Interview With Author Ben Foth
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
My name is Ben Foth. I’m an author, artist, free spirit, renaissance man, and chill young gent overall.
In my free time, I like to keep myself in shape through lifting, running, and swimming, watch new shows and movies and rewatch old favourites, read and write, do photography, make art, cook, and just enjoy life.
I’ve published 3 books so far:
Measuring What’s Divine is a hard book to describe succinctly. In it, I cover a myriad of spirituality and self-improvement topics, from esoteric and woo-woo things like energy, manifestation, and realms beyond Earth, to practical and useful life advice, on topics such as how to recognize what people you can and can’t potentially date, how to massively improve the quality of your relationships, how to find career success, and how to quickly, easily, effortlessly improve your mental health and overall well-being.
Musings of a Failed Dating Coach is a collection of my best writings during my former failed career as a dating/relationship coach + a few original chapters about lessons I’d learnt after I gave up on it for good. I was extremely competent at the work and gave my clients immediate, life-changing results, which is why I held out for so long hoping for this to pay off. But in the end, there wasn’t enough market-demand for me to coach full-time, and I compiled everything that worked about my coaching into this book, while cutting out everything I was wrong about in hindsight.
Starlight Season 1: Extraterrestrial, Supernatural, Unconventional is an episodic short story collection about the adventures of Starlight: an Ottawa-based team of covert alien hunters who protect the city from alien and supernatural threats.
This is the first book in a planned 5-book series, and it stars an ensemble cast of 6 main characters:
Bryce, the young, responsible, and idealistic newly-hired field agent/housekeeper for the team. Jane, another field agent on the team who’s shy, reserved, and hasn’t moved on from her high school days. Omar, the team’s engineer who’s a prideful, romantically frustrated dogmatist. Simon, the team’s medical specialist and the rational, level-headed straight-man of the group. Tom, the team’s leader, jack of all trades, and the most wise and experienced of the group. And Helene, the team’s wildcard who’s bubbly, chaotic, and often delusional about how the world works.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Measuring What’s Divine was inspired by my obsessive interest in self-improvement and spirituality back in my early 20s. When I was 21-25, I was a very ambitious young guy. I had a long list of things I wanted to accomplish with my life, in all domains, and I took massive action on it every day. I also got heavily into studying religion and spirituality, and explored an immense amount of schools of thought on the subjects of spirituality and self-improvement during those 5 years.
Measuring What’s Divine is the culmination of those 5 years of study and life experience. In this book, I share everything from those years that worked for me in practice, checked out against the real world, and debunk everything I’ve found to be false or only effective for some types of people and completely ineffective for others.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
If I’m writing a scene where characters are drinking, I like to drink while writing. I consider it method-writing. It really helps me write a drunk character’s dialogue too, as my mental state’s close to theirs while I’m writing it.
I wrote all of Chapter 6 in Starlight Book I while drunk, and significant portions of Chapters 5 and 7. Starlight Book II so far, I wrote many scenes while being quite tipsy too.
Also, the one chapter I’ve completed of The Angel and His Girl so far, I was incredibly tipsy the whole time I was writing it. It takes place at a house party where the two main characters are just as drunk as I was writing them.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
The first major inspiration I had was when I read the Alex Rider series as a kid. I absolutely loved it, and it was the first book series I ever read that made me think “I can definitely write something like this someday!”
I also read the Sherlock Holmes series when I was in 9th grade, and it made me think the same. It inspired the “episodic short story” format of the Starlight series. Every chapter/episode of Starlight is its own self-contained story as opposed to just a chapter in a novel. Though unlike Sherlock Holmes, the characters grow and evolve immensely as the books progress, and no two Starlight episodes/chapters/stories are built the same.
What are you working on now?
The sequel to the first Starlight book, titled Starlight Season 2: The Games of Ross Hansen. The main antagonist of this one is Ross Hansen, a human-turned-demigod, much like Bruce Almighty, if Bruce was the villain of the story. 😉 I’ve already completed the first 4 chapters of a planned 10, as well as some scenes in later chapters.
I’ve also started writing a standalone spin-off to the Starlight series, titled The Angel and His Girl. It stars Ben Gilbert, a side-character in Starlight Book I. It’s a coming of age + romance novel where he first discovers his true purposes in life. I only have the first chapter finished so far.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I’m still experimenting with that.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Know your style and own it.
Don’t try to copy what someone else has already done, because you’re not them. Know yourself, know your style, and be unapologetically authentic the whole way through.
Write about what you love. Don’t be inauthentic forcing yourself to write something that just isn’t you. Write about the things that speak to your soul, that make you feel fired up and in love with your life, not the things that’d make someone else feel that way but not you.
The most important thing in writing, in my opinion, is enjoying the process. Don’t write unless you enjoy it and love what you’re writing about. If writing feels like a torturous grind, don’t force yourself to keep working. It’s fine to take a break until new inspiration strikes and you enjoy the process again.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Your soul didn’t come to this Earth intending to someday discover all the right ways to live, fight and destroy all the wrong ways, and convince every other “misguided, ignorant” soul to wake the hell up and start following the right ways. You’re here to follow your own ways. You’re here to live by your own values, get everything you prefer, connect with everyone you prefer, and do everything you enjoy, all of which is Divinely Provided for you, and can never be destroyed or taken away from you. It can only be resisted and self-denied.
If you were to demand that everyone prefer and value the same things, conform to the same customs and ways of life, and act in all the same ways, you would be demanding the impossible. You would be demanding the death of the universe’s creativity and expansion, which cannot die as long as diverse viewpoints exist, which is forever and always.
What are you reading now?
The Other People by C.J. Tudor.
And hopefully the next time I’m in a bookstore, at least one more worthy new read will call out to me.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Hopefully to get my two current WIPs done by the end of the year.
I also can’t wait to get the right inspiration for a non-Starlight-universe novel. Starlight is a very fast-paced, action-packed, and high-energy series, but I also want to write a book that’s slow, gritty, and dark someday.
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?
Levels of Energy by Frederick Dodson.
Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins. (my all-time favourite fiction book)
Looking for Alaska by John Green, in case I’m feeling an old favourite.
The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle.
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