Tag: Interview Page 4 of 16

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At this point, it feels strange for me to write an introduction for Matthew Hanover, because I’ve been talking about his books–and doing Q&As with him–for years now. But I know that not everyone reading this today will have read all of that–so let me just say that he’s a great author, a nice and supportive guy, and someone you should get to know.

One way to do that is through his book Not Prepared, which releases today.

Neil Bennett, a highly sought-after wedding photographer, knows all about romance and happily ever afters—for everyone but himself. As a chronic hypochondriac pushing forty, Neil has convinced himself that marriage and children just aren’t in the cards for him.

But then fate throws Neil a curveball when his 12-year-old god-daughter Chloe shows up at his door after being abandoned by her mother. She has nowhere else to go and suddenly, Neil’s bachelor lifestyle is thrown into disarray as he grapples with endless sensitive and awkward situations that come with caring for a preteen girl in his small apartment.

As Neil questions whether he’s ready to flip his world upside down, there’s a glimmer of hope when he meets Jenna Kaplan, a young and ambitious interior designer. She has her own quirks and idiosyncrasies that might just make them perfect for each other—and the ideal parents for Chloe. Suddenly, Neil has to face the possibility that he, too, can have his happily ever after… if he doesn’t screw things up.

Before we get into things, why don’t you give the reader a brief introduction to you and your work.
Hey there, I’m just Matthew Hanover, your average guy trying to make a living in the world of marketing. But when the day is done and the weekends arrive, I find solace in writing novels. Inspired by the talents of Nick Hornby and Jonathan Tropper, I specialize in contemporary fiction and romantic comedies. It all started with a single story that I couldn’t get out of my head, but as time went on, I realized there were more stories within me waiting to be told.

I typically can be found on Twitter @matthewhanover, Instagram @matthanoverfiction, and you can always reach out to me via my website, matthewhanover.com.

What are some of the biggest misconceptions you find that readers have about self-published books?
I think the most common misconception is that self-published books aren’t as good as traditionally published books. But, the fact is that the publishing industry is so competitive it’s hard for many authors to land an agent or get a deal. Frankly, getting a book deal is no guarantee of success and plenty of independent authors do well and make more money than their traditionally-published counterparts.

What kind of costs are associated with self-publishing a book? Do you hire one or more editors, or one editor for a couple of passes? Cover artist? Anyone to help with layout, design, etc.? Beta readers? Or do you take it all on yourself? Are you actually making any money at this, or are you still focused on breaking-even while building an audience?
The old saying is that readers should not judge a book by its cover, but in reality, you have to. If a self-published author isn’t willing to invest in his or her own work by getting a cover designer, their books will get overlooked. If they aren’t willing to invest in an editor, the readers they do get will notice errors and abandon the book. If they aren’t willing to invest in professional formatting, the reading experience will be bad and it won’t matter how well the book is written. Yes, these things cost money, but if you want to compete, they’re necessary.

Do you do your own cover design, or have you found people to help with that? It seems almost as difficult as writing the novel itself–talk about the process a bit.
I recently hired an illustrator to redo all of my covers and do the cover for my next book. While I didn’t feel there was anything particularly wrong with my previous covers, I felt a refresh was necessary to help catch the eyes of different readers.
For what it’s worth, I didn’t find anything particularly lacking with the previous covers, but the new versions are great!

How do you juggle marketing/PR/etc. with writing new work? (along with day jobs, family, hobbies, etc., etc.)
I honestly don’t get to spend as much time marketing my books as I need to, and certain platforms are difficult for me to make a splash in.

How do you promote your book–what things have worked best for you? What kind of lessons have you learned for things not to do (at least for you)? Do you do any in-person marketing, or are you all online (I assume predominately online)
My marketing and promotion are 100% online. Though sometimes I toss a paperback in a Little Free Library.

What made you decide that self-publishing was the direction you wanted to go? How often do you question that choice? How do you get through the self-doubt?
Honestly, I never considered trying to go the traditional route. I never wanted the pressure of worrying about querying agents and publishers. I just wanted to write and get my stories out in the world.

Have you thought about trying to get a deal with major (or indie) publishers for upcoming works, or are you planning on sticking with self-publishing?
I never considered seeking representation or attempting to get a traditional book publishing contract. Over the years, I’ve seen several indie authors try and struggle with the process. Even those who managed to get a book deal are not guaranteed success by going with a publisher. Sure, there’s some cachet that goes with it, but I’m not convinced it’s worth it.

Odds are, you’re doing this from love/passion, not to pay the bills. What keeps you going? I’m assuming there are more “who”s than “what”s, actually–who is it?
Honestly, if I had just one story in me I wanted to tell, I’d have written it, published it, and been okay with just that. I just found that there were more stories I wanted to tell, and so in the end, as long there’s something I want to write, I’ll write it.

Self-publishing tends to have less external deadlines keeping one accountable. How do you maintain your work process or work ethic?
I have a tendency to trust my creative drive. If I’m not inspired to write, I won’t force it. When the inspiration and desire hits, I’ll do the work. Not having a deadline to meet allows me to create at my own pace, free of pressure. If I believe in a story enough, there’s no question that it will get out there eventually, so I don’t worry about it.

What is your favorite and least favorite thing about being self-published?
My favorite thing is having total control over the content and design direction. My least favorite thing is incurring the costs of editing, cover design, etc.

What was your process for learning how to take care of all the facets that go into self-publishing? (editing, book cover and design, ISBN, finding places to sell/distribute, etc.)?
Amazon made the process quite easy, and I picked up on the process quickly.

How do you decide a book is finally finished and ready? (or how do you avoid “perfection as the enemy of good”?)
For me, the real problem is getting too anxious and putting something out there before its ready. My third novel was not properly copyedited when I released it. I was too excited to get it out there and there were some typos that readers caught. I’m not making that mistake again with my next novel, which is coming out in July.

Thanks for your time and participation! Hope you enjoyed it! And do know that there are many of us out here who appreciate and applaud what you do (and our number is growing)!

I say this every time a Hanover book is released–be sure to check out all of his work!

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The Inside Scoop—A Q&A with e rathke About Self-Publishing

By HCNewton

On July 25, 2023

In A Few Quick Questions With..., Literary Locals

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e rathke is one of those authors that came my way thanks to JCM Berne–I’d never encountered them or their work before, but there’s plenty of good looking material out there to dive into.

In particular, I’d like to point you to Iron Wolf, which is released today. The description of it is:

The giantess Lady Agova leads Virgil and Vera home to Avalon. All they have to do is get through the gate. But that gate throws them into an interdimensional labyrinth full of nightmares.

Set in a desolate postapocalyptic world where science and magic blend and reality itself twists and bends, where some attempt to grow a new world while others delve through the detritus of a shattered civilization, Iron Wolf continues the monster hunting journey began in Howl.

Before we get into things, why don’t you give the reader a brief introduction to you and your work.
I write weekly essays about games and books at my substack. All my essays are free and available to anyone. I’ve begun serializing a steampunked mix of Harry Potter and Gundam over there as well. On top of that, I’m now releasing weekly short stories. Paying subscribers get the ebook versions of my novels included in their subscription and they receive those a month before publication.

Along with all that, I also publish novels. The Howling Earth is a lofi cyberpunk mashing together of Vampire Hunter D and Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun, though I’ve also received a fair amount of Dark Souls comparisons as well. The first novel came out December 2022 with the second novel out this week, and a third coming in November. 2024 will have four more.

With Kyle Muntz, I cowrite The Shattered Stars series. Imagine Star Trek: The Next Generation where the crew is straight out of Firefly and you get The Shattered Stars. Though it’s an ongoing serial, each “episode” is meant to stand alone and be enjoyed even for those who just want to dip in and out of the series. The first episode came out in March, with the second out in June. The third and fourth are coming September and December, and we have the entire second season completed and ready to publish quarterly through 2024.

But, yeah, lots going on! I’m also narrating a children’s serial about a pirate named Carrot. This began as a daily bedtime story for my son, but I began recording it as well so that he can return to the story whenever he wants. Because I had the audio already done, I began a podcast to release new episodes weekly.

(I love the idea behind the podcast, will be adding it to my rotation)

Do you do your own cover design, or have you found people to help with that? It seems almost as difficult as writing the novel itself–talk about the process a bit.
Most of my covers are done by Christopher Olson. I wish he had a website because he’s a great artist. Very talented and capable of just about any style I want.

I’ve toyed with the idea of doing covers myself, since I go through a lot of them each year, but that really just isn’t my skillset. Christopher is a friend and we work well together. I usually tell him what I want for the cover and try to lead him towards a style that I’m looking for. Then he does his magic and I’m always surprised by what he shows me.

Ultimately, the book cover is your face to potential audiences, so it’s worth it to take the time and find the people who will give you what you want and how you want it. Covers can be expensive, too, which is probably the biggest barrier for some. For that reason, they’ll decide to do their own covers. Which is great! But it’s really not what I’m good at.

It’s great to have a friend like that! The graphics on my site are the same way—if they look homemade, that’s me (frequently, it’s me defacing the work of a talented cartoonist/illustrator). If they look decent, that’s the work of a friend of mine who does graphic design.
Ha, I wish I even had the talent to make bad art. It would save me a lot of time! It would also allow me to do my own illustrations for my books, which I’d love to have.

What made you decide that self-publishing was the direction you wanted to go? How often do you question that choice? How do you get through the self-doubt?
During the 2010s, I was pretty involved in small independent publishing. I worked with a handful of publishers in various ways, and I had three novels come out on independent presses.

Many have a good experience this way, but I mostly did not. I think the truth of small independent publishing is that many people just want their name in print and are less concerned with getting readers. This is especially true for the kind of publishing I was involved with, where many of the authors were MFA professors, aspiring MFA professors, MFA students, or aspiring MFA students.

The publication was more important for their CV than it was for anything else.

I don’t have an academic background. I wasn’t in an MFA or getting into one, and so I had very different goals with my own publishing. My bad experiences with these publishers—all of which no longer exist—led me to abandon publishing for about eight years.

I turned to self-publishing because of the freedom it allowed me. And so I don’t question the choice. I much prefer it to what I previously experienced through a more traditional route. To me, self-publishing is just fun. It also gives me control over my career and the flexibility to do what I want, how I want.

I publish a lot of books each year. If I were on a traditional press, they’d want me to have at most one or two books per year. In 2023, I’m publishing eight books. In 2024, I’ll be releasing 12.

There are downsides to this rapid pace, but I’m writing for fun and for those people who are ready and willing to ride along with me. When someone discovers one of my books, I want them to google me and find a dozen other books waiting for them.

As a reader, I always found that experience thrilling.

Having a backlist to dive into as a reader is always great, I agree. And more than one self-published author I’ve talked to has mentioned getting things out regularly. Eight books in a year is pretty impressive! How do you find the time for this? Sure, you multitask by podcasting your bedtime stories—but even that’s an investment of time after your son’s asleep.
Recording audio takes me quite a lot of time! I’m sure many people can do this in a fraction of the time it takes me but I would say it takes me about an hour to get ten minutes of audio. And even that audio could probably be improved tenfold by just a bit more technical know-how.(I was kidding about that, I hope that came through. I’ve listened to two episodes so far and those hours spent are evident!)

As for finding the time – I write a lot and I write relatively quickly. I’ve written a bit about my process in the past, but there is no trick to it beyond volume of hours sitting in front of your computer.

The one advantage I have over other people is that I have 20 or more novels and novellas sitting unpublished on my computer, so I could publish ten books a year for two years without even writing something new. That being said, only one novel coming out this year is taken from that store of novel(la)s. Though cowriting four per year also helps alleviate some of the load.

Also, length is an important driver. For better or worse, I’m primarily publishing novellas in the 20,000 word to 35,000 word range. I want people to be able to pick these up and read them in about the time it takes to watch a movie (sometimes a long movie). This may prove to be a mistake because people may want those big beefy novels. I have those written, too, but I guess I’m saving them.

Most countries have a thriving novella market, except the US. But I think we could have that and I think people want short books along with the big doorstoppers. With everyone else writing the huge books, I feel there’s a real space left open for people who want to pick up a book they can burn through in an evening.

Have you thought about trying to get a deal with major (or indie) publishers for upcoming works, or are you planning on sticking with self-publishing?
I do submit novels to major publishers. I’d be more than happy to get on a traditional press, though I think my goals are different than other hopeful writers.

The barrier to any writers—traditional or indie or self-published—is discoverability. You can be the best writer in the world, but if no one hears your name, they’ll probably never find your books. And so much of marketing for any book is a simple process of getting your name out there enough times for people to finally take notice.

For me, the benefit of a major press is that they make the first step easier. If I had a book come out on Tor or Harper or wherever else, thousands of people who had never heard of me would now hear or see my name for the first time.

That’s what I want. I mean, I’d be happy to have a successful book on a major publisher, but even if my book technically failed, by traditional publishing terms (fewer than 5,000 books sold), that would still be a success for me and where I’m at right now.
And so the benefit to me about major publishing is that it would broaden my potential fanbase immensely overnight.

Even so, it’s important to understand what major publishers are offering. Major publishers once gave every author a marketing budget and they’d have professionals handle this stuff. Now, they rely on individual authors to do their own marketing, line up their own book tours and interviews, and so on.

Which is the exact same thing self-published authors are already doing.

Because of this, the benefits that they offer are becoming fewer and fewer every year.

What is your favorite and least favorite thing about being self published?
My favorite thing is the flexibility and control.

My least favorite part is everything else!

I love writing. I would write all day, every day if I could. It’s what I want to do and it’s what I like doing. My ideal situation would be finishing a novel and handing it off to someone else to handle all the marketing, publicity, and so on.

Unfortunately, there’s just me. And so I’m not only the author. I’m also the business manager, the marketing department, the publicist, the accountant, the editor, and on and on.

It’s quite a lot!

In an ideal world, I wouldn’t have to do anything to get my name out there. I wouldn’t be on social media or pitching myself to podcasts or trying to track down reviewers and interviewers, and all the other thousand little things that get books into reader’s hands.

But instead I’m in this world, wearing a dozen hats and swapping between them dozens of times per week.

But that’s the game. And it is a game. Writing is fun and it’s work, but it’s the fun kind of work that makes it feel like play. The marketing is the work I’d rather not do, but it’s arguably just as important—if not more so—than the writing itself.

You’ve mentioned the word “flexibility” a few times—is that flexibility in schedule, genre, format, etc.? Or is it more than that?
All of the above, honestly. I love a lot of different kinds of books and though it goes against any career or marketing advice anyone will give you, I intend to keep writing across genres. Too, most would probably encourage me not to publish 6+ books a year because it can dilute or overwhelm your audience. Much as I’d like people to pick up a new book from me every month, the simple truth is that most people only read a handful of books each year. Expecting them to read a new book by me each month is a big ask! But there are other people out there who will be excited by this as well.

And so flexibility may be a double-edged sword for me, in that it gives me the freedom to make too many mistakes at the same time. And much of what I’m doing now may be foolish. Short books published at a rapid pace may be the exact opposite of what I should be doing, but I’ll learn. If need be, I’ll publish fewer books, but longer books.

But it’s this flexibility and this wild west nature of my publishing adventure that keeps it fun and exciting. I just hope people are willing to come along for the ride.

Thanks for your time and participation! Hope you enjoyed it! And do know that there are many of us out here who appreciate and applaud what you do (and our number is growing)!

Readers, e rathke has a good number of novellas, essays, and other things out there. Be sure to check out them out here or the other links above!

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The Inside Scoop—A Q&A with Ian Shane About Self-Publishing

By HCNewton

On July 24, 2023

In A Few Quick Questions With...

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Ian Shane has become one of my favorite authors over the last couple of years—I’ve given copies of his books away and recommended them to people in real life and online. I’m very glad that he agreed to take part in this series. I hope you enjoy this—and click on the links below, there are some solid recommendations here.

Before we get into things, why don’t you give the reader a brief introduction to you and your work?
Hi, I’m Ian Shane! I’m the author of three novels (Radio Radio, Postgraduate, and In Ten Years). I’m finishing up an “almost memoir” (Sundry Notes of Music) which should be ready for publication in November. If you want to put a label on my work, my genre is “Lad Lit,” in the great tradition of Nick Hornby.

My website is currently down, but you can find my books at viewauthor.at/ishane, and I’m on Twitter @ThatIanShane.

What are some of the biggest misconceptions you find that readers have about self-published books?
That they are less than published books. I will take the works of Matthew Hanover (@MatthewHanover), N.J. Cartner (@njcartner), Wesley Parker (@weswritesforfun), and Adam Shaw (and so many others) over many other “traditionally published” authors. Indie authors’ voices are important and, many times, infinitely more interesting.

What kind of costs are associated with self-publishing a book? Do you hire one or more editors, or one editor for a couple of passes? Cover artist? Anyone to help with layout, design, etc.? Beta readers? Or do you take it all on yourself? Are you actually making any money at this, or are you still focused on breaking-even while building an audience?
There is a lot of investing. The lion’s share of the cost is for editing. But it’s sooooo worth it. Melissa Gray (@ProofreaderMG) is the best editor in the business. Editors are a prerequisite to publishing a book, not an option. I have paid for the covers of my previous three books; however, I designed the cover of my next book. I’ve also paid for a website, but I am reevaluating that, as it seems that it only attracts unsolicited messages from web designers offering to redo my website. I’ve also tried some promotional campaigns, which did very little to move the needle when it comes to sales.

I’m not making money off of this. Writing is my passion project, and I’m more interested in building an audience than making money.

Are there tools, mentors, websites you’ve found to help you through this process? Or did you stumble through blindly on your own?
A little bit of both. My first novel was done blindly. However, after I finished my first draft, I joined a writer’s group in St. Paul. It was nice to have a group of beta readers I got to check in with every two weeks. When I started writing Postgraduate, I found some writers on Twitter who had different approaches to promotion and distribution, which I was able to adopt.

How do you juggle marketing/PR/etc. with writing new work? (along with day jobs, family, hobbies, etc., etc.)
It’s the biggest obstacle. I am a writer, not a publicist, and indie authors are forced to be both. It also doesn’t help that my schedule for the day job isn’t exactly consistent, so I don’t have a set time to market the book. The job is the highest priority because I like the finer things in life, such as food and shelter. Writing is next. Especially when I’m in the final stages of a book, I have very little time for spreading the word. I really need to get better at it.

How do you promote your book—what things have worked best for you? What kind of lessons have you learned for things not to do (at least for you)? Do you do any in-person marketing, or are you all online?
I’ve tried a couple of promotional campaigns that didn’t really seem to do anything for sales. I also tried Amazon Ads and have had mixed results on it. Believe it or not, the thing that seems to work the best is Twitter. There is a correlation between when I spend a bit of time on Twitter and sales spikes. I’m not constantly tweeting links to my book, although I take advantage of #WritersLift tweets from time to time.

On a whim, I tagged Jake Ruhd, an on-air personality on The Current in Minneapolis, in a tweet. He hosts a classic alternative show on Sundays, and my second book was about the same kind of music. I wrote that I was waiting for him to discover the book organically, and I just decided to be shameless in getting his attention this way. He retweeted my post, and it got a lot of traction. To this day, that was my best-selling month. (I love this story)

That has started to become a little trickier now that Twitter is so divisive and there is a fracture of social media feeds, I’m trying to find time to devote to other platforms, but it’s exhausting starting all over again to build an audience.

What made you decide that self-publishing was the direction you wanted to go? How often do you question that choice? How do you get through the self-doubt?
When I first started writing Radio Radio, there was no such thing as CreateSpace, and I didn’t know any print-on-demand options. I felt that my book catered to a limited audience, and I didn’t believe a traditional publisher would be interested in inside jokes between me and a few people I worked with. There was an indie publishing house in Bloomington, Indiana (where I was living at the time), and I thought it would be my best option. Having a publishing house like that locally was an advantage of living in a college town. However, the “basic option” was a bit out of my price range, so I started to scrimp as much spare change out of my embarrassingly low paycheck while I wrote the first draft.

I moved to Minnesota and lost my connection to AuthorHouse, so I was trying to find a home for my book. I found SmashWords and CreateSpace and never looked back. I’ve never thought about “what could have been” if I tried to sell the book to a traditional publisher, and if I had the chance to do it all over again, I would do the exact same thing when it comes to publishing.

Have you thought about trying to get a deal with major (or indie) publishers for upcoming works, or are you planning on sticking with self-publishing?
I plan on sticking with self-publishing.

Self-publishing tends to have fewer external deadlines keeping one accountable. How do you maintain your work process or work ethic?
While writing Postgraduate and In Ten Years, I started posting word totals on my day-to-day writing on Facebook. It was a very public way to keep myself accountable, and the fear of failing in front of my friends was a huge incentive to keep my but in the chair and typing. I’m certain that it annoyed most of my friends; however, some kept me accountable and mentioned it any time I was slacking.

What is your favorite and least favorite thing about being self-published?
The great thing about self-publishing is that anybody can publish a book. What isn’t great about self-publishing is that anybody can publish a book.

I love that I don’t have a deadline that anybody else has set and that I don’t have to change my writing to draw in as many people as possible. I love that I get to tell my story on my terms. Writing is art, not a commodity. Picasso and Jackson Pollock never had to submit themselves to a focus group.

The downside is that in 2021, there were 2.3 million new independently published books. And while I love that others have taken advantage of the same system I have, it just makes it harder to market my book. As a writer, I really have to stand out, and that’s not always easy.
2.3 million? I’m feeling better about my TBR List’s size.

How do you decide a book is finally finished and ready? (or how do you avoid “perfection as the enemy of good”?)
I may be the wrong person to ask this. I have rewritten Radio Radio post-publications many, many times. I used to make fun of George Lucas for continuing to “update” the Star Wars trilogy, but I get it now. But, that was my first book and I wanted to get it out as soon as I could.

However, I have honed my process. I have found an amazing editor and the right people to review the writing. But in the end, it’s a feeling I have. I have an inner peace that lets me know that I have expressed what I wanted.

Be sure to check out all of Ian Shane’s work—you’ll laugh, you’ll smile, your heart will get warmed all the way down to the cockles!

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The Inside Scoop—A Q&A with Jeremy Billups About Self-Publishing

By HCNewton

On July 24, 2023

In A Few Quick Questions With..., Literary Locals

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I met Jeremy Billups a few years ago at a local Comic Con and was instantly drawn to his art—it helped that he’s a super-nice guy, too. Since then, I’ve talked about all of his books and he’s been very generous with his time and participated in several things around here. Those of you who’ve seen the cartoon pilcrow I use here and on Social Media know a little of his work, too. Let’s hear a little about self-publishing for the Picture Book/Children’s Market.

Before we get into things, why don’t you give the reader a brief introduction to you and your work.
Thanks so much H.C. for the opportunity to chat! My name is Jeremy Billups and I make attempts at writing and illustrating children’s books. I’ve self-published three so far. Bearded, Bearded Too, and Sea This and Sea That. I’m very close to wrapping up the manuscript for the third Bearded book. I’m also chipping away at a Christmas book and a book about being a dad.

I’ve also been working on some comics, Squirrel E. Jones and Tales of the Incredible. Both comics are very different from each other and the children’s books, but good creative outlets for me.

If so inclined, you can find all my books, comics, and other fun things at caffeinatedbeverages.com.

I’m very thankful to have enough design experience from my day job that I’m able to handle the design and artwork for my projects. In fact, that was a big reason why I chose to go with self-publishing. Having the skills and knowledge with the design side of things gives me a lot more control over my projects and saves me a lot of money.

The biggest cost for me is printing. It took a while, but I was finally able to find a U.S.-based printer that does print-on-demand at a cost that works for me. I’m now able to put out new books without nearly as much financial risk. Saying this though, it makes me realize that I need to take advantage and put out more books!

I do work with one editor. With each project we go back and forth with each manuscript until I think it’s ready. I’m fortunate here as well because my word count is so low that she only charges me a very reasonable flat rate.

Though, nothing to live on yet, I am making money at this. It’s just enough to keep me motivated to continue growing my catalog and audience. I would love for this to be all that I do one day.

Your comment about word count will tie-in very well with what a Fantasy author says about that (and how he’s considered other genres because of it)
Yeah, I’m very thankful that word count is something I don’t have to take into consideration while telling my stories.

How do you promote your book—what things have worked best for you? What kind of lessons have you learned for things not to do (at least for you)? Do you do any in-person marketing, or are you all on-line (I assume predominately online)
So I started out on Amazon and only produced a digital version of my book, Bearded. Seemed like a good way to see if anyone would be interested. I was all in on Kindle Direct Publishing. At the time, it was exactly what I was looking for. I did all the things they recommended, took advantage of their promotional offers and saw some traction. The big download numbers always came when I offered the book for free. So I decided to lean into that and make the digital version of Bearded permanently free. And, then I offered a second book, Bearded Too as a paid follow up to the free book. With the change of Bearded to “perma-free” I saw significant downloads and good ratings for the free book, but those downloads never really translated to people buying the second book.

I have a few theories as to why I didn’t see the sales I was hoping for, but it doesn’t matter anymore. I decided to change things up and focus on in-person. There are a few local events that I participate in every year and it’s been so much better. I’ve made some great connections, sold some books, and get to see repeat customers face-to-face each year.

I didn’t give up on the internet entirely. I’ve recently updated my website with a shop so that I can keep selling online and I’m currently exploring Etsy as a option to sell online as well.

I don’t know that I’d have thought about Etsy for self-published books—but it make sense—what got you thinking in this direction? Have you considered other non-Amazon options?
I decided to give Etsy a try after noticing that a lot of the artists/creators that I follow on social media were using it to sell their creations. After exploring the site and buying some super cool things, I thought it would be worth trying out. At the very least, I think it’s a good way to expand the reach of my products beyond what I’m currently doing with my website.

As for other non-Amazon options, I haven’t really considered anything other than Etsy. But, I am a little curious about selling directly through Instagram and/or Twitter. If Etsy doesn’t work very well, that may be what I try next.

What made you decide that self-publishing was the direction you wanted to go? How often do you question that choice? How do you get through the self-doubt?
It really came down to my lack of patience, and a bit of naivety. I didn’t want to sit around waiting for approval to tell my stories. I just wanted to tell them. Self-publishing gave me that capability immediately and so I dove right in. I definitely questioned the decision early on. But now, after all that I’ve learned and experienced, I know it was the right decision, and I’m excited and proud to continue telling my stories this way.

The self-doubt comes in on whether or not to go all in or not. Today I have a day job that pays the bills and supports my family. When to take a leap of faith and devote my career to more books, I’m just not sure about yet.

Have you thought about trying to get a deal with major (or indie) publishers for upcoming works, or are you planning on sticking with self-publishing?
I have thought about this. Especially since it may be the quickest path to getting to do this full-time. If it was a partnership that worked well for both parties then I’d definitely be open to it. There is a bit of self-doubt here too. Am I good enough? Can I meet their deadlines? Can I continue to produce as much as I think I can?

At the very least, I’m open to entertaining the idea if someone were to reach out.

Thanks for your time and participation! Hope you enjoyed it! And do know that there are many of us out here who appreciate and applaud what you do (and our number is growing)!
Thank you for the opportunity to meet with you and all the great questions! I enjoyed the discussion and look forward to the next one. I also appreciate all that you do and the love and attention you give self-publishers like me. It really means a lot!

Your kids/grandkids/nieces/nephews/etc. are going to love Billups’ work! Be sure to check out all of it!

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The Inside Scoop—A Q&A with Shannon Knight About Self-Publishing

By HCNewton

On July 24, 2023

In A Few Quick Questions With...

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We’re starting this series with Shannon Knight—she’s one of those authors who came to me from JCM Berne. I’ve yet to read any of her books, but she’s popping up on the blog all over. She’s contributed a Guest Post (as she mentions below) about the cover design for her novel, Grave Cold, and we’re working on something else now, too—stay tuned for that. But today we’re talking about the self-publishing, when she sent me her replies she explained why she replied to so few questions: “I wrote long answers to the questions. I guess I want to turn everything into a story.” I loved the her stories and thought they made a great launching point for this week.

Before we get into things, why don’t you give the reader a brief introduction to you and your work.
My name is Shannon Knight. I live in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve published three novels this year, all science fiction and fantasy. The first is Wish Givers, a fantasy set on a tropical island with tattoo magic where the hero must save her people and destroy her enemy by granting his every wish. Next is Insiders, a great, big space opera. With the help of a sentient plant, the crew of a small spaceship must each overcome their personal demons and lend their unique strengths in order to save the universe. Finally, I published Grave Cold, a biopunk novel set in the near future. When the dead are being used as an energy source, a reaper and a necromancer work together to save the dead from the living. You can find full blurbs for each book at your favorite online bookstore.

Buy Wish Givers here: https://books2read.com/WishGivers
Buy Insiders here: https://books2read.com/Insiders
Buy Grave Cold here: https://books2read.com/GraveCold

What made you decide that self-publishing was the direction you wanted to go? How often do you question that choice? How do you get through the self-doubt?
I caught COVID-19 in the Spring of 2020. None of it went the way I’d expected. I’d run a mountain marathon the month before, I had a robust immune system, and I was medically young. Nonetheless, it seemed I was going to die. Weeks passed, months passed, and I did not improve. In fact, new symptoms kept appearing, so that the random, extreme malfunctioning of my body became my norm. I strove to breathe, to haul my bones to the toilet, and to endure constant pain. In an allusion to The Princess Bride, COVID was my Dread Pirate Roberts. “Good night, Shannon. Good work. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.”
Shannon Knight 2
During the first two and a half years, I had passing access to my own thoughts. See, even self-reflection was no longer readily accessible. In my moments of clarity, I accepted death. I accepted the life I had lived up to this point. I also really wished I’d put those books out. I decided that if the mental capacity to pull it off returned to me, I would self-publish. It was roughly around the two and a half year mark that my life changed. One of the many medical tests yielded results and a treatment. Suddenly, I could sit up. Out of bed. For many hours! My mind opened. I could think again! I started studying Korean. I could do it! I could simply stand up! I wanted to run. I wanted to build my body back up.

My new limitations clarified themselves, but I began work on self-publication. I could study Korean, but for some reason, I couldn’t understand my own novel. That was bad. My daily reserve of expendable energy was quite small. I minimized my steps, ate instant food, and focused on self-pub. I reached out to editors, to cover artists. I created spreadsheets of prices and timelines. Some of the waits were extensive. I worked as long as I coherently could each day, with my body wilting and vision blurring as I hit my cut-off point. Unfortunately, my symptoms were increasing, my functionality decreasing. It wasn’t long before I could only sit up for two hours per day. I emailed my doctor. He said, “Oh, yes. It’s common for this medication to fail. We’ll take you off of it for a reset. We can also keep doubling the doses as it successively fails. Each time, there’s a fifty-fifty chance these methods will work.” Confused, I emailed the artist and editor I had been planning with and put the project on hold. Off the meds, I returned to that no-person space.

On round two of the meds, I threw away all notions of exercise or cooking. Everything was about my books. I hired the editor. I confirmed that the artists would not be available before my next expected round of med failure. I had long pursued art as a hobby, but never anything digital. I decided to do the best with what I could accomplish myself in a race against my failing body. But I was improving! I was much more capable than during round one. I completed the Insiders revisions with ease, perfectly understanding my story, and feeling frustrated at the number of errors my copy editor had not caught. I gave the manuscript multiple extra sweeps myself to make sure I was satisfied with it. I published both Wish Givers and Insiders in January 2023. The green Insiders cover was completed in a deep blur of confusion as my capacity waned, but the book inside was everything I wanted. Back off the meds, I told myself, it’s okay now—you’ve got two books out.

Then my doctor said some very frustrating things to me. That guy. He said I should plan to never get better. That I should expect complete failure of the meds that let me think and stand and occasionally go to the grocery store. At first, I was upset, but then I decided that none of it was true. I’ve got Long COVID. It’s a novel disease. There are no treatments, they don’t fully understand the mechanisms behind it, and, therefore, they don’t know what’s going to happen to me. I have so many doctors, and only one of them made this statement.

I hired the artist that I wanted to do the Wish Givers cover. I found and hired an artist for the Insiders cover. It would be a few months. Was that okay? Would I make it? Hell, yes. (I paid early, though, just in case.) Grave Cold needed serious revisions. Also, it has a death theme, and I had lots of new thoughts on the matter. I dove into all of it. And I’m holding steady. WAY steady. I published Grave Cold in May. The artwork for Insiders was completed in early June, and the art for Wish Givers will be finished at the end of June. (I’m writing this in June.) Then I’ll re-release those books properly.
A Photo of the Grave Cold cover
So why did I decide to self-publish? COVID-19 is why. Do I question that choice? No, I do not. Do I have self doubt? I doubt plenty of things in this world, but I do not question sending my stories out so that people can read them. Do you know what comforts a person who is lonely? What distracts a person from pain? What brings someone hope? What allows a person to consider the many emotions and relationships in this world when everything has fallen down around them? Stories do that. Stories are a light in the darkness. Let me turn on the light.

Do you do your own cover design, or have you found people to help with that? It seems almost as difficult as writing the novel itself—talk about the process a bit.

I designed my own. Cover design has been a unique challenge for each of my books. I spoke with you once before, in detail, about my cover creation process for Grave Cold. In some ways, the design for Grave Cold was the easiest of my three books because I chose the cover art from existing photographs. While I needed to consider many possibilities via different search terms and scrolling through endless photos, there were also built-in limitations regarding what was available. Then the details of the typography were chosen based on genre and on what the art didn’t already convey.

For Insiders and Wish Givers, I commissioned paintings. Therefore, I needed to decide everything. The price tag on commercial paintings also meant that I needed to make them count. I may not earn back the cost I spent on the covers, but in indie, if your cover isn’t good enough, readers are unlikely to even consider giving your story a chance. After the years I’d put into writing these books, the least I could do was invest in the best covers I could get.

Insiders created a distinct challenge. At first, I thought I had an easy solution because Insiders is a space opera, and NASA and ESA/Hubble have made all their space images free for public use. However, an image of space or spaceships in space would not drive home that Insiders is a character-driven, ensemble piece. Thematically, teamwork is crucial. I needed to show characters on the cover, but I couldn’t cram six characters and a plant on the cover and make it look good. (Or could I? I spent some time on that, too. I’ve seen movie posters do it well.) I considered which character or characters I could select from the group for the cover. One character has a special role in that she is a teen wearing the sentient plant suit, but a teen photo on the cover is code young adult, and Insiders is an adult novel. It took me longer than I care to admit before I realized that the plant suit covering her face and body, which would be straightforward in a painting, would eliminate the young adult classification and look wonderfully sci-fi. (Ironically, my cover artist, Isa Backhaus, chose to show her face anyway, but the result don’t look young adult in the painting. Of course, I also made this concern clear to my artist, so I’m sure it wasn’t accidental.) For Insiders, the final cover design also didn’t feature a scene directly from the book. Instead, the design was decided in order to portray enough elements to show the heart of the story. I believe the cover is beautiful, represents the story well, and will attract the right readers.

I spent months on designs for Wish Givers. It’s a fantasy novel, but my agent had found interest for it outside of standard fantasy circles, so initially, I was thinking of breaking the standard fantasy cover expectations by choosing an art style not normally used on fantasy novels. I’m afraid I spent too much time on that before realizing that my limitations as an indie writer meant that I shouldn’t be trying to break the mold. When I returned to the traditional fantasy style of covers, I realized I had a new problem. My Polynesian characters already wouldn’t look like traditional fantasy characters. The magic within the book involves elaborately drawn tattoos that make wishes happen. Showing a tattoo in progress or a completed tattoo would not convey a sense of magic or fantasy. I needed magic on the cover so that Wish Givers would be immediately identifiable as fantasy. I realized the wish that would best show this, but I was still worried about creating a design that was genuinely captivating. Plus the generative AI debacle was creating its own massive mess, reproducing the most common denominators of everything. I wanted something very human made. I decided one of the least common denominators was a truly dramatic perspective. And, eureka, I had it! I created a design for Wish Givers from an extreme angle above my character so that she was strikingly foreshortened. The angle alone causes the human eye to pause and reflect. It also offered the bonus of hiding many of the protagonist’s tattoos, which are story spoilers, and allowing for an eye-catching placement of the wish-come-to-life. After all my design work, I was amused and delighted to find that my cover artist, Eli Peiró, offered three designs to choose from, even if an author arrives with a design in hand. I could have saved myself some trouble and let her do that heavy lifting! I chose the design I had initially suggested. As I write this, the new cover for Wish Givers is being painted, the drafts are absolutely lovely, and the new cover will be available in early August. You should check it out!

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your time and effort—and openness—for this. Thanks for your participation! Hope you enjoyed it! And do know that there are many of us out here who appreciate and applaud what you do (and our number is growing)!

Readers, be sure to check out all of Shannon Knight’s work!

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LITERARY LOCALS: A Q&A About Writing in Idaho with Amy Maren Rice

By HCNewton

On June 20, 2023

In A Few Quick Questions With..., Literary Locals

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A couple of months ago, my daughter and I met a handful of local authors at the Nampa Library’s Treasure Valley Indie Book Fair, and while there I talked a few of them into participating in this series. I remember having a fun chat with Amy Maren Rice while there, and was very happy she agreed to do this. Life and whatnot has delayed her appearance here, but I can finally bring you this fun Q&A with a newer author to the local area. Hopefully this isn’t her last appearance on this blog.

A personal highlight was the way she describes my daughter—which drove my daughter into a laughing fit so long that it almost started an asthmatic episode (she loves it and finds it ridiculous at the same time). I can’t tell you how often we’ve quoted that in the week or so since I received these answers.

Before we get into things, why don’t you give the reader a brief introduction to you and your work.
Oh gosh, all about me, hu? This is always a bit nerve-wracking. It reminds me of the first day of school which was always terror invoking.

Here goes. My name is Amy Maren Rice. I’m an American author of pre-teen fantasy and I was born in and am currently living in Idaho. I’ve always loved books and have had a desire to write since my teen years. While I’m, ahem, a bit past those years, the desire is still there and I finally took the dive. My first book was published in the fall of 2022, Fuzzwiggs the Switcheroo. It’s geared toward pre-teens, the age group my boys were when I dreamed up the story. We always had a hard time finding fun, interesting books that were at a high enough reading level so, I wrote one. It entertains but challenges their vocabulary and is good clean fun. As a parent this is what I was always on the lookout for. I didn’t anticipate where the book would take me, however, and found myself writing about Fuzzwiggs with fart powers. Growing up I wasn’t even allowed to say the word fart! Sorry Mom!

I have several links where you can find Fuzzwiggs The Switcheroo. Through Covenant Books who I worked with to publish, of course on Amazon.com, and I was really excited to see it online at Target, Walmart.com and Barnes & Noble. You can also find me on Facebook and Instagram.

Are you a native Idahoan? What is it about Idaho that keeps you here?
Yes! I was born and raised in Eastern Idaho and moved to the Western side shortly after I graduated from Idaho State University. There’s no place like home!

Are you tied into some sort of local author/bookish group/culture? If so, tell us about it and how it helps you as an author. If you’re not, is there a reason for it?
Nope … anxiety!!! I’m working on it! Ask me about it sometime and I’ll tell you about my rollercoaster of emotions and involuntary physical quirks. I’m always discovering new ones! It’s actually been a big journey for me to allow people to even read my book.

I hear that—so what was the final push to get you to put the book out in the world?
My desire to be an example to my children. I realized that they were struggling with some of the same social anxieties that I was and they needed me to be their example. I needed to show them that I was brave enough to do the things I was asking them to do and, if I failed, they needed to see that too because I could show them how to be resilient in the face of disappointment.

What kind of events in the area do you attend—either to sell/promote your books or to network with authors? Are there any outside of this area that you hit regularly and wish we had something like it here?
I’ve been to a few library-held events. My first one was where I met you! At one point, you mentioned that you get nervous approaching people about your blog and, well, while we were talking, I was secretly having a heart attack! I tend to say all the words at once and several on repeat. You seemed so cool with your blog and intimidatingly cool daughter and all the while I was hoping you wouldn’t see through my facade of claiming to be a real author. I’m still waiting for someone to find me out.

I definitely wish we had more venues to connect with readers and other local writers. It was the biggest thrill when an eight-year-old saw me at another event after she had bought my book and came to meet me. I mean, just wow!

What a rush that must’ve been. I’m assuming most of your feedback has been pretty positive at this point—anything else stand out to you? Do you have plans to look into other avenues (craft/art fairs, bazaars, etc.?) Or are you just dipping a toe in the water until your anxieties quiet down a little bit?
Yes, it was! I really enjoy talking with kids. Adults are a bit harder.

People who attend literary events tend to be kind because they’re there for the books. They have the same love for them as you do, so yes, I’ve had mostly a positive experience so far. Fingers crossed, eyes closed and breath held – a nod to Jasper’s good luck charm in Fuzzwiggs the Switcheroo.

Toes are being dipped, but I’m open to other events if I feel it’s a good fit.

What’s the breakdown of your audience—do you have a strong local base, or are your readers from other parts of the world?
Oh gosh, I’m just grateful to have readers! Fuzzwiggs the Switcheroo came out last fall and I have had a ton of support locally, both here and in Eastern Idaho. It’s written for kids in that mid-range of 8-13 but I have a lot of adult readers too. They tell me it’s not just for kids!

I’ve seen my book listed in all sorts of places all over the world like Australia, Austria, Poland, Romania, The UK, Germany and China. What a rush! I became a stalker of Google listings for Fuzzwiggs last year and took a screen shot of every single one I found for the dopamine!

Have you had any interaction via social media or anything with any out-of-country readers? Or for now is your foreign dopamine coming from the listings?
I have foreign sales but haven’t interacted with any readers outside the US. That would be a rush though. Talk about dopamine!

Do you bring Idaho (or some sort of Idaho-sensibility, assuming one exists) to your work? Whether or not anyone else sees it, can you look at some aspect of your writing and think “That’s Idaho” or “I would do ____ differently if I was a Kentuckian or from Illinois?”
I do bring my version of Idaho to the book and a few of my experiences growing up here. It takes place in an Idaho mountain setting where my two main characters, young brothers, are new to the area and I get to explain some unique Idaho things through their eyes.

Hmm, Idaho-sensibility. What’s interesting about Idaho is that we all do seem to have a collective Idaho-ness about us but you see a range of different lifestyles here. I grew up growing a garden that was essential for our family’s food source. If we needed it, we grew it, made it or built it. My father built the house I grew up in. My husband grew up on a golf course, my friend grew up on a cattle farm, another in a double-wide trailer they could barely afford the rent on and another in the largest home in the whole town with luxury cars, boats and vacation homes. But we all had commonalities in the way we acted and how families were at the center of everything we did. A feeling goodness permeated my childhood. For the most part, that’s something I feel is prevalent in Idaho. I hope you feel that in my writing. I wanted to bring that goodness to my characters. They go through their journey and have their faults, but eventually they show their true colors as good, kind kids. Throw in a little magic and a plethora of farts and you have my very first book Fuzzwigg the Switcheroo!

Thanks for your time and participation! Hope you enjoyed it!
Thank you for inviting me to participate. Another notch on my “learning to try new things” belt! I had a great time.

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A Few More Quick Questions With…D.I. Jolly

By HCNewton

On June 8, 2023

In A Few Quick Questions With...

I talked about D.I. Jolly’s BaIT earlier this afternoon, and now I’m pleased to bring you this Q&A with him. I’m particularly grateful to him for this because I sent them the questions under the mistaken impression that we’d previously discussed doing a Q&A. He graciously replied quickly anyway.

Could you take a moment or two to introduce yourself to my readers? What set you on the path to writing, describe your path to publication, genre choices, and so on?
My name is D.I. Jolly, I’m a South African author living in Germany. I first wanted to be a writer when I was about seven years old and played a video game called Gabriel Knight, where the titular character was an author and just the coolest person I could imagine, so I decided I would be him when I grew up.

I currently have seven published books, five novels and two short story collections. When I moved to Germany is started a writing group called Poetry Club, and in the last seven years I’ve written over 270 short stories for this event, and all the ones that aren’t in the published collections are uploaded onto my website. So, if anyone is interested in dipping a toe into my writing you can read over a hundred short stories for free on my site.

When it comes to genre, my aim is always to use it as a story telling element. Rather than a setting. So, with Mostly Human, I used the elements of lycanthropy to display mental health and bipolar disorder. With Counting Sheep, the sci-fi elements are there to create an exaggerated environment of capitalism and consumerism, the two key themes of that novel. With Bait, I wanted to have what is seen now as a cliched paranormal romance novel, but focus on themes of consent rather than lust.

What was the genesis of Bait—both the story and the themes (assuming they didn’t pop up together in your mind)?
As I said, the main theme for me in Bait is consent. I had often joked that I could just write a romance novel and publish it on the Inkitt platform and get thousands of reads no problem. And I joked about it so much that I was challenge to put my money where my mouth was. So, I did, and in researching what was the current focus and trends in romance, I noticed something I really didn’t like. Something called ‘soft consent’. For those who don’t know, soft consent is when a book is written in the first person and the reader is in their head, so even though a character is saying “no, no, no, get off me.” The reader knows that in their head the character is thinking, “actually yes I want you.”

Now, I’m not here to shame anybody, your fantasies are yours, enjoy them. But what bothered me was that a lot of the audience for these kinds of books on those kinds of platforms are younger teenagers. And I saw a pattern of the snake eating its own tail, in that, an adult with experience and understand would write a soft consent novel to live out their fantasy. Absolutely fine. That would then get read by a teenager who learns something about themselves and expresses it in their own book. But now you’ve lost the experience and some of the understanding behind that kind of story. That then gets read by another teenager who does the same thing, and now it’s just focused on the sex and lacking consent but being displayed as, ‘this is what love looks like’.

And I wanted to throw a wrench into that spiral. So, I wrote Bait and made sure to show that consent was vital and very important, that consent could still be very sexy, and that consent taken away was traumatic. Both sexually and in the case of not listening to your partner while they’re in crisis.

And low and behold it got hundreds of thousands of reads on Inkitt, and was so popular that the digital rights were licensed by Inkitt and published on their pay to read app Galatea, and the publishing company TinPot acquired the print rights and put it out into the world.

I picked up a nod or two to your Mostly Human books—does this take place in the same world? If so—these werewolves seem different from Alex and the rest. Am I wrong about that? Or do you have multiple species wandering around the world (which is kind of cool), and do you plan on having them intersect?
They are different worlds in my head, but I did just want to put Easter Eggs to my other books in the story. Mostly for my own entertainment but also just to have a little nod to people who maybe go from Bait to reading some of my other books. I like the idea of someone who loved Bait diving into Mostly Human and going. “Ooooooooooohh!”

Jessica is a big personality. I know people like her and they can (fully unintentionally) take over a room/conversation in a moment—was it a challenge to keep her as a secondary character and/or keep her from taking over most scenes she’s in?
Because Bait is written in the first person and Jessica is always preserved not given her own perspective it actually made it very easy to have her be a big personally but not stealing the story. Having the boundary walls of not getting her own point of view, made it safer in a way to let her steal the scenes she was in, and to really be herself. It was also a lot of fun to write.

You’ve got a few books now under your belt—I’ve often heard that writers, or artists in general, will forget hundreds of positive reviews but always remember the negative. What’s the worst thing that someone’s said about one of your books, and has it altered your approach to future books?
There is a two-star review of my first book A Guy A Girl and A Voodoo Monkey Hand that is about 2 pages long, that point by point breaks down everything I apparently did wrong.

There is also a review of Mostly Human with the line. “…and the author didn’t really know what Thai Chi was.” Which always makes me think. “I don’t think you know what a joke is.” But hey. It’s still a four-star review. But these are the comments that live rent free in my head.

Is there a genre that you particularly enjoy reading, but could never write? Is there one you’re dying to try?
I read a lot of classics, Russian and Japanese literature. Which goes from brutal to psychedelic realism. Which I really enjoy reading but really don’t think I could write in that way. The way I think and tell stories doesn’t lend itself to that sort of world building and descriptions.

here’s a game we play around here, called “Online Bookstore Algorithm”. What are 3-5 books whose readers may like BaIt?
I’ve been told that if you enjoyed the Twilight series, you’d really like Bait. There is a very popular book on the Galatea app called Millennium Wolves, and those readers would also get behind Bait I believe. Otherwise, I don’t know, Vampire Academy? Or the Sookie Stackhouse books.

What’s next for D.I. Jolly, author?
I wrote a dark psychological thriller called Blurred Lines that I’m currently shopping around. I’m also working on a new novel Milton (working title) which is a family comedy drama. That I’m really enjoying working on. I’m waiting for a video game to be announced that I can finally tell people which game I wrote the story for, which is exciting. Poetry Club is still on going, the last Monday of every month, so there will be some new short stories going live on my website the next day. Yeah, lots of things going on, and they’re all writing.

Thanks for your time—and thanks for Bait, and hope you have plenty of success with it.
Thank you, me too.

A Few Quick Questions With…Tony Ganzer

By HCNewton

On June 5, 2023

In A Few Quick Questions With...

Earlier today, I posted my two cents about Ganzer’s book, Kneading Journalism, and now I have the opportunity to share this Q&A with the author. The note at the beginning was just something I included for him, but I enjoyed his response enough that I thought I’d throw it in.

There’s an intimidation factor I hadn’t anticipated in asking questions to 1. a journalist and 2. a journalist about a book on journalism. Hopefully this is worth your time 🙂
I really appreciate you taking the time to read these essays and wanting to engage in dialogue. Hopefully the feelings of intimidation and hunger subside with some bread and good chatting!

Could you take a moment or two to introduce yourself to my readers? What set you on the path to writing this book, describe your path to publication, and so on?
For most of my career I have been a public media broadcaster, working for NPR stations in the US, and was previously a correspondent for an English-language service of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation. I’ve been fortunate to have covered everything from tracing the Ricola production cycle from Alpine herb farm to cough drop, to the realities of Swiss gun culture. From the earliest experiences of “real world” journalism, though, I’ve been confronted with the juxtaposition of reality versus ideal. I wanted to tell sound-rich, character-filled stories all the time, but modern journalism is still very much a “feed the beast” apparatus all too often chasing minutiae and scandal. So more than 15 years ago I started writing short essays on my craft, and posting them on my website. I’d reflect on whether Glenn Beck being interviewed by Anderson Cooper on Glenn Beck’s show about Glenn Beck’s book was appropriate. Or I’d reflect on whether journalism as a craft is being practiced by other industries as a kind of “outsourcing” of journalism. These essays were part journal, part industry critique, and part lodestar to anchor me in my beliefs about what is good or bad about the industry. Journalists tend to be—and I’m speaking anecdotally and personally—a fairly cynical bunch, and in recent years I haven’t seen enough to salve that cynicism. The COVID period was strange on its own, but it goes well beyond that. Amid ever nastier political rhetoric about “the media,” amid disinformation campaigns, amid the continued deterioration of the journalism labor market, and amid personal and professional soul-searching, I looked for a way to more deeply preserve that “lodestar.” Given how important bread baking had become in my life—for food and mental health—I thought I had a unique enough idea, and after being hit by a car in March 2020 (a story for another Q&A!) I was even more determined to see it all the way to the end. I thought about the traditional publishing route, but decided to remain an independent publisher to make exactly the kind of essay collection I wanted, and to build publishing skills. I hired a talented illustrator, Nicole Falatic, and a newspaper editor friend, Brian Beesley, to keep me sharp. It just so happened that this project was wrapping up at the same time I decided to step away from daily news. I finished my MBA and found a job outside of journalism, and began a detox from push alerts. The book acts as a kind of a love letter to the brand of journalism I wanted to practice and I think we need especially now.

I think I missed your time at the UI’s Argonaut by a semester or two, but I enjoyed knowing there was a common-bond there. Something I’ve often wondered—does working on a student newspaper prepare you in any way for “real world” journalism?
To a degree, yes, if you have a well-structured program, and good advisers (which the UI does). The student newspaper, radio, and television could be seen as journalism with training wheels. You need to learn how to talk to people and to listen. You face ethical questions of what to report and how to frame stories. And something else people may not think about is how often nowadays student media are a first line of accountability and challenge to university administrations. Information can travel quickly on campus, and student reporters may be clued into big and small stories before they break into non-student press. One of my beats (areas of focus) while at the student paper was administration, which might sound boring, but it gave me a chance to build sources and explore budget issues. And sometimes big stories break on campus, even at the UI, requiring students to mature in their practice of the craft. After the FBI descended on campus, a colleague and I explored whether students’ rights were violated by interrogations. My experience in student media positioned me to be able to help tell that story then, and build experience that I applied once in the “real world.”

I thought the idea behind the “combination of baking and thoughts on the craft of journalism” was a stroke of brilliance—did that idea come to you fully-formed, or did you have to work your way to it?
Thank you for that—I know it’s definitely a niche combination! I had been tossing around the idea of combining my bread baking with my journalism for a while, but I didn’t know what it could be. I had been an assistant baker at a food co-op for a few months after college, but didn’t begin re-upping my bread skills seriously until 2018 as a stress reliever, and I thought maybe I could do a vlog following my progress. Being a radio guy, I’ve always felt weaker in video production and I like to learn through doing. So a vlog could help me improve in video (and early episodes show I needed practice!) while improving with bread as well. Now this is a bit of a random turn, but I had a chance online encounter with members of a passionate fandom for Korean megagroup BTS, which led to literally thousands of social media messages to me explaining the culture, philanthropy, and support network of their fandom. Long story short: for a time, I became a go-to resource for some people’s questions about journalism and the framing of stories. Usually this came after a writer was seen as misinterpreting the motivations or beliefs of this fandom. I asked whether some of these people would like me to try to demystify journalism and maybe throw in some bread baking, and there seemed to be some interest. So I began making vlogs showing my very amateur bread skills while I tried to explain something about journalism. Looking back at those breads…well, not all of them are pretty, but the project was more about personal progress (even through failure) and dialogue—if it’s not fully formed yet, well that’s part of it. Over time my breads improved, and I further refined my thinking about journalism. Eventually, I got to a point where I thought I could really elevate the concept with research and memoir, and the book was born.

You’ve traveled a lot as journalist—how would you say that journalists/journalism is regarded in other parts of the world? Either the work of foreign journalists or their fellow-citizens?
This is a tough question because I don’t want to generalize. There are nuances in every country to the relationship with the press. Most of my experience has been in the “West,” namely Europe and the US, in which there is more or less the understanding that quality journalism is valuable and that journalists should be serving the public. I say “more or less” because recent years have seen our common language and perceptions about journalism splinter into an unrecognizable battleground of semantic and ad hominem attacks. Even when speaking with people who are hostile toward “the media” I tended to be able to find space to dialogue with them on a person-to-person level. The desire to be heard and understood is the same in rural Ohio or Idaho as it was in a tea bar in Zurich with members of the Palestinian diaspora. But here are two observations: I will say that Germans, in my experience, were much better about news literacy than the US—that’s to say Germans typically knew about the top stories, and had read enough to form a fairly nuanced opinion about a range of issues. When living in Berlin I would often be on a morning train next to workers just getting off the night shift. These working-class guys would be drinking a beer at 7 or 8 in the morning, looking through the paper and having a great conversation on fiscal policy or foreign affairs. Maybe it was just my train, but that image stuck with me. Germany has faced populism and tabloid frenzies as other countries have, but I still considered their general news literacy very high. Second observation: it seems no matter where you are, people with power are generally accommodating to the press so long as they are not the target of a report. If a story can be used to further their goals—either noble or self-serving—they’ll be very helpful. It makes sense that someone would want their narrative to get the widest amplification possible, but when they actively obscure information, manipulate facts, or just lie, then the end product is at best incomplete and at worst propaganda. Even with journalists no longer playing the role of “gatekeepers” of information as in the past, the skills they should have are meant to help filter and counteract such manipulation…assuming they are truly independent of political favor or ideology.

You talk about the effect of having public officials calling the press an “enemy of the people.” Have things improved in the last year or two, or do you think it’s continuing?
Have things truly improved? No, I don’t think so. What’s happened—and this is just my opinion, of course—is we’ve entered a kind of ideological Cold War with our media. For the most part, the country has gone beyond just media echo chambers which reinforce perspectives or preconceptions. Increasingly we are living in parallel societies based on political, religious, cultural, or social identities in which we mostly hear information as being from “friend” or “foe.” These ideological ecosystems then work to defend the “friends” and defame the “foes,” reality be darned. Occasionally there are skirmishes and proxy wars fought on individual issues, or judicial or government nominees, or federal debt limits, but these events are just grist for the ideological mill working to perpetuate divisions. There are “neutral” players in the ecosystem. For news outlets, these may be the straight shooters just trying to document our times (a wire service like Reuters, for example) but they are often only paid attention to when they can fit the “friend” or “foe” role. The COVID pandemic showed the extent of the divisions, not just in discussions about state and federal response and economic aid (and potential misuse and/or fraud) but also in vaccines and medical advice. Many people died, it wasn’t clear how long the worst of the pandemic would last, and we needed an adult conversation about what we should do to protect ourselves and our posterity. Instead, the parallel societies did what they did best: partitioned reality and perception to accept information that was seen as coming from “friends” or “foes.”

To extend the Cold War analogy, what happens in the end? The opposing sides remain existential threats to a healthy democracy so long as dialogue is seen as a dirty word. It’s not about friends or foes, it’s about fellow citizens with their own perspectives which would add to a nuanced conversation. Is it easy? No. It is necessary? Yes. I try very hard to make personal connections with people when I speak to them for an interview or just in life. I’m not an idealogue, I’m not pushing a narrative—I’m just a guy investing time and energy in this interaction. Think of it as creating the Cold War “red phone” hotline to deescalate tensions. At the other end of the line wasn’t an ideology, it was a person.

Would you say you’re fairly optimistic or pessimistic about the next, say, 50 years of American journalism?
Wow, 50 years!? You think back 50 years from now, and we’re in the midst of the Watergate scandal, which many people see as the dawn of a new era for modern journalism. In the ultimate check on power at the highest levels, journalists proved their worth. A generation or two of journalists looked to emulate that check on power, even as the economics and tools of the trade vastly transformed journalism. Projecting 50 years beyond this point, I think there are a few things that are likely to happen:

The ideological separations of our media will continue. The democratization of technology has allowed bloggers, podcasters, activists, malcontents, and everyone else to flood the world with niche perspectives, just as corporate and political media operations continue to further the “friend” and “foe” partitioning. We’re coming full circle to the partisan beginnings of the American press, and I don’t think it’s a good thing.
Meanwhile, what we understand as “modern journalism”—well reported, nuanced, ethical—will continue to face financial pressures. Philanthropy will fund some operations for a time, as will corporations, but the net effect will be a smaller and smaller field of professionalized journalists. Work may be found behind subscriptions or paywalls or media bundles, meaning there will be further proliferation of free media of varying quality and perspectives, while the best stuff will be consumed by a shrinking number of citizens willing to pay for it.
Because AI is all the rage right now, I do want to mention the potential for further evolution of robot writers. AI been used for years to create journalistic work, notably with financial news. If quarterly results stories are formatted the same way, every time, except for the numbers, then journalists can be freed up while the computers fill in news story mad libs, right? Further, AI could continue to scrape sentences and media from other websites to create for every user a personalized news report, with increasingly complex multimedia elements which may or may not be credible. I think AI-generated content will likely increase in an assistive capacity, for data crawling, visualizations, and perhaps even some basic writing. I think this technology has the potential to flood the mediascape with more and more questionable material, making it harder and harder for people to sniff out quality information. I’ve already pulled way back on my social media use (save for posting bread pictures) as a way to protect myself from “fake news.” This struggle will continue.

I hope we’ll see a renaissance of journalism, but the craft is on the backfoot.

We have to talk bread a bit—and frankly, as hungry as the book made me, I think I could go on for a while. Did you have to cut any recipients for space (or because you couldn’t think of an essay to pair them with)? What kind of feedback are you getting on including them? What’s your favorite to eat? Bake? (whether it’s in the book or not)
There’s a recipe for Swiss braided Zopf bread I came across years ago and I would’ve loved to include that because it’s an impressive bread (looks like a Challah) that makes a good gift. I also have a recipe for hot dog buns that I made into pull-apart dinner rolls that can be baked with Camembert. This may be controversial, but: bread recipes are pretty ubiquitous. The ingredients themselves have been more or less the same through the course of all bread history, so it’s the description and execution of the process which adds a personalized flavor. Those are two breads I left out because I didn’t want to force the concept too much—am I writing an essay because I think it should be written, or just because I have another bread to include? I also wanted the breads to be as accessible as possible. I’m not a bread sommelier, just a guy sharing what I’ve learned so far!

I think most of the response I’ve gotten so far has been about the bread, and not the essays! And that’s fine by me, because it means people took some time to at least try something new. But this concept of mixing bread and journalism has generally been well-received. It’s unusual, but taken seriously. And I do feel like I’ve been able to build a small community of bakers both new and experienced.

It’s tough to decide on a favorite bread. I think I like the Rosemary Asiago bread because it’s hard to screw up—cheese tends to be very forgiving on bread! I sometimes will make this bread into rose buns (sometimes called flower buns) which is a nice treat for the kids.

I’ve also just started exploring pain d’épices, which is just honey-based spice bread. I’ve not tweaked the recipe enough to consider it enough of my own, but it’s a good addition to the dessert arsenal alongside my Irish Gingerbread.

There’s a game we play around here, called “Online Bookstore Algorithm”. What are 3-5 books whose readers may like Kneading Journalism?
Oh—what a challenge!

Maybe Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, since I take a unique track into the topic!

A Cook’s Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines by Anthony Bourdain, even though it’s a different vibe, maybe someone would like a less-than-conventional take on food and stories.

And a recent book: maybe The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening by Ari Shapiro. This memoir by NPR host Shapiro is a different kind of book, but still uses the lens of journalism to explore the world, as I tried to do.

What’s next for Anthony Ganzer, author? Do you have other books in you?
I would like to think I do. I’m not sure it will be the same kind of book (Kneading More Journalism? Kneading Journalism Harder?!) I’ve traveled so much in my life, and have talked to so many kinds of people, I feel like there is something to be said about lessons I’ve learned about myself through sometimes very personal moments with interviewees. I have a podcast where I use narrative journalism to explore issues of faith, and I thought they might eventually weave themselves into a book-appropriate format. Journalism tends to be a fairly non-religious industry, or at least that’s how it seems, so it could be a powerful lens to examine my reporting and my personal faith journey. It’s an idea at least!

Thanks for your time—and thanks for Kneading Journalism. I really enjoyed it, and hope it finds an audience.

A Few Quick Questions With…Michael Sears

By HCNewton

On May 9, 2023

In A Few Quick Questions With...

Earlier today, I posted my overdue take on Michael Sears’ novel Tower of Babel, and now I have the chance to share this Q&A that Sears was gracious enough to participate in. Thanks to Wiley Saichek for facilitating this.

I’d sent these questions during Release Week for Tower of Babel, so I appreciate his edit to question 6 so it still works. I love these answers, hope you enjoy them, too.

According to his website, “Until 2005, Mr. Sears was a Managing Director for two different Wall Street firms, where he worked in the bond market for twenty years and, earlier, in foreign exchange and derivatives. Prior to returning to Columbia University for his MBA, he was, for eight years, a professional actor appearing at the Shakespeare Theatre of Washington (Folger Theatre), Playwright’s Theater of Washington, New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, The Comedy Stage Co., and, in the course of a single year, every soap opera shot in New York City.

He is married to the artist and poet, Barbara Segal. Together with the not-altogether-domesticated cat, Penelope, they live in Sea Cliff, NY, within sight of the towers of New York.”

Could you take a moment or two to introduce yourself to my readers? What set you on the path to writing, describe your path to publication, genre choices, and so on?
My name is Michael Sears. I’ve been fortunate in my life that my hard work paid off. I now get to write books and have them published. This is the best of all possible worlds.

When I left Wall Street, I gave myself the gift of a creative writing course – which lead to another, and another, dreaming all the while that I might get a short story published someday. I had two books out before my dream came true.

I have been a reader – a fan – of crime writing from an early age. Freddy the Detective (Walter Brooks) was an early favorite. My mother encouraged my reading and I was soon devouring Sherlock Holmes, Rex Stout, Dashiell Hammett, Agatha Christie, and so on.

Assuming you can answer this without spoiling anything—why walk away (however temporarily it may be) from your Jason Stafford series to launch a new one? What was it about Ted Molloy that made you want to tell his story? Or did you have the story and have to build Ted to fit it?
I began the Jason Stafford series with the idea of following the arc of this man’s journey as his autistic son leads him to a greater appreciation for life beyond making money. Jason made the trek. And I discovered that I had written him into a corner. It was no longer okay for him to put his life at risk. More people depended on him. He’d found love and duty and a responsibility to both. He may come back some day – certainly the Kid’s arc is nowhere near done – but I’m busy right now with another man in need of some humanizing.

A question I had running through my mind a lot while reading is that this feels like a very New York kind of story. Do you think about how to make something like this work for audiences in, say the Pacific Northwest or the Plains States, where it’s hard to relate to so much of the story and real estate concerns? Is it actually possible to make a living like Ted does doing this kind of thing?
Real Estate is the religion of New Yorkers. It binds everyone with a common language, and set of experiences, yearnings, disappointments, and successes. There is a shared sense of what each individual needs to feel fulfilled. I don’t know that this feeling is easily transported to another city. I was born in Manhattan and lived there for many years and this sense is in my blood.

And, yes, it is possible to eke out a living along the periphery of New York’s real estate industry. The big sharks leave plenty of crumbs behind. A diligent worker will make a buck or two; a lucky one can earn a good bit more.

There were great secondary and tertiary characters throughout this book. Do you spend a lot of time and energy on them before introducing them to the story, or do they just pop up and you run with them? Specifically, let’s focus (almost at random) on The Preacher and Mohammed—there’s some comic relief to them, but more, too. Are they as fun to write as it seems?
Secondary characters support the main characters. They can provide a sounding board, some humor, and opportunities to explore the depth of the main characters. Lester is a great example. Tertiary characters provide specific functions like muscle or messenger but a writer has the latitude to play a bit. These folks can be ciphers or flamboyant and memorable figures. When in doubt, I go for the latter. And yes, they are fun to write. While I want readers to enjoy Ted’s explorations of right and wrong, I know they’ll get a kick out of Mohammed. As they serve the plot, rather than carry it, I feel free to let them lead me. And that’s fun. Sometimes surprising. I liked Mohammed so much, I made his story the main plot line of the sequel. (Tentatively titled, LOVE THE STRANGER, I expect this book to be out sometime in 2024.)
I was going to read the sequel already, but if Mohammed is the focus? I’ll rearrange my schedule.

The relationship between Jill and Ted worked on so many levels—I could probably do a Q&A focused solely on it. The way it adds layers to Ted and humanizes him is fantastic, it’s also not at all what I expected to find in this kind of book. Can you talk a little bit about why their relationship (particularly focusing on its status early on) was important to the novel outside of the later plot complications? I realize it’s dangerous to equate a fictional character’s politics/religion/tastes with the author, but especially in the contest of these two, I have to assume you share their sentiments when it comes to the Mets?
I am a lifelong Yankees fan. But the Mets offer a writer much more nuance and that plays to Ted’s history and his future.

Jill is such a great foil for Ted, revealing much about his character. Jill, like Ted, doesn’t know exactly who she is because she has tried so hard to be someone else. She begins her journey of discovery first, but Ted surpasses her. We’ll have to see where they each end up as the series progresses.

My process is more exploratory than structured. I am a pantser. at least for the first half of the book – or more. At some point I have to come up with an outline, just so I can put the plot in some kind of order. But I get to try out characters and see where they take me without a lot of pre-thought or judgment. Jill was a happy discovery. And she kept demanding to stay in the limelight.

Tower of Babel has been released for a while. Do you have anxiety when a new book is released? How did it compare to the previous novels?
I’m the guy who refuses to acknowledge my own anxiety – a trait that drives my wife nuts. I try to stay busy as pub day approaches. I don’t get much done, but the distractions give me the illusion of progress.

Tower of Babel won the 2022 Nero Award, as someone who’s been re-reading that series for decades, I have to ask—outside of that award, do you have much of a connection to Nero Wolfe as a fan/reader? What about the series grabs you? Can you see an influence of Stout on your writing (whether or not anyone else can)?
I read Rex Stout before Agatha Christie. My mother suggested I try him after I read all the Sherlock Holmes. I’m guessing I was in 6th or 7th grade at the time. Maybe that was too young because it was a long time before I came back to them.

I like that Wolfe solves crimes with his brain. Archie provides evidence – and often gets the significance all wrong – and Nero Wolfe puts it all in proper order. But it’s the trappings of the stories that keep bringing me back. I most enjoy when Wolfe is dragged out of his home – it’s rare, I know. Too Many Crooks is one of my favs. It takes place at The Greenbrier and I was once at a conference there.

There’s a game we play around here, called “Online Bookstore Algorithm”. What are 3-5 books whose readers may like Tower of Babel?
That is the most positive way I have been asked this question. I usually duck it because I try hard to be unique. But your method has swayed me. Charmed me.

A reviewer once said of a book of mine that it read like a combination of Ian Fleming and Woody Allen. If they’d also said I looked like George Clooney, I couldn’t have been happier.

Donna Leon’s Venice series comes to mind. The human interactions are as important as the plot. And the ends are always sad. Evil escapes unscathed all too often.

Another series, which we all know from PBS, is Morse. The books are quite good too. And here again, the innocent often are served worse than the guilty.

WHAT YOU BREAK, by my good friend, Reed Farrell Coleman for sense of place and the noir mood.

I think of TOWER OF BABEL as a love story. SOMETHING TO HIDE by Elizabeth George comes to mind.

Again, the issue of place is important. And so THE DEAD OF WINTER by my fellow Soho author – and Nero Award winner – Stephen Mack Jones.
I didn’t think of What You Break, but that’s absolutely the same kind of feel! I’m tempted to go re-write my post about Tower of Babel now discussing the relationship between the two.

What’s next for Michael Sears, author?
A sequel to TOWER OF BABEL is making its torturous way through the publication process, which means I have turned in a complete book to my Soho editor and now await a round or two of edits before we set a pub date – which will most likely be next spring.

And as I am writing all the time, there may be more. Stay tuned.

Thanks for your time—and thanks for Tower of Babel. I really enjoyed it, and hope you have plenty of success with it.

A Few Quick Questions with…Elliott Linker

By HCNewton

On April 19, 2023

In A Few Quick Questions With..., Comics, Fiction, Grandpappy's Corner, YA/MG/Children's Books

I talked about Linker’s book earlier today, and now I’m excited to bring you this Q&A. This whole experience—from seeing the book at the Library’s Indie Book Fair and getting him to sign it through this Q&A—has been a delight for me. Which is probably why I ended up asking him more questions than I normally do—I’m just glad he took the time to answer me (and I have so many follow-ups that I want to ask!). Hopefully, you enjoy this at least 10% as much as I did.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? (how old are you, what grade are you in, career plans, and that kind of thing—whatever you want to say)
I am 9 years old and in the 3rd grade. I want to be an author and a football player when I grow up. I like to read a lot. My favorite authors are JK Rowling, Kazu Kibuishi, Dav Pilkey, and the authors of The 39 Clues. I also like building with Legos and I like Star Wars.

Did George the Banana start out as a school assignment or did you just decide to write and draw a comic book/graphic novel one day? Are you like most authors who have books they’ve tried before and decided to not show anyone, or is this your first?
I just decided to start writing my own comic book last summer. I have tons of books that I have written that I didn’t want to show anyone. I still have stories that I have written that I don’t want to share.

Is George based on someone you know, or did you me him up completely?
I made George up. I don’t really remember how he came into my imagination.

Before you start writing, do you have a plan for the story or pictures? Or do you just make things up panel by panel?
I just make things up panel by panel.

Have you read or watched anything to teach you how to go make a comic book/graphic novel? (things like panel sizes, flow of the pictures, and so on) Or have you just read enough that you learned that way?
I have just read enough that I learned that way. My parents did take me to the Boise Comic Arts Festival last Fall to try to gain a little more experience and I was able to have a professional comic artist/author review my “portfolio”… aka, George the Bannana.

Did you do all the art—lettering, drawing, coloring—by yourself, or did you get someone to help? If you did get help, did you tell them what you wanted or did you let them do it on their own? Did you have to tell them to try something else because you didn’t like a color or something? How did that work? (are you a tough boss?)
I did all the writing and illustrating but my mom helped me with the coloring. I told my mom what colors I wanted things most of the time, especially for the colors of the characters, cars, buildings… my Mom just made decisions about the blank background space. My mom asked me what colors I wanted if she wasn’t sure what I wanted.

Why did you decide to publish this? Did your family give you a lot of support and encouragement to do it?
I like telling stories and I want to share my stories. I want to make people laugh. Yes, my family gave me a lot of support. We weren’t sure about how to publish my book so it took my mom a lot of time to find out.

What was the hardest part about writing or drawing George the Banana? What did you do to get past that?
I didn’t have a hard time writing or drawing George the Bannana: Book 1

What are some of your favorite books to read? Either graphic novels or other kinds?
Amulet, The 39 Clues, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Cat Kid Comic Club, Dog Man, Zita the Space Girl, Captain Underpants and The Bad Guys

What’s next for Elliott Linker, author/artist?
George the Bannana: Book 2, including Volume 4: The Fight, Volume 5: Connecting Forces and Volume 6: The Last Stand

Thanks for taking the time to answer these—and thanks for making George the Banana, I really enjoyed reading it and I hope you keep creating! Be sure to let me know when Book 2 is available, I’ll snatch it up in a heartbeat!

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