Interview With Author A.R. Grosjean
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I am Amber, aka A.R. Grosjean. I've written and published 24 books so far this month. I've been writing since I was eleven years old and plan to keep writing until I've taken my last breath. I have over 60 titles waiting to be written. Yeah, I have a lot of stories on my writing list. Some of those stories I started writing when I was a kid, teenager, and young adult. Writing is my life. I published my first book after I was married to Jack, aka Billy, who is my biggest fan. He supports my dream of writing, and because of him, I was able to get where I am today. He's always encouraging me to go write lol.
It took me twenty years to finally get published traditionally, but I decided to take the self-publishing route and changed my pen name to what it is now. I rewrote all of the books I had published so all of my books could be under one pen name. I love to write and write in most genres. Fantasy and Science Fiction is my favorite but I also enjoy mystery, romance, thriller, paranormal, horror, etc lol. The sky is the limit with my imagination lol.
I was bullied growing up and didn't have friends until my family moved to a different city. I attempted suicide when was only ten years old. It was a year later when I discovered writing. Well, I knew about it (my mother and younger sister always had a book in their hand), but I didn't know it was something I could do until I was eleven and a story popped into my head. Becoming a writer saved my life, literally. It gave me something I didn't have before: purpose and belonging.
As I mentioned, I am married. Billy and I have three children who are now grown. They have children (the two girls anyway). We have five grandchildren right now. They call me Nana, which is pretty cool. They are my inspiration.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Hidden Agenda is my most recent; it gets released on December 10th. COVID-19 inspired this story. I kept hearing all these rumors about how it started, and my mind started churning out these ideas. I was afraid to write this book, though, so I kept putting it off. Finally, another author told me I should go ahead and write it, so I put my fingers on the keyboard, and the story was born. I am a pantser writer, coming up with stories as I go lol. This story is a thriller.
My next book is called A Mother's Pain. I'm editing it at the moment and will release it next year, in February. My personal story inspired this one, but I made some changes to it so it could inspire others, so it's my first inspirational piece. But it is also women's fiction. It is packed with emotions.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
My memory isn't very good, so I can write one story and turn around and write the next story on the same day. I used to write several stories at the same time, but I wasn't getting anywhere with them, so I decided to focus on one story at a time. Now I write pretty fast and get a lot of books written. Some go really fast. I've been able to write and publish five books in a given year now, which is really cool.
My imagination never really changed as I got older, so I still have the childlike imagination that I grew up with, which keeps me on my toes. Ideas pop up out of nowhere, which is why I have so many books waiting to be written lol.
Since I write using the panster method, I don't know how my stories are going to turn out. That means I get excited more often because I don't know what's around the corner. My emotions run a little more vividly as a result. I've been caught lauging, crying, and yelling at my characters more times than I can count lol. It is a little embarrassing, but I think my husband is used to it now lol. As I write, I jot down the notes so I don't forget anything later and can keep using the information further down the story like names, places, etc.
I create my own covers too. As soon as I come up with an idea for a story, I run to paint shop pro and begin pulling pictures together to create a cover for the story. This does help me remember what the story is about. As time passes, I'll revisit the cover and tweak it to improve it or come up with something different. I do have a few covers that other people created but most of them I did. And I'm very proud of that.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
I think the biggest author would have to be Stephen King. I've always loved him and his work. I'm a big movie-watcher lol. The fact that he was in his 40s inspired me. I made my first attempt at writing a horror story because of King. Of course, that story turned out to be romance, but it was cool enough. More horror story ideas did come up that I will be writing, so those will give me a new chance to write the stories that he inspired. I love how he takes parts of his real life and throws them into plots, people, and ideas.
I did meet Judy Blume once when I was younger, and I told her I wanted to be a writer. She told me to write. I thought that was cool.
I read a lot of books on writing. Some of those books inspired ideas for stories. Stolen was one of those books. I can't remember the name of the book, but there was a chapter on writing prompts, and one of the prompts was about twins. I decided to write a collection of books on twins, Stolen was the first. Ideas come from everywhere for me.
What are you working on now?
Well, I am editing A Mother's Pain, but as in my new WIP, I am writing a science fiction thriller called Nanobytes. These alien nanobytes are injected into these people as a test study (they are paid for the study). The MC loses weight and gains all these abilities as a result. But that's not the problem—the problem is that there is an alien race heading to Earth to invade, and she's among the few who are the only ones who can save Earth.
The nanotechnology came from the aliens these invaders conquered. If they couldn't beat this alien race, how is Earth supposed to?
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I use social networking a lot and Instagram is my favorite because the people there are less judgmental than on the other sites. All the other sites aren't used as often for that reason among others.
I lean heavily on my website for a lot of my marketing. I also created another website where I have made for any Indie Author in a combined author website to promote all of our books on a (everyone share the link, kind of thing). I like it because we're all doing our part in sharing the site, bringing our books to different people who might not otherwise have heard of us. It's still pretty new, but there are a lot of authors on the site now. I like to help others, and this was one way I could do that because I don't have that much money. Reading all of their books is kind of hard, so I chose to do this to show support for my fellow authors. That site can be found here: https://booktoursauthorsun.wixsite.com/home
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Yes. Don't give up. The first draft is you telling yourself the story. It is more important to get the story down than to get it right, so just write the story. You can make it better once you're finished getting the story down. Then edit like crazy!
Every word you write gets you closer to the ending, so take your time and don't worry about how long it's taking to write the story. Some writers take years to write one story. So don't compare how fast you're writing to another writer. They could be at a different point in their writing career than you are. Maybe it took them years to get there. So focus on your story, one word at a time.
Don't throw anything away. If something isn't working for this story, you can save it for later. It might be better suited for another story. So when you're editing and you feel that scene isn't working, clip it from the story and save it. Sit on it until the scene does work for a story. It'll save you time and headaches.
When saving your stories, have multiple backups. That way, if your computer crashes or you lose the file, it's safely stored somewhere else. Believe me, that's happened to me! It's not fun trying to write a story from scratch that you spent years on.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Everything that I shared in the last answers plus I learned that we're all in different stages in our writing. Just as we learned how to be a person (starting with crawling, then walking, running, etc), we learned in different speeds. I could be this age and be writing at "this age," while another writer could be at a different point. It was interesting how the person explained it, and it made so much sense. None of us became instant successes; we all got there at different stages of our careers. Yes, some authors may have published their first books, but how long did it take them to get those polished books before they were accepted, and how many times were they rejected before that publisher signed them on? I can almost promise those first books weren't published by the first publisher who read those stories, and those books were edited a thousand times or more before they were accepted.
That story resonated with me. And it holds a lot of truth. It really makes a lot of sense if you really think about it.
What are you reading now?
I am reading a fantasy by another indie author. I would like to leave the title out for now because I have a system lol. I'm sharing it on Goodreads and Instagram, so you'd have to check out those sites to view it.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Write, edit, write, edit, and keep on working the pattern. Of course, there are a ton of little things in the works at the same time, like research, cover design, updating websites, and social networking. I like to be busy, and I love to write.
As I mentioned before, I have 60+ books waiting to be written. I know I won't live forever, so I've been focusing on just getting the stories written. I hope I can get through them before my time is up. I know it won't happen because there are so many of them, but I hope I can get a big chunk of them written and published. I'm not rushing, but I feel like I don't have enough time lol. Have you ever felt like that?
I am always reading, learning, and growing as a writer. I've been working on building my readership too. Meeting my readers/fans, and keeping them happy is important to me so that is always evolving as much as I can. I keep my mind busy. And I keep a day job so that's always fun lol.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
I would bring blank tablets with me so I could record my experiences while on the island. That way I could write a book about it lol. I would rather write a book than read a book, but that doesn't mean I don't read because I do. I just live and breathe writing. Period.
So I would have to sneak a pen or pencil with me so I could write. And if I used up all the paper, I would find something else to write on because I can't live without writing. It's part of who I am, just like being a wife, mother, Nana, etc. You can't have one without the other. Take away the air and you can't breathe—that is how writing is for me; it's my air.
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