Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
For the most part, I’m an adventure seeking farmboy who loves to read and write. So far I’ve written three novellas and I’m publishing my second novel early in December, 2014. They all belong to the Twinfinity series and are about a blind and deaf girl who can see and hear through her brother’s eyes. Both of them were born on another world and had to be born on this one to capture a fugitive from where they originated.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
A Prim and a Prophet is the follow up to Nethermore and the series was originally inspired through a desire to write a series concerning a pair of twins who originated from another dimension. As the story progressed and went through rewrites it morphed quite a bit and became what it is today.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I never write the antagonist scenes during the original first draft. I always go back through and add them as a part of the editing process.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
As I think about the Twinfinity series I can see so many different influences within it, that it is almost impossible to point them all out. I can see how my subconscious mind has cherry picked things from Star Wars, Harry Potter, Avatar, The Dark Tower, and many other books and movies that I love. I’ve always been a fan of stories, whether on the big screen or books, and many little tidbits from those influences make it into my writing.
What are you working on now?
I’m going through A Prim and a Prophet one last time to make sure I haven’t missed anything. It is due out in a week and will be Available on December 1st.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
So far my entire promotional approach is centered around offering free titles. I haven’t had any luck with any other kind of promotion whatever, but through free promotions my titles have reached more than 30,000 readers in one form or another. I think giving my stuff away is a form of showing readers, rather than telling them. They expect me to say my work is good, so showing them seems to be more effective.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
I think there is a false expectation from new authors. I’ve corresponded with many authors who believe that now that they’ve written a book, they will make tons of money and all of their financial woes will be solved. It’s not that easy and if I could deliver any message to an author its, “write because you love it,” because in the beginning that’s about all you’ll get from it. It takes years to develop a solid platform and if you don’t have the patience to build it, it’ll never be built. It almost never happens that an author published something and has instant success. Those may be the stories we here, but the reason we hear them is because they are so rare.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Write, write, write!
After publishing Twinfinity: Nethermore, I thought I was supposed to sell it to a certain number of people before I began volume 2. I did spend some time writing the novellas that told more of the stories, but I put off starting the second volume. This was a huge mistake on my part. All I accomplished was delaying the publishing of that novel, and having more than one work published is a huge benefit that I was missing out on. I didn’t realize how many more opportunities I had by having multiple works published. Even if the first one wasn’t selling a thousand copies per week, having two still made good business sense, and the only thing better than two, would be three.
What are you reading now?
Found by Brenda Lee Harper.
What’s next for you as a writer?
For now I’m going to keep going with my series. There is still quite a bit left to it, and unless I get burned out on the series, I’m going to keep going.
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?
Three or four isn’t enough, but if I could only pick three, they would be The Stand by Stephen King, and Hunger Games trilogy.
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