Interview With Author Quintin Engelbrecht
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I am an atypical nerd. I love spending hours outdoors doing cycling, hiking multi-day traverses on mountains, freediving and kitesurfing, but also love curling up on the couch and binge-reading a good book. My love for words started when I was about 8. My aunt was moving house and she dumped a few dozen Reader’s Digest into my hands. I devoured them and reread them all several times.
Inspired, I started work on my first book at the age of 10. In Search of The Magnificent TIger. Never got further than 25 pages, but it sparked something. I would go on and finish writing the first version of my novel, The Winds of The Wild Coast in 2015, my last year of high school. It was just over 20k words. A skeleton. And it sat there, waiting to be resurrected. In 2018, I partially translated it from Afrikaans into English, and I saw the potential for it to grow into more. I expanded it further, but life got in the way again.
October 2024. Enough was enough. I took the manuscript and started fresh. I read it, researched, plotted and fleshed out the skeleton and started working. I got it up to 37k words in February of this year till I got stuck. I could have pushed through but I felt something was still missing from the story, and I didn’t know what it was. Another story burned in my mind and I had to get it out.
That is how We Were Here First was born. From March till July I wrote, revised, and edited my debut novella. I am a space nerd(I’d spend hours of my school year afternoons watching space documentaries and reading articles about the space race) and this novella embodies my passion for space exploration and the human element behind it. I am extremely proud of it and I put countless hours of research into this story and made many calculations to ensure things were as accurate as possible. And I also want people who don’t often read hard sci-fi to enjoy. I did my best to write it accurately and accessibly too. And I think I nailed it.
So, to answer succinctly, I have written 2 half books, 1 novella, and am working on the next book of this series.
I hope you like ’em!
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
We Were Here First.
Actually, it was a meme. I am a space-nerd through and through, so I love anything space-related, including the memes.
The meme was: “imagine we land on mars, and inside a cave, you find a piece of paper. what is the scariest thing possibly that could be written on it.”
So I thought something like, “We Were The First Ones!”
Now I took that idea, and brought it to an alternative version of history of the Space Race years.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Nothing special. I like listening to epic instrumental music when writing. Sometimes I need silence to write, other times music, or just ambient sounds. A must for any writing session is a cup of coffee or tea with a rusk.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Wilbur Smith is definitely an author that broadened my horizons. His rich descriptions and sprawling storylines were a joy to read. There are many others who I don’t even remember the name of, but their stories stuck with me.
Others I do need to mention is Colonel Chris Hadfield, Andy Weir, and Dick Francis. I thoroughly enjoyed all of their work and have directly or indirectly influenced me and my writing.
What are you working on now?
Marketing this book! Haha.
On a more serious note, I am working on the sequel to We Were Here First, and also on the prequel, Project Zvezda.
And of course, The Winds of The Wild Coast. It has been churning around my mind and I have solved some of the issues that got me stuck earlier and I am excited to finish and publish it in 2026.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Honestly Tiktok is a great place to start. I wish I did more book-related content as a reader instead of just promoting my books. When I started becoming more of an indie-author supporter, naturally, more people started supporting me. I have seen the most growth there in the last month like that. Threads seems to have some potential. There are more authors than readers on there as far as I have seen, but I am trying to be more active on there.
Surprisingly, Youtube has been great too. I often got 2x or even 5x views of the same video there compared with Tiktok. Even found one of my ARC readers there. So crosspost to every platform you can and see what hits.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Give more to the community than what you take. Be a contributor before being a consumer. Crosspost your videos everywhere you can. Focus on the social media platform you can tolerate the most and crosspost that content elsewhere. It is never to early to start marketing.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Make it exist first. You can make it good later.
What are you reading now?
The Defector, by Chris Hadfield.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Finishing my novella series and getting The Winds of The Wild Coast published too! And another book in the works is called Dead line. A suspense story about a small town in the 1950’s where people die after receiving a phone call. And a switchboard operator is the one to investigate. Already got more ideas for a few more books after that 🙂
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 Bible, What to Do In an Emergency, some kind of massive bound volume of all wikipedia’s articles, and Project Hail Mary.
Author Websites and Profiles
Quintin Engelbrecht Amazon Profile
Quintin Engelbrecht’s Social Media Links
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