Maria Savva's Blog, page 58

May is National Short Story Month!

As a short story writer, I am thrilled to discover that there is such a thing as National Short Story Month! I found out today from my good friend and fellow author, Stacy Juba, who has a free short story available for download on Smashwords entitled, 'Laundry Day'. I've read some of Stacy's work and would encourage you all to download this story; it's bound to be good, she's a very talented writer.

The short story seems to be getting more popular these days because people live busy lives and often don't have the time or energy to really get into a novel. A good short story can be a really satisfying way to end the day. You can read a whole story in one sitting, without having to wonder what happens next, or worry about forgetting important facts by the time you next sit down to read it.

I am an avid reader as well as a writer, and I used to only read novels, but have recently been finding that I enjoy short stories and short story collections just as much.

I'm very happy that short stories seem to be making a come back because I love writing them as well as reading them.

To celebrate short story month, I thought I would recommend a few short stories and collections that I have read and enjoyed in recent years. I hope you will choose one or two of them to read. (I've included quotes from my reviews of the stories, you can read my full reviews on the relevant pages).

In no particular order:



With this short story, Michael Radcliffe is introducing the world of the Guardian's Apprentice, his fantasy novel... If you like books about witches, wizards, magic, curses etc., you will love this story. It kept me interested and I loved the little twists contained within it. Nisha wants to save her father, a powerful Wizard who is dying. Will she be able to find the stone that will cure him, and at what cost?



A skillfully written crime short story, taking a minor character from Darcia's Michael Sykora series of novels, and giving him the spotlight. Sean Riley is a man with a dark past and this story shows just what effect his past has had on the way he now lives his life. If you like crime fiction, you'll love the way Darcia Helle writes. This character oozes pure evil, and the dialogue-driven prose helps to give the reader the impression that they are a fly on the wall witnessing this brutal scene. Definitely not a story for the fainthearted!



More of a novelette, but still a quick read :)
A psychological thriller exploring schizophrenia and the unexplained bond between twins. It's a story that will have you glued to the page. The suspense is well constructed and made me want to continue reading until I found out what was happening. The story unravels bit by bit, slowly revealing the reasons behind the characters' behaviour. Beaudet drip feeds the information in the most effective way, with flashback scenes and high drama. A wonderfully entertaining story. I'd recommend it to everyone who likes a good suspenseful thriller.




(collection of short stories)
This is a book that will give you a fly on the wall look at ordinary lives and the common scars and ties that bind us. It will reveal to you the hidden side of life, the side most people will never reveal, and of which we are usually oblivious.





Those who love a good romance story will love 'A Valentine For Victoria'. It's a sweet story about how an unlikely couple fall in love. Apart from being a story about how love can blossom in unexpected ways, this story has more depth; it looks at the feelings of insecurity that come with loneliness, that can make us reach out to someone who may or may not be ideal... An underlying theme to this story seems to be 'never judge a book by its cover', and it reminds us that sometimes what we've been looking for has been there all along, but we just don't see it for one reason or another. An entertaining read.



A wonderful, well written story, about a young girl and her father, who doesn't always live up to her ideal. She has created a fantasy figure in her mind of what a real father should behave like. The mannequin in an expensive store looks just right for the part. One day, her world changes when a mystery man appears and challenges her view of the world. An insightful and interesting read.



A story that many will relate to. Dean is a 40 something sales rep who is tired of his humdrum life and job, and of the things in his life, like the road markers, that keep him hemmed in. He wants to break free. In the past he has had suicidal thoughts. We follow him on a ride along a dark highway as he deliberates about the consequences that would follow if he were to cross that line and end it all. His mind meanders like the twists and turns of the highway and McIntytre keeps the reader hooked with many a diversion in this skillfully structured short story. A recommended read.


(collection of stories)

'The Heroes and Other Stories'is a well composed collection of short stories. Kat Hausler has a wonderful talent for describing and portraying the nuances of human behaviour. For me this collection included absolute gems... Two stories in particular stood out for me, in that they grabbed my attention from the first page and would not let go: 'Peripeteia' and 'La Fee Noire'... I loved the ending of the first story 'What Makes Us Happy', a study of self-imposed loneliness; the ending is very fitting and thought-provoking, and that is one of the better stories in the collection too. I would recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of short fiction. Many of the stories are so intricately detailed that I am sure I would enjoy reading them again and again. This is a promising debut from a talented author.



A man wakes up one day to find he has been changed into a large insect/beetle. The story follows his efforts to deal with this, and his family's reaction to the change. But it's not just a story about a man turning into a beetle, it's a clever way of writing about how a family would deal with the main breadwinner in the house becoming unable to work, and also on a wider scope, the way a family (and the world at large) reacts to someone who is disabled, or terminally ill... The once able and hard-working man, transformed into a beetle, is now rejected, and his family blame him for their financial situation and the fact that they cannot move to a smaller house, because they need to have a room to keep him in.
The descriptive quality of the writing is excellent, and although it is a sad and gruesome tale, it is also very funny in parts; I couldn't help laughing out loud a couple of times... The main thing that struck me, was that even though this story is nearly 100 years old, it is still totally relevant to today's world.



(collection of stories)

Tom Upton's talent seems to lie in being able to grab the reader's attention and draw them into the story, and most importantly to keep the reader's interest. There are many believeable and well-observed/developed characters in these tales... My personal favourites are, 'The Hanging Boy', which I felt was particularly insightful, and, 'Life Along the Okie-dokie Highway'...
I enjoyed reading this book and it's definitely a collection worth reading.



(collection of stories and plays)

This book is hilarious. If you like Woody Allen's humour I would highly recommend it. It's totally ridiculous, but brilliant at the same time — which sums up Woody Allen as a comedian. This is a book to make you laugh out loud. It's a collection of short essays, short plays and other strange observations... If you want a giggle you should pick up this book.



I have to start this review with a word of warning: you have to read with an open mind, and I would not recommend this collection of stories to anyone who is of a nervous disposition or who dislikes graphic descriptions of sex and violence, or who has an aversion to the use of swearwords. With that out of the way, I have to say that on the whole, I really enjoyed reading this collection. The author is a very talented writer and has a fantastic imagination. He has created many interesting and compelling tales... The stories are written about the darker side of life and some are frightening, some shocking. All the tales will make you think. Most, if not all, are controversial... definitely a book which you will want to read to the end.

And now, of course, I have to mention my own short story collections :)
I have three collections



A diverse collection of short stories, dealing with subjects such as love, luck, loss, and other things beginning with L (LOL).



A themed collection of stories. 7 stories, each one inspired by a different colour of the rainbow.



My latest collection. Contains ghost stories, love stories and even a bit of sci-fi :)


I hope you will find some short stories to enjoy, and perhaps you'll be persuaded, like I was, that short stories can be just as much fun to read as novels.

Happy National Short Story Month!!

Meet Mark McKenna, author of The Word Gang, and enter to win a copy of the book!

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I recently met Mark McKenna on Goodreads when he approached me for a review of his book The Word Gang. The thing I love about reviewing is that sometimes I get to read books that I wouldn't have otherwise chosen to read, and then I absolutely love them. That's what happened with The Word Gang. It's a Young Adult book, that can be enjoyed by young and old alike. It's one of the best debut novels I have ever read.

I had to invite Mark here to introduce him and his wonderful book to you.

As well as agreeing to answer my interview questions, Mark is also giving away a copy of the book to one lucky reader of my blog. All you have to do is leave a comment here to enter! A winner will be picked at random on 20th May 2011. It's an international competition.

Here are Mark's answers to my interview questions:


The Word Gang is your debut novel.  I was fascinated to read on your website how the story evolved over a period of 17 years.  The idea came to you in a dream, and you were hesitant about writing it as you felt you were not a writer.  What have you learnt about what it means to be a writer over your 17 year journey?


The first thing was how difficult it is to write. My first version was 122,000 words long, containing every amateur mistake a beginner could make. I loved it. My next version was 96,000 words; it actually had more details than the earlier one. I loved it, too. The came 86k, then 76k, then 73k and the final book was 71,000 words. Each version came after professional editing, after more experience writing, writing other novels in between, etc. Each version came at the expense of my ego and with a certain amount of pain, or at least "getting used to" whatever shortcoming had been revealed. And I'm still not sure about what I've written, although reviewers so far have been kind.




At the end of your book, you call it ‘an imperfect labor of love’.  I was surprised to read that as I could see nothing ‘imperfect’ in it.  Can you explain why you feel it is imperfect?

Every time I open the book I find something I want to change. One good thing about finally publishing a book — it puts an end to all that. 



The Word Gang is the story of three kids in school who start using big words to be disruptive.  How did you go about choosing the obscure words that the characters use in the novel?

I had fun. I own all the dictionaries mentioned in the book (including the moldy one) and I love looking through them. I searched for words hardly anyone would know. I felt it would add to readers' enjoyment to be a bit mystified. The Word Gang was partly written to explore words, big and small, as well as the intention behind their use.

I also like to revive obsolete words — it’s like finding a valuable antique in a junk shop, taking it home, and putting it out for people to enjoy. “Covenable,” for example, means “agreeable,” “appropriate,” or “suitable.” It comes from "coven" originally an assembly, meeting, or company. Only later (1600s) was it used for a gathering of thirteen witches. It's related to the word "convent" as well.

I think the book is a very realistic portrayal of how teenagers might behave.  Did you base the teenage characters on any real teens?

No, I really don’t know where my characters came from. It’s a mystery. I’m thinking of calling my short story collection Who Are These People? because that’s the way I feel about them. Of course, I was a teen myself a while ago, as Mr. Spinoza says, “back when God was a boy.” 




Mr. Spinoza is a loveable eccentric character who speaks many languages.  Do you speak more than one language?

I studied Spanish and German in high school and college. At one point I wrote papers in both languages, now I'd need a dictionary to read them.



Aside from the big words, there are a few historical references and words spoken in other languages in the book.  How much research did you have to do, and how did you go about it?

I love the Internet. All the things I needed (the specs on BD's 1968 Camaro Z-28, for example) were there and waiting. Some knowledge I'd just picked up along the way. I've worked on my own cars and held a lot of jobs we would call "grunt work" in the US. 

In the first paragraph of The Word Gang the lines -- The lark’s on the wing. The snail’s on the thorn -- are part of a long poem called Pippa Passes by Robert Browning. The last lines of that section of Browning’s poem -- God's in His Heaven, All's right with the world -- are spoken by Mr. Ralston near the end of my book. I used that allusion because I felt there was some connection between Kalisha and Pippa, a certain innocence that protected them from, and changed, their worlds.

 I've always liked the poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens so I included it, too. I admire the French photographer Robert Doisneau. The book of his photographs that Mr. Spinoza shows Kalisha (Three Seconds from Eternity: Photographs) is a real book that I own. (I mention “real” works of art, because I also made some up!) It was fun, throwing in things I knew and liked, including a very tasty recipe for lasagna. 




Which of the characters in the book can you most relate to and why?

I relate to them all. I like Mr. Spinoza's secret studying -- it's sort of like the writer's life. I always felt out of place at school so Kalisha, BD and Sahmbaht all act out parts of my rebellious nature. Of course, they're bolder than I was, and somewhat quicker off the mark. I always think of the perfect comeback a day too late. 




I saw from the back cover of your book that the Chief Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary read and enjoyed the book.  That’s quite an endorsement.  How did he come to read it?

Kalisha’s life is transformed after she is given the Compact Oxford as a gift. Because of the connection to the OED I wrote to John Simpson and asked if he would read it. I think that was the 86,000 word version. He did and offered suggestions, which I followed. He was, I would say, ‘cautiously supportive’. (My characters use words improperly at times, and not always with the noblest of intentions.) Then I asked John if he would look at my final version. He said yes again. Having him read my book was one of the main reasons I was able to persevere over the years. I can’t tell you what it meant to have someone with his status in the world of words offer comment and support. It was HUGE. I feel very fortunate and grateful.



Your book is being promoted as a young adult book (although I think that adults will enjoy it just as much as teens), what in your mind is the target age group for your book?

When I began writing the book I didn’t even know there was such a thing as “Young Adult”— that’s how naive I was. At one point a literary agent said to me, “This book falls squarely into the Young Adult category.” I said, “Fine.” I thought the book would be suitable for ages 14 and up, but a 12 year old was one of my first readers and wrote a great review. Young readers are very sophisticated nowadays.



Are there plans for a sequel to The Word Gang?

I’m about three chapters into a sequel called The Word Gang Rides Again. It’s a murder mystery that’s solved, in part, by good vocabulary. None of my main characters are “the victim,” but someone in The Word Gang is... *suspenseful organ music*



Do you have an tips for someone who is considering self-publishing their own book?

The advice I would give is the advice I ignored: Learn something about marketing your book. For example, many review sites will only take a book BEFORE it’s published, three to six months before. I didn’t know that. I was so wrapped up in producing the book I let all that go. 



Who are your favourite authors and what is it about their writing that you like?

I like Isaac Bashevis Singer. I like the easy way he tells a story; his voice is beautiful. My character, Mr. Spinoza, is named after a character in one of his short stories, The Spinoza of Market Street. I like Sigrid Undset, who wrote Kristin Lavransdatter. That book felt so realistic I thought Undset was somehow mystically channeling 13th century Norway. Later I found out her parents were archeologists or anthropologists, and they specialized in that era. Her childhood home was filled with artifacts.

I like science fiction and mysteries.
P.G. Wodehouse is a favorite. His similes are delightful; Jeeves and Bertie Wooster are immortal gods to me. 






Mark Twain...

When I visit the library I always get some brand new books and then wander through the older fiction. Rumer Godden, is a lovely writer for example. Nathaniel Hawthorne. I recently read The Blithedale Romance. What I like about Hawthorne is the fact that I always feel a modern sensibility peeking from behind the archaic language. And Charles Dickens— I just re-read Great Expectationson my phone! I read it in high school but I found it much more enjoyable as an adult. I likeScarlett Thomas. The End of Mr. Y and PopCo. She’s a quirky writer and I like quirkiness in all forms. The more I think about your question, the more writers I could name. There was a book called The Theory of Everything I liked, by Lisa Grunwald. Leo Tolstoy. My father gave me his collected short stories when I was a teen and it made a big impression. Independent People by Halldór Laxness.



Is there a book you own that you’ve read more than once?

Kristin Lavransdatter, two or three times. The hobbit books, three or more times. There’s a wonderful book called Alaska Man's Luckby Hjalmar Rutzebeck. I read that several times. Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson, twice. Roughing It by Mark Twain, two or three times. I like books that transport me to a different world, or a different time. You read a book from the 1700s and think, “Ah, a man, just like me.” Many modern books are like modern movies: consumed. I consume them myself, but they leave no lasting impression. Tasty, but like lunch four days ago. 




What was the last book you read?

I just finished 

Judas Unchained, a sprawling “space opera” by Peter F. Hamilton. Quiet Days in Clichy by Henry Miller. The ITCH : A Novel by Benilde Little and Rembrandt's Hat, stories by Bernard Malamud.



Are you reading a book at the moment?

I’m reading two: Oblivious by Neil Schiller and Green by Ted Krever. I met both of these authors on the Goodreads website and we exchanged books via email. Very different books, but they’re both as good as anything being offered by traditional publishing. They are real finds.


What do you think of ebooks?

I’m ambivalent. When I read Great Expectations on my phone I thought it was hurting my eyes. It was fun though, to be able to take out the phone every time I had a few free minutes. It opened to the right page every time, smart little phone that it was. The process gave me a sense of freedom similar to the freedom I felt as phones evolved. First it was long cords (always tangled) then you could talk in your backyard, then with modern cells, almost anywhere. With ebooks I can read in more places, and with more ease.

I don’t own a Kindle or a Nook, but I have nothing against them. I do like paper books and I love libraries -- but if the times have to change it’ll be good for the trees.

How important are reviews for you as a writer?

I’ve had only three reviews so far. I have about five or six more coming out. I do enjoy seeing what others take away from my writing, especially people who don’t personally know me.



How did you go about choosing a cover for your book?



I wanted the title to be in a funky font that would contrast with the neat type of a dictionary entry. I chose the word “otiosity” because “otiose” is the first word Kalisha learns and uses.

I first learned the word “otiose” before I started writing The Word Gang. I was making tofu sandwiches for Wildwood Natural Foods in Fairfax, CA in the early 80s. Great sandwiches; we overdosed the entire San Francisco Bay Area on soy. We had a mock tuna salad called “Tofunofish.” We also made rows of seitan submarine sandwiches we called “The Wheat Meat Fleet.” For the tempeh sandwiches we cut out a center portion of a tempeh burger so a special sauce could be added. This left us with “otiose wads of tempeh,” a phrase we all used and enjoyed. So the word was a “natural” for the cover of my book. (Ouch, sorry.)



What are you working on now?

I have a completed science fiction novel called The Borzoi Suite. I’d like to put it online as a collaborative project -- invite other artists to add text or pictures -- a sort of wiki book. I have a number of short stories I’m thinking of publishing. One is a series featuring the same character, Frankie P. that could stand alone as a book. Then there’s the sequel to The Word Gang.



Where can people buy your book?

The book’s website has all the links to buy, more information, and a link to read a few chapters.

The Word Gang



Do you have your own website or blog where people can read more about your work?

On Facebook: The Word Gang Fan Page

On Goodreads: Author Page


Thanks, Mark :)


Remember, you can enter to win a copy of The Word Gang by leaving a comment below. Good luck!

Meet author Marty Beaudet and enter to win 'By A Thread' or 'Losing Addison'!

I met Marty Beaudet online on Bestsellerbound.com. When he first joined us on that forum, he was a newly published author, having just finished his debut novel By A Thread. He was frustrated because life as an independent author was not working out as he had hoped. Why were people not buying his book? Why wasn't he a bestselling novelist yet?

Some of us who had been networking and marketing our work for years, and still selling about 1 book a month on average, wondered whether he was just not cut out for this self-published road. Was he expecting too much? Did he really have the passion to carry on writing even when months could go by without a book sale?

Over the few months that I have known him, I have grown very fond of Marty. He does have drive and passion. He knows he has an amazing talent as an author. When I recently read his novelette, Losing Addison, there was no doubt in my mind that this author is something special.

As well as answering my interview questions, Marty has very generously offered to give away a copy of each of his books! All you have to do to enter the giveaway is leave a comment. Random winners will be picked on 15th May 2011.

Here are Marty's answers to my interview questions:


Your debut novel, By A Thread is a political thriller that has been getting some great reviews. It’s been described by many reviewers as a conspiracy novel. I haven’t read it yet, and I don’t usually read political thrillers. What would you say to a reader like me to persuade me to read it?



My decision to write a book stemmed, in part, from my dissatisfaction with many of the books I had read. I like the puzzle-solving aspects of mysteries, suspense, and thrillers, but too often those kinds of books lack any real human component. The characters are often cardboard cutouts that seem to be used over and over again. Romance in such books is frequently trite, a cynical nod to the fact that sex sells. The confines of genre labels seems to assure that mainstream novels never stray far from the "successful" template, but it also makes them boring and predictable, in my opinion.

In writing By A Thread, I was determined to tell a story that was as much about the personal lives of the characters as it was about the intrigue in which they were engaged. What's more, I chose characters who were at times antithetical to the stereotypes readers have come to expect: Mormon missionaries, gay characters, Muslims who are NOT terrorists, self-doubting intelligence agents, Americans who are NOT all good guys, a strong female leader, and so on.

Alas, in order to market the book, even in the self-publishing realm, I am forced to assign a genre label to it. So I have settled for calling it a "political thriller with a heart," in order to convey the idea that the characters' personal relationships are every bit as urgent as the suspected conspiracy that drives them to action.

How much research went into writing ‘By A Thread’, and how long did it take you to write?

A huge-—and probably inordinate—-amount of research went into the book! I wrote it over an eight-year period, with a three-year health-induced hiatus in the midst. I love novels whose details are so explicit and accurate as to both teach me something about the real world in which they purport to take place, and to keep me guessing as to which parts are actually true. I'm fond of saying, "If the reader can tell where truth ends and fiction begins, the writer hasn't done his job." Consequently, my research was so detailed as to describe the actual furnishings of the actual apartments in which the characters live! I used real-life train schedules to determine arrival and departure times. If you were to go to Vienna today, you would be able to visit every venue in the story and see it exactly as I described it. In addition, the hypothetical political crisis in the book is based on real-life disputes about the U.S. Constitution, and the book's intelligence activities are grounded in reality, as well. One appreciative reader, himself an intelligence veteran, told me he knew immediately that I had an intelligence background when he read the book.

Your latest book, a novelette, Losing Addison, was inspired by a dream. Can you tell us a bit more about how that came about?



One morning in March I awoke, struggling with myself and the bedcovers. I had been having a nightmare. As I lay there staring at the ceiling and trying to come fully awake, I drifted in and out of the nightmare again. Each time I did so, more and more details of it became clear to me. My waking mind would ask a question, and my dreaming mind would answer it. It was so explicit as to seem an actual memory to me, as though I hadn't dreamt it, but lived it at some time. Finally, I could contain myself no longer; I flew out of bed, skipped breakfast and the bathroom, and began writing. I wrote only about 1,000 words before I was exhausted. I wanted to know more, but I felt I shouldn't push myself or the story would become a contrivance. Each day after that, for fifteen days, I wrote an additional thousand words and posted it to the new Losing Addison blog I'd begun. I didn't know where the story would go each day until it flowed out of me. I was so in awe of this process that I didn't even go back and read what I'd written until the entire thing was done, for fear that somehow my conscious efforts to fiddle with it would pollute it!

I was hooked on Losing Addison from the start. It was written as an online serial, unedited, but it reads like a fine-tuned psychological thriller. It’s almost as if you were writing something from memory. Are any of the characters or events in Losing Addison based on real life?

My experience with dreams—-as I am sure is common with others—-is that events are rarely linear and details come in and out of focus. For instance, my mother in one moment will suddenly be my sister in the next; or I'll be in San Francisco in one instant, then suddenly in Portland. This dream was no different. What was different was the progressive nature of the relationship among the characters and events. This provided a framework over which I laid details based on my own life experiences. Am I making any sense?

It's like this: suppose I tell you to imagine a time when you argued with a sister and ended up throwing something at her. Then I tell you to write it down. As you do this, your mind will recall details of the setting—location, time, persons present, what they were wearing, what was said, what you threw—-information that I didn't provide you. My writing process was similar. The dream told me what the gist of the event was, but not the details. As I attempted to describe it, pictures would pop into my mind that were a product of actual persons, places, and things in my own life.

Oh, one other thing: when my mother was pregnant with me, I/we were supposed to be twins. My four older siblings had been allowed to suggest names for the twins. They were all fans of the Mickey Mouse Club on television at the time, which featured a couple of twins on the Triple-J ranch, named Spin and Marty. When I came out alone, I'm fortunate that they named me Marty, not Spin! (Though I've considered using that as a pseudonym!)

Which one of the twins from Losing Addison, Addison or Les, can you most relate to, and why?

They are both me! I see in their struggle my own inner conflicts, especially in reconciling my erstwhile Mormon faith with being gay. There's my overly analytical, second-guessing self in Les, and my devil-may-care rebel in Addison.

Is there a particular author, or book, that inspired you to start writing?

Generally speaking, no. As I said earlier, many of the books I have read inspired me by leaving me wanting more, or a different turn of events than the author had provided. As I read these, I often found my mind wandering and rewriting the story with a different outcome. In particular, I found the absence of any gay characters like myself to be disappointing. We all want to jump into the skin of a book's character once in a while. On the other hand, most books labeled "gay fiction" are pulp or borderline pornographic. I'm no prude by any means, but that's not what I'm interested in reading. I want intellectual engagement. Anyone who can do that gets my book-buying dollar.

The one author who influenced me the most at the time that I started writing was Dean Koontz. In particular, From the Corner of His Eye really grabbed me. It was an ordinary story about ordinary people caught up in a crime. But slowly a paranormal element began to expose itself in a completely unexpected turn of events. I thought it was brilliant! It crossed genres. Crime, mystery, thriller, paranormal—-all rolled up into one. I thought, yes, I can do that too!

When did you first discover your love of writing?

Very late, indeed. In high school I took a creative writing course and hated it. The idea that creativity could be yoked to assignments and schedules seemed antithetical to me. I succeeded only when I wrote about my own experiences. But I never made the connection back then that non-fiction could be made into fiction in the hands of a skilled storyteller.

In my thirties I became a political activist in San Francisco and in the Mormon community. This necessitated putting feelings into writing to promote or defend various causes. I found that my passion enabled me to do this effectively and I became a spokesperson for several causes over the next decade. I was eventually hired as a staff writer and editor for several magazines, but had still not written fiction. As an avid reader however, I found my longing to write a novel growing over the years.

Do you have any tips for someone who is considering self-publishing their own book?

Yes. Beware of other writers who offer you tips! Truly, I found an overabundance of advice in the online writers' community when I was introduced to it last year. Much of it was contradictory and lead me in so many directions at once that I considered giving up completely. You might recall that when I joined Bestsellerbound my posts were so full of frustration and complaints that I got people's hackles up! (A shoutout to Joel Kirkpatrick who so graciously took me aside and cleaned up my act!) I was doing everything I'd been told on one hand, only to find that I was annoying people on the other hand.

I'm still not sure of what I'm doing! Do I tweet too little or too much? Am I required to blog about things other than writing? Or do I bore and annoy with off-topic posts? Are mentions of my books considered unwanted advertisements or useful links to something of interest to potential readers? I never know the answers to these things. And when my Twitter mentions and retweets dry up, and blog hits fall to zero for a week, I'm always second-guessing myself, wondering who I've offended and how!

So, no, I'll leave the advice-giving to those who have come before me. I'm flying by the seat of my pants out here!


Who are your favourite authors and what is it about their writing that you like?

Well, I've already described Dean Koontz. But even he has trailed off into commercial schlock at times, likely the result of deadlines and production quotas imposed by traditional publishers. I'm not a die-hard fan of anyone in particular. I come across books I love and books I can't finish. It doesn't seem that the author is any guarantee of the outcome. I read Stieg Larsson's first "The Girl Who…" book, but couldn't finish the overly dense, excruciatingly inner-monologue-bound, second one. Khaled Hosseini, on the other hand, thrilled me with both The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns I read The Kite Runner twice. I've liked books as random as Bel Canto (Ann Patchett) and Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts (Julian Rubenstein). I absolutely loved Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides), and I thoroughly enjoyed Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mars Trilogy," a gift from a friend, and the first fiction I had read in nearly a decade prior.

Since becoming an indie writer, however, I'm now committed to buying only indie titles. There are too many gems out there that I'll never have time to read. I don't need to risk formulaic commercial novels any more. I will still read a mainstream book that is loaned to me however, if it comes with a recommendation from family or friends.

Is there a book you own that you’ve read more than once?

The Kite Runner, Lord of the Rings, Ballad of the Whiskey Robber, The Russians, From the Corner of His Eye, On the Road,Tales of the City, and probably others I can't remember.

What was the last book you read, and are you reading a book at the moment?

I'm currently reading both Jason McIntyre's Thalo Blue and Darcia Helle's The Cutting Edge. While driving I'm also listening to Lifeguard by James Patterson and Andrew Gross, loaned to me by a neighbor. I don't remember the name of the last book I finished! It was something I won on fReado's Bookbuzzr. Prior to that was Josh Bazell's Beat the Reaper.


What do you think of ebooks?

A curse and a blessing! I don't own an ereader and can't afford one. We live on very little, as I have chosen to be a writer and only work part time. As a reader I'm frustrated by the number of books by indie authors (such as those mentioned above) that aren't available in print. My only guaranteed reading time each day is at bedtime. I can't hold my computer to read ebooks in bed! Other reading opportunities are in the bath and on public transit, both places where a print book is more practical than a computer. Similarly, none of my closest friends and neighbors with whom I share reading interests own an ereader or iPad. Consequently, I can't share with them those downloaded indie titles I know they'd love.

On the other hand, as a writer I'm grateful for the opportunity ebooks give me to circulate my writing among a much larger audience than print books alone can offer. My recent novelette, Losing Addison, would never have been published in print by a traditional publisher. The cost of producing it, even as a self-published title, likely means that it will find its greatest audience in its ebook form.

Personally, I will never abandon print books. I love to hold them. And, as a graphic designer, I thoroughly appreciate good cover art. It's about the only art I can afford now! I believe that down the road, print books will experience a resurgence, just as vinyl has in the music world.

How important are reviews for you as a writer?

Would I sound too pathetic if I said "they're everything" to me? It's true, for this reason: Storytelling, like a conversation, requires two parties. I have no interest in a carrying on a monologue. I don't write to hear myself think. I write to share. Even if there were no monetary recompense for writing (and oftentimes there isn't when the books are balanced), my greatest joy is to read or hear and share the excitement of others as they discover the story that has captured my imagination in creating it. And, while I have been fortunate thus far to have had only one bad review (a Mormon who thought By A Thread was "not an LDS book"), I feel that constructive criticism will help me refine my work in the future.

How do you go about choosing a cover for your books?

I have been a part-time graphic designer for twenty-four years, so I do all my own cover work, including photography. Since the City of Vienna is a character in By A Thread, I chose an iconic symbol of that city as a focal point for the cover: the Riesenrad (Ferris wheel) at the Prater amusement park on the Danube. It has the added cachet of being an iconic symbol of the movie "The Third Man," about intrigue in post-war occupied Vienna. What better choice for my political thriller?

The cover of Losing Addison came to me as readily as the story itself did. I created it in about thirty minutes, starting with a photograph I had taken of an acquaintance several years ago. I knew it needed to be dark and mysterious, and tweaked it for that effect. The idea of a face over a face stems from the interaction of twins in the story. Creating covers is one of my favorite parts of the process! I'd love to do it for other authors, as well.


What are you working on now?

Ack! I'm going in so many directions at once now! Last November I sat down to write an entirely different, coming-of-age-in-the-high-desert story. But I had barely begun when I acceded to the requests of several fans who wanted me to write a sequel to By A Thread. The cynical, marketing-oriented part of my brain said, "strike while the iron's hot!" But I got 20,000 words into it and hit a wall. Like By A Thread, The Third Token has complex plot threads that gradually interweave. I found that, while I loved writing my protagonist, the creation of a villain was dragging me down. I don't like to get into evil people's heads! It doesn't come easily to me.

Losing Addison was such a refreshing and unexpected break from The Third Token, that I decided to explore some other ideas that were bubbling to the surface. I wrote three chapters of a new psychological thriller, but balked when I delved further into Jason McIntyre's Thalo Blue, because I found too many similarities between the two, even though I'd written mine before reading his. I then began another project, but am second-guessing myself on it now because it would likely find only a limited audience. I'm wondering if I should go back to my other projects first. As you can see, there is no method to my madness!


Where can people buy your books?

Readers wanting print editions can get the best deal by watching for my oft-tweeted discount codes and going to CreateSpace to use them. Currently, code DKAYY424 offers a $3 discount on By A Thread.
Code NGD939PC offers $2 off of Losing Addison.
Amazon doesn't allow author discounts, but has the advantage of free or combined shipping if you're buying multiple books. Both By A Thread and Losing Addison are available for Kindle at Amazon, as well.
Losing Addison is also available in all digital formats at Smashwords. (Readers of this blog may use code EW27M for a 50-percent discount there through the end of May.) By A Thread is on Smashwords, as well.
European buyers can also purchase my ebooks from XinXii (the price includes a VAT tax).

Do you have your own website or blog where people can read more about your work?

By A Thread has a website that offers reviews, as well as insights into both my background and the novel's, including links to the real-life counterparts to the story's elements and characters. There is also a By A Thread blog where I post related stories, occasional contests, and discount offers. Losing Addison has its own blog, where I post reviews and discounts.

Thank you, Marty.

Remember to win a copy of either By a Thread or Losing Addison, leave a comment below. Good luck!!

Meet Giles, from 'Me and My Dictionary'!

Giles is a character from 'Me and My Dictionary', a short story from my collection, Fusion.
Giles loves learning words, in fact, he has learnt all the words up to 'P' in the dictionary. He likes to learn a new word every day :)

Today, he's appearing on Darcia Helle's blog!

To learn more about Giles, and Darcia's new blog feature, click the link below:

Meet Giles!

Fusion is my latest short story collection, available on Amazon and B&N as well as all other good online bookshops. You can also order it from your local bricks and mortar stores, or libraries, quoting the ISBN: 978-0-9564101-3-9

There is a 40% discount if you buy from Lulu.com at the moment!

Meet Andrew Blackman, and enter to win a signed copy of 'On The Holloway Road'!

I'm thrilled to be introducing you to an award winning author, and fellow Londoner, Andrew Blackman. His debut novel, On the Holloway Road won the Luke Bitmead prize in 2008. I met Andrew through Goodreads about two years ago, and his novel remains one of my favourite books. I was attracted to the title, as I am from North London and know the Holloway Road well; in fact, I used to work in an office on the Holloway Road.
His novel is about two very different young men who form an unlikely friendship. They set off on an adventure together, full of entertaining twists and turns. The thing that struck me most about the book is that it is extremely well written; it reads as if it was penned by an author with years of fiction writing experience behind him.


On The Holloway Road is one of the books in my library that I want to read again.
If you haven't read it, you can enter a competition by leaving a comment on this blog post. Anyone who comments will be entered into a draw to win a signed copy of this award winning book. A winner will be picked at random on 10th May 2011.

Here are Andrew's answers to my interview questions:


Your debut novel, On the Holloway Road won the Luke Bitmead prize 2008. Can you tell us a bit more about that prize and how you went about entering the contest.

Luke Bitmead was a novelist for Legend Press who died at a tragically young age. His family set up the award in his memory, to give £2,500 and a publishing contract to the author of the best unpublished manuscript they received. I submitted my manuscript and won, and a year later On the Holloway Road was published. It’s an annual contest and is free to enter, so I’d encourage any unpublished writers to give it a try.

Your background is in journalism, and I understand you’ve written for The Wall Street Journal, and many other newspapers across America. How does writing non-fiction compare to writing fiction, and which do you prefer?

I prefer fiction, definitely. Free from the necessity to get the small facts right, I can explore larger truths. Journalism can often provide a very misleading view of the world – something is newsworthy because it’s the exception, not the rule. In my fiction I deal with people who are unexceptional in many ways, and in doing so I aim to explore what it means to be human, at least in this particular time and place. The Wall Street Journal was a great place to work, though. It has very high standards, and in my three years there I learned a lot about writing and editing my work, often under great time pressure. I stopped being so protective of my words and understood that they could be subjected to an almost infinite process of improvement.

When did you first discover your love of writing, and is there a particular author, or book, that inspired you to start writing?

I have always been quite shy, and struggle to express myself clearly in the heat of conversation - by the time I’ve thought of the right thing to say, it’s usually far too late! As a child I discovered that writing allowed me the time and tranquillity to come up with the right words and say what I really meant. In my early teen years I plunged into War and Peace, which took me months to read but introduced me to a whole new world. I loved the fact that as a teenager in suburban London I could live for a few hours each day in the Russia of the Napoleonic Wars. I decided that I wanted to create worlds of my own, to let other people visit them.

I read that you won the Daniel Singer essay prize. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

I won that prize in 2004, for an essay entitled “What is the Soul of Socialism?” I was working for The Wall Street Journal at the time, which is on the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, so I didn’t talk about it with my colleagues – I think I was the only socialist on the payroll, and would probably not have been on it much longer if they’d realised! But it was a wonderful experience, because it was the first time I’d been rewarded for writing something I really believed in. The essay was published in Monthly Review a year later – it’s still available online here – and I delivered a lecture based on the essay at the 2005 Left Forum at CUNY Graduate Center.

I thoroughly enjoyed On The Holloway Road. I found the characters very believable and realistic. Did you base the characters on people you know?

No, I didn’t base them on anyone I know. I’m always watching people, whether it’s friends and family or just people on the Tube, and if I something strikes me for whatever reason, I write it down in my notebook as soon as I get the chance. So I build up my characters from the physical attributes, facial tics, phrases and character traits of probably hundreds of different people, along with plenty of things I just make up.

Jack and Neil, the two main characters in On the Holloway Road, are very different, and yet they form a friendship based on their view of the world.

Which one of the characters can you most relate to, and why?

I relate to both of them, and in some ways they reflect different sides of my own personality. Jack is drifting, lonely, depressed, looking for meaning, while Neil is more energetic and boisterous, but also quite childlike and naïve in his expectations of people. They are both in their own ways looking for something more out of life, a way to live more authentically, and this is something I relate to very strongly.

Jack is an aspiring novelist. Is any part of the novel autobiographical?

Congratulations, you’ve hit on the only part of the book that is autobiographical! The road trip and the events are all fictional, but Jack’s struggles with his long, turgid literary novel are strongly based on my own experiences with a novel I was writing before On the Holloway Road, a novel that has not been and never will be published. I think I was trying too hard, and began writing On the Holloway Road as a way to escape for a while and find the enjoyment of writing again. I wrote fast, spontaneously, and completed the first draft in a month. To my amazement it was better than the novel I’d spent years struggling with, and so I abandoned the old one and felt very free as a result.

Jack Kerouac’s On the Road was obviously a great influence for your novel. What was it about that book that captured your imagination?

When I read the book at different points in my life, I got different things from it. As a teenager, probably like many people, I was intoxicated by the glamour and excitement of a road trip across the vast open spaces of America, the free-wheeling life of parties and hitch-hiking. But when I went back to it more recently, I was struck by the ultimate failure of Sal and Dean’s mission. For all the travelling back and forth across the continent, they keep ending up back where they started, with everything broken – for all the imagery of the straight open road, it’s actually quite a circular novel. I was interested in how a similar trip would play out in the more narrow confines of 21st century Britain.

Who are your favourite authors and what is it about their writing that you like?

I love Milan Kundera,Kazuo Ishiguro, andJorge Luis Borges, because their stories make me think about the world in a new way. Beautiful writing is not enough, for me – I look to books to introduce me to new worlds and to challenge my assumptions. A couple of writers I’ve come across more recently and been very impressed by are Preeta Samarasan and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Is there a book you own that you’ve read more than once?

I’ve read the Tao Te Ching more times than I can count. It’s on my nightstand and I turn to it whenever I am feeling lost or confused.

What was the last book you read?

Edgelandsby Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts.

Are you reading a book at the moment?

Yes, I’m reading .A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes. I’m also listening to an audio book of To Kill a Mockingbird.

What do you think of ebooks?

Not much! I have always loved books, and currently don’t see an ebook offering anything that a physical book doesn’t (at least in fiction – in non-fiction or reference I can certainly see that the ability to search by keyword and to include videos or other material would enhance the reading experience). For me, novels are a respite from the world of gadgets and electronic screens. Everyone always tells me how great it is that I can carry hundreds of books with me at once, but I’ve never wanted to do that – one at a time is enough for me!

How important are reviews for you as a writer?

Reviews are vital, as they are one of the main ways that people find out about your book. For On the Holloway Road I didn’t get too many reviews in the national papers – just a short review in the Daily Mail – but all the reviews on sites like Amazon and Goodreads are very much appreciated. It’s also great to hear from readers even if they don’t write a formal review, but just email me or leave a comment on my blog.

How did you go about choosing a cover for your book?

My publisher, Legend Press, handled that side of things. I was happy with what they did – I’d probably have gone for something obvious like a road stretching off into the distance, but they had a graphic designer work on it and came up with something much darker and more abstract, which fits the content of the book perfectly.

What are you working on now?

I’ve just finished work on a second novel, called A Virtual Love, which is about love in the age of Twitter and Facebook, and am starting on a third one now.

Where can people buy your books?

It’s in a lot of bookshops – not as many as when it first came out in 2009, but check there first. They can always order it within 24 hours so it’s usually faster than online ordering. Or you can go online and order a physical copy or ebook from the usual suspects – Amazon UK, Amazon US, the Book Depository, Waterstones, etc. If you want a signed copy, you can buy it direct through my website – I’m currently offering free worldwide shipping (for a limited time, so might not be available if you’re reading this some time in the future!).

Thank you, Andrew, for answering my questions :) Your new novel sounds intriguing. Can't wait until it's released!




Remember, by leaving a comment on this blog post you can enter to win a signed copy of Andrew's book! This is an international competition. Good luck!!

Meet author, Joel Blaine Kirkpatrick, and enter to win signed copy of, 'Breathing Into Stone'!

Today, I would like to introduce you to one of my favourite people. He's not only a gifted writer, but he is a marvellous person. I met Joel on the BestsellerBound forum, not long after it launched last summer. He immediately caught my attention because he is a bit of a practical joker, and full of fun. To put it simply, I love Joel. I am sure you will all fall in love with him, too.
I have read his novel, Breathing into Stone, and it is one of my favourite books. Joel has generously agreed to give away 2 print copies of this epic novel to readers of my blog. It's an international competition. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment below. Winners will be picked randomly on 5th May 2011.

Joel is the author of four novels, all of which have received fabulous reviews.

Joel is a great supporter of indie authors. On his blog, The Tales The Thing he features authors and books that he has found interesting. His interviews are always fun to read, and I'd highly recommend you to stop by his blog when you get an opportunity.

Last year, Joel single handedly put together a 3 volume sample anthology showcasing 62 authors. This anthology is available as a free download. It includes short stories and excerpts from novels, in various genres. Here's a link to the promotional trailer, for more information:
BestsellerBound Anthology Trailer

Here are Joel's answers to my interview questions:


Is there a particular author, or book, that inspired you to start writing?

Nearly every book I’ve read has inspired me; I just love stories. I really prefer hundred year old narratives, because they were not manipulated as things are today. I’ve admitted to being in love with Gary Jennings’ tales. I hope someday to form a novel as he did.

Do you have any tips for someone who is considering self-publishing their own book?

By all means get it done! There are few feelings as grand as reaching those last few pages. Self-publishing, to me, is the only thing the modern age has gotten right in literature. For someone who feels intimidated by the process – don’t isolate yourself and continue to feel alone; ask for help. Indie authors are a community – a very generous community.

You have published 4 novels in under 2 years, if we are to believe the rumours. That is quite a feat. Can you describe your writing process, and is it true that it took you only 36 days to write one of your books?

True, and still shocking to me. What I’ve only recently admitted, is that I took a year sabbatical from my career and spent the whole time writing. It was easy to write for 14 hours a day. I exploded, so-to-speak. Not knowing I could market on the web, three novels were in my hands before things slowed down. Then I began to poke around the internet and learn what self-publishing was all about. (I believed for months that traditional publishing was my only avenue. I got over that nonsense quickly.) And, yes, Breathing into Stone was completed at just under 200K words in five weeks. Someday I shall be ripped to shreds for that. It will be called a hopeless mess.

My process is very simple. Ideas get swished around in my mind, until they feel good. The best ones are typed a bit. About twenty good story-starts have been filed away. The first chapter is always done in a flash, so I know where I’m going, and those set the tone of the book. Then I unleash my brain to sort everything out. Nothing is typed until I’ve worked it out beforehand. I already have the first chapter of my fifth novel complete, it’s just waiting for me to get going.


From looking at the synopses of your four books, they seem quite unique in themes and genres. Which one was the hardest to write and why?

I don’t have a genre yet. In a few years that will arrive. It’s too much fun experimenting to worry about nailing that down just yet. Harmony's Passing caused me the most work, because the science is so familiar it had to be correct. I researched as the story formed, working out sky positions, and instruments, and a bit of biology. My desk was cluttered with star-charts the whole time. The other three books were just odd ideas that I loved exploring. My upcoming book will cost me a lot of research, because every element of it is taken from actual history – history that I will scramble apart completely.

Which one of your books was the most fun to write, and why?



Harmony was ‘fun’ because I’m a geek. But it was such a delight being with the characters in the others. I am quite in love with Caraliza (from Caraliza), and with Anoria (from Breathing into Stone). My wife thinks that is so stupid. To me, Shared is a bit darker, much more personal. Some elements of that book were difficult to write.

If someone was new to your work, which one of your books would you recommend they read first, and why?

Caraliza, would have to be my choice. It is my shortest novel, that’s a plus already. It is also the purest entertainment, asking only that the reader allow the ghosts to speak to them. Harmony requires some patience for the flood of scientific detail; Breathing into Stone is just a barge – you know that – a short vacation is needed to read that thing. Shared? That book wants into your mind, and into your heart. It wasn’t written to entertain. Shared is a spiritual expedition.

I own all your books, but have only as yet had time to read one of them. Breathing into Stone, is a literary masterpiece in my opinion. I am eager to read your other books after reading that one. Can you tell us what your inspiration was for Breathing into Stone, which is a historical drama, set in Italy, revolving around the life of a master sculptor and his beautiful daughter.

Anoria came to me in a sudden burst of warmth. I had been wondering if I could write from a woman’s perspective, and make her believable. It seemed natural to make her challenge a man’s world, because I knew something about that. I adore that period of time, the 1700’s. The earth was much bigger then. I put Anoria in her father’s marble workshop just hours after imagining her. From that setting, I could indulge my love of that period’s art, and play it all against the Church. Also, I looked around to see if there were any women like her in that period, working with stone. There were so few turned up in my research, I knew Anoria would stand out as very unique. There is nothing unique in my antagonist, Novia. He’s as generic as they come – Furio might really just be cliché, but I like him. He did his job.

The setting is real, Resceto is a charming, tiny little village – right where I claim it is. It gave me some isolation, which enhanced the characters, and it afforded me the chance to fill the novel with the setting. It would have been boring, and half as long if I put them in a little house in Massa. When you stand in Resceto on that single street, it seems you are swallowed by the mountains. But climb just an hour above the village, and you begin to see the stunning landscape, the sea to the west, the mountains rushing away north and south. Suddenly you are in a wide world, and it is a perfect mirror for Anoria’s personal journey; from isolation to the grandeur and fame of the marble culture.

When I read Breathing into Stone, I thought that somewhere in your work background, or at least for a serious hobby, you were involved with carving marble! The description of the way the marble was carved was so intricate, that sometimes I could almost see each tiny detail being carved by the hand of Antonio Lisi or Anoria. But I read in a recent interview that you have no experience in this whatsoever, and didn’t undertake much research either. I find that amazing. Did any of your novels require much research, or do you find that you are always able to write convincing prose without researching your subject matter?

Beginning Breathing into Stone, I could already name more than a dozen of Michelangelo’s most famous marbles. I wrote as an admirer, it’s been a lifetime devotion, and I let that drive the text. If you can’t fill the narrative with love, you’d better be ready with something else, like facts. Harmony could not have been written without a second computer screen open to Google. My next novel will be oppressive work, I actually dread some of that research.

Your ebooks were recently pirated and up for sale on Lulu.com by an unknown seller. Did you ever find out how that happened, or manage to gain any insight into how other authors could possibly protect themselves from having the same happen to them?

Yes, that was resolved in just under two weeks. We had a stupid pirate. I found her on Facebook. She’s been banned by the websites that she used. 52 books were in her storefront on Lulu.com. I’ve had correspondence with nearly all those authors. Any one of them could file international complaints against the pirate. I have certainly done that.

As to protection from book theft: there is none at the retail websites. There are no systems to identify false books, only the author can do that. Also, nothing will be done by any retailer, other than remove the content and ban the pirate from the site. So, don’t believe the legal scarewords in the user agreements on those sites. Retailers could not care less if a work is stolen or legit. Retailers care about profit and nothing else. (Sheesh – isn’t that already sooo obvious?) Authors must be aware of themselves on the internet; you should do regular vanity searches. Know where your books should be. Know how your books appear at all times on the web. It is a lot of work, but it helped me uncover a thief.

You have gained a reputation as a man who likes to help other indie authors succeed. I understand you have a blog dedicated to seeking out and promoting authors who in your opinion should be read by the masses. You also masterminded the BestsellerBound Sample Anthology, where over 60 authors (including myself) were able to showcase a chapter from one of their books, or a short story in an anthology which is available free for anyone to read on various websites. What is your motivation behind such efforts?

Fun :)

What is your opinion of the current state of indie publishing as compared to traditional publishing, and do you have any predictions as to how the publishing industry will change in the coming years?

My opinion is tiresome. I’m really a whiner. No one in traditional publishing had time to look at me, so I complain about them. They shout their refrain ‘.. it is good, because we say it is good,’ but it is not the exclusive reality they think they own. It is no longer true. Oddly, my opinion is also shared by about 4 million people on earth....

Traditional publishing (modern publishing) has been strangling literature for my entire lifetime. Makes no difference they have published an increasing number of books every year since the advent of the printing press. In my lifetime they have applied ‘marketing’ which didn’t improve a single damned book. I cannot predict what traditional publishing is about to endure, but I’m thrilled they must change. If part of the industry dies... I don’t care. Writers are no longer suffering with false constraints.

The ants in the industry, who should be screaming in panic, are literary agents. They have no purpose in self-publishing. Even editors can enjoy some trust from Indie authors, but the agency driven paradigm is dying. It has already drowned in good submissions, and proven itself useless.

Who are your favourite authors and what is it about their writing that you like?

That’s a long list, Dear. I’ve already named Gary Jennings. He can make me close my eyes, and close the book, with a single sentence. His words are stunning. I enjoy classics, and have read most of the standards – Edgar Allan PoeHerman MelvilleJules VerneOrson WellesCharlotte BrontëJane Austen. If you want to be seriously challenged on every subject possible, in a single narrative, find and read Bulwer-Lytton. But, I also love quirky things. Christopher Moore is also a favorite of mine because he seems to be writing as though he cannot believe his books are being published. THAT must be such fun.

Indie authors thrill me, and I’m a kid in the candy shop again. Just look at the authors featured on my blog, and discover cutting edge talent.

Is there a book you own that you’ve read more than once?

I’ve re-read every classic that I own. But I’ve gone back to J R Tolkien and Lewis Carroll more than any others. Half a dozen times for Tolkien’s Ring fantasy. I have an original 1898, first edition printing of a rare book by a dentist, Dr. Henry Allen Tupper. Around the World With Eyes Wide Open: The Wonders of the World Pictured by the Pen and Pencil 1898 is a travelogue, written at the moment the world began to shrink, and modern transportation made the globe a vacation ground. I’ve read that several times.

What was the last book you read? Yours - The Dream (soon to be published). Before that, two of mine, because I was hunting errors in my own text. Before that....several other Indie authors. I did finish reading Tolkien’s ‘Hobbit’ aloud my son Colin, just a month ago. He loved it.

Are you reading a book at the moment?

At the moment I’m reading first chapters of submitted works for the JournalStone Publishing Horror contest. That has been an enlightening exercise, because I’m not reading to be entertained, but to judge. Jurists have been asked to read with very particular guidelines, and then score the work for the next step in the competition. It has made me think very differently of the way stories are created. I have ten elements that must be considered with each submission. I’m having great fun with it.

What do you think of ebooks?

eBooks have made reading fun again. We’ve invented a cool way to tote our books. I love them, for their ability to show text to the masses. I hate them for their inability to make a page look as the author intended. I’m good at sneaking things into the format that I demand, like fonts which normally refuse to appear. I don’t just submit, I experiment and then hammer on the file before upload. One retailer finally gave up on me, because I couldn’t get what I wanted in the final ebook’s appearance. They got tired of refusing my submission.

How important are reviews for you as a writer?

Don’t tell me you are reading my book. I’ll drive you nuts to hurry you and get the review. Can’t grow without it, can I?

How do you go about choosing a cover for your books?

Um...I may be bad at it? Caraliza is a professional bit of work by Serendipity Graphic Design in Holland. I paid for that. I love that image, but also saw the other couple hundred taken. That photoshoot, in The Hague, was magic. The model, Maret Reutelingsperger, captured my character perfectly. At least for me.





Shared also has a stunning cover, and that was a lucky find on a photo website. I really only care the cover give some impression of the book, and perhaps only the mood of it. I really couldn’t care a whit that my name be on the cover.


What are you working on now?

Something which is so secret that I won’t say more than this: it is an alternative history. We all know the story, up to the point I take it over. It will only be available in hardbound print; no ebooks. And the synopsis is a single sentence of five words. It might be ready sometime in 2012.

Where can people buy your books?

Smashwords for the best price and selection of formats

Lulu for prints

I’m beginning to use Createspace for prints too. Only Shared is available there now.


Apart from your blog, where people can read more about your work?

Hehe Google my full name. I have a huge footprint.

Is there anything you’d like to say to your readers?

Read Indie Authors! Hug your kids a lot. Don’t get dressed in the dark; people will stare at you.

Thank you, Joel, for being such a splendid guest :)


Remember, you can win a print copy of Breathing into Stone just by leaving a comment on this blog post :) Good luck!

Happy Easter!

I'd like to wish a very Happy Easter to all my blog followers. Thank you for all your support.



Easter Comments



And, remember, Easter is one time of year that you can eat lots of chocolate and not feel guilty about it ;)

Meet author, Neil Schiller, and enter to win a copy of 'Oblivious'!

I met Neil Schiller through Bookpleasures, when I reviewed his book of short stories,Oblivious. I was so impressed by the collection that I just had to interview Neil and introduce him to you. If you like reading short stories based on real life issues, you'll absolutely love Neil's collection of moody, dark, short stories. Most of the stories in the collection revolve around loss, regret, misunderstandings, and relationships. All of them are insightful and reflect a side of life that we sometimes choose to ignore.



I have since discovered that Neil is quite an accomplished writer.

As well as agreeing to be interviewed on my blog, Neil will be giving away a copy of Oblivious to one lucky person who leaves a comment on my blog! This is truly an exceptional collection of short stories not to be missed.

Here are Neil's answers to my interview questions:


Is there a particular author, or book, that inspired you to start writing?

I’m not sure whether there was a single book that made me want to be a writer. There were certainly some that made me more serious about it. I read Orwell’s 1984 when I was seventeen – it was probably the first literary work I’d ever sought out and read for myself. Until then I’d read genre novels, mostly horror and some sci-fi, the usual male teenage reading list. I remember that book made a huge impression on me. The brutal honesty with which he tackles human weakness – where Winston Smith is determined he won’t give up the woman he loves and under torture he not only gives her up, he begins to hate her. I thought that was profound. Deeply depressing, but it just seemed like the kind of truth that most writers shy away from and it impressed me because he was brave enough to unearth the idea and to meet it head on.



When did you first discover your love of writing?


As long as I can remember I’ve wanted to be a writer. I don’t really know why. English was always my best subject at school, even from a young age. It could well be that realising this led me to writing as an ambition. I know when I was about six I copied out the first two or three pages of The Gingerbread Man into an exercise book and declared I’d written a book. I was a strange kid I suppose. It was around fifteen or sixteen that I started writing under my own steam and just found it a great way of ordering my thoughts and ideas, which otherwise always seemed a bit of a mess in my own head. I stuck with it as I seem to be a less dazed and confused person when I’m writing.


Do you have any tips for someone who is considering self-publishing their own book?


There are the obvious things about making sure it’s ready, getting it proof-read etc. But for me the most important thing would be to make sure you have realistic expectations. Don’t expect 10,000 sales on the day it goes up. If it’s good, it will sell, but it’s like pushing a car, it takes some time and effort to gain any momentum. You will have to try and promote it in some way, however against the grain that may seem, and even then the hours spent trying not to upset people by being too pushy on forums and discussion spaces may still only generate interest from a handful of people. It takes time and patience, and in my opinion you have to look on it as a start that you can hopefully build upon.


As well as writing fiction, you have written critical works on Charles Bukowski and Richard Brautigan.  What is it about those authors that made you decide to write about them?




I did a Masters degree in twentieth century literature and part of the course was a dissertation on any writer we wanted to cover. I couldn’t really think of anyone I would be able to write 20,000 to 30,000 words on. So I was poking around Waterstones and they had a section at the time for ‘Cult Fiction’. I’m always drawn to things that proclaim themselves to be cult, just because from experience I tend to like these things more than mainstream work. So I picked up Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Bukowski and just from reading the first couple of pages I was hooked. I think it’s just his deadpan style which is punctuated with moments of wistful beauty, and his unapologetic stoicism – those things struck a chord with me. He became my dissertation subject because I just found so much in his work that I had an opinion on and could commit to paper.

I discovered Brautigan in a similar way. I was in London for a meeting and I was reading A Clockwork Orange on the train. I finished it much more quickly than I expected and was left without anything to read on the way back. So again, I went into Waterstones and made a beeline for the ‘Cult Fiction’ section. I found A Confederate General from Big Sur and loved it. It reminded me of the Beats but with just enough of a postmodernist slant to make it quirky and funny and interesting. I love his insane use of imagery which seems so outlandish it shouldn’t work, and yet it does. His minimalism in particular was a huge influence on me. What blew me away though is this technique he uses of turning a metaphor into a literal descriptive. I’ve read all his work and some of it is incredible, and some of it actually isn’t very good in my opinion, but again, even in those inferior books there is so much going on that I found myself thinking I would probably never run out of things to say about him.


I read on your blog that you wrote The Haiku Diary in 2008.  Can you tell us a bit more about that and how it came about?


Essentially it came about because I was working with someone whose father had recently died. He uncovered a diary in his personal effects that had been written in the 1940s when he was serving in North Africa as a young private. The guy I worked with was telling me how it was opening his eyes to a side of his father he had never known. I pondered about that for a few days, thinking about my two year old daughter and how there would probably be a side to me she’d never get to see as our relationship would always be defined in a particular way. I was also reading a lot of Haiku at the time, as part of the research on Brautigan and his Zen Buddhist influences. My partner bought me a book called The Haiku Year for Christmas as she knew I was enjoying reading Basho and Issa and because the book had contributions from Michael Stipe and Grant Lee Phillips – two musicians I admire. All those things kind of coalesced and I decided to record a year of my life, warts and all, for my daughter to look at when she’s older. I figured writing a Haiku a day would make me focus on what I was putting down, instead of rambling on about appointments at the dentist and really mundane things like that. It was never intended for publication. I put it up for the Kindle purely because I found self-promotion so difficult and I figured with poetry being a smaller product range than fiction, it might make my name more visible on listings.



I recently read and enjoyed your book of short stories Oblivious.  As I mentioned in my review of the book, two of the stories that caught my attention were ‘Trapped’ and ‘Half’.  They are very short.  ‘Trapped’ is only one sentence.  Tell us about the thought process behind including that as a short story. 


Brautigan wrote a story called ‘The Scarlatti Tilt’ which is two sentences long. I was blown away when I read it because the couple of dozen words he used were just so evocative it felt like a much fuller narrative. They just sort of bled off the page and I found myself constructing from them a fully formed, two or three thousand word story in my head. I saw from poking around the Webook forum that people were trying micro fiction, stories of no more than six words and because of that Brautigan story the idea really appealed to me. I wrote about twenty of them, some of them awful, some of them not so bad. I picked what seemed the best one to go into the collection just to see if I could get away with it. Initially, I was going to include two of them, but that seemed like I might be pushing it.

Which are your favourite stories from Oblivious and why?


It’s hard to say. Every time I look at them I have different opinions on whether they’re any good or not. I like the opening to ‘Brand Awareness’, just because I like writing about music and I was happy with the descriptions the songs inspired, but I don’t think the story as a whole is my favourite. I was pleased with the way ‘The Anarchist’ turned out, but the one that I probably like best is ‘A Long Winter’. I think the tone of that one is possibly the most consistent throughout. What surprises me is that other people who read it always pick as their favourites the ones that I don’t think are quite as strong, so what do I know?


Did you write Oblivious as a collection of stories, or were they stories you had written over the years?

Kind of both really. I always had a collection in mind but I wrote them over a long period and kept rotating things in and out. I pulled one or two stories at the last minute as they differed in tone to the others, so I guess I was focused on it working as a set of related pieces. 



Many of the stories in Oblivious feature protagonists who are lost or struggling in some way.  They are all very realistic.  Are any of the characters based on real people?


Yes. Some of them are fictionalised versions of experiences I’ve had, others are drawn from the experiences of people I know, or have known. The dialogue in particular is all based on actual dialogue of some sort – just because every time I tried to write dialogue from scratch I failed to give it any authenticity. Some of them started from anecdotes people told me, or I overheard. The central idea behind ‘The Anarchist’, for example, was an incident that someone I know had witnessed on a bus not long after the terrorist attacks in London. An Asian man got on with a bag and someone decided in their infinite wisdom that anyone who wasn’t white who was carrying a bag had to be suspicious. I put with that the image of a burnt out car which actually came from the person who bought my house from me and reported back, when I bumped into her, that her car had been set alight when a firework got caught underneath it. The rest of the story formed around those two things – I added in descriptions of the place I used to live and things I’d seen in restaurants when the pubs had let out etc.


Are any of the stories in Oblivious autobiographical in any way?


Yes, that was the starting point for some of them. I won’t admit to which ones, (although I have a horrible feeling some might be obvious), except to say that ‘You’ was written about the death of my grandfather when I was in my early twenties. I was so devastated by it at the time that the only way I could get my feelings straight was to write it out. It was originally written in first person but I changed it to a second person narrative after reading Bright Lights, Big City – I thought it might resonate with readers more that way, align it with their experiences of similar emotions.


You review books by independently published authors on your blog.  What do you like about reviewing books?


I love reviewing. Books, records and films mostly. I just enjoy the challenge of trying to articulate what you like, or don’t like, about something. I don’t articulate half as well verbally as I do in written form, so I think reviewing is my way of trying to compensate. On Webook I did a lot of fifty word film reviews and that was just great. It helped my writing enormously as it forces you to be economical and to strip off the excess from every single sentence. I’m an Amazon Vine reviewer, and I think I was asked to do that because I was bored one night and had a few drinks and reviewed just about every CD I could think of that I liked. The drinks resulted in me waxing lyrical again and again, but it seemed to work as I got a lot of helpful votes from other customers…


Who are your favourite authors and what is it about their writing that you like?

I mentioned Orwell, and he is one of my favourites just because he dealt with subjects in his work that, in my opinion, very few others have. Bukowski and Brautigan as mentioned above. I also like Raymond Carver who was a massive influence on Oblivious. His stories are so incredibly well observed, and I love his use of understatement. Gabriel García Márquez, just because the ending of One Hundred Years of Solitude was the best ending I’ve ever read, by far. Haruki Murakami – I love the surrealism in his work, the dreamlike quality to books like Sputnik Sweetheart and the seamless way he weaves this into realism. And Ken Kesey. I still think One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest is a contender for THE great American novel.



Is there a book you own that you’ve read more than once?



I haven’t read many books twice to be honest. Some of the Brautigan ones I reread just to be more familiar with them. I have read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values twice. The second time I seemed to struggle much less in understanding it – it is one hell of a dense book. I’ve also read The Great Gatsby twice, because the first time I wasn’t overly impressed and the way some people I knew were talking about it I suspected I must have missed something. I was right – the second time through I thought it was superb. I mustn’t have been paying attention.

What was the last book you read?



An indie book called The Girl with the Bomb Inside by Andy Conway. It was good. A little rough around the edges, but it seemed deliberately so. The author compared it to “a three minute punk song” and it did have that kind of feel about it. It made me think about why we expect books to be highly polished when we often accept music that hasn’t been quite so sanitised.

Are you reading a book at the moment?


Yes, another indie/small press book: Loisaida -- A New York Story by Marion Stein. It is just incredible. It’s almost like a literary successor to Hubert Selby Jr. with a myriad of different voices – all down and outs of one type or another in 1980s New York – but with a central narrative about a murder and a riot. It really is an amazing book, if it had been written twenty years ago it would probably be spoken of as a cult classic. Why this hasn’t been picked up by a mainstream publishing house I will just never be able to work out.

What do you think of ebooks?



When I first saw an ereader several years ago I thought it was just a fad. But the first time I used a Kindle that a friend of mine had, I was a total convert. I think ebooks are probably the future of reading. On the one hand they’ve made it much easier to self-publish, which I’m obviously happy about. But, of course, the downside is that anyone can self-publish easily now. I don’t mean that in a superior way – who am I to say I’m better than the next writer? What does concern me a little bit, though, is when I think back to some of the absolute rubbish I wrote when I was 17 or 18. At the time I was probably arrogant enough to think it was worthy of publication. In fact, I know I was because I sent some of it to publishers who, quite rightly, rejected it. If the Amazon platform had existed back in 1992 I shudder to think that I might have been stupid enough to put some of this stuff out. I’m guessing there are plenty of 17 or 18 year olds out there now who are in the same place I was back then, and with a few mouse clicks they could be setting themselves up for a big fall when, in fact, if they gave themselves time to develop they may become the truly great authors of the future.

How important are reviews for you as a writer?



Honest critiques of my work are very important. I genuinely want to know what people think of the things I’ve written. I don’t have a problem with them not liking it if they would kindly tell me why. I want to improve as a writer and feedback is absolutely critical in order for me to do that. Obviously it’s a minefield trying to pick through the comments you think can help and those that actually you just don’t agree with, but it’s a minefield worth navigating through. Reviews, as in Amazon reviews, are useful to help draw readers in, and I’m obviously happy when I get a good one, but that’s not the reason I write.

How do you go about choosing a cover for your books?



I’m an enthusiastic amateur photographer and between the ages of 21 and 30 I travelled a little bit around Europe and America – I made it as far as Japan once. So I have this big collection of arty (pretentious?) black and white photographs I took in Amsterdam, Vienna, New York, San Francisco etc. I’m using them for the covers, messing about with them in some free design software I downloaded until they look just about good enough to use. The cover for Oblivious is a photo I took in Venice – just as I was taking it some random bloke turned out of a doorway and started walking away from me, so he was captured in the shot by accident. The cover to The Haiku Diary was taken in Venice as well I think. I have a cover for my next book already even though it isn’t finished, and bizarrely the image I chose is informing the story. It was taken in Paris in the Musee D’Orsay – there’s this great big clock up on the mezzanine floor and you can look out through it. I took a photograph of it from the inside and, again, a couple of people walked into the shot at the last second. So I took it again, and the one with the people in it turned out better because they added a focal point, they’re just there in silhouette and give it a human element. It’s those photographs with random people in I’m drawn to for the covers because they seem to reflect some of the themes of isolation and endurance that I keep coming back to. Someone once told me my photographs have a dreamlike quality to them, and I suppose that’s part of it too: people caught in a dream of their own lives – if that doesn’t sound too pretentious...

What are you working on now?



I’m working on two things. One is a novel/novella called Hinterland which is very similar in style to the short stories in Oblivious, but with a more sustained narrative. I guess you could loosely categorise it as a sort of literary thriller (if such a thing exists). The other is a second collection of short stories, all about music in some form or another. That’s basically because the stories I stripped out of Oblivious are about music and I wanted to give them a home.

Where can people buy your books?

The Kindle formats are available on Amazon, with an epub version of Oblivious available on Goodreads. (I struggled with Smashwords formatting so I took them down from there and still do need to sort that out at some point). Oblivious is also available in paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and direct from Createspace.

Amazon (Kindle):
Oblivious

The Haiku Diary

Goodreads (epub):

Oblivious

Paperback:

Oblivious at Amazon UK

Oblivious at Barnes & Noble

Oblivious at CreateSpace

Apart from your blog where people can read more about your work?


At the moment, that’s the main place to go. I am on some writing forums – Webook and YouWriteOn – so my new work is on there to try and gather feedback and comments as I go.



Thank you, Neil, for answering my questions

Remember, Neil is giving away a copy of Oblivious. All you have to do to enter the giveaway is leave a comment on this post. A random winner will be chosen on 1st May 2011. This is an international competition. Good luck!!

The inspiration behind the stories in my latest short story collection: Fusion

I’m fascinated by the creative process which is why I love reading and writing so much. I am often inspired by events in my own life, or by things I’ve heard, when I write my stories and novels.
I'm often asked, 'How do you come up with the ideas for your stories?'
So, I thought it would be nice if I wrote a paragraph or two about a few of the stories in my latest short story collection,Fusion. These stories were written over a period of over 10 years. Some of the descriptions below contain spoilers, so, unless you’re the type of person who always reads the last line of a book before you finish it (I actually know someone who does that!!) you might want to read ‘Fusion’ before you read this article!

Only Time Can Divide Us

I remember watching a documentary many years ago about young men who fall in love with much older women. It always seems okay when we hear about an older man dating a much younger woman, but for some reason it’s not so well regarded if it’s the other way around. I wrote this story as a love story for a competition.

Untold Crimes

This story came to me around the time that the Swine ‘Flu epidemic was taking hold in the UK. I remember a television advert at the time which seemed to be suggesting that you could be a murderer without realising it if you didn’t take precautions against spreading the virus.


Me and My Dictionary

This one was written for a short story competition where the theme was 'The Dictionary'. The story had to feature a dictionary in some way. My mind somehow came up with this funny little story. For some reason, maybe because I’ve written it in the first person, everyone who reads it always thinks it’s autobiographical. Maybe I just look like the sort of person who would learn all the words in the dictionary? I’ve never really taken the time to learn all the words in a dictionary before... or have I?

Make Hay While The Sun Shines

Again, this story was inspired by a theme for a short story competition. The theme was ‘Make Hay While The Sun Shines’. The story was to be based around that saying. It’s a story about deception, and looking for love.

Hope Springs Eternal

This story is loosely based on my own idealistic attitude towards love and romance. It takes it to the extreme; what would happen if someone fell in love at first sight and then waited around for ever for this special someone who never felt the same?

The Reunion

This is a ghost story. I was always interested in ghost stories when I was growing up, and we lived in a haunted house. I am sure this story was inspired by something I once heard about a person communicating with someone after their death.

A Virtual Affair

This story was written years ago when I was using email for the first time. It explores the idea of how people can pretend to be who they want to be when they are only communicating online.

Till death us do part

This one was inspired by a documentary I watched over ten years ago, about women who would correspond with prisoners on death row, and even have relationships with them. In more general terms, the story is about how it can affect someone’s life when their friends or family don’t agree with their choice of partner.

Seize the day

This is a fun story, dealing with subjects such as how reality TV can propel someone to super-stardom over night, and the modern type of celebrities whose lives are documented daily in newspapers and magazines, and the exploitation that can arise.

The Time Machine

A sci-fi tale. I don’t usually write sci-fi, but I was told by a sci-fi writer that it’s good.
The title says it all, really. I like the ending of this story. It’s one of my favourites.


The Valentine’s Card

There is a great story behind this one. One day, about 17 years ago, I was standing at a bus stop on the way back from work. An elderly woman asked if she could borrow a pen. When I gave her my pen, she said it was nice and asked me what I did for a living. I said I was a trainee solicitor. As she was writing something, another middle-aged woman came over and said something like “That’s a nice pen”. Then when the elderly woman said she’d borrowed it from me, the other woman looked at me and said: “You could write a lot of good things with that pen”. Then she told me a story about a friend of hers who owned a card shop. She told me that a man had gone into the shop and had bought two Valentine’s cards, one for his wife and one for his mistress. The one for his mistress was much bigger and more decorative than the one for his wife. That inspired my short story about ‘The Valentine’s Card’. The thing about those two ladies was that they told me other things, and when I look back they seem to have been some kind of fortune tellers. Anyway, they definitely foretold that I’d be a writer, because I hadn’t started writing stories or novels when I first met them, but they must have seen something in that pen.


Fusion is available as a paperback at all good online booksellers, and can be ordered from bricks & mortar stores by quoting the ISBN 978-0956410139

You can also order it from your local library.

Here are a few links:

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Lulu

Barnes and Noble

Meet Lisette Brodey, author of 'Crooked Moon', plus exclusive discount codes and a giveaway!!

I'm thrilled to be introducing you to my guest today, author Lisette Brodey. I met Lisette on Goodreads about 2 years ago, maybe more. We have also connected on MySpace and numerous other social networking sites. She has become a good friend. It's a hectic life being a self-published author and doing your own promotion, but Lisette always finds time to drop me a line every month or so to check up on me and see how I'm doing. I have found her to be very caring; a really genuine friend.

As well as being a fabulous person, she is also a very talented author. I fell in love with her book Crooked Moon, and am eager to find time to read her other novels (Squalor, New Mexico, and her latest -- to be published towards the end of this year: Molly Hacker Is Too Picky!).

In addition to answering my interview questions, Lisette has very generously agreed to give away a signed, personalized ebook copy of Crooked Moon or Squalor, New Mexico. To enter, all you need to do is leave a comment below. We'll do a random draw on 25th April 2011, and contact the winner directly! Also, at the end of the interview, Lisette has given details of promotional codes you can use to purchase both of her books on Smashwords for just $2.99 each, until 1st May 2011!



Here are Lisette's replies to my interview questions:

When did you first discover your love of writing?

As early as I can remember. My first recollection of writing was a song I wrote at the age of five or six. Throughout the years, I wrote poetry, short stories, and random essays. Interestingly, poetry, short stories, and essays are things I never write now.

Do you have any tips for someone who is considering self-publishing their own book?

Absolutely. Build a network. Don’t wait until your book is published. That’s way too late. It’s very important to remember that building a network means supporting other authors’ work.

If you are planning to self-publish, don’t be so excited that you rush to publication without taking the necessary steps. I can’t stress the importance of getting your manuscript professionally edited. Many writers have little or no budget so they often skip this step. Don’t do it. Just look around. There are many competent editors who will work for a very reasonable fee. Looking for an editor ahead of time will greatly increase a writer’s chance of finding a competent professional.

Take the time to have a great cover done. There are many artists looking to build a portfolio who will do work very reasonably or perhaps even barter services. Although it may be true that you cannot judge a book by its cover, books are indeed judged by their covers every day.


I have read and enjoyed Crooked Moon, in fact it’s one of my favourite ever books. The characters all seem so real.  I especially liked the way you portrayed the relationship between Frankie and Callie. Do you ever base characters on people you know, or are they always entirely fictional?

Most of my characters are hybrids of people I know or have known, or types of personalities that I am familiar with. Frankie Cavalese, one of the two main characters in Crooked Moon, is based on someone close to me, but she is NOT that person. Even if a character is not based on someone I know, it is important for me to have a visual of the person on which I can build a character of substance.



Who do you relate to more, Callie or Frankie?

Interesting question. While there are parts of me that relate to each woman, overall, I would probably say Frankie.

I’m hearing some good things about your young adult book, Squalor, New Mexico.  Firstly, lets deal with that title, it’s quite unusual, how did you come up with that?

All throughout my life, whenever I heard someone described as, “living in squalor,” it always sounded like a place to me. One day, I had a vague idea of writing a book and making the first line “My aunt lived in Squalor.” Years later, I was finally ready to get to work on this idea. I wrote the first line, which became: “My aunt Rebecca lived in Squalor.” Then, around that one line, I built the story of a family and their secrets, encompassing many layers and many years.



What is Squalor, New Mexico about, and how does writing a young adult novel compare with writing an adult novel? Are there any tips you can give to writers of the genre?

Squalor, New Mexico is the story of Darla McKendrick, who, at nine years old, overhears her mother and her aunt Didi talking about their sister, Rebecca. Darla is intrigued by the mention of this mysterious aunt and immediately has questions for her mother. It isn’t long before Darla realizes that while no one wants to tell her the truth about Rebecca, they seem to talk about her quite a bit, especially when they think Darla is out of earshot.

The book covers Darla’s life beginning at age nine until the age of sixteen; it is the evolving story of her discoveries and simultaneous coming of age.

It’s funny you should ask me about tips for writers of the genre. I’ll share a secret with you: I had no idea I was writing a young adult book. I set out to write a coming-of-age story that was shrouded in family mystery. It naturally fell into that genre. My advice would be that if you are writing about teens, listen to teens. Remember your own childhood. That was key to me in writing this novel.

Crooked Moon is an adult contemporary fiction book, Squalor, New Mexico is a young adult book, and your new book, due to be released later this year, Molly Hacker Is Too Picky!, is a women’s fiction novel.  That’s quite a diverse range of writing.  Does that reflect your own reading tastes?

Crooked Moon is closest to my own reading tastes by a landslide. I wrote each book for a very different reason. My fourth novel will likely be closer to Crooked Moon. Since publishing my own books and meeting so many fellow authors, my reading of other genres has expanded. I just love a good story with believable characters that is well written and pulls me in. The genre is secondary to good writing.


Which one of your books was the most fun to write?

I don’t have an answer for this. I only remember how much I enjoyed writing certain parts of certain books, either because they were emotional, poetic, funny, absurd, or shocking.


How long does it usually take you to write a novel? And which book took the longest to write?

If I could just focus on the writing of a novel itself, I might finish one in six months time to a year. The book that took me the longest is my upcoming third novel, Molly Hacker Is Too Picky! The reasons for that are many. First, when I wrote Squalor, New Mexico and Crooked Moon, it was a very different world. There were no social media and no networking to worry about. It was much easier to just write.

I began writing Molly Hacker Is Too Picky! in 2006 because I saw that women’s fiction and chick lit were popular genres. When I discovered in 2007 that self-publishing was feasible for me, I put Molly on hold to publish my two already written books. In 2009, I went back to the half-written Molly manuscript, and it was quite a job to make every nuance of the character and the storyline current in my brain. Although this book is a comedy/drama and more lighthearted than the first two, it has more small details, and it was not easy to write.

Who are your favourite authors and what is it about their writing that you like?

My favorite books have been the ones that I have seen as literary masterpieces: Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner, Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe, David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, works by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many other writers.

Is there a book you own that you’ve read more than once?

With so many books to read, I don’t believe I have ever read one more than once. That said, there are so many I would love to read again. It’s all about having time. With time, I would read everything!

What was the last book you read?

David Copperfield.

Are you reading a book at the moment?

The Language of Trees by Ilie Ruby

What do you think of ebooks?

I think ebooks are fabulous, but I don’t want to see paper books disappear from our lives. I think that the ease of reading ebooks and the pricing make it so much easier for authors to get their work read. I read books on my Kindle and my phone, but I also hold paper books in my hand. There is no substitute for the warmth of a room filled with shelves of books, or for browsing through an old bookstore or physically picking up books in one’s personal library to find one that suits your mood.

How important are reviews for you as a writer?

They are very important because they give prospective readers an idea of what other people are thinking. I take into consideration that taste is subjective. There is no one book that everyone loves. Reviews are also important to me because I learn a lot about what readers took from my work. I’ve learned a lot from reading the way different people describe my work; it helps me know my audience, too.


How do you go about choosing a cover for your books?

For Crooked Moon, I was set from the beginning on showing the Philadelphia row houses in which the two main characters, Frankie and Callie grew up, as it is also the home where a great deal of the story continues. After taking photographs of houses that matched the ones in my story, an artist then turned the photograph of my choice into an illustration, adding the elements that made it come alive.

For Squalor, New Mexico, which has such an unusual title, it was important give the reader a clear picture of what the book is about. That is why I ultimately decided to show Darla peeking around a door, listening to her mother and aunt whispering secrets.

With Molly Hacker Is Too Picky! I described Molly in depth to the artist (Goodreads author, Megan Hansen), and she brilliantly drew the character as I had envisioned her.

You’ve recently launched a blog for your new women’s fiction book titled: Molly Hacker Is Too picky!.  I understand that the blog will be written as if by your character, Molly, rather than by you.  This is a fun idea, how did you come up with it?

A friend of mine, who is an author and author success coach, gave me the idea. She suggested the blog would be the best way to build a book platform and introduce Molly Hacker to the world before the publication of her book.

Summarise your book, Molly Hacker is Too Picky!, in three or four sentences.

Molly Hacker is a 32-year old snarky, overanalytical, and husband-seeking reporter working for the Swansea Herald, a newspaper covering an old-money bedroom community of New York City. Molly battles interference from friend and foe alike in her search for true love.



Where can people buy your books?

The paperback editions of Crooked Moon and Squalor, New Mexico can be purchased on Amazon.com.

The ebook editions of these novels can be purchased through most major retailers, including Amazon, BN.com, Smashwords, and OmniLit.


Do you have your own website or blog where people can read more about your work?

My general website is Lisette Brodey

My Facebook Author page is Facebook. On this page, I have the most up-to-date announcements on everything that I am doing.

My Goodreads.com profile also has lots of information about my books and is linked to my blog. Lisette Brodey

Readers can meet my character, Molly Hacker, at Molly Hacker. Molly blogs every Monday.

Molly also has put out her first video, which can be seen on YouTube: Molly Hacker on YouTube, as well as on Molly’s blog site.

And, of course, there are numerous reviews of my work on Amazon.com.

Thank you for answering my questions, Lisette. I understand that you would like to offer promotional codes to readers of my blog for a limited period, can you tell us more about that?

I am offering a special promotion to all readers of this blog. From now until May 1, both of my novels can be purchased at Smashwords for only $2.99 each.

Please use the following promotional codes:

CROOKED MOON: RY75D
SQUALOR, NEW MEXICO: RN83N

Thanks, Lisette!

Remember, to be in with a chance of winning an ebook of either Crooked Moon or Squalor, New Mexico, leave a comment below.

Good luck!!

Molly Hacker Is Too Picky! Will be available to purchase later in the year. Follow Lisette's dedicated blog for more information.