A Chilling Horror Tale
Meet the author: Brhi Stokes, author of urban fantasy Caligation
Build Your Tribe
Are you sitting on a mail list consisting of friends, family, and critiquing partners? I was, until the beginning of the month. Then I invested about ten hours of time and nineteen days later, I’m talking to nearly four hundred (and still growing) people who volunteered their contact info in exchange for a short story that has been free on Smashwords for well over a year!
Will this work for anyone? Nearly anyone. There are prerequisites and some up front investments in time and your precious intellectual property, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?
Are you writing your first story now? Put promotional stuff on pause, tuck yourself into your rough drafting safe haven and write your story. Then show it to other writers in the Roundtable critiquing group. Personally, I didn’t want to begin marketing until I had written three novels and an anthology. However my critiquing pal, the person who taught me how to grow my own tribe, Guy Reissen, is using his short stories to grow an audience for his upcoming first novel! Continue reading…
An Interview with Jon Cronshaw
Are there any authors or artists who influence(d) you?
Where to start? I’m inspired by people who are trying to push the possibilities of their field — authors like William Gibson, Margaret Atwood, Charles Yu, Ursula Le Guin, Haruki Murakami, Anthony Burgess, Kurt Vonnegut, China Mieville, Paulo Bacigalupi, Junot Diaz, Connie Willis, Liu Cixin, Roald Dahl, Yoon Ha Lee, Geoff Ryman, and Ted Chiang.
Tell me about your book / series. Wizard of the Wasteland
- Give me a one-line ‘hook’ line: A reformed addict and a travelling showman team up to save a group of enslaved children.
- Tell me more: My Wasteland series is a character-driven story about finding hope in a hopeless word. Abel, a reformed addict joins with a self-proclaimed wizard who travels the wastes with his show, passing off pre-apocalypse technology as items of magic and intrigue. When they stumble across a group of children enslaved by the brutal drug gang The Family, Abel and the wizard use their ‘magic’ to mount a rescue.
How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have?
I have one full novel that will never see the light of day and two novels where I got to around 20,000 words and abandoned them.
What’s your opinion on the practice of ‘banning’ books?
Pointless. Ideas always find a way out. The best way to kill a dangerous idea is to engage with it.
Connect with Jon Cronshaw at the following links: