AUTHOR INTERVIEWS
Rob Burton, Sherry LeClerc, James Gault, Ted Bun, Richard Savin, John Dill,
Michael Hsu
JAMES GAULT MEETS AN AUTHOR ... ROB BURTON
Rob Burton is the author of the urban fantasy Meditations on Murder and of the Celtic novella The Castle of the Red Haired Maidens. He was a professional Sociologist for over 25 years at a number of prestigious British Universities. Now semi-retired Rob works in Nanjing, China teaching English and writing novels.
Hi Rob, Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed.
What motivates you to write fiction? What do you want to achieve by it?
Ever since I was at school where I always did well in ‘composition’ I have wanted to be a writer. I have written poems most of my life. Then when I was busy working in factories and got involved with the Trades Union I wrote political polemics for local left-wing magazines. Then I was at university writing essays and after that working as an academic writing learned papers so my fiction writing ambitions were buried beneath all this other stuff. Then my university wanted to make me redundant and so did the mother of my child. So I sat in my office and started writing blogs and then that developed into a first novel – now lost on some old hard disc somewhere. Then as the angst set in so started the beginning of what is now my first novel Meditations on Murder. Write what you know they say. Read between the lines in this novel and you will understand my motivations.
What do I want to achieve? A person enjoying my writing is enough. Writers write to be read – don’t they?
I know you live and work now in China? How do you think living in another country and travelling in general influence your writing?
As I mentioned above “Write what you know’ is good advice. I have lived and worked in a few countries, travelled through war zones, done things I don’t want my mum to read about (That’s why I use a pen name for my China memoir). Young writers come on Facebook and ask about how to write a novel and make it realistic. I say take Jack Kerouac’s advice and get On The Road. Have some experiences and live life.
You’re an academic. What difference does an academic background make to your writing?
When I was an academic and wanted to write fiction I would convince myself that academic writing in itself was actually a creative process – so I was writing. What I have learned is the discipline of writing. One sees writers on the Facebook groups bemoaning the fact that they have “writer’s block.” Well I suggest try telling their boss, if part of their job description includes writing, that they can’t possibly supply the report they were meant to provide because they are “blocked” – it doesn’t wash. Writer’s block is a myth from my point of view. Many, many writers have deadlines they have to meet if they want to eat, keep a roof over their heads and remain employed so for them it’s nonsense to suggest writers block is a thing. As an academic I have also learnt how to research what I am writing to make it as authentic as possible – although I am not adverse to using artistic license to play fast and loose with facts, history and geography – something one cannot do as an academic.
Is there a short paragraph form your work that you’re particular proud of? Can you share it with us and tell us why?
From Meditations on Murder
I looked into his face, well, up into his face. He was bigger than me, and not as plumpish, quite solid in fact. A local bouncer, or Security, as they prefer to be referred to while bouncing people. He oozed Russianness. Black leather jacket, white shirt, black tie, big fuck off watch, bald. He had a special-forces earpiece in and a Spetsnaz attitude all over his face.
What would Jason do? Kill him.
I couldn’t, because I was too busy trying to breathe. He was a real professional, and he spun me around, dropped the chokehold, and shoved my arm up my back, executing a pretty practised arm lock.
‘Ow’. That hurt too.
I struggled. I tried out a Kung Fu kick I saw on a movie once. I’m not good at street fighting. It didn’t work.
‘Hey, motherrrfucker, kalm fuck down beforrre I smack you.’
He smacked me anyway.
I like this little scene – It sort of sums up Charlie and the situations he finds himself in – a sort of hapless hero.
You have described your genre as ‘urban fantasy’ – what exactly is that?
To be honest I never knew what urban fantasy was. I didn’t know I was writing it. I just wrote a story. Im not even a planner. I don’t plan. I write. I’m a pantser in the jargon of the writing groups. I just write what my characters do and say – I don’t control it. Then I got involved with a twitter pitch party where you tweet you pitch to agents. I had to have a hashtag with my genre. So I asked what’s my genre, I gave people a synopisis of the story and they said urban fantasy, so I stuck with that. My current novella is set in 12th century Scotland so I guess that may be Historical Fantasy as it does have ghosts. And my WIP is set in Cornwall with all sorts of going’s on I think that might be Contemporary Fantasy or I’ve started a new genre called Rural Fantasy. What is urban fantasy – I don’t really know the exact definition. I could Google it I suppose – Charlie does that all the time.
I see a lot of historical and linguistic influences in your last novel. Can you say a bit more about that? What was it that got you interested in these topics?
As I mentioned above I don’t plan these things. I’m a pantser and I just write what my characters do and say. So A sarf Landen boy would have a South London accent as would the yardie and a Scottish character and so on. They say it I write it. For the reader it seems to be like Marmite, some like it some hate it. It does seem that nowadays people don’t want to work too hard with their reading. On the advice of the editor and some comments I did tone it down a little – but even that grated with me. In The Castle of the Red-Haired Maidens I did tone done the Scottish a little. So Nye is not quite so intelligible.
One of the works that really interested me was A Clockword Orange by Anthony Burgess. The main characters use lingo/slang called Nadsat a mix of Russian, Cockney rhyming slang, the King James Bible, and German. In a sense he pre-empted the rise of the London patois or street patois that youths use today just with a Jamacian/Hip Hop influence rather than Russian.
What are you currently working on?
I have just published a Novella called The Castle of the Red-Haired Maidens this is Nye’s back-story. In Meditations on Murder she told us that she had been murdered horribly in 12th Century Scotland. But she didn’t want to give details – understandably.
I am also working on Book 2 of Charlie Simpsons adventures – The Twelfth Rune takes place in Cornwall and it’s a Dan Brownish romp through Cornish Myths and Legends. My PhD was Cornish Identity so once again I am writing what I know.
I also write textbooks for ESL students. In particular books for students taking the IELTS English proficiency tests. I have published a speaking guide and am now also working on a writing guide.
Is there anything you want to write in the future that might be a change in direction for you?
I have no idea what I’ll write tomorrow let alone in the future.
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JAMES GAULT MEETS AN AUTHOR ... SHERRY LECLERC
Sherry Leclerc is a Canadian author of Science Fiction and Fantasy novels. Her current project is a series of novels called THE SEERS SERIES, the first book of which, THE GUARDIANS OF EASTGATE, is available on Amazon. She combines her writing with her duties as a working mum and a teacher.
Hi Sherry, thanks for agreeing to submit to this grilling. I hope it’s not too painful.
Can you describe your genre and tell us what attracted you to it?
My genre is fantasy, though it has also been referred to as cross-genre because it has elements of action & adventure and romance as well. As for the fantasy portion, it is more of an epic or high fantasy. However, the way I am approaching it lends to having five or six 70,000 – 90,000 word books as opposed to two or three longer tomes.
The big attraction to the fantasy genre for me is that there are really no limits to what you can write. From a reader’s perspective, I have always loved being able to immerse myself in fantasy worlds and characters that stretch the imagination. It teaches you new ways of looking at things and forces you to consider new perspectives that you may not have thought of before.
Fantasy novels tend to pit good against evil and teach moral lessons – kind of like Aesop’s Fables for teens and adults. At the same time, they can show that there is no true black and white. There are many shades of grey as well.
On a more basic level than all of that is the fact that, when times are difficult, or you find yourself in a bad mood or situation, you can immerse yourself in these fantasy worlds and imagine yourself as the protagonist. It provides a means of escape and a way to unwind. Sometimes the characters can go through such trials and difficulties that we think, “Well, maybe life isn’t so bad for me after all.”
From a writer’s perspective, the fantasy genre forces you to expand your understanding of the world and the universe. It makes you ask, “what if?” It causes you to test the limits of your imagination. When, as a writer, you can create a world that seems real, that makes sense even though it is not based on reality, you know you are really getting somewhere.
I believe you are a big fan of J.R.R. Tolkien. What attracted you to him and does he influence your writing?
Yes, I am a big fan of J.R.R. Tolkien. In high school I took advanced literature courses, and the first book in the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, was required reading for one of them. In all honesty, my teenaged self had a difficult time getting into the book. It was the longest book I had read to that point, and it was very detailed. Sections of the story felt long and tedious to me.
Yet, by the end of the book I was hooked, and I was glad for all the detail he wrote into the novel. I went on to read the whole trilogy, then The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, and the Unfinished Tales. The Silmarillion reads more like a history, and I’m sure it wouldn’t be every reader’s cup of tea. However, I found it fascinating. The kind of detail he put into his world building and the depths of the history and character building are truly amazing.
Tolkien most definitely influences my writing. In the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, we actually get to see the perspectives of a number of different characters. The movies were much more limited in this respect. In the books, we get to see the journeys, trials and difficulties of a number of the main characters.
In my Seers Series, I wanted to do the same deep world-building, and to show a shared quest from a number of different perspectives, as Tolkien did. At the same time, modern readers are not the same as readers were in the early to mid-nineteen hundreds. These days, there are many readers who would enjoy the genre, but have neither the time nor attention to devote to huge works of literature.
I tried to write my series with these readers in mind. The story is huge, with many important players. The first four books of the series all look at the same threat from different perspectives, yet the protagonist of each book has his or her own personal challenges to overcome as well. So, though the characters are all working toward the same end goal, the books will actually be quite varied and different. Then in the fifth (and possibly sixth) book, they will all converge and move forward together. It is kind of like if someone had taken Tolkien’s way of structuring, pulled the pieces apart, and reassembled them into more manageable bits. At least, this is my goal. Time will tell if I succeed in reaching it.
I have also written some short stories based in the same world as The Series Series, and I will be adding more. They give a little background on some of the main characters from the series. Readers can get a free copy of these short stories in exchange for signing up to recieve my author newsletter, which I send out about once a month. They just need to visit my website, scroll down to the cover of The Guardians of Sterrenvar, and click on the image. This will bring them to a page where they can sign up for a free ebook version of the stories by putting in their email address. My website is: www.sherryleclerc.com
I know you’re a mum and a teacher as well as a writer. How do you find time for writing?
Very simply, writing, and activities related to my writing pursuits, are all I do in my spare time. I don’t watch TV, play computer games, or spend a lot of time on social media, for example. I am also good at compartmentalizing.
When I am at work, I am completely focused on my job and my students. When I come home from work, I spend time with my kids. After they go to bed I either write, read, read about writing, or do other writing, publishing, and promoting related tasks. I also watch videos and webinars and take on-line courses related to writing, publishing, marketing, and so on.
There are evenings where I don’t have time to write at all. However, as long as I am doing something to forward my writing career, I feel I am using my time well. I try to catch up on weekends and holidays as well.
I don’t really know any other Canadian writers apart from Margaret Atwood. We Brits tend to think of Canadians as sort of Americans, at least culturally. Is that fair? Is there a Canadian style? And do you think that being Canadian has any makes a difference to your writing?
This is a very loaded question. I think if you asked any Canadian, we would all argue that we are very different than Americans. At least when it comes to culture, ideology, and so on.
Yet, there is a lot of cross-border shopping, and we read many of the same things. Canadian libraries and book stores promote and support Canadian authors, but there is also a big American influence in what we read, and sometimes in how we write.
As an example, I am a Canadian author and, as you may know, Canadian spelling is very similar to the British way. Our slang and terminology can be quite different, but we still have maintained the British way of spelling. Politically speaking, and personally for many people I know, we also still very much think of our selves as a British colony, with our Governor General being the figure-head of the monarchy.
However, if you read my book, you will see that I use American spelling instead of Canadian spelling. This was a very deliberate choice on my part. We Canadians are used to seeing both Canadian and American spellings, but from what I understand (though I’m not American and don’t spend time in the US, so I can’t say for certain) Americans are not accustomed to our spelling.
Of course, being Canadian makes a difference to my writing – both consciously and subconsciously, I’m sure. For example, I have travelled from the farthest east to the farthest west provinces in the country and have visited all the provinces in between. I have even lived in four of the ten provinces. In my travels, I have met many interesting people and I’ve seen beautiful sights and amazing landscapes. Many of these have ended up as part of the fantasy world I’ve created.
I’m interested in the fact you both teach and write, because I used to teach myself. What’s the relationship between your teaching and your writing, if there is one? Do you see it as part of your role to encourage youngsters to ‘take up the pen’? And if you do, how do you go about it?
Yes, there is a relationship between my teaching and my writing. My first university degree was a Bachelor of Arts with a major in English Language and Literature, and a minor in French Language and Literature. I knew I wanted to be a writer, but this was more than twenty years ago, when self-publishing was a virtually non-existent concept. Becoming a published author, I knew, could be a long and tedious process which was largely out of the writer’s control (beyond the writing of the book, anyway).
So, I knew my B.A. degree would be a stepping stone to something else. Though I wanted to be an editor and writer, I was a poor student and my education was completely funded by student loans, which I would have to pay back once I graduated. I couldn’t afford to just up and travel to somewhere where the opportunities were greater or cross my fingers and hope to land a publishing contract sooner rather than later.
So, I decided to focus on something that would still allow me to enjoy an area I loved and be able to share that enthusiasm with others, and I pursued a Bachelor of Education at the Intermediate and Secondary level. My goal, of course, was to be a high school English teacher, where I could share my love of the written word with students.
Funnily enough, though, I never taught English, aside from during my practicum and a few supply teaching jobs here and there along the way. Canada is an officially bilingual country, where we are all required to learn the other language, but where French speakers are a minority outside of Quebec and New Brunswick. So, since I am an anglophone who studied French and became bilingual (though you can still tell I am a native English speaker when I speak French), and there was a great need for French teachers, that’s what I ended up teaching for the majority of my career.
My job as a language teacher serves a very important role. Rather than encouraging youngsters to take up the pen (though it would be great if they did), I try to encourage them to open their minds. I try to teach my students that communication is a very important thing. Learning about others’ languages and cultures is very important. I personally believe that there would be a lot less conflict in the world if people truly tried to understand and appreciate one another rather than just saying, “My language/culture/country is better than yours and everyone should do it our way.”
My love of language and literature is linked to this as well. How language is formed, the expressions people use, the differences in structure, and so on, all give us clues to how that other culture thinks and functions. This is even true on the individual level within a language and culture. The words a person uses and how he or she uses them can give us a great insight into their personality (I try to use words and manners of speaking to show elements of personality in my writing as well).
One of my goals is to get my students to go from saying, “Why do they do it that way? It doesn’t make any sense,” to “Oh, that’s why they do it that way. That makes sense.” This is a goal because this can signify that “Aha!” moment when someone goes from learning about another language and culture to truly trying to understand.
I do encourage my students to read, and read a lot, because this is another excellent way to learn about and experience other cultures and ways of life, and to look at things from perspectives they may not have considered before.
Are you a feminist? I’m asking because women seem to be very important in the worlds you create.
That is a very interesting question. I do not consider myself a feminist as such, though many of my beliefs wold fit into that ideology, and I am sure many who meet me or know me would consider me a feminist as well.
Women are important in the worlds I create because of who I am as a writer, what I identify with, and the points I’m trying to make. One of those points is, yes, that women can be as strong, capable and independent as men. While there are undeniable differences between the genders, there really is nothing there physically or mentally that says women can’t be tough and independent. That we can’t like being strong or learning how to fight. Or that men can’t like to read or write emotional stories, or prefer passivity to violence.
But this is only a small part of the larger point I am trying to make.
My belief in equality expands far beyond gender roles. I also believe that all humans should be treated fairly, regardless of gender, race, culture, or socio-economic status. There are so many factors that create differences between people, but that doesn’t mean that one person, race, culture, or gender is better than another. It just means we have lived different histories, have had different experiences and opportunities, have different priorities and goals, and so on.
I personally believe that if, throughout history, people had been more willing to try to actually understand one another, to learn about each other and to value differences, and to value people for who they are rather than just say, “My way is better than yours,” there would have been, and would be, an awful lot less conflict in the world. And that is one of the points I try to make in The Seers Series, starting with The Guardians of Eastgate.
The Guardians of Eastgate, Book 1 of The Seers Series is now on sale. Where are you with the rest of the series?
My second book in The Seers Series is a completed draft now and is currently with beta readers for early feedback. There will still be a couple of rounds of editing to do once I get it back, but I expect it to be ready to publish in the next couple of months.
I am also creating an audiobook version of the first book in the series, The Guardians of Eastgate. The recording is complete, and I am currently in the editing process. It has been slow going, since I have so many other things going on at the same time, but I hope it will be complete, uploaded and ready to download in a couple of weeks to a month from now, depending on how much time I get to put into it.
I am also about 25% of the way into the third book of the series and have the rough outlines of the next two books in the series.
To sum up, could you say what your hopes and ambitions are as a writer?
I think my hopes and ambitions are the same as those of any writer. I hope to increase my fan base and the number of readers who get to experience my stories. I hope that my books might cause people to consider different perspectives, to look at the world and all its people a little differently. I hope it inspires people to value differences instead of expecting everyone to conform to one specific set of expectations. I hope it makes people think about what it means to be human and, even deeper, what kind of people we want to be.
I hope my writing can touch others’ hearts and souls, and to help them open their minds.
More on a surface level, of course I hope that my writing will eventually help me to be successful financially. However, the big reason I hope for financial success is so I can afford to keep writing, because I have a lot of other ideas I would love to put on paper and get out there to the world.
Beyond having the rest of the books in my current Seers Series either written, partly written, or outlined, I also have ideas for three separate science fiction novels. So, my ambition is to complete and publish all these works, and to improve my writing and my sense of what the readers need as I go.
I also have a fair bit of poetry that has been sitting around. My novels contain some of my poems, but I hope to one day publish at least one book of poetry as well.
Hi Sherry, thanks for agreeing to submit to this grilling. I hope it’s not too painful.
Can you describe your genre and tell us what attracted you to it?
My genre is fantasy, though it has also been referred to as cross-genre because it has elements of action & adventure and romance as well. As for the fantasy portion, it is more of an epic or high fantasy. However, the way I am approaching it lends to having five or six 70,000 – 90,000 word books as opposed to two or three longer tomes.
The big attraction to the fantasy genre for me is that there are really no limits to what you can write. From a reader’s perspective, I have always loved being able to immerse myself in fantasy worlds and characters that stretch the imagination. It teaches you new ways of looking at things and forces you to consider new perspectives that you may not have thought of before.
Fantasy novels tend to pit good against evil and teach moral lessons – kind of like Aesop’s Fables for teens and adults. At the same time, they can show that there is no true black and white. There are many shades of grey as well.
On a more basic level than all of that is the fact that, when times are difficult, or you find yourself in a bad mood or situation, you can immerse yourself in these fantasy worlds and imagine yourself as the protagonist. It provides a means of escape and a way to unwind. Sometimes the characters can go through such trials and difficulties that we think, “Well, maybe life isn’t so bad for me after all.”
From a writer’s perspective, the fantasy genre forces you to expand your understanding of the world and the universe. It makes you ask, “what if?” It causes you to test the limits of your imagination. When, as a writer, you can create a world that seems real, that makes sense even though it is not based on reality, you know you are really getting somewhere.
I believe you are a big fan of J.R.R. Tolkien. What attracted you to him and does he influence your writing?
Yes, I am a big fan of J.R.R. Tolkien. In high school I took advanced literature courses, and the first book in the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, was required reading for one of them. In all honesty, my teenaged self had a difficult time getting into the book. It was the longest book I had read to that point, and it was very detailed. Sections of the story felt long and tedious to me.
Yet, by the end of the book I was hooked, and I was glad for all the detail he wrote into the novel. I went on to read the whole trilogy, then The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, and the Unfinished Tales. The Silmarillion reads more like a history, and I’m sure it wouldn’t be every reader’s cup of tea. However, I found it fascinating. The kind of detail he put into his world building and the depths of the history and character building are truly amazing.
Tolkien most definitely influences my writing. In the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, we actually get to see the perspectives of a number of different characters. The movies were much more limited in this respect. In the books, we get to see the journeys, trials and difficulties of a number of the main characters.
In my Seers Series, I wanted to do the same deep world-building, and to show a shared quest from a number of different perspectives, as Tolkien did. At the same time, modern readers are not the same as readers were in the early to mid-nineteen hundreds. These days, there are many readers who would enjoy the genre, but have neither the time nor attention to devote to huge works of literature.
I tried to write my series with these readers in mind. The story is huge, with many important players. The first four books of the series all look at the same threat from different perspectives, yet the protagonist of each book has his or her own personal challenges to overcome as well. So, though the characters are all working toward the same end goal, the books will actually be quite varied and different. Then in the fifth (and possibly sixth) book, they will all converge and move forward together. It is kind of like if someone had taken Tolkien’s way of structuring, pulled the pieces apart, and reassembled them into more manageable bits. At least, this is my goal. Time will tell if I succeed in reaching it.
I have also written some short stories based in the same world as The Series Series, and I will be adding more. They give a little background on some of the main characters from the series. Readers can get a free copy of these short stories in exchange for signing up to recieve my author newsletter, which I send out about once a month. They just need to visit my website, scroll down to the cover of The Guardians of Sterrenvar, and click on the image. This will bring them to a page where they can sign up for a free ebook version of the stories by putting in their email address. My website is: www.sherryleclerc.com
I know you’re a mum and a teacher as well as a writer. How do you find time for writing?
Very simply, writing, and activities related to my writing pursuits, are all I do in my spare time. I don’t watch TV, play computer games, or spend a lot of time on social media, for example. I am also good at compartmentalizing.
When I am at work, I am completely focused on my job and my students. When I come home from work, I spend time with my kids. After they go to bed I either write, read, read about writing, or do other writing, publishing, and promoting related tasks. I also watch videos and webinars and take on-line courses related to writing, publishing, marketing, and so on.
There are evenings where I don’t have time to write at all. However, as long as I am doing something to forward my writing career, I feel I am using my time well. I try to catch up on weekends and holidays as well.
I don’t really know any other Canadian writers apart from Margaret Atwood. We Brits tend to think of Canadians as sort of Americans, at least culturally. Is that fair? Is there a Canadian style? And do you think that being Canadian has any makes a difference to your writing?
This is a very loaded question. I think if you asked any Canadian, we would all argue that we are very different than Americans. At least when it comes to culture, ideology, and so on.
Yet, there is a lot of cross-border shopping, and we read many of the same things. Canadian libraries and book stores promote and support Canadian authors, but there is also a big American influence in what we read, and sometimes in how we write.
As an example, I am a Canadian author and, as you may know, Canadian spelling is very similar to the British way. Our slang and terminology can be quite different, but we still have maintained the British way of spelling. Politically speaking, and personally for many people I know, we also still very much think of our selves as a British colony, with our Governor General being the figure-head of the monarchy.
However, if you read my book, you will see that I use American spelling instead of Canadian spelling. This was a very deliberate choice on my part. We Canadians are used to seeing both Canadian and American spellings, but from what I understand (though I’m not American and don’t spend time in the US, so I can’t say for certain) Americans are not accustomed to our spelling.
Of course, being Canadian makes a difference to my writing – both consciously and subconsciously, I’m sure. For example, I have travelled from the farthest east to the farthest west provinces in the country and have visited all the provinces in between. I have even lived in four of the ten provinces. In my travels, I have met many interesting people and I’ve seen beautiful sights and amazing landscapes. Many of these have ended up as part of the fantasy world I’ve created.
I’m interested in the fact you both teach and write, because I used to teach myself. What’s the relationship between your teaching and your writing, if there is one? Do you see it as part of your role to encourage youngsters to ‘take up the pen’? And if you do, how do you go about it?
Yes, there is a relationship between my teaching and my writing. My first university degree was a Bachelor of Arts with a major in English Language and Literature, and a minor in French Language and Literature. I knew I wanted to be a writer, but this was more than twenty years ago, when self-publishing was a virtually non-existent concept. Becoming a published author, I knew, could be a long and tedious process which was largely out of the writer’s control (beyond the writing of the book, anyway).
So, I knew my B.A. degree would be a stepping stone to something else. Though I wanted to be an editor and writer, I was a poor student and my education was completely funded by student loans, which I would have to pay back once I graduated. I couldn’t afford to just up and travel to somewhere where the opportunities were greater or cross my fingers and hope to land a publishing contract sooner rather than later.
So, I decided to focus on something that would still allow me to enjoy an area I loved and be able to share that enthusiasm with others, and I pursued a Bachelor of Education at the Intermediate and Secondary level. My goal, of course, was to be a high school English teacher, where I could share my love of the written word with students.
Funnily enough, though, I never taught English, aside from during my practicum and a few supply teaching jobs here and there along the way. Canada is an officially bilingual country, where we are all required to learn the other language, but where French speakers are a minority outside of Quebec and New Brunswick. So, since I am an anglophone who studied French and became bilingual (though you can still tell I am a native English speaker when I speak French), and there was a great need for French teachers, that’s what I ended up teaching for the majority of my career.
My job as a language teacher serves a very important role. Rather than encouraging youngsters to take up the pen (though it would be great if they did), I try to encourage them to open their minds. I try to teach my students that communication is a very important thing. Learning about others’ languages and cultures is very important. I personally believe that there would be a lot less conflict in the world if people truly tried to understand and appreciate one another rather than just saying, “My language/culture/country is better than yours and everyone should do it our way.”
My love of language and literature is linked to this as well. How language is formed, the expressions people use, the differences in structure, and so on, all give us clues to how that other culture thinks and functions. This is even true on the individual level within a language and culture. The words a person uses and how he or she uses them can give us a great insight into their personality (I try to use words and manners of speaking to show elements of personality in my writing as well).
One of my goals is to get my students to go from saying, “Why do they do it that way? It doesn’t make any sense,” to “Oh, that’s why they do it that way. That makes sense.” This is a goal because this can signify that “Aha!” moment when someone goes from learning about another language and culture to truly trying to understand.
I do encourage my students to read, and read a lot, because this is another excellent way to learn about and experience other cultures and ways of life, and to look at things from perspectives they may not have considered before.
Are you a feminist? I’m asking because women seem to be very important in the worlds you create.
That is a very interesting question. I do not consider myself a feminist as such, though many of my beliefs wold fit into that ideology, and I am sure many who meet me or know me would consider me a feminist as well.
Women are important in the worlds I create because of who I am as a writer, what I identify with, and the points I’m trying to make. One of those points is, yes, that women can be as strong, capable and independent as men. While there are undeniable differences between the genders, there really is nothing there physically or mentally that says women can’t be tough and independent. That we can’t like being strong or learning how to fight. Or that men can’t like to read or write emotional stories, or prefer passivity to violence.
But this is only a small part of the larger point I am trying to make.
My belief in equality expands far beyond gender roles. I also believe that all humans should be treated fairly, regardless of gender, race, culture, or socio-economic status. There are so many factors that create differences between people, but that doesn’t mean that one person, race, culture, or gender is better than another. It just means we have lived different histories, have had different experiences and opportunities, have different priorities and goals, and so on.
I personally believe that if, throughout history, people had been more willing to try to actually understand one another, to learn about each other and to value differences, and to value people for who they are rather than just say, “My way is better than yours,” there would have been, and would be, an awful lot less conflict in the world. And that is one of the points I try to make in The Seers Series, starting with The Guardians of Eastgate.
The Guardians of Eastgate, Book 1 of The Seers Series is now on sale. Where are you with the rest of the series?
My second book in The Seers Series is a completed draft now and is currently with beta readers for early feedback. There will still be a couple of rounds of editing to do once I get it back, but I expect it to be ready to publish in the next couple of months.
I am also creating an audiobook version of the first book in the series, The Guardians of Eastgate. The recording is complete, and I am currently in the editing process. It has been slow going, since I have so many other things going on at the same time, but I hope it will be complete, uploaded and ready to download in a couple of weeks to a month from now, depending on how much time I get to put into it.
I am also about 25% of the way into the third book of the series and have the rough outlines of the next two books in the series.
To sum up, could you say what your hopes and ambitions are as a writer?
I think my hopes and ambitions are the same as those of any writer. I hope to increase my fan base and the number of readers who get to experience my stories. I hope that my books might cause people to consider different perspectives, to look at the world and all its people a little differently. I hope it inspires people to value differences instead of expecting everyone to conform to one specific set of expectations. I hope it makes people think about what it means to be human and, even deeper, what kind of people we want to be.
I hope my writing can touch others’ hearts and souls, and to help them open their minds.
More on a surface level, of course I hope that my writing will eventually help me to be successful financially. However, the big reason I hope for financial success is so I can afford to keep writing, because I have a lot of other ideas I would love to put on paper and get out there to the world.
Beyond having the rest of the books in my current Seers Series either written, partly written, or outlined, I also have ideas for three separate science fiction novels. So, my ambition is to complete and publish all these works, and to improve my writing and my sense of what the readers need as I go.
I also have a fair bit of poetry that has been sitting around. My novels contain some of my poems, but I hope to one day publish at least one book of poetry as well.
FIONA TURNS THE TABLES ON AUTHOR INTERVIEWER JAMES GAULT
Let’s get you introduced to everyone, shall we? Tell us your name. What is your age?
Hi Fiona, Nice to meet you.My name is James Gault and I’m a (hopefully)young 71.
Fiona: Where are you from?
Originally I’m from the west of Scotland, where I went to University in Glasgow, studying Maths and Computer Science. It seems like an odd education for someone who now writes novels, but if you think about it, it involves the same kind of logical planning process as creating the plot of a story. Now I live and work now in the South of France except when I go back the UK to visit my children and grandchildren.
Fiona: Tell us your latest news.
My 3rd novel ‘The Redemption of Ann Petrovna’ is just out on Amazon. Currently, I’m writing my fourth novel and I’m also in the process of launching an on-line magazine about books and writing called ‘Vox Lit’.
Fiona: When and why did you begin writing?
Well everyone begins to write at school, but for me writing is something that has been building up all my life from a small beginning. I started with letters to magazines, moved on to writing English Language Teaching Textbooks, short stories and articles, and then it was novels. I have always written because I have something I want to say.
Fiona: When did you first consider yourself a writer?
That’s a tough question. What is the right criterion for claiming you are a writer? The first time someone publishes your work? I can tick that one off. The first time someone hands over money for what you’ve written? I’ve had that too. Seeing one of your books on the bookshop shelves? Yes, I’ve been lucky enough to pass that milestone. Getting a public prize for something you’ve written? Another lucky break I’ve had. Every little achievement is encouraging, but until I get to the top of the best seller list or sell a novel to a film producer, I’ll always think of myself as just working towards being a writer.
Fiona: What inspired you to write your first book?
My first book was an ELT book which I wanted to write because I had some strong ideas about how to teach English to foreigners that I wanted people to try. I was lucky enough to get a commission to do it.
Fiona: How did you come up with the title?
The title for this one was decided by the publisher.
Fiona: Do you have a specific writing style? Is there anything about your style or genre that you find particularly challenging?
I try to be able to vary my style to the needs of the book, but I am governed by the belief that writers you show readers the world form a point of view that others don’t have. And also, I try to make my fiction at least amusing if not funny.
Fiona: How much of the book is realistic and are experiences based on someone you know, or events in your own life?
I see fiction as exaggerated reality. So people and events in my life are the starting point, but then the imagination has to extend them. I wouldn’t say any of my novels are ‘romans à clef’.
Fiona: To craft your works, do you have to travel? Before or during the process?
I’ve travelled a lot and I’ve worked in Scotland, The Czech Republic and France. I don’t travel in order to write, but my travel experiences influence my writing. I always set my novels in places I have spent a lot of time.
Fiona: Who designed the covers?
In another life I was a marketing manager, so I have been designing the covers of my indie novels myself. But maybe that isn’t a great idea. I’ll probably write a brief and get a professional designer the next time.
Fiona: Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
I hope there are messages in all my novels. In my latest, the messages are about corruption and reconciling goals and ambitions with moral principles in such an environment.
I wouldn’t be able to write if I didn’t have something to say. I always hope that my readers will see things just a tiny bit differently after reading my work.
Fiona: Are there any new authors that have grasped your interest? Who is your favorite writer, and what is it about their work that really strikes you?
This is the kind of question I am no good at answering. There are so many new writers and so many great writers I wouldn’t presume to pick out one as a favourite. I love Charles Dickens, for instance, because I was brought up on TV adaptations of his work, but when you get into his books themselves they are wonderfully witty and insightful, which is something that the adaptations have never managed to capture.
Fiona: Outside of family members, name one entity that supported your commitment to become a published author.
Many of my friends, my first publisher, the publisher who read but rejected one of my books but then wrote a very encouraging and helpful analysis of it. But I think that it is an author’s personal drive and ambition which counts most.
Fiona: Do you see writing as a career?
Not at my age – my books might be a legacy for my grandchildren. But I see writing as a way to point out things that they may not have noticed to others
Fiona: If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything in your latest book?
Yes yes yes!! But I know of some writers who have never published because they keep going back to change things. I’m 99% satisfied, and on to the next book now.
Fiona: Did you learn anything during the writing of your recent book?
You learn something new every time you do anything. This last novel was the longest and most intricate I have written, and it brought home to me how valuable an editor can be in pointing out what you may not noticed yourself.
Fiona: If your book was made into a film, who would you like to play the lead?
I’m a fan of Gwyneth Paltrow, but she may be a bit too old now.
Fiona: Any advice for other writers?
Keep at it! Especially for a novel, it’s a lot of work and easy to give up. I have about 10 false starts of novels still sitting in my computer.
Fiona: Anything specific you want to tell your readers?
Apart from ‘Buy my books’, I would just like to tell them to be open-minded about everything.
Fiona: What book are you reading now?
Right at this moment, I’m reading an interesting non-fiction book about world history called ‘After Tamerlane’ by a British academic called John Darwin. It’s a long and difficult read, but the interesting thing is that he explores modern history (from 1400) not just from a UK, European or Western point of view, but from Musim and Asian viewpoints also. It fulfils my need to see the world though more than my own eyes.
Fiona: Do you remember the first book you read?
No, can anyone really? I remember reading ‘Biggles’ books when I was young.
Fiona: What makes you laugh/cry?
I don’t cry very much and laugh at almost anything. I am very lucky.
Fiona: Is there one person, past or present, you would love to meet? Why?
This is another ‘favorite’ question which is hard to answer. There are a lot of politicians I would like to meet just to ask them what they think they are doing.
Fiona: Do you have any hobbies?
Writing.Family. I also still write computer programs.
Fiona: What TV shows/films do you enjoy watching?
Above all, history documentaries on TV and spy films. The ultimate joy is a TV documentary on cold war spies
Fiona: Favorite foods, colors, music?
No favorites, but I do like Opera.
Fiona: Imagine a future where you no longer write. What would you do?
Read?? But I think I will always be writing something.
Fiona: What do you want written on your head stone?
‘Reserved for an occupant who is not quite ready yet!’
Hi Fiona, Nice to meet you.My name is James Gault and I’m a (hopefully)young 71.
Fiona: Where are you from?
Originally I’m from the west of Scotland, where I went to University in Glasgow, studying Maths and Computer Science. It seems like an odd education for someone who now writes novels, but if you think about it, it involves the same kind of logical planning process as creating the plot of a story. Now I live and work now in the South of France except when I go back the UK to visit my children and grandchildren.
Fiona: Tell us your latest news.
My 3rd novel ‘The Redemption of Ann Petrovna’ is just out on Amazon. Currently, I’m writing my fourth novel and I’m also in the process of launching an on-line magazine about books and writing called ‘Vox Lit’.
Fiona: When and why did you begin writing?
Well everyone begins to write at school, but for me writing is something that has been building up all my life from a small beginning. I started with letters to magazines, moved on to writing English Language Teaching Textbooks, short stories and articles, and then it was novels. I have always written because I have something I want to say.
Fiona: When did you first consider yourself a writer?
That’s a tough question. What is the right criterion for claiming you are a writer? The first time someone publishes your work? I can tick that one off. The first time someone hands over money for what you’ve written? I’ve had that too. Seeing one of your books on the bookshop shelves? Yes, I’ve been lucky enough to pass that milestone. Getting a public prize for something you’ve written? Another lucky break I’ve had. Every little achievement is encouraging, but until I get to the top of the best seller list or sell a novel to a film producer, I’ll always think of myself as just working towards being a writer.
Fiona: What inspired you to write your first book?
My first book was an ELT book which I wanted to write because I had some strong ideas about how to teach English to foreigners that I wanted people to try. I was lucky enough to get a commission to do it.
Fiona: How did you come up with the title?
The title for this one was decided by the publisher.
Fiona: Do you have a specific writing style? Is there anything about your style or genre that you find particularly challenging?
I try to be able to vary my style to the needs of the book, but I am governed by the belief that writers you show readers the world form a point of view that others don’t have. And also, I try to make my fiction at least amusing if not funny.
Fiona: How much of the book is realistic and are experiences based on someone you know, or events in your own life?
I see fiction as exaggerated reality. So people and events in my life are the starting point, but then the imagination has to extend them. I wouldn’t say any of my novels are ‘romans à clef’.
Fiona: To craft your works, do you have to travel? Before or during the process?
I’ve travelled a lot and I’ve worked in Scotland, The Czech Republic and France. I don’t travel in order to write, but my travel experiences influence my writing. I always set my novels in places I have spent a lot of time.
Fiona: Who designed the covers?
In another life I was a marketing manager, so I have been designing the covers of my indie novels myself. But maybe that isn’t a great idea. I’ll probably write a brief and get a professional designer the next time.
Fiona: Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
I hope there are messages in all my novels. In my latest, the messages are about corruption and reconciling goals and ambitions with moral principles in such an environment.
I wouldn’t be able to write if I didn’t have something to say. I always hope that my readers will see things just a tiny bit differently after reading my work.
Fiona: Are there any new authors that have grasped your interest? Who is your favorite writer, and what is it about their work that really strikes you?
This is the kind of question I am no good at answering. There are so many new writers and so many great writers I wouldn’t presume to pick out one as a favourite. I love Charles Dickens, for instance, because I was brought up on TV adaptations of his work, but when you get into his books themselves they are wonderfully witty and insightful, which is something that the adaptations have never managed to capture.
Fiona: Outside of family members, name one entity that supported your commitment to become a published author.
Many of my friends, my first publisher, the publisher who read but rejected one of my books but then wrote a very encouraging and helpful analysis of it. But I think that it is an author’s personal drive and ambition which counts most.
Fiona: Do you see writing as a career?
Not at my age – my books might be a legacy for my grandchildren. But I see writing as a way to point out things that they may not have noticed to others
Fiona: If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything in your latest book?
Yes yes yes!! But I know of some writers who have never published because they keep going back to change things. I’m 99% satisfied, and on to the next book now.
Fiona: Did you learn anything during the writing of your recent book?
You learn something new every time you do anything. This last novel was the longest and most intricate I have written, and it brought home to me how valuable an editor can be in pointing out what you may not noticed yourself.
Fiona: If your book was made into a film, who would you like to play the lead?
I’m a fan of Gwyneth Paltrow, but she may be a bit too old now.
Fiona: Any advice for other writers?
Keep at it! Especially for a novel, it’s a lot of work and easy to give up. I have about 10 false starts of novels still sitting in my computer.
Fiona: Anything specific you want to tell your readers?
Apart from ‘Buy my books’, I would just like to tell them to be open-minded about everything.
Fiona: What book are you reading now?
Right at this moment, I’m reading an interesting non-fiction book about world history called ‘After Tamerlane’ by a British academic called John Darwin. It’s a long and difficult read, but the interesting thing is that he explores modern history (from 1400) not just from a UK, European or Western point of view, but from Musim and Asian viewpoints also. It fulfils my need to see the world though more than my own eyes.
Fiona: Do you remember the first book you read?
No, can anyone really? I remember reading ‘Biggles’ books when I was young.
Fiona: What makes you laugh/cry?
I don’t cry very much and laugh at almost anything. I am very lucky.
Fiona: Is there one person, past or present, you would love to meet? Why?
This is another ‘favorite’ question which is hard to answer. There are a lot of politicians I would like to meet just to ask them what they think they are doing.
Fiona: Do you have any hobbies?
Writing.Family. I also still write computer programs.
Fiona: What TV shows/films do you enjoy watching?
Above all, history documentaries on TV and spy films. The ultimate joy is a TV documentary on cold war spies
Fiona: Favorite foods, colors, music?
No favorites, but I do like Opera.
Fiona: Imagine a future where you no longer write. What would you do?
Read?? But I think I will always be writing something.
Fiona: What do you want written on your head stone?
‘Reserved for an occupant who is not quite ready yet!’
JAMES GAULT MEETS AN AUTHOR ... TED BUN
Ted Bun is an author of naturist fiction, a blogger and regularly contributes reviews and articles to The Voice of Literature.
He combines his active writing life with running a holiday facility in the South of France.
Thanks for joining us, Ted. Can I begin by asking you how long you’ve been writing and what got you started?
Most of my working life I was a Medical Rep, which meant hours in the car, stationary on the M25. I would listen to stories and plays on the radio and miss the endings, so I would have to make up my own.
I was writing technical material for several web sites for 20 years, and have had several articles published in medical journals. Later after a change of job I had to write lots of project documents and bids for funding, some of which got close to fiction.
I started to write fiction in a more formalised way after stopping work and moving to France in 2015. We run a small gîte which kept me busy during the summer months apart from when it didn’t. When the autumn and the shorter days arrived, I had another story ready to tell and typed this one up.
What do you hope to achieve by your writing?
I just want to amuse and entertain If a reader tells me I’ve made them laugh, I consider my job done. If a bit of education or self-improvement occurs that is a bonus.
A lot of your stories feature characters from the entertainment and music business. Where does your interest in this come from?
I am a failed rock star. I was part of a band that nearly made it into the 2nd Division except we kept losing members just as things were starting to happen. However, I got to play with some people who never had a real job in their lives.
I’ve heard you describe yourself as a ‘storyteller’ more than an author. What do you think is the most important thing a novelist has to do to tell a story?
I am not the person to answer that question.
I have a group of characters, all of whom are composites and exaggerations of real people. I then start with a “what if?” question then I let my characters make a journey from the start to the end. I try to stay within the bounds of conventual behaviour and settings, which means I tend to end up with very character driven stories. Tales that depend on the reader becoming engaged with character rather than the plot.
If pushed, I’d say you need a clearly defined Starting Place and End Point. Characters with the skills and attributes to make the journey and enough imagination to construct interesting obstacles to put in the road and solutions to these problems.
Did I say I ended up working as a “Change Manager” I think I just described the Novel as a change process.
Your books are always light-hearted and full of optimism. Have you never been tempted to explore the dark side of humanity in your writing?
No, there is too much darkness and violence in the world I don’t want it in my entertainment. I’ll be sticking to the escapist uplands where the sun shines all day and the evenings are warm. Having said that, the next Rags to Riches story has a lot darker plot, but it is still an optimistic story withvery positive outcomes.
You’ve written a large number of novellas and fairly short novels. Would you ever think of writing a great long epic like ‘War and Peace’?
Ha-Ha, No. I lack the skills for that sort of writing. Too much plotting, research, attention to detail and continuity required for the way I work.
Although I suppose if I rewrote the Rags to Riches stories into a single narrative I’d have enough words. Then Conan-Doyle could have done that with Sherlock Holmes and didn’t.
Isaac Asimov, of course, wrote the first three Foundation books as part works, which were combined to novel length, (as was most of Dickens’ best work) but Asimov never sanctioned a big “All the Days of The Foundation.” book.
Without a strong external narrative in the background, the war does that for Tolstoy’s epic, slavery for Alex Halley’s Roots, not many stories have the legs for such a long journey.
What advice would you give to a new young writer?
For a budding writer of any age, get a note book (or a voice recorder if you drive a lot!) and make notes. Use it to record; snippets of story, bits of dialogue (real or imagined), people’s reactions to events around them (Do they wade in to stop fights? Stand and watch? Pass by?) and situations that occur.
What are you currently working on?
Too much!
I always try to have a couple of projects on the go. How do I choose what to work on? I follow a story until it gets a bit sticky. Then move on to one of the others while I resolve the obstacle in the first.
I have a short story that is built around a scene edited out of an earlier book. (I never discard anything completely. I cut and paste “edits” into a “Spare Scenes” document, it seemed like a good idea once, maybe it will work better somewhere else.) Currently I am moving the focus of the narrative to a different character, so that the story can have a different ending to the book.
A follow up to New House … New Neighbours, which continues from where the first story stopped. This one is charging along, unless it gets derailed, it will be the next story to escape into the Amazon jungle.
A new “Time travellers sent back in time to save the world by changing history” story, which might be about to take a new structural tack.
And an almost completely plotted and written tenth novella in the Rags to Riches Series. This caused real problems while writing The Uncovered Policeman: Made for TV because it kept distracting me! Watch out for this one around Christmas time.
JAMES GAULT MEETS AN AUTHOR ... RICHARD SAVIN
Richard Savin is a novelist, ex journalist and one time London restaurateur who writes alternative history fiction.
His novel ‘A Right to Bear Arms’ is currently available in Amazon as an e-book and a paperback.
Hello Richard. Our readers are always fascinated by what makes authors tick, so let me thank you for agreeing to take part in this little exercise in amateur psychoanalysis. In one way or another, you have been writing for a very long time. Can I begin by asking you how you got started and how you keep going?
I had decided I wanted to be a journalist when I left college but in those days it was a very closed shop and hard to break into. You had to be a member of the NUJ to get a job, but – you had to have a job in journalism to get a union card. It was pretty Kafkaesque. So for a while I compromised, working in the City of London, commuting with a bowler hat and a rolled umbrella, doing a job I really didn’t like.
It was an interest in motor sport that finally opened the way for me. I’d been driving in club events at weekends and I began writing freelance pieces for motoring magazines, particularly a publication called Autocar. This in turn led on to a broader field of writing, particularly politics and world events. You could never be sure who would take the stuff, you just had to keep churning it out on spec and firing it off to people you thought might be interested. Sometimes I’d write a piece and not find out it had been published till much later. I remember filing a very small news item with the Daily Mail about a British diplomat who had travelled overland by car to take up his post with the High Commission in Pakistan – I only learned it had been used when a cheque arrived in the post two months after publication.
The lucky break for me came in the late sixties when I joined an international press agency, first as a stringer then later as an editor.
What kept me going in the early days was often no more than the sheer pleasure I got from writing and the sense of achievement at seeing my work in print and that remains true for me right up to the present day. Enjoying what you are doing is the sustaining force.
You’ve travelled a lot and lived in various countries? How has that affected what and how you write?
The first thing it taught me was how to write on the move and to write to order. Not to put off getting stuck in. For years I travelled with an Olympia transportable typewriter; it was often the largest piece of luggage I carried.
Of course my writing as a journalist was less affected by the foreign experiences than by the needs of the story. What I write now is another matter; I’ve heard it is said you should write about what you know. I was born at the outset of the Second World War and have strong memories of air raids, and being bombed; especially the V1 ‘doodlebugs’. I also covered the Third Indo-Pakistan war and have been at close quarters with two revolutions and a number of military coups, so you might expect that to colour my writing – and to a certain extent it does. However, life for me has never been a simple straight line; a long acquaintance with food, wine, cars, doubtful adventures and all the fondly remembered moments of romantic liaisons and tragic farewells also have their impact on how and what I choose to write.
You’ve had a long career as a journalist and now you’re a novelist. What do you find are the similarities and differences between the two forms of writing?
The most important role for a journalist acting as a reporter of events is to verify the facts and write a balanced story. You then hand it over to others who may add a comma here or drop a word or two there, swivelling the syntax and lending to it what you might then consider a fictional slant. Writing a novel is often the other way round; you research the facts that others have established and from this material you create the fiction; the plot, the characters, the narrative and the dialogue – it is a much freer experience.
When you write, what is your goal –to entertain or to enlighten readers? Or do you have another motive?
Writing for me is like satisfying an addiction. It is something that brings me pleasure just in the execution of the act. There is a beguiling rhythm to language which I find very satisfying. But the greatest reward for me is to entertain, to know that someone has read the words and been moved – to laugh, to cry, to hold their breath; this for me is the goal.
You say you write ‘alternative’ historical fiction? Can you say why you choose the periods of history you write about and also in what way is what you write ‘alternative’?
Ah, well that one is not quite correct. I have written alternative history with ‘A Right to Bear Arms,’ and I shall do again, though my next book due out later this year is a thriller set against the real history of WW2 and so by definition not ‘alternative history’.
I confess to a particular interest in the first half of the 20th century though I am not confining my writing exclusively to that period or the genre of military fiction. I do however enjoy writing about it. It was an exciting time in history, part of which I lived through; it heralded the dawn of the internal combustion engine, air travel, the radio, television, the spread of the telephone, the camera, the movies, the talkies, the birth of the computer and two of the bloodiest wars in world history. It was a period which brought fundamental change to the lives of ordinary people – so quite a lot for a writer to bite on.
A lot of writers are asked if they have some advice for other writers? Do you? Very few writers are asked to give advice to readers. Would you like to be one of the few to do so>
I hesitate to give advice but if I had to I would say, ‘write something every day. Do not wait for the muse to be upon you.’ If you really want to get things done you need to apply discipline and write to a schedule; I personally treat writing as a job.
Advice to readers? Give the book a chance even if it’s slow to get off the ground. Personally I am always inclined to persevere – it may reward you in the finish.
What are you currently working on and what do you have coming up?
Like many writers I have a queue of situations and characters lining up and jostling to be heard. Next up is a wartime thriller with a touch of romance running through it. ‘The Girl in the Green Baker’s Van’ is due out in August.
The project in hand – first draft just written and getting preliminary edits – is a psycho-thriller set in modern day Manhattan and Michigan; working title, ‘The Girl, the Scarecrow and the Harlequin Goat,’ we are aiming to launch in time for Christmas.
In between times a novella, ‘A Short Drive to the Office,’ – a rewrite of a serialised article published some years back – may get squeaked onto KDP before the year dies.
Thank you Richard. All the best with your projects and we look forward to your new thriller.
His novel ‘A Right to Bear Arms’ is currently available in Amazon as an e-book and a paperback.
Hello Richard. Our readers are always fascinated by what makes authors tick, so let me thank you for agreeing to take part in this little exercise in amateur psychoanalysis. In one way or another, you have been writing for a very long time. Can I begin by asking you how you got started and how you keep going?
I had decided I wanted to be a journalist when I left college but in those days it was a very closed shop and hard to break into. You had to be a member of the NUJ to get a job, but – you had to have a job in journalism to get a union card. It was pretty Kafkaesque. So for a while I compromised, working in the City of London, commuting with a bowler hat and a rolled umbrella, doing a job I really didn’t like.
It was an interest in motor sport that finally opened the way for me. I’d been driving in club events at weekends and I began writing freelance pieces for motoring magazines, particularly a publication called Autocar. This in turn led on to a broader field of writing, particularly politics and world events. You could never be sure who would take the stuff, you just had to keep churning it out on spec and firing it off to people you thought might be interested. Sometimes I’d write a piece and not find out it had been published till much later. I remember filing a very small news item with the Daily Mail about a British diplomat who had travelled overland by car to take up his post with the High Commission in Pakistan – I only learned it had been used when a cheque arrived in the post two months after publication.
The lucky break for me came in the late sixties when I joined an international press agency, first as a stringer then later as an editor.
What kept me going in the early days was often no more than the sheer pleasure I got from writing and the sense of achievement at seeing my work in print and that remains true for me right up to the present day. Enjoying what you are doing is the sustaining force.
You’ve travelled a lot and lived in various countries? How has that affected what and how you write?
The first thing it taught me was how to write on the move and to write to order. Not to put off getting stuck in. For years I travelled with an Olympia transportable typewriter; it was often the largest piece of luggage I carried.
Of course my writing as a journalist was less affected by the foreign experiences than by the needs of the story. What I write now is another matter; I’ve heard it is said you should write about what you know. I was born at the outset of the Second World War and have strong memories of air raids, and being bombed; especially the V1 ‘doodlebugs’. I also covered the Third Indo-Pakistan war and have been at close quarters with two revolutions and a number of military coups, so you might expect that to colour my writing – and to a certain extent it does. However, life for me has never been a simple straight line; a long acquaintance with food, wine, cars, doubtful adventures and all the fondly remembered moments of romantic liaisons and tragic farewells also have their impact on how and what I choose to write.
You’ve had a long career as a journalist and now you’re a novelist. What do you find are the similarities and differences between the two forms of writing?
The most important role for a journalist acting as a reporter of events is to verify the facts and write a balanced story. You then hand it over to others who may add a comma here or drop a word or two there, swivelling the syntax and lending to it what you might then consider a fictional slant. Writing a novel is often the other way round; you research the facts that others have established and from this material you create the fiction; the plot, the characters, the narrative and the dialogue – it is a much freer experience.
When you write, what is your goal –to entertain or to enlighten readers? Or do you have another motive?
Writing for me is like satisfying an addiction. It is something that brings me pleasure just in the execution of the act. There is a beguiling rhythm to language which I find very satisfying. But the greatest reward for me is to entertain, to know that someone has read the words and been moved – to laugh, to cry, to hold their breath; this for me is the goal.
You say you write ‘alternative’ historical fiction? Can you say why you choose the periods of history you write about and also in what way is what you write ‘alternative’?
Ah, well that one is not quite correct. I have written alternative history with ‘A Right to Bear Arms,’ and I shall do again, though my next book due out later this year is a thriller set against the real history of WW2 and so by definition not ‘alternative history’.
I confess to a particular interest in the first half of the 20th century though I am not confining my writing exclusively to that period or the genre of military fiction. I do however enjoy writing about it. It was an exciting time in history, part of which I lived through; it heralded the dawn of the internal combustion engine, air travel, the radio, television, the spread of the telephone, the camera, the movies, the talkies, the birth of the computer and two of the bloodiest wars in world history. It was a period which brought fundamental change to the lives of ordinary people – so quite a lot for a writer to bite on.
A lot of writers are asked if they have some advice for other writers? Do you? Very few writers are asked to give advice to readers. Would you like to be one of the few to do so>
I hesitate to give advice but if I had to I would say, ‘write something every day. Do not wait for the muse to be upon you.’ If you really want to get things done you need to apply discipline and write to a schedule; I personally treat writing as a job.
Advice to readers? Give the book a chance even if it’s slow to get off the ground. Personally I am always inclined to persevere – it may reward you in the finish.
What are you currently working on and what do you have coming up?
Like many writers I have a queue of situations and characters lining up and jostling to be heard. Next up is a wartime thriller with a touch of romance running through it. ‘The Girl in the Green Baker’s Van’ is due out in August.
The project in hand – first draft just written and getting preliminary edits – is a psycho-thriller set in modern day Manhattan and Michigan; working title, ‘The Girl, the Scarecrow and the Harlequin Goat,’ we are aiming to launch in time for Christmas.
In between times a novella, ‘A Short Drive to the Office,’ – a rewrite of a serialised article published some years back – may get squeaked onto KDP before the year dies.
Thank you Richard. All the best with your projects and we look forward to your new thriller.
JAMES GAULT MEETS AN AUTHOR ... KYRIAN LYNDON
Kyrian Lyndon is a novelist and poet from New York.
The first novel of her Dark Veils series, Shattering Truths can be found on Amazon as an e-book and a paperback. Where you'll also find her two poetry collections and her novel Provenance of Bondage.
Hi Kyrian. A big thanks for taking part, and a bigger thanks for answering the questions so frankly. As a poet and an novelist who has been through bad times and good times, I'm sure your comments and observations will be uplifting and illuminating to both readers and any to upcoming authors who read them.
You have been writing since a very early age? What do you think compelled you to start and then keep going?
It was something I did instinctively since the age of eight, something I felt born to do. I don't feel like I’ve had a choice about it, so it's good that I love it. It's become my addiction.
As a poet as well as a novelist, how would you say that working in both literary forms enhances a writer’s style?
Poets embrace the dark and the light, the joy and the pain—happy, sad, whatever. It’s all good. We write from our hearts. We need to express all these compelling thoughts and pictures that keep running through our minds. For all I know, that might be the same for any writer. I know you can be a great novelist without being a poet, but poetry does enhance my own style. It has always been a way for me to keep a record of my impressions, observations, and emotions. If I’m writing, and I need to get the feeling and picture right, I can often go back to those poems and recapture certain moments.
You have a great affinity for 19th century British literature. What attracts you to it? Has it influenced your writing style?
It has influenced my writing style. The interest in other time periods may have started when I watched Dark Shadows as a kid. I love stories with parallel time, and, in that series, the characters traveled back and forth from the 20th century to the 19th and 18th centuries. I loved the settings, the costumes, the hairstyles. I loved noticing the differences in behaviour. All of it was fascinating to me. Charles Dickens showed us the harsh reality of that era. He also showed us the romantic beauty and innocence, as did many of the other authors of that time. Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, the Brontë sisters, Jane Austen, and Percy Bysshe Shelley are among my favorites.
At some point in my life, I became an anglophile (though I haven’t been to England yet), but I can’t say if it was before or after falling in love with 19th-century British literature.
How has the other jobs you have had influenced your writing?
I got to be an expert on the computer!
Actually, the other jobs mostly made me wish I was somewhere writing. There were stuffy environments where I didn’t necessarily fit in as an eccentric young adult, and that included publishing companies. They were perfect in the sense that I learned what happens on the other side—the manufacturing of books, the publishing world dealing with new technology, etc. The advertising environment, on the other hand, was more comfortable. There was all this creativity and craziness. I felt at home. Back then, I’d make friends with creative directors, and they’d say, why don’t you do this ad? It seemed absurd to me because I was into hiding behind the scenes as a writer, not putting myself on that level of display. But it’s always interesting because you learn, and you can incorporate everything you learn into your work.
I know your writing is very personal and related to past bad experiences. For a writer, which do you think is best, emotional detachment or emotional involvement?
As a writer, I feel that I can’t have enough experiences. Even the bad things that happen, you think about how you will tell that story, and those experiences usually have good outcomes. I say that not because I’d wish them on anyone but because those experiences help you learn, heal, grow, and evolve. Then you pay it forward by sharing what you’ve learned so that someone else can benefit. Sometimes they are my experiences. Sometimes they are the experiences of others, but they serve the same purpose. I like to help and serve people in that way, but I also love to entertain. In a novel, you can do both. You can mix fact and fiction. As for emotional detachment, I don’t know about that. It’s foreign to me. I think I’m emotionally involved in whatever I write. As for what’s best, do we know if George R.R. Martin was emotionally detached or involved when he wrote Game of Thrones? If he was detached, he didn’t need to be involved. I’m pretty sure J.R. Rowling was emotionally involved in creating the Harry Potter series. So, I’d say whatever works for that writer.
What to do you want readers to get from your work?
I want, above all, for readers to enjoy my work. They should be able to escape into a different world, fall in love there, and then close the book with a lasting impression. At the same time, I do hope to impart some of what I’ve learned because I can’t begin to explain how much the works of others have taught me and helped me to grow. We all know things that can benefit others, and I think we should be all about sharing for the greater good.
Among the things you’ve written, what’s your favourite and why?
My favorite is always my work in progress because, as writers, we keep learning and growing. We get better. It’s like parenting. I can look back at the earlier years and wish I could go back to fix something because I know better now. Any book out there is my child, in a sense. They each have their place in my heart.
Do you have any advice for other writers?
Mastering your craft is an ongoing thing. Keep yourself open to learning everything there is to learn and stay in the loop. What may have been right to do once may not be presently acceptable. We’re lucky to have the internet. Take advantage of it. Read a lot. Learn from criticism. Join a community or two. Check your ego at the door.
What have you got coming up?
My main project is the sequel to the last book. It’s the second book in the Deadly Veils series. The focus is on different characters, including one character that a lot of people seemed to love in the first book. It’s more of a crime thriller, and there will be a good deal of romance. The main character from the first book, Danielle, won’t feature prominently in this one, but she’ll pop up eventually. Aside from that, I started working on a dark fantasy novella which has been exciting to do. I’m very enthusiastic, and I’m eternally grateful that I get to do this kind of work.
The first novel of her Dark Veils series, Shattering Truths can be found on Amazon as an e-book and a paperback. Where you'll also find her two poetry collections and her novel Provenance of Bondage.
Hi Kyrian. A big thanks for taking part, and a bigger thanks for answering the questions so frankly. As a poet and an novelist who has been through bad times and good times, I'm sure your comments and observations will be uplifting and illuminating to both readers and any to upcoming authors who read them.
You have been writing since a very early age? What do you think compelled you to start and then keep going?
It was something I did instinctively since the age of eight, something I felt born to do. I don't feel like I’ve had a choice about it, so it's good that I love it. It's become my addiction.
As a poet as well as a novelist, how would you say that working in both literary forms enhances a writer’s style?
Poets embrace the dark and the light, the joy and the pain—happy, sad, whatever. It’s all good. We write from our hearts. We need to express all these compelling thoughts and pictures that keep running through our minds. For all I know, that might be the same for any writer. I know you can be a great novelist without being a poet, but poetry does enhance my own style. It has always been a way for me to keep a record of my impressions, observations, and emotions. If I’m writing, and I need to get the feeling and picture right, I can often go back to those poems and recapture certain moments.
You have a great affinity for 19th century British literature. What attracts you to it? Has it influenced your writing style?
It has influenced my writing style. The interest in other time periods may have started when I watched Dark Shadows as a kid. I love stories with parallel time, and, in that series, the characters traveled back and forth from the 20th century to the 19th and 18th centuries. I loved the settings, the costumes, the hairstyles. I loved noticing the differences in behaviour. All of it was fascinating to me. Charles Dickens showed us the harsh reality of that era. He also showed us the romantic beauty and innocence, as did many of the other authors of that time. Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, the Brontë sisters, Jane Austen, and Percy Bysshe Shelley are among my favorites.
At some point in my life, I became an anglophile (though I haven’t been to England yet), but I can’t say if it was before or after falling in love with 19th-century British literature.
How has the other jobs you have had influenced your writing?
I got to be an expert on the computer!
Actually, the other jobs mostly made me wish I was somewhere writing. There were stuffy environments where I didn’t necessarily fit in as an eccentric young adult, and that included publishing companies. They were perfect in the sense that I learned what happens on the other side—the manufacturing of books, the publishing world dealing with new technology, etc. The advertising environment, on the other hand, was more comfortable. There was all this creativity and craziness. I felt at home. Back then, I’d make friends with creative directors, and they’d say, why don’t you do this ad? It seemed absurd to me because I was into hiding behind the scenes as a writer, not putting myself on that level of display. But it’s always interesting because you learn, and you can incorporate everything you learn into your work.
I know your writing is very personal and related to past bad experiences. For a writer, which do you think is best, emotional detachment or emotional involvement?
As a writer, I feel that I can’t have enough experiences. Even the bad things that happen, you think about how you will tell that story, and those experiences usually have good outcomes. I say that not because I’d wish them on anyone but because those experiences help you learn, heal, grow, and evolve. Then you pay it forward by sharing what you’ve learned so that someone else can benefit. Sometimes they are my experiences. Sometimes they are the experiences of others, but they serve the same purpose. I like to help and serve people in that way, but I also love to entertain. In a novel, you can do both. You can mix fact and fiction. As for emotional detachment, I don’t know about that. It’s foreign to me. I think I’m emotionally involved in whatever I write. As for what’s best, do we know if George R.R. Martin was emotionally detached or involved when he wrote Game of Thrones? If he was detached, he didn’t need to be involved. I’m pretty sure J.R. Rowling was emotionally involved in creating the Harry Potter series. So, I’d say whatever works for that writer.
What to do you want readers to get from your work?
I want, above all, for readers to enjoy my work. They should be able to escape into a different world, fall in love there, and then close the book with a lasting impression. At the same time, I do hope to impart some of what I’ve learned because I can’t begin to explain how much the works of others have taught me and helped me to grow. We all know things that can benefit others, and I think we should be all about sharing for the greater good.
Among the things you’ve written, what’s your favourite and why?
My favorite is always my work in progress because, as writers, we keep learning and growing. We get better. It’s like parenting. I can look back at the earlier years and wish I could go back to fix something because I know better now. Any book out there is my child, in a sense. They each have their place in my heart.
Do you have any advice for other writers?
Mastering your craft is an ongoing thing. Keep yourself open to learning everything there is to learn and stay in the loop. What may have been right to do once may not be presently acceptable. We’re lucky to have the internet. Take advantage of it. Read a lot. Learn from criticism. Join a community or two. Check your ego at the door.
What have you got coming up?
My main project is the sequel to the last book. It’s the second book in the Deadly Veils series. The focus is on different characters, including one character that a lot of people seemed to love in the first book. It’s more of a crime thriller, and there will be a good deal of romance. The main character from the first book, Danielle, won’t feature prominently in this one, but she’ll pop up eventually. Aside from that, I started working on a dark fantasy novella which has been exciting to do. I’m very enthusiastic, and I’m eternally grateful that I get to do this kind of work.
JAMES GAULT MEETS AN AUTHOR ... JOHN DILL
John Dill is a science fiction writer from South Carolina
He is the author of the BRAXIN KING series. Books One and Two are available on Amazon in Kindle unlimited as well as paperback and Book One is available in Audible as an audio book. Working on Book Two for audible in the future. Hopefully Books Three and Four will be available by early 2019.
What got you started as a writer?
I was born a writer and a musician. But it was music that opened the door for me to writing. Composing songs led to poetry and from there to short stories. It was inevitable that I move into novels. Especially when I realized novels are simply a collection of short stories tied together by a common theme.
Your genre is science fiction, so how did your interest in science and the future develop?
I’ve always had a fascination with all things science. I remember as a boy wanting to build a robot. I almost organized a team of my neighborhood friends to build one, but we never made it beyond the stage of what to build it out of. Then there were all those Hollywood contributions to my fascination that began with the 1960’s version of War Of The Worlds at our local movie theater.
There are moral and political overtones in your writing? Would you say you were a writer with a point of view to project? If so, what is it?
Yeah, I have a contorted mixed up mess of political/moral thematics playing through my writing but not with any direct intentional bias. It just seemed to fit in to the stories and emerge from them almost as a coincident consequence.
How do you find your characters? Do you have a favourite?
Again, the imagination is a wonderful playground. I don’t really focus on building a character into my books as much as just concentrating on developing circumstances and conversations relative to those circumstances out of which characters just seem to develop of their own accord. I look at where I want to take my readers and how to get them there and then fill in the blanks. With the Braxin King series I was dealing with entire species, so I developed the species first and let the characters reflect each species as I imagined them to be.
What’s the hardest thing for you in writing?
Finding the time to complete something. Since I don’t make my living as a writer I have to work in my writing where I can. One’s personal life can become an overwhelming obstacle to completing a story, forcing you to focus on reality in lieu of imagination. The problem with a big imagination is how little it contributes to the daily grind of reality.
And what’s the best thing?
Holding that finished novel in hand.
What are you currently working on?
Book Three of The Braxin King along with a rework of Book Two. I rushed Book Two and came away unsatisfied with the finished product, so I’ve also almost completed a second edition which I hope to have available in paperback this year. I plan to create an entirely new universe in this series now that I’ve created an entirely new universe to be replaced by the newer version. And if that isn’t confusing enough, wait until you ask me what’s wrong with the universe we now inhabit.
He is the author of the BRAXIN KING series. Books One and Two are available on Amazon in Kindle unlimited as well as paperback and Book One is available in Audible as an audio book. Working on Book Two for audible in the future. Hopefully Books Three and Four will be available by early 2019.
What got you started as a writer?
I was born a writer and a musician. But it was music that opened the door for me to writing. Composing songs led to poetry and from there to short stories. It was inevitable that I move into novels. Especially when I realized novels are simply a collection of short stories tied together by a common theme.
Your genre is science fiction, so how did your interest in science and the future develop?
I’ve always had a fascination with all things science. I remember as a boy wanting to build a robot. I almost organized a team of my neighborhood friends to build one, but we never made it beyond the stage of what to build it out of. Then there were all those Hollywood contributions to my fascination that began with the 1960’s version of War Of The Worlds at our local movie theater.
There are moral and political overtones in your writing? Would you say you were a writer with a point of view to project? If so, what is it?
Yeah, I have a contorted mixed up mess of political/moral thematics playing through my writing but not with any direct intentional bias. It just seemed to fit in to the stories and emerge from them almost as a coincident consequence.
How do you find your characters? Do you have a favourite?
Again, the imagination is a wonderful playground. I don’t really focus on building a character into my books as much as just concentrating on developing circumstances and conversations relative to those circumstances out of which characters just seem to develop of their own accord. I look at where I want to take my readers and how to get them there and then fill in the blanks. With the Braxin King series I was dealing with entire species, so I developed the species first and let the characters reflect each species as I imagined them to be.
What’s the hardest thing for you in writing?
Finding the time to complete something. Since I don’t make my living as a writer I have to work in my writing where I can. One’s personal life can become an overwhelming obstacle to completing a story, forcing you to focus on reality in lieu of imagination. The problem with a big imagination is how little it contributes to the daily grind of reality.
And what’s the best thing?
Holding that finished novel in hand.
What are you currently working on?
Book Three of The Braxin King along with a rework of Book Two. I rushed Book Two and came away unsatisfied with the finished product, so I’ve also almost completed a second edition which I hope to have available in paperback this year. I plan to create an entirely new universe in this series now that I’ve created an entirely new universe to be replaced by the newer version. And if that isn’t confusing enough, wait until you ask me what’s wrong with the universe we now inhabit.
Michael Hsu is a man who wants you to build what he calls “emotional strength”. This US life coach, holistic health practitioner and the author of the strikingly titled self-help book “You Are the F*cking Sh*****t: Heal Your Anxiety, Anger and Depression from the Ground Up!” has a mission to heal the root of your emotional problems and leave you in a better place. I met up with him and his wife Daria to find out more.
I started by asking him how he got started in the field of caring for emotional problems. He had graduated from the University of California Irvine with a degree in Education and Chinese Literature and was taking prerequisites at a local community college to enter pharmacy school with a view to joining his family business when one of his professors asked him if he was sure that he wanted to dedicate his life to "counting pills." When he thought about it, he realized that he didn’t. But he did want to help others and to continue in the health field, so he switched his graduate studies to holistic medicine and health counselling. But he had learned two important things that would affect how his work would progress in future. The first was that each individual has to find his own way, and the second was that healing entails more than healing the body: healing the emotional core is just as important, if not more. This is why about ten years ago he started his practice called "Heal From the Ground Up" as a life coach and holistic health practitioner. His work in that field as well as his own self-exploration and personal growth have led him to the conclusions that inform his coaching methods and that stand behind the message of his book.
Michael told me that about one in five people are "highly sensitive," which means that they pick up on the emotions of others in much more subtle ways than the average population. He added that being highly sensitive was both a curse and a blessing for these people. I had to confess I didn’t understand. Wasn’t he talking about just empathy and wasn’t empathy a good thing? Michael’s wife Daria helped me out with an example. She told me of a conversation she had with someone she had just been introduced to. After the conversation, she felt an inexplicable sadness and depressed feeling. Yet this person hadn’t told her anything terrible, in fact the conversation with him had been not much more than small talk. Later she found out that the person had a history of depression. It seemed that she had subconsciously picked up the signals about his emotional well-being (or rather lack of it) to the extent that she began experiencing them as her own. This story highlights the essential difference between empathy and emotional sensitivity. While the first is a cognitive process that results in understanding the feelings of others, the second is an unconscious process that leaves you experiencing those feeling of others as your own without understanding why. This lack of awareness of one's own high sensitivity to others is the curse of emotional sensitivity. To this, Michael added that highly sensitive individuals are especially strongly influenced by the emotions they picked up from their parents during childhood and that oftentimes they tend to notice and tune into those same emotions in their surroundings strongly when they become adults. For example, Daria's mother suffered from depression during Daria's childhood. This explains why Daria found herself unconsciously tuning into her new acquaintance’s underlying feelings of depression and picking them up as her own immediately during the conversation.
By describing a process that brought to my mind the psychoanalytic work of Freud over 100 years ago, Michael explained how you could turn the negative curse of emotional sensitivity into a positive blessing, revealing a true gift behind a seeming affliction. The secret is to explore these others’ feelings that we have absorbed as our own and bring the reasons for them into the conscious mind. To do this, he has been developing a methodology to build emotional strength called FIST: Feel; Identify your feelings; Separate your own (genuine) emotions from those false feelings that come from other people; and identify the power of your True self.
Daria used a political analogy to illustrate the underlying problem: the ‘me’ centred view of the US Republican party and the ‘we’ centred view of the Democrats. Taken to excess, either view is toxic and results in a disturbed and troubled country. A similar unbalanced approach in an individual leads to an unhappy person. Michael’s ‘from the ground up’ approach to counselling helps people utilize their gift of high sensitivity consciously and correctly so that they can achieve a sensible balance between compassion for others and honoring their own true self.
Michael went on to add that over the years he has come to understand that all negative feelings of highly sensitive people resolve into one of two common core feelings; the belief that ‘I’m a failure’ and the conviction that ‘I don’t matter’. According to Michael, these feelings are the result of feeling responsible for others and unsuccessfully trying to save others from the emotions they pick up. Therefore, they end up using the gift of high sensitivity incorrectly by attempting "to drive the vehicle of life for others" while abandoning their own "sacred lane," which is their greatest gift to humanity. In his book and in his own practice, Michael tries to teach people to use their gift of high sensitivity correctly so that instead of being an emotional sponge for others' pain, they begin to honor their true self and become a "source of light" for their surroundings.
By this point in the conversation I was beginning to understand the basics of Michael’s method, but I was having reservations about the book. Michael had written the book for two audiences. It is undoubtedly useful for those who work in the field of emotional counselling. But Michael’s main target is that 20% of the population who are emotionally highly sensitive. Would those people be able to carry out his steps successfully from the written word and without the ongoing support of a trained counsellor? Michael conceded that there were people who would benefit from the support of counselling sessions in addition to reading the book, but that the book was written in an easily understandable manner with many practical exercises and memorable formulas to help the readers get to the root of their troubles and successfully apply Michael's methods to their lives. The book on its own would perhaps not be enough for those suffering from severe emotional disturbances, but for others it could help them transform an unhappy and unsatisfactory life into a fulfilled one.
So where now for Michael and his career? Through his practice, ‘Heal from the Ground Up’, he will continue to work with his clients, helping them in their lives, learning from them every day and honing and improving his methodologies. His second book is now in preparation, and it will bring further insights and help bring more contentment into a difficult and troubled world.
I started by asking him how he got started in the field of caring for emotional problems. He had graduated from the University of California Irvine with a degree in Education and Chinese Literature and was taking prerequisites at a local community college to enter pharmacy school with a view to joining his family business when one of his professors asked him if he was sure that he wanted to dedicate his life to "counting pills." When he thought about it, he realized that he didn’t. But he did want to help others and to continue in the health field, so he switched his graduate studies to holistic medicine and health counselling. But he had learned two important things that would affect how his work would progress in future. The first was that each individual has to find his own way, and the second was that healing entails more than healing the body: healing the emotional core is just as important, if not more. This is why about ten years ago he started his practice called "Heal From the Ground Up" as a life coach and holistic health practitioner. His work in that field as well as his own self-exploration and personal growth have led him to the conclusions that inform his coaching methods and that stand behind the message of his book.
Michael told me that about one in five people are "highly sensitive," which means that they pick up on the emotions of others in much more subtle ways than the average population. He added that being highly sensitive was both a curse and a blessing for these people. I had to confess I didn’t understand. Wasn’t he talking about just empathy and wasn’t empathy a good thing? Michael’s wife Daria helped me out with an example. She told me of a conversation she had with someone she had just been introduced to. After the conversation, she felt an inexplicable sadness and depressed feeling. Yet this person hadn’t told her anything terrible, in fact the conversation with him had been not much more than small talk. Later she found out that the person had a history of depression. It seemed that she had subconsciously picked up the signals about his emotional well-being (or rather lack of it) to the extent that she began experiencing them as her own. This story highlights the essential difference between empathy and emotional sensitivity. While the first is a cognitive process that results in understanding the feelings of others, the second is an unconscious process that leaves you experiencing those feeling of others as your own without understanding why. This lack of awareness of one's own high sensitivity to others is the curse of emotional sensitivity. To this, Michael added that highly sensitive individuals are especially strongly influenced by the emotions they picked up from their parents during childhood and that oftentimes they tend to notice and tune into those same emotions in their surroundings strongly when they become adults. For example, Daria's mother suffered from depression during Daria's childhood. This explains why Daria found herself unconsciously tuning into her new acquaintance’s underlying feelings of depression and picking them up as her own immediately during the conversation.
By describing a process that brought to my mind the psychoanalytic work of Freud over 100 years ago, Michael explained how you could turn the negative curse of emotional sensitivity into a positive blessing, revealing a true gift behind a seeming affliction. The secret is to explore these others’ feelings that we have absorbed as our own and bring the reasons for them into the conscious mind. To do this, he has been developing a methodology to build emotional strength called FIST: Feel; Identify your feelings; Separate your own (genuine) emotions from those false feelings that come from other people; and identify the power of your True self.
Daria used a political analogy to illustrate the underlying problem: the ‘me’ centred view of the US Republican party and the ‘we’ centred view of the Democrats. Taken to excess, either view is toxic and results in a disturbed and troubled country. A similar unbalanced approach in an individual leads to an unhappy person. Michael’s ‘from the ground up’ approach to counselling helps people utilize their gift of high sensitivity consciously and correctly so that they can achieve a sensible balance between compassion for others and honoring their own true self.
Michael went on to add that over the years he has come to understand that all negative feelings of highly sensitive people resolve into one of two common core feelings; the belief that ‘I’m a failure’ and the conviction that ‘I don’t matter’. According to Michael, these feelings are the result of feeling responsible for others and unsuccessfully trying to save others from the emotions they pick up. Therefore, they end up using the gift of high sensitivity incorrectly by attempting "to drive the vehicle of life for others" while abandoning their own "sacred lane," which is their greatest gift to humanity. In his book and in his own practice, Michael tries to teach people to use their gift of high sensitivity correctly so that instead of being an emotional sponge for others' pain, they begin to honor their true self and become a "source of light" for their surroundings.
By this point in the conversation I was beginning to understand the basics of Michael’s method, but I was having reservations about the book. Michael had written the book for two audiences. It is undoubtedly useful for those who work in the field of emotional counselling. But Michael’s main target is that 20% of the population who are emotionally highly sensitive. Would those people be able to carry out his steps successfully from the written word and without the ongoing support of a trained counsellor? Michael conceded that there were people who would benefit from the support of counselling sessions in addition to reading the book, but that the book was written in an easily understandable manner with many practical exercises and memorable formulas to help the readers get to the root of their troubles and successfully apply Michael's methods to their lives. The book on its own would perhaps not be enough for those suffering from severe emotional disturbances, but for others it could help them transform an unhappy and unsatisfactory life into a fulfilled one.
So where now for Michael and his career? Through his practice, ‘Heal from the Ground Up’, he will continue to work with his clients, helping them in their lives, learning from them every day and honing and improving his methodologies. His second book is now in preparation, and it will bring further insights and help bring more contentment into a difficult and troubled world.