What genre do you write and why?
I write to relax. I
enjoy reading Epic Fantasy novels and so, my first published book is in that
genre. I grew up reading Louis L’Amour
and Clive Cussler though, so I have a desire to try that genre at some point,
and I have started about half a dozen times, a book about my adventures in
Baghdad, Iraq in 2004 when I was there serving as a police advisor helping to
stand up a democratic policing presence in a country that had none. Basically, I just like to write, and the
fantasy genre is the most open, allowing me to be creative with character
development and create conflicts that drive character interaction.
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| http://amzn.to/2zXTIqZ |
Tell us about your latest book.
Child of Creation is an epic fantasy novel about a young
man, Lark, who is suddenly, and violently, torn from the only world he has ever
known when the small village he has never been more than a few miles away from
is attacked and everyone in it, including his parents, are killed. As the only witness to that atrocity, Lark is
sent away by his mother who strangely tells him to keep who he is a secret just
before sending him away. Lark then has to figure it all out, how to survive in
a world he doesn’t even really understand and wanders into a variety of
challenges along the way, forcing him to grow up faster than he ever thought he
could, and face the fact that somehow, his tragedy is tied up in a much greater
series of events than he ever imagined he could be a part of.
How
do you select the names of your characters?
The most popular question I have received since people
started reading my book. I basically
didn’t want to accidentally step on any toes, so whenever I ran into the need
for a new character name, I would start putting vowels and consonants together
until they sounded like the character I was creating. I wanted an entirely new world that broke
stereotypes from other worlds while at the same time, creating an entirely new
set for this new world’s inhabitants.
There are patterns in the names that I try to follow. I will leave the identification of those
patterns to the imaginations of my readers.
What
marketing methods are you using to promote your book?
A part of my choosing Page Publishing was their offer
of sending out a press release about the book and setting up a web page. I was also moved to work with a terrific
group of publicists out of Austin, Texas, called PR by the Book who helped me
make contact with you. It is an uphill
battle for any self-published author to convince people to give your work a
chance, but I have been pleasantly surprised at the acceptance the book has
received and hope that the more people read it, the stronger word of mouth
advertising will work in my favor. It is
about the characters and the world they live in, and if they drive people’s
imaginations strongly enough, I will reach a point where the book can and
should sell itself. All I have to do is
keep finding people to convince to read it until I reach that point.
Who
are your favourite authors?
Terry Brooks and his Shannara books got me into the
whole fantasy genre as a teen, and Star Wars and George Lucas were the only
real science fiction I ever got into.
However, Louis L’Amour and Clive Cussler were big influences and
currently George RR Martin is a genius with how he creates characters that are
so real you can believe in them. Last
but not least, David Eddings was a tremendous influence on my writing. I have read everything he wrote for decades
over and over. I would say my favorite writer today though, is Robert Donohue.
What
advice do you have for other writers?
If it matters more what other people believe than what
you feel about your writing in your heart, then you are writing for the wrong
reasons. Writing is a personal thing for
me and I think that helps me create stronger characters and delve more deeply
into their interactions with each other.
Don’t write to sell books, write to make strong stories.
What's
the best thing about being a writer?
For me it is being able to come up with problems and
then finding ways to solve them. We all
face challenges in our lives that seem so momentous at the time, but then, the
years pass and fade into obscurity. For
the people in the books I write, those challenges will live on just as strong
today as they were the day I wrote them.
Are you a plotter or a pantser?
I honestly had to
look this one up. I generally have a
direction that I am thinking the story should go and then I start to type and
go where the story leads me. I guess
that makes me a pantser if I am understanding things correctly. The greatest thing about being a writer for
me, especially in this genre, is that I can take the story literally anywhere
so long as the storylines remain seamless and the writing is such that I am not
ashamed to show it to my kids.
Who or what inspired you to become a writer?
I have always enjoyed
writing. I was a writer long before I
was an author. I can say for sure that I
was awful at writing in high school. I
didn’t have the patience for all the research that was necessary for the type
of writing we were doing, but then when I hit college and got into the
mandatory composition classes, I found out that fiction was so much easier to
come up with and I went from Ds and Fs on papers to consistent As. I would say that was when it became fun for
me and when I started to enjoy just making up the stories
My wife would tell
you I am a professional sleeper, but in reality, I work about 60 hours a week
between all of the jobs I work and then I am a part-time graduate student as
well. Soon I will be teaching at the
college level also and hopefully still be writing and doing press and book
signing events.
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Child of Creation
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Jo Linsdell
Robert Donohue
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