Interview with Me

Interview with the author

Q I know that this is your first published novel but have you written anything that hasn't been published previously?

A this is actually my third attempt at writing a novel but the first I have successfully completed.

Q what happened to the first two?

A in short I didn't finish them.

Q why what happened?

A there were two different reasons really. The first book one misplaced word was a bit too complicated for the skills that I had at the time. It was all about perception and I was trying to give make the reader question some of their own thought processes. With a big game changer at the end. If I can explain by reminding people of what they thought at the end of the sixth sense then without spoiling, I wanted to similarly say " I never said that, you just thought I did" added to that as with prisoners I had a parallel story. In the end it all got a bit preachy. I like the idea of challenging perceptions and I have tried to bring some of those themes into this novel, but they are I hope a bit subtler.

Q so what happened to the second book?

A that was actually the complete opposite. I started it with the intention of learning skills to help me go back to project one better prepared. It was a nice simple quest called "take one pass it on" , straight forward; not too many complication, a to b, with a kind of love story thrown in. The trouble was half way through I realised I was pretty bored writing it. I certainly didn't love it or feel attached to it. It was just something I was doing. It wasn't that it was terrible or anything and the characters certainly took on their own identity. So one day I just stopped, put it in a drawer and prisoners was born.

Q so why do you think you finished this and not the previous attempts?

A I guess it was just that the story grabbed me. It was a happy medium with enough complexity to keep me interested but simple enough to avoid getting lost. I hope that the readers will find this works for them as well . The fact that my beta readers finished it so quickly gave me confidence that it worked. Ironically "take one pass it on" and "prisonersfdj" were supposed to help me revisit "one miss place word" but I think the reverse happened. My first two attempts actually helped me with the third. I learnt so much about the whole process; from research, through characterisation, plot and generally organising my thought processes. So that when it came down to the writing of "prisonersfdj" I finished it in virtually no time at all . Everything was so clear and the bits that weren't just came as I started to write. The most important piece of information that I think I have ever read on the subject said "just write" don't get hung up on getting it perfect but keep a momentum and a flow. I'm not sure I could write anything that took years, if I was reading a book and it was taking me that long I would suggest quite rightly that it hadn't captivated my imagination. I don't see why writing should be any more I will post the second half of the interview tomorrow

I'm such a wimp

It should be easy to promote something you believe in; shouldn't it. You just print out some flyers and hand them out, what can be so hard about that. Argh but I'm clever I am only going to target Kindle readers or at least this weekend I am. So you just go up to them on the tube or the train and say

"sorry to interrupt. I dont know what sort of thing that you normally read, but my novel is available for free this weekend, you might be interested to have a look"

then you hand them one of your well designed postcards and move on to the next. Easy peasey , lemon squeasey. Yeah right. In two nights of commuting I have handed out precisely 1 card and approached one other person who politely declined my postcard. Somehow the targeting thing just makes it all a little too personal, which of course it is. I have chosen you, specifically you now I feel self conscious. if I just stood at the entrance and handed out a card to everybody maybe it would be easier. I would be expecting that a lot of people would say no thanks or just ignore my out stretched hand of literary enlightenment, but when I try to target people the possibility of rejection becomes more of a personal judgement on my decision making.

"You thought I might like your book , why would I do that; its rubbish, you're rubbish, I hate you, now leave me alone creepy man."

Ironically 10 years ago I sold accident insurance door to door, cold calling. Rejection became part of the game and you got used to it, well actually I never got used to it, but I did it anyway. I believed in the product that I was selling but on the other hand I didn't really care if other people didn't, it was no skin off my nose. This whole novel writing thing has become intensely personal. I want people to like it . I want people to like me. If they don't like the book which I have put so much of myself into then perhaps they don't like me either. In the words of Bill Shankly

"its not a matter of life and death , its more important than that"

Well to me it is. Where's the rescue remedy or the Gin

Size isn't everything it expands by twenty percent

If like me before you started writing your first Masterpiece, you will have read lots of wise words about structure, plot, characterization and length. I did just this and for a large part, although it was informative it just delayed me from actually writing. The most valuable piece of advise that I did read, although I confess now that I cant remember which pontificators guide to writing it came from, was: "just write". Once I got this into thick skull the process was quite straight forward, I wrote the bulk of the book in 1 month. One of the many advantages of the whole self publishing, eBook phenomenon is that many of the rules have been torn up and thrown away. You haven't got to meet an editors preconceived ideas of an ideal length for a genre. If your story ends up at 20,000 words and you think that you like it like that and it fulfills your expectations then maybe some readers will like it that way as well. Similarly if you feel that you can keep a reader enthralled and absorbed for 180,000 words then fine go for it. In my case I was worried that at 50,000 words "prisoners, families, dolls and judgements" was a little short, although it just about met the acceptable criteria for a debut novel that I had read. However what I didn't want to do and I think can easily happen, is adding words just for the sake of it, scratching towards some preordained target. I'm sure that even the most forgiving reader will notice this and there is also a big danger that the book becomes imbalanced. If you suddenly insert a long rambling description when this hasn't been the style you have cultivated, then it will just appear as a bit weird and out of place. If after you type "and they all lived happily ever after" you honestly feel that your novel is too short,don't despair. After I had given my draft to my editor and worked on some of his comments, there was a natural swelling. It didn't seem forced and I certainly hope it hasn't come across that way. At the final count my novel is 59,700 words it did actually make the magic 60,000 at one point but being true to my anarchistic self, I cut a paragraph and I was left just a little short. But just like in other aspects of life its not how much you have but how you use them.

Nothing much to blog today except this


Prisoners, families, dolls and judgements by S.B. Mann
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed reading this book which was given to me by a friend. It was easy to read and I finished it in only a few days. The Author managed to give a real feel for Prison life and the contrast with the Family interactions was particularly interesting. The reversal of popular conception was also thought provoking.

If you like reading something a bit different try this



http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/asin/B00G3...

View all my reviews

Blog the book

I feel like a proper writer now. I not only have a paperback, but I also have a blog.The big question. What the hell do you do with a blog. Now I could spend hours and hours trawling through other people's blogs to find the answer. Or I could just make it up as I go along. Now as the process of writing my book very much relied on the second option and I like making stuff up, I think that will be my route to blogging superstardom. That is not to say that I am a liar, it's not that kind of making up that I like. I like writing stories and poems. In fact the poems came first, but there was all that tricky rhyming. So I switched to prose, which I guess is just poetry without rhymes. And a bit longer. Unless of course you write poems that don't rhyme, which are… Just prose anyway but with different line spacing. Sorry I got confused then, it's just as well that I don't write poems like that, my poems are quite clearly poems. Actually I don't really write poem much these days, but I might need to because I'm going to publish some in an anthology called The Ramblings of a middle aged romantic.

I got slightly off-track, this blog has got slightly off-track. But without even knowing or really intending I've made a point about something, not the something I intended, but about poems. So after all maybe I have got the hang of this blogging. Write a lot, make a point, or sometimes two, go to bed. Job done. Except the going to bed bit. I'm going to do that now

The Proof Copy