My interview with crime writer/tutor Sally Spedding recorded at the July 2011 Winchester Writers’ Conference was released as special episode 32 today, Monday 18th July. Depending on how you’d like to listen to (e.g. iTunes, Google Feedburner, Podbean etc… or if you feel so inclined to subscribe that would be fantastic) – there are links on the left-hand ‘Where to find me’ menu. Below are the questions asked:
– Can you please tell us something about yourself and how you came to be a writer.
– You write poetry, novels and short stories, often the darker the better, do you know why you ended up in this end of the spectrum and do you write ‘light and fluffy’?
– What have you had published to-date? Can you remember where you saw your first books on the shelves?
– How much of the marketing do you do for your published works or indeed for yourself as a ‘brand’?
– What is your experience of writing competitions?
– Do you have an agent? Do you think they’re vital to an author’s success?
– Are your books available as eBooks? If so what was your experience of that process? And do you read eBooks?
– What was your first acceptance and is being accepted still a thrill?
– How do you deal with rejections?
– Do you manage to write every day? What’s the most you’ve written in a day?
– Do you ever suffer from writer’s block?
– How much of your stories do you plot?
– Do you have different characters in each book? Do you bring any of the minor characters back in other books?
– You live in Wales and France – do you write about those countries because you know them well?
– Who do you first show your work to? Do you still paint?
– Because you’ve written so much do you find that your writing is tight in the first draft?
– Re. word count… some of your books are quite large, does word count matter?
– You write mostly in third person, is that a viewpoint you favour?
– Do you have pieces of work that you think will never see light of day?
– What’s your favourite / least favourite aspect of your writing life?
– If anything, what has been your biggest surprise about writing?
– What advice would you give aspiring writers?
– What do you like to read?
– What do you think the future holds for a writer?
– Is there anything else you’d like to mention?