The Author Interviews, Round 3: #9: Daniel Umbehr

Please welcomeDaniel Umbehrto the Author Interviews.What made you want to become a writer?I never intended to become a writer. In late 2012 I had left the Army and was back at college, a late twenties man surrounded by eighteen and nineteen year olds who still considered their high school graduation to be the biggest event of their lives. Their issues seemed so petty that I couldn’t relate to them, and none of them could understand the Army life I’d just emerged from. This resulted in a lot of time to simply sit, watch and listen.Slowly, an idea began to form in my mind. It was an old childhood fantasy, an odd blending of Conan and Beauty and the Beast. But my mind needed a distraction, so I developed the idea for fun. Within a few days, I realized that I was forgetting parts only to recreate them, so I wrote notes on paper. Before I realized it, I had over sixty pages of handwritten notes. That led to the critical moment.It was already too much to keep on physical paper, and it was still growing. But I knew that if I started typing it into the computer it would lead to something big, probably a full novel. But with nothing to lose and already forming an attachment to this ‘thing’ that my mind had created, I decided to go for it.Eventually I found a local writing critique group “The Woodlands Writers Guild” and they helped me learn the art of writing. Ever since then, it’s just been an addiction. I have too many stories to tell and not enough time to write them all.Million dollar question, are you working on another book?Several, and from multiple genres. To briefly describe a few…1 – A man wakes up in hell and partners with a condemned woman to find the way out.2 – An alien crashes on earth and has to steal a primitive human ship to escape.3 – A collection of stories from my time in the Army, each one a F.U.B.A.R situation.What do you think about the ebook revolution?It’s a mixed bag.The good side is that writers like me can be published without going through half a lifetime of rejection just to get our work out there. Traditional publishers no longer control the gateway to public recognition, and the authors can keep a much larger cut of the money.The bad is anyone can get published, including the incompetent and the unskilled. I spent four years learning to write before I considered myself ‘competent’ and I still make mistakes. But now any amateur who spends a few weeks throwing together a manuscript can present their work on amazon or smashwords as being equal to everyone else. As a result, the public has been flooded with bad writing. This has changed how people shop for books and attached a stigma to the whole industry.What is your advice to Indie Authors? On writing? Marketing?Know your objective from the beginning.Most authors have an inspired story in their head and it’s unique. It will be a very good read if they develop and polish it enough, and that is what most starting authors try to do. But they are probably making the same mistake I made – the book isn’t going to sell. Selling books and writing books are two very different skillsets, and they use very different products. For example, how many romance books have you seen that are just a copy of the same old formula? You see the same thing in fantasy, the formula known as the hero’s journey. Obviously we want something more interesting and unique than this, but for some reason these formula type books sell like crazy. Why?The reason is this: books that follow the formula are easy to market, and that results in sales. Unique books, my first novel included, are harder to market. They don’t fit neatly into predefined genres. They are difficult to summarize in a single sentence, which is the key to catching the attention of a potential buyer.So my advice is this: know what you are after. If you want to create your personal work of unique literature, then follow your inspiration. If you want to sell, then write the formula.What is your writing style?I mainly do third person limited. I aim for a fast pace, no more than a paragraph or two of description per scene because it’s important to get to the action. Because my plots are usually complicated, I’ll spend a few chapters in one character's point of view, then switch to another character so you can see something important over there. As a result, the reader often knows more than the characters.I also dabble in first person, but that is primarily for short stories, not novels.Pen or type writer or computer?It usually begins as a random inspiration, so I write it with whatever pen and paper I have on hand at the time. As soon as possible, I convert it to a computer file; Microsoft word, Windows 7 (I refuse to upgrade to windows 10). I’ve looked at other programs like scrivener and open office, but the key is to use whatever you’re comfortable with. There is no magic program that will somehow give you a shortcut.A small office room, a comfortable chair, silence with no one around and the internet turned off - that is the best setting for me to write in.What tactics do you have when writing?I have a very specific tactic. First, the overall idea. Second, the beginning to ending outline, and an overall blurb – the kind you would put on the back cover. Then I write the opening scene, the one that will either make-or-break the reader's interest.Once I have all four of these, I put them in a folder together and ignore them. It becomes a project that I will do sometime in the future. I have to do this so I can focus primarily on whatever my current project is. When I complete one project, I go to my ‘library’ of ideas and choose one to be my next project.Are your characters based off real people or did they all come entirely from your imagination?My characters are based mostly off my imagination, but they are heavily shaped by the realities in which they live in. For example, in my Novel “Given & Taken” all the characters are a result of the brutal era in which they live – slavery, torture, barbarian raids, crucifixion, eaten alive, burned alive, impalement, human sacrifice – As I said, a very brutal era and I tried to make it as accurate as possible.The setting is shaped by the military journals of Jullius Caesar – yes, that Caesar, the one you read about in high school and was stabbed to death by Roman senators. His journals are known the The Gallic War and Caesars Civil War (an excellent resource if you have any interest in history whatsoever).So, if you ever wanted a novel that was fully realistic and didn’t hesitate to include the darker side of reality, then “Taken & Given” is a must read.What additional material or goodies go into your novels?For my historical fiction, I always include a small section at the back giving a historical explanation of what eventually happened to each faction. This is distinguish it from pure fiction where the groups are entirely made up.In my fantasy novels – which are not published yet – there are going to be small sections intended to make the fantasy more real. For example, why do elves have pointed ears? Why do witches and shamans have familiars? And where does the power of magic come from?When you don’t answer these questions, you end up with very shallow world settings. Take Star Trek for example - all the aliens look human except for a few minor features, and they never explain why. Star Wars did slightly better by making the aliens look different from anything we’d ever seen, even if they still did walk on two legs.What has been the best compliment?The best compliment I ever receive was from a member of the critique group. They said “Your novel has George Martin syndrome!” They were referring to the frequency with which the characters were dying. Since then, I have made a concentrated effort to ensure that you never know who will live and who will die.If you would like to support this author, please consider purchasing a copy of the book.Many thanks.