What genre are you most comfortable writing? Anything with a speculative bent – sci-fi, fantasy, supernatural. That’s what all my books are so farm and unless at some point I deliberately decide to write without those elements, they’ll probably always be there.
What do you consider the most challenging thing about writing a novel, or about writing in general? Finishing the dang thing. I find it gets progressively harder to wrap things up, and I’m not sure why. Other authors have talked about this phenomenon. I try to combat it by giving myself permission to write anything I want – sometimes I write the ending scene or the climax scene long before I’ve written the intervening parts – because I can always rewrite something later.
Did writing this book teach you anything and what was it? Yeah, how hard the whole thing is, and at the same time, how easy. Contradictory? Maybe, but here’s what I mean. It’s easy to get an idea and start vomiting words on paper. What’s hard, at the end of the day, is making it coherent and entertaining. The hard thing is the work of crafting, not the art of creating. I can create in my head all day, it’s getting it down on paper and then turning that hot mess into a smooth coherent story that’s difficult.
Do you intend to make writing a career? Oh heck yeah. It’s freedom, baby. I have more options than some people, because I am retired from the military and have a pension already that will put the food on the table. That will eventually give me the liberty to do it full time, once the last kid is out of college and we have sold our house to free ourselves of ties to one place.
What is your greatest strength as a writer? I’d say the ability to just get it on paper. I hear of people who take years to write a book. Not me. I feel antsy and behind if I’m not doing a thousand or two words a day, which translates into 3-5 books a year depending on length. I’d say I also am a pretty good copy editor, both of my own work and others. In fact I freelance as a copy editor, and I’ll also give writing feedback if the client wants it.
Have you ever had writer’s block? If so, what do you do about it? Nope. I can always write something. Sometimes I can’t seem to make progress on a particular piece, so I rotate through my projects and see what I can add to any of them. once I have done all I can for a day I usually take a hot bath, read a book, watch a movie – and often I’ll get a second wind and go back to my computer to write or tweak something.
How did you develop your plot and characters? I write The Eden Plague pretty organically – in fact, my first draft and first edition was in first person, before I rewrote it into third person I could expand the character threads and plot. First person is very easy to do, but hard to do well – powerful but tricky to get right. This method did have the benefit of getting 80% of everything down on paper pretty fast – I think I wrote the book in about five weeks – and then all I had to do was tinker.
Who designed the cover? The cover is by James at Humblenations.com. He’s a great designer and he has a lot of premade covers at goonwrite.com, or he will do custom work.
Who is your publisher? I’m self-published through Amazon, Kobo, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, Apple, BestIndieBookStore, and maybe a few more. I’m always looking for legitimate places to sell my ebooks. That’s not to say I wouldn’t be happy to get picked up by a traditional publisher but I’m not actively seeking. I’m intending to go the route of Hugh Howey or EL James, which is to say, self-pub first, then let them seek me out. If they don’t, I’m doing all right so far as an indie, and perhaps that’s what I’ll always be.
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Genre – SciFi /Adventure
Rating – PG13
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