writing

Author Interview; Keith Gillison

~ ChanAtkins ~ 1 Comment
Welcome to another indie author interview! If you missed the last interview I posted, it was with indie author Joel Dennstedt,  during which he told me all about the inspiration behind his novels, and how manages to keep writing alongside his constant travels. Next up is Keith Gillison, a British author I discovered recently. His debut novel The Boss Killers is a dark and twisted satire about one man’s desire to dispose of his vile boss. Intrigued? You should be, it’s a hell of a story!
1) Your novel, The Boss Killers is a dark satire about one man’s desire to kill his terrible boss. Could you tell us where you got the idea from? 

I’d love to say I did lots of research, spotted a niche area ripe for exploiting and then painstakingly plotted the novel out. However, I was walking through the splendid grounds of a public school in Dorset when this scene played out in my head of a man having his annual appraisal and in his mind he’s saying all the things he really wants to say to his jobsworth boss. I just liked the idea and wanted to know what would happen next so took the idea from there as a starting point and ran with it. The hammer came from an actual former boss who, on my first day, showed me a hammer he kept in his desk, which I’m pretty sure was intended as a threat.

2)Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?

When I was at school for some reason I actually enjoyed writing essays. In my career in marketing I wrote a lot of business copy for promotional materials and websites. I liked writing but never tried my hand at creative writing, I was one of those people who thought ‘one day I’ll write a book’ while secretly knowing that it was a pipe dream and I’d never do anything about it. Nine years ago that changed when I lost my sister to cancer. I thought I couldn’t look myself in the mirror if I didn’t at least try my best to write that book.

3)What has your journey as a writer been like so far? How would you describe the experience?

It’s been a tough journey. At the same time my sister was dying of cancer I was very ill. My energy levels were getting worse and then one day I was out in Dorchester, I sat down at a bench and couldn’t move any part of my body. I was eventually diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (also known as ME) and nearly ended up in a wheelchair. I’ve battled back but have still had frequent bouts of chronic illness for the last 10 years. During this time I also had two children, moved home and wrote a novel. It took me a long time to write it because I was ill so much so there were long periods when I couldn’t write. Also, I wrote the entire novel before I attended my first writing class, which probably isn’t the wisest way of doing things. At first I really struggled writing the novel, as I’d never even written a short story before but I persevered and then one weekend I wrote this scene, what would become The House of Lard chapter, and I thought ‘Woah, where did that come from?’ It was like I’d opened this door into my imagination and suddenly I felt like I might actually be able to do this.

I’ve had ups and downs, I’ve won a writing competition and had short stories published in magazines and anthologies, and been broadcast on local radio, as well as plenty of rejections along the way. I’d say I’m more confident in my own ability now and have learnt some of my blind spots and areas I need to work on but I’m still learning.

4) What made you decide to take the self-publishing route?
I contacted a number of agents initially and was rejected by some, others didn’t even bother to reply. I had some nice rejections but I found the process of waiting an interminable amount of time (always longer than their guaranteed reply period!) very frustrating. I found myself in the position of having a decision to make – did I want to spend the next however many years sending my novel off to publishers and agents or did I genuinely want people to be able to read it. I was impatient to start working on other writing projects as well and I didn’t spend all that time and effort writing my novel to sit on my computer forever so I went for self-publishing. I think people need to ask themselves that question – do you want people to read your work? If the answer is yes then there is nothing stopping you doing it yourself through self-publishing.

5) What would you say is the best thing about being an indie writer?
You can do whatever you want. Nobody is telling you what to do or when to do it, you have the freedom to just go ahead and publish and while the process is a lot of hard work, you also learn a lot and gain valuable skills. It’s a feeling of freedom to not be dependent on other people, knowing you can just do it all yourself. You don’t have to be one of those people who says ‘I wrote a novel but couldn’t get it published so I gave up.’ Self-publishing means when you are rejected by publishers it’s not the end of the road. It’s better that some people read your work than nobody.

6)What would you say are the worst things about being an indie writer?
It would still be good to not have to do everything yourself. As a self-published author you have to do all the promotion of the book yourself and there are times when I’d rather have someone do that for me so I could just concentrate on writing. It’s also irritating that sometimes the self-published tag is perceived as meaning lower quality which is an unfair generalisation. I’m sure there are some poor self-published novels, but I’ve also read plenty of traditionally published novels that were utter tripe.

7) Do you have any top tips for indie survival?

In the words of a well-known sports clothing brand; just do it. It’s an amazing feeling to have your work published and out there for everyone to read. The biggest piece of advice I can give is – believe in your work. As an indie author you have to fight to get attention for your work and you’ll get disappointments along the way but if you truly believe in your work then you’ll know that people just need to read it. Don’t expect it to be easy though, there are millions of books and authors out there but you know something they don’t – your book is awesome! And keep going, it might take you longer to get where you want to be but you can still get there

8)What are you working on at the moment?

I injured my arm in December and typing is still painful now so at the moment I’m mostly writing short stories and flash fiction, with a view to an anthology later this year. I’m about 40,000 words into another novel and I have plans for several others as well. I’ll get back to the novel when I can write more intensively again without the severity of pain.

9) How would you describe your genre and style?
Humour tends to be my natural style of writing, with a leaning towards dark and surreal or ridiculous humour. I love taking an idea and stretching it way beyond what anybody would consider normal. I’d like to think of my writing as very original and different from everything else out there.

10) Who are your influences/fave authors?

Terry Pratchett is a huge hero of mine. I love the humour in his writing and he has some of the greatest fictional characters of all time. Lord Vetinari is a particular favourite, as are Granny Weatherwax and Cut-my-own-throat-Dibbler. Pratchett takes you on amazing journeys of the imagination and he combines great humour with brilliant storytelling.

11) what are your dreams/hopes for the future?

The ultimate dream would be to be able to make a decent living out of writing novels, be a bestselling novelist. I’m sure all authors would want that. I’d just like to write more novels and feel that I’d told the stories in my head as I wanted to and that people enjoyed them. I don’t want to be accused of literature but it would be nice to be recognised as a writer that readers regard as entertaining and original.

12) Tell us about your writing routine/process – how does it work?

I write the old fashioned way – pen and paper and then I type it up later. It adds to the time but I just can’t get any creative juices flowing staring at a screen. There is something special about just a pen and paper and your imagination, you can go anywhere, be anyone and do anything. Pen and paper also means being able to write anywhere without the need for technology. I’m continually scribbling bits at the side and adding arrows so the page is organised chaos. Ideally I like to be alone and somewhere quiet and then just write for a few hours. I have found it difficult to find a quiet place, even libraries aren’t quiet anymore, sometimes I’ve written in my car and bits of the novel were written at kids soft play places but I wouldn’t recommend that. I don’t edit as I go, just write it all out, including the rubbish bits, it’s important to keep the flow and once I’m on a roll I’ll keep writing until I’ve either got to the end of a story for a short story or the end of a scene or chapter for a novel. I don’t like to leave a scene or story half-finished, I’d rather wait until next time. I usually write a few notes at the top of the page, pointers of things I want to include but I don’t plan anything out in detail, I like to just picture the scene in my mind and then write it.

13) Tell us three interesting things about you

1/ I’m a decent table tennis player. I’ve played for my county at both junior and senior level. I spent my youth travelling around the country playing in table tennis tournaments.
2/ I suffer from acute anxiety and have frequent panic attacks.
3/ My background is in marketing. I have a management degree from Aston University and a postgrad diploma from the Chartered Institute of Marketing. I once worked for a woodland burial ground and funeral directors, selling burial plots to the general public and steel mortuary trays to funeral directors. That was a conversation stopper; ‘So what do you do?’ ‘I work for a funeral director’. Many a tumbleweed moment was had.
 Keith Gillison is 40 years old and lives in Dorset, but is originally from Birkenhead on Merseyside. He is married with two children. A graduate of Aston University and the Chartered Institute of Marketing, he spent 17 years working in marketing. He published his first novel, The Boss Killers, in 2015. He also writes short stories and flash fiction and has been published in magazines, anthologies and online.
Find out more at thebosskillers.com or follow Keith on Facebook and Twitter

Final Draft? Patience is the key…

~ ChanAtkins ~ 4 Comments

Last Friday I finally finished the final draft of my YA novel The Tree Of Rebels. Yes, yes, yes, it is done! It is finished at last! Or is it? I’ve lost count of how many drafts and rewrites it has been through now. I’ve blogged about a fair few of them! I decided to change the tense from present to past, and I also added some new scenes. Then I went through it all again, with what felt like a very gentle and enjoyable edit. Correcting typos here and there.Small corrections. Nothing major. And I finally liked it!

As I may have mentioned once or twice before, I’ve had a love/hate relationship with this novel since I first got the idea for it. I ignored the idea for a while because it would mean writing a book way out of my comfort zone. When I finally started it, I suddenly got another really good and important idea for another book, which wanted to interrupt this one. I didn’t let it, and forced myself on, which in hindsight, was probably the wrong thing to do. I do wonder if I ought to have listened to the loudest voice, put Tree of Rebels to one side and gone with Elliot Pie when he was at his most demanding…

But anyway, I didn’t. I wrote this book, and then started a second draft, sent to beta-readers, drafted again, hated it, drafted again, loved it, left it for ages while I wrote Elliot Pie…drafted it again, hated it even more and so on, and so on. It was like having a constant argument with myself. This book is brilliant! No, it’s not, it’s a total waste of time!

I’m pleased to report that during this last, final, never to be messed with again, draft, I really and truly fell in love with this book. I got the feeling I had been waiting for. Everything clicked. I knew what it was and I was proud of it. Changing the tense worked wonders, and the extra scenes I added seem to work really well too. I was so into this book by the time I finished it, I even carried on and drafted the synopsis of the sequel, and wrote the first two chapters of this!

So when will I be releasing it then?

Hmm, not yet. Because I still don’t think it is finished! I decided that after so much doubt, it would be worth sending it back to my top beta reader/editor for a final read through. I know she will be honest and scathing if she needs to be. I am curious to see what she thinks of the change in tense and the extra scenes. Waiting for her to read it will give me some head space from it, and a chance for the book to breathe. I thought this was a sensible idea. If there are any lingering typos or things that don’t make sense, they will be picked up and sorted and being patient will help me decide if it really is finished.

The problem is, I am already getting more ideas. Just little bits here and there. Just bits of dialogue, and brief scenes or moments that have suddenly popped into my head. I really didn’t think this would happen! I really did think I was done…

But I’m glad that it has, even if this does mean once it comes back, it will be getting another going over by me. You see, it’s all too easy these days to write something, do a few more drafts and then self-publish it and move onto the next one. Believe me, it is very, very tempting to do this. I have so many other books to write, but I have to resist the temptation to rush things. Patience is the key. A book is done when it is done, and not a moment before. I could release this book now and see if you like it, or I could wait to see what my favourite critic says first. I could release it after that, after any last lingering mistakes have been mopped up, or I could wait a bit longer, see if it can be any better. It’s surprising how you feel about a piece of writing if you leave it alone for a while. You might think its the best it can be, but give it a few months, during which hopefully your writing skills would have improved even more, and quite often you can already see that it can be made better. And if it can, then it should.

So, apologies folks. The Tree Of Rebels is done…but not done.

The really good news is that I have finally fallen in love with it, which is how it should be in my opinion. I’ve had a strange relationship with this book, and I’ve nearly given up on it several times. It never felt quite the same as my other books, like the connection was not quite right. But this feeling has well and truly gone now. I’m even writing some more of the sequel tonight!

 

 

Untold Stories

~ ChanAtkins ~ 7 Comments

I’ve blogged recently about the amount of stories and characters I have in my head. I have also blogged about my struggles with the final draft of my YA novel The Tree Of Rebels, and how I have been constantly distracted by voices from untold stories. In order to keep some of these voices at bay, so that I can finish each project I am on, I have been writing the odd short story for these characters. Has this worked? Well, yes and no! On the one hand, it does feel good to get something out, to relieve a little of the pressure. But on the other hand, it seems that if I allow these people an inch, they will take a mile, and start shouting even louder.

Anyway, I am making great progress with the final draft of The Tree Of Rebels. I am probably only days away from finishing it. I might have mentioned before that I decided to try changing the tense, to see if that worked, and although I can’t be sure until I read through it all, I think it has! So, the plan is, I finish the draft then re-read the whole thing, checking a final time for errors, typos and so on. Then it will be done! What comes next? Well, I do feel I ought to finish my rough plot for the sequel, as it might be a good idea to not let there be too big a gap between the two books, but this won’t take me long. I will then jump into the second draft of my novel Elliot Pie’s Guide To Human Nature. As you might recall, Elliot Pie was a queue jumper! Jumping neatly ahead of the planned sequels to The Tree Of Rebels and The Mess Of Me! He was too insistent to ignore, so he finally got his story told. Once I have done the second draft I will send it to my wonderful beta readers, as I will need feedback on the structure of the novel, as it is a little bit different. What will I do whilst they are reading this?

Ooh, I’m glad you asked! Well, I recently wrote two short stories for a character that was getting impatient. Bill Robinson is one of the characters in a gritty teen drama I first wrote when I was sixteen years old. I never finished the book, and it had always been one I knew I would go back to at some point! Much in the same way I finally finished The Boy With The Thorn In His Side in 2013, after first writing it when I was twelve! Nightprowler and Bird People are both available to read on Wattpad if you are interested. Nightprowler is really a prequel to the novel, an event that happens before it all begins, and Bird People is really a snapshot into the mind and character of Bill.

Anyway, the point of this blog post is untold stories, and how exciting it is once you finally get the chance to tell them. Maya Angelou was quoted as saying that ‘there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you,’ and I think most writers would agree that this is very true. It does become an agony. The desire to write and share, and the noise created by the characters and their lives, can reach unbearable levels if something is not at last released.

With this in mind I went hunting yesterday, and dragged the old suitcase out from under my bed. This suitcase is very important to me because it contains all my old stories, school work, essays and ideas. Luckily for me, I have never thrown anything away. And thank goodness too, because I found what I was looking for, and what a joyous moment that was. This great big hulking binder full of Bill’s story. It didn’t have a title back then, but the working title will now be A Song For Bill Robinson. Everything was right there. A plot (and how exciting to see that I used to plot at age sixteen, the same way I do no! ie a scruffy notepad filled with ideas with ticks on top of them!) character bios, and a whole load of notes and extra bits paper clipped together. More excitingly there is also a map! I used to draw maps of the fictional worlds I created to help me when moving the characters about. There is even a play list of songs, as one of the main plot lines involves Bill entering talent contests in his local community centre as a singer. He hooks up with some other people who play instruments, and the play list was a rough idea of some of the music they might play together.

How exciting! What a find…I knew I still had the unfinished handwritten manuscript, but I had completely forgotten about all the extra bits! I wanted to go back in time and pat my sixteen year old self on the back! Job well done! I can use all this! This is going to be brilliant! I was also impressed to find scraps of paper where I had written things like ‘by chapter 7 we know that Charlie is hiding something, and we know about some of it. We have suspicions of Laura’s private life, some from what she tells us and some from Bill’s own suspicions.’ Ha ha! Nice to know I had a good handle on the whole show not tell thing back then!

I can’t tell you how happy this discovery made me yesterday. This story still has to wait for me to get around to it, but in the meantime it is going to continue to grow and swell and evolve inside my head. I already know lots more about the characters than I did back then. There have been lots of nice, little details striking me lately.

So exciting!!

 

 

 

 

 

Too Many Ideas, Too Little Time

~ ChanAtkins ~ 7 Comments

I’m lucky that I never get writer’s block, or run out of ideas. It would be quite nice to get some peace one day, but for now, my head is full of so many people and stories that I struggle to sleep or get a break from them. Some of them have been around for years. They fade in and out, getting loud, only to fall quiet again. Some are new, popping up and thrusting themselves into my consciousness when they are least wanted. Some of them are being dealt with right now, while some of them are getting really, really impatient…

It was the same today. I was out walking, because walking is where most of it happens, when I get away from the home and the duties and the children, I suppose when I get the chance to become more me…Anyway, today was a day like all others. It was good the way my mind jumped from one thing to the next. A new idea for the collection of shorts related to next novel The Tree Of Rebels. I had almost forgotten about these until I heard a gunshot while walking through the woods. In my perpetual childish state, I wanted to run and duck and cower and find a tree to hide behind because the baddies were after me…instead I let my mind run, and there was this small child running through the woods, running from the gun and the men in black and the dog-like creatures she’s can’t quite believe will be allowed to hurt her…and I thought oh yes, hell yes, another short for Tales From Province 5…I forgot I already had three…I need to sort these out and get these done! They were meant to be part of the launch plan I wrote for The Tree Of Rebels ages ago…you know, because for the first time ever I’m going to try that!

Anyway, there was that, and that was really good. I pretended I was her for a while, blundering through the thorns and the undergrowth, so that was fun. Then there was the Tree Of Rebels in general. You’ll be pleased to know I am not struggling with the final draft anymore. That’s probably because I know it won’t be the final draft! So at the moment I am changing it all to past tense, instead of present. It was worth a try to see if it worked, and I think it has. I’m editing as I go of course, but what I intend to do, is change the tense, then go back to the beginning for the final, FINAL draft. And I definitely love it again. I am loving it. It is loved!

Then there were some extra bits to add to a short story I wrote the other day, which was an attempt to alleviate the urgency of an old story pushing its way forward. It keeps doing it. This story about teenage alcoholic Bill Robinson I wrote when  I was 16 but abandoned for another idea…used to do that a lot back then! Anyway, Bill Robinson keeps piping up, so I wrote a short for him a while ago and put it on Wattpad and here, and that worked. It pushed him back a bit. But not for long.

You see, what happens is, I will be in the car, I’ll see a person, a face, hear some music, glimpse a building, a snippet of conversation, anything god damn it, and it will link up, it will hold on and it will grow and swell and it becomes fiction, although somehow real at the same time…so I can’t avoid it or ignore it, it just happens! So I wrote another short for Bill, but that made it worse. Some new bits came today, they’ll get added when I get time…he is not going to shut up any time soon.

And then there is Elliot Pie…quiet for now because his first draft was done, and that calmed him, that quieted him because his story is told. But even today, I got some snippets of dialogue, some expressions in my mind, some bits I need to remember…and this blog post…

I thought, god its frustrating and crazy feeling like this all the time, like there are stories and lives and stuff everywhere, and I get so impatient because I will never have the time to do it all, to say it all, to get it all out, especially when every time I leave the house I get more! But then I thought, hold on, isn’t it also the best feeling in the world? Like no other high? All that energy and life, all those possibilities, all that potential, comedy, tragedy, and drama in my head! It makes me feel so alive!

How to cope? Who to listen to? Who shouts the loudest or who has been waiting the longest? How to hold onto one thread and not drop it when another one barges in? How not to dilute the passion of one project, because another one is already tapping on the door? I will try to keep them back with shorts and notes, and thoughts that calm them. I will get to them all in time. Take a deep breath . Plot them out if I need to. Let them stew. So I do this, and I get home fast, got to rush in and get to a notebook and make a list, jot stuff down before I forget any of those things!

And then I step into the hallway and see that it needs sweeping, and the reality hits, and the toddler wants me, and oh it feels so selfish to want to push them all aside and get to my notebook before it fades… I just need to get this down, just quickly, just a few things before I forget, and my mind is always on it, always wandering here and there, always listening to the people in my head. So selfish.

Yet it’s not.

Think about it. All that sharing. Writers share their thoughts and feelings, fears and anger more than anyone else! Okay, a lot of it is made up, turned into fiction, exaggerated and so on, but at the same time it is real, because it came from us. Maybe we are like the sponge, absorbing all the lives and stories we see and hear around us, but we don’t just take it and keep it for ourselves. We put it right back out again. We share it with the world.

So I’ve decided, I will try not to feel guilty. It’s not like I can help it. I can’t stop them coming, I can’t stop seeing ideas and stories almost everywhere I look. I’ll just do what I can with the time I have, and try to remain calm. I just hope that if I am lucky enough to live a long life…I will have run out of ideas by the end of it. I want to lie on my death bed and know that there is nothing more to say! But that is probably wishful thinking.