Interview With Author Paul Yoder
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
There’re a few things that really come through in my writing from my upbringing. I was a big pen and paper gamer and I gravitated towards fantasy fiction novels heavily from a very early age. That combination ended up pretty much ensuring I remained a huge fan of the genre for life. I’m just as in love with dragons, elves, magical treasure, undead, and the like to this day and write about it from sun up till sun down, day in and day out.
I’ve written three books in my dark fantasy adventure series titled Lands of Wanderlust. Before that, I had published a few other books, but my main focus is the Lands of Wanderlust series and a fantasy romance series I’m currently working on. (The romance will be my first story published on Kindle Vella!)
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Heart of the Maiden is the third book in the Lands of Wanderlust fantasy series, and it was a conclusion to the Lords of the Deep Hells trilogy. I’m super excited for the next trilogy in the series to come out here in a month or so!
My inspiration for all my books has been: I write what I want to read. That’s the main reason I started writing in the first place. There are endless possibilities we have with the fantasy genre. Literally anything we imagine can have a story told about it—no matter how fantastical. I love that about our genre.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I’m not too interesting there, other than while writing some intense sections, I’ll get up and do some laps around the house geeking out over what my characters are doing. You know how dogs can get a case of the zoomies? Yeah, I totally get that feeling my furry friends. 🙂
What authors, or books have influenced you?
The Coldfire Trilogy by Celia S. Friedman was huge for me as a kid. Before that it was, of course, Lord of the Rings. My first ever series that I picked up on my own (around eight), was the Redwall series by Brian Jacques. Another series that helped through youth was the Dark Elf trilogy by R. A. Salvatore. Thanks Drizzt for guiding a lost young teen through those years! It was then I realized how powerful being an author could be to reach across time and space to speak to someone one who was going through a tough time and help them through it. How amazing is the written word!
What are you working on now?
I’ve been excited to try my hand at two new things: publishing in chapter form on Kindle Vella, and writing some fantasy romance. I’ll be launching the first few chapters soon over there. I think if you follow my amazon author page it should update you once I publish. Make sure to do that if you want to follow these next few publications I’ve got coming up.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I’ve been trying out quite a few methods to promote my books lately. I’m up for trying anything out! That’s the one hard part about being an author. I can write stories all day, every day and be super happy in my own created world; however, when it comes to publishing the book…yeah, there’s a lot of work to be done there. If I was to be honest, I simply would much rather be writing than worrying about marketing and publishing. Ah well, that’s how it goes.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Um…I have a ton of advice for new authors. Just so we’re not making this interview into a novel, I’ll stick to one item: WRITE! If you are wanting to be a successful author and publish often, you’re going to need to consistently output those daily word counts. It can be a thousand words a day, five thousand, or ten thousand, but you’re going to need to start at a number that you can reasonably sustain and then slowly up it. The more you write, the more that you’re becoming what you aspire to be—a writer and author. Keep it up and get at that word count TODAY!
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Always be learning and evolve with the game. That’s true for any industry, but you can’t afford to get too comfortable in your craft. Always be learning and growing. Become accustomed to uncomfortable change and learn how to convert failures into successes by learning from what went wrong and fixing it on your next attempt. Those who make it to the top are the ones that didn’t give up when everyone else did along the way. Keep at it!
What are you reading now?
I have a bad habit of reading a ton of books at once. I just finished Dune (one of the best sci-fi novels I’ve ever had the pleasure to read!) I’m reading Recursion by Blake Crouch. Guild by Raven Kennedy, Dragon’s Gift by Jada Storm, and 2001 A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke. All lovely books so far.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Diving deep into the intricacies of the romance genre. I’ve played with the theme before and always found great stuff there. I’m excited to jump in and get dirty. Kindle Vella, here I come! 🙂
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?
Bram Stoker’s Dracula for one, Frank Herbert’s Dune, and…can I cheat and have all the collected works of Tolkien and count it as one?
Author Websites and Profiles
Paul Yoder’s Social Media Links