Book Fiends Kingdom Q&A
This is an abridged version of the interview I had with the Book Fiends Kingdom. To read the full version, please visit www.bfkbooks.com/node/640.
Do you find it hard to sit and write every day a certain amount of words towards your finished project?
Well I’d be lying if I said it was easy! I have a minimum target of 1,000 words a day when I’m writing, but really I’m looking to get nearer 1,500 words down on the page. As with many things in life, the hardest bit is starting, but once I’m away it’s usually not too bad. The thing I have to remember is that no one’s going to write the book for me!
Did you choose the names of your characters before you started writing, and how did you come up with the name Zac Hunter?
Before I set out to write a book, I spend a fair bit of time making detailed notes on the major characters that can run up to five or six pages long. As well as giving them all a name (and trust me, this can sometimes be the hardest part), I come up with things like their family background, their physical description, their clothing, what they like to eat, what car they drive, etc, until I have a fairly well rounded idea of who they are and what makes them tick. A lot of this information may not get used in the novel, but it makes it easier for me to view them as real people rather than just names on a page.
As for my lead character, Zac Hunter, his surname was chosen as a reference to his role (i.e. he’s a hunter of bad guys), while I wanted his first name to be a little out of the ordinary. I got the name Zaccharia from a book I read about a Romany traveller when I was a child, and it’s stuck with me ever since.Do you think that there are authors who have influenced you with your writing?
Without a doubt, as every book I’ve read will have had some sort of impact on me as a writer – I think it’s fair to say that we’re all the sum of our influences. Off the top of my head, I guess the following authors deserve a mention:
- Robert Crais, for his pacing, lead character, and love of L.A.
- Andrew Vachss, for his black humour and shadowy morality
- Harlan Coben, for his fiendish plotting
- Stephen King, for his grasp on human, and particularly male, relationships
- and John Connelly, for taking the crime novel in brave, new directions.
Do you have a good way of relaxing?
My wife would tell you that I’m not very good at relaxing, as even when I’m not busy, I’m always thinking about the next job that needs to be done. Working from home has countless benefits, but it does mean that you never really leave work, so I do find it hard to switch off. Even when I’m watching my favourite crime shows on TV (The Shield, The Wire, The Sopranos, if anyone’s interested) I often find myself making notes on location, character, dialogue, etc. The one time I do let go is when I’m listening to music – usually loud rock music, as besides books this is my other great love in life. I go to a lot of gigs in my hometown, Norwich, and my favourite weekend of the year is when I make my annual pilgrimage to the Reading Rock Festival in August.
Have you found it easy to make the change between being a writer, for your own benefit, rather than writing for a financial institution?
When I wrote for a financial institution my output was very factual, but writing a novel demands a far more rounded set of skills. When I first decided that I wanted to give it a go, the two areas that I was most concerned about were dialogue (as I’d never really written any before) and plotting, as I had no idea if I could create a storyline that would hold a reader’s attention over the course of a novel, but once I started I found that I enjoyed taking on these two new challenges, and hopefully overcoming them – but I’ll let my readers be the judge of that!
The hardest part of the transition was not so much about the writing, but more about going from full time employment to not knowing where the next pay cheque was coming from. In fact, when I first started out, there was no guarantee that my book would ever see the light of day (far from it in fact, as very few aspiring writers are fortunate enough to ever see their work published), so it really was a leap into the unknown.How does your wife find it now you work at home and not in an office or does it not bother her very much?
While the idea of working from home is an attractive one, it’s fair to say that it’s not for everybody. It’s quite a lonely existence (I can go hours on end and only talk to my dog), and many people would miss the cut and thrust of human interaction that an office provides. My wife is one of those people, whereas I’m a bit of a hermit. She also gets the added benefit of having a househusband, as I do most of the shopping, cleaning, washing, etc! And it wasn’t until I started working from home that we felt able to get a dog – Murphy, our chocolate Labrador, who’s now a hugely important part of our lives.
Is there another novel on the way and will this be a continuing story of Zac and the officers around him?
The second novel in the Zac Hunter series, entitled Blood Law, will come out in 2009. When Hunter answers a distress call from a beautiful Latino girl from his past, he finds himself sucked deep into the murky world of L.A. street gangs, where illegal drugs are the major currency and automatic weapons are the main negotiating tool. With a child’s life at stake, Hunter finds himself in a race against time to discover who’s behind the recent upsurge in violence, and why they’re so keen to see the streets run with blood.
