Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’ve been writing seriously for seven years, and in that time I’ve written 40 short stories, 10 novellas and two novels, with a third on the way. I’ve been influenced primarily by Southern Gothic, Modernist, and Russian Literature.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Ceremony of Ashes: A Novella about Witchcraft and Vengeance. I grew up forty-five minutes away from Salem, Massachusetts, where the Salem Witch Trials occurred. The trials, as well as the local folklore surrounding the city served as inspiration for this book, as well as Russian folklore as well.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I use a Sterling 12 Smith Corona Typewriter to write all my first draft. I can’t write first drafts any other way. I can assure you that there’s a practical reason for this and not just for hipster points.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Mikhail Bulgakov, Nikolai Gogol, Virginia Woolf, Fyodor Dostoevsky, William Faulkner, Shirley Jackson, Cormac McCarthy, Mary Shelley have all been deeply influential to me. Prominently the short stories by Nikolai Gogol based on Ukrainian folklore, the Master and Margarita by Bulgakov, as well as McCarthy’s Tennessee novels and Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha lore and atmosphere.
What are you working on now?
Marketing Ceremony of Ashes, with plans to begin a new project in June.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Social media. Interact with your readers. Develop a relationship with them. It makes the reader-writer relationship all the more intertwined and meaningful.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
1,000 words a day is four manuscript pages. That’s a half hour to forty five minutes of your time. After a month you’ve already got one third of a novel completed. You have no excuse.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Never write your ideas down. The good ones will remain in your head.
What are you reading now?
Every marketing book imaginable and also re-reading the Brother’s Karamazov.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Paying my bills.
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 Brothers Karamazov
The Waves
Don Quixote
Absalom, Absalom
Author Websites and Profiles
Jayson Robert Ducharme Website
Jayson Robert Ducharme Amazon Profile
Jayson Robert Ducharme’s Social Media Links
Goodreads Profile