Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Hi! I grew up in Massachusetts, but have spent all my adult life in Texas. My interests in my early days were playing musical instruments, then I shifted to acting, before I decided to go back to college and get a BS in Computer Science, which is the field I spent the last thirty years in. I’m also a karaoke junkie and a former wargamer.
Most everything I’ve written has been short fiction in the speculative fiction genres (sci-fi, fantasy and light horror), and I have around 90 stories out there in the ether, singly and in collections, including two series (Herc Tom, Champion of the Empire & Detective Jimmy Delaney.) I published my first novel last year (Swordsmaster.)
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Let’s go with Swordsmaster, which is my first novel. I actually started writing it in 1979 (did I mention that I’m old?) when I was just playing around. That was a long time ago, so any memory of what inspired it is gone. I stopped writing it after 80 hand-written pages (no PCs then, guys) because a character I really liked was heading to his death, and I didn’t know how to stop it, so I stopped writing. There are four main events in the story that anchored it (Sandrik’s exile, finding the sword, Svaerd’s escape, and the final ritual in Taernfeld), and so the story stayed in the back of my mind all these years.
I didn’t get serious about writing until 2008, and after spending a few years getting used to short fiction, I decided to return to Swordsmaster, and finished it last year (I like advertising it as “A story forty years in the making!”, which either sounds impressive or pathetic, depending on how you look at it.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
No unusual writing habits, except that I am quite often surprised by where my stories take me (I usually am pleasantly surprised.)
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Tolkien, Orson Scott Card and the Twilight Zone (I often see my scenes in classic TV black and white.)
What are you working on now?
I’m currently working on the sequel to Swordsmaster.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Promotion is something I’m not good at – I am just now focusing on learning the tricke of the trade. I publish directly to Amazon and to Smashwords, which then distributes everywhere else.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
If you want to be an author, you must write, and you must get the story down in rough draft as soon as it occurs to you. Don’t worry about finding the perfect word, or whether you put the comma in the right place until the rough draft is done – THEN you can let your internal editor (I call him my INFERNAL editor) loose to clean things up (but not too much.)
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Heinlein’s Rules:
1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you write.
3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.
4. You must put the work on the market.
5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.
What are you reading now?
I just finished Patrick Rothfuss’ The Wise Man’s Fear (great fantasy series – if he ever writes the third book), and am reading Jim Butcher’s “Fool Moon” (the second of his Dresden Files.)
What’s next for you as a writer?
Finish the rough draft for Swordsmaster’s sequel (working title Swordsmaster: Deception.)
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?
I’m going to cheat and pick series – Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, and Ender’s Game.
Author Websites and Profiles
William Mangieri Website
William Mangieri Amazon Profile
William Mangieri Author Profile on Smashwords
William Mangieri’s Social Media Links
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