Author Emma Joy Hill has been telling herself stories for as long as she can remember; and when she learned to write in sentences, writing down a story was one of the first things she did. ‘I remember writing a story called The Pretty Trees. It was inspired by a particular morning when sparkling frost covered all the trees in the city,’ says the Ontario-based Canadian writer, who is also well-versed in Dutch, beginning her interaction with The Literary Juggernaut.
When asked if becoming an author was a conscious decision she made, Barbara, who is also a member of Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, says she was working as an actor, which gave her a lot of down time, and she needed an outlet to keep from worrying herself to death between jobs. ‘I have always loved reading, and I thought I would see if I could write a book. I mean, how hard could it be? It looks so easy! Well, it was not easy, but it kept me occupied. And I learned I prefer writing to acting, so I switched emphasis, which is good because as a woman of a certain age, my acting career was stalling out.’
Author Ann Wuehler admits she has not been writing as much as she normally does. Speaking to The Literary Juggernaut in an exclusive interaction, the quinquagenarian, who is currently residing in Eastern Oregon, close to the Snake River and Hells Canyon, says she almost always sets herself on a schedule to break free of the general hopeless malaise coupled with impotent fury. ‘I try to start writing or doing something ‘writerly’, such as submissions, by nine every morning. I try to make it a habit,’ she begins, adding that she has lately been wanting to write, which she asserts is a good sign. ‘I have stayed up late into the night writing at times, of course. Or jumped into it nearly as soon as I woke up, eager to continue. It depends. On mood, on time, on if the project is due or just something for me,’ she explains.
Says Mr Elustondo, who has had the opportunity to travel to many countries in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, ‘I would say that in writing, as in anything else in life, nothing comes easy and requires perseverance, self-confidence, and believing in what you are doing. Learning from a set-back should be a powerful motivator to move forward and become successful. It requires a cool mind and self-searching to understand why sometimes things do not go as we expect and whether we truly believe in our goals. Keep writing and reading since this helps us hone our skills and discover new forms of expression.’
Going on to aver that writing is a career for him even if he does not make a living at it, Mr Link, who has studied Spanish, Japanese, and Brazilian Portuguese, tells us he thinks authors get too tied to the financial aspect of writing, and that’s not the bar he sets for his success. ‘I want to reach people so they’ll read my stories and enjoy them, not so I can quit my day job. That’s one of the reasons I love Kindle Unlimited. People can read me for free,’ he says.
I promised that I would throw a bag at each resting stop
So he allowed me inside and I boarded the bus with a hop
At the first stop, I threw my bag carrying ‘Comparisons ‘
And the bus started again, leaving that station
On the next stop, I chose to throw the bag containing ‘Expectations’
What transpired next caused me great harm,
For I learnt I was conned, fooled
By you and those you had valued;
Places you’d been to were revealed,
So were lanes you’d trodden upon;
I smiled though my heart rang bruised bells.
Author T C Weber is a morning person, and he begins his day with what he loves doing most: writing. In an exclusive email interaction with The Literary Juggernaut, Mr Weber, who is a member of Poets & Writers and the Maryland Writers Association, says when working on a novel, his goal is to write one scene each day, schedule permitting. ‘I ensure that I write something every morning, even if it’s just random thoughts or a few paragraphs. Long scenes may take several days,’ explains the author, who also knows to speak Spanish besides a bit of Russian and Japanese.
The author, who can speak a bit of Spanish and Welsh besides swearing in Punjabi, thanks to his Indian friends at school, also stresses while accepting the reality might be hard, if one does accept, then it will take the sting off the inevitable rejections and negative reviews that all authors get. ‘With rejections, try to be level-headed when they land. First consider whether they are sincere, or whether they are just a form rejection with little thought or substance behind them. If they are sincere, then study them carefully, take on board the comments and try to learn,’ he explains, adding, ‘This is especially important if those rejections go into specific detail about what did and didn’t work. Try and see this as honest advice from top people within the industry, which, in any other scenario, you would probably be paying good money for.’
I personally found the events transpiring in the Belmarsh prison quite interesting. A kind of friendship blossoms here that one might seldom expect to blossom in the outside world. There are moments when you may end up weeping, but as we have mentioned already, the moments you’ll guffaw will be a lot more.
There’s not much to put the eye at ease
when we pass the abandoned garden;
tangles of string, planks and chicken wire,
a smother of snowdrops in late spring,
a quince tree with lichen, yellow fruit
rotting to brown then a winter black.
Is there a forgotten expression
in the language for which the bleak phrase
‘abandoned garden’ is not enough?
They’ll build a gas station in its place.
I saw up ahead the articulated trailer of a lorry jack-knife out in front of the scaffolding truck, the truck’s brake lights igniting in glowing red against the mist of spray. The roof of the scaffolding truck’s front cab crumpled against the trailer and the flapping high visibility jacket move slowly towards me, in my direct line of sight, as I pumped the brakes.
The writer, who is also well-versed in Hindi and Punjabi, avers that she is grateful to the fans she has as followers on Twitter. ‘I’d thought Twitter was a boring app filled with rude people, but after having discovered the writing community, I have learnt very many useful things about writing and publishing. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, rude people continue to exist, but I have now learnt how to use Twitter in a way that uplifts me,’ she says with a smile.
Author Ian Barker doesn’t remember a time he didn’t write. In fact, one of the school reports from when Mr Barker was about twelve years old says he has ‘an easy style and interesting ideas’. Be that as it may, the author went on to spend almost twenty years working in the IT sector, writing short stories and poems for his amusement. ‘I then discovered that it was easier to write about computers than to fix them, and so, I combined my job and hobby by going to work for a computer magazine,’ says the sixty-one-year-old UK-based author, speaking to the Literary Express in an exclusive interaction.
Love. Hate. Betrayal. Romance. Horror. Hope. Separation. Reunion. Perry Martin’s debut novel Pretty Flamingo promises all of this and much more. It’s a sublime tale that oscillates primarily between two time periods and two places: the late 1960s set in Brisbane, Australia and the early 2000s largely set in California, the US. It’s a poignant story of loss and separation where, in the end, love reigns supreme. The central idea, nonetheless, revolves around one question: Is it possible that people have ever lived before?
Indie author Graham Smith might have never stepped into a college or university as a student after leaving school with eight O levels and two highers, but not attending a college never stopped him from pursuing what he loves doing most: writing. Speaking to the Literary Express in an exclusive interaction, the author says he has no formal writing qualifications other than forty years of being an avid reader. He lets us know that he began writing about a decade ago.
It was a tour that author Eric Johnson took about a decade ago that inspired him to come up with his first-ever novel. In an exclusive interaction with the Literary Express, the author said that his first novel fictionalised the time he had spent in Afghanistan, a country he happened to visit ten years ago. The forty-four-year-old Maryland-based writer, who has an Associates degree in Business Management and Arts, stated that he had published twenty-three books and that his later book is entitled ‘Operation Crescent Moon’. ‘It is the fourteenth book in the 2-4 Cavalry Series. It takes place in the future and is about a future conflict that the unit goes through in the book,’ he explained.
When author Vince Stevenson was just twenty-nine years old, he’d moved to London, and for the first time, began living alone. That was exactly when he felt he’d all the time in the world. Before relocating to London, the author, now sixty-two, had worked for big companies and was heavily involved in communication. ‘In the old days, we had large dictionaries on our desks. I attended meetings and was often responsible for disseminating and documenting material, and it had to be accurate. If anything left my desk with a typo, I’d be cross with myself,’ begins Mr Stevenson, speaking to the Literary Express in an exclusive interaction. That was exactly when he started attending writing classes and meeting people with similar interests. ‘And I found that incredibly inspiring. I began to write short stories about the IT world, and I had many published in Computer Weekly,’ he tells us with a beatific smile.
