Some of the toughest questions anyone could ask of a novelist allow you, the reader, a chance to get to know your favourite authors even more. Not for the faint-hearted!
John Dolan
John's Bio:
"Makes a living by travelling, talking a lot and sometimes writing
stuff down. Galericulate author, polymath and occasional smarty-pants."
John Dolan hails from a small town in the North-East of England. Before turning to writing, his career encompassed law and finance. He has run businesses in Europe, South and Central America, Africa and Asia. He and his wife Fiona currently divide their time between Thailand and the UK.
John Dolan hails from a small town in the North-East of England. Before turning to writing, his career encompassed law and finance. He has run businesses in Europe, South and Central America, Africa and Asia. He and his wife Fiona currently divide their time between Thailand and the UK.
Links:
Twitter @JohnDolanAuthor
Amazon http://www.amazon.com/John-Dolan/e/B008IIERF0/
and now the hard bit:
1. Describe any strange writing habits or a sequence of things you always do before clicking away at the keyboard.
I guess I need to keep this clean, right? OK. The first thing I do
before clicking away at my keyboard is to put my laptop in a bag and go and
find a nearby coffee shop. It is usually a Starbucks:
not because I like the coffee, but because there are so many of them locally.
They seem to breed like rabbits. I have no idea why, but the sound of bored,
disgruntled baristas, and the sight of inedible processed food sets my creative
juices flowing. Or maybe, like a serial killer, I work most efficiently when I
am among strangers. In fact, my probation officer expressed the view that this
method of working was likely linked to some uncontrollable violent urges on my
part, and he wants to discuss this idea further once he is out of hospital.
2. What was an early experience where
you learned that language had power?
I suppose it was listening to jokes when I was a kid. In the
working-class area of North-East England where I come from, everyone told
jokes. I think it was – and still is – a coping mechanism for the
disenfranchised. (Gosh, am I getting political here?) Funny stories have a
strange power, and sometimes they can make you cry, as well as laugh. An
example? Sure. “I’ve just
been to see an art exhibition on depression. The pictures had hung themselves.”
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When I gave the manuscript of my first novel Everyone Burns to my wife Fiona she told me the first forty pages
were ponderous and needed a fundamental re-write. It taught me never to give
her a copy of one of my manuscripts again. But she was entirely correct,
dammit.
4. If you could have written any book
in the world (old or new) what would it have been and why?
I guess, the Bible, because
technically that would make me God. But seriously, and setting all pretentions
of divinity aside, it would have to be The
Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro – a beautiful, faultless masterpiece
of restrained emotion. It reduced me to tears.
Most Indie writers I have encountered hate marketing their books – and I
can understand why that would be the case, since selling yourself/your works
can be a dispiriting and perhaps at times demeaning experience. It doesn’t feel
like something we signed up for when we wanted to be writers. However, for me, editing
is the worst part of the whole deal. It is necessary to ensure you end up with
some kind of quality product, but I still find it awful. Hence, I invest a lot
of time in planning out my novels beforehand to try to reduce the amount of
editing required. Writing mysteries (as I do) makes this a bit of a
prerequisite anyway if I don’t want to discover plot holes the size of the Titanic at a later stage. Even so, by
the time the editing is done, I am heartily sick of the sight of my latest book
and cannot wait to get it published and off my desk. Inevitably, it will be at
least six months after publication before I can even bear the thought of
opening that book again. So, the biggest emotion I feel on publication is relief.
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Is that what I write? Certainly, that’s the genre you’d find my books
filed under, but at the time I started out I had no intention to write anything
that would fit into a ‘genre’. I recently heard a talk by the Scottish crime
fiction writer Ian Rankin, and he said pretty much the same thing. Apparently,
in his early years he would sneak into bookshops and move his novels to the Literary Fiction section, since he
considered himself a ‘serious’ writer (or so he said, chuckling). The other
strange thing is, that I don’t usually read crime fiction (in fact, I prefer
non-fiction to fiction, but that’s another story). So, why I write what I
write, I really have no idea. Some little guy in my head comes up with the
ideas, and I’m just the typist really.
7. How would you describe your writing
style, and why?
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Planning. The thought of looking at a blank screen with a blinking
cursor, is terrifying to me. Hence, before I embark on writing a book, there
will be at the very least a detailed spreadsheet showing all the key events etc
by chapter, and a Word document describing the main characters and their
development trajectory. Some writers can write with little more than a vague
outline, but not me. I’m much too anal for that.
9. What are your future writing plans?
My first priority is to complete the Karma’s
Children series – which requires me to write another two books: the first
of which, Two Rivers, One Stream, I
am aiming to publish in 2018. I also have a collection of poetry and two
unpublished plays, which I am musing on what to do with at present. I have
ideas for two completely new trilogies, one stand-alone novel, and a
non-fiction book. In what order I will tackle these, I don’t know. Once Karma’s Children is done and dusted, I
can take a deep breath and decide where to plunge in next, assuming my creative
well-spring hasn’t dried up by then!
NOTE: To celebrate the launch of Restless Earth, from 24-28 November, A Poison Tree will be FREE
to download on Amazon Kindle, Everyone
Burns will be available at the heavily-discounted price of 99cents (99p in
UK), and the short story Jim Fosse’s
Expense Claim is also FREE. So, this is your chance to get lots more
background stories and information on the characters in Restless Earth while this offer lasts! (Available on all Amazon
sites worldwide.)
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Restless Earth
by John Dolan
Giveaway ends December 31, 2017.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
Thank you, John, for your interesting answers. I have to take exception to be mentioned in the same sentence as one of my own writer heroes though... Richard Greene, Lorne Greene, maybe - both author luminaries as we know ;-) but Grahame Greene!!! OTT!
I must point out that John's latest 'Restless Earth' be out soon. I've been waiting for this one for a while and already have mine on pre-order for its Nov 24th release date! You can pre-order now too!
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