Interview With Author Andrew Môn Hughes
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I live in Holyhead in Anglesey, Wales with my wife Judy, and our two Dachhunds, Bella, and Benny, and our cat Patch.
I’m a big music fan, and I have an extensive collection of vinyl and CDs – it’s a pretty varied collection but primarily classic and progressive rock with a good smattering of German bands such as Novalis, Anyone’s Daughter, Neu, Cluster, Kraftwerk and Peter Maffay.
My main passion, however, is The Bee Gees who I’ve been collecting for over 45 years. I’ve worked on a lot of projects for them such as writing tour programmes, CD and DVD sleeve notes and I’ve been involved in many television documentaries about them with much of the visual material supplied from my collection.
It was an inevitability that I would write a book about them.
The first was “The Ultimate Biography of The Bee Gees: Tales of the Brothers Gibb” (Omnibus Press) in 2000. A second edition was published in 2001, and when Maurice dies in 2003, a third revised and updated edition came out. The final English edition was in 2012 after Robin passed away. It has also been translated into German and Russian. The book itself is our print now, but still available as an e-book.
I’m currently in the middle of writing a series of books about The Bee Gees career, split into decades – the first was “DECADES: The Bee Gees in the 1960s”, and it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out what the subsequent volumes are going to be called!
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My most recent book is “DECADES: The Bee Gees in the 1970s” – it’s co-written with my good friends Grant Walters and Mark Crohan, as was the previous volume, “DECADES: The Bee Gees in the 1960s”. We are contracted to write a further two volumes covering the 1980s and 1990s, but we’re hoping to convince the publisher to allow us to cover the 21st Century to conclude the story.
Both books in the series so far have been about 125,000 words, so by the time we complete the project, we should be in excess of 600,000 words. Bear in mind that the first book I co-authored “The Ultimate Biography of The Bee Gees: Tales of the Brothers Gibb” was about 360,000 words, so this is indicative of the new level of research and detail in the “DECADES” books.
As for the inspiration to write – I needed something to do during the COVID lockdown! A couple of my friends wrote a book about another group, so I contacted Sonicbond Publishing and got the deal. I then invited Grant and Mark to join me as the writing team as they’re both experts on the Bee Gees too, and we all have different skill sets and areas of expertise.
We’re spread far and wide, I live in Anglesey in Wales, Grant is in Ohio in the United States and Mark is in Melbourne in Australia. Our Zoom calls are interesting – Grant’s having his morning coffee, I’m having lunch and Mark’s having a nightcap!
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I wouldn’t say that my writing habits are unusual, because I sense that a lot of writers do the same as I do.
Writing factual material – I absolutely detest the term non-fiction – is quite different to writing fiction. I really enjoy the research part of the process. I love scouring through old music magazines, so not only do I see things which are relevant to the subject matter, but I also pick up on other stories of interest, so that’s a lot of fun. But, sometimes, there’s something that doesn’t seem quite complete and needs further investigation and this results in some restless nights. The solution, of course, is to get up at silly o’clock and keep digging.
Similarly, when I’m actually at the writing stage, I can’t just stop writing, I must complete the specific thing that I’m working on before I go to bed.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
I’m not a big reader, I tend to buy books for reference purposes more than anything. I really don’t do fiction.
I sometimes see books where I like the concept or design layout, so I take these aboard for future writing projects. The most recent was “From Me to You: Songs the Beatles Covered and Songs They Gave Away” by Brian Southall. Obviously, if I was to write a book along similar lines it would be about the songs The Bee Gees gave away – their catalogue is immense, and there are well over 200 songs that have been recorded by others. I already have a title for it, and most of the research work is already done as it’s already there from previous projects. All it’s really going to take to make this happen is to find a publisher and get it nicely presented.
What are you working on now?
I’m currently preparing all the work files for the next volume of the “DECADES” series, the 1980s. Once that’s done, I’ll upload them to Dropbox, and then Mark and Grant can access the documents and as time goes on, we’ll shape the narrative. Between writing, editing, printing, and distribution, I hope that it will be published in the final quarter of 2024.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Our website is useful – we used that to facilitate online sales for pre-orders on the 1960s book. One of the forewords to that book was written by Vince Melouney who was a bona fide Bee Gee in 1967-68. He had agreed to sign copies for those who pre-ordered which gave us an incredible sales boost. I should mention at this point, seeing as I’ve mentioned forewords, that Robin Gibb’s son, Spencer, is writing forewords for all the books in the series. It’s great to have his support with this project.
Social media is a necessity nowadays, but we suffered a blow in July when Facebook suspended our page – we appealed the decision and they said that they’d review it within 45 days, but several months later there has been no progress at all. Nothing can be resolved online so I’ve resorted to writing a letter and mailing it to them instead in the hope that they will action it.
We have Twitter (or X, or whatever they’re calling it this week), Instagram and Threads accounts, and we also have a YouTube channel.
We’ve managed to get a great deal of promotion and reviews on many platforms – websites, magazines and newspapers, podcasts, radio, and television. These are all available to view on the “Media” page of our website. The radio and television appearances are also on our YouTube channel.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Not really – my experiences as a writer are probably quite different from most people out there. I’ve been very lucky to have had willing publishers for all my books, so I haven’t had to go down the road of self-publishing.
From a writing perspective, factual books are quite different from fiction books. I have the facts and I write about them, I don’t need to have an active imagination to create my characters and scenarios. My characters exist and I report on their past activities. On the face of it, that doesn’t sound very interesting, but I find it fascinating.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Be good! And if you can’t be good … don’t get caught!
What are you reading now?
As I said earlier on, I’m not a big reader – but my bookshelves are full … have you noticed how all the clever people who appear on the TV news programmes have packed bookshelves behind them. Do I aspire to be seen as a smart person?
I don’t regularly buy books, but I seek them out when I’m seeking knowledge – even then, I won’t sit down and read them end to end. I treat them as reference works and seek out specific things that I want to learn more about. I like bookazines – I’m currently diving into three about The Who, two about Kraftwerk, and one each about The Eagles and Abba.
What’s next for you as a writer?
I’m contracted to write at least another two volumes of The Bee Gees’ “DECADES” books, so that’s the priority. Who knows, some other small, related things may crop up in the middle of that which would be a welcome break.
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 did enjoy these books, and I’d gladly revisit them if I had time to kill on a desert island:
“I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan” by Alan Partridge
“Nomad” by Alan Partridge
“At My Mother’s Knee … and Other Low Joints” by Paul O’Grady
“The Devil Rides Out” by Paul O’Grady
“Still Standing” by Paul O’Grady
“Open the Cage, Murphy” by Paul O’Grady
Author Websites and Profiles
Andrew Môn Hughes Amazon Profile
Andrew Môn Hughes’s Social Media Links
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