Simon Duringer's Blog, page 37

Doran Ingrham Interview

You might well speculate that he is a better sniper than the Jackal and moreover has more tactical knowledge than Jason Bourne. He exudes the relaxed demeanour of James Bond to such an extent that you might also be forgiven for not being afraid if you bumped into him down a dark alley. But that fellow readers, that is exactly what makes Doran Ingrham so deadly! The Doran Ingrham Interview is now live. Don't miss it;

http://simonduringer.com/latest-news/...

Jake Needham Interview

Wow...

How fortunate was I. Yes I went blogging with the International Bestselling Crime Novelist Jake Needham this week.

Jake Needham is an American novelist and screen writer. He is known as one of the best-selling English-language authors in Asia. He is a frequent speaker at schools and universities throughout Asia and guest on Asian television and radio networks. (source: Wikipedia)

I was honoured to welcome Jake Needham to my blog; Jake is an International lawyer turned Bestselling International Crime Novelist. His works have been sold globally during the last 15 years and numbers reading his books have soared well into six figures.

Come to my blog to read the full interview and find out about his next book release...

Tim Stevens Interview

Last week I was fortunate enough to blog with the incredibly busy author and doctor Tim Stevens...

Tim is the author of a series of spy thrillers which have recently gone to market as a box set. A total of nine books to his credit, yet curiously, Tim retains his mainstream career as a NHS doctor. We shall be asking him what inspires him and drives his passion to continue writing spy novels alongside his already huge commitments as a NHS doctor and of course; which profession he prefers.

http://simonduringer.com/latest-news/...

Josephine Bailey Interview

Last week I interviewed Josephine Bailey on my blog...

Born in London, England. Jo Moved to the USA in 1996 and lives in South Carolina. She has won ten AudioFile Earphones Awards, a prestigious Audie Award, and Publishers Weekly named her Best Female Narrator in 2002.

A highly talented career actress; one of Jo’s first acting parts was as a student in the film Carry on Teacher. She went on to act in plays and commercials, and has numerous voice-overs and audiobook narrations on her list of credits, including; The Wild Thornberries, Uncle Gus, and various Disney-Dreamworks projects. Josephine is also involved in television, film, and theatre with television previous roles in Robin Hood, A Tale of Two Cities, and Sword of Freedom. In film she was featured in Shadow Hours, Life’s a Circus, and Corridors of Blood. Her theatre experience includes lead roles in Betrayal, Otherwise Engaged, and Blithe Spirit.

Read the entire interview on Simons 10 Q Interviews at;

http://simonduringer.com/latest-news/...

Ken Farmer & Buck Stienke – Authors, Film Producers, Independent Publishers

As authors they are perhaps best known for their Award winning Novel series Black Eagle Force, as publishers for the independent publishing house they co-own Timber Creek Press and furthermore, as movie makers their partnership in Timber Creek Productions.

Ken Farmer and Buck Stienke’s first meeting was driven by fate; a small purchase at a gun store, a casual conversation with its owner about a screenplay. The rest as they say is history….

Today, I am delighted and privileged to be hosting with both Ken and Buck as they come blogging with me and run the gauntlet of ‘Simon’s 10 Q Interview.’

Gentlemen, I would first like to thank you both for taking the time out to come blogging with me. As you know I have 10 questions for you which you can either answer individually or as one, here we go….

SD Q1: The Timber Creek Productions story all started when Ken arrived as a potential customer at the Buck Stienke gun store in Gainesville, Texas. Did either of you imagine at that time that the purchase of a semi-auto pistol might become the catalyst for such an incredible partnership?

KF A1: Had no clue. I was still doing some acting, voice over work and working on some script ideas.

BS A1: Like wise.

SD Q2: You are Bestselling authors, screenwriters, film producers, directors, independent publishers, and of course businessmen. Is there anything you wouldn’t put your hands to in the world of entertainment?

KF A2: Porn for starters. Don’t care much for the zombie craze…talk about wearing it out. Most of it is pretty mindless…pun intended. A possible exception is the new Arnold Schwarzenegger film currently in production, entitled Maggie. One of our acting students, Jodie Moore has a nice role in it and it actually sounds interesting. Of all the avenues in entertainment I’ve been involved with in my career, novels offer the most creative freedom.

BS A2: I also write songs and sing and perform locally sometimes, both professionally and for charitable events. I’m probably not gonna be seen in Dancing With the Stars any time soon. I have so little free time to devote to that form of entertainment. (It would take months to get that good!) I used to be a professional athlete, as one of my brothers (Jim) I played professional Football (American style, not what we call soccer!) and was a starter on the USAF Academy Rugby team for years before becoming injured.

SD Q3: Within your own bestselling books you base your characters where possible on actual individuals throughout history. With the added research that must create, do you feel it is simpler to write fictional stories based on original characters, that can be moulded as you wish, as clearly you must spend a considerable amount of time and energy ensuring the accuracy of your information?

KF A3: Actually, only our historical fiction novels, The Nations and Haunted Falls (The Nations)are based on actual individuals mostly, like Bass Reeves and Judge Issac C. Parker. Our Black Eagle Force Series are pretty much fictional stories with original characters as far as our protagonists go. We occasionally use real life characters for antagonists such as Osama bin Laden in Sacred Mountain and Adolph Hitler, Martin Bormann and Hans Kammler in our current work in progress, Black Eagle Force: Fourth Reich, which will be out later this year. We try to create characters that the reader tends to believe are real…whether they are or not. You figure it out.

BS A3: I prefer to create fictional characters and interweave stories based upon events which actual have taken place, then make a seamless transition into the rest of the tale, whereupon the reader cannot realistically be expected to separate fact from fiction. In the movie business, we call that “The suspension of Disbelief”. In other words, you know at some point that its a movie but you forget about that and start to think that you are really watching something real. Books can work the same way. That’s exactly the way we started the first book in our writing series Black Eagle Force: Eye of the Storm. Its prologue begins in 1836 with a German immigrant family that bought 3,000 acres of land along the Rio Grande in what was then still Mexico. Our use of history, geography and current geo-political events makes for interesting reading. When our readers become attached to the characters, we know we have them hooked. (One fan even told us he found himself yelling at the characters while he was engrossed in the story!) We do spend time with research on technical, historical, scientific, political and geographical aspects of the stories. It is important not to loose a reader’s interest through glaring inaccuracies. But from a story standpoint, characters and content are king. The Characters are telling the story and we try not to use a narrator to fill in the background if at all possible. By the way, I use my friends and Air Force Academy classmates for many of the characters as crew members and special ops guys. They get a kick out of it.

SD Q4: You were both pilots in previous careers; Ken within the U.S. Marines and Buck within the U.S. Air Force. Do either of you still go flying privately and if you were given a government sized budget, which would be your aircraft of choice and why?

KF A4: Haven’t flown in years. The last aircraft I owned was a 580S Aero Commander. Great plane. Aircraft of choice with a govt. sized budget? A budget of a size to actually create a functional VTOL like our Black Eagle Force M600/A Eagle.

BS A4: I still fly occasionally with my brother or brother in law as they both have their own planes. I actually started flying with my father at age 5 and flew my first military plane the week I turned 18. After flying eight years active duty in the military (Contiguous USA and Alaska, Europe and the Middle East) and 25 years commercially (North and South America, Hawaii, Asia and Europe in a Lockheed L-1011, and Boeing 767 400ER.) I have kinda had my fill of flying straight and level. A career of very long days (Up to 30 hours an a stretch), short nights and having to go through airport security every day gets less and less fun – particularly after the events of 9-11. If you have ever travelled international across the Atlantic or Pacific, you can probably relate to jet lag. Seoul, Korea and Taipei, Taiwan are 14 time zones away from my home. I once flew fifteen days in a row over the Pacific and on another occasion crossed the Atlantic six times in eight days, not including the thousand mile commute to and from work twice in that same week. Makes me tired just thinking about it! If money were no object, I’d have a P-51D Mustang and an F-15 Eagle in my hanger for myself and a Gulfstream 550 when I wanted to take some friends and family along.

SD Q5: You are both believers that fiction is often what drives reality; for example, in an interview earlier this year with Nick Wale you commented that the mobile phone concept had been born out of Star Trek. I recall some years ago watching The Minority Report starring Tom Cruise and saying to my partner at that time that he was using the computer of the future. Of course she laughed! Today, with hands-free game consoles and contact lenses containing head up displays (HUD) being tested for medical side effects, I think that was probably a good call and that we’re very close to that becoming a reality. So, what in your opinion is the latest fictional item introduced within books or film that in 5-10 or even 20 years we may see emerging as a product available within the public domain, and why would the public find it useful?

KF A5: We have a number of things we have created in our BEF novels that will probably become operational in the future although most have a military application. But, then again, there are many military inventions that have civilian applications. Of course our VTOL has great commercial possibilities.

BS A5: From a medical standpoint we cover a lot of scientific cutting edge technology. Our Burn stem cell treatment mentioned in Sacred Mountain is real and very cool as well. We took the technology even further and created a gunshot wound treatment system using a soluble engineered porous matrix to replicate various tissue and used the patient’s adult stem cells to rapidly replace their lost muscle and connective tissue. I’ve received donor bone in an operation and could see that or many other bones being created using 3D printer technology. We also used roll up LCD screens for maps in Blood Ivory. Lizard technology described for our BEF aircraft and ground operatives makes them virtually invisible, and will become real within five or six years as will our Raptor’s wrist controls for their wraparound Helmet Mounted Displays. We give them superhuman hearing, sight and the ability to see with infra red capability. The warfighters are equipped with a lightweight armor using impenetrable graphene over Dragonskin (flexible titanium-ceramic discs that overlap and spread out the impact of small arms fire.

SD Q6: You are co-owners of Timber Creek Productions and Timber Creek Press and you have an impressive stable of authors including; Alex Cord (Days of the Harbinger and widely known in the UK for Airwolf), British actress and Audie award winning Josephine Bailey (Hotey), the highly knowledgeable and real life Black Ops specialist and co-author to you both Doran Ingrham (Blood Brothers), and Steve Daniels (Guardians of the Well). For those authors currently looking at their publishing options; what can Timber Creek Press offer them and what can they do to make their work stand out to you?

KF A6: We believe it starts and ends with content…in other words, content is always king. We see far too much work that focuses on telling, not showing and it seems that very few writers actually know how to write dialogue. With a degree in drama and forty years as a professional actor, I feel one thing I bring to the table is believable dialogue. So many writers write dialogue like they write, not how people actually talk. I like to see dialogue in novels with a lot of ellipses, hitches and breaks because that’s how people talk. The writer might know what the line is going to be, but the character does not. He must allow the character the opportunity to create the dialogue as it happens. After all it’s the characters that are telling the story, not the writer. I want the reader to actually hear the characters speak. Another thing is that we like good descriptive exposition. Create word pictures. A bubble. Make the reader see, hear, feel, taste and smell what’s going on in the scene. A good storyteller doesn’t tell the story to the reader…he sucks the reader into the story.

BS A6: We have to like the material we publish. Don’t want to come off as snobs, but we use our own tastes as a filter on material. If it bores us, we figure it will bore others as well and we pass on it. Timber Creek Press will help fledgling and experienced authors alike learn the art of promotion via social media. We use a technique of providing content daily so that a post from us or our company is not just “Buy our book!” That gets old really fast. We want to educate and entertain our readers in our daily musings as well as make them curious enough to try one of our novels. We also encourage our published writers to keep writing! It is far more than a case of practice make perfect (although almost all writers do get better the more they write). A series of novels with relateable characters results in multiple sales without multiple marketing being required (other than to let the readers know a new title is coming.) People love our heroes and hate our bad guys. When the story ends, we leave them wanting more. The next title in a series is like another entree at a sumptuous buffet. It seemingly never ends. We get emails all the time asking when the next book is coming out. That is certainly better than not having anybody care what we do!

SD Q7: You agree to be dropped off on a deserted island that is plentiful with food, water and shelter to live out the rest of your days; You are each allowed one personal item to take with you. What one item would each of you take and why?

KF A7: A good knife. With a knife, I can make writing materials and or just about anything else I might desire. It’s the oldest tool known to mankind, next to the club.

BS A7: A case of sunscreen. I don’t want to get sunburned while I’m lounging by the beach and Ken is off whittling himself a typewriter!

SD Q8: When you consider taking on an authors work; given the role of Timber Creek Productions, is one of your first considerations whether an individual’s story might look good on the big screen or are you judging it on its own merit as a piece of writing for publishing only?

KF A8: Don’t really look at it that way. The story/characters have to stand on it’s own merit. By the time a good novel gets to the screen, it’s usually almost unrecognizable. Again, content is king. One of the few films, actually it was a six hour mini-series, that they didn’t screw up too much was Lonesome Dove. But then again, it took six hours instead of the normal two.

BS A8: Other factors might also come into consideration, such as overall marketability and the author’s willingness to pitch in and help promote their work. Hollywood is infamous about not being willing to experiment with something that is not tried and true. If something does click at the box office, they tend to inundate the market with sequel after sequel (Rocky Sixteen/ Die Hard Twelve). In some ways that not far different from what we see many writers do with their series of books, but I often find the Hollywood screen writers show a lack of imagination. The western genre was beaten to death there because the plots became the same interchangeable three of four stories, only with different faces. We look for writing with new and innovative characters, told in an interesting manner. Aside from the obvious attributes, with some books, ancillary rights such as toys, video games, T-shirts and other factors could play a major part in a decision whether to publish or not and how the contract would be let. The recently departed Tom Clancy

made a mint on his name in the action video game market i.e. Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell

SD Q9: You both have incredibly diverse careers and interests, what has been the highlight of your lives to date and what would you like to concentrate on mostly in the future?

KF A9: Still working on the highlights. I’m doing right now exactly what I want to do. Can’t believe I didn’t start writing until I was 66. Go figure.

BS A9: I spent most of my adult life locked in a small cockpit with a stick or yoke between my knees. You haven’t felt confined until you strap an older jet fighter to your back! Can’t move left, can’t move right and the canopy is touching your head all the time! (That’s why a Marine Sniper gave me the call sign “Shoehorn”!) Some folks think it’s way more glamorous than it is. I lost several friends and classmates due to combat and accidents, and tied the world’s record for flying low in a Stearman back in ’82 and scared my wife to death. On the flip side; I learned to speak French, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean well enough to catch a cab, go to restaurants or shops and conduce business, have dinner and make it back to the hotel in one piece. (I studied German in college and Spanish in high school) Some of the places I’ve been and things I did or saw end up in our books. (Fun stuff like playing the guitar, wind surfing, scuba diving and the more exotic like watching toothless Chinese old men drink warm cobra blood mixed with whiskey to enhance their libido in a Taiwanese market) Now I wouldn’t trade it, but I’m with Ken on this subject. I’m not looking in the rear view mirror and am happy to be churning out several new books a year. Our best ones have not been written yet. I still enjoy acting, teaching acting and writing and am designing a line of titanium suppressers for rifles and pistols. (I studied aeronautical engineering in school and designed and had gold jewellery custom made in Seoul especially for my wife) To quote Yogi Berra “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over!”

SD Q10: Who are you favourite; author, actor/actress, and director of all time and why?

Author;

KF A10: Edgar Rice Burroughs . Great storyteller, a master at creating characters.

BS A10: J. R. R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings was finished shortly after I was born and was one of the books I read at age 12 or so that captivated my imagination in a huge way. We actually pattern much of our joint writing style after the novelists; Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy and Dale Brown

.

Actor/Actress;

KF A10: John Wayne/Katharine Hepburn. ’nuff said.

BS A10: Tom Hanks/Meryl Streep. Each have been able to create memorable character separate and distinct from themselves and still be completely believable.

Director;

KF A10: John Ford. Consummate storyteller and film maker.

BS A10: Steven Spielberg. Jurassic Park, Jaws, Indiana Jones, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List, E.T.- Wow, these are films that raised the bar for their genres. He of course had his failures (I hated the Transformers series of films- no story or characters in my opinion) . But he had a vision and stuck to it, cast well and brought to life things that don’t actually exist today (like dinosaurs!). In Saving Private Ryan essentially an anti war film, in his view) he captured the realism, including the chaos, noise, violence, mayhem, bravery and sacrifice that accompanied D-Day better than any film before or since. He is one of the greatest triple threats (writer, director and producers) ever.

SD Comment: Gentlemen… your answers have been; thorough, captivating, informative and amusing. I thank you once again for talking time out of your busy schedules to come blogging with me.

If you are an author looking at your options in the publishing world, you can contact Ken and Buck through their website using the contact us form.

Ken and Buck’s award winning books can be purchased at the following links;

Return Of The Starfighter (BLACK EAGLE FORCE)

Black Eagle Force: Sacred Mountain

Black Eagle Force: Eye of the Storm (Unabridged) (Black Eagle Force Series)

Black Eagle Force: Blood Ivory

The Nations

Haunted Falls (The Nations)

Blood Brothers (A Mark Ingram Adventure)

….and anywhere good books are sold; Amazon, B & N, Kobo, iBooks, etc!

Interviewer Simon Duringer’s 5* Amazon rated thriller Stray Bullet is available to buy on Amazon at;

U.S. Site – http://www.amazon.com/Stray-Bullet-ebook/dp/B00DTX9Q1E

The Ken Farmer and Buck Stienke interview took place on 05 October 2013

Simon Duringer © 2013.

Garrard Hayes – Author

When I first touched base with Novelist and New Yorker Garrard Hayes, readers had already downloaded over 7,000 copies of Bourbon & Blood. During the last week, that figure has risen sharply to over 13,000 downloads, making Garrard Hayes a number 1 ranked novelist in the amazon genres of; Thriller/Crime and Mystery/Hard-Boiled, number 2 in Thriller & 6 in Mysteries.

Garrard is a traditionally trained fine artist and has seamlessly made the transition from the blank canvas of his easel to that of a QWERTY. His sentences are so smooth it’s amazing the pages aren’t manufactured from silk. A true artist, it is little wonder that one of the most eye catching covers presently adorning social media pages has been of his own making…. But Garrard Hayes has a controversial secret, a secret shared by a growing number of authors, a secret loved by some and loathed by others, A secret I intend to uncover exclusively within Simons 10 Q Interview.

Today, Garrard came blogging with me and ran the gauntlet of Simon’s 10 Q Interview! We talked about the book, the marketing techniques that launched him onto the bestsellers list and what he is planning next in an attempt to top the success of his current, debut and bestseller list novel Bourbon & Blood: A Crime Fiction Novel (Bill Conlin Thriller).

Welcome Garrard and congratulations on the incredible success of your debut novel. As you are aware I have 10 questions for you, so without further ado or gilding the lilly, let’s get started…

SD Q1: You were trained as a fine arts painter; In today’s world art seems to extend beyond the canvas and often engulfs & incorporates entire rooms. What is your perspective on the art world today and why have you chosen to give it up to position your brush over the world of literature?

GH A1: Well, Art has become digital for a lot of folks. In a past life I used to paint mural size expressionism and pop art. It’s tough breaking into the art community and making a living from it, but I hope to return to it someday. Right now my house is very small and my wife would have a fit if I messed it up. So I decided to start writing and paint paragraphs instead of large canvas paintings. I still thoroughly enjoy designing my cover art.

SD Q2: You are a lifelong resident of New York, have you ever considered leaving the city or even the country for somewhere more tranquil?

GH A2: I would never want to leave New York except perhaps for a summer home somewhere warm. I spend a lot of time in the city; I have my excitement, run the rat race and then go back home to a quiet and beautiful waterside view outside the city. Perfect for writing and not so messy sketching.

SD Q3: What is the most prized piece of art you have ever possessed and why?

GH A3: My most prized pieces of art are my children. They are so full of life, comedy, drama and sound. Nothing I could ever buy or create could bring me more joy or make me prouder.

SD Q4: When I first touched base with you ‘Bourbon and Blood’ had reached over 7,000 downloads and reached number 1 in two genres. What has it reached today?

GH A4: Number of Downloads Over 13,000. Rankings #1 in Thriller/Crime, #1 Mystery/Hard-Boiled, #2 in Thriller & #6 in Mysteries.

SD Q5: The recent and unequivocal success in raising your profile has come at a price i.e. you’ve handed over potentially several months worth of heart-breaking, sweat stirring QWERTY time for free. What pushed you to make that ultimate sacrifice, and having read excerpts from your book, do you not feel you could have achieved similar success with such a good piece of work whilst earning a living from it?

GH A5: I had to get it into reader’s hands and I felt the only way was to make it free. I had fun writing Bourbon & Blood and I enjoyed reading it, but you can never tell if friends and family are just being nice. Many people are afraid to give honest feedback. Except my wife of course, she uses Occam’s Razor straight to the true and would never sugar coat a thing.

As far as making a living from my writing, only time will tell. I started for fun and to earn my stripes in storytelling. According to Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcom Gladwell you have to put in 10,000 hours in anything to become a grand master, I still have along way to go. I can only hope that the fun I have writing comes across to the readers.

SD Q6: I can’t think of many careers in the world where an individual will work for several months for free, though there are sure to be many out there in mainstream careers who feel as though they do! Given that each year there are reportedly over 1 million newly published books in this fascinating era of kindle & eBooks, do you believe that your approach to entering the publishing world will soon be an expectation of all new authors, in which case; does it not follow that by adhering to this initiation process, we as authors risk helping to create an elitist career open only to those who can ‘afford’ to write?

GH A6: I have a different view on writing. I still have a regular job and commit to a few hours a day of writing and marketing my book. Sometimes I wake up early and other times I stay up late to work on my book project. My approach has been a poor man’s version of what you described. Which is to say I do a little bit everyday and like saving pennies, after six months I have accumulated a pretty big bundle of words. If the money comes that would be a dream, I just want to have fun and learn new things as I go.

SD Q7: Clearly your first Novel has been a huge success and I congratulate you for this. You must now be all too aware that there are potentially a dozen thousand readers waiting for what comes next. What lies in the pipeline for you and when can we expect the next Garrard Hayes novel to be released?

GH A7: Well it’s a mystery. Just like life, you never know where things will lead you. I write organically and let my character tell me where to go as I’m writing. Its like Stephen King said in his On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft A story is a fossil you find on the ground, and you gradually dig it out slowly. I have a rough idea where the bones are I just have to get digging. One thing I can tell you is that I’m an action junkie and whatever I write will be spicy and fast paced. My favourite authors; like James Lee Burke, Ken Bruen and Dennis Lehane, they know how to get you hooked; I should only be so lucky. I have my next few novels swirling around in my head and it’s only a matter of time before I start digging up the fossils again.

SD Q8: If you were given an unlimited source of funding, what piece of art would you purchase and why?

GH A8: As much as I like painting, and I’ve spent a lot of time at New York Museums, there is one statue that has completely captured my imagination and it is as beautiful as it is tragic. In the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s courtyard there is a marble statue called UGOLINO AND HIS SONS by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. The story is part of Dante’s Inferno. It is the ultimate blend of art and storytelling. I have pictures of this masterpiece and it is an incredible accomplishment of art combined with literature.

SD Q9: Art or Literature; Which is more fun and why?

GH A9: I want it all! For me they are both one in the same art. Art is combined with literature or the other way around. What could be better? Most artists are trying to tell a story using their art to create tension, emotion and action. Literature does the same only it happens in our minds and the author guides us to visualize the art of storytelling.

SD Q10: Finally, Bourbon and Blood is a story that has appealed to the masses and has already started gathering multiple 5* reviews. What were your initial expectations for the novel and playing Devil’s Advocate for a moment; if you had known of your current ranking and download successes in advance, might you have chosen a more fruitful route into the marketplace?

GH A10: I expected nothing and just wanted to enjoy the process, but I figured if I had fun maybe the readers would too. I had such a blast writing and thinking about the story everyday that I could hear my character talking about what was next. Self-publishing has been tough, but I’ve learned so much about writing, ebook formatting, cover design and marketing, I wouldn’t change a thing. What could be better than setting your own challenge and having total control over the outcome?

SD Comment: Garrard Hayes you have been an excellent sport in answering all 10 questions in Simons 10 Q Interview and my thanks for tackling those questions head on. I wish you all the best and continued success for Bourbon and Blood, I have no doubt that your newfound fan base will stick with you when you publish further novels, but personally I do look forward to seeing a price tag attached to your next publication when it appears in the bestsellers list.

SD Summary: This interview raises a number of topical questions that we as authors must ask ourselves; what is the value of our work? How can we hope to reach mass audiences perhaps even within our lifetimes? It is perhaps sad that whilst there are thousands of talented and generous authors out there, that only a select few will ever reach the dizzy heights of financially rewarding success. We conduct giveaways, promotions, signings and as we have seen, on occasion we gift entire publications. Should we set a ceiling on our generosity or is this just a part of modern day publishing. Your views are welcomed; please feel free to leave comments at the end of the post.

If you wish to download/purchase Garrant Hayes Number 1 ranked novel Bourbon and Blood you can do so from the following amazon link;

Interviewer Simon Duringer’s 5* Amazon rated thriller Stray Bullet is available to buy on Amazon at;

U.S. Site – http://www.amazon.com/Stray-Bullet-ebook/dp/B00DTX9Q1E

The Garrard Hayes interview took place on 01 October 2013

Simon Duringer © 2013.

Author Interviews

I have now started my blog at http://www.simonduringer.com

Fuelled by curiosity as to the minds of other authors, my blog will concentrate on interviewing successful and interesting writers.

There are six lined up already and it's time to get back to the qwerty to prepare some interesting questions for them :)

Visit the blog now to see what and who is coming up in the next few weeks, you won't be disappointed!

http://www.simonduringer.com/blog

5* Review on amazon.com

Another 5* Amazon review... This time (at last) one posted on the amazon dot com site!

Isabel G (Taken from Amazon.com) says:

September 12, 2013 at 2:50 pm

"As this is a new author to me, I wasn’t sure what to expect but after the first few pages I knew I had hit a winner! It was so easy to connect with the characters in it; I felt as though I had known them for a long time. I also enjoyed watching the way the author brought out the best and the worst in them and was amazed at the fact that I could still like one of them even although he was definitely an evil nut case! I hope this book is the first in a long series, I think there is loads of potential for these very interesting characters."

New feedback

We love feedback....Here's the latest feedback on Stray Bullet;

Sam G (FB message whilst holidaying in Dominican Republic!) says:

September 11, 2013 at 12:16 am

Excellent book Simon! Love the ending – the letter from jack to Harvey. Damn well done!! Will give a review when I’m back next week :)

For all reviews see my website;
http://simonduringer.com/reader-reviews/

Freedom

Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.

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