Interview With Author Ivan Scott
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
My road to being a published author is sometimes as crazy as the stories I write. I am up to my sixth book now, and a seventh in October.
I have written ever since I was in elementary school and finally was able to get serious about it, and know that I am doing the one thing that I am passionate about doing.
My books look at the romance we have for each other as well as for life. My muse is my redheaded wife, and the times we get to share since those stories will live on long after we both have left the world. To me, that’s the ultimate victory, and no matter what happens, a piece of me will live on in the stories I create so that one day, people can read about the world I lived in.
He has Dyslexia, so that is a struggle at times with his writing, but as he tells his two children, whom both have Dyslexia too, “Never use your challenges as an excuse. Use them to achieve greatness.”
His first book was rejected 303 times, but he didn’t take no for an answer and decided to self-publish and has never looked back. Writing the story, formatting it, creating the cover, and doing all the marketing seemed like a daunting task, but as he says, “When you have passion and persistence, nothing is impossible.”
He lives with his beautifully saucy Redheaded wife, two troublemaking kids, and a Rat Terrier named Beesley in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs.
Scott currently has five books published, and another that will be reelased in October 2024.
To learn more about Ivan, please visit him on Instagram, X, Facebook, Goodreads, and YouTube. To get a look at what his inspirations are for the characters and places used in his stories, visit his Pinterest page.
He has written five books, all RomComs with a redheaded heroine.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My latest book is titled, A Redhead in Brooklyn. The story is about a baseball player who goes back in time to 1955 to fulfill a promise he made to his father, but there he meets a girl who he falls in love with. When the season ends, he has to decide to either stay in 1955 with the girl he loves, or come back to present day.
At the end of the day, I hope the reader also wonders what it would be like to leave behind all the technology of present day to be with someone you love back in 1955.
I have always been a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, and have always wondered what it would be like to play a game at Ebbets Field. More importantly, I wonder what it would be like to be in the middle of a place where the team meant everything, and the players were royalty.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I have dyslexia, so creating my stories takes me a different route than others.
I write all my stories in notebooks, since I need to be able to ross out sentences, write notes in the margins, and feel like I am not writing in a box. After I finish, I will transfer the pages to the laptop.
I also have a large newspaper sized tablet that I use when I want to see the story and the characters. I will break out the markers and use colored boxes for the characters, draw arrows to other boxes, and then I see the story and where things need to go.
Since I am visual, that is my way to get the story where it needs to be.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Hemingway is my mentor/favorite writer, and his words and stories have inspired me. I think the reason why is when I read his books, I think that he must know who I am and wrote about my life since his feelings are the same as mine. Also his fears and the way he looked at life is similar to how I look at life too.
I also like Fitzgerald, and The Great Gatsby is a magical story about life. He comes at it differently than Hemingway, but still its a fascinating look at how people wrote about life, especially 100 years ago. I found that there wasn’t too much difference from the 1920’s to the 2020’s, just different clothes and language. But the feelings were the same.
The Eric Segal book, The Class, is another great book that influenced me about how authors who write about people make those stories tat are fiction come to life, and the story becomes real to us since we can identify with it.
What are you working on now?
My sixth book, The Redhead and the Fountain Pen, is a story about a man in Atlanta who moves to a small town in the north Georgia mountains. He finds a Dear Jill letter in a copy of, “The Great Gatsby,” and tracks her down to lend his support to her.
Since he doesn’t like social media, and neither does she, so they communicate through handwritten letters, and they eventually fall in love based on their words to each other.
In this day and age, I think this is a nice change from learing about someone through a profile or on a dating service.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I have a limited budget, so I have to be creative in marketing my books.
I use Instagram, Facebook, X and have made several contacts who have me as a guest on their podcasts.
I have joined several writers groups as well, and promoting through their sites and pages is another great way to get the word out.
I have business cards printed so if I am out, I can give it to whoever I meet so that’s another way to get your brand out to the world.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Yes, there are a few ideas.
Be thick skinned. Agents are rough and you will have much more rejection than success, so be tough in the face of all the nos.
Write what’s in your heart. If you are passionate about a story, then it will be the best thing you will write, since you will write it with your heart. By the same token, take that and write the first draft with your heart. The edit with your head. But your best work is the work that you love and are knowledgeable about.
Stephen King’s book on writing is like a tool box of information that has helped me. Also, Hemingway’s book on writing is another excellent source of advice for writers.
There will be times you want to give up. Being a writer will find out if you are serious about it or not. If you aren’t, it will find you and you’ll make excuses for not writing and eventually give it up completely. If you love it, all you’ll want to do is write, and feel bad when you’re not doing it, and that’s when you’ll know it’s for you.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Don’t let anyone tell you what you can and can’t do. If you want to write a story, and create something that will live forever, only you can stop yourself. Also, you don’t need anyone’s permission to be what you want to be.
What are you reading now?
I am reading Volume 2 of the letters of Ernest Hemingway. It’s a fascinating look at his life through his letters and how his books came to be. It’s like a blueprint to where he got his motivation from, and his ideas for creating stories.
What’s next for you as a writer?
On to book six, which I am going to release in October. And then book seven, which is a hockey romance that will be released in the spring of 2025. Well, unless an agent finds me and wants to work together…haha
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?
The Old Man and the Sea. The Great Gatsby. Bums, the oral history of the Brooklyn Dodgers and The Sun Also Rises.
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