Template interview

The following material may be used as the basis of 'author interview' style pieces: provided you subsequently contact me with your intended copy prior to publication. There might be more up-to-date information available and it will also give you the opportunity to ask further questions. Clearly if you alter my words I need the chance to approve them. Please see the main media page for pictures.

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When did you first become interested in writing?

Quite young, actually. I started trying to write novels while a teenager, but prior to that I managed to get a few technical articles published in magazines such as Practical Wireless and Practical Electronics. I then got a booklet on electronic projects published before I left school, and I was asked to produce another book for the same publisher, which I did. It got me off to a good start, with high hopes of a writing career. Fortunately I did not know then how much more difficult it was to get fiction published.

What publications came after that?

I always had this compulsion to write. I think all true 'writers'—and by that I mean those people with a 'compulsive writing syndrome'—just need to write. They can't help it, any more than a painter has to paint or a composer to compose. So each stage of my career produced a related non-fiction book. While I was in semiconductor research and development I wrote a book on semiconductor physics. Then I became an electronics design engineer and wrote a book related to digital design. Then I managed to move into technical documentation, which meant I could actually write for a living. I started as a technical author, writing about submarine control systems. Later, I became a documentation manager responsible for a team producing handbooks for the army, navy and other commercial organisations. In general, I was too busy at work, and at home while Hazel and I were bringing up our two children, to find the time for serious fiction writing, although I did dabble with non-fiction and articles. While I worked for British Aerospace I got involved in their in-house documentation system and that paved the way for me to become self-employed running my own travel article website: synergise.com. I suddenly became a webmaster and I had to learn to run while stumbling. Travel writing was inevitable after that.

Why have you only now got around to publishing a novel?

It's the time factor. Too busy with children, cutting the grass, DIY, walking the dog, and all the other stuff of life, but my driving ambition was always to write fiction. My early efforts at fiction, during teenage and twenty-something years, suffered from my inability to create decent characters. I could think of plots, but I really didn't know how to create people. Looking back, I can see they were cardboard cut-outs, and I was rightly rejected by publishers. In those days I was more interested in science-fiction than I am today. In fact, it was a decline in the popularity of science-fiction which contributed to my lack of effort in writing fiction during those times. It is interesting how the wheel has come around again. Fantasy does not hold much attraction for me, though. I worked in a scientific industry, so I liked my science fiction to be a extrapolation of science fact. My first job was working in research and development in pioneering semiconductor days.

I ended up writing for a career, but this was technical writing. But it enabled me to develop a natural flow that seemed to come almost as a brain-dump, just as though someone were dictating it all. Sometimes it all stitched together so well it was difficult to insert anything new without breaking the thread that was already woven. I was eventually able to take these writing skills across into fiction, but there is a quantum leap between writing good non-fiction and writing good fiction. It took me a long time to realise the width of that gap.

When I left full-time employment, getting an income from my travel website, synergise.com, was the most important factor, so I concentrated fully on that for some years. I still run the site, but now I can find more time for writing fiction. I had two novels in mind. One was a deeper novel to make people really think, while at the same time giving them a really entertaining story-line, and the other was what has now become 'Sandman'.

Is writing fiction really very different from writing non-fiction?

You'd better believe it. There's this old chestnut that everyone has one book within them. Well, let me tell you that for most, that one book will never get out of them! It takes an immense amount of effort and commitment to write a novel and only those who have tried for some months can truly appreciate that. Remember that most novelists take around a year just to write a novel, and that is full-time. Is it harder than non-fiction? Mightily harder. When you write non-fiction, or a report, say, you have all the hard facts at your finger-tips. There is no need to be 'creative' or invent things. Also, finding the right 'voice' is not too difficult either; it's more or less defined by the end product. By that, I mean it will be very formal in a report, a bit more chatty in a technical article, and so on, but there's never the issue of whether you are inside someone else's head or not, whose head or heads, and how deeply you are inside those heads. There are all kinds of extra things you have to contend with when writing a novel: voice, characterisation, plot, description, narrative, viewpoint, natural dialogue, flow, pace, use of language, style, the list seems endless. And you really need to let all the accumulated knowledge of other successful writers get inside your head by some kind of long-term osmosis until it begins to become second-nature. Lots of fiction reading is essential, but also regular exposure to accumulated knowledge through books on creative writing and preferably by reading a regular magazine on writing such as the UK's excellent Writing Magazine.

Then there's the battle of whether to focus on the current formula for a particular genre, and therefore compete with best-selling authors head-to-head and not look too different to a publisher, or write what you want to write, with the difficulty of finding a publisher who can think outside the box. It's a real Catch-22 situation. New authors have it very tough now. Publishers only have the resources to consider submissions from agents, so someone else does the slush-pile filtering, and agents, who only get a percentage of an author's measly royalty, can only become interested in taking on someone new who has what they consider to be a massive talent: so they have some chance of getting an adequate reward for their efforts and expertise. I don't think anyone should think of writing a first novel unless they are so driven that nothing will actually stop them! The odds against them getting published are stacked so high.

Have you got an agent?

I spent some time trying to find one, but it all takes so long, and in the end I thought life was too short, given I am not exactly a youngster. A few 15-minute sessions pitching to agents at two writers' conferences in an environment like speed-dating was the last straw. Now 'Sandman' is 'out there', and through Amazon and other online resources, you can get it anywhere in the world. What I would really love, though, is an agent willing to take on my next novel, which is rather more unusual (although it does have some unique selling points). Or an agent who can see the filmic quality of 'Sandman' would allow it to be translated into a TV drama or film with plenty of chance for beautiful soft-focus, where chills and romance vie for prominence. [Any agent want to contact me? Don't hold back! Read how Norm Goldman felt he was watching this novel as a film!]

What inspired 'Sandman'?

I thought that a conflict between two men who both strongly thought they were in the right, although diametrically opposed, offered a strong story-line. It gave me the chance to get inside both their heads and to develop some strong characters. I also had the notion that one of them would be weird, probably a stalker, and the story-line developed from there. I wanted some high drama, and to put the protagonist's daughter under great pressure too, so he would be torn by events and well as family problems. I also figured it would be good to have both male and female viewpoints in order to widen the book's appeal—to both reader and potential publisher. Viewpoint would reflect the person under the most stress, although I would not have too many viewpoint characters, and would stick to one per scene to avoid confusion or 'mind-hopping' (which I can't stand).

I had taken a lot of steps to teach myself how to develop characters, and the psychological thriller seemed the ideal genre to ensure that: the emotions of those affected are stretched to breaking point, and this adds strength and presence to writing. After studying a number of books on characterisation for novels, I came across a system of psychological character definition in the States that was based on 16 normal and 16 related abnormal types. This seemed like a breakthrough for me, for it gave me far more refinement than the books I had studied and it was based on real psychology, which would mean consistent, authentic types. The problem was that the huge variety of types—32 in all—made it tricky to get a handle on which types best suited my intended characters. Because of my documentation experience, I knew that a picture truly was worth a thousand words, and so I developed a graphical interface to the types which allowed one to easily home in onto the type details in an entirely different way, through 'mapping'. It is all based on the conflicting tendencies for a person to be pulled by the desires of Power, Popularity, Perfection and Peace. Note the four "Ps". I called the system 'P4 Personality Mapping', and to make it really easy to use, I devised a hyperlinked version which I eventually make available to the public via my Synergise website (at synergise.com/p4). I realised it was a great tool for novelists, but it is also excellent for anyone who wishes to better understand his fellow human-beings. P4 enables you to assess them and to see where they coming from in all situations. That kind of knowledge is great for team leaders, managers, sales people, even for interacting with family and friends. And it certainly got me off to a good start with 'Sandman', although characterisation has since become much easier for me as a result.

After my earlier lack of achievement in the difficult field of characterisation, it was great when best-selling author Sophie King actually said, in her endorsement of my novel, that it was "a gripping psychological read with characters that reach out and grab you. A real page-turner." That was worth an air-punch, I can tell you! It was confirmation my studies had paid off.

Why did you choose Mudeford Sandbank, in England, as your principal setting for 'Sandman'?

For a number of reasons. I think a novelist should ideally write about locations he or she really knows, for then place can seem really authentic. I knew and loved Hengistbury Head and Mudeford Sandbank, and I hope I have managed to make this shine through in the story. This location became integral to the story I chose to weave, in the end. I was very keen to ensure the book cover depicted the iconic Mudeford Sandbank beach huts because they are so well known for being probably the most expensive of their kind in the world—some having sold for over £100,000 in their heyday—and that says a lot about the desirability of the location and its beauty. I also figured beach-time reading of a beach-based thriller might also help sell a few extra copies, and that is an important factor for any debut novelist. It was part of my marketing plan!

Is psychological fiction going to be your chosen genre?

Yes and no. 'Yes' because I can imagine I would be most likely to come up with stories in that genre, and 'no' because the next novel I have in mind is not a psychological thriller—although it will be strongly character-based. It is a novel to make people think, but with a strong and light underlying story-line that has a rich vein of humour so it never strays from being an entertaining read—despite offering much scope to ponder upon after laying the book aside. I don't want to say much more at this stage. I have a draft at present but it is much too long at 120,000 words for smaller publishing houses. I think I will probably end up rewriting to a more stringent plan, like I did with 'Sandman'. 'Sandman' has a brisk pace because I was very conscious of word-count all along. Plan B was the small publishing house, and I knew that 80,000 words made it more viable than 120,000. I counted words as I went and planned maximum words allowed for each scene. It minimised my restructuring—although I am amazed at how many times I read and re-read the manuscript. I won't even tell you how many.

Do you think anything could be done to help debut novelists get noticed more easily?

Mainstream publishers in the UK are hard to crack these days, but that's not surprising given that the big retailers like Tesco and Amazon have forced down their margins so much. It's made them lean and mean. Now they've mostly had to give up on unsolicited submissions from new authors and they rely on agents to do their slush-pile filtering. But agents only get a cut of the author's cut, so they have to be even more selective now and they receive much more 'slush'. It's a dreadful situation for aspiring novelists. Where will the new talent come from?

Thankfully there are new, small publishing houses out there making a name for themselves, and they are the best bet for new authors. Admittedly, most of them have to use print-on-demand (PoD) technology to keep their costs down by avoiding expensive print-runs, and that is a marketing drawback because, historically, reviewers and bookshops are less interested in PoD books. (These are produced by clever machines like electronic printers, except that a whole book pops out at the end and one or hundreds can be ordered as easily as you would select the quantity on a photocopier.) This stems from the outmoded practice of sale-or-return, which very few businesses today can expect to employ successfully. Mainstream publishers always let bookshops sell by these means to reduce risk and then pulped or 'remaindered' to cheap shops those books that were returned. So one book sold in a bookshop needed to pay for several books printed.

Reviewers really like to review hardbacks, and it is not cost-effective these days to publish a newcomer in hardback. Also, because it is so hard to turn a profit these days with all the big operators driving down prices and margins, not many new novels actually reward their authors with a conventional advance any more; the huge majority of new authors today only get royalties after sales. Smaller publishing houses sometimes offer a bigger cut for the author to compensate for the lack of an advance: fair, given that their royalty then comes directly from sales. I think the mainstream publishing industry needs a massive overhaul. Actually, it is happening, whether they like it or not, because small publishing houses are getting in there and I hope the day will come when mainstream publishers will consider PoD a sensible option that also gives them a reasonable excuse to edge-out of the sale-or-return formula. After all, they could remove waste, put down their prices to booksellers as a result, and let themselves, the bookseller and even the hapless author get a bigger profit. I think it could work, for if a bookseller buys at a lower price then that reduces the risk of not selling a book even if it is non-returnable. It would then be possible to publish new authors without much risk. I'm afraid I can rant on this! It is one thing to pulp unsold newspapers, but another thing to do the same with books and their beautiful covers. I wish publishers would sit up and smell the coffee rather than concentrating their worries on the effects eBooks will have on their business. Serious readers will always want real books to hold, no matter how good eBook readers become.

Do you have any tips for up-and-coming authors?

Write and perfect at least three good chapters and then get a critique on it from a professional organisation. Look in something like Writing Magazine (in the UK) for their ads. Or post it on a peer review website such as Authonomy for free feedback. If you get rubbished a lot then listen; you probably have got a turkey. If you get a lot of praise then that is very encouraging. The consensus of opinion is generally worth listening to, but it is your work, so go with your gut feelings, having taken into account the reaction of others. (But don't dare hope a site such as Authonomy is actually likely to lead to a publishing contract; don't waste too much effort trying to get to the top of their popularity pile, just absorb in the feedback.)

When you have finished and edited the entire novel—not before—and are ready for publishing, have a Plan A and a Plan B. Plan A should be to try the traditional route of any mainstream publishers you can find who actually allow submissions—very few—plus agents. Only send to suitable publishers by checking them out online or in The Writer and Artist's Yearbook or the Writer's Handbook for the UK, or their US equivalents if you live there. Go for multiple submissions unless you want this stage to take three years! Why put your life on hold at the whim of publishing policies? If that fails, Plan B should be to move on to the smaller publishing houses that still do accept unsolicited submission—after 6-9 months. I've known publishers and sometimes agents to keep a MS for up to 6 months before rejecting it. Then, of course, there is Plan C: publish it yourself, but in order for that to work, they need to bear in mind that Plan C is an option from the start so you do not write a tome; there is no way you can turn a profit on a tome. And if you do that, don't pay out to a vanity publisher who prints books for you to store in your garage. Go for a publisher who only makes its money from selling your book, not just from printing it. They're a bit hard to find, mind you!

Be aware how much work is involved in writing a novel: probably at least a year if the quality of writing is to be there. Another reading can always improve a work, but at some stage you have to be pragmatic and stop; if a mainstream publisher takes you on, you'll be involved in a lot of further editing anyway. Then be aware that is only the start. Even mainstream publishers expect new authors to do all the leg work unless you've written what they consider to be a blockbuster—that is promotion and marketing—so there's really not a lot of difference between mainstream publishers and small publishers when you get down to the nitty-gritty: except the small publisher might offer you a better deal, have a more personal relationship and interest in you, and maybe even help that little bit harder. And remember that marketing all comes out of your profit margins!

The bottom line is this. Don't even try to write a novel unless you have an X-Factor degree of motivation. You'll need it. Chances are the financial rewards will be slim, but if you're driven to write, the psychological rewards can be great—and what alternative do you have to get it out of your system?