Category: Interviews

Interview with successful self-published Author, Mike Wells

Mike. HeadshotAn Interview with Mike Wells *** ‘Unputdownable Thrillers’

Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing?

A. I like to write outside if the weather is warm enough, which is one reason I live most of the year in Cyprus. I usually write on our veranda, or at an outdoor cafe by the beach. I like to move around to different places, keeps things stirred up.

Q. Do you have any special rituals when you sit down to write? (a neat work space, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)

A. No. Those kinds of things (IMO) can turn into excuses not to write, I broke myself of anything like that a long time ago. I’m generally a very flexible and adaptable person, don’t get dependent much on physical elements like that.

Q. Could you tell us something about yourself that we might not already know?

A. I can’t throw up. Continue reading “Interview with successful self-published Author, Mike Wells”

Interview with best selling author, Anne Gracie (part 2)

Q. What makes a writer great?

Anne's band, the Platform Souls
Anne’s band, the Platform Souls

A. I think unforgettable stories and characters. People talk about beautiful turns of phrases, and lovely writing is a joy to read, but unforgettable characters and wonderful stories makes a writer’s work live on. Dickens created some of the most unforgettable characters in literature, and some amazing stories and so his work lives on, even if people don’t read him — his characters and stories have entered popular culture so deeply that people who’ve never heard of Dickens know Scrooge and Miss Haversham and Fagin.

Q. and the all important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like?

A. I think the important thing is to push on. Writers (IMO) tend to give up for two basic reasons — 1) they endlessly tweak and fiddle with the writing, and never get to finish the story. Perfectionism gets in the way. But the best piece of writing advice ever comes from Nora Roberts, also arguably the most prolific and successful writer of popular fiction in the world: “You can fix a bad page but you can’t fix a blank one.” So you need to push on and make yourself finish, even if you think it’s horrible. Then you can either fix it, or work out why it doesn’t work and learn from it. Writing, as with all things, takes practice. Not all the books you write will be publishable — some books have L-plates on them. But often the story idea is good and later, when you’re better at creating the architecture of a novel, you can revisit that early idea.
2) The second reason people don’t finish is…. Continue reading “Interview with best selling author, Anne Gracie (part 2)”

Interview with Australian author, Anne Gracie

TS: I have been reading Anne Gracie for YEARS…no, decades!!  I love her stories!  And I admit quite freely that I’m a junkie for historic romances.  Anne’s characters are rich and full and funny.  So I must tell my readers, fans, friends and tweeters that it is a thrill for me to now be able to interview her!

International best selling author, Anne Gracie
International best selling author, Anne Gracie

 

Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing?

A. I write in different places. I often go to my local library and write by hand. I write in my office, and sometimes in my bed on my laptop. I carry a notebook with me at all times, because sometimes a phrase or snippet of dialogue will come to me at odd times, and I don’t want to lose it.  I also go away once a year with a small group of other writers (eight of us) on a writing retreat… Continue reading “Interview with Australian author, Anne Gracie”

An Interview with best selling author, Elizabeth Hoyt

Elizabeth_Hoyt_headshot

Another one of my favorite authors, Elizabeth Hoyt writes historic romances with humor.

Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing?

A. I have an office—it’s a sun room at the back of the house. I also do a lot of writing at coffee shops.????????????????????????????????

Q. Do you have any special rituals when you sit down to write? (a neat work space, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)

A. I like to have something to drink—both coffee and water, preferably.

Q. What is your mode of writing?

A. If I wrote in longhand I wouldn’t be able to read the result. 😉 I use Scrivener on an eleven inch MacBook Air.

Q. Do you have a set time each day to write or do you write only when you are feeling creative?

A. I write to deadlines. When I’m on deadline I write. 😉

Q. What’s your best advice to other writers for overcoming procrastination?

A. I find that the bowel-loosening fear of defaulting on a contracted deadline and possibly messing up my entire career is a pretty good incentive to sit down at the computer. If you don’t have a contracted deadline, you need to make your own deadline or goal because the muse may never arrive if you’re waiting on her to write. Continue reading “An Interview with best selling author, Elizabeth Hoyt”

Interview (part 2) with best selling author, Barbara Delinsky

delinsky.lake._nPart 2: Continuing with this look into best selling author, Barbara Delinsky’s world:

Book signing
Book signing

Q. What makes a writer great?

A. Not fancy prose or even extensive research. I believe that a writer is great when she can produce book after book that readers love.

Q. and the all important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like?

A. Discipline. That’s it, short and sweet. Produce three pages each day before allowing yourself to leave the computer, and you will eventually finish a book. Do I start with an outline? Vaguely. But it’s sketchy and subject to change as the book grows and characters take over.

Q. Where/when do you first discover your characters?

A. Given that my books are character-driven, my characters come to me at the very start. That said, I don’t fully know them until I’m nearly halfway through the book. This is good. By not boxing them into a preconceived notion of who or what they should be, they take off on their own and do things I may not have planned. Those things are often what make the book shine.

Q. What inspires your story/stories ? Continue reading “Interview (part 2) with best selling author, Barbara Delinsky”

My Interview with international best selling author, Peter May (part 3)

CANADA!  Peter May is headed your way.  Don’t miss it!  http://www.ur-web.net/PeterMayMain/tour2014.htm

Q. How do you get from ‘finished’ book from ‘no book’?  (continued)Peter.Janice

A. When I am happy with my outline, I can see what and where I still need to research. I make a list of all the locations in the story and I make a point of visiting every one of them. A sense of place is very important in my books, whether it is France, China, or the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. I never write about a place if I haven’t been there. I like to go and take video of the locations, making notes about what sort of things strike you when you are there – the heat, or cold, the smells etc.
When I get back from my location research I will make a short video of each location that I can replay when I am writing the scenes that are set there. Sometimes visiting the locations will cause me to have to change the story outline. I make any changes necessary, then I am ready to write.
Writing the actual book is probably the most difficult and least enjoyable part of the process. I want to get it over and done with as quickly as possible. I adopt a very strict routine that absolutely nothing is allowed to interfere with.
I get up at 6 am, take my breakfast to my desk, Continue reading “My Interview with international best selling author, Peter May (part 3)”

Part 2 of my Interview with Peter May, best selling Author

Peter in France

Q. When did you begin to write seriously? (con’t.)

I wrote stories all through my teenage years and at the age of 18 I finished my first serious attempt at a novel. I sent it off to Collins Publishers and of course received a rejection letter. The editor who wrote to me took trouble and care to reply to me, saying of my writing: “…we do like it. It has a direct and emphatic narrative style and has an oddly memorable – even idyllic flavour about it. We feel you ought to go on writing, and would like to see anything you write in future – which may not sound very much, but is, I can assure you, a great deal more than we say to 95% of the people who send in their typescripts!”

Those words stayed with me all my life. And there’s an amazing coda to this story, because that very editor, a writer named Philip Ziegler, recently wrote the definitive biography of Lawrence Olivier which was published by Quercus, the publisher of my own books. My editor at Quercus was able to arrange a meeting for me with him, and 42 years later I came face to face with the person whose words of encouragement all those years ago, gave me the incentive to stick with my writing and keep trying.

Q. How long after that were you published? Continue reading “Part 2 of my Interview with Peter May, best selling Author”

Interview with International author, Peter May (part I)

Peter May, best selling international author, granted me an interview.  I was very excited as his newest in The Lewis Triology was released September 1st.  Through this process his wife, Janet, and I have become new friends.  Starting this month they will be on a book tour in the US…..more about that later.  Read my review of The Lewis Man.

Q. Peter, where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing?

A. I live in France and spend my winters in Spain. In France I live in a two hundred year old, stone-built farmhouse. It’s a 14619739192_1d38f13ba2_opretty rambling place on three levels. It’s in the middle of France and very far from the sea. In Spain I live in a much more modern apartment with sea views. And in both places I have a study. As you’ll see from the pictures, the set up is pretty much the same in each place. I travel with my laptop between the two locations and link it to two extra computer screens. I like to have as much screen space as possible, that way I can have the file I’m writing in open, together with all my research files, and any research video that I’ve taken.

Q. Do you have any special rituals when you sit down to write? (a neat work space, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.) Continue reading “Interview with International author, Peter May (part I)”

‘The Lewis Man’ by Peter May…a Review

reviews, authors, writingreviews, authors, writingreviews, authors, writing   reviews, authors, writing reviews, authors, writingFive out of five quills    
A REVIEW   The Lewis Man by international best selling author, Peter May

 

Peter May writes in black and white.  I rarely see ‘color’ in his books….and that’s high praise. 

He plunks me down inLEWISScan the stark, forbidding Outer Hebrides, a group of islands northwest of Scotland and bared to the North Atlantic Sea.
“A sky torn and shredded by the wind.  A sky that leaks sunlight in momentary flashes to spill across dead grasses where the white tips of bog cotton dip and dive in frantic eddies of turbulent air….” ( prose at its best!)

After reading about the people settled there one wonders why they stay.  And that is at the core of why his characters are so intriguing and entertaining.  There is little soil on these rocks jutting out of the sea.  And trees for shelter and fuel?  Forget that.   But peat bogs flourish and provide fuel for heat in the oldest tradition of the Gaelic world.  When a body turns up in a bog the remains could be a month old, several decades old, and in some instances, centuries old.

As I’ve mentioned before I’m not a reviewer who fills the page with a synopsis of the story.  For me, the reader, it spoils it to be given the plot on a plate.  Continue reading “‘The Lewis Man’ by Peter May…a Review”

My Interview with Ace Atkins, (Part 2)

Q. HAce.cafeow long after that were you published?

A. Two years after I became a full-time reporter, I sold my first novel. I had finished a novel right after college but it was horrible. It was good enough to get me an agent, but I’m grateful now that no one bought it. One of the major mistakes young writers make is quitting after finishing their first book and waiting for their careers to take off. You must be prepared to write a dozen novels before one works.

Q. What makes a writer great?

A. Hard work and an eye for realism. The better the writer, the more the truth comes out.

Q. and the all important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like? 

A. It changes with each project. I’ve written 15 published novels. And each one, like children, present new and unique challenges. I have had books that were effortless to write and edit. I have had some that I finished only to realize they required a complete retooling. It changes every time.

Q. Where/when do you first discover your characters? Continue reading “My Interview with Ace Atkins, (Part 2)”