X. Ho Yen is the pen name of Rich Hogen, a Cuban-Chinese-East Prussian child of refugee immigrants who worked more than two decades as an aerospace engineer. Through his writing, he aims to continue the trend of globalizing, demilitarizing, and humanizing realism-based science fiction. As an autistic, multiracial, complex post-traumatic stress disorder survivor, he places a strong personal emphasis on human nature. More about the author — and the origin of his pen name — at xhoyenauthor.com.
SunLit: Tell us this book’s backstory. What inspired you to write it? Where did the story/theme originate?
X. Ho Yen: “Minimum Safe Distance” is my first novel. All first novels are autobiographical, some are therapeutic, and MSD is both. In short, MSD is about transformation and what it means to be a person. The idea behind it came to me around the time I was beginning to break my lifelong Complex PTSD, around age 40.
I think my right brain was anticipating being freed from the prison of masking and intense, very left-brain self-analysis that dominated my life before then. Long story short, MSD is me shouting to the universe, “Hey universe, I’m still here, I’m still autistic, and this is my experience of life.”
SunLit: Place this excerpt in context. How does it fit into the book as a whole? Why did you select it?
X. Ho Yen: MSD is a gestalt experience. It’s just how I write. So I chose to offer the prologue since it’s as standalone as any part of the book could be. The motif of MSD is that there is a better definition of sentience than the very human-centric definition we all inherit. My device for showing that is these transbiological beings, the SelfMade.
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So the feel of the story is less from a human standpoint than from a SelfMade standpoint, spanning an entire human lifetime, which is a drop in the bucket to them. The mental and emotional feel of MSD is more Buddhist than we in the West are accustomed to experiencing.
SunLit: Tell us about creating this book. What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?
X. Ho Yen: Long ago I read Orson Scott Card’s “Speaker for the Dead”, which had a huge impact on me. The extremely important unifying message of that story was powerfully conveyed. It’s something every human should experience. For me, it was a life-changing book.
My reaction to that book was, “I wish I could write like that, I wish I could offer readers a profound experience like that, not merely escapism or adventure.” Later, upon reading other works I particularly enjoyed, I started to have a “Hmm, I think I could write something as good as this” experience. Then, when I broke my CPTSD in 2007 I actually started trying. It took a long time to go from trying to writing and then the later stages.
SunLit: What did the process of writing this book add to your knowledge and understanding of your craft and/or the subject matter?
X. Ho Yen: Understand that I’m a second-career author, and that the idea for MSD came to me in 2005. It was released in 2022. I can’t claim to have craft yet. Writing MSD taught me everything. I’m aware that it’s not a perfectly executed work. But one of the things you learn is that there’s a “good enough” line in the sand, beyond which you move on to new things and keep improving.
My professional editor on MSD, Sarah Cypher of threepennyeditor.com, helped me get past a lot of newbie mistakes. I then read her book on editing, which solidified that learning. I’ve always been a stickler about language, but storytelling goes beyond that. Now I have real confidence in my writing. It’s the outreach and promotion stuff that’s still a tremendous challenge for me.
SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?
“Minimum Safe Distance”
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X. Ho Yen: Oh, every challenge a new writer faces, especially indies and second-career writers. Confidence, patience, diligence, confidence, time management, persistence, learning, confidence, agent querying, dealing with rejections, confidence, learning everything you need to know to self-publish, deciding to sink thousands of dollars into it, confidence… have I mentioned confidence?
SunLit: What’s the most important thing — a theme, lesson, emotion or realization — that readers should take from this book?
X. Ho Yen: I will allow the reader to find other important things in MSD, but here’s one I can offer you: one of the most important things all humans need to understand is that “emotions” are a reflection of intelligence, of mental sophistication.
Everyone is familiar with the idea of “intuition.” We assign no stigma to a person having intuition. Emotions are akin to intuition. One paradigm might simply be to see emotions as the right brain’s equivalent of the left brain’s intuition. As a species, as a culture, we need to grow beyond considering emotions problematic and recognize their value to us as a social species. So much of what is wrong with human civilization comes from a deep lack of understanding and disrespect for the experience of emotions.
SunLit: Glancing at the back cover blurb, and based on the “First Contact” tag associated with MSD, one might think it’s an alien invasion story.
X. Ho Yen: No, if anything, MSD is a “reverse” alien invasion story, because it’s humanity that causes all the problems. Humanity as a whole is sort of a standalone character in the story. The transbiological aliens have zero need for planetary resources. They can live in space without spacecraft. Why would they need to invade? I personally feel that alien invasion stories are thinly-veiled “fear of Other,” and we’ve had enough of that on this planet.
SunLit: Tell us about your next project.
X. Ho Yen: I’m working on two things, my next novel, and a puzzle book for tweens and up. There are many puzzle books, but most are just collections of standalone puzzles. Mine has a story and a world that provide a fun context for the puzzles, based on the Innerverse of my garage-animated YouTube series. It’s also educational.
The next novel is “Attendants of the Future”, which takes place on the Moon. It’s in the same universe as my second novel, “Custodians of the Future,” but this is not a series. With CotF I wrote something that was the stylistic opposite of MSD. CotF is a mystery-romp-chase set in a single day in Stockholm, and it has some whimsy to it, as well as pop culture references (not required for enjoyment of the story). AotF is still crystallizing. We’ll see what it becomes when it becomes.
A few more quick questions
SunLit: Which do you enjoy more, writing to editing?
X. Ho Yen: To me they are the same thing, there is no writing without editing, and vice versa. I enjoy both!
SunLit: What’s the first piece of writing – at any age – that you remember being proud of?
X. Ho Yen: I guess I would have to say the collection of poems I wrote in the ’80s, which, alas, are now lost to time.
SunLit: What three writers, from any era, would you invite over for a great discussion about literature and writing?
X. Ho Yen: Zowee… John Steinbeck, Kurt Vonnegut, and Franz Kafka!
SunLit: Do you have a favorite quote about writing?
X. Ho Yen: Not as such. But if pressed, I’d say this one, which is more general than writing but directly applicable:
“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to light a candle of meaning in the darkness of mere being.” – Carl Gustav Jung
SunLit: What does the current collection of books on your home shelves tell visitors about you?
X. Ho Yen: I read about as much non-fiction as fiction.
SunLit: Soundtrack or silence? What’s the audio background that helps you write?
X. Ho Yen: Silence! This is an autistic thing with me.
SunLit: What music do you listen to for sheer enjoyment?
X. Ho Yen: Wow, er… Muse, Anna Nalick, Evanescence, Cake, Massive Attack, KT Tunstall, Stevie Wonder, Imogen Heap, Bonnie Raitt’s old “Takin My Time” album never quits, The Crystal Method, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings …
SunLit: What event, and at what age, convinced you that you wanted to be a writer?
X. Ho Yen: In 2005 (age 40) I visited an old friend to run my idea for MSD past him. He’s well read and intelligent, someone I unreservedly respect. After our discussions, he said to me urgently, “Do NOT let this idea die.” There’s no way around it, that propelled me into this second career.
SunLit: Greatest writing fear?
X. Ho Yen: My greatest writing fear is that my material is too cerebral for the audience I have a hope of reaching during my lifetime.
SunLit: Greatest writing satisfaction?
X. Ho Yen: Nothing beats seeing someone experience something in your writing that you didn’t anticipate. That’s an audience participation thing that theater folks experience but writers don’t often get to see.