Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’ve led a fairly normal life. I was a goth in my teens (you should see the pictures – they’re hilarious!). Not quite sure what I did in my twenties. I suspect I may have been drunk but to be honest, it was all a bit of a blur. Then married, divorced, emigrated to Scotland.
So far I have two books published. The Tin Kicker was my first, an air crash investigation technothriller. It took forever to write. There was just so much research involved. After that, I vowed never to take on a project that research-heavy again! But, I’m finally pleased with how it turned out.
I’ve just published my second novel: The Spirit Road. I am really pleased with this book. It’s just a story that I really would want to read!
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My latest book is The Spirit Road – Book One of the Wilderness Series. It’s basically the story of a small construction firm’s attempt to build a highway and tunnel through the Andes mountains in South America. Things don’t go well, and pretty soon we hit rock bottom, and then we follow our characters’ attempts to claw their way back on top. It’s a fairly old-fashioned story in that sense: a classic tale of loss, redemption and a struggle to survive.
After I wrote The Tin Kicker, I knew I wanted to head in a completely new direction. It was a that point that I hit on the idea of some big disaster – some catastrophic failure of a bridge, dam or building etc. But the main influence was – and you’re going to love this – an episode of the 60s puppet TV show Thunderbirds. In particular, the episode named End of the Road, where a small construction firm is trying to build a road through a mountain range. Sound familiar? And there was one exchange of dialogue that really struck a chord with me.
Gray: “We’ll just have to try and get an extension.”
Eddie: “Extension? The only reason we got the contract was because we gave an early completion date. If we don’t make it, this company’s nothing. You’re out, I’m out, everything we’ve planned for, worked for, goes up in smoke.”
Those few sentences still give me a tingle in my writing bone. Pretty heavy concepts for something that was supposed to be a kids’ TV show!
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Nothing particularly unusual nowadays. I wrote the bulk of The Tin Kicker in pubs around London, generally on my way home from work. When I couldn’t see the page any more, I’d deduce that was the time to give up for the evening and I’d stagger the rest of the way home!
The Spirit Road was a more professionally structured endeavour, and written largely without the aid of alcohol. I got about a quarter of the way through and then got stuck. I couldn’t think of a way to continue so put it on the shelf. It wasn’t writers’ block; I’d just written myself into a corner. Eventually I came back to it and bingo! I had an epiphany and charged through it, writing 70,000 words in three months. By the time it was finished, I had an unwieldy epic of 132,000 words. Thankfully, that got edited down to a much leaner 116,000 words.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved the great thriller and adventure writers. I was hooked on Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan stories, as well as Frederick Forsyth and John Grisham. For adventure, I’ve never encountered a better narrative storyteller than Wilbur Smith, with the possible exception of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Edgar Rice Burroughs.
In August, I’m publishing my first science fiction novel: Arcadia – Book One of the Eternity Series. I was brought up reading the classic sci fi authors like Larry Niven, Frederik Pohl, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and especially Arthur C Clarke. But more recently I have discovered Dennis E Taylor and I’m just in awe of his world-building talent. If you’ve not come across it yet, check out his fantastic Bobiverse series. You can thank me later!
What are you working on now?
Right now I’m splitting my time between working on the sci fi novel Arcadia, and book two of the Wilderness Series: The Skadi Inferno.
Arcadia was originally a two-hour screenplay I wrote for Amazon Prime Video. They didn’t take it up so I’m now adapting it as a novel. There’s plenty of action and intrigue, and some fantasy elements as well. But at its core, Arcadia is a good, solid hard sci fi adventure.
When I’m not working on Arcadia, I’m writing The Skadi Inferno. This is a very different book to The Spirit Road, but has the same group of characters fighting to survive, this time in the frozen wastes of Antarctica. I’m having a lot of fun writing this one, and slipping back into the characters that I developed in book one.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
When I finished The Spirit Road, I embarked on that most demoralising and fruitless exercise: finding an agent. I knew it was a good book, but as I had found with The Tin Kicker, agents weren’t looking for these types of books. After half a dozen rejections, I decided to go the self-publishing route. This was when I happened upon an article on Jericho Writers, detailing a plan that looked like it could work. I’ve followed that plan quite closely and had some success, but it’s clear that it needs some augmenting. Marketing The Spirit Road is still a work in progress, but I believe groups like Awesome Gang may just be enough to tip the book into the top 100 in its chosen Amazon categories.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Loads!
1 Have faith in yourself and your ability to write good books. Seriously, self-doubt is a bigger killer than a corrupted hard drive.
2 Be persistent and nurture a book once it’s published. Explore various advertising and book promotion avenues. Just make sure you have a coherent plan that makes sense to you, and keep plugging at it.
3 If you can afford it, get your book professionally edited. If you can’t, it’s not a problem. Go through it again and again until you’re happy with it. If possible, get a few people to beta read it for you for free or as a quid pro quo. Try using ‘Read Aloud’ in MS Word; it helps you catch a lot of errors that the eye skips over.
4 Make sure your cover isn’t just ‘good enough’. The idea is for it to catch the eye of a browsing shopper, which means it can’t just be pretty, it has to jump out and say “HEY, COME AND TAKE A LOOK!”
5 Start to develop a mailing list. I use MailerLite to manage mine. Integrate it with your website and be prepared to give away a free story to get readers’ email addresses. Feel free to visit my website to see how it works. I’m happy to answer any questions if I can. Good luck!
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
The best publishing advice was Harry Bingham’s article on self-publishing, which can be found in the library section of Jericho Writers. I can’t emphasise enough just how helpful and empowering this article felt. Instead of the usual, daunting impossibility of having any kind of success, it left me with three words bouncing around my head: This. Could. Work.
The worst advice was from a successful, traditionally published writer: “Get yourself a good agent”. This was the most stupid, inane, patronising nonsense I’ve heard. When it’s nigh on impossible to get any agent to give your work a second glance, this smug so-and-so tells people to go and get a good one. Thanks, Einstein.
What are you reading now?
I’m currently reading a book I haven’t read since it was first published twenty-five years ago: The Seventh Scroll by Wilbur Smith. I do that a lot, going back and re-reading books, and I remembered just how good this one was way back in the dark ages of 1995!
What’s next for you as a writer?
Well, the rest of this year will be taken up with finishing Arcadia and The Skadi Inferno. Next year, I dare say there will be a sequel to Arcadia to write, followed by book three in the Wilderness Series. This time, the team head back to central Africa and the Chambeshi River Dam. If you’re not familiar with that tale, check out the free story on my website: Into the Wilderness – Prelude to the Wilderness Series.
I also have an idea for a contemporary horror story, based on Scottish folklore. That could be a lot of fun.
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?
Now there’s a question! Four books maximum, you say? Okay, let’s get the easy one out of the way first:
1 Bear Grylls Ultimate Survival Handbook. For practical reasons. I’m not exactly Ranulph Fiennes.
2 Then I would want a damned good encyclopedia.
3 A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C Clarke, because it’s a brilliant story.
4 Five on Kirrin Island Again by Enid Blyton, because I’m still a child at heart.
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