Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’ve been writing seriously for more than a decade now, and I have so many drawer books I’m not sure I could list them all. I have two published (one in a children’s series based on Edgar Allen Poe, and the other a Space Western), two more slated for publication this year (book two in the children’s series and book one in a Paranormal series) and six more that I’ve completed the first draft of. And then another six or seven as of this moment that exist as quasi-finished outlines and research folders.
I was born and raised in the mid-west, but for the last seven years we’ve lived on the east coast with a family of seven (the humans are outnumbered by the animals). Someday I will either acquire a pterodactyl or an armadillo. We’re still not sure which would be more dangerous.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Undiscovered Country is my first book, and also my most recent (it’s strange the way ebook and pub schedules line up, and the three month print delay has made it both book one and book three).
The inspiration was a large part fascination with the main character, Orion Bartleby, and panicked wagon circling three days before National Novel Writing Month was supposed to start. I was a regional organizer for NaNo at the time, and it’s a bit like being forced to plot with the world watching. So it all started with his internal dysfunction, and then just blew up from there.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Oh so, so many.
I speed-write, which can lead to entire books (or more than one) springing into being in a matter of weeks. Conversely, it also leads to A LOT of editing time. And it means I have to be harsh when it’s time to dig out the red pens.
I hyper-plot, and excessively over-think things that will never go into an actual book. And then at the same time leave myself half-formed messages as plot points with the assumption I will understand them months or years later. I do not.
And lastly, I tend to start with a single book idea in my head, but by the time I’ve written half of it it’s ballooned into a five-book plot arc that requires it’s own language, three detailed topographical maps, and an entire twelve-book set of source material.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
The first book I read that made me think I wanted to write something like it was by A Year and A Day by Virginia Henley. I read Jurassic Park for a solid four months straight as a seventh grader, and wrote myself into the story in every way imaginable. JK Rowling, John Scalzi, Piers Anthony, Stephanie Laurens, Lilian Jackson Braun, Robert Cormier, the list is epically long and that’s probably a good place to stop.
What are you working on now?
I am currently on final deadlines for the first book in a paranormal trilogy about monster hunters and witches and all kinds of epic craziness. The title is Guardian’s Circle: Book 1, Lost and Found and it’ll be available in early April 2015
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I feel like twitter gives you the most option to actually get somewhere with self-promotion. It gives you the most freedom and movement.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Don’t look at the market, don’t trawl the facebook groups, don’t spend valuable writing time psyching yourself out of writing.
Put your butt in the chair(bed, couch, floor, coffee shop) and write the book you want to write. Worry about the rest of it later.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming…
What are you reading now?
I’m supposed to be reading The Peace War by Vernor Vinge, but I’m leaning toward Dinocalypse Now by Chuck Wendig.
What’s next for you as a writer?
This may I’ll be at Awesome Con in DC with Golden Fleece Press, and trying to launch two of my own books and a handful of books for the press as well.
In the far future I keep thinking about a full Choose Your Own Adventure e-book that actually carries a multitude of story lines so it’s a different book nearly every time you read it, or a mystery series that spans an entire year in the detective’s life released one month at a time.
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?
Jurassic Park–because dinosaurs.
Pride and Prejudice–because Elizabeth, mostly.
Old Man’s War by John Scalzi–because old people in space and boot-camp fic are my secret weaknesses.
And book four is either Dance with the Devil by Sherrilyn Kenyon or Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, depending on the mood I’m in the day I leave.
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