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Post by Jim on Jun 27, 2009 15:49:23 GMT
Ian I am afraid I not familiar with your work, can you give us some background information?
Amazon reviews good or bad? I get the feeling that many of them are not exactly honest if you get what I mean.
What inspires you to write?
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Post by Ian Faulkner on Jun 28, 2009 21:29:54 GMT
Thanks for the question Jim. My first ever published story was back in 2001 ‘Emmy’ holds a very special place for me.
It was the first story I ever had professionally published way back in 2001 by Ash Tree Press in Canada for their highly prestigious Ghost Story publication ‘All Hallows’. I was very lucky to get my first piece published by them.
It was named for one of my four daughters, Emma. If I don’t give her a mention she’ll probably quit talking to me!
Anyhow, at the time I was friends with the gifted illustrator Paul Lowe, who hails from Walsall in the West Midlands in the UK.
Paul Lowe, if the reader isn’t aware, is an exceptionally talented award-winning artist whose work is featured, amongst other places, by the popular Canadian Ash-Tree press.
I’d been writing on and off since 1996, purely for myself. That was an awful time for me and my former wife, Diane. That really was the year in hell for all of us.
Our baby son died shortly after being born in May of a rare disease.
The hospital he was delivered at was woefully unprepared for a child born with his physical difficulties and well…everyone dies; it’s a journey we all must make. Without dwelling too much, from what I saw, I strongly believe that our son had a very bad time getting there. It was an awful life-changing experience that will stay with me and my ex-wife until the day we die.
Looking back, I took up writing later that year as a cathartic exercise. It was an attempt to deal with my own personal pain.
It was a way that I could shut myself off from life and others around me. It started as an excuse, a pretext to hide and lick my wounds in private… but later became a consuming passion.
But back to Paul; he read this tale ‘Emmy’ and suggested that I should send it to his publisher, Barbara Roden in Ashcroft, British Columbia.
I did so a little reluctantly, and was pleasantly surprised that she liked it. It was slated for the October 2001 issue of ‘All Hallows’.
I set this ghostly little tale in the late 70’s quite deliberately. With this story I wanted primarily to entertain, but also to give just a hint of how dreadful those years were for many working class communities.
I didn’t know of one family, friend or acquaintance, that wasn’t touched by the bleak specter of job loss.
The town I grew up in was a steel making center in the West Midlands.
It never recovered from the massive closures of those times. Even today, some 30 odd years later and in a new century, it still has high unemployment and a poverty rate far above the national average.
Since then I have had two others published by Ash Tree 'Grandpa Billy' which had an honorable mention in 'The Years Best Fantasy & Horror' from Ellen Datlow and 'None So Blind' which is featured in my first anthology of the same name.
My other short stories have won two awards from the now sadly defunct BT site for new writing 'getitoutthere' including dinner with the Author Jenny Colgan...unfortunately I was ill & never got to it!
I have also been published in the UK magazine 'Voyager' (not sure if that's still going) on several Internet literary horror sites and also in Australia.
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Post by ian on Jun 28, 2009 21:48:08 GMT
Hi Ian. any chance of you signing in? you're buggering up my board stats. You get loads of good stuff like a cool rank under your name also Jim give out Mars Bars and Twix's to members.
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Post by ianfaulkner on Jun 28, 2009 21:56:19 GMT
:'(Sorry!! Is that better? ;D
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Post by Jim on Jun 29, 2009 4:30:16 GMT
How far would you go go to keep being published. If say someone offered you a contract to write Barbara Cartland novels would you take it?
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Post by Jim on Jun 29, 2009 4:34:19 GMT
Do you have any rituals that you go through when writing?
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Post by ianfaulkner on Jun 29, 2009 4:45:19 GMT
QUESTION: How far would you go go to keep being published. If say someone offered you a contract to write Barbara Cartland novels would you take it?
ANSWER:
That's an interesting question...would I write Barbara Cartland novels? Probably yes...as long as I didn't have to have the perm or wear the pink cardigans. Let's be honest...her novels were bad...but...they sold and she made more money than most of us will see in a lifetime...with the exception of Willie Miekle of course.
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Post by ianfaulkner on Jun 29, 2009 4:51:29 GMT
QUESTION: Do you have any rituals that you go through when writing?
ANSWER: Not rituals as such...but I did have one habit, shall we say. Smoking...years ago I genuinely felt that I couldn't write if I didn't have a cigarette burning merrily away. But when I finally came to my senses and realized that inhaling huge clouds of carcinogens didn't actually contribute to the creative process one iota...i quit. So rituals, as such, no...just me, my old laptop and plenty of blood, sweat and tears.
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Post by williemeikle on Jun 29, 2009 16:56:13 GMT
QUESTION: How far would you go go to keep being published. If say someone offered you a contract to write Barbara Cartland novels would you take it? ANSWER: That's an interesting question...would I write Barbara Cartland novels? Probably yes...as long as I didn't have to have the perm or wear the pink cardigans. Let's be honest...her novels were bad...but...they sold and she made more money than most of us will see in a lifetime...with the exception of Willie Miekle of course. I've never had a perm, or a pink cardigan, but there's a picture somewhere of me dressed as Frankenfurter in basque and suspenders that better never make it into the public domain As for the money... where the hell is it? That;s what I'd like to know
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Post by ian on Jul 1, 2009 11:03:11 GMT
You just write in your laptop or do you carry a notepad around to jot ideas down.
Do you try to keep to a daily word count?
If you ever come against 'mind blank' whilst writing, is there anything you do to get those cogs moving again?
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Post by ianfaulkner on Jul 2, 2009 3:39:04 GMT
Question: You just write in your laptop or do you carry a notepad around to jot ideas down.
Do you try to keep to a daily word count?
If you ever come against 'mind blank' whilst writing, is there anything you do to get those cogs moving again?
Answer:
It sounds strange, but it depends on the job I'm doing.
Currently I'm working on two books...'Wolfsbane' for GWP and 'Call Sign: Killer' a commissioned biography.
The 'Wolfsbane' novel just flows, I get stuck into the narrative and I just find myself there, priming a flintlock, drawing a sword and battling for my mortal soul against a vicious horde of Werewolves in Civil War era England. I don't need a pad for that, I literally just sit there and type away on the keyboard and out it comes. I can see the events clearly in my head.
The biography though, is a different type of writing altogether. Because of the nature of the beast, the research is obviously painstaking and I have to write down in long hand and record on my digital recorder everything and everyone I interview/sources etc.,
That's not to say I don't research my other stories though! I research everything I write...for instance 'Myth' my cryptozoological thriller is set around Graham Island off the coast of British Columbia; consequently the descriptions, events, peoples etc., need to be spot on...otherwise readers will quite justifiably point out the errors.
As to a word count, well...no, not really. I always have felt that you can sweat for 10 hours and write 3000 words of total crap (and I've done it) and just end up slinging it away. And then the next day you can write 1000 words of pure gold in half of the time.
I'm a strong believer in that old adage..99% perspiration...and 1% inspiration.
Does my mind ever go blank...sure it does! But one thing I've learnt is the time comes when you just have to walk away and leave it for a while...go do something else. Anything!
And like the saying goes...tomorrow is another day.
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Post by Jim on Jul 2, 2009 6:59:45 GMT
Should an author write for himself or the fans? You hear so many stores of fans outrage when an author refuses to write another story based on one of there characters or set in one of their worlds.
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Post by ianfaulkner on Jul 2, 2009 14:40:08 GMT
Question:
Should an author write for himself or the fans? You hear so many stores of fans outrage when an author refuses to write another story based on one of there characters or set in one of their worlds.
Answer:
I think there has to be a happy medium. If an author is at a stage where they are identified with a particular character or set of characters then they have to expect a certain obligation to those readers that have given them their success.
Robert Heinlein came up with an interesting if maybe far-fetched hypothesis in his book 'The Number Of The Beast'.
He postulated that every imagined literary character was given instant corporeal form and came into existence just because the author imagined them. A brand new universe in the pantheon of multi-verses was created just for them.
So who knows? When we authors come up with these characters and situations in our tales, our obligation, if Heinlein is given any credence, may go infinitely beyond that of their just our readers.
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Post by ian on Jul 3, 2009 9:02:36 GMT
What are some of your current favourite horror books and movies?
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Post by ian on Jul 3, 2009 9:02:59 GMT
Is there anyone new out there we should be watching out for?
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