Welcome to the six hundred and seventeenth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with short story and novella author, and editor Paul D Brazill. 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, Paul. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.
Paul: Hi Morgen, I’m Paul D. Brazill and I live in Poland. I started dabbling with writing flash fiction at the end of 2008 when I sent pieces to a few online e-zines, notably Six Sentences, Powder Burn Flash and A Twist Of Noir. And things have trundled along quite haphazardly since then.
Morgen: Most authors write novels, what made you choose short stories?
Paul: Because I know how easily I lose interest in things. I started off writing something that I would actually finish, so the shorter the form the better! Hence, flash! The stories are getting longer, quite naturally, but hopefully they’re still lean and mean! I hate flabby writing.
Morgen: And readers do too. I love flash fiction too (part of the reason why I started Flash Fiction Fridays) and most of my 5pm Fiction is less than 500 words. Is there a genre that you generally write and have you considered other genres?
Paul: Most of the stories get classed as noir or crime fiction – sometimes humour – and I suppose that they’re a bit of a mish-mash of all of that. I’ve also written a few horror stories – most notably Drunk On The Moon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Drunk-Moon-Roman-Dalton-Anthology/dp/0615641504
which is about a werewolf private eye – and I wrote a sci-fi hardboiled hybrid with David Cranmer called In Like Vin which is contained in the eBook Vin Of Venus: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vin-of-Venus-ebook/dp/B008TDLSR4
But I think my stories are just a smorgasbord of the ‘stuff’ that clutters up my noggin.
Morgen: 🙂 Me too, although I’m usually darker than light. Is there a particular market you aim for when writing stories for publication?
