Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I ventured into the world of e-book self-publishing in 2014, and so far, I have published 13 books. I write fiction and non-fiction around one central theme – preparing for the future. After working professionally on the transition from physical to digital media in the entertainment industry, I became really interested in how new technologies will affect our behavior in the near future. So I began my future tech thriller series, Life Online, on that theme and continued to build from there into non-fiction focused on how you can help yourself get ready for the coming changes.
My work and studies have taken me around the world, I love to travel and my books, including the non-fiction, are set in locations around the world. With one exception, my Ravencross romance thriller series (under the pen name E. Avalon) which is set in a mysterious city built around two crossing rivers.
For the formal record, in careers, I have been a diplomat, management consultant, digital operations executive and lawyer. In education, I have a BA, MBA, JD and MPS in Applied Economics. All of that experience and education goes into my books where I try to draw out human experience as well as a compelling story.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
People kept asking me how I’ve done what I’ve done. So I wrote my latest book, Bloom! Defeat Negativity, Overcome Bad Advice, Love Yourself, and (finally) Become the Happy Person You Want to Be, to provide some inspiration and motivation to people who are trying to have a happy life. A lot of the information in the book comes from work I did for an earlier non-fiction book called Life Dream. Life Dream is aimed at people who are interested in becoming entrepreneurs. Bloom! is more foundational, it’s to help people find out who they really want to be by reaching beyond negative external influences.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Is it unusual to just write and write and write? As soon as I have an idea, especially for fiction, I can sit down and write the whole book. For non-fiction, I do tend to outline. But for fiction, I collapse into the world I’m inventing and tell the story. I can visually see the whole story play out in my mind, like a movie. So I describe what I see and hear as if it has already taken place, or is taking place right now.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
The list is so long. In Bloom! I have a link to download an entire article about the books that helped form my life philosophy. But okay, if I have to narrow the list down to two that fall under the category of “influence,” I’d say Rick Telander’s Heaven is a Playground that taught me I could make a living writing about a subject that really interested me. And The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield that showed me I could write fiction based on spiritual ideas with a global appeal.
What are you working on now?
The next four books are part of two series. I’m writing book 4 of my Life Online series which are future tech cyber thrillers set in the near future. This one will cover supersonic air travel in a frightening and suspenseful story.
Then I have the next three books in the Ravencross romance thriller series. The Ravencross books are about the cast, crew and fans of a popular daytime drama who become dangerously and obsessively involved with one another while playing an online game based on the show. Each book covers three romances taking place in the real world, on screen and online. It’s a totally different concept for the genre.
All books in each individual series can be read independently. The characters cross over but you can pick up each new story quite easily.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Giveaways seem to work well, especially if you have a series. You can give away the first book and then continue to promote the series to readers you know already have at least one book in the series.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Keep writing. Sometimes new authors get discouraged by the process and want to give up. But keep writing. And publish the book. You can do revisions forever and use that as an excuse to give-up. But if you publish you can feel that sense of accomplishment. With e-book self-publishing you have a lot of flexibility around publishing and promoting your book, but it does not start until you actually hit ‘submit’ for an online site.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Fail fast. Fail often. Fail forward.
You have to at least try to do whatever it is you want to do. If you are unsuccessful, that’s fine, take what you have learned and try again. I tweak my book launches every single time. I do not have a set formula that works for every genre. So if I do not think the book is doing well, I try and figure out another approach.
What are you reading now?
I literally have a stack of physical books and lots of Kindle and iBooks books with the ‘new’ banner still glowing at me. So I have to say which book did I pick up last. Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. It’s deep, thoughtful, eye-opening material. For fiction, I’m reading The Pit by Frank Norris which was written at the turn of the last century.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Besides the books I’m writing, I have a business, Ready Entrepreneur, aimed at helping people achieve their goal of starting a business. This fits with my overall theme where I believe in the near future, when there are fewer jobs, there will need to be more entrepreneurs. But entrepreneurship is not taught in schools, so people who are interested have to learn on their own. Ready Entrepreneur focuses on finding the confidence time and money to get started, meet investors and go global.
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?
Well I’d want something funny but timeless, but I don’t know what that would be. I’m looking for a book that would repeatedly make me laugh so go ahead and send me a recommendation. To get lost yet again in a magnificent world I’d take my favorite by my favorite writer, Penmarric by Susan Howatch. For inspiration, Susan L. Taylor’s Living in Spirit.
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