of that one interview.

As a fiction author, one of the things I find most difficult is creating really intelligent characters and keeping them in that character through the story. The problem is, as too many science fiction authors don't seem to know, really smart people consistently think and speak above the level that most of us operate. Interviewing someone who is extremely intelligent is a similar problem, except that the interviewer's task is to try and keep from boring the interviewee with predictable and idiotic questions.

Kevin turned out to be easy. Not because I overachieved, but because he is a very kind and generous person. We still have something of a friendship going, since he regularly comments on the silly crap I write in this blog, and he's is always good for insight into complex mechanical and social issues. So, I hit him up occasionally for his views on many of the things that baffle me. He has never let me down. Sometimes, that pay received from doing this writing thing is a small part of the total compensation.