Last week, I did an interview with author and book blogger Rachael Rippon for her site Caravan Girl. Visit her site for some great reviews of self-published books and interviews with their authors: rachaelrippon.blogspot.com. Here’s my interview, in all it’s glory.
What is your history? Have you always been a writer?
Not specifically, no. I went to college for computer animation, with the intention of working in special effects. My timing was way off. By the time I’d graduated, CGI had gone through a boom and the bubble had burst, overloading the industry with over-qualified, out-of-work animators. As a fresh graduate, I couldn’t even get an interview, much less a decent job, so I followed up an internship at Wizards of the Coast with a job there.
I’m a pretty big geek, and loved working for WotC, so I kind of set aside my creative pursuits for a while. I was there for four years before they laid me off, at which point I landed at Nintendo, where I worked up until 2013. At the beginning of last year, I had a very serious discussion with my wife about the future, which led to me leaving Nintendo to be a full-time writer/house-husband.
When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
As a little kid? A marine biologist. I wanted to work with sea lions and otters, mostly. I’m not sure what really happened to that desire, but I know it shifted to more artistic pursuits once I was in high-school.
What is your favourite genre to write in?
Fantasy, without question. I like melding genres, somewhat, but no matter what I write it tends to have some sort of fantasy element. In addition to The Chronicler Saga, I have an idea for a western series… with a fantasy twist.
Do you listen to music when you write? If so, what?
I do. I absolutely cannot listen to anything with lyrics, though. I find it fascinating that any writer can actually concentrate when music with lyrics is playing in the background. It is so damned distracting.
I use Pandora a lot. I know that in the age of Spotify, saying I use Pandora is akin to me declaring my love for MySpace, but I still love it. I have three different stations for writing: If I just need mellow background music, I have a classical station originally based on Beethoven. If I need tension or atmosphere, I have one based on Nick Cave & Warren Ellis. If I’m writing action, I have one based on Hans Zimmer.
All of them have morphed and expanded some, but the basis gives you an inkling of their content.
Why did you decide to self-publish?
Control, primarily. I’d been going the query letter route for a while, but even while I was querying agents I wasn’t sure it was the right path. I received my fair share of rejections and non-responses, which gave me time to really think about it. I decided that I wanted to have control over the IP if it ever came down to it. Were my stories to take off, the idea of the right’s being dumped off piecemeal by a publisher with little to no input from me seemed appalling.
It’s a trade-off, though. Self-publishing is a lot more work for me, and more of an initial expenditure. I paid for editors and my own cover art, and I did all of the eBook design myself. The actual process of setting up the book for publishing is a hell of a lot of work. Luckily, I really enjoyed all the different aspects.
Do you think the negative stigma surrounding self-publishing is still there?
Absolutely. I even encounter it with my friends. People I know who’ve read the book will say things like “It’s actually really good!” It’s that “actually” that defines the stigma. The automatic expectation is for it to be bad, riddled with errors, or both. And that’s not an un-earned reputation, unfortunately. With the barrier to entry so low, a lot of self-published authors are fine with half-assing their work in favor of quantity or making a quick buck. Others inadvertently half-ass because they don’t know any better.
The other issue, of course, is the difficulty of discoverability and the lack of curation. It’s not easy for a reader to find the authors that rise above the dreck. My only advice, there, is research. If a self-published book catches your fancy, take the time to look into the author further. Is their website professional? Is the excerpt or preview of their book free of errors? Do they have an editor listed? Just as there is more work for a self-published author to get their book into readers’ hands, there’s more work for readers to sift through and find the gems. It can really be worth it, though.
What advice do you have for aspiring self-published authors?
Two bits: First, get an editor. However you can. The author who can reliably self-edit is a unicorn. Every artistic person in the world, be them writers, sculptors, painters, or crafters of hand-knit turtle cozies on Etsy, gets caught in art-blindness. You’ll stare at words for so long and read them so many times that you’ll just lose all sense of the errors in the text. That can only be solved by setting aside ego and collaborating with a second pair of eyes, preferably professional. If not an editor, at least a trusted group of beta-readers. Someone else has to look at your text, and you have to be open to changes.
Second, don’t skimp on the design work. Get a good cover. Do some interior design. The automatic conversion software from most of the digital self-publishing services is only just adequate. A lot of tinkering can be done to make the interior pages of an ebook – even with reflowable text – look a lot better than what their software can produce, especially if you take the time to learn some basic HTML/CSS. If you’re unable or unwilling to learn, then hire someone to do the design work for you. It’s absolutely worth it.
Is your goal to be traditionally published? If so, why?
Not specifically, no. If, down the road, I can sell one of my books to a publisher, I may go that route. I’m a pretty hardcore control freak when it comes to the IP rights for things I create, though, so I’m not sure I’d be able to negotiate a satisfactory contract with a traditional publisher. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that choice, I just don’t think it’s for me.
What are you writing at the moment?
Most of my time is spent working on the second book in The Chronicler Saga series, at the moment. I have a couple of other projects I’m dabbling with – a script for an 8-issue comic book series, and the aforementioned western idea – but the continuation of theConstruct story is my primary focus.
What can readers expect in the next installment of The Chronicler Saga?
I’m not sure how much I can give away this soon after the first book’s release, but the second book will be an expanded look at some of your favorite characters from Construct. New characters will be introduced and the plot will be significantly expanded. There’ll be some pretty fantastic surprises for fans of the first book that I’m really looking forward to seeing the reactions to. It’ll be fun.
