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Post by williemeikle on Jun 23, 2009 19:56:10 GMT
WHAT TO YOU LIKE TO DO IN YOUR SPARE TIME? I play guitar. I've been playing since 1972 and have a small degree of competency that allows me to play some blues stuff pretty well on a battered old Dobro and sing along. (I used to sing in a choir in my schooldays) I like beer. A lot. And whisky. I read. A lot. I get out and about to see wildlife and scenery. And I spend far too much time just hanging out online when I should be writing.
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Post by Jim on Jun 23, 2009 19:58:35 GMT
Its bad enough hat we have lost the great Scottish horror Joe Donelly to the childrens market The man who wrote the best horror novel ever to be set in Greenock I miss him too... Twitchy Eyes, later republished as Dark Valley was my favourite by him
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Post by Jim on Jun 23, 2009 19:58:56 GMT
Beng a horror author, do your family and friends ever wonder about you? What has their reaction been after reading your work?
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Post by williemeikle on Jun 23, 2009 20:04:44 GMT
What do you think needs to change before horror fiction is as popular as it was was before the late 90's? I don't think it will reach that degree of popularity again... at least not in the terms I think you mean. The market has fragmented too much. Some things that used to be classed as horror are now in the crime section, or the YA section, or the fantasy section. And that's before we even get to the "romantic" supernatural stuff. Plus booksellers see "horror" and think "gore" and are put off buying it. The horror genre has effectively been marketed into a series of ghettos, and it's tough to see it becoming mainstream unless someone with Stephen King's impact can come along and do a "Da Vinci Code" type set of blockbusters that'll make us "hip" again. Besides, there's a chain of thought that says it already -is- as popular, what with all the sparkly teenage vamps around at the moment.
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Post by williemeikle on Jun 23, 2009 20:08:08 GMT
Beng a horror author, do your family and friends ever wonder about you? What has their reaction been after reading your work? I've always been drawn to the dark side of the force so I don't think it's any surprise to anyone that's known me for a while. My mum is one of my biggest fans I -have- been asked why I don't write something "nice", but that's not my style. I'm not an extreme horror writer though, and it might be different if I had lashings of sex and gore painting the page
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Post by williemeikle on Jun 23, 2009 20:10:00 GMT
The man who wrote the best horror novel ever to be set in Greenock I miss him too... Twitchy Eyes, later republished as Dark Valley was my favourite by him One of my faves too... bits of it felt like he'd been tapping into my childhood
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Post by Jim on Jun 27, 2009 5:16:10 GMT
How long did it take you to publish your first book, after you started trying?
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Post by Jim on Jun 27, 2009 5:55:59 GMT
If You Could Be Any Book Character Who Would You Be...?
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Post by williemeikle on Jun 27, 2009 14:40:22 GMT
How long did it take you to publish your first book, after you started trying? It took me a while to get into novels. For most of the '90s I was selling short stories almost exclusively in the UK small press. The 1st novel I wrote was "The Book of The Dark". I started it in about 1993 and didn't finish until 1998 and it took a while before it found a home at Black Death Books in 2006. Island Life was the 1st one I actually shopped around seriously, and it sold quickly. An online friend, Joe Nassise had just signed up with a new publisher (Barclay Books) and I sent them the manuscript. I wrote it in early 99 and they published it in 2001. The rest of the story of Island Life is an all too familiar tale of a publisher biting off more than they can chew and folding, leaving authors hanging.
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Post by williemeikle on Jun 27, 2009 14:47:36 GMT
If You Could Be Any Book Character Who Would You Be...? Well that's an easy one at 1st sight... I've wanted to be Tarzan since I was six But as an adult, I guess it would be someone who has adventures in strange, fantastic places. Lumley's "Titus Crow" comes to mind, or Moorcock's "Eternal Champion", or maybe John Carter of Mars?
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Post by Jim on Jun 27, 2009 15:41:04 GMT
Is Joe still writing?
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Post by Jim on Jun 27, 2009 15:52:03 GMT
Amazon reviews good or bad? I get the feeling that many of them are not exactly honest if you get what I mean.
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Post by williemeikle on Jun 27, 2009 15:53:49 GMT
As far as I know.. he's been quiet recently. I know his "Templar" trilogy did good business in German, and he was looking for an English language deal for it, but i haven't seen his name around for a while. He's got a pretty snazzy website: josephnassise.com
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Post by williemeikle on Jun 27, 2009 16:01:52 GMT
Amazon reviews good or bad? I get the feeling that many of them are not exactly honest if you get what I mean. It works both ways on Amazon... you get people's friends bumming them up, but you also get spiteful dickheads trying to score cheap points by giving 1 star reviews to books that everyone else has given 4 or 5. There was also a ruccus a wee while back when a group of romance writers got together to plug each others books while also trying to destroy the reputation of their competitors. It's the price you have to pay for an open system I guess, and you just have to learn to read between the lines. Then again, I've rarely bought anything from Amazon on the basis of reviews anyway.
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Post by Jim on Jun 27, 2009 16:11:59 GMT
Which leads me onto, author blurbs, do you think there too much back scratching going on. I've read many a book with glowing blurbs, and by jings they've been awful
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