Monday, December 28, 2015

#IndieSpotlight of Andrew Nelson Mystery/ Suspense Author.

Name:

 Andrew Nelson


The Title of Your Work or Group: 
Author of Perfect Pawn, Queen’s Gambit, Small Tow Secrets and Bishop’s Gate

Where are you from?
Born and raised in NYC and currently happily retired in Illinois. 

In what genre do you write? 
Mystery / Suspense

In your own words, what is your book about? If you were not the author and trying to explain this awesome book you just read to a friend, what would you say about it?
 Perfect Pawn would be what you would get if Ian Fleming, Tom Clancy, Diana Gabaldon, and Lee Childs got together and collaborated on a book. The book has a bit of everything: action, intrigue, mystery, romance and will appeal to a wide variety of readers. 

What is your writing style? Do you follow all guides and rules? Synopsis, outline etc. or do you just sit down at the computer and type to see what happens. 
I tend to do a very rough outline initially, just getting myself from point A to point Z, but after that, anything goes. I always say that the outline is the black lines on a coloring book. The colors you choose to make it pretty are entirely up to you, or the voices in your head.

Have you ever written anything and thought; "The world has got to see this!"? 
I’d like to say that I felt that way about my first book, but it was actually my wife, who I had written the book for, who was crazy about it. I just thought she was being kind, but when I began to get all the feedback from readers, I thought I might have a career in this. It would make an epic movie. 

Do you have an editor and Cover Designer or do you do this yourself?
 I do all my own cover design work.

Who is your favorite author. Not just someone that you read allot. I wanna know whose book you read that made you suddenly know that if you didn't do this for the rest of your life then you would never be happy. 
I’d have to say there were two: Frank Herbert (Dune) and Tom Clancy (Without Remorse). I love books that draw you into their world. The character development with those two authors is superb. It is something that I try to mimic in my writing. I don’t want you to read my books, I want you to get immersed in them; to the exclusion of everything else around you. I have had mothers write to me and complain that my books were messing with their home lives because they were up till the wee hours of the morning, then they had to try and get their kids ready for school so they could go back to reading.

Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing? 
Not really. For me it has always been like watching a movie in my head, then I just write what I see and the dialogue in my head. 

Do you write your characters or do they write themselves through you? 
I’d like to take credit, but they write themselves. I just allow them to be as good or as bad as they want to be. 

Do you ever write yourself into the characters?
 Partially. They say that you should write about what you know, so part of me is incorporated into them. 

Is writing your full time job or are you "Keeping your day job"? So to speak. 
I actually didn’t begin writing until after I retired from the NYPD, so it has become my full time job now. 

If you could go back in time and meet one famous person or legend in history, who would it be? 
That is such a difficult question, but I would have to say Jesus Christ. I don’t know how you could pass up the chance to speak with him. Actually, on second thought, I guess it would be a matter of just listening to him speak. 

There are millions of new books released every year. What in your mind makes yours stand out from all those millions in your genre?
 Not to take away from anyone else, but I think that, having spent twenty-two years in law enforcement, I bring a certain level of gravitas to my writing. When an author like James Patterson, for arguments sake, writes a police story, he has to research. I’ve lived it, so when I tell you what happens, it’s as authentic as you can get. There is one scene in Perfect Pawn that recounts a presidential visit to NYC. I walk you through it, from arrival to departure, giving you a behind the scenes look because it was what I did for five years. You can’t get that level of detail from ‘research’. 

In the world of Indie, marketing is very difficult, especially if you don't have the funds to pay for it. Have you found a great free way to market your work that you think other Indies will benefit from? 
In this day and age, I’d have to say social media is the primary driver. Connecting with people on Facebook, Twitter, etc,.. is the way to generate interest in your works. Then it is a matter of other fans recommending your work and hoping that one day it will get into the ‘right’ hands of someone influential. Every author needs that one big push, someone with clout who says ‘Hey, you need to read this book’. 

Social media links 





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Monday, October 5, 2015

#IndieSpotlight of J Edward Neill @JEdwardNeill Author of The Tyrants of Death Series.

Name:

 J Edward Neill


 The Title of Your Work or Group:
I've published tons, but my primary books are tied to two series': Tyrants of the Dead and Coffee Table Philosophy. I also blog extensively for Tessera Guild.


Where are you from? Does not have to be the name of the place exactly. You can say Hick-ville Florida, for example if you are more comfortable with that.
 Chicago, IL. Lakeside. Frosty.

 In what genre do you write? 
 Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Horror, Literary Fiction, and non-fiction philosophy.


In your own words, what is your book about? If you were not the author and trying to explain this awesome book you just read to a friend, what would you say about it? 
 The Tyrants of the Dead series is about a girl who thinks she's just running away from home, but who wanders into an apocalyptic war in which she'll play an (accidentally) huge role. Meanwhile, the enemy of mankind (The demonic Ur) plot to use her as the key to their resurrection. 

What is your writing style? Do you follow all guides and rules? Synopsis, outline etc. or do you just sit down at the computer and type to see what happens.
 For all my fiction works, I outline heavily. And then, after a few glasses of whiskey, I abandon all pretense of organized thought and I just write until sleep overtakes me.


 Have you ever written anything and thought; " The world has got to see this!" ? 
Maybe. When I finished my Coffee Table Philosophy series, I thought, "Every human being needs one of these in their house." If only to challenge their minds.


Do you have an editor and Cover Designer or do you do this yourself?
 I've hired the lovely Amanda Makepeace and Eileen Herron to handle my art. I outsource my editing to friends and professionals.


Who is your favorite author. Not just someone that you read allot. I wanna know whose book you read that made you suddenly know that if you didn't do this for the rest of your life then you would never be happy.
 JRR Tolkien & Dan Simmons. Dark. Adult. Poetic. The three themes I look for in every book.


Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?
 Nah. I love to do it. Writer's block doesn't plague me. Editing, on the other hand...


Do you write your characters or do they write themselves through you?
 I write them. I'm not half as interesting as anyone I've ever put to page. Even the bit-characters are cooler than I am.


Do you ever write yourself into the characters?
 Just the one bad guy in Down the Dark Path (Book 1 in the Tyrants series). Archmyr Degiliac. He's a cocky SOB. He's me if I were allowed to be a villain.


Is writing your full time job or are you "Keeping your day job"? So to speak.
 Both! I have a day job, but I write/market/publish/edit for far longer than 40 hours per week, so...


 If you could go back in time and meet one famous person or legend in history, who would it be? 
Shakespeare. No doubt. I want to discuss tragedy with him over three bottles of wine.


There are millions of new books released every year. What in your mind makes yours stand out from all those millions in your genre?
 I write non-Harry Potter, anti-Twilight, non-elves/dwarves/dragons, not-at-all-like-Game of Thrones fantasy. The dark themes I embrace aren't for kids, and that's not because of anything sexual in my books. I try to embrace an Old World, poetic style. There's no sexy in the Tyrants of the Dead series. Just hard, humanistic, tragic themes. There's not much of my style out there. I try to be a splash of Shakespeare in a world that has largely forgotten the subtleties of truly vivid prose.

In the world of Indie, marketing is very difficult, especially if you don't have the funds to pay for it. Have you found a great free way to market your work that you think other Indies will benefit from? 
There's no secret. There's just hard work. Promote like a mofo, maintain your voice even while marketing, and spread the word every single day. I guess if I had two pieces of advice that I see Indies largely ignore, they'd be: A. Most of your social media posts should NOT be about selling your books. And B. Crappy grammar is author suicide.



Links to find and follow J Edward Neill's
work:


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Monday, September 28, 2015

#Indie Spotlight of Alex Brightsmith @AlexBrightsmith Author of Viennese Waltz

 Name:


Alex Brightsmith

The Title of Your Work:
Viennese Waltz

Where are you from?:
 A little town called Sandy, in Bedfordshire. Anywhere in the world I can lay odds that if anyone has heard of the town they’re a keen birder, because the RSPB have their head office there. No one else has ever heard of it – even in England, a lot of people struggle to place Bedfordshire, let alone Sandy, but we do perform the vital services of preventing the Midlands from falling into the Fens and buffering the Home Counties from the North.

In what genre do you write?
 My published novels are contemporary thrillers, but I’ve also contributed fantasy stories to anthologies, and I’m working on a fantasy series. When it comes to flash fiction I skip around in whatever genre seems to fit the prompt.

In your own words, what is your book about?
 If you were not the author and trying to explain this awesome book you just read to a friend, what would you say about it? 
Viennese Waltz is a character driven thriller that begins as hypnotically written intrigue and evolves into an intense tale of subtle bluff and desperate thrust and parry action.

Kathryn Blake (or Kate, which she prefers as the short, honest blade of a name suits her so well) finds herself in Vienna for what should be a minor part in a simple operation, with an opportunity for her to attend to some business of her own on the side. When the job starts to go wrong her government employers are forced to use all of her talents, and she finds herself playing a lone hand in a game she doesn’t quite understand, with an opponent she’s tempted to trust and old friends she knows can be dangerous.

What is your writing style? Do you follow all guides and rules? Synopsis, outline etc. or do you just sit down at the computer and type to see what happens. 
I don’t think I have one particular settled style of working, but I’m a great believer in harnessing the mood I’m in. If I’m on fire to write something I’ll write it, and worry about where it fits later – whether it belongs later in the piece I’m ‘supposed’ to be working on, goes off a tangent, or simply comes out of the blue. Either I’ll work it in, or get a ‘meet the cast’ blog out of it, or it can sit in the maybe file. If I’m feeling more diligent than inspired maybe I’ll outline a section that’s giving me trouble, writing very mechanical stage directions that I can flesh out on a day when the words come more easily. Even if I’m having a day where everything I write sounds awful, that’s fine, that just makes it an editing day.


Have you ever written anything and thought; " The world has got to see this!" ? 
If I have, I was probably wrong. The piece I’ve had the most extraordinary response to started as a silly challenge to myself, and almost didn’t see the light of day because it didn’t come out at all how I was planning.

 Do you have an editor and Cover Designer or do you do this yourself? 
For my thrillers I’ve self-edited and also worked on my own cover art, but that’s likely to change. Both of those works spent so long in the back of the drawer that I had the distance to edit them myself, but at the same time I was so close to them that I knew I would find it very difficult to work with anyone else on them. I’m learning to be less bull-headed now.

 Who is your favorite author. 
I find it hard to say what’s really influenced me, because my memory tends to turn everything into mulch in the back of my brain. Besides, if I was really honest about the one single book that had inspired me to write down the stories that I’ve always told myself, and if I could remember what it was, it would probably be something awful, something that made me think ‘well, if that can get published ... ’

However, one author who must have influenced me, and one I would love to see reflected in my writing, is Leslie Charteris. My brother had a handful of Saint books that I read over and over again in my teens. I just adored them, for their pace and excitement and sheer exuberant fun, but also for their language and their expectation that the reader would keep up (hagiography and occiput spring to mind as words I learnt from him). It’s a joy to read something that, though it allows me to take my mind off the hook and enjoy the ride, revels in the full joy and complexity of the language.

Charteris never gets stale. He’s endlessly inventive and his style ranges easily from hard-boiled New York excitement to pastoral adventures reminiscent of G K Chesterton. Above all, the Saint books play to the strengths of the written word. It often seems that the highest compliment a reader can pay is to be impatient to see their favourite work filmed, but screen adaptations of the Saint never work for me. Roger Moore’s Saint is wonderful, of course, as television, but for me he’ll never be the Saint of the books. Charteris’s Saint is a swashbuckling matinee idol, but he works because he’s contrasted to the real world, and that’s something that can be done with subtlety on the page when it might seem heavy-handed or comical on screen.


 Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?
I think what I find hardest is how much to reveal – thank heavens for beta readers! When I’ve lived with a story all that time, thought it and rethought it, written it and rewritten it, everyone’s motivations are so clear to me that it’s easy to forget that they’re strangers to the reader. Finding the balance between patronising the reader by spelling things out too clearly and being mystifyingly oblique is always a struggle.


 Do you write your characters or do they write themselves through you? 
I fool myself that I’m in charge, but a lot of the development goes on unconsciously in the back of my mind, and in little vignettes that I amuse myself with in check out queues and at bus stops. That means that by the time I’m actually writing the main characters are as well known to me as an old friend, and knowing what they will and won’t do does make it feel sometimes as if they’re dictating the plot. That can be frustrating, but it can lead to the best feeling of all – when a story has stewed down so well that I almost feel as if I’m sitting on the next bar stool scribbling down the story as the narrator tells it to me in their own words.


 Do you ever write yourself into the characters?
I try not to, usually. It’s amusing and frustrating in equal measure to find, during editing, the quirks that all my characters share because they’re natural to me, like a tendency to know more than you’d expect about botany and folklore and to have a discreet chirr or buzz for their ringtone. Having said that, sometimes I can’t resist giving a character something that’s mine. Kathryn Blake is a natural night owl because I wanted to share the joy of two a.m, which is something all you natural early birds will never know. I haven’t found an excuse to really go for that yet, but I’ll really enjoy writing about it when I do.

Is writing your full time job or are you "Keeping your day job"? So to speak.
 I’m a long way short of paying the mortgage without showing up in somebody else’s office on a regular basis. Usually that annoys me, but sometimes I wonder how much writing I’d do if it wasn’t a guilty pleasure that I had to cram in around all that important stuff.

If you could go back in time and meet one famous person or legend in history, who would it be?
 I’m at a bit of a loss on this, partly because I’d be so shy I’d certainly waste the opportunity, and partly because I’m so dizzy and eclectic that I could never settle on one person. Even if I did, I’d probably get distracted by a view or a market stall or something on the way to the meeting, and be too fascinated by that to keep my appointment.

I’m jealous of my husband in the respect, because I know that he’d choose Isambard Kingdom Brunel without a second’s hesitation. His earliest memory is of standing in the hull of the ss Great Britain (Brunel’s only surviving ship) not long after she was towed back to Bristol. She was open to the public, but she wasn’t a big tourist draw back then, and it was just his family there and a volunteer doing some work with an angle grinder. It spawned a lifelong fascination for him, and I know that if he had a chance to corner Brunel he’d have a list of questions as long as his arm. I can be interested in anything for ten minutes, utterly absorbed by it, but I don’t have that depth of knowledge.

There are millions of new books released every year. What in your mind makes yours stand out from all those millions in your genre? 
I’ve been described as writing books that are like fine malt whisky, subtle and complex. I know it was meant unreservedly as a compliment but it’s a double edged sword. I don’t write alcopops with mass market appeal (though I have the greatest respect for anyone who can pull off that trick) – but if I’m the right writer for you I’ll mesmerise and beguile you, and once I’ve drawn you in I’ll reward you with action that doesn’t let you go.

In the world of Indie, marketing is very difficult, especially if you don't have the funds to pay for it. Have you found a great free way to market your work that you think other Indies will benefit from?
 If only! I’m afraid not. But I’m open to suggestions.


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Monday, July 27, 2015

#IndieSpotlight of Rachel Cotterill Author of Watersmeet



Name: 

Rachel Cotterill


2. The Title of Your Work or Group: 
I have two series, currently. Rebellion and Revolution are the first two books in a trilogy of fantasy adventure stories, featuring a young woman who trains to become an assassin. My most recent work, Watersmeet, is the first Twelve Baronies novel, a series of stand-alone, optimistic, romantic stories set in a fantasy world on the edge of its own industrial revolution and enlightenment period.


3. Where are you from?
England, is the short answer. I was born in Luton (just outside London), but I grew up in Lancashire and consider myself more of a northerner. And now I live in the Cotswolds, which is incredibly pretty and green, with a landscape that feeds my imagination every day.


4. In what genre do you write?
I've dabbled in all sorts, but the ideas that really stick tend to be fantasy and sci-fi, often with a side of mystery or romance.


5.In your own words, what is your book about? If you were not the author and trying to explain this awesome book you just read to a friend, what would you say about it? 
Watersmeet is fantasy for readers who are feeling a bit worn down by the current fashion for grimdark realism. You can pick it up and know that you're going to get a happy ending, with characters who are doing their best, even if sometimes their best efforts leave something to be desired. It's the kind of thing I love to read when I'm feeling a bit down, pure escapism.


6. What is your writing style? Do you follow all guides and rules? Synopsis, outline etc. or do you just sit down at the computer and type to see what happens. 
I'm extremely haphazard. I usually have a number of projects on the go -- starting things is easy, it's finishing that's hard. And I write from the middle, whatever scenes come into my head with the most force are the ones that get written first. It makes editing hell, and continuity errors abound for the first couple of passes, but it's the only way my mind seems to work.


7. Have you ever written anything and thought; " The world has got to see this!" ? 
Ha! I'm more the opposite. I write something, and I love it while I'm working on it, but then I just want to hide it in a drawer. Even handing things over to my husband or editor is nerve wracking, I don't enjoy the waiting, but it's important to see what someone else makes of my words. You only learn through feedback, but the most useful feedback is always the critical kind, so you have to develop a thick skin to handle it.


8. Do you have an editor and Cover Designer or do you do this yourself?
I started off with neither, and now I have both. I wouldn't go back to DIY!


9. Who is your favorite author. Not just someone that you read allot. I wanna know whose book you read that made you suddenly know that if you didn't do this for the rest of your life then you would never be happy. 
Wow, just one? That's really tough, but I think I'd have to go with Frank Herbert and the Dune series. I grew up on those books and I just wanted to live between the pages. All I've ever wanted as a writer was to create something half as compelling.


10. Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?
Finishing! Because I write disjoined scenes, there's a lengthy phase of tying everything together, and then gradually working through the whole manuscript time and time again to draw everything more tightly together and make a coherent and consistent whole. It takes ages, which is okay, but knowing when to stop is a challenge.


11. Do you write your characters or do they write themselves through you? 
I write them, but I'm kind of a method actor. I back my characters into difficult situations and then I try to place myself in their shoes, with their skills and experiences, to understand what's got to happen next.


12. Do you ever write yourself into the characters? 
I think that's inevitable, really. I can only see the world through the lens of "being Rachel" -- no matter what other worlds and characters I imagine, I'm imagining it from the position of being myself. There are always going to be elements of me in there.


13. Is writing your full time job or are you "Keeping your day job"? So to speak.
I'm always going to keep some kind of day job -- or jobs, really, in my case. I'm a research scientist, and I also do recipe development on the side. Living the rest of my life gives me fuel for writing: I think I'd go mad if it were just me and the blank page, every day.


14. If you could go back in time and meet one famous person or legend in history, who would it be? 
I'd really like to talk to Hedy Lamarr -- there aren't many women who've so conspicuously succeeded in both artistic and technical careers. She's obviously much more famous for her film work, but I bet she'd be at least as proud of her scientific achievements and I'd love to discuss that with her.


15. There are millions of new books released every year. What in your mind makes yours stand out from all those millions in your genre? 
Fantasy is obviously a hugely popular genre, but the intersection of fantasy and romance is something that appears far more often in contemporary settings (urban fantasy or paranormal romance) rather than secondary world, high fantasy environments. I think being an academic also gives me a slightly different approach to some authors, in that I like my characters to apply some basic scientific method to their understanding of magic.


16. In the world of Indie, marketing is very difficult, especially if you don't have the funds to pay for it. Have you found a great free way to market your work that you think other Indies will benefit from? 
It's true, marketing is really hard, especially if (like me) you hate singing your own praises. For me, the best way is to focus on getting my books read, rather than on making sales per se. I give a lot of books away. For as long as I have a day job, I don't need the money, so I can afford to play the long game. Even on a really tight budget, you can give away ebooks at no cost, and every fan you generate through a freebie will tell their friends, potentially leading to more sales in future. In my experience gifting books to people directly is more effective than just having them free to download from Amazon (though I do both); they're more likely to get read rather than just languishing on someone's extensive TBR.

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Monday, July 20, 2015

#IndieSpotlight of Lynne Murray Author of Gravitas: Valkyrie in the Forbidden Zone.

1. Name: 

Lynne Murray

2. The Title of Your Work or Group: 
Gravitas: Valkyrie in the Forbidden Zone

3. Where are you from? Does not have to be the name of the place exactly. You can say Hick-ville Florida, for example if you are more comfortable with that. 
I grew up traveling a lot due to a father's work for the military and then in aerospace. We lived in Southern California, Texas and Alaska. I moved to San Francisco to go to college and have never left since.

4. In what genre do you write?
All my books feature humorous elements. I'm concentrating on science fiction and fantasy now Gravitas: Valkyrie in the Forbidden Zone is about aliens stranded on earth. But I've also written vampire fantasy (the Falstaff Vampire Files), romantic comedy (Bride of the Living Dead) and four books in the Josephine Fuller murder mystery series about a sleuth of size who doesn't apologize. 

5.In your own words, what is your book about? If you were not the author and trying to explain this awesome book you just read to a friend, what would you say about it? 
Gravitas is about a woman from Planet Valkyrie who is carrying an overdose of an aphrodisiac when she gets stranded on earth, which has been declared a Forbidden Zone.

6. What is your writing style? Do you follow all guides and rules? Synopsis, outline etc. or do you just sit down at the computer and type to see what happens. 
Following rules is hard for me. I naturally rebel at instructions, so I've learned that I have to follow my own quirks in order to finish a story. Whenever I try outlining or using planning software, I end up writing scenes in the margins and throwing the outline out to go back to the manuscript.

For me writing a novel is like making a bunch of puzzle pieces and putting them together different ways to see which ones make a better picture. 

The only way I can do it is to keep coming back to just picking up my manuscript every day and pulling the story along like a spider weaving a web. Oddly enough, my brain seems to be thinking ahead without my noticing, because when I get near the end the action starts clicking like a row of dominoes dropping! 

As you might imagine I do a lot of editing and re-writing, but that's the only way that works for me. 

7. Have you ever written anything and thought; "The world has got to see this!" 
I feel that way about Gravitas, because the ideas in it have percolated around my brain for a long, long time, and I finally found a story about a planet where the sex roles are completely reversed (women are expected to have as many husbands as they can support) and the major export was an aphrodisiac. I imagined a woman from that culture stranded on Earth with no easy exit. 

8. Do you have an editor and Cover Designer or do you do this yourself? 
I was fortunate enough to have editorially skilled friends to read Gravitas and suggest changes that vastly improved it.

I fell in love with a pre-made cover from David at GoOnWrite.com who has amazing covers at a price I could afford.

9. Who is your favorite author. Not just someone that you read allot. I wanna know whose book you read that made you suddenly know that if you didn't do this for the rest of your life then you would never be happy. 
I can't remember not wanting to write books, even before I could read. But Jo March was such a role model in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, Little Men ad Jo's Boys that I just knew it was what I was meant to do.

10. Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?
Fight scenes and love scenes are pretty scary. I just do the best I can and hope to get better as I do more.

11. Do you write your characters or do they write themselves through you?
I'm constantly finding out new things about my characters. I try not to stand in their way when they reveal themselves. 

12. Do you ever write yourself into the characters? 
I try to imagine what my characters are going through in physical actions, sensory impressions, and words. They do and say things I never could, but they don't have my limits. So I live through them in a way. 

13. Is writing your full time job or are you "Keeping your day job"? So to speak.
So far I've had to find other methods of supporting myself than writing. Sometimes I've made enough money to put back into the writing (e.g., buy a new computer, etc.). But stopping has never been an option. It's kind of an obsession and I live in hope that it will pay off more as I go along.

14. If you could go back in time and meet one famous person or legend in history, who would it be? 
I've practiced Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism since 1968, so I would want to meet the founder of our sect Nichiren (1222-1282). I'd have to bring along someone who speaks classical Japanese to communicate, and it might take me some years (a few lifetimes?) to process the encounter.

15. There are millions of new books released every year. What in your mind makes yours stand out from all those millions in your genre? 
Gravitas provides drama, laughs and an explanation for UFO sightings that hasn't been aired before. Fun is a word many reviewers have used including Frannie Zellman who said, More fun than eating chocolate while sipping wine."


16. In the world of Indie, marketing is very difficult, especially if you don't have the funds to pay for it. Have you found a great free way to market your work that you think other Indies will benefit from? 
I'm still experimenting and looking for resources. Every day I look for new places to share my books or find reviewers. I've met some great authors at the Facebook and Twitter #Awethors and #IndieBooksBeSeen groups and pooling our ideas has been helpful and encouraging. 

Now give me your links so we can get people to your book sites! 



Twitter: @lynnemurray







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Monday, July 13, 2015

#IndieSpotlight of Adam Dickson Author of The Butterfly Collector

1. Name: 

Adam Dickson

2. The Title of Your Work or Group: 
The Butterfly Collector

3. Where are you from? Does not have to be the name of the place exactly. You can say Hick-ville Florida, for example if you are more comfortable with that. 
South Coast, England

4. In what genre do you write?
Contemporary fiction, screenwriting, non-fiction 

5.In your own words, what is your book about? If you were not the author and trying to explain this awesome book you just read to a friend, what would you say about it? 
The darker side of adult relationships explored from the male angle. ‘Chick-lit turned on its head.’

6. What is your writing style? Do you follow all guides and rules? Synopsis, outline etc. or do you just sit down at the computer and type to see what happens. 
I write my novels longhand in notebooks, then put them away for up to a year while I work on something else. Then, after reading them back and writing a summary, I write them up on the computer. The rewrite process continues, draft after draft, until I’m satisfied (well – sort of satisfied!) They then go to an editor and proofreader for further improvement. 

7. Have you ever written anything and thought; " The world has got to see this!" ?Yes – everything! But I’m particularly excited about a screenplay I’m working on based on a real life murder case from 1946.

8. Do you have an editor and Cover Designer or do you do this yourself? 
Yes, as I said, I do have an editor. All kinds of errors are made during the writing of a novel, which the writer never sees himself. Good editing is a valuable part of the process and helps to make the finished work stronger.

My son, Alex, designed the covers for both my novels. His cover for The Butterfly Collector won an award from Joel Friedlander’s online resource, The Book Designer.

9. Who is your favorite author. Not just someone that you read allot. I wanna know whose book you read that made you suddenly know that if you didn't do this for the rest of your life then you would never be happy. 
I read A Clockwork Orange as a teenager, and was captivated by the strange language and the psychotic narrator. Books like, The Outsider by Albert Camus, and Junky by William S Burroughs were also extremely influential (I suppose this says something about my taste in literature!) I always knew that I wanted to write from an early age. 

One of my favourite novelists is Graham Greene. For me, he is the master of economy, never a word wasted. The opening of his novel, A Burnt-Out Case is a superb example of both precision and imagery.

10. Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?
Getting started! I’ve spoken to many writers who have a similar dread. There is something incredibly daunting about a novel – especially in the early stages. But generally it’s the thought of a blank page that makes it worse. Once you sit down and write the first few sentences, that awful fear usually vanishes. Coffee and digestive biscuits do the rest! 

11. Do you write your characters or do they write themselves through you? 
A bit of both. I usually start with a vague outline during the first draft, then build on that as I go, adding flesh to the bones with each draft. For The Butterfly Collector I had a clear image of Peter and Natalie meeting for the first time, and the sense of seductive antagonism that developed between them. 

12. Do you ever write yourself into the characters? 
Not purposely! But we may share certain traits, thoughts, and beliefs etc. I think it would be very difficult for a novelist to remove himself from the text entirely. But certainly, the characters take on a life and form of their own. That’s one of the fascinating aspects of the job. You get to be the resident psychoanalyst to all these weird and wonderful people! 

13. Is writing your full time job or are you "Keeping your day job"? So to speak.
Writing is the only job I have. But … I am also the Director of a film company – West Cliff Productions Limited. We are currently in the development stage, looking for investors to bring the screenplay I’ve written about a real-life murder to the big screen. 

14. If you could go back in time and meet one famous person or legend in history, who would it be? 
Julius Caesar. I find the whole subject of Roman history fascinating, and him in particular.

15. There are millions of new books released every year. What in your mind makes yours stand out from all those millions in your genre? 
To quote the novelist John Banville, ‘My books are better than everyone else’s, but rarely good enough for me!’ Although my novels are controversial in the subjects they deal with, I have been commended on my ability to write about emotions from both the male and female perspective. 

16. In the world of Indie, marketing is very difficult, especially if you don't have the funds to pay for it. Have you found a great free way to market your work that you think other Indies will benefit from? 
I would have to say that I’m a late convert to social media, and use Twitter and Facebook regularly to raise my professional profile. Having said that, I would question the use of Twitter just to plug books exclusively. Having a Facebook Author Page is great for posting content: this can then be linked to blogs/websites etc. I also use business cards with the covers of my books on one side and contact details on the other. There must be a few thousand of these floating around in the atmosphere already!

The best advice I could give any aspiring writer is simply to keep writing. You only have so much time, so use it wisely. Remember – books don’t write themselves.

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