Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I think everybody asks at one time or another “who am I?” I’m not much better at answering that question than most people – LO L. I suppose I’d have to answer that I’m kind of a loner. I like solitude, contemplation, and I take a lot of pleasure in solitary pursuits like reading and creative projects.
I love eating at good restaurants, and I have a favorite bar – Gentle Ben’s, in Tucson down by the U of A. If things go well for me I’ll indulge my favorite pursuit which is travel.
As for my writing, my first book was written about 25 years ago, I wrote it when I was living in Bangkok. It was called Death of a Dream; Thumbnail Sketches of the Decline of American Society. It’s a very dark book – about a dozen short bios of different people I knew at the time, and the various aspects of the decay of US society they exemplified.
My other books – Rotting in the Bangkok Hilton, (short stories about my time in Thai prison), and the Nature of Religion – a grisly yet fascinating scholarly overview of spiritual beliefs, are both nonfiction.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
it’s called Lasting Happiness: Secrets of the Heart, Mind and Spirit Revealed. It was the product of immense suffering and pain – but it is also the most important thing I’ve ever contributed. I believe that it holds the keys to contentment and joy for most people on the planet. The book is a paradox – profound insights about happiness that emerged from a terrible experience. The years I spent in prison I was surrounded by death and cruelty. The lessons these things teach can transform your heart and spirit, if you let them. If you strip everything away, you realize that YOU are responsible for your own happiness.
If you are at peace with yourself, and you have people you love around you, you have the foundation you need for a happy life. That is the essence of my book, and it was inspired by my need to make it real for myself and others. All the tools and techniques in the book – which I borrowed from brilliant scientists and philosophers, are just methods of making these central truths real.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
it’s hard to separate out my favorite books from books that have influenced me heavily. There are some books I love because they tell a great story – like Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, and JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series. Those are like old dear friends to me. I love Robert Silverberg’s work, I’m a great fan of Stephen King, and there are many great nonfiction authors very dear to my heart, like Naomi Klein, Derrick Jensen, Dr. Rianne Eisler – too many others to do justice to.
But if I had to pick books that were a great influence a few do stand out. Cosmos by Carl Sagan. The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski. The Golden Bough by James Frazier. The Art of War by Sun Tzu, and of course the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu. Niccolò Machiavelli’s the Prince. The White Goddess by Robert Graves. These are both favorites and seminal influences on my life and writing.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I don’t think there is any one magic formula or “best” way of promoting a book. Local media – your local weekly, community cable and community radio, local university or college papers, and local magazines – these are the most accessible media, and the ones most likely to help you starting out. This has certainly been the case for me.
The many book promo sites are also good, and pretty reasonable financially, to get your book in front of a lot of potential readers.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
without a doubt, it comes from Stephen King’s On Writing – keep it very simple, direct, and descriptive. If your work is active and easy to understand, you are doing the job right. Communication is the name of the game, and the simpler your writing style is the more likely it is you’re going to be able to reach the people you want as your audience.
What’s next for you as a writer?
I have two very different projects that are going to take up my time for a while. One strangely enough is young adult fiction, a book about a young girl who can communicate telepathically with animals. I’ll only say that the theme of the book is our need to rejoin the family of living things.
The other project is more mundane – a long series of seminars that delve very deeply into all the subjects that I raise in my book. The way I wrote the book Lasting Happiness, it’s very short and concentrated. Each chapter is the summation of literally thousands of pages of scholarly and scientific work. The seminars I’d like to do – both video/audio and print versions, basically flesh out the almost telegraphic style of Lasting Happiness.
Author Websites and Profiles
T. M. Hoy Website
T. M. Hoy Amazon Profile
T. M. Hoy Author Profile on Smashwords