An interview with Chris M Grey

Thoughts on successful self publishing Halloween ghosts!

An interview with Chris M Grey

Hi Folks,

Here he is!
Today I have a guest on my blog who is a great bloke, excellent author (of both 'Shadowland' and 'Flight of the Griffin') and, as an aspiring fellow YA fantasy writer, somebody who I feel I share a lot in common with. Namely, Chris M Grey. So, without further ado, let's get on with it! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Rod, thanks for having me here on your blog, I’m thrilled to be chatting with you today... nice place!
Cheers Chris, glad you like it. :) Thanks for popping by.
1)Why do you write fantasy? Is there a deeper motivation that guides you?I guess I write fantasy because I find it hard to take life too seriously, so I can’t take my stories too seriously either. I like strangeness so I throw fantastical things into my stories because it makes it a lot more fun. I write to entertain myself first and foremost, so even when writing my book Shadowland, which is the story of Uther Pendragon, father to Arthur I had to throw a big dollop of fantasy at it; after all, who knows what is real and what isn’t? With things like crop circles, the northern lights and UFO sightings, who knows what is fantasy and what is ‘normal’ anyhow? Just maybe there really is magic and dragons and things... we just collectively ignore it as we believe it doesn’t exist!

2) Can you tell us anything about your next novel?Right now I’m finishing my third book, it’s called Chaos Stormand is the sequel to my book The Flight of the Griffin. I’m almost done, I’m about three... maybe four chapters from the end, but it’s taking time to get juuuuuust right... I’m actually itching to get to the next book. I can’t wait to start something fresh. I’ve got lots of ideas, I think it will be something historically based again like Shadowland and of course there will be a fantasy, fantastical side to it, I just can’t resist! I’m tempted by the Victorian age, or maybe something set a little earlier, but I also like the idea of a story set during the Second World War... I can’t wait to see which way it will go!
I can sympathize - endings can be tricky to tie up!

3) Are events in your novels ever based on someone you know, or events in your own life?I’ve been lucky enough to have travelled an awful lot and some of the places I’ve been do indeed form the backdrop in some of my scenes. To give an example, in The Flight of the Griffin there is a desert city that I name as Dhurbar, but the inspiration for it comes from a mixture of places, certainly both Fez and Marrakesh in Morocco with probably also a bit of Jaipur and Fatehpur Sikri, the deserted city in India thrown in as well. As for people, well I’m sure some of the characters in my books have some basis in the people I’ve met, but not from any close friends or family.

4) Name one entity that you feel has supported you in your writing outside of family members.Outside of family, probably Amazon. When Amazon opened its KDP programme allowing indie writers to place their books on the same platform as fully supported published writers it personally gave me a boost. I don’t necessarily ‘need’ to make loads of money writing, it would be very nice, but as a writer I need my books to be read.It wouldn’t be fulfilling enough for me to write a book, have it bound and printed and then put it up on my shelf. I crave the feedback of readers and Amazon gives me the chance to put my work in front of readers like no other platform, so they support my efforts like nobody else can! It would help, however, if they paid UK authors by wire transfer on US sales rather than send a cheque which costs more to cash than it’s actually worth... suppose I just need to sell more books and get bigger cheques!I do also love Goodreads. Of all the author/reader places to go it is simply the best online community.
If I can just mention that ‘inside’ of family members my greatest support comes from my children, I do after all write for a younger audience. My daughter, Yasmin lily hasn’t actually read or been read either of my books yet as she is only seven, but she still tells me I’m the best writer in the world, which s wonderful to hear! My son, Dylan has read both books and tells me they are indeed the best books ever written and is grabbing chapters of Chaos Storm to read even before I’ve edited them. He’s twelve and his support means absolutely everything to me... well it would wouldn’t it!
5) Do you see writing as a career?I would absolutely love to write full time and do hold onto the belief that one day I will be selling enough books to be able to do just that. As it stands at the moment, however, I’m a long way off from that so no it’s not my career its more my not so lucrative vocation, but I’m pushing in that direction. For the moment I’m just delighted knowing my books are being read and when a total stranger takes the time to write me an encouraging review it gives me reason to keep going.
6) Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?I find it all both a delight and a challenge. At the moment tying up all the lose strings and coming up with a ‘big’ ending for Chaos Storm is a huge challenge. I don’t write to a set plan and have no idea where my stories are leading. I so want to get it right and it is flowing at the moment, but there is always a nagging doubt, ‘will it do the job?’ It’s a bit like telling a good joke with everyone smiling, huge expectation and anticipation on their faces... only you fluff the punch line... big pressure! Do you go through the same process?
I tend to write 'organically', which means I make up a lot of the content of my novels as I go along. I totally understand the punch line analogy, coming up with something clever and unique right at the end is the hardest single thing about writing a story in my opinion.

7) Who designed your covers?I did. I’m no control freak but when it came to finding someone to do my covers, I looked and looked but didn’t come up with anyone I was happy with or could afford, so I had a go myself. The cover to Shadowland is a picture I took in France with a little Photoshop work done to it and the cover for The Flight of the Griffin is a montage of my own sketches with a few objects placed on, then I took a picture... Of the two I would like to get a better cover done for Shadowland and maybe some day I will.I have noticed that when I look around at other books in the YA genre it seems that having some young twenty something male ripping his shirt off to expose a six pack sells books... but then the readers may get disappointed when they start reading and there isn’t some smouldering stud just a few grubby kids throwing magic or talking with wolves... Rod, do you have a six pack and will you be using it on the cover of your next book?
Ahem...of course I do. Though if I placed it on the cover of my novels it probably wouldn't help them sell. Wait...we are talking a six pack of beer here, right?

8) Do you intend to kill off any of your chars for your next book? (Don’t tell us who…of course.)Oooh, that’s a good idea! I might kill them all off so I don’t have to make it a trilogy! There will of course be a few deaths, at this point I’m still trying to decide who is annoying me the most!
9) While you are writing, do you ever feel as if you were one of the characters?No, I feel more like some omnipotent being looking down and merely reporting on the trials and tribulations of my characters. Of course as an omnipotent being I have the power to cast a few lightning bolts or sink a ship from my characters to liven up the plot which is fun! Freaks them right out! I especially like toying with Bartholomew Bask, the fat greedy merchant in The Flight of the Griffin. He is also in Chaos Storm where I mess with him royally! Maybe I’ll give him some horrible death...
Ooo - can't wait. I never liked him either...

10) When you sit down to write, in which location or environment do you feel most productive? I tend to grab moments, especially when I’m editing but the best time for me to really get down and write is late at night, when my family has gone to sleep and the dogs have quietened down. I’m lacking a really good spot to write, I write on a laptop so tend to move about. I sit at the kitchen table, or outside on a warm evening and then close to the log fire in the winter. What I would really like is a study, lined with books and a desk and comfortable chair at just the right height, but I’m still working on that.

11) Have you ever approached literary agents for representation? Have you done so recently? Tell us about your experiences.Hmmm... okay...well yes, that’s a story in itself, but you did ask. I did have an agent a few years back after I had written my first book. After her representing me for a couple of months she said she had two of the ‘big six’ publishers interested and was auctioning the rights; going back and forth between them. I was getting calls from her asking if I was happy including US rights... then film rights... and then I got a call at home directly from a third smaller publisher telling me not to sign anything until they could make an offer... very exciting times and at that point I totally believed I was the next J.K.Rowling, I had been ‘discovered!’ But then it all fell totally flat, everyone backed off and I was left thinking, what the f*&^%! It was very sobering, brought me down to earth and I stopped writing for over a year. I don’t know if other authors have gone through this and it’s normal, but that was my experience with an agent and the publishing community. I haven’t approached anyone else and I don’t know if I will. My plan is to have three books up on Amazon, build up sales and... get discovered, or make my fortune first as an Indie - either will do!
Crikey, exciting stuff. We're all rooting for you Chris!

12) How do you market your work? What avenues have you found work best for you?I tried Smashwords and despite loving the platform and the idea that they can market to people like B&N and Sony books etc, but unfortunately I didn’t sell many books at all. I gave a whole bunch away during their summer madness giveaway and I got some fantastic reviews, but sales didn’t follow.
Right now I’m a big Amazon fan, I recently offered Shadowland as a free giveaway for two days and got 8,403 downloads! One week later I have had three really nice reviews and 142 book sales, the most I’ve ever had in a week. I did a lot of preparatory work before and sent details of the free days to a whole bunch of websites to ‘get the word out’ and it seems to have worked. I use twitter, but I don’t really see how it is helping me. I can’t stand facebook, but I do have a facebook page... least I did last time I looked. It always seems full of irrelevant chatter about how many chicken McNuggets someone ate last night or what a simply wonderful weekend auntie had in Wales. Bah humbug...I have a blog, not as nice as yours... *grins* unfortunately, I guess I’m socially inept.
You're getting lots of attention on Goodreads right now I notice, maybe the word is finally getting out about your work. I tend to struggle a bit with FB too, I hang out on Twitter and Goodreads mostly for similar reasons. :)
13) Do you have any advice to give aspiring writers?Write for the fun of it, there isn’t a lot of money in it! Be yourself and be original and most important of all, get a good editor. However good you think you are you never see all the typos and rogue commas. Hyphens are my nemesis and those little dots... that I keep putting everywhere, exclamation marks are also tempting but usually not necessary! A good editor will get rid of them all, I can recommend a fantastic one if anyone out there is interested, she certainly sorts my manuscripts out!

14) Is it just a coincidence that you have the same name as the male lead in Fifty Shades of Grey? Is this an issue with your online presence?So you’re a big fan of female porn eh! <Umm...actually no. My wife is though :D >For quite some time I had no idea why female teenage bloggers were sending me giggly emails delighting in my name, then one broke through the blushes to mention that the main protagonist in the fifty shades was a certain Christian Grey. So, being a writer with a wild fantasy imagination, I happily tell them all that of course that’s me, just don’t tell my wife!

15) When and why was the last time you got really pissed (angry) about something?I don’t really get angry, I honestly don’t remember the last time. I get upset about the environment or the mess our society is in, but not really angry, more just resigned to doing my best in my little corner of the world. My day job is raising capital and awareness for a company that replants the rainforest in places like Brazil and Nicaragua, so I hear about all the bad stuff going on with illegal logging and corrupt governments, but this is at least a company trying to do something positive about the problems.

16) When and why was the last time something made you laugh out loud with joy?I laugh a lot, especially with my kids. I have a very strange sense of humour I think and will often laugh at things that others look at straight faced. In the same regard, I don’t laugh at those video programmes that show people falling over at weddings or making fools of themselves on stage, which my wife and kids think are hilarious.

17) What would you do if you woke up one morning next to an Ewok?I would probably figure I had been smoking forbidden substances and berate myself for returning to sins from the past. Then I would figure it must be my wife dressed up for another of our ‘fifty shades’ experiences and spank her soundly with my lightsaber!
Yikers! Hey...did they use lightsabers in Fifty Shades?

18) Do you have any ‘Harry Potter’ type injury scars? If so, how did you get them?No, miraculously I have no lightning shaped scars, awful broken bone irregularities or even unsightly moles... which is pretty boring of me and I apologise profusely for being so uninteresting! I’ve done my best, honest. I’ve jumped out of planes, dived to dizzying depths on shipwrecks and visited some decidedly dodgy places. I had a gun pulled on me in the Negev desert and a knife in the backstreets of Istanbul, but could I get a decent scar? Could I *&$”&^!
LMAO
19) You live in Barcelona, in Spain. How’s that working out for you?Barcelona is great, I love it here. I live in a house in the middle of the forest, but just a half hours drive outside the city. I’ve been here twelve years now and this is the longest I’ve been in one place since I left the UK in 1982... I’ve lived all over the world from Hong Kong and Manila to rural France and Amsterdam, where I met my wife. The funny thing is that when I go back to England, to Braintree in north Essex, not too far from you I think? I feel more like a foreigner than I do anywhere else, it’s a weird feeling.
Just down the road in fact - I never knew you were from Essex! I hear you about feeling like a foreigner. I used to get that when I lived in the USA. Coming back to the UK for a week and everything looks really odd.

20) Is it sunny? Can I come visit and help myself to stuff out of your fridge for a couple of months?Lots of sun but because its the north of Spain it also has a good winter, its snows at my house most winters and there is good skiing just two hours drive away. I would be delighted if you came to visit and the fridge is yours to raid. Plenty of beers and wine but you may want to bring your own British bacon and sausages as I’m vegetarian... There are abundant wild boars in the woods around us so you could always chase them and prepare your own!
Thanks for reading folks - and cheers Chris, my suitcase is packed and I'm booking a flight right now :) (The wild boars are safe btw!) Great answers, it's been lots of fun. You sure lead an interesting life, thanks for telling us about it. All the very best for the future mate!
Chris M Grey is the author of two (nearly three) Young Adult Fantasy novels. I read both of them and thought they were great - check them out here -