Ask the Author: Neil Sharpson
Answered Questions (4)
Neil Sharpson
Hi Diana, so sorry I didn't answer this earlier, Goodreads hides these questions like the fine china. As far as I'm aware, there will be no substantive changes to When the Sparrow Falls for the paperback release, other than one sentence that I reworded because it felt a little clunky.
Neil Sharpson
"Plan" is a strong word. At the moment I have an idea for a story set in the Caspian Republic but it won't be my next book, or the one after or probably even the one after that. I do have a title though: Yozhik.
The trouble is, at the moment I know WHAT I would write, basically Yozhik's story running parallel to Nicky South's but I don't yet know WHY. As in, why tell this story? What would this character's journey reveal that wasn't already present in Sparrow? I don't have the answer to that yet, but I hope it will come to me eventually. I do love Caspian, and I'm sure one day I'll be back tramping through the misty streets of Ellulgrad, with one eye cast over my shoulder to make sure The Bastards aren't following me.
The trouble is, at the moment I know WHAT I would write, basically Yozhik's story running parallel to Nicky South's but I don't yet know WHY. As in, why tell this story? What would this character's journey reveal that wasn't already present in Sparrow? I don't have the answer to that yet, but I hope it will come to me eventually. I do love Caspian, and I'm sure one day I'll be back tramping through the misty streets of Ellulgrad, with one eye cast over my shoulder to make sure The Bastards aren't following me.
Neil Sharpson
The odds against you are huge. But they are not unalterable. When you sit down to start writing your first chapter, the odds against that book ever being published are a million to one. But that number can be brought down. Everything you write, every query you send in, every connection you make, every workshop, every note, every rejection, it all chips away at that huge big number. Finish the book? Congratulations, you've gone from a million to one to 500,000 to one. Got an agent? Now you're 100 to 1. Got a better agent? 10 to 1.
Never gave up? Kept going no matter what? Refused to take no for an answer? 1 in 1.
Never gave up? Kept going no matter what? Refused to take no for an answer? 1 in 1.
Neil Sharpson
If you're anything like me, part of your brain will try to procrastinate whenever you sit down to write. I find if you work on two projects simultaneously, you trick your brain into working on one to avoid working on the other (the one you work on will, without fail, be the one with the less pressing deadline).
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