Author interview with crime writer Peter Tickler

Welcome to another of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with crime novelist Peter Tickler. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello, Peter. Please tell us something about yourself, and how you came to be a writer.

Peter:  I think writing crept up on me when I wasn’t looking and prodded me in the ribs. My first published piece was one on war-gaming, when I was about 18. I was thrilled when the magazine not only published it, but sent me a cheque for £20. I sent two more articles. They published those too, but somehow no further cheque ever arrived in the post!

Morgen: Oh dear. My first published piece was a 60-word story in Woman’s Weekly for which I got £10 (not a bad word rate). I’d sent them a whole page of stories and the one they picked (‘Pizza Payback’ which they renamed ‘Payback’) was the first one so I thought they’d print more but sadly they stopped doing the 60-worders a couple of months later. You generally write crime novels, have you considered other genres?

Peter:  Not as yet. I have written a number of monologues based on biblical stories for my local radio station, but I’ve never tried other fiction genres.

Morgen: You have had three novels published to-date? Have you ever been tempted, or indeed written, under a pseudonym?

Peter: No. I guess I’d have to be pretty embarrassed about what I had written to do that.

Morgen: 🙂 Your books are available as eBooks – how involved were you in that process? Do you read eBooks or is it paper all the way?

Peter:  When I signed my contract for Blood on the Cowley Road, electronic publishing rights were not even included. Later they sent me an addendum to sign. As far as I am concerned, eBooks is something that happens at some point after the hardback has been published, with no extra input on my part.

Morgen: It’s very easy to do (I have a guide for indie publishers to do their own) and the great thing is if you wanted to change anything (perhaps update factual events), it’s just a case of re-uploading a Word document. You mentioned hardbacks, are they released first in that format and then in paperback? Do you think the format matters?

Peter: Yes, they are, but interestingly the time gap between the publication of the two has become increasingly shorter.

Morgen: I know a couple of authors whose publishers have stopped doing hardbacks and Amazon sell less of them than any other format, which is a shame because I prefer them to paperbacks (I’m a don’t-like-damaging-paperback-spines reader). Your books are set in your home area of Oxford, how important is location to your writing and have you had reader feedback about the city?

Peter:  I love writing about Oxford because I have lived there so long (and also studied as a student). Describing it accurately is important to me, though of course sometimes I do just make buildings and even streets up. But if I can set a scene in an ice-cream shop that really exists (see Blood on the Marsh for that), I will. People seem to really like the authenticity of the locations. One man queried my depiction of Grandpont as being Labour voting and Guardian reading, but it turned out he had lived in Grandpont thirty years previously.

Morgen: Oh wow. That’s the joy (or sometimes the opposite) of reader feedback. I love it – even when I had a lady on Goodreads say she hated one of my stories (Feeding the Father, based on a true story) so much she vowed never to read anything by me again (which is a shame because she’s previously said how much she’d loved another (April’s Fool). You’re a fan of the football club, Oxford United, and you wrote for their programme recently, has the club, or the sport, ever featured in your fiction?

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Author interview with humorous non-fiction writer Amy L Peterson

Welcome to another of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with humorous non-fiction author Amy L Peterson. I first chatted with Amy (click here for that interview) back in April 2012 where we talked generally about writing. Amy is back today, with an update, and to talk more specifically about writing non-fiction. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello, Amy. Welcome back. Please tell us something about yourself, and remind us where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.

Amy: I’m an author, wife, stepmom, grant manager and caretaker of pets. Our pet count currently includes two puppies, one middle-aged cat, two mynah birds, seven hamsters, and three aquariums of fish (because the discus fish didn’t get along and needed to be separated).

I’m based in mid-Michigan near the home of the Michigan State University Spartans. It seems I’ve always written, but didn’t think much of it until I won second place in a Law Day essay contest in fifth or sixth grade.  The prize was $50 and I realized then that I’d have to be really lucky to make a lot of money writing and that it’d be a good hobby.

Morgen: Which sounds like it then became a career (I use the term loosely, I think most of us who write full-time are still working on making it our careers!). You write non-fiction, how do you decide what to write about?

Amy:  When I became a stepmom to four kids and hadn’t a clue what I was doing, I thought perhaps my experience might be entertaining and helpful to other stepmoms and potential stepmoms, so that became the basis of my first book, From Zero to Four Kids in Thirty Seconds.  Shortly after I got married, my husband began bringing animals into the house and that material evolved into Something Furry Underfoot.

Morgen: A great husband. Many, I would have said, would have frowned on their wives or children doing that. What have you had published to-date? Do you write under a pseudonym?

Amy:  From Zero to Four Kids in Thirty Seconds is about becoming a stepmom to four great kids, who were 3, 5, 13 and 15 at the time I met them. All of the kids are big now and survived being under the same roof with me at times, so I guess that worked out okay.  Something Furry Underfoot is about taking care of, and trying to spoil, a whole bunch of different pets.

I’m reserving the use of a pseudonym for when I get into a whole bunch of trouble and want to write about it without anyone knowing it’s me.  So far, no need.

Morgen: 🙂 That’s what I thought but I’ve written some very (very) dark crime that I’ll probably use another name for… we shall see. Have you self-published? If so, what lead to you going your own way?

Amy: I self-published because I worked with a literary agent once upon a time and it didn’t have a happy ending. Self-publishing is a lot of work but it puts the writer in control of their own destiny.

Morgen: That’s a shame, but you’re not the first writer I’ve spoken to who has had that experience, but as you say, we have more control going our own way and really, we have to do most of the marketing ourselves these days anyway. Are your books available as eBooks? Do you read eBooks or is it paper all the way?

Author interview with non-fiction and short story writer Trish Nicholson

Welcome to another of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with non-fiction, short story writer and spotlightee Trish Nicholson. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello, Trish. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based.

Trish: I am from the Isle of Man so I’m part Celtic, part Viking, and like many islanders, seem destined to wander. After fifteen years of living and working in various corners of the world, I’ve settled in the ‘winterless’ Far North of New Zealand, on top of a hill overlooking a lake which is my daily inspiration.

Morgen: I’ve moved five times in my life, the grand sum of sixty miles. A lake would inspire me too – I love water and yet live in the middle of England, three hours away from the sea but I do plan to have a house with a sea view eventually. How did you come to be a writer?

Trish: I’m not sure at what point one calls oneself ‘a writer’. Writing came in somewhere in all the careers I’ve followed, research, interpretation, newsletters, press releases and so on, but in the 1980s I was asked to write a regular column for a UK management magazine and a number of features for national newspapers. So I suppose you could call that the start. But my background is anthropology and whenever I could, I was travelling, not only around Europe for my work, but trekking in the Himalayas and in South America, feeding my curiosity and indulging in photography. In the end, these interests won – I left the UK for my first overseas job in rural development in Papua New Guinea and worked there for five years. Writing then was mainly in a personal journal – lots of extraordinary happenings to scribble down.

I worked in the Philippines for a further five years after that, with more research in Vietnam and a year in Australia. After my return to the UK, all that experience led to a couple of commissions. I was invited to contribute a chapter to a book on anthropology; Earthscan asked me to co-edit and write new material for the 1999 edition of The Green Travel Guide, and I worked for a UK university as a gobbeter, writing synopses of research reports for their website. Poor pay but wonderful practise for a writer – reducing great wads of text to 500 words. That’s probably where my love of flash fiction came from.

And then I settled in New Zealand. At first, I was too busy planting my hillside in native trees to do much writing, but now I write full time and love it.

Morgen: Having an interest in photography must help when designing book covers. You write non-fiction, how do you decide what to write about?

Trish: I write short stories as well, but yes, most of my published work is non-fiction – management, anthropology, tourism, and latterly, travelogues. They’ve all arisen from my overseas working and travelling, some involved extensive research. Masks of the Moryons for example, an eBook about the Easter pageant on Marinduque Island in the Philippines, was based on three years in the field – it was the basis of my doctoral degree, but of course, had to be completely restyled for publication. I’ve even written a short popular-science book, but that combines short fiction with anthropology; it traces how humans evolved as storytellers – that was huge fun to write. And my latest book explores the relationship between readers and writers when they ‘meet’ in a story. No shortage of topics to write about.

Morgen: I purely write fiction (or non-fiction about writing) and have more ideas than I can cope with, even writing a story a day for my 5pm Fiction slot. Writing non-fiction and short stories, are there any differences or similarities between writing non-fiction and fiction?

Author interview with mystery writer Catherine Astolfo (part 2)

Welcome to the latest of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with mystery novelist and interviewee (October 2011) Catherine Astolfo. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello, Catherine. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.

Catherine: Hi, Morgen! I’m from a medium-sized city in Canada, located near Toronto, Ontario. Growing up, the city was a small town, and we had characters galore. My mother always told us lovely stories about her life on a farm. Thus I had a rich upbringing in creativity. As soon as I could put pencil to paper, I started writing stories. First, fairy tales for my classmates, then short stories for my sisters and cousins. I have the feeling that I was born a writer.

Morgen: How lovely. I read a lot when I was younger (and Stephen King in my teens) but it didn’t occur to me that it was a profession I could do until I went to evening classes January 2005). What genre do you generally write and have you considered other genres?

Catherine: I write mysteries. Lately, there is a new sub-genre that’s being bandied about in North America at least: the literary mystery. Much as I dislike the term “literary”, I must say that I am happy at last to have a category for my books. One literary agent said that the plots of literary mysteries are “underneath the surface”. The characters take the front seat. The vocabulary tends to be somewhat more extensive and the focus is on the personalities involved. The reader learns something about the human condition through the stories. In addition to solving a puzzle, of course. My current novel, Sweet Karoline, can also be classed as a psychological thriller: the unreliable narrator; the underlying feeling that we’re not being told everything. I have considered other genres, especially the general literary one. In fact, I have an outline for a future book that follows a couple of generations of women.

Morgen: I’ve always thought of literary as being a genre that are more poetic than other genres (and where non-genre books fit)… no doubt I’ll have readers tell me otherwise! What have you had published to-date? Do you write under a pseudonym?

Catherine: I have had four mystery novels and several short stories published so far. On July 14, 2013, the fifth book, Sweet Karoline, debuted. My publisher is an independent Canadian company from Edmonton, Alberta. My short stories have appeared in such publications as NorthWord Literary Magazine. In fact, “What Kelly Did” won the 2012 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Story in Canada. I don’t use a pseudonym, although I have considered using my maiden name for a future book that’s not in the mystery genre.

Morgen: Some authors do to avoid their avid fans expecting one book but reading another (although looking at the jacket blurb would help) but I’ve always written a bit of everything so I don’t have to another name (it is hard enough to get one noticed!). Have you self-published? If so, what led to you going your own way?

Author interview with poet Linda Eve Diamond

Welcome to another of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with poet Linda Eve Diamond. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello, Linda.

Linda: Hi Morgen. First, thanks so much for the interview and for sharing my poetry on your wonderful Website!

Morgen: You are very welcome, Linda. Thank you for providing it and for being here today. Please tell us something about yourself and how you came to be a writer.

Linda: My writing began in the technical writing field over 20 years ago, but how that came about is too long to tell here. At the time, though, I never imagined even attempting any sort of creative writing. Even when an idea or little turn of phrase came to me that made me want to try, I’d ignore it because I felt I didn’t know what to do with it or how to write a poem. After a while, I just started writing these things down anyway… and there it was… and I couldn’t stop. My newest book, The Beauty of Listening, is my second poetry collection.

Morgen: It’s interesting you went the non-fiction route first. To-date the only non-fiction I’ve written is about writing but I’m thinking of writing articles about other topics. Do you write poetry to form or as it comes?

Linda: Mostly I’ll write poetry as it comes, though sometimes different forms intrigue me and I’ll play around with them. In the new book, I play a lot with concrete poetry, a form that builds shapes with the words. My favourite is a little poem I wrote for my husband, Jeff, just before our wedding called The Rings, which wraps two lines of poetry into circles, side by side.

Morgen: That sounds delightful. Do you generally write rhyming or free verse?

Linda: Most of my poetry is free verse, but you’ll also find a rhyme from time to time.

Morgen: Being a (pretty much) non-poet, I do think writing rhyme is harder. You mentioned two collections of poetry, what have you had published to-date?

Linda: I’ve written eleven books in the areas of business, education, self-help and poetry. A few of the titles are Rule #1: Stop Talking: A Guide to Listening, E-Z Spelling, a spelling book for Barron’s Educational Series, and books for McGraw-Hill’s Perfect Phrases series, from Perfect Phrases for Writing Business Announcements to Perfect Phrases for Sales Presentations. Of course, even the “perfect phrase” books emphasize listening. My two poetry books are The Human Experience, which was one of my earliest books back in 2007, and The Beauty of Listening, which was just published in June 2013.

Morgen: A new baby. 🙂 Do you write under a pseudonym?

Linda: I’ve always written under my own name. My husband, Jeff, and I were married in 2011 and I decided to take his name, but I still continue to write under my maiden name, which is Diamond. Oddly enough, this change in legal name makes Diamond into sort of a pseudonym. So, I’ve always been and will continue to be a Diamond in my writing life, but now in “real life” I’m a Novick, too.

Morgen: 🙂 Are your books available as eBooks? How involved were you in that process?

Linda: I think most of my books are available as ebooks, but I haven’t been very involved with that part of the process. Moving forward, I’ll be more involved with this. I’m in the process now of looking into making The Beauty of Listening available as an ebook.

Morgen: It’s not as hard as people think (I have tips on http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/ebooks/how-to-create-an-ebook). Do you have a favourite of your poems or topic to write about?

Author interview with historical romance and mystery writer Elizabeth Bailey

Welcome to another of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with historical romance and mystery Elizabeth (Liz) Bailey (no relation) :). A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello, Liz. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.

Liz: Hello, Morgen, and thanks for inviting me here. I’m based in Sussex in the UK, and took up writing as a secondary career after I’d been in the theatre for years. I had always written, but never thought of doing so professionally until my sister put together a co-operative to send work out. Then I got down to business and began writing historical romance.

Morgen: I’d always enjoyed English and read prolifically in my teens but it never occurred to me until I went to evening classes in 2005 that it could be a career. It took another six years for me to realise it’s what I wanted to do… and have done full-time for the past year. Isn’t it the best feeling? What genre do you generally write and what have you had published to-date? What do you think of eBooks?

Liz: I write both historical romance and mystery, and have had both published. Harlequin Mills & Boon (the UK branch) produced 18 of my historical romances, and Berkley in the US did the first two of my Lady Fan mysteries. I’m a great fan of eBooks and have started my own independent publishing with Amazon and Smashwords.

Morgen: What lead to you going your own way?

Liz: As so often happens in this business, for different reasons, I lost both my publishers. Fortunately just at the point where authors are taking control of their own careers with the growth of independent publishing. I had already self-published, or rather co-published a print novel POD called Fly the Wild Echoes, in a different genre, which hadn’t found a home. I’m now re-releasing the title on eBook.

Morgen: Do let me know how that goes. You could come back for an author spotlight. Do you have a favourite of your stories or characters? If any of your books were made into films, who would you have as the leading actor/s?

Liz: My current love is my heroine sleuth Ottilia Fanshawe (properly Lady Francis Fanshawe), and I would love Kristin Scott Thomas to play her.

Morgen: A great actress. Do you manage to write every day, and do you plot your stories or just get an idea and run with it?

Author interview with poet, short story author and novelist Marc D Brown

Welcome to another of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, scriptwriters, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with poet, short story author and novelist Marc D Brown. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello, Marc. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.

Marc: I’m Marc or Marc D Brown, I’m 27 and from York in the UK. I’ve been writing since I was about 17.

Morgen: Not far off me; 2005 to-date, although add those two ages together and you’ve got mine. 🙂 What genre do you generally write and what have you had published to-date?

Marc: I mainly write poetry and I think that will always be my priority to be honest. I’ve been writing lyrics and poems for years, so the whole writing style flows a little more naturally for me. Currently I have published two collections of poetry ‘Words of Marc D Brown’ & ‘20Seven’ although I do have a few short stories in mind that I’d like to put out there this year and also a novel I’m jotting a lot of ideas down for… I have the beginning and the end, its just the middle I’m struggling with. That’s a work in progress.

Morgen: The middles are always tough – they’re often called the saggy middle, and it’s hard keeping the momentum. Which authors did you read when you were younger and did they shape you as a writer?

Marc: When I was a teenager again I started to read a bit more, I started with Jay Anson’s – The Amityville Horror then moved on to Dave Pelzer’s – A Child Called ‘It’ and The Lost Boy. I wouldn’t say anything I read as a teenager has shaped me and my writing style. I put my style down to people lyrics from Jim Morrison from The Doors to Keith Buckley from Every Time I Die… oh and a lot of horror movies and the news about what goes on in the world.

Morgen: A bit of everything then. Do you manage to write every day, and do you plot your stories or just get an idea and run with it?

Marc: I think I used to write everyday but now if I try to do it, it just feels forced and what goes on to paper or the screen turns out to be naff. With me just getting into story writing it’s a whole jotting ideas down when ever inspiration hits me… sometimes it’s weeks before I get another solid idea which can be a tad frustrating.

Morgen: I’ve been writing a story a day since May 2012 for Story A Day May and 5pm-fiction although I had a break for NaNoWriMo, and I’m taking a break for July and August as I’m concentrating on competitions and magazine / online submissions so I know where you’re coming from (as the saying goes). If you could invite three people from any era to dinner, who would you choose and what would you cook (or hide the takeaway containers)?