1. What inspired you to write? I loved scribbling stories as a child but they were only for me and my family’s consumption. I did not think of publishing them.
2014, that changed as I went through a dark period of depression after I experienced malaria delirium. I lost a whole year of my life during the recovery period.
As I recovered, I started making notes about my experience and the desire to share with others led to the publishing of my first book – From Depression to Hope @ – Onaoluwa Abimbola ( available on Amazon etc).
2) Are you a reader? What are some of your favorites? Yes , definitely, favourites have changed over the years from Enid Blyton’s Famous five series , Eze goes to school by Onuora Nzekwu , Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ‘s Half of a yellow sun to adult options like James Patterson’s Tell me your dreams, Francine Rivers …Jim Collins Good to great etc. I read a varied selection.
3) What is your newest work, and what is going to happen in the future? From a Fellow Wayfarer is my second book and I am working on a third.
4) Do you have advice or tips for Indie Authors?
Advice? Hmmm, stay true and authentic to yourself. Your tribe will find you.
5) What influenced you as a writer?
My dad and mum, I grew up around books they had a small library in our small house and encouraged us to go to the public library too.
1. What inspired you to write? Reading and a joy of writing 2) Are you a reader? What are some of your favorites? Vonnegot, Tom Robbins, All the greats of sci fi, Burroughs, Shakespeare 3) What is your newest work, and what is going to happen in the future? Just about to publish my debut novel, Greetings, Planet Earth! Currently working on the sequel, Help, I Lost My Planet! 4) Do you have advice or tips for Indie Authors? Always work on improving your craft, and work with others 5) What influenced you as a writer? Other writers, social conditions, and circumstances of Covid.
1. I wrote because I was unable to express what I was feeling inside in any other way. 2. I am an avid reader of historical romance novels. 3. My advice for Indie authors is to keep trying, don’t be discouraged. 4. I was inspired to write from my high school days. My English teacher was hugely supportive of creative writing.
1) What inspired you to write? I have worked for over 25 years as a therapist with some of the most challenging children and their families. I discovered early on that many traditional child therapies did not work for these children. Over the years I developed a therapy model that I found to be effective with this population. I felt called upon to share this with other therapists and also to write a book for parents to promote healing for children and families. 2) Are you a reader? What are some of your favorites? Yes I’m a reader. I’m a Tolkien/Lord of the Rings fan, but also love a cozy murder mystery a la Agatha Christie. 3) What is your newest work and what is going to happen in the future? My newest work is a book for parents: Understanding Attachment Injuries in Children and How to Help: A Guide for Parents and Caregivers. I also just published a second edition of my first book: M-MAT Multi-Modal Attachment Therapy: An Integrated Whole-Brain Approach to Attachment Injuries in Children and Families. For the future I am planning trainings based on these books. 4) Advice or tips for indie authors? Write what you are passionate about. Then get some good editors/proofreaders and beta readers to help polish it up! 5) What influenced you as a writer? I was inspired and influenced by the many therapist-writers that have come before me. By courageously putting their ideas on paper they have allowed the field to grow and evolve, paving the way for new ideas and authors such as myself.
1. What inspired you to write? I’ve been a writer in the tabletop roleplaying game field for over two decades now, but I started writing (very poorly) all the way back in grade school. I’m inspired by the usual things for geeks like me: Dungeons and Dragons, Star Trek, Star Wars, and so on… At first it was fascination with the fantastic, but then I realized that you can tell some very engaging stories in these worlds, and I wanted to try my hand at it.
2) Are you a reader? What are some of your favorites? Absolutely! I grew up reading JRR Tolkien, R.A. Salvatore, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. More recently, I’ve enjoyed the Star Trek tie-in fiction from David Mack, Dayton Ward, and Peter David. I enjoy reading in shared universes, even if a lot of people don’t consider them literary.
3) What is your newest work, and what is going to happen in the future? I actually have some exciting news right now. I wrote a roleplaying game book called Battlemasters & Berserkers, which did pretty well as a Kickstarter. Part of the KS was a piece of original barbarian themed fantasy fiction called Rathorn: Savage Adventures. It’s a novella approximately 19,000 words long, which is the first of many. I’ll be releasing new episodes at a rate of one per month for the foreseeable future. These will be going out through my Patreon, which is located here: https://www.patreon.com/Rathorn and possibly Kindle Vella.
4) Do you have advice or tips for Indie Authors? Yes. Don’t be in a rush to publish (which also means, don’t follow my example). If you want to compete, the book needs to be of professional quality, and that means it needs to be polished. Clumsy writing is endemic in the indie publishing realm, and readers pick up on it. It’s more than just fixing misspellings and correcting grammatical errors. You need to have style, and that means eliminating redundancy, extra words, and not phrasing things clumsily. Unless you have an English degree and a ton of editing experience, you’re not going to be able to find and fix all these issues yourself, and frankly even professionals shouldn’t edit their own work anyway (again, follow my advice, not my example).
5) What influenced you as a writer? It was the realization that writing is the only professional endeavor I want to pursue, and it’s the only thing I feel like I have a decent amount of talent for. If it wasn’t for writing, I’d probably be asking customers if they want fries with their order, or locked into some dead-end soul-sucking desk job, like telephone debt collecting. Honestly, it doesn’t matter if I’m writing fiction or hammering out a book full of rules for Dungeons and Dragons, for me it’s the thrill of creation; of bringing something into the world with my name on it. Long after I’m gone, my books will remain, in both physical and digital form.
1. What inspired you to write? I have always written since I learned to write! 2) Are you a reader? What are some of your favorites? I like old fashioned Sci-Fi like Alexei Panshin, Tanith Lee, Ann McCaffrey, but also newer writers like Laurann Dohner (my guilty reading secret) 3) What is your newest work, and what is going to happen in the future? I am currently writing the third in a fantasy trilogy that I am hoping to try trad pub with. But I’m impatient, and if I don’t get interest by the end of the year, I will probably self-pub it. I have 15 other books self-published. 4) Do you have advice or tips for Indie Authors? Just write and publish it. There’s worse and better than you, but not all have your story. 5) What influenced you as a writer? My father. I always had a library of interesting books, and a computer at my fingertips. Image is of my latest release, The Deadliest Dance, Stories from Vaelyn City, A Fourth World Novel.
1. I started writing at the age of 7 as I loved reading. 2. I use to read 3-4 books a week as that was all I would do. my favourites were the point horror books 3. my newest work that I do is write short stories for people to read on my Facebook page which is gathering quite a big audience now called Storiesthatspook in the future I will have my first novel published and I will start writing a series. 4. my advice would be to keep on writing! don’t give up! the human imagination is so brilliant, everyone has different likes and dislikes so someone will like your writing even if a few don’t. it doesn’t matter. keep writing! 5. my mum influenced me as she would the stories that I had written when I was younger and said that I would be an author when I grow up. she would always push me to write.
1) What inspired you to writing? I had a love for reading fantasy fiction and in high school my mother encouraged me to do some creative writing to see where it took me. That’s how I started my first book. 2) Are you a reader? What are some of your favorites? yes, I love to read. I read a little bit of everything; romance, YA, urban fantasy. I’m not sure I have a single favorite author, I read and enjoy from so many. 3) what is your newest work, and what is going to happen in the future? I have multiple projects in the works, but my main focus is a YA novel about a teen girl that struggles with mental health and desperately tries to pretend she’s okay. In the future I plan to continue writing, it’s what I love. I’ll always be writing. 4) do you have advice or tips for Indie Authors? my advice is to keep writing and learn as much as you can from other writers. Join writer groups, exchange work and keep striving to learn and better your writingthose? 5) what influenced you as a writer? the desire to create a world that another person can enjoy or use as an escape. Maybe even help someone.
I’ve always been a writer. I find inspiration through old movies, nostalgia, music, and listening to the wind while in a fit of contemplation. To see, hear, and feel emotional frequencies and vibrations that rage within my veins with the purpose to create and to be a part of. To be a part of literature and the literary field. To be respected among my peers and to contribute a voice to the never-ending parade dancing across the stage of life. It’s not just about writing a book, there has to be a message, a reflection of society within the pages, a warning over carless human behavior, or a story that reaches into the heart of humanity and rips it from the chest, tossing the organ on a slab to be feasted on. To create a story that drives deep into the psyche and cuts even deeper into the flesh, with a bite that remains and leaves an ever-lasting impression on the heart and to use words, actions, thoughts, and behaviors that reflect the human condition and the dark heart of society.
2) Are you a reader? What are some of your favorites?
I fell in love with literature at a very early age. When I have a book in my hand I feel complete so yes I have more than a few favorites. But where to begin and where to end is the question, because there’s so many worthwhile books and even more I’m sure I haven’t read (is it possible to read every book in existence in one lifetime?), so here’s a list in no real order from the classics to modern literature including a few non-fiction books:
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Dracula by Bram Stoker (also read Dracul by Dacre Stoker and JD Barker, excellent prequel IMO)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
The Od Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Others by James Herbert
Time and Again by Jack Finney
The Damnation Game by Clive Barker
The Shinning by Stephen King
Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
The Secret History of the World by Mark Booth
The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot
Breaking the Death Habit by Leonard Orr
Vicious and Vengeful by VE Schwab
The Charlie Parker series by John Connolly
The Fourth Monkey Killer trilogy by JD Barker
Recursion and Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
3) What is your newest work, and what is going to happen in the future?
The Rose Vol 1 is the first installment in what will be at least an eight book dystopian science fiction series. The first installment begins immediately after the end of World War 3 and follows the protagonist Sandy Cox who is rescued from a WW3 safety camp by a mysterious rebel fighter, Phil, who, for reasons unknown to Sandy, has been tasked with transporting Sandy to the rebel fighters base in Atlanta. During the rescue attempt Sandy is captured and brought to an underground medical complex where she soon discovers the presence of alien greys and alien vampires who have conspired with elite humans to subjugate the human population. When Phil learns she’s been taken to the underground medical complex he enters the compound, fighting through alien vampires, telekinetic greys, werewolves, and genetically mutated human beings to rescue Sandy. The book is a tour de force of action, martial marts, conspiracy, and heroism. The story is told through multiple points of view. I enjoy being in the heads of all my characters, whether they’re alien vampires, grey aliens, or rebel heroes.
As far as what will happen in the future, well, without giving away the special sauce lets just say the series will have increasingly high stakes for our protagonists to overcome, new alien species and alien worlds to discover, evolving super powers and the evolution of the human mind, and, of course, the fate of humanity. Time travel, alternate universes, and dimension travel will also be included.
4) Do you have advice or tips for Indie Authors?
Yes, don’t just read, read, read, study the craft. How the author introduces new concepts or characters. The flow from one chapter to the next. Find out why you keep reading, what is it about the story that’s intriguing, the language, the characters, the situation, but also, how does the author present the problem and solution, what’s the formula within the story, the flow and the words used to drive and maintain reader interest. Knowing what makes you tick as a reader transfers to how you as a writer can continue to engage your reader. And use ProWrittingAid or another writing program. I’ve had major success with ProWritingAid and highly recommend the program for any new writers.
5) What influenced you as a writer?
Intelligent writing and stories that cut deep into the human condition by way of excellent character depth with an accurate psychological analyses that drives the story (I’m also a hypnotist and psychologist so getting the psychology correct is important to me as a reader and writer). Also, nostalgia, old familiar feelings, sensations, alternate dimensions, quantum physics, and youthful memories. Stories that look at all the possibilities that can, may, or do exist, latching on to the most surreal and exploiting the idea to its fullest in a never ending sea of imagination. And then there are the authors and books that get my gut more than others. Major literary influences have been HG Wells, Jules Vern, Ray Bradbury, Mary Shelley, Poe, Ernest Hemingway, Clive Barker, Stephen King, Anne Rice, Blake Crouch, VE Schwab, John Connolly, and JD Barker, to name a few. I also need to include John Carpenter movies. Movies like Big Trouble in Little China, They Live, Escape from New York, and of course Halloween, have all played major influential roles.
1. Growing up (I still am), I always assumed everyone wanted to write – we all have a book in us. But I also had a more negative experience recently – I read a holiday novel that was so badly written, the author forgot she had already killed-off a character, and so killed her again a few chapters later. I thought ‘I can do better than this!’ 2. I have always read, starting with Joy Adams, the Born Free series. I read Tolstoy, Dickens, and Hardy as a teenager, and more political moderns in my early twenties – like Steinbeck, Orwell and Heller. Catch 22 and The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist are probably my favourite. But I was not especially book-wormy as a youngster – unusually for a writer it seems, I am quite sociable. 3. I have just published a travel suspense thriller – Listless In Turkey. My books are embarrassingly autobiographical, I sometimes wonder if I even really have an imagination. So I might not have enough in me for another book – we’ll see. 4. The writing is the easy bit. As an indie you are involved in the publishing, marketing and selling – which requires different skills to the writing. Oh, and sell the author, not the story. 5. My two novels and one short story are not highbrow, but they do have a conscience. Every book should tell a story – at the risk of stating the obvious. My biggest influence in my own writing is some very strong females in my life. Sadly not all lived long enough to read my books.
Samantha Evans--Author 