Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m Rhys, recently entered my fourth decade of living, and recently gone from a full time professional career to part time in order to study at university! The amount of time I have has freed up so much that I have a lot more time to write than I did before.
I began writing aged 11. I think it was in the summer transitioning from primary to secondary school. Being the cool kid I clearly was, I bought from Ottakar’s (since merged into Waterstones) The Wind Singer by William Nicholson. It was a book that a couple of friends from school had themselves read and I thought I would give it a go. Up until that point, I was reading and re-reading Harry Potter like there was no tomorrow (I was in the generation when we were the same age as the characters in the first three film releases). I didn’t have a very broad horizon of fiction that I had read, save for what we were reading all together in school. When I bought that book then, it was almost like an epiphany. There was something of a very content, fulfilled and even sophisticated feeling of holding a fresh new book, complete in itself. From there I decided that I wanted to create my own, new complete book. From then on I’ve been jotting my ideas down , of which there are quite a lot, and planning out my ideas for years, in and around everyday life and my eventual career(s). My reading range rapidly increased as well a I found it easier to pick anything up and read it.
I’ve only written one book, my debut novel detailed in the next question, but I have dozens of ideas on the go. Or rather, I have dozens of ideas on the to-do pile! And I fully intend on seeing them all through!
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My latest book is actually my debut novel, the first one published. It’s called ‘Payment’. Payment is actually started out as a short story competition entry in early 2017. The theme was horror and it was done on the website fanstory.com. What FanStory is, is a website that lets aspiring authors enter writing competitions and/or write their own works to be read and reviewed by fellow aspiring writers or people who simply love to read.
I didn’t win the competition. I was a bit miffed because I actually thought the winning entry was unoriginal and not written too well. But it didn’t really matter; the reviews and words of encouragement I received from random people on the internet, none of whom I know personally or have met, encouraged me to keep writing. I decided that there was so much more I could do with Payment. Here was a basic skeleton of a story (no pun intended given the horror theme) with a lot of unexplored themes, avenues and even literary devices. So I decided that I would make Payment a full length novel over 40,000 words. I even manage to incorporated one or two other ‘flash fiction’ competition entries that I did on FanStory into this novel too!
Payment is a back-to-basics gothic horror. There are references to things featured in many horror stories, such as ghosts and old, spooky mansions, and the story itself is written from the point of view of the main character; a 19th Century Esquire, dealing with the themes of loneliness, fate and forgiveness as he tries to protect what matters most to him against forces he can’t understand.
Payment was released on 13th March of this year. Some of you will look at your phones or diaries or calendars and see that it was a Friday the 13th! Don’t worry though, it’s already horror themed, so there’s nothing wrong with that 😉
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
It’s usually a case of writing loads and loads in one go over a period of time, then not writing anything on the project for several weeks or months at a time. Eventually I’ll return to the project, but not after starting another one on the go.
I also have the habit of writing the start, then the end (or vice versa), a bit here in the plot, a bit there in the plot, piecing it all together like a jigsaw puzzle. Some may like that idea but it really does require a lot of extra effort in order to ensure that all plot points are connected correctly and there’s no dead or loose ends.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
There’s a wide variety of people who have influenced me, and they have done so in different ways:
JRR Tolkien. Easily the grandfather of modern high-fantasy, he wrote the famous ‘Hobbit’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’ novels after spending a couple of decades crafting his own world, complete with lore and language. The dedication, I think, has not been matched in anyone’s works since. Plus, there is a ‘quintessential Englishness’ about him that does not in any way imbibe the rushed, commercialised way of life there is today.
Michael Crichton and Alister McCain. Their works are very engaging novels, and with an ‘old-school’ rugged feeling about them.
Wilbur Smith and Bernard Cornwall. The former close to the previous to as well but both take on various periods in history having done extensive research. I’m very much into history and the majority of my works are going to be in non-modern times. I look to these two authors as guides for the amount of research I am going to have to do to maintain an historical accuracy.
What are you working on now?
I actually have two on the go – although I am aware that that is not necessarily always recommended! I have a medieval adventure-quest on the go that will probably take a couple of years to finish in all honesty. I’m not going to disclose exactly what the quest is about. I think I have thought of a very, very simple idea that nobody has yet come up with and I’d be rather miffed if someone else saw the idea and published a work on it before I could! The themes are, I think, rather clever and will make people go “ahhhh” in realisation. That’s what I’m hoping to achieve anyway.
The other project is going to be set in the 1700s and focuses on investigation and legal proceedings. Whilst the application of law itself is fundamentally duller than dishwater, the history of English Common Law and the history of legal processes are something I have actually found very interesting. The beauty of the internet era is that you don’t have to search very far to find court records and proceedings from centuries past that have since been transcribed digitally. I have read into trials and judiciary proceedings that have taken place where I live from centuries past. It’s incredible that it’s fundamentally the same today. Again, like with the above project, I’m not divulging too much information about the themes of the investigations/trials.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
In all honesty, I’m still very much working that one out. I’ve done a Facebook ad campaign and another paid site’s promotion deals but they haven’t amounted to anything. Didn’t even break even. So now, I’m trying to go for a different approach. I firmly believe social media plays a massive factor in marketing so I’m trying to go for that approach, with things like instagram. But I find myself doing a fair few author interviews on the internet too. I think for me my best bet might be doing things like this, going for smaller target audiences, engage with them before expanding.
To be honest, I think gothic horror is a vey, very specific genre anyway. It might not necessarily appeal to as many people as general fiction do.
That said I do have a couple of podcast guest appearances lined up!
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Just write your novel. Don’t worry about whether or not people will like it or not. With over 7 billion people on the planet you will find that many people don’t like idea. But with 7 billion people on this Earth, there will be many that do, and your story may be a pleasant pastime or distraction for them. Just write. Don’t get caught up on publishers. If you haven’t yet written your story, a publisher can’t read it or publish it. Just write. Don’t fret over the marketing you have to do if you’re self publishing, because you can’t market something that hasn’t yet been written. Just write.
I talk about this a little bit in a Medium.com article I wrote (link at the bottom). There are hundreds of people in this world who say “I would have done [insert dream] but I couldn’t because [insert lame excuse]”. Don’t be one of those people with big, challenging and achievable ambitions but ultimately mediocre lives. Just write. Norman Vincent Peale said, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss you’ll still land amongst the stars”. There is never a truer phrase to describe writing your own fiction.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Someone once told me, which I think is loosely based off a phrase Winston Churchill once said, “You’re never going to do something that doesn’t attract criticism. If no-one’s critiquing or disagreeing with you, you’re not doing anything.”
Rightly or wrongly, everything we do will attract the ire of someone, especially in today’s over-sensitive, entitled, woke world. Might as do it anyway, and bollocks to them.
What are you reading now?
I’m actually reading a non-fiction book at the moment: Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock.
For those people who are unaware of who he is, Graham Hancock is a leading advocate of the theory that civilisation is actually much, much older than what history presents. An example of this is the (scientifically accurate but not culturally accepted) theory that the Sphinx’s weathering is due to rain erosion as oppose to wind. The last time it rained with such ferocity in that region was thousands of years before the Sphinx is said to have been built. The period Hancock hypothesises the sphinx was built was during a time when the constellation Leo was facing the Sphinx. A lot of journaled archaeologists try to debunk and dismiss Hancock but the evidence is mounting up in his favour, which could mean changing the history books.
What’s next for you as a writer?
I think for me it’s going to be continuing writing the projects I have on the go, naturally, but with that there is a lot if research that I need to do for them, so that’ll be next for me.
Research is one of the most important parts of novel writing to me. All bar one or two of my ideas for projects are all historical stories, so I try my best to be absolutely meticulous in the historical accuracy of attitudes, inventions, events and people who lived in those times. It is all too easy these days, with instant access to unlimited information, to read a paragraph and ‘fact check’ it. If a person has discovered an inaccuracy, the done thing these days isn’t to write a private letter to the author(ess) or publisher, but to showcase that mistake on social media as if it was a circus attraction. This typical behaviour that is all too common these days makes research and accuracy all the more important.
The research can sometimes take as much time, if not more, as the writing during the periods of time that I have to write. Research is also fundamentally important not only to keep the fact-checkers at bay, but as many works of fiction require a suspension of disbelief, there needs to be at least an element of belief in there to start with.
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?
Definitely a Discworld novel, for that light hearted humour to remain sane and those philosophical moments to remain focused.
One of the books that feature on the ‘longest novels of all time’ for sure. If there’s a possibility I’m going to be there a while then I might as well achieve reading one of books. Not Les Mis as I’ve already read that. I might attempt War and Peace again then.
I’d probably have a light-hearted easy read with some length to it, to balance out the giant epic above. Difficult or long reads can be mentally exhausting, and something that contrasts it could be a good respite.
And of course, ‘how to build a raft’ 😉
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