Tag archives for Author Query

Last December I reviewed Laura Lam’s Pantomime. I fell in love with her world of Ellada and her wonderful protagonists Gene and Micah. So when I got the chance to interview Laura for her official release blog tour, I jumped at the chance. Laura was kind enough to answer my questions and I’m excited to share the interview with you today. Let’s take a look at what Laura had to say.

Let’s start with the basics. Who is Laura Lam?
I’m a 24-year-old who was born and raised near San Francisco, California, and gave up the sunshine to move to Aberdeen, Scotland to be with my husband, though we might not settle here forever. I work as a corporate librarian, read a lot and write a lot, watch some TV, travel, and don’t do all that much else!

You’ve stated Pantomime was originally developed from background notes to a different Micah Grey story. Why did you have Micah run away to join the circus?
Without giving the game away too much, Micah’s long-term career has a distinct need for physical strength and some theatric performances. So having him join the circus as a young lad would work very well for him indeed. It was an idle fancy for a while, but when I decided to write a “short story” about Micah joining the circus. I just fell in love with the setting and it kept getting longer and longer. First it was going to be a short story, then maybe a novella, and then it became a novel. With a sequel, and maybe more!

Have you always had a fascination for the circus?
I’ve always loved the circus. I remember seeing Ringling Bros with my mother and brother when I was little. I distinctly remember really wanting a snow cone and after I ate it, it turned my tongue blue. Like all kids, the clowns scared me. And I loved the aerialists the most—flying through the air and catching each other at just the right moment.

I’ve also watched Cirque du Soleil on TV, but not live yet, and whenever the circus comes to town, I always pop down to the beach to go see it. Anything with circuses always makes my ears perk up.

Did you have to do much research on Victorian circuses? If so, what was that process like?
I did a fair amount. Luckily, Brenda Assael wrote a really detailed account in her book The Circus and Victorian Society, which is fantastic. I also did a lot of general research online, and also read The Giant Circus Book by Taschen right before a huge rewrite, which was excellent inspiration. I also watched a lot of clips on Youtube of circus acts and read circus fiction like The Night Circus & Water for Elephants.

One of the clowns, Drystan, in his description and ‘clown persona’ rather reminded me of Robin Hobb’s Fool. Was this a deliberate homage or is it accidental?
It’s funny how obvious my admiration for Robin Hobb has come out in my writing, without me even realising it. It makes me feel oddly exposed! But yes, Robin Hobb is my favourite author and the fact that Drystan wears white motley is not accidental in the slightest. It’s a little homage to the Fool. Drystan is different to the Fool in many respects but there’s some obvious parallels—they both keep their past secret and they like to tease the protagonist until he blushes, and they’re both decidedly odd, but in the best possible way.

In Pantomime, both Gene and Micah dealt with issues of gender identity. What drew you to this subject?
I’ve always been fascinated by gender. Perhaps it’s a result of growing up in San Francisco. I’ve always seen gender as a fluid thing (even if I personally have landed pretty traditionally on the cisgendered-female side), and found it increasingly annoying that people were obsessed with putting people into boxes. Black or white. Male or female. Straight or gay. For so many, it’s not an either/or, and so I wanted to have characters who don’t fit into traditional societal boxes of gender or class or race or sexuality. It’s also not an accident that Micah’s last name is Grey.

I think all of my work will have some aspect of “in between” in it. YA embraces that as it has characters transforming from children to adults.

Of all of the acts in R.H. Ragona’s Circus of Magic, which one would you love to see most in real life?
The Phantom Damselfly, without a doubt, though she was more of a sideshow performance. Under the Big Top, I’d want to see the aerialists most of all.

What’s up next for you? More Micah Grey books or are you working on other projects?
I’ve finished the first draft of Pantomime2 (title to be determined) and sent it off to my agent and am awaiting revisions. In the meantime, I’m working on another YA set in our world, which is a gothic ghost story with a twist and meshes a bunch of genres together, as apparently that’s what I do!

I’ve also been playing around with some short stories set in Ellada as well, which has been fun, and also contemplating other books set in Ellada & the Archipelago.

What is your current read and what book are you most eagerly awaiting, apart from Pantomime of course?
I’m currently reading Shadows on the Moon by Zoe Mariott, which is just lovely. It’s a feudal Japan Cinderella retelling mashed with the revenge of Count of Monte Cristo, with magic and shadow-weaving. Fantastic!

Upcoming books: A lot of my Strange Chemistry cohort will have amazing books out next year, and I’m also anticipating a couple of sequels to books I loved this year, such as Dracomachia by Rachel Hartman and Scarlet by Marissa Meyer.

Is there something else you’re obsessed with other than writing and books?
To be honest, reading and writing covers most of my obsessive nature. There’s other things I quite enjoy: watching good TV and film, travelling, seeing friends and the like, but nothing else I’m obsessed with as I am with the written word.

Finally, I have to stay true to my roots and ask a librarian question to finish off with: Do you shelve your books alphabetically, by genre or do you have an ingenious system?
As someone who worked in a library, I appreciate this question! I alphabetize my fiction by last name and my nonfiction is in rough Dewey Decimal system. The system’s getting a bit messy around the edges because we’ve run out of room for books, though.
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Thank you so much, Laura! If you want to find out more about Pantomime or Laura, please visit her website or follow her on Twitter or Facebook. And I’m only the second stop on Laura’s blog tour, be sure to check the other stops out as well. They are listed below.

In the past few months I’ve reviewed both of Rowena Cory Daniells’ trilogies published by Solaris. The first, King Rolen’s Kin, consisting of The King’s Bastard, The Uncrowned King, and The Usurper, was published in 2010. The second one, called The Outcast Chronicles, comprising Besieged, Exile, and Sanctuary, was published over the summer with the last instalment released in the UK today. I loved both series and since they both left me with some questions on their origins and the process of writing them, I decided to ask whether Rowena would be willing to answer some questions. She was gracious enough to agree and luckily wasn’t stymied by the amount of questions I posed her. I hope you find her answers as fascinating as I did.

Rowena Cory Daniells

Your first series, Last T’En, was published in a traditional time frame (roughly one a year), whereas the last two trilogies have been released according to a quick-release schedule (one a month). Why this switch? Do you prefer writing out the entire trilogy before releasing it into the wild?

Absolutely. I like to be able to tweak books one and two, to plant clues for book three. Besides I tend to write what amounts to one really long book, then find places to break it into smaller books to create a trilogy (I think you might have guessed).

As for the books coming out a month apart, that was the publisher’s idea for King Rolen’s Kin because I handed them all in at once, having completed them ahead of schedule. Being a reader I’d much rather have a trilogy come out a month apart, so I was really pleased when Solaris announced they were doing this with KRK. And then when Solaris said they would do the same with The Outcast Chronicles I was delighted.

How did writing the two Solaris series differ? Was it easier to write The Outcast Chronicles, because you were returning to a familiar universe or was there more pressure, since King Rolen’s Kin was so well received?

In both cases I’d been writing the series for several years off and on. With KRK I set out to write the kind of book that got us all hooked on fantasy in the first place – a traditional, rollicking fantasy adventure. But, when it came to the OC, I wanted to challenge the genre.

How would we really react to gifted people living alongside us and how would these gifts impact on the gifted? So I set out to create a world as intricate and detailed as a science fiction writer would create for an alien society. This meant the society of the T’Enatuath is not your standard fantasy fare and I found conveying its structure within the narrative very challenging.

Before moving on to my questions about your new series, The Outcast Chronicles, I just had a few questions on King Rolen’s Kin. What inspired the Abbeys and their link to Affinity in King Rolen’s Kin?

In medieval times Abbeys were the equivalent of corporations. They owned land, farmed, sold produce and often sold indulgences – get out of hell – passes for sinners, providing a conduit to the divine for the ordinary people. It just seemed natural to me, that if there was tangible evidence of the divine, the abbeys would lay claim to it and be in charge of it.

The Affinity (power) that bubbles up from within the earth just came to me, bubbling up from my subconscious. I tell this story on my blog-site:

When I was about 10 my family went to play tennis at a set of courts in the back blocks of the Gold Coast. This was in the days when the holiday strip was not as gaudy and glitzy as it is now. My parents loved to play tennis and they told me to watch my little brothers, 8 and 5 and my sister 3. Behind the courts was a stretch of land backing onto a creek. There were white sand dunes, scrubby trees and it was the perfect place for us to play (in those far off days when kids ran wild most of the time).

As the eldest I was used to organising the games and I always saw myself as a sort of hero character so we’d play these long involved games with my younger siblings as my army, following orders, fighting great battles against enemy foes.

While running down one high white sand hill through the hollow and up the next we left my little sister behind. Halfway up the dune I turned around to find she’d run through the deepest part of the hollow and the sand, which appeared to be solid, had given way. She was knee deep in some sort of sticky sand-clay mix and couldn’t get out. Having seen plenty of Tarzan movies, I immediately thought of quicksand.

A real emergency! I told my brothers to stay back, afraid that they’d get trapped too, and edged forward. The sand’s surface broke up under my feet. It was cold and smooth and wet, and I didn’t know what was under there. My eight year-old brother came and took my arm to pull me out if I got stuck. I managed to grab our little sister’s arm and hauled her out of the sticky sand-clay which did not give her up easily. Meanwhile, my five year-old brother danced on the edge of the danger zone desperate to help and likely to get himself into trouble.

End of story, she was fine and we kept on playing. I don’t think we even told our parents about it, because by the time they finished playing tennis our game had moved on and that was old news. But I will always remember that sense of something under the ground opening up and proving dangerous.

In King Rolen’s Kin power seeps up from the land’s heart, infecting people and animals. Only those trained to contain this power go near Affinity Seeps. Now you see how a childhood adventure can be the inspiration for something in a story many years later.

One of the elements I found hardest in King Rolen’s Kin was reading about Byren and Orrade. They both broke my heart, Orrade because it’s so painful for him and Byren because he genuinely doesn’t seem to know what to do — even if I wanted to shake him and tell him to get over it. The level of homophobia displayed by the people in Rolencia (and Merofynia) was quite discomforting. Was it a conscious decision to write about this issue or was Orrade just born this way?

Byren is the younger twin. Even though he has a natural gift for leading men, he isn’t consumed with ambition. When the first book opens he likes hunting, leading raids and roistering when he comes home. He’s nineteen and nothing really bad has ever happened to him. He hasn’t been tested. Orrade is his test. I like to put my characters in difficult situations to find out what they’re made of.

As for the homophobia, it’s there because the world of KRK holds a mirror to our world. Sometimes what we see when we look in the mirror makes us uncomfortable and it should.

Was King Rolen’s Kin always meant as a quartet, or did you only decide to finish up the story in an additional book/series after finishing the first three?

I always thought there would be more KRK. Byren defeated one of the villains, but he still has to defeat his cousin, Cobalt, who seized the throne. Solaris has contracted me to write KRK 4, King-maker, King-breaker, to resolve this.

Moving on to The Outcast Chronicles, I completely fell in love with the T’Enatuath. What cultures or ideas influenced the creation of the T’En? Why a warrior culture divided in brother and sisterhoods?

I had written hints of a troubled past in the original trilogy and I was intrigued by the idea that what we are taught as history, is only what the victors wish us to know. So I set out to write about the original Imoshen who led her people out of persecution.

As someone who spent five years studying Iaido, the art of the Samurai sword, I became immersed in the way of the warrior. It seemed to me that a people who had to live with an unruly gift would develop a strong set of taboos to keep their powers under control and these powers would manifest differently in men and women. The T’En women fear the males because they believe the gift makes them violent and unpredictable.

I’ll never forget sitting on the floor with the children at a family get-together, when my kids were little. It was Christmas and Santa was about to distribute the presents. Only the person who came down the stairs wasn’t Santa, it was William Wallace of Braveheart. My brother had decided to dress up as him. Now both my brothers are six foot six. When he came down stairs, bare chested, wearing a kilt and long hair my other brother laughed and strode across the floor to challenge him. They locked arms and roared at each other.

The children all reached for me, terrified. I was terrified and I knew my brothers were gentle giants. But in that moment they were every male warrior. They embodied threat.

In The Outcast Chronicles I wanted to play with the gender power balance. In our society women are harassed by men every day. They are more likely to be raped, beaten or murdered by a male in their lives than by a stranger. It is only in the last hundred years that they have had the vote. Do you think women would put up with this if they were more powerful than men? In T’En society the females are not as physically strong as the males, but they are more gifted. I wanted to explore how this would this change the dynamic on an intimate level and on the larger stage of political manoeuvring.

To the T’En the division into brotherhoods and sisterhoods is normal, in fact they find it hard to think beyond this and it is only those reared outside of normal society like Imoshen, and the brother and sister pair, Ronnyn and Aravelle who can see the flaws.

Fantasy gives us an opportunity to hold a distorted mirror to the world and ask what if.

Did the importance of stature come as a logical outflow of a warrior culture?

In the past your word was your bond. If you lived in a medieval town, everyone in your local area knew you. If you lost your reputation, you would lose your livelihood. Stature, as the T’En think of it, is a logical extension of this. In the brotherhoods and sisterhoods there is no individual wealth so a person is measured by what they do and what they contribute towards their brotherhood or sisterhood. At the most basic level, we all want to be valued for who we are and what we can do.

How did you conceive of the Malaunje and the fact that two Mieren parents can unexpectedly produce a Malaunje child?

In real life some families have recessive genes which neither parent knows they carry until the evidence arrives in the form a baby. In the OC the race of T’En mystics had to arise somehow. It seemed logical to me that a gifted race would be the product of recessive genes in the general population.

King Charald doesn’t know that he was born with a half-blood twin so when his son, Sorne, is born with the Malaunje traits he is horrified. The king disinherits him and sends him away, meaning to use him as a spy to infiltrate the T’En.

I extrapolated that if True-men drove the Malaunje out of their villages, these Malaunje would band together. Since they carried more recessive genes, some of their children would be born T’En. And, gradually over time, a society would evolve to cope with the pressures of the gifts.

King Charald’s affliction plays a large part in the series, but you describe the symptoms in greater detail in Exile, reminding me of Mad King George’s symptoms. Was it modelled on porphyria or was that just accidental?

Definitely planned. In his younger years, King Charald is suffering from one of the three forms of bi-polar, mania with very little down-time. He is also an explosive sociopath, meaning he has no real empathy for other people and explodes in fits of temper, made worse by his mania. (It is possible to have these two conditions at the same time). Later in life he develops phorphyria which can be mistaken for Parkinsons disease.

Medical conditions have afflicted people in power, Poor King George is one well known example, and can cause those people to make decisions a healthy person might not make.

King Rolen’s Kin wasn’t actually your first fantasy trilogy published. You had a previous trilogy called Last T’En published in the late 90′s early 00′s. This was a trilogy dealing with the T’Enatuath six hundred years on from the time in The Outcast Chronicles. Is there any chance of that being re-released for those who, like me, missed it a decade ago?

Now that I have the rights back to the original trilogy, I’ve given it a name that’s easy for people to pronounce (LOL) — and will be re-releasing the trilogy in both e-book and POD formats.

It starts when most trilogies end, after the great battle and it explores the challenges of controlling a resentful, conquered people. The invader, General Tulkhan, is from a patriarchal warrior society and Imoshen is one of the last T’En throwbacks. Fair Isle is an island kingdom accustomed to obeying an Empress and Imoshen refuses to let women become second-class beings.

The trilogy has a very different tone, in that it is more intimate, concentrating on the conflicts these two characters face as they grow to understand and trust each other. Then there’s the added complication of Reothe, Imoshen’s betrothed, who has one goal, to reclaim both Fair Isle and Imoshen.

While Sanctuary wraps up the story told in The Outcast Chronicles completely, there are some definite hooks for the future. Do these link to the Last T’En or can we expect another return to this world?

I have rough drafts of more books which follow the outcasts, Imoshen, her children, friends and lovers through exile as they search for a place to call home. Originally, I started this new trilogy when they arrived in Fair Isle, then I realised I had to go back and tell the story of how they were banished because it affects their decisions.

Your next book, King-maker, King-breaker, the fourth King Rolen’s Kin book, is due to be published in late 2013. What more can we expect from you in the future?

KRK 4 will be a rollicking adventure fantasy. Piro, Byren and Fyn have lived through events which force them to grow up. Orrade’s devotion to Byren will be tested and someone they believe to be dead will return!

Finally, I have to stay true to my roots and ask a librarian question to finish off with: Do you shelve your books alphabetically, by genre or do you have an ingenious system?

LOL, I shelve my books according to size and type. All my big art books are on the lower shelves. My reference books are above them and then there’s another bookshelf devoted to fiction, which is shelved according to genre and author.

I used to have a secondhand bookshop, so I’ve had to be ruthless in recent years and cull my collection. Sad face.

 

 

 

 

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Thank you Rowena! You can find Rowena at her website, on Twitter, and on Goodreads. You can also watch book trailers for King Rolen’s Kin, The Outcast Chronicles, and her paranormal crime novel The Price of Fame on Youtube.

Last week I ran across an interesting post on a blog I follow for work. In it the author discussed an article published in the Wall Street Journal which reported on the statistics eReaders collect from the reader, which aren’t just on what and when, but how long, when they put the reader down and how long it takes for them to return to the book. He wondered about the usefulness of the data to market or even commission books, as these are only eReader stats and e-reading and paper reading still are two wholly different beasts. He looks at the question from a form and content angle and also addresses the privacy issues, especially as they concern libraries. However, one passage that truly caught my eye and had me wondering was the following:

I’m a bit concerned as to what the feedback will do to the writing process. If an author is told that a particular passage really resonated with readers, how will that change their ideas and approach to their stories and style? Will it take it in new directions? Will it encourage authors to write towards these safe and favorable areas rather than push the boundaries of their craft? Or could it move the reader and author into greater sync in terms of what people want and what the author can provide?

My gut reaction was no, it wouldn’t affect how writers write their books or what they write about. One of the first and most important writing advices I see given time and again, is write what you want to write and write what you love. However, perhaps it would affect how writers write, if only in a positive re-enforcement sense: good feedback leading to moving further in a similar direction. But, since I’m not an author and I really was curious as to the answer, I decided to ask some of the authors in my Twitter stream:

Chris F. Holm
My gut reaction is, tracking e-reader reading habits won’t directly impact the writing process. Writers are, by and large, too wild and woolly a bunch to write according to market analytics. But that doesn’t mean such analyses won’t hold sway. Many publishers will no doubt take heed of what the data’s telling them, and adjust their acquisitions accordingly. Since writers pay attention to what publishers are looking for, I suppose e-reader data mining could indirectly impact writing as it changes acquisition habits.

To be contrarian for a moment, though, I take exception to the idea that a passage that resonate with readers is definitionally “safe and favorable.” That sells short the visceral responses of the readers whose habits are being tracked. One could argue such passages may often wind up being challenging, resonant, and universal to the human experience. In that way, better understanding reading habits could conceivably sharpen, rather than blunt, an author’s work.
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Chris F. Holm is the author of Dead Harvest and The Wrong Goodbye (forthcoming in October). You can visit his website and follow him on Twitter.

Elspeth Cooper
I’d be fibbing if I said I wasn’t curious how long people spent reading, and how long it took them to come back to my book after putting it down, but I don’t think writers should let themselves invest bald stats like that with too much significance. There’s no context; no way to know the circumstances under which the stats were generated. Did a six hour stint followed by a two week break mean the book hit a stodgy patch and the reader was reluctant to finish it, or did they simply begin reading on a long-haul flight at the start of a vacation but forgot to pack the device’s charger cable?

In general terms, reader feedback is important to me. I love knowing that a complete stranger has identified with a character I created, or found a particular passage meaningful or poignant enough to post a Kindle highlight or whatever. When you’re on the receiving end of your third snarky review in a row, a shot of warm-and-fuzzy like that is priceless.

But every reader is different, and just because some people found a particular scene affecting, doesn’t mean that all readers will, so it’s a poor basis on which to change your writing approach or style unless you have enough feedback to identify a trend. Of course, once you start analysing trends and writing to suit there’s a risk your books will lose their freshness and become formulaic or tired.

Besides, even if I had the time to engage in statistical analysis, it wouldn’t influence my writing at all: I’m not one of those authors who consciously plans what they’re going to write. I have a much more organic approach and tend to start from a single image that speaks so strongly to me I simply have to start writing in order to find out What Happens Next. At that point, my higher brain has very little input!
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Elspeth Cooper is the author of Songs of the Earth and the soon-to-be-released Trinity Rising. You can visit her website and follow her on Twitter.

Myke Cole
I think this is a great question, and probably too complicated for a hard and fast answer. I won’t name names, but I know many writers who write with incredible confidence. They are excellent judges of their own work, effective self-editors and have no problem standing up to titans in the field (including powerful editors, famous writers and long established agents), refusing to accept editorial criticism they disagree with.

This may sound egotistical, and maybe it is. But the fact remains that the “high confidence” writers I know tend to produce really, REALLY good work. Great stories aren’t written by committee, and the ability to look at editorial criticism (and reader reviews are a brand of that, albeit crowdsourced) and not knuckle under to it is powerful and precious thing. Of course, this is provided that you aren’t ignoring *good* editorial criticism, which is different problem (*Cough* GEORGE LUCAS *Cough).

I am not such a writer. I am a poor judge of my work, and require a great deal of feedback. I do stand up to editorial criticism at times, but it carries much more weight with me and refusing to make changes my editor requests takes a lot of effort and will. Reader reviews work the same way, sometimes up to the point where I have to lay off reading them to avoid having my ego crushed so badly that it saps my ability to write at all and to avoid them influencing the direction I take in future work. 

And I know a lot of writers who are just like me, far more than the confident ones I described above.

So I’ll go out on a limb here and say that your gut feeling is a bit off base. If authors have regular access to specific, line-edit level comments (“this passage really worked for me!”) then it *will* color their writing moving forward. Though whether they admit to it or not is a horse of a different color :)
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Myke Cole is the author of Control Point and Fortress (forthcoming in 2013). You can find him on his website, on Facebook and on Twitter.

Anne Lyle
My gut reaction is “there are lies, damned lies, and statistics”. Whilst I’m sure that publishers (and many writers) will be interested in the more commercially relevant facts, like how many readers immediately buy the next book in a series, when it comes to things like when and where a book was abandoned, or how quickly or slowly read, the figures are useless without qualitative data to back them up.

I know from Goodreads that the people who stop reading my book (or who don’t enjoy it) do so for the most part because they don’t connect with the characters. Is there anything I can or should do as a writer to change this? Absolutely not. For every “meh” review, there are several glowing ones from readers who turned the pages as fast as any potboiler thriller, simply because they loved my characters. No book is going to connect equally with all readers, and I’m not going to abandon my existing readership in favour of an approach designed purely to net more sales. If I could somehow do both, then sure :)

As I said in a recent blog post, I’m interested in reviews as market research, and ereader stats will provide a different angle on that, but that’s purely so I can fine-tune what I already do. I hope we writers don’t see pressure from publishers to do more than that in the misguided hope that it will lead to more sales. We need more variety in fiction, not less.
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Anne Lyle is the author of The Alchemist of Souls and The Merchant of Dreams (forthcoming in 2013). You can visit Anne’s website or follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

Jonathan Oliver
I think that critical feedback is invaluable for any writer. After all, it is how we learn and how we grow creatively. I’d imagine these stats gathered from e-readers won’t be used so much to guide what the writers write, as to how the books are sold and promoted. Of course, lying within this is a dystopic vision of the future where each writer is constantly changing their text on the whims of whatever electronic voting system is connected to their e-book. But I don’t think that this is likely. As a writer it’s important you write the right story for the right reasons. Writing to market isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it can make for some pretty soulless texts. The opportunity for wider ranging reader feedback facilitated by the devices is actually a good thing. It is up to the writer, however, and the writer alone to write the book they want to and the best book they can.
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Jonathan Oliver is Editor-in-Chief of Abaddon and Solaris, author of Twilight of Kerberos: The Wrath of Kerberos and Twilight of Kerberos: The Call of Kerberos and editor of The End of the Line and House of Fear. You can follow him on his blog and on Twitter.

Helen Grant
I have to come clean and say that I don’t have an e-reader myself. This is not because I have anything against the idea, but I do much of my reading in the bath!!! Until there is a waterproof e-reader I’ll have to pass.

Therefore, I don’t know to what extent my e-reading habits would differ from print-reading habits HOWEVER I would expect that if I were reading an e-book I would be more inclined to go through the book from page 1 to the last page rather than peeping ahead or looking back. With a paperback you can simply flick backwards and forwards, and you have a feel for how much of the book you had read when you were on a specific bit. I can’t imagine being able to do that with an e-reader so my reading habits would be different. Therefore, I would not assume that e-reading information was accurate for ALL reading.

Ok, so that was my first point.

As regards whether I would change anything because of e-reading feedback I would say that I would listen to that feedback but whether I changed anything would depend very much on what I was writing and what were my priorities – to express myself creatively or to get as many royalties as possible, or to balance the two!

Currently, I write rather Gothic, literary thrillers. I have listened to feedback from readers of my first three books, and I have noticed that even the readers who didn’t like a particular book very much tend to enjoy the gruesome and dramatic finales. A teenager on the Penguin Spinebreakers site simply HATED Wish Me Dead but still said that the ending was “made of awesome.” This has definitely influenced me. I like writing those scenes too – so why not add more of them? In the case of the trilogy I am working on at present, each book opens with a chilling death. If I knew that readers were scurrying from one gruesome scene to the next without really reading the bits in between I might add even more gore!

On the other hand, I would draw a line at making very sweeping changes to the tone and style of my books. For example, if someone said to me, well, I loved The Vanishing of Katharina Linden but it would be much better if it were set in small-town America and the heroine was called Candy, I would say sorry, no. The book is about Germany and Anglo-German culture.

Generally as an author I am very open to listening to feedback and constructive criticism. For example, The Vanishing of Katharina Linden was not the title I suggested for the book. I wanted to call it Unshockable Hans. But I was prepared to listen to what the publisher said about that. However, there are some changes I would not want to make. The heroine of my new novel is called Veerle. It’s a beautiful Flemish name and suits her really well. I have had one or two discussions about this name because potentially it is difficult for UK readers to pronounce. But I don’t want to change it. She IS Veerle. She isn’t An or Els or Merel. She’s Veerle. Even if 3 million e-readers said it would be better if she were called Sherry, she would still be Veerle.

I think anyone who writes has to make a decision early on. What do I want out of this? Do I want to go for mass market appeal regardless of artistic considerations? Do I want to maintain complete artistic integrity but only sell 200 copies via a small publisher? Probably most people end up somewhere in between.
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Helen Grant is the author of The Vanishing of Katharina Linden, The Glass Demon and Wish Me Dead. Her next book will be out in 2013. You can visit her website and follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

Thank you to Chris, Elspeth, Myke, Anne, Jon and Helen for being kind enough to be part of my first ever Author Query/interview sort of post. I found your answers very interesting and they shone a different light on the question for me! How about you, dear readers? What are your thoughts?