1. Reading the work of authors I admired inspired me to explore my own imagined worlds on paper and an inspirational English teacher made me realise I had a genuine talent tor it. The same English teacher who inspired the poet Ted Hughes.
2.I have been an avid reader all my life. Among my favourite authors are Tolkien, Raymond Chandler, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Michael Connelly, David Baldacci.
3. My newest work is The Lunatic Son, a sardonic coming of age romance of family and community, set in a South Yorkshire mining town in the 1960s. I am working on a sequel but the next to be published is a detective story The Big Perhaps, which will be available in September.
4. The advice I would give to indie authors is simply to write and hone your craft, read snd study other writers and listen to advice but don’t slavishly follow it and stifle your own unique gift. Despite what all the ‘How To’ books tell you there is no magic formula for success.
5. My own style has been most influenced by American writers of the ‘hard boiled’ school – Raymond Chandler, Ross McDonald, Robert B. Parker and the gritty. But humourous tradition of Northern English fiction writers such as J.B.Priestley, David Saville and Keith Waterhouse .
Samantha Evans--Author 