An Interview with Benjamin Douglas
This is a time-release message. I am currently touring Cornwall, staying in remote bunkhouses, so had to write this last week. By the look of the weather forecast, I am experiencing a lot of wind and rain.
Firstly, I need to apologise for the broken links in last week's roundup. I missed off the https:// on my blog and the mailing software guessed the start of those addresses incorrectly. I fixed the blog that night, so you can have a look at https://alasdairshaw.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/the-july-roundup-of-scifi-books.html if you want to find those books.
Since I last wrote, the first blackberries of the year are in the hedges. My first attempt at making bramble jelly looks OK, but has yet to be taste-tested. I've made progress on my 100km run challenge for Alzheimer's Research UK (you can check out how I'm doing and sponsor me by following the link below). And I spent a lot of money on new ropes and other equipment for teaching climbing.
Right, so today I am talking to Benjamin Douglas, author of The Lunar Gambit, and other Starship Fairfax stories.
Which writers inspire you?
The books I go back to over and again are Tolkien, Le Guin, and Dumas the elder. My guilty genre pleasure has always been John Grisham, no matter the title. But I'm incredibly inspired by the indie authors whose work I've come to love as a fan, like Edward Robertson and Lindsay Buroker, and by those who maintain high-value indie-author-oriented platforms, like Joanna Penn and Bryan Cohen. Some of my favourite scifi that I've read in the past couple of years has come from Robertson, Buroker, and Mark E. Cooper.
What is your favourite book and why?
The Silmarillian, hands-down. It sounds silly to say, but if I go too many years without rereading it, I feel like something is missing in my life. Seriously! I love the world-building, sure, but it's more than that. It's the epic-poetic nature of the prose, and the grandiose storytelling. When I was a kid, I used to read history books for pleasure. So when I discovered this magnum opus fantasy backstory that read like a beautifully crafted history book, lol, I was sold for life!
Of course, the first thing I tried to write when I decided to self-publish was a history-style fantasy background story. Lol. But that was fraught for a few reasons, chief among them that I am not JRR Tolkien. Nevermind the market, ha! Suffice to say that attempt never made it past halfway.
OK, so continuing the theme: what is your favourite movie and why?
Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. It's the characters. Films from the 50's have such a different pacing than blockbusters anymore, and I think that has something to do with it. I'm really attracted to slow-pacing with lots of character development. I think there's something really hooky about it, and I think it's one of the reasons long-form storytelling (TV) is doing so well right now with Netflix and Hulu, etc. Seven Samurai has this magnificent blend of character depth, plot frustration and satisfaction, and, of course, action. With swords.
More recently, I'm a big fan of Christopher Nolan, especially Interstellar and The Prestige.
Given your wide range of reading and watching preferences, what draws you to writing science fiction?
My dad is a lifelong scifi fan. We always had episodes from the old Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits or the original Star Trek on TV when I was a kid, so I guess I come by it pretty naturally. It seemed like he was always reading an Asimov book. My older brother is a Gen-Xer, so of course Star Wars was a big deal for us. It's hard to escape your environment, lol!
I've also been attracted to what other indie authors have been doing in scifi recently. I mentioned Buroker. Of course there's also Mr Chris Fox, who made a heck of a case for selling scifi with 'write to market.'
Any tips on what to do?
I've done a couple of things that have been working well for me, one thing I regret, and one thing I'm waiting to see about. Good things: I wrote two short stories, both prequels, and made them both free. "The Trials of Io" is a free 7k story that you can only get by signing up for my mailing list, and I've heard back from fans who signed up to get it and loved it! "Totaled" is of similar length and permafree on Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords Direct. I actually wrote it to a prompt for a scifi anthology, The Officer, which of course was organized and edited by you, Alasdair. I've seen both sales and mailing list sign-ups from being in that anthology, so I definitely recommend it as a tactic for finding more readers. Thanks!
You're welcome. The anthology has been doing very nicely since it was released at the end of June.
What about things you'd recommend not doing?
What I regret: that I didn't have Book 2 ready as soon as Book 1 went live. Now I'm sweating my way through Book 2 and trying not to lose the nibbles I've had on my mailing list. Fans are a precious resource, and they must be grown, I think. So make sure you have enough soil and food and sunlight ready before you commit!
And then there's the work in progress: I host a show, The Book Speaks Podcast, in which every Friday I read a chapter from a different indie author. I'm doing this for a few reasons: to learn from other indies, to network, to delve into craft, to engage the community, but also to build platform. And that's a bit of a risk, because it's definitely a show geared mostly toward other authors, and conventional wisdom holds that you should build platform focused on readers, not other writers. So I'm gambling with some of my time. But I'm bootstrapping the entire venture; it hasn't cost me a penny, since I already owned some low-cost recording equipment. Check it out if you're interested!
Thank you. Good luck with Starship Fairfax; I look forward to seeing how Caspar's career progresses...
Benjamin Douglas was born at a young age at a nearby distant location. After spending five lifetimes consuming all things speculative fiction, he spent another consuming all things indie-author related, and decided to spend this one writing books. He currently resides in Iowa, with his wife, his tiny mini-me, and their fuzzy feline god, Max. It's a good life.
If you'd like to read his poems, follow him on his scifi/fantasy indie author journey, or see pictures of Max that you can print and put up in your home as prayer shrines, visit him at: http://benjamindouglasbooks.wordpress.com
If you'd like to contact him directly for any reason (a reasonable reason, one hopes), you can do so at: benjamindouglasbooks@gmail.com
And if you'd like to follow and rate and review his podcast, The Book Speaks Podcast, please do so at: http://thebookspeakspodcast.wordpress.com
Firstly, I need to apologise for the broken links in last week's roundup. I missed off the https:// on my blog and the mailing software guessed the start of those addresses incorrectly. I fixed the blog that night, so you can have a look at https://alasdairshaw.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/the-july-roundup-of-scifi-books.html if you want to find those books.
Since I last wrote, the first blackberries of the year are in the hedges. My first attempt at making bramble jelly looks OK, but has yet to be taste-tested. I've made progress on my 100km run challenge for Alzheimer's Research UK (you can check out how I'm doing and sponsor me by following the link below). And I spent a lot of money on new ropes and other equipment for teaching climbing.
Right, so today I am talking to Benjamin Douglas, author of The Lunar Gambit, and other Starship Fairfax stories.
Which writers inspire you?
The books I go back to over and again are Tolkien, Le Guin, and Dumas the elder. My guilty genre pleasure has always been John Grisham, no matter the title. But I'm incredibly inspired by the indie authors whose work I've come to love as a fan, like Edward Robertson and Lindsay Buroker, and by those who maintain high-value indie-author-oriented platforms, like Joanna Penn and Bryan Cohen. Some of my favourite scifi that I've read in the past couple of years has come from Robertson, Buroker, and Mark E. Cooper.
What is your favourite book and why?
The Silmarillian, hands-down. It sounds silly to say, but if I go too many years without rereading it, I feel like something is missing in my life. Seriously! I love the world-building, sure, but it's more than that. It's the epic-poetic nature of the prose, and the grandiose storytelling. When I was a kid, I used to read history books for pleasure. So when I discovered this magnum opus fantasy backstory that read like a beautifully crafted history book, lol, I was sold for life!
Of course, the first thing I tried to write when I decided to self-publish was a history-style fantasy background story. Lol. But that was fraught for a few reasons, chief among them that I am not JRR Tolkien. Nevermind the market, ha! Suffice to say that attempt never made it past halfway.
OK, so continuing the theme: what is your favourite movie and why?
Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. It's the characters. Films from the 50's have such a different pacing than blockbusters anymore, and I think that has something to do with it. I'm really attracted to slow-pacing with lots of character development. I think there's something really hooky about it, and I think it's one of the reasons long-form storytelling (TV) is doing so well right now with Netflix and Hulu, etc. Seven Samurai has this magnificent blend of character depth, plot frustration and satisfaction, and, of course, action. With swords.
More recently, I'm a big fan of Christopher Nolan, especially Interstellar and The Prestige.
Given your wide range of reading and watching preferences, what draws you to writing science fiction?
My dad is a lifelong scifi fan. We always had episodes from the old Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits or the original Star Trek on TV when I was a kid, so I guess I come by it pretty naturally. It seemed like he was always reading an Asimov book. My older brother is a Gen-Xer, so of course Star Wars was a big deal for us. It's hard to escape your environment, lol!
I've also been attracted to what other indie authors have been doing in scifi recently. I mentioned Buroker. Of course there's also Mr Chris Fox, who made a heck of a case for selling scifi with 'write to market.'
Any tips on what to do?
I've done a couple of things that have been working well for me, one thing I regret, and one thing I'm waiting to see about. Good things: I wrote two short stories, both prequels, and made them both free. "The Trials of Io" is a free 7k story that you can only get by signing up for my mailing list, and I've heard back from fans who signed up to get it and loved it! "Totaled" is of similar length and permafree on Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords Direct. I actually wrote it to a prompt for a scifi anthology, The Officer, which of course was organized and edited by you, Alasdair. I've seen both sales and mailing list sign-ups from being in that anthology, so I definitely recommend it as a tactic for finding more readers. Thanks!
You're welcome. The anthology has been doing very nicely since it was released at the end of June.
What about things you'd recommend not doing?
What I regret: that I didn't have Book 2 ready as soon as Book 1 went live. Now I'm sweating my way through Book 2 and trying not to lose the nibbles I've had on my mailing list. Fans are a precious resource, and they must be grown, I think. So make sure you have enough soil and food and sunlight ready before you commit!
And then there's the work in progress: I host a show, The Book Speaks Podcast, in which every Friday I read a chapter from a different indie author. I'm doing this for a few reasons: to learn from other indies, to network, to delve into craft, to engage the community, but also to build platform. And that's a bit of a risk, because it's definitely a show geared mostly toward other authors, and conventional wisdom holds that you should build platform focused on readers, not other writers. So I'm gambling with some of my time. But I'm bootstrapping the entire venture; it hasn't cost me a penny, since I already owned some low-cost recording equipment. Check it out if you're interested!
Thank you. Good luck with Starship Fairfax; I look forward to seeing how Caspar's career progresses...
Benjamin Douglas was born at a young age at a nearby distant location. After spending five lifetimes consuming all things speculative fiction, he spent another consuming all things indie-author related, and decided to spend this one writing books. He currently resides in Iowa, with his wife, his tiny mini-me, and their fuzzy feline god, Max. It's a good life.If you'd like to read his poems, follow him on his scifi/fantasy indie author journey, or see pictures of Max that you can print and put up in your home as prayer shrines, visit him at: http://benjamindouglasbooks.wordpress.com
If you'd like to contact him directly for any reason (a reasonable reason, one hopes), you can do so at: benjamindouglasbooks@gmail.com
And if you'd like to follow and rate and review his podcast, The Book Speaks Podcast, please do so at: http://thebookspeakspodcast.wordpress.com
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