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What inspired you to start writing?
I have always like to draw, I have been doing it for as long as I can remember. Landscapes, characters, weird machinery, wildlife and all sorts of wonderful things. So I guess it was inevitable that later I would began adding words to tie each of them. Even to this day it is not uncommon that the painting might come before the wording.
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Can you tell us a little about your latest book?
It is a fantasy-fiction narrative sprawled across 300,000 words and with over 100 colored paintings to illustrate it. Once embarked, the reader must escort a group into, and across, the depths of an ancient, at times impossible world.
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How do you create your characters?
Honestly, they just come to me. I would like to sit here and claim that I write the base characteristics down; who they are and what they prefer, but that would be dishonest. I have the baseline in my head and then I draw them repeatedly to the point of satisfaction. Once that is done, I start adding the words to complement them further.
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What does your typical writing day look like?
Hours spread thin. I do not write every single day as sometimes your feeling up, others down but when I do is for long stretches of time. Instead of say two or three hours every day I guess it is more like six to eight hours straight every other day.
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What has been the most rewarding part of being an indie author?
Freedom. Not being bound to any rule or tradition. To be able to do what hasn't been done yet as that is, in my opinion, the only way to push any medium forward. For the better or worse, there is nothing quite like the works I set out to do. Love it or hate it, as long as you can't quite compare it to anything else.
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What’s one challenge you’ve faced in your writing journey?
Getting the work out there. Stories come easily and the will to finish them even more so but actually getting them out there, that is the true challenge. Especially, again, when you tend to run outside the norm because then you have people telling you cannot do this or that.
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Do you have any favorite writing tools or apps?
None. Be it words or drawings, I use pen and paper for everything. Once I am mildly satisfied I move forward. Words are moved to the PC in order to become a full fledged document and sketches are turned into paintings.
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What advice would you give to new or aspiring indie authors?
I would like to say something around the lines: "Stick to it" or "Do not give up" but for someone to persist regardless of adversities, that requires tremendous love. And who has the right to tell what you should love?
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How do you handle book promotion as an indie author?
I am somewhat of a luddite so admittedly I leave all those things to my partner. But what can she do? What can all of us do if not try our best to find publishers that reciprocate the intents of our works? Besides that is the usual; spreading the word on social media of all sorts. Sometimes resort to adds in whatever way we can find and afford them.
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What’s next for you? Are you working on a new book?
I am always working on the next thing, be it novel or comic or a mix of both. The only thing that can slow me down, if not altogether halt me, is the sometimes many issues of trying to get my previous work out there. That can, admittedly, cause me to go on a hiatus every now and then.
