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Tag: cookery

Author interview no.514 with food writer and private chef Isabel Hood

October 8, 2012January 29, 20132 Comments

Welcome to the five hundred and fourteenth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with food writer and private chef Isabel Hood. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello, Isabel. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.

Isabel: I live in Birdham, a village on Chichester Harbour, in what I trust will be our “final” home, a semi-detached old lock-keeper’s cottage. We bought it eleven years ago, and it has taken us seven years to redo it and modernise it, with the garden being completed just two weeks ago. It has taken a huge amount of effort and commitment – real blood, sweat and tears! – and neither my husband nor I have any intention of ever moving out.

The UK, however, is not my “native soil”. I was blessed to grow up in Mexico, a land of luminous skies and rainbows, of snow-capped volcanoes and cascades of scarlet bougainvillea, of dazzling beaches and torrential downpours! – and some of the most fabulous food in the world, which is what led me into food writing. I had my own catering business in London, which I ran for 16 years, and then we decided to move to the country in the late 1990s. I obviously could not take my clients with me as travelling backwards and forwards to London did not seem viable.

Our first house was rented and the kitchen inadequate for outside catering so I decided to get a job to keep me going until we had bought our own home – which I had hoped would have a decent kitchen so that I could start building up a new catering business. Things did not work out according to plan and it is only very recently that my utterly unmodernised and well below current regulations kitchen has been brought up to scratch. I ended up working in the travel industry for a number of years and my days of involvement in my great passion, food, just slipped further and further away.

The thought of writing about food drifted in and out of my mind, not only as a link to one of the most important areas in my life but also as a creative outlet. It was in 2003 that things finally started to come together. I returned to Mexico for the first time in a quarter of a century, to celebrate our fifteenth wedding anniversary with my husband – and I experienced the most extraordinary catharsis, as I reconnected with my roots and realised that I had not felt “at home” since I had left Mexico in my late teens. I was also thrilled to rediscover its food, and on my return to the UK, I wrote a book on Mexican cookery. I received rejection after rejection from publishers, along with many compliments on style, writing, angle, etc. I kept hearing “there is no market for it”, and “Mexican food is not popular in this country”.

While I was marketing the Mexican proposal, I wrote a second book, about cooking for two. My husband and I married relatively late and chose not to have a family so all our home cooking is for two people – and we found ourselves constantly struggling to adapt recipes for 4 or 6, often with very unsatisfactory results. I did some research on the internet and found that households of just one or two people were the fastest growing section of the British population…. I called the book Pas de Deux, i.e. a dance step for two, and gave the different chapters dancing titles: Quickstep, Foxtrot and Waltz, to illustrate fast, not so fast and decidedly time-consuming recipes. My husband came up with a far more clever title, and RePas de Deux, i.e. a meal for two, started doing the rounds of the publishers. I struck lucky with W Foulsham, who rejected my Mexican book but accepted my second proposal, and Just The Two of Us – Entertaining Each Other was published in 2006. Repas de Deux was deemed too “tricksy” a name, and I suspect they were right to change it.

With a published cookery book under my belt, I tried again with my Mexican manuscript and finally, frustrated and worn out not both by the rejections and the lack of even a reply, I decided to go down the self-publishing route, and Chilli and Chocolate – Stars of the Mexican cocina came out in 2008.

By now I had finally managed to get back into food by leaving employment and becoming a freelance private chef – and I was seriously bitten by the food writing bug. I put together a third proposal and found myself a literary agent. While we did not succeed in our search for a publisher for this proposal, my agent did receive an enquiry from a publisher who was looking for a vegan food specialist. While I am not in fact a vegan, I have eaten a preponderantly vegan diet for most of my adult life – I have found from experience that it suits me and provides me with great energy and vitality – and so Vegan Cookbook The Essential Guide came into being in November 2011.

I have been the Mexican Food Editor of an internet magazine called BellaOnline The Voice of Women since February 2010. Bella is the second largest women’s website in the world and I contribute a weekly article. I have to do an enormous amount of research, even though I already consider myself a Mexican specialist and boy have I learned a lot about Mexican food! The writing of the weekly article is only one side of it, as there is a lot of interaction with readers via a forum and by e-mail.

A proposal for a fourth book is currently being marketed to publishers by my agent, and I am keeping my fingers very tightly crossed that I will soon have another fascinating project to absorb me.

Morgen: My lodger is from Mexico and I get treated to her home cuisine occasionally, it’s lovely. Your writing is clearly food-related, have you considered other genres?

Isabel: Food is my greatest passion and suffuses every corner of my life so it is unlikely that I will ever move into another genre, or ever tire of cooking, eating and writing about food. But you never know – at least one well-known food writer has become a novelist.

Morgen: Many celebrities have. Do you write under a pseudonym?

Isabel: No, I am and always will be Isabel Hood, food writer and private chef.

Morgen: Have you had any rejections? If so, how do you deal with them?

Isabel: More than I care to count. But I always remind myself that Jack Canfield, author of multi-million dollar bestseller “The Success Principles”, received 130 rejections before he found a publisher for his first book, “Chicken Soup for the Soul” and would simply say to himself: Next! every time he received a rejection. Chicken Soup went on to sell millions and has been translated into 39 languages. I think the most frustrating letter of rejection is the template one which does not apply to you, your book or your subject. I remember receiving a rejection for Chilli and Chocolate which informed me that the publisher was looking for something far more original and unusual and which had not been covered before. I made a point of visiting a bookshop to see what their most recent cookery book was about: “The Food of Italy”…..

Morgen: I have a writing colleague who has 40+ submissions out at once so when one comes back rejected it dulls the ‘pain’. 🙂 Have you won or been shortlisted in any competitions?

Isabel: Sadly not. I did submit Just The Two of Us and Chilli and Chocolate for the Guild of Food Writers’ awards but was unsuccessful.

Morgen: 😦 Do you have an agent? Do you think they’re vital to an author’s success?

Isabel: I do, but they are not vital as I have heard of one very successful food writer who does not use an agent. Some authors do strike lucky with a publisher who continues to publish them. And certainly having an agent is no guarantee whatsoever of getting published. But food writing is horrendously competitive, and without an agent, one needs to be prepared to put a lot of time, effort, and money into the process of finding a publisher. An agent has valuable connections and can usually ensure that the manuscript at least gets seen by the right person, even if the result is a rejection. Mine is also an extremely important sounding board and source of advice, as she knows the publishing world inside out.

Morgen: Agents obviously have contacts but as you say many an author has managed well without one. Are your books available as eBooks? Were you involved in that process at all? Do you read eBooks or is it paper all the way?

Isabel: Vegan Cookbook The Essential Guide is available as a paperback and an eBook, which was the publisher’s choice. I have been strenuously encouraged by various people to do the same with Chilli and Chocolate, and I suspect I will go down that route once all the current paper stock is gone as I would not want it to go out of print and eBooks are an excellent way of keeping a book “alive”. I do not have any kind of Kindle and my vast collection of cookery books is all paper – they are dog-eared and splattered with oil, wine, soup and goodness knows what else, full of my scribbled notes about the recipe and ideas for other dishes, easy to leaf through, consult, enjoy and delve into; somehow an eBook is just not the same.

Morgen: That is the advantage of paper, as you obviously wouldn’t want to let a Kindle near ‘goodness knows what else,’. 🙂 How much of the marketing do you do for your published works or indeed for yourself as a ‘brand’?

Isabel: Publishers supposedly do some marketing but as soon as a book has come out, they are onto their next publication and other titles are forgotten and left behind. I suspect this is particularly true for cookery books, which bookshops only stock for a maximum of six months, unless it turns out to be a bestseller. Even my local bookshop no longer stocks Just The Two of Us and Chilli and Chocolate, in spite of the fact that I am a local writer. I sent copies of Chilli and Chocolate to the BBC and got a radio interview; and then managed to interest the producer in Just The Two of Us. So when Vegan Cookbook came out last winter, I sent a copy to my contact who passed it on to another producer, who invited me onto her show, and now I am appearing on a monthly basis – wasn’t that lucky?! My books have also been featured in my local newspaper, The Chichester Observer, which has published some of my articles. I use my three books as my business card and distribute them to all my clients and their friends, and basically take copies of the books wherever I go, in case anybody is interested.

Morgen: I didn’t know that there was literally a shelf-life for cookery books. You’d think unless they were seasonal that it wouldn’t matter. Congratulations on your BBC appearances – they are generally a very supportive organisation (their writers’ room is great for scriptwriters). Do you have a favourite of your books?

Isabel: I am immensely proud of all three of my cookery books, and have a particularly soft spot for the Mexican one – but Just The Two of Us was my first born and is extremely personal, as it is dedicated to my husband who played a big part in it, both in the creation itself and as a specific feature of the book: he is “The Saturday Night Porker”!

Morgen: <laughs> Did you have any say in the titles / covers of your book(s)? How important do you think they are?

Isabel: No. As mentioned above, RePas de Deux became Just The Two of Us; and I had called the vegan one Vegan Vie, but this was changed to Vegan Cookbook The Essential Guide. I reckon that publishers know their job and their market and if they feel that the author’s title will impede the success of the book, I am happy to accept their decision, even if I feel that their title is utterly uninspiring.

Morgen: You would hope that they do. What are you working on at the moment / next?

Isabel: My agent is currently marketing a proposal for a fourth cookery book to publishers, so my fingers are as crossed as can be.

Morgen: Mine too. Do let me know. Do you manage to write every day? Do you ever suffer from writer’s (chef’s) block?

Isabel: The private chef side of my work has to take priority as it is what brings in the money, so I write when I can. Sometimes I have quite a lengthy period of available time, on other occasions or at certain times of the year I may not write at all for several weeks. I get writer’s block on a regular basis and then I have to discipline myself to get on with it and just write anything, even if I know it is bad or incorrect or not particularly interesting or irrelevant. I remind myself that I will come back to it in due course and improve it, and this gets me back into the flow.

Morgen: Do you plan your books, or do you just get an idea and run with it?

Isabel: For a cookery book, one needs to decide what aspect of food to focus on and then from which angle to approach it.

Morgen: Do your books need editing or do you find that as time goes on your writing is more fully-formed?

Isabel: There is always editing to be done. Once the first draft is written, I need to go over it time and again, tweaking it, playing around with it, approaching something in a different way – there always seems to be a means of enriching, of clarifying, of expanding. Certainly my writing must be improving as I progress, but my priority at the start is to get it all down on paper as it were, knowing that I can then change it as much as is necessary until I am happy with it.

Morgen: Do you have to do much research?

Isabel: A huge amount! I feel that as a food writer I have a responsibility to ensure that my recipes work and are clear, and that any information I give is correct.

Morgen: Do you have pieces of work that you think will never see light of day?

Isabel: No, I think they will all see the light of day in one form or another. I have written a number of articles as well as proposals for cookery books which have not found a publisher, but the ideas, text, information, recipes etc. always seem to find a home elsewhere, even years down the line, in a book or article which does, or eventually will get, published. It is never a waste of time.

Morgen: Absolutely. If nothing else, it’s all practice. What’s your favourite / least favourite aspect of your writing life?

Isabel: Sitting in front of a computer for hours at a time – but then I get to spend countless creative, magical hours in the kitchen, bringing my writing and ideas to life.

Morgen: 🙂 What advice would you give aspiring writers?

Isabel: Get on with it and write, write, write. Do it seriously. Keep coming up with ideas, and have unshakeable faith that you will succeed, however long it takes – and it will probably take a long time and a huge amount of effort! But most importantly, have fun and enjoy it.

Morgen: I do. If you could invite three people from any era to dinner, who would you choose and what would you cook?

Isabel: So long as they have good appetites and truly enjoy food, anybody is welcome at my table. In fact, when we lived in London and I ran my catering company, my husband and I used to test recipes – only ever other people’s in those pre-food writing days – on Saturdays. I obviously could not try recipes out on my clients as that would be a sure road to catastrophe, so I spent a lot of time – and money! – choosing and testing recipes. We would cook at least 8 or 9 different dishes and then invite people round to help us not only eat it all but also judge it. We made it clear to them that they were allowed to criticise as much as they wanted and that all feedback was welcome. We don’t do that any more as most of my private chef work is at the weekend, so we test sporadically whenever there is time – and needless to say, if I am in the middle of writing a cookery book, we test my recipes time and again until we are confident anyone can cook them, or until we give up on them and discard them.

Morgen: What a shame I don’t live nearer – I’d gladly critique. 🙂 Is there a word, phrase or quote you like?

Isabel: Eat, drink and be merry!

Morgen: 🙂 Are you involved in anything else writing-related other than actual writing or marketing of your writing?

Isabel: As mentioned above, I have been appearing on a monthly basis on a BBC radio show called You and Your Food which is tremendous fun – so far I have covered my own cookery books, as well  as be talking about other food-related subjects – asparagus, chillies, strawberries, BBQs, apples, whatever. I am also interested in demonstrating: I have demonstrated at The Fiery Food Festival in Brighton and I really enjoy the whole process, the “live” feeling so I hope to do some more in the future.

I have recently being helping a small start-out company to develop recipes for Mexican sauces which is an exciting project.

Morgen: How wonderful. I love helping start-outs (authors, websites, shops)… and I love Brighton. 🙂 What do you do when you’re not writing?

Isabel: Cooking is my passion, both my career and my hobby so I do tend to spend a lot of my spare time in the kitchen. But I also love country walking and sailing, going to the cinema, the arts generally (my husband is an architect and an artist so some of this has rubbed off), entertaining – we are doing a lot of that at the moment to catch up on all the years when our house was not fit to receive guests.

Morgen: Are there any writing-related websites and/or books that you find useful?

Isabel: I have only recently discovered the LinkedIn Writers’ Network, which is of course where I found you! I don’t really have the time to do a lot of internet surfing looking for relevant websites – there are just so many of them out there nowadays and it is very difficult to assess what they can offer.

Morgen: Yay for LinkedIn. It’s a great tool and I put my shoutouts on there when I’d almost run out of interviewees and was very quickly swamped, to the point actually where I’ve just pulled it as I’m booked 8 months in advance and emails have been getting in the way of my own writing so not fair on anyone. Are you on any forums or networking sites? If so, how valuable do you find them?

Isabel: I joined LinkedIn at a friend’s suggestion recently but have not really had time to study it and see how I might benefit from it. But since I found your blog there, it has already started to do its job. I am not on Facebook or Twitter or anything like that. I don’t frankly know much about them but my feeling is that they are far too general, wide and all-encompassing to be of specific use. LinkedIn however does have a specifically professional focus. I do sometimes wonder though whether I am missing opportunities by not following up on this kind of thing.

Morgen: They are very time-consuming, although fun in small doses. What do you think the future holds for a writer?

Isabel: It is a field which has become horrendously competitive and publishers are under ever increasing economic pressure and finding it more and more difficult to make a profit. This obviously means that they are very careful in their choice of what to publish and what not. A book by a celebrity chef is bound to sell tens if not hundreds of thousands of copies, however badly written and however unreliable the recipes may be, while a book by a little known food writer is a huge risk. A publisher once told me that they needed to sell a minimum of 15,000 copies of a cookery book to make it worth their while.

Morgen: Ouch.

Isabel: However, people will always read, and hopefully always cook, so there will always be opportunities and possibilities.

Morgen: Cooking has become far more popular in recent months and hopefully made people eat better. Where can we find out about you and your work?

Isabel: I recently had a very lovely website designed for me: www.isabelhood.com

And my Mexican articles on BellaOnline can be found on: www.bellaonline.com/site/mexicanfood

Morgen: Is there anything else you’d like to mention?

Isabel: Any of your readers who are chilli lovers might be interested in this link: http://www.fieryfoodsuk.co.uk/content/Events – I’ll be doing cookery demonstrations

Morgen: I’m sure my lodger would be. Is there anything you’d like to ask me?

Isabel: No, but I would like to thank you for interviewing me and for your interest in my books.

Morgen: You’re very welcome, Isabel thank you for joining me.

I then invited Isabel to include an extract of her writing…

“This book is about Mexican food as I remember it; it is about my deeply personal, very nostalgic, journey back to the food of my childhood; and it is also about my understanding and modern interpretation of Mexican food. I have structured the book around five specific foods which, for me, represent the very heart of Mexico’s glorious cuisine, its quintessential, dominant ingredients and flavours. Many will disagree with me, but then this is my Mexican food, my Mexico, mi México lindo y querido, the Mexico which comes alive in my kitchen every time I prepare a tomato salsa, scented with fresh coriander and heady with chilli; or a mole, deep and rich with chocolate and spices; or a simple dish of black beans flavoured with cumin and bacon. As I cook and breathe in the intoxicating aromas, I can close my eyes and be instantly transported to the little street stall by the bus station in Tuxtla Gutierrez where we bought tortas filled with huevos a la mexicana just before dawn; or to a fonda in Guanajuato – just three rickety tables under a tattered awning and a memorable quesadilla of chorizo and strips of poblanochilli; or the courtyard garden of the old colonial palace in Mérida where we ate a simple roast chicken with a mango and avocado salsa under a jacaranda tree in full bloom. And as, in my mind’s eye, I wander along the aisles of the indoor market in Oaxaca, past huge woven baskets of dried chillies and piles of plantains, papayas and guavas, I hear the marchantas, the stall holders, calling out: “que se va llevar”, “what will you take”.

*

I then invited Isabel to include a synopsis of her latest book…

Cast aside any thought of denying yourself gastronomic pleasure and wearing a culinary hair shirt – any visions of brown rice, brown lentils and even browner nut roast – any pre-conceptions about deprivation and emptiness – and enter the charismatic and flamboyant world of vegan cookery, with its endless spectrum of flavours, textures, scents and colours. In Vegan Cookbook The Essential Guide, food writer and private chef, Isabel Hood, sets out to prove that the glass, far from being half empty, is full to the brim, full to overflowing with mouth watering possibilities and a way of eating which is limited only by our imaginations. Whether you are a fully fledged vegan, a beginner just dipping your toes into the water, or an omnivore simply looking to broaden your diet, this collection of vegan recipes will introduce you to a whole new world of exciting dishes based on fruit and vegetables, pulses and grains, nuts and seeds, pungent herbs and warm aromatic spices – prepare to be DAZZLED!

Isabel Hood blames her cosmopolitan childhood and upbringing for her fascination with food and her deep interest in the cuisines of the world. She grew up in Mexico and was educated at an international school with fellow pupils from virtually every country on earth – as a result, she has been steeped in intensely flavoured, palate-tingling, aromatic cooking all her life and exposed to foreign culinary influences from a very early age. This has encouraged her to seek adventure in the kitchen (which has always been her favourite room in the house!) and in the food traditions and cultures of other nationalities. Through her culinary voyages, Isabel has developed a two-pronged personal approach to cooking: food which brings joy and pleasure, and also supports dynamic health and vitality. Her areas of speciality and particular interest are vegan cookery and the cuisines of Mexico, France, southern Europe and the Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Near and Middle East.

***

If you are reading this and you write, in whatever genre, and are thinking “ooh, I’d like to do this” then you can… just email me and I’ll send you the information. They do now (January 2013) carry a fee (£10 / €12.50 / $15) for the new interviews on this blog but everything else (see Opportunities on this blog) is free.

If you go for the interview, it’s very simple; I send you a questionnaire (I have them for novelists, short story authors, children’s authors, non-fiction authors, and poets). You complete the questions, and I let you know when it’s going to go live. Before it does so, I add in comments as if we’re chatting, and then they get posted. When that’s done, I email you with the link so you can share it with your corner of the literary world. And if you have a writing-related blog / podcast and would like to interview me… let me know.

Alternatively, if you’d like a free Q&A-only interview, I now have http://morgensauthorinterviews.wordpress.com on which I’ve rerun the original interviews posted here then posted new interviews which I then reblog here. These interviews are Q&A only, so I don’t add in my comments but they do get exposure on both sites.

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

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As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do. I welcome critique for the four new writing groups listed below and / or flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays. For other opportunities see (see Opportunities on this blog).

The full details of the new online writing groups, and their associated Facebook groups, are:

Morgen’s Online Non-Fiction Writing Group

  • http://nonfictionwritinggroup.wordpress.com
  • http://www.facebook.com/groups/335526669896374

Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group

  • http://novelwritinggroup.wordpress.com
  • http://www.facebook.com/groups/508696639153189

Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group

  • http://poetrywritinggroup.wordpress.com
  • http://www.facebook.com/groups/388850977875934

Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group

  • http://scriptwritinggroup.wordpress.com
  • http://www.facebook.com/groups/319941328108017

Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group

  • http://shortstorywritinggroup.wordpress.com
  • http://www.facebook.com/groups/544072635605445

We look forward to reading your comments.

Interview no.353 with writer and publisher Will Sutton

April 28, 2012January 26, 201318 Comments

Welcome to the three hundred and fifty-third of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with writer and publisher Will Sutton. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello, Will. Please tell us something about yourself.

Will: My name is William Sutton (Will for short) and I’m currently based in Cambridge, England, although later this year, I’ll be moving to Wilhelmshaven in Germany.

Morgen: I love Germany. 🙂 How did you come to be a writer?

Will: I wrote my first book in grade school, when I was 11 years old. My friend and I wanted to write a few comic books and sell them to our friends at school. His contribution was to tell everyone and help sell the book, but I actually wrote and drew the comic, which later became Ollie the Octopus.

Morgen: What fun. 🙂 You run Safkhet Publishing, can you please briefly explain the structure of your publishing house… perhaps who’s involved along the process of an acceptance to the book / story being published.

Will: Our company structure is very straightforward. Kim, who is both my business partner and my wife, and I are wholly responsible for the day-to-day activities of Safkhet. We’ve divided up management responsibility for the imprints: her imprints are Safkhet Cookery and Safkhet Soul, and my imprint is Safkhet Fantasy. We both manage books in the Safkhet Select imprint, as these are books that (a) don’t fit into the other imprints and (b) we believe in them anyway.

Morgen: “we believe in them”, I love that. How does a writer submit to you?

Will: Generally, we only accept submissions that follow our submission guidelines on our webpage. Submissions sent here are rerouted to the appropriate imprint managing editor, depending on the genre of the manuscript. If the manuscript passes our rigorous testing and analysis, it is discussed in editorial meetings that we have while we walk Mozart, the office manager and family dog, in the park. Assuming the book is a go, then we write up a contract, get it signed, and begin the arduous process of copyediting and proofing, cover design, text layout, and (most importantly) marketing the book to be.

Morgen: My dog thinks he’s the manager too so I let him and we have editing meetings like your editorial. 🙂 Do you write yourself? If so does this help with deciding which projects to take on?

Will: Yes, I do write myself. I think it only helps with deciding in that I understand what it is like to submit your “baby” – your manuscript that you’ve slaved for years over – to the publisher. Otherwise, we accept books that either fit our imprint or we personally like.

Morgen: The $64,000 question: out of all the submissions you receive, what makes a book / story stand out for all the right reasons?

Will: For me and for Safkhet Fantasy, I really only want to publish the books that really move me or stand out among the crowd. The work has to be grammatically and content-wise great already, the characters well-developed, and the storyline and plot gripping or downright hilarious. I’ve read quite a few fantasy books in my life and it’s got to be really, really good. Otherwise, I can’t put my soul and effort behind it 1000%.

Morgen: Absolutely. Like a writer, if you don’t care it’ll show. You mentioned your various imprints, what genres do you accept? What would you suggest an author do with a cross-genre piece of writing?

Will: We accept cookery, romcom, fantasy and some non-fiction. As non-fiction does not have its own imprint, it’s got to be really moving or interesting to get accepted. Cross-genre works might be accepted – that’s what Safkhet Select is for. I suggest authors submit if they’re willing to do what we ask them to do – help 1000% in promoting and selling their books, for example.

Morgen: Every author (bar one and she’s still active on Twitter / Facebook) I’ve spoken to has realised they need to actively market themselves. It’s a tough job but they know it’s a necessity these days. Is there a genre that sells better than others or that you can’t get enough of?

Will: I’ve just been recently convinced that romcom is a big seller. I used to think fantasy was a winner, but the hype over Recipes for Disaster is starting to convince me. Me personally though, I really like fantasy and science fiction. However, the sci-fi I want to see more of is the William Gibson / Philip Dick / Aldous Huxley types of sci-fi: near-future, post-apocalyptic or alternate reality. Also, I think I could get interested in steampunk, but only if it has a magical quality to it.

Morgen: I’m glad to hear about romcom – I submitted a chick lit I wrote to three agents at Winchester Writers Conference last July and was told by more than one (to my face) that “chick lit is dead”. I’m sure the chick lit authors out there would have been pleased to hear that (not). You mentioned earlier how to submit, can you suggest some do’s and don’t’s when submitting to you.

Will: Do follow the guidelines, be honest, be personal but respectful and be ready to take direct constructive criticism. Don’t not follow the guidelines (:)), flip out if we reject your work, submit horror or erotic works, send mass-mailings, or be impersonal. We want authors who are real people and who want to work for their book. If we can’t see that the author has taken the time to send to us directly, then that author will have a hard time fitting into our Safkhet family.

Morgen: And that’s the impression I get. I’ve interviewed three of your authors so far (Sheryl Browne, Bruce Moore and Will Macmillan Jones), and went to Sheryl’s book talk recently (which was great; we ended up having a conversation about second person viewpoint :)), and it does feel like a ‘family’ which an author would want from their publisher, an advantage perhaps over a larger publishing house. This is a question that I ask authors but I think is just as relevant to you as a publisher: what was the first book / story you published?

Will: Our first book was Ollie the Octopus. It can be downloaded for free on our website, and it is an interactive PDF, with the original artwork.

Morgen: I did, and it’s really sweet (so I ‘liked’ and tweeted it :)). To your knowledge, have any of your published books / stories won or been shortlisted in any competitions?

Will: No, but we are looking for as many ways for our authors to get into these competitions.

Morgen: What do you feel about an author writing under a pseudonym? Do you think they make a difference to their profile? And would you recommend an author writing under different names for different genres?

Will: There’s absolutely nothing wrong with an author writing under a pseudonym. It is only important that the author is able to keep up with the social media contacts under that pseudonym. Having one identity in the world might be easy, but handle two – or even three, as I’ve seen with some authors – and the work involved in keeping those identities up-to-date becomes phenomenal. I don’t see any reason why an author would write under different names for different genres, especially because one name is hard enough to keep popular. I understand that an author might want a different name if the name was connected with a certain genre, such as Stephen King with horror. But then developing the following that the author has under the other name becomes a huge effort, once again because the other name has no following. In the end, it is not really relevant whether your fans read your horror fiction, crime fiction, fantasy or non-fiction political books, so long as they read them – and buy them.

Morgen: Ruth Rendell (Barbara Vine), Joanna Trollope (Caroline Harvey) and Nora Roberts (JD Robb) write under those pen names but their followers know that but I guess they don’t want their usual readers to pick up their book expecting one thing and getting another but yes, being known as one name is hard enough. 🙂 Now for, in theory, a simple question: what’s your opinion of eBooks, do you publish them and do you read them?

Will: I think eBooks are another great way to get a book out to the public. There are readers who want to read on computers, and would rather download and read on their technological devices than read a book in the paper version. Not providing material to these readers is cutting out a significant portion of the reading market.

Most of our books are available as eBooks on the Kindle. You can easily find them by going to the book’s page at http://www.safkhetpublishing.com and clicking on the links on the left side of the page.

Morgen: Most of the people I’ve spoken to (myself included… although that would imply that I talk to myself :))  say they read both formats. I love knowing when I go out that I have 400+ books available should I have some time to kill, but I have so many paper books at home that I don’t think I’ll get through them all in my lifetime. Poetry and short stories are, in my opinion anyway, the two most hard done by genres… what do you see as the future for them? Do you think the eBook revolution will help given that eBooks seem to be getting shorter?

Will: Poetry definitely has a niche and can still hold its own, but for the mass market, poetry may be just a bit too esoteric. Those publishers of poetry are strong in their market. They don’t try to hit the mass market, because they know that the mass market isn’t interested in poetry – they want easy and fast reads. So long as there are lovers of poetry, there will be a demand. Short stories are difficult to deal with, as they need to be in collections or anthologies – and the quality of the stories vary greatly, not just from story to story but from author to author. Take Ray Bradbury, for example. Ray Bradbury was a great writer, prolific in the science fiction and fantasy genres. He’s one of my favorite authors. His book “The Martian Chronicles” is a collection of short stories focused on Earth’s colonization of Mars, and the destruction of the Martian society in the process. As a whole, I think it’s brilliant work. But within, there are stories that are just too weird, too esoteric for the mass market. These days, only those who read it contemporarily even remember it – only those who either read it as a kid or are still involved in the genre even know about it. If you ask those readers, they’ll most likely say that Bradbury’s work is great stuff – but when pressed, they might just admit that not all of it was that great. Another popular contemporary short story writer is John Updike. Updike wrote some great stories, too, but some of them are just either too esoteric to understand, or just not very good. The stories are carried on as works of art, but not because the work was good, rather because they were written by John Updike.

EBooks are just another method of distributing content. The biggest issue I have with eBooks is that they are relatively easy to produce. I should mention that good eBooks are still just as difficult to produce as physical books are. However with the Kindle Direct Publishing and the number of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) software programs that convert Word documents into ePub files, the eBook market is literally flooded with unedited tripe that dilutes the great works out there with its mediocrity.

Ultimately, it is definitely more cost-efficient for poetry and short stories to make an impact in the eBook format than in the physical copy format. Other than that benefit, it is a customer demand issue.

Morgen: That’s probably why I love writing / reading short stories more than anything else; because I’m weird and esoteric… or at least my writing is. 🙂 Is there a plot that’s written about too often?

Will: In fantasy, it is the “Horrible evil threatens to destroy all that is good – a handful of rag-tag adventurers sally forth and save the day by killing the big bad evil guy and thus avert total disaster”. The part that really makes no sense is that by killing the one bad guy, the entire army of evil is wiped out.

Morgen: Like the hero never getting even a scratch in a movie shootout. 🙂 Do you have to do a lot of editing to the stories you accept or is the writing usually more or less fully-formed?

Will: We leave as much as possible to the authors, with comments and style guides. Safkhet has a style guide and we ask our authors to use it. As new common issues arise, we ask our authors to do those corrections. Otherwise, we do rigorous copy-editing and proofreading before layout (sometimes simultaneously). Of course, we try to find as many errors as possible before going to print, but we sometimes miss one or two. If our readers find errors, we’d love it if they tell us so we can fix those errors in the next edition.

Morgen: I hope the same for my eBooks because although they’ve been through at least two people (myself, my editor… sometimes other first readers) it’s always possible. For your purposes, does it matter what point of view a story is written in? Have you ever printed any in second person? What’s your opinion of second person?

Will: I personally like third person. I find it difficult to relate to a character that narrates in first person. I’ve never printed in second person, and I haven’t given second person much thought, as I’ve never even seen a submission in second person. The last time I saw a relatively successful second-person fiction was when I was a kid. I read the Choose Your Own Adventure series whenever I could. It is very much like a solo role-playing session. However, after a while, I feel like the plot is railroading me and I really don’t have any choice as to my future in the story. Interesting for a while, but it really loses steam in the end.

Morgen: I loved them too, which could contribute to why it’s my favourite viewpoint now… for short pieces anyway. It’s fairly unheard of so I’ve even given it its own page here. Given that more emphasis these days is put on the author to market their published works or indeed themselves as a ‘brand’, how involved are you generally with your authors post-publication?

Will: I talk to all my authors at least once a week. Some I talk to on the phone for an hour or so at a time. Safkhet functions like a family. Our authors are just as involved in the business as we are – only to different degrees and with different responsibilities. We stay involved with them because all of us sell their books, not just us or them. It is very important to our business that we all integrate together and work together to sell the books.

Morgen: That’s refreshing to hear as some authors have said that although they’re with a publisher they’re pretty much left alone, which is a shame. You’re currently in the UK but moving to Germany, do / will you find this a help or hindrance with letting people know about, or distributing, your publications?

Will: Thanks to the internet, we could be anywhere and still produce books for whichever market we want to be in. The only difficulty is in hosting a live event in a country where we are not.

Morgen: That’s true – maybe we’ll all go over to video conferencing or YouTube. 🙂 Speaking of technology, what do you think of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and more business-related such as LinkedIn? Do you think they’re invaluable or too time-consuming?

Will: Using social media is the core of our marketing. They are completely invaluable.

Morgen: 🙂 You mentioned earlier that you also write, what genre do you generally write and have you considered others?

Will: Currently, I write children’s books and academic articles. As of yet, I have not considered writing in any other genres, primarily because I am too busy running Safkhet.

Morgen: What have you had published to-date? Do you write under a pseudonym?

Will: To date, I have published an eBook called Ollie the Octopus, which has been translated into German and also has a secondary storyline with the same illustrations, called Ollie Saves Sally. This book I published as William Banks, to honor my grandfather, William Banks, who was a printer and watercolour artist.

Morgen: Ahh… Have you had any rejections? If so, how do you deal with them?

Will: I have not gotten any rejections yet. I imagine, though, that should I have gotten rejections, I would either continue on with representing my book to other publishers, and ask the rejecting publisher for feedback, so that I can possibly improve my next submission.

Morgen: They say it’s more difficult to get an agent these days than a publisher, do you think agents are vital to an author’s success?

Will: I think that agents might be useful for getting your copy to one of the Big Six, but otherwise, an agent is not vital to an author’s success. Many times, an agent represents the author incorrectly, or has other interests in mind.

Morgen: Or done very little, as I’ve heard in a few cases. We’ve talked about eBooks, do you read eBooks or is it paper all the way?

Will: I like to read both eBooks and physical copy, although I don’t actually have an eBook reader; I read the eBooks on my laptop.

Morgen: It’s so easy, isn’t it. Do you have a favourite of your books or characters? If any of your books were made into films, who would you have as the leading actor/s?

Will: My favourite character in my book is definitely Ollie himself, followed by the Offisher. I’m not sure who the voice over for Ollie would be – maybe Michael J Fox.

Morgen: That would be fun. 🙂 How important do you think titles / covers are?

Will: I think an author should have input into the title of the book, but not total control. This is because the author may have knowledge of his genre, but the publisher has knowledge of the market – and can tell whether a seemingly “cool” title is a winner or a flop.

Morgen: Absolutely. What are you working on at the moment / next?

Will: Right now, the next Ollie book is just in planning stages, as I’m primarily focusing on my day job as a lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University and on my role as an editor / publisher at Safkhet Publishing.

Morgen: Do you plot your stories or do you just get an idea and run with it?

Will: I usually just get ideas and run with them. If I have to stop for the day, I’ll write down my ideas at least, so I can pick them up again for next time.

Morgen: Do you write any non-fiction, poetry or short stories?

Will: I do write academic articles when I can find the time. And I blog. Other than that, I don’t write anything else.

Morgen: I’m not sure how relevant this is for ‘Ollie’ but do you have to do much research?

Will: Not really, although I want to make sure that I don’t make underwater characters do things that their real counterparts could never do (apart from the anthropomorphic actions like speaking English, of course).

Morgen: 🙂 What point of view do you find most to your liking?

Will: I like to write in third person. I’m not a big fan on books that are written in first person, but I do see the value in it for some genres.

Morgen: Do you have pieces of work that you think will never see light of day?

Will: Yes, but most are in my head.

Morgen: What’s your favourite / least favourite aspect of your writing life? Has anything surprised you?

Will: My favourite aspect of my writing life is when I can realise an idea and write the whole shebang in one sitting. My least favourite aspect is not finding time to write and watching the ideas and tasks pile up in my inbox.

Morgen: Time. Yes. My biggest bugbear. If you could invite three people from any era to dinner, who would you choose and what would you cook (or hide the takeaway containers)?

Will: Assuming language is not a barrier, I would invite Albert Einstein, Ben Franklin and Socrates to dinner – and we would have a homemade roulade with braised green cabbage and vanilla ice cream for dessert.

Morgen: Yum. Is there a word, phrase or quote you like?

Will: I like the phrase that Uncle Scrooge from the Donald Duck cartoons says in German:”Wer den Kreuzer nicht ehrt, ist des Talers nicht wert.” (translated to English – Those who don’t honor the Kreutzer are not worth the Thaler.”)

Morgen: I’ve been to Germany loads of times and love the little cartoons they put in between programmes, even if I don’t understand every word (German’s my second best language after English) I get the gist. What do you do when you’re not writing?

Will: When I am completely off, I like to go on long walks with my wife and my dog in the park or through the city. Kim knits and I crochet. I also like to play Dungeons & Dragons on weekends with her and our friends.

Morgen: Where can we find out about you and your work?

Will: http://www.safkhetpublishing.com; http://safkhetpublishing.wordpress.com; on Facebook and on Twitter.

Morgen: Thank you, Will, for being so thorough today. It’s been really interesting.

I then invited Will to include a short biography and he said…

People on the net are all into cloud tags these days, so here is my biography written in “cloud tags”:

Doctor of law; lawyer; Cambridge lecturer; role-player; writer; publisher; legal advice dispenser; friend to animals; dreamer; jogger; dog-lover; hiker; skier; child; non-smoker; non-drinker; lover; husband; organic-meat-eater; chocolate lover; traveler; Texan; IT person; web designer.

***

If you are reading this and you write, in whatever genre, and are thinking “ooh, I’d like to do this” then you can… just email me and I’ll send you the information. They do now (January 2013) carry a fee (£10 / €12.50 / $15) for the new interviews on this blog but everything else (see Opportunities on this blog) is free.

If you go for the interview, it’s very simple; I send you a questionnaire (I have them for novelists, short story authors, children’s authors, non-fiction authors, and poets). You complete the questions, and I let you know when it’s going to go live. Before it does so, I add in comments as if we’re chatting, and then they get posted. When that’s done, I email you with the link so you can share it with your corner of the literary world. And if you have a writing-related blog / podcast and would like to interview me… let me know.

Alternatively, if you’d like a free Q&A-only interview, I now have http://morgensauthorinterviews.wordpress.com on which I’ve rerun the original interviews posted here then posted new interviews which I then reblog here. These interviews are Q&A only, so I don’t add in my comments but they do get exposure on both sites.

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel, which is being serialised on Novel Nights In!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do. I welcome critique for the four new writing groups listed below and / or flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays. For other opportunities see (see Opportunities on this blog).

The full details of the new online writing groups, and their associated Facebook groups, are:

  • Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group (http://novelwritinggroup.wordpress.com / http://www.facebook.com/groups/508696639153189)
  • Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group (http://poetrywritinggroup.wordpress.com / http://www.facebook.com/groups/388850977875934)
  • Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group (http://scriptwritinggroup.wordpress.com / http://www.facebook.com/groups/319941328108017)
  • Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group (http://shortstorywritinggroup.wordpress.com / http://www.facebook.com/groups/544072635605445)

We look forward to reading your comments.

Author interview no.325 with non-fiction author and journalist Bruce Moore

March 31, 2012January 25, 20131 Comment

Welcome to the three hundred and twenty-fifth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with non-fiction author and journalist Bruce Moore. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello, Bruce. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.

Bruce: I am originally from New York but currently reside in Richmond, Virginia. For more than 20 years I have been involved in the music business in various capacities from studio engineer and mastering engineer to live sound reinforcement. I also have a degree in English from The University of South Florida. A few years back I began combining the two disciplines and I started writing for numerous music magazines. In addition to books I continue to write for many different music publications.

Morgen: Two notoriously tough industries – presumably you’ll have had some rejections? If so, how do you deal with them?

Bruce: I have had more rejections than I care to think about. I don’t really have any trouble dealing with rejections. I have never submitted anything that I didn’t believe in 100 percent. I have been around the block a few times and I know not everyone will get it and to be honest I don’t expect them to. I am just looking for the one person who does get it; the rest just get tossed into the trash bin without so much as a second thought. Art is very subjective; I understand that and fully expect to receive tons of rejections knowing I will eventually find the right outlet.”

Morgen: Absolutely it is just one person’s opinion. Just a shame if they’re the editor of your favourite magazine but as you say there are plenty of outlets out there. How much of the marketing do you do?

Bruce: I have become my own best proponent. With technology the way that it is now it is quite easy to grow a fan base and then connect with them on a regular basis. Social networks like Facebook have become invaluable in this day and age, especially when as an artist I am working on a limited budget.

Morgen: I’m on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and have met some really wonderful people that way… many of whom have been on this blog. It’s literally opened up the world. Did you have any say in the title / covers of your book(s)? How important do you think they are?

Bruce: When I was working on my books “For Those About To Cook” and “For Those About To Cook, Pure Metal” I worked hand-in-hand with Safkhet Publishing. They made sure that I was involved in the creative process and always made sure I was fully satisfied with the covers before they went to print.

Morgen: What are you working on at the moment / next?

Bruce: At the moment, my second book, “For Those About To Cook, Pure Metal” is in the editing stage which has freed up some time for me to tackle another endeavour I have wanted to attempt for a while. Sticking with the music and food genre I have created and begun filming a musical cooking show I am calling “Brutally Delicious”. Basically it is a show where bands come into the studio, chat about their new project and then cook an original recipe with me in the kitchen; think Rachel Ray meets “The Headbangers Ball”.

Morgen: That does sound like fun. 🙂 I guess this is less of an apt question for non-fiction but do you do a lot of editing or do you find that as time goes on your writing is more fully-formed?

Bruce: My mind gets way ahead of me when I am writing and typing so even though I have been at this for a while I still find the need to go back and edit; sometimes significantly.

Morgen: Oh dear. 🙂 What’s your favourite / least favourite aspect of your writing life? Has anything surprised you?

Bruce: My favourite thing about writing is the whole creative process. I absolutely love taking an idea and putting it to paper watching it eventually grow into the project that I had envisioned. I find that I can so easily get lost in writing and brainstorming that the hours literally fly by.

My least favourite aspect of writing is the business side of things. I cannot stand all the corporate nonsense that comes along with the whole process. I guess if I made enough cash as a writer and could pay someone to do that for me it would be ideal. Now however, writing, music and cooking are passions of mine that really get me out of bed in the morning even if they don’t pay the bills.

Morgen: Having just given up my job (two weeks ago) I’m in that situation but you’ve got it spot on; you need the passion. I have it in JCB loads. 🙂 If you could invite three people from any era to dinner, who would you choose and what would you cook (or hide the takeaway containers)?

Bruce: Jesus Christ, whether you believe in him or not his impact on the world has been huge and has changed the world. So much has been written about him both good and bad that I would love the opportunity to sit down and break bread with him. I would have so many questions. As far as cooking I think a good Middle Eastern dish would be appropriate, maybe some Falafel and Tabouleh followed by a strong, black Turkish coffee.

Gene Simmons from the rock band Kiss. As a long time fan of the band the little kid in me would love to sit down and chat with him over a meal. Even more than that though he is a fierce businessman and marketer and I would hope over a nice long meal he would impart some of that knowledge to me. As far as a meal I think a nice hunk of rare bloody beef would be appropriate – perhaps an extremely rare prime rib and a Bloody Mary to wash it all down with.

I would also like to sit down and share a meal with my all-time favourite author James Joyce. He was an author who wrote his way and on his terms; commercial success was not the goal. The goal was to create fresh, vibrant fiction that pushed boundaries and moved into uncharted territory. I would absolutely love to pick his brain on the craft of writing. As far as meals go perhaps a nice Irish meal of corned beef and cabbage.”

Morgen: I think I’d want to keep asking Gene to stick out his tongue to see if it really is that long. 🙂 Is there a word, phrase or quote you like?

Bruce: “If it is too loud you are too old!”

Morgen: I love that. Thank you, Bruce.

You can read my interview with Safkhet Publishing‘s Kim Maya Sutton here.

***

If you are reading this and you write, in whatever genre, and are thinking “ooh, I’d like to do this” then you can… just email me and I’ll send you the information. They do now (January 2013) carry a fee (£10 / €12.50 / $15) for the new interviews on this blog but everything else (see Opportunities on this blog) is free.

If you go for the interview, it’s very simple; I send you a questionnaire (I have them for novelists, short story authors, children’s authors, non-fiction authors, and poets). You complete the questions, and I let you know when it’s going to go live. Before it does so, I add in comments as if we’re chatting, and then they get posted. When that’s done, I email you with the link so you can share it with your corner of the literary world. And if you have a writing-related blog / podcast and would like to interview me… let me know.

Alternatively, if you’d like a free Q&A-only interview, I now have http://morgensauthorinterviews.wordpress.com on which I’ve rerun the original interviews posted here then posted new interviews which I then reblog here. These interviews are Q&A only, so I don’t add in my comments but they do get exposure on both sites.

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel, which is being serialised on Novel Nights In!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do. I welcome critique for the four new writing groups listed below and / or flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays. For other opportunities see (see Opportunities on this blog).

The full details of the new online writing groups, and their associated Facebook groups, are:

  • Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group (http://novelwritinggroup.wordpress.com / http://www.facebook.com/groups/508696639153189)
  • Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group (http://poetrywritinggroup.wordpress.com / http://www.facebook.com/groups/388850977875934)
  • Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group (http://scriptwritinggroup.wordpress.com / http://www.facebook.com/groups/319941328108017)
  • Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group (http://shortstorywritinggroup.wordpress.com / http://www.facebook.com/groups/544072635605445)

We look forward to reading your comments.

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    © Morgen Bailey and Bailey's Writing Tips, 2011-2019. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Morgen Bailey and/or Bailey's Writing Tips with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All guest content remains the property of the appropriate author - any reproduction is strictly prohibited without their prior written approval.
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