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Jason Venter 

Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’ve written all kinds of books. As a child, I wrote books for my friends by cutting up sheets of copy paper and writing and drawing on them. Then I got a computer and typed stories. I got my worst million words out of the way around the time I graduated high school. The number of books I’ve published in any sort of official capacity, however, is pretty low: two. More than 20 years passed between each one, so I’m hoping to cut down on that delay a bit as I get cracking on the third book.

What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My latest book is Forest Lessons, and as I want to avoid spoilers, that’s nearly all I can say. I should mention that I read and and loved a lot of works from David Eddings, another author from the Pacific Northwest, so certain parts of his works have inspired my writing in general and my newest novel in particular.

Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Not really. Picture an overweight, middle-aged man sitting in a chair and typing in the middle of the day, with no sound except the clackity-clack of typing. That’s my habit.

What authors, or books have influenced you?
My writing has been influenced by a variety of bestselling authors from years gone by: Terry Brooks, David Eddings, Robert Jordan, Lloyd Alexander, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, L. Frank Baum, and so forth. More recently, I’ve been reading a lot of mystery novels from the likes of Sue Grafton, Robert Crais, Lawrence Block, John D. MacDonald, Ross Macdonald, and Michael Connelly. It’s too early to say, but I might have picked up pieces of their technique by way of osmosis. I’d be okay with that.

What are you working on now?
I just finished writing Forest Lessons, and I plan to follow that up shortly with its sequel. The series takes place in a massive world I’ve had in mind for most of 20 years, so just about anything I write going forward will take place in that world.

What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I’m still learning about promotion, honestly. I have a budget of $0, so I’m open to trying just about anything if it reaches people who might genuinely be interested in what I have to say. I’ve learned from previous marketing efforts that numbers don’t tell the whole story. I’d much rather talk with 10 people who appreciate what I’m doing than 1000 people who don’t.

Do you have any advice for new authors?
Turn writing into a habit. My biggest problem over the years has been a failure to develop and maintain my writing habit, which means that every time I do find myself in the mood to write more fiction, it’s like I’m starting from scratch all over again. Even just writing, editing, and working in close proximity to fiction for a few minutes every day is enough to make it feel natural.

What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Stop spending your time worrying about things you can’t change, and focus on those things you personally have the power to do something about. It’s difficult advice to follow, but I’m working on it in my own life and so far I like the result.

What are you reading now?
I am finishing up The Bones in the Attic, by Robert Barnard, as well as Darker Than Amber by John D. MacDonald. I also look forward to returning soon to Jim Butcher’s series with Ghost Story, but two books at once is probably enough.

What’s next for you as a writer?
I don’t actually know what’s next for me as a writer, but I do know that I want to keep writing. I realized some time ago that I can’t see myself being truly happy spending much of my time doing anything else. I plan to buckle down and write regularly in hopes of finding a wider audience as I tell stories within the world I have created. There are enough of them to keep me busy for a few decades, most likely.

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings, The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks, The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander, and The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis. But I wouldn’t be happy about it.

Author Websites and Profiles
Jason Venter Website
Jason Venter Amazon Profile

Jason Venter’s Social Media Links
Facebook Profile
Twitter Account

Lindsey Blick 

Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I help catch naughty folk for the Government, hunted pirates in the Persian Gulf,
and sailed through the Suez Cana twice. I’ve successfully run in the Walt Disney
World Marathon as a woman, climbed to the top of Mount Fuji and been kicked
off Mount Rainier taught English Conversation in Japan and can analyze anyone’s
handwriting.

And I’ve written three books, 1) The award-winning Naughty or Nice – Whose
List Are You On? I hand out at lectures on red flag behaviors in relationships; 2)
The bestseller, The Happiness Code, I co-authored with Ray Brehm and other
authors and we share the happiness hacks we use, you can use too, and 3) the
award-winning epic, fantasy adventure, The Devil Pulls the Strings, set to launch
on September 15, 2021.

What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
I wrote The Devil Pulls the Strings to honor the hero’s journey and infuse Slavic
mythology and the many faces of Baba Yaga, the mother of all witches. Because I
grew up reading grand tales and epic fantasy adventures and listening to my
Grandma Yetta and other relatives share all sorts of bedtime stories which fueled
my imagination and fed my soul.

Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I routinely work 14-16+ days, so I squeeze in writing whenever opportunities open,
before anyone stirs or wakes in the house, on the two-hour train ride to and from
work, meal breaks, and after everyone in the house falls asleep.

When I write, I love to listen to music and surround myself with art, so I find songs
perfect for scenes and chapters, and search online to find images that resemble
characters, objects, and locations in the story to inspire and motivate me as I write.

What authors, or books have influenced you?
Stephen King, George R. Martin, Edger Allen Poe, Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain,
and J.R. R. Tolkien, to name a few.

What are you working on now?
Marketing and logistics to put everything in place for The Devil Pulls the Strings
novel, audiobook, and graphic novel. And once that’s finished, work on the
podcast series of the book can start. And after that, I can work on the next book in the
series.

What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
My website is http://jwzarek.com/.

Do you have any advice for new authors?
Identify who your audience is, create your logline, synopsis, beat sheet, and
outline, then write your draft first, then edit after your draft is finished.

1) Identify who your audience is.

Do you write for yourself, a targeted audience, or a specific genre?
If you write for yourself, write what you want, because who cares what anyone
else thinks but you. However, if you write for a targeted audience, remember to
tailor the material accordingly. And when you write for a specific genre, read, know
and understand the genre.

What genres are you drawn to most? Read the top twenty-five bestselling books in
the genre.

Next, ask yourself the question, what stories would you like or love to see in the
genre you haven’t seen before? Now go forth and write these stories in the genres
you’re most drawn to.

2) Create your story’s logline, synopsis, beat sheet, outline, and back of the book
blurb.

Logline

A logline is how you describe your story in 30-words or less.
– Ideally, your logline should be one sentence long. However, when your story is
complicated, a couple of sentences may be required.
When you think of loglines, you can also think of what’s said to describe a film or
movie. Here’s the logline for Die Hard, starring Bruce Willis:
”New York City cop travels to Los Angeles to reconcile with his wife but learns she’s been taken hostage by terrorist in a skyscraper — and he struggles
alone to save her.”

After you have your story’s logline, create your story’s synopsis, beat sheet,
outline, and back of book blurb.

What Is a novel synopsis?
A brief summary of your story’s main plot, subplots, and ending, a few
character descriptions, and an overview of your major themes.

What is a beat sheet?
A beat sheet is a precursor to a screenplay outline: it identifies the important
moments in the story and lays out what needs to happen in each act of the story.

What is a novel’s outline?
A document that includes important planning information about your novel’s
structure, plot, characters, scenes, and more. It is the skeleton of your novel.

What is the back of the book blurb?
This is what’s written on the back of the book cover that gets the reader to want to
open and read the first page. The blurb is a short, yet descriptive account of the
book shown on the back cover of your book, often 100 – 200 words, but can be
longer, between 500 – 800 words. And the blurb should include any information
that represents the book best and intrigues the readers.

3) Write your draft first, then edit your finished draft after.
You can write your draft or edit, but you can’t do both simultaneously. So instead,
focus on writing your first draft. Because when you finish, you have the knowledge
and accomplishment you’ve written the first draft.

Stephen King, says everyone’s first draft is manure. And it’s during your revision
process the best parts of your book shall happen.

What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Read, write and always learn and strive to improve your writing, because everyone
has a story inside of them that needs to be told, so write and share your story with
the world.

What are you reading now?
I’m re-reading Stephen King’s book On Writing a Memoir of the Craft.

What’s next for you as a writer?
I have a personal goal to write one hundred books. I’ve written three books, so
ninety-seven more to go.

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
1) Ulysses by James Joyce.
It’s a long, dense book perfect to read on a deserted island.
2) The Complete Works of William Shakespeare in a single volume.
What’s not to love, romance, tragedy, comedy, and more.
3) The U.S. Navy SEAL Survival Handbook.
– It has too many useful tidbits and nuggets.
4) The Complete Works of Stephen King.
– on my nuclear-powered Kindle Paperwhite (Hey, it could happen).

Author Websites and Profiles
Lindsey Blick Website
Lindsey Blick Amazon Profile
Lindsey Blick Author Profile on Smashwords

Lindsey Blick’s Social Media Links
Facebook Profile
Pinterest Account

C.J.S. Hayward 

Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m an Eastern Orthodox author with a finger in many pies (kind of like Borges, though I’ve been more influenced by C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton). I was surprised to be told that on Facebook my initials are not given as “CJSH,” but I trilettered to “CSH,” i.e. “C.S. Hayward”

I’ve lost count how many books I’ve written. My complete works collection spans twelve volumes of four to six hundred pages.

As for a bio, let me give two author bios:

About the Author
Who is Christos Jonathan Seth Hayward? A man, made in the image of God and summoned to ascend to the heights of the likeness of God. A great sinner, and in fact, the chief of sinners. One who is, moment by moment, in each ascetical decision choosing to become one notch more a creature of Heaven, or one notch more a creature of Hell, until his life is spent and his eternal choice between Heaven and Hell is eternally sealed.

Man, mediator, midpoint, microcosm, measure: as man he is the recapitulation of the entire spiritual and visible creation, having physical life in common with plants and animals, and noetic life in common with rank upon rank of angel host, and forever in the shadow of that moment when Heaven kissed earth and God and the Son of God became Man and the Son of Man that men and the sons of men might become gods and the sons of God.

He’s also a writer with a few hobbies, but really, there are more important things in life.

A longer bio reads:

Orthodox Theology and Technology: A Profoundly Gifted Autobiography
Cover for Orthodox Theology and Technology: A Profoundly Gifted Autobiography
BUY ON AMAZON
O Lord, I know not what to ask of Thee. Thou alone knowest what are my true needs. Thou lovest me more than I myself know how to love. Help me to see my real needs which are concealed from me. I do not dare to ask either a cross or a consolation. I can only wait on Thee. My heart is open to Thee. Visit and help me, for the sake of Thy great mercy. Strike me and heal me; cast me down and raise me up. I worship in silence Thy holy will and Thine unsearchable ways. I offer myself as a sacrifice to Thee. I have no other desire than to fulfill Thy will. Teach me to pray. Pray Thou Thyself in me. Amen.

St. Philaret of Moscow, a high rank of bishop, unusually named after a layman, St. Philaret the Merciful.

A picture of C.J.S. Hayward standing in front of the wardrobe believed to have inspired C.S. Lewis’s “The Chronicles of Narnia.”
Used by the quite gracious permission of the Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL.

It is not particularly unusual for a teenager to lie awake in bed and wonder about the biggest questions: “Who are we?”, “Where did we come from?”, “Where will we go?”

What is unusual in my case, as I wondered and tried to answer questions like, “Is there an external world?”, “Can there be a perpetual motion machine?”—”If so, how can it get started?” “What does it mean to be ‘”Jonathan Hayward?’”, “Am I a being of the same class as those I observe about me?”, is that I was not a teenager. I was a little boy, too young to think about any of those questions in words. and so I worked out my idiosyncratic and even solipsistic metaphysics by thinking in pictures, and this is in fact my earliest memory.

People (some agree, some don’t) say that a person’s earliest memory can be illuminating, and it has been commented that this is an unusual first memory. I have read a number of people’s earliest memory stories, and not one that I have read is like this. The one that jumps to memory is a girl saying she remembered her Mom holding her and then passing her to another woman, and asking, “Who is this?” and being told, “That’s your grandmother.” An earliest memory is normally a story, not to mention simple and concrete. I was a bit of an outlier.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

I was born in 1975, a firstborn son to John and Linda Hayward, when my father was a grad student. My father studied physics, and my mother would go on to study the teaching of English to speakers of other languages. I was born almost three weeks overdue. A botch by my Mom’s obstetrician meant that at my birth both my mother and I were fighting a deadly infection. I spoke in complete sentences before my first birthday, and at the age of two fell down stairs and hit my head on a concrete basement floor. My eyes rolled back and I did not respond to stimuli. I survived, but spoke slowly, spoke very little, and stuttered. My Mom prayed over me and the stuttering was taken away. When my father had graduated and I was one, my parents moved to Macomb, Illinois, where my father taught at Illinois State University (their homepage shows a young woman wearing goggles that are simply inappropriate for the work she is doing, a common syndrome when photographers try to make a model look scientific). A major goal in their move was to be able to raise me outside of smog. When I was three, my family moved again, to the house where I have my earliest memory, and where my father began teaching at Wheaton College, where he worked until retirement. He had studied physics, but worked in computer science, and served both as a professor and a high-level in-house consultant at Wheaton. He introduced me to puzzles and questions relating to what we found most interesting in computer science (e.g. a question about the foundational ‘pigeon hole principle:’ “You are in a dark room and cannot see at all, and have a drawer full of mixed black and white socks. What is the minimum number of socks you can take to be sure you have a matched pair?”), and Unix computer games, which I dialed into by modem.

Schooling from kindergarten on
I have fond memories of Lowell Elementary School, where I entered in kindergarten, sometimes dressed up as a cowboy with chaps or in a suit, and attended until third grade, when school and my parents sensed that I would do better at a specifically gifted school, and I entered Avery Coonley School in fourth grade, where the headmaster bent a number of rules and awarded me 25% of the total financial aid awarded by the school for that year so my parents could afford to send me. I was initially placed in the less advanced of two math groups (one year ahead instead of two), and in eight grade ranked 7th nationally in the 1989 MathCounts competition, programmed a four dimensional maze, conducted an independent study of calculus, and (re)invented recursion in programming and iterated integration in calculus.

After a brief class in modern algebra for math whizzes at the the University of Chicago which I didn’t really get, I skipped a freshman year at a local school to enter the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, where I continued to get high ranks in math contests, ran a Unix server that did the work of a local and hard-to-use social network. and actively participated in discussions, and programmed a video game on my calculator. Someone commented later that this was the first video game they’d heard of where you lose points for shooting things, although I wasn’t trying to be original. (I was trying to implement a game I’d envisioned in gradeschool.) In order to justify a decision, my high school asked me to take an IQ test, and the psychologist scoring the test almost fell off her chair.

The summer after my junior year of high school I trained as an Emergency Medical Technician at College of DuPage because I was frustrated at the shallowness of what I had taken in first aid class. I was also unsatisfied with the Emergency Medical Technician training, as it seemed to me then to only teach enough medicine to package patients up and ship them to the local emergency room, but there have been a few times I’ve used my training: once two summers later, in Malaysia, where I helped provide some faint parody of suspected spinal injury management in helping a motorcycle accident victim, who had evidence of serious internal injury, get to the emergency room when he was loaded into a nearby van instead of an ambulance. I also used knowledge about heat, years after that, to get an elderly dog to stop shivering after she was taken outside for a potty break and made a lethargic beeline to the place in the yard where the wind was least bitter, and stood there, shivering, until I picked her up and carried her back inside and did what I could to raise her body temperature. (I do not think she would have survived for more than a few hours more if I had not had that prior medical knowledge.)

I mentioned that two summers later I was in Malaysia. It was wonderful and I didn’t want to leave. The rest of my family went there for a calendar year; I choosed to stay in the U.S. for my freshman year of college, but joined my family for the summer. It awakened a lifelong interest in culture and the many ways time can be experienced, but beyond that I would refer to a book on writing college admissions essays which talked about avoiding clichés that college admissions officers are tired of reading, which included pet death and The Travel Experience, which runs something like, “In my trip to _______, I met new people and new ways of doing things. _______ challenged assumptions I didn’t even know I had, and has changed me forever. [And so on and so forth about life in _______.]” Please note that this description is entirely ambiguous about what continent, island, or space station “_______” was located on. Living in Malaysia was a life-changing experience, an eye-opener, and a delight, however I try to be careful to avoid stretching social patience in talking about my cherished travel experiences. Those who have already had a travel experience know what it is like; those who haven’t don’t want to hear me gush on and on.

I entered Wheaton College as a National Merit Scholar, but ran aground on a particular community requirement which, like others before and after me, some Christians are not comfortable with. When I stopped running from my conscience, I took the unprecedented step of appealing to the Board of Trustees to give a conscientious exemption to this requirement (no lesser figure had the necessary authority), they did not pay me the courtesy of letting the item be put on the agenda for consideration (they thought the voluntary nature of Wheaton made my concerns “evaporate”). The requirement, that Wheaton students don’t drink and dance, has variously and inconsistently been defended by Wheaton leadership as “just social mores,” “like vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity,” and a strict requirement of Wheaton’s conscience. I lay on bed at night, wondering, “If this is how Christians act, do I want to be a Christian?”

I transferred to Calvin with a broken heart. I ended up being able to take all of the highest-level math classes offered at Wheaton and also at Calvin, in totall a major and a half’s worth of them. I spent a semester in Paris at the Sorbonne, where I imagined the cultures of my own fantasy world, “Espiriticthus,” a fusion of the beauty I saw in Malaysia and France. I met my first Luddite, a man who commented simply that he would look into the window to the computer lab and observe that everybody seemed to be angry as they were typing. On a larger scale, I also had a painful relationship with a girl named Rebecca. In that troubled relationship, I am not interested in stating what she did wrong. I am interested, however, in stating what I did wrong. I approached that relationship, like life itself, as a department of mathematics. Meaning, as time passed, I did not relate to Rebecca as especially human, and I did not relate to myself as especially human either. Our relationship was mercifully broken off.

I spent a summer as a camp counselor and entered as a graduate student at UIUC, where I managed to get a master’s in applied mathematics, with a thesis accomplishing one thing usually associated with a PhD: carving out a niche where I knew more than anyone else in the world, in this case opening a new subbranch of “point-set topology” whose implications included a straightforward but rigorous way to handle infinitesmals such as bedeviled the foundation of calculus, in an academic discipline where it was hard to find something new to prove. Nonetheless, my advisor, the department chair, told me in one prolific summer that he regarded my many emails (see a later writeup of one topic covered) as “mathematics fiction” by analogy with “science fiction,” and he did not regard my math awards as indicating in any way that I was adequate in mathematics. He and one other professor approved my thesis without reading the second half.

Entering the work world, or trying to
My first job out of college, at an anonymous company, told me when I was hired that I had gotten the highest score on one test of any applicant yet, and I had gotten a perfect score on the linear logic test, and I submitted the best code sample they’d seen (“reads like plain English”). Then things turned a little odd. I believe the reasons were complex, but they boasted about the computers they gave employees then gave me what was apparently a hand-me-down, and more seriously when, in the interview process, I asked if I would be able to program in what was then the darling language in IT, I was told I would program in a language they compared to a Formula One racecar, but once hired, I was told I would program in a language that had a terrible reputation (one computer science great said that its use “…cripples the mind. Its teaching should therefore be regarded as a criminal offense;” lesser wits had compared it with a sexually transmitted disease in that “those who have it tend not to admit it in polite company”). I complained, believing in good faith that its use would be harmful for me. In retrospect I do not believe they made an intentional bait and switch, but there was some ineptitude in advertising what they advertised I would work with and then assigning what I was assigned to work with. Also, I think that is the main area where I earned my “not a team player” badge.

I was brainsized my third day on the job (they refused to tell me why…), and I was later told that fellow alumni of the company blocked me from getting jobs at other companies.

A few months later, I developed a terrible manic episode and my life was again in danger. However, the manic episode is less significant in its aftermath, where I was prescribed a year-long drug overdose that destroyed my abilities of mathematician. I spent a year of my life at my parents’ house (where I am still), lying on my bed, staring at the light bulb, with nary a thought running through my mind beyond, “This is worse than watching television.” When I saw my psychiatrist, I would inevitably ask, “When am I going to get my abilities back?” and with an edge of anger in his voice my psychiatrist would answer, “I don’t know. You’ve had a major manic episode, and it can take a long time to recover from a manic episode.” After about a year of this, my Mom dragged me against my will to a patient advocate group meeting on Wheaton College’s campus where a fellow patient, without medical credentials that I know of, listened to my complaints, asked about my medication, and said, “That’s not an effect of your manic episode. It’s your medication.”

I have incidentally complained about the provider’s preferred counselor to work with a complaint I could have directed at the psychiatrist equally well: trying to get anything done better was “like a magic spell, where you have to say just the right words, and say them just right, or else it’s all for nothing.” (It wasn’t, for instance, enough for me to tell him, and have other medical personnel he was working with to observe, that I was throwing up half my medication most days for a year. I had to make a request in just the right words, and just the right way, for him to prescribe the other form of the same medication which had all of the benefits of what he prescribed me, and no added drawbacks, but would not induce vomiting on a frequent basis.)

The hardest intellectual achievement I had made in my life was not some discovery; it was, after spending six months away from mathematics (including my semester studying French at the Sorbonne), regaining competency. I was never in my life to regain competency in research mathematics. Computer programming came back, but with difficulty and imperfectly. Humanities work, which I had always been interested in, came back almost immediately.

Picking up the pieces
After being on a less destructive dose, I took stock and tried to decide what I wanted to do with my life. I had had some rough times outside of academia; I would later hold one post for over a year, but I was fired after I reported a senior manager for harassment. I asked my pastor, who was also a professor at Wheaton College and one of the most charismatic people around, advice on how to get an interdisciplinary humanities degree, and was strongly advised to pick a single field and get a doctorate in that specific field: “American Studies” PhD’s from a department he taught at, who had studied an interdisciplinary fusion of American literature and history, were incredibly hard to place. History departments wanted a straight history PhD; literature departments wanted a straight literature PhD. I applied to several schools, and Cambridge University accepted me.

In the time between employment and Cambridge, I had joined a group of Wheaton students and some alumni, close friends, meeting every Tuesday night at 9:58 PM for a reader’s theatre reading of classic children’s literature, and it was lore that students from that group would enter a tailspin after leaving England (and it seemed almost every member of the group found a way to England at some point). However, I thought that that simply did not apply to me. It was not exactly arrogance on my part; past experience had been that I simply did not experience culture shock on cue. I had experienced culture shock, but not when I was expected to, and when culture shock was predicted, I experienced nothing particularly like culture shock. I had, furthermore, already lived abroad, so this wouldn’t be my first time outside the U.S.

New directions at, and after, Cambridge
There was a major crescendo of trial and providence involved in my getting to England; there were several distractions, and after six months of red tape and difficulties getting student loans, they fell into place one business day before I left. My college told me not to come into residence. Additionally, I had a growing lump by my collarbone and was very sleepy very often. Cambridge had admitted me for a diploma, not yet a master’s, and after I arrived on faith and things started working out, I was diagnosed and treated for lymphoma. And despite all this, I succeeded. After further difficulties and prayer, I was admitted to the master’s program, where at the beginning of the year I said I wanted to study the holy kiss, meaning a doctrinal study of ideas, and after reclassifying my intent as a sociological study of kissing that was not particularly edifying, I was told two thirds of the way through the year that my announced thesis topic did not fit my philosophy of religion seminar, and I would therefore have to change topic completely. (There was also some hideous confusion where it took all but two weeks to meet with my professor and fix the topic for my second compulsory essay, which was a two month project.) I pulled out the stops, wrote a still not particularly edifying thesis in AI as an Arena for Magical Thinking, and succeeded at earning a master’s in theology as well, albeit with not quite high enough marks to enter a doctorate. I went home and had my tailspin.

Now there were several things that happened along the way; the biggest one being, during my time at Cambridge, my reception into the Orthodox Church. And I would like to tell a bit about one particular nuance.

There is a tradition in Orthodoxy for people of sufficient age to choose a patron saint, and take that saint’s name. It is believed that not only does the catechumen choose the saint, but that the saint chooses the disciple from Heaven. I wanted to be called “John Adam:” “John” after John the Theologian, and “Adam” as bearing Sources of the Self’s burden of pioneering a new way of life for others to follow. I knew at some level that this was wrong, and I should have recognized I was choosing those names out of pride. A significant struggle occurred when I was wrestling with my guilty conscience, and after long resistance on my part, I repented. This just happened to be when a priest was reading the names of people commemorated in prayer. The next name I heard was “Christos,” and my surrender was complete.

The name has had some salutary side benefits I did not even think of. One thing I have found is that whether clergy are quick to dress me down for taking Christ as my patron gives me a highly effective early warning system for how well we will end up getting along. (It seems to reflect whether I am judged for obvious pride in choosing One above all Saints, versus perhaps seeing no legitimate way I might have been right in that choice, but still refraining from judging.) Now at my cathedral clergy are not happy about my name, but that came later, after I kept bringing horrible things to confession. I give no complaint about them. But social response has offered me a powerful and useful social cue.

As an author, I have usually given my name as “C.J.S. Hayward”, and on Facebook, which is not terribly friendly to such use of initials written out my name as “Christos Jonathan Seth Hayward,” which I thought would condense to “CJSH” when people spoke of me. I have been told that on Facebook it has instead condensed to “CSH,” meaning “C.S. Hayward.” Did I mention that I’ve read every well-known work by C.S. Lewis and most of his obscurities, and he formed me as a writer?

I might also mention that there is more besides the number of times my life has been in danger and I’ve survived (I seem to have more than a cat’s nine lives, though I have rarely been accused of being catlike.) I’ve had an awful lot of being in the right place at the right time in ways I do not that I can rightly take credit for. For instance, I built my first website within a year or two of the web’s creation, although it would be over a year between when I first built a website and I ever used a graphical browser. I used Lynx, a command line tool that displays text alone. It is still a good way to check if a site appears pornographic before loading graphical view; not the reason why I made a nasty parody site called “Revenge of the Hydra,” optimized for Internet Explorer, which if you load it, nine popup windows appear, and for each popup window you close, two more appear. (People on the Megalist wanted to ride me out on a rail for that one.) My main site, started in the early nineties, would grow to be a fixture of the web; when Google still published its PageRanks, my website had a PageRank of 5, a respectable PageRank for a medium to large sized organization, and was the top site in its category in directory.google.com. (I’ve won dozens of math awards, and hundreds of web awards.) It’s grown since then, and in some people’s opinions, it has only gotten better. Now I have worked long and hard to make my website a good site, but there was from the beginning a great deal of being in the right time and choosing decisions that would prove helpful for reasons I could not have imagined. I also published on the web when the tried and true advice was to pursue traditional publication. Now I am a traditionally published author; I’ve published two books with Packt, and they’ve been very good to me and I would heartily recommend contacting an acquisition editor for IT professionals who want to write a book. (Note to such professionals: the pay you receive directly from an IT publisher is a social courtesy; Packt pays more than many publishers but hardly enough to live on. For an IT professional to publish a technical book should be seen as a marketing move that will qualify you as a domain expert who can charge over $100 per hour for expert work.) However, while Packt is built to give structure to unformed authors, traditional publishing tripped me up, and my traditionally published titles are far from excellent and lower in Amazon ratings than those I’ve self-published. The core reason is that I do my best work when I am writing out of my heart, but working with editorial requests for major overhaul has been necessarily out of my head; I cannot summon or control my inspiration or awen at will. Even this work, alongside works I consider some of my best, is not the work I set out to write, though that is grace.

I wrote in another blog post that I believed I had experienced what I would call “fame lite.” Leonard Nimoy, in I am Spock talks about how Hollywood has teachers for all kinds of skills they would need to portray that skill in movies: musical instruments, riding a horse, and so on and so forth. However, there was something that no teachers were to be found in Hollywood: dealing with fame. Nimoy learned, for instance, how to enter a restaurant through the kitchen because there would be a public commotion if Spock walked in through the front door. And on that count, I do not obviously suffer the consequences of real fame. I’ve been asked for my autograph, once. I’ve had someone call out publicly, before I entered Orthodoxy, “That’s Jonathan Hayward!”, once. I have repeatedly had pleasant meetings with people who know me through my website. And since then, the only new tarnish to my claim of undeserved “fame lite” is in recent years when a job opportunity was really a cloak for attempted seduction. If that was because of my website or reputation; I am not sure it was.

My thorn in the flesh: harassment
However, there is another shoe to drop, a scorpion in the ointment: harassment. To take one example, whenever I made a new post to my website, an acquaintance from IMSA wrote extended and intense criticism that delivered pain, took me down quite a few notches, and elevating himself even more notches socially. No matter what genre, length, or really quality I posted, he would, he would deliver trenchant criticism that covered those bases.

At one point, when I explained why his contorting and twisting of my words into an actual alleged assertion that rape is the victim’s fault, followed by his giving me the most belittling lecture in my life, I explained where rape had come close to home and I found that the most offensive thing he’d said yet. He responded with another hefty serving of criticism. I asked him not to send any further criticisms on my writing. He responded with another hefty dollop of criticism of me personally. I asked him not to send any further unsolicited criticisms on any topic. He wrote, “Ok, I will not send any unsolicited criticisms, but I will take emails from you as solicitation for response,” and responded by another king-sized industrial strength dose of brutal, judgmental criticism.

A forceful “No” cc’ed to helpdesk@imsa.edu stopped his criticisms cold, or rather I think that the help desk explained to the great liberal what the word “No” means.

I have not heard from him since apart from one request to list him as a trusted contact on LinkedIn.

I also can’t say that I missed him.

This sort of thing has happened dozens of times, and not just with people who post a fantasy of their alter ego luring a boy into a car and being finished with him in under five minutes. For one couple of amateur psychologists, my months or years-long ongoing, repeated “No” was slapped down with an assertion that I was “sending mixed messages” each and every time, combined with moving forward with their attempts to help me with my (alleged) Asperger’s. This kind of thing is why I made a T-shirt saying:

Autism Spectrum, n. A range of medical conditions whose real or imagined presence in your life causes numerous socially inappropriate behaviors in amateur psychologists.)

As far as underlying social dynamics go, in the Bible King Saul wanted St. David dead and sent St. David on a suicide mission that would require killing two hundred Philistines. St. David succeeded in his quest. Then women were singing in the streets, “Saul has slain his thousands and David his tens of thousands,” which was about the worst thing they could have done for St. David’s welfare. It really would have been better for St. David’s political stock if the woman had chanted a cultural equivalent of, “David smells bad and his mother dresses him funny.”

That was the point where Saul went from wanting St. David dead to making him Public Enemy #1 and engaging in extended manhunts after his first outright attempt at direct murder failed.

My giftedness is not simply from my genes, even if my parents are both at the top of their game. It is actually common for profoundly gifted individuals to have birth trauma or early childhood brain injury; such insults to the brain usually push a person towards intellectual disability, but once in a blue moon they overclock the brain and cause an intensification of overgrowth. I’ve had both routes, and however astonishingly bright my parents are, um…

I had higher SAT scores in 7th grade than my father had as a high school senior, and when I took the Modern Languages Aptitude test, the UIUC linguist who scored it said,

…and here’s where it gets interesting. I’ve never seen someone complete this section before… Your mother scored in the mid 150’s, which is considered a very, very high score. You scored 172. I don’t know what to make of it. I’ve been scoring this test for thirty years, and I’ve never seen a score this high…

I was looking to avoid mentioning this, but my parents, especially in my childhood, surprisingly often dealt with me in anger.

In a moment of “I have no mouth and I must scream” after other unrelated situations of harassment and hostility from several other people, I gave my scream in The Wagon, the Blackbird, and the Saab.

My quality of life improved remarkably when I learned that a “CEASE AND DESIST” letter Cc’ed to abuse@gmail.com or other authority figure can stop harassment cold.

Schooling: Another attempt
Returning to education, in 2005 I entered Fordham’s PhD program. What I think I’d like to say about that was that it was a golden illustration of St. John Chrysostom’s “A Treatise to Prove That Nothing Can Injure The Man Who Does Not Harm Himself.” During that time, there were occasions where my conscience was extraordinarily clear and I ignored it. Furthermore, while external things may have been inappropriate, it was my own sins that gave them real sting. That a doctor took me off a medication I needed was not my choice. That I worried to the point of uninterrupted waking nausea about whether I would be able to find employment given that my work in the business world had been clumsy and my PhD “union card” to teach in academia was jeopardized, worriedly asking, “Will there be a place for me?” was my decision. Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger quoted in the NFL said, “We suffer more in imagination than in reality,” and I suffered much more in imagination than in reality then—that was my decision, and not the decision of even the most hostile member of the university. Possibly I could have completed my degree if I had not ignored a conscience at full “jumping up and down” intensity when I didn’t see a reason for what my conscience was telling me, and possibly I am guilty for failing to accept tacitly offered help. I washed out of the program in 2007. Perhaps the other thing really worth mentioning is what I intended to be my doctoral dissertation, which I wrote up in non-scholarly prose that one Roman reader called “the most intelligent and erudite” thing he’d ever read: “Religion and Science” Is Not Just Intelligent Design vs. Evolution.

The birth of a unique area of attention
Now I’d like to shift gears a little bit and talk about something else that has slowly developed over the years, incrementally and mostly imperceptibly to me.

Like others before me, I’ve bristled at the concept of “an idea whose time has come.” My main use of it, as a programmer who poked fun at tools he did not like and tools he did like, was to quote a fake advertisement for Unix’s “X Windows:” “An idea whose time has come. And gone.” When at Fordham I read Vatican II’s almost incessant anxiety to pay attention to “the signs of the times,” meaning in practice to pay attention to whatever 1960’s fads were in the Zeitgeist and take marching orders from them, I pointed out that in searching the 38 volume Ante-Nicene Fathers and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers collections, I could only find three or four references to discerning the signs of the times, and never a slavish imitation of Zeitgeist; one of them simply meant being on guard against lust.

Nonetheless, there is a sense in which Zeitgeist is real. It is a well-known phenomenon among mathematicians that a major problem will remain unsolved for ages and then be independently solved at almost the same time by several researchers: hence mathematicians are advised that if they discover something major, they should write it up and publish it as soon as possible, because if they don’t, someone else will get the credit for first discovery. And this is in what is possibly the least Zeitgeist-like academic discipline.

Gandhi has been popularly misquoted as saying “First, they ignore you. Then, they laugh at you. Then, they fight you. Then, you win!” and while researchers have traced a legitimate Gandhi quotation about how victory will develop if you apply Gandhi’s satyagraha or nonviolence in dealing with people hostile to you, this did not sound much like Gandhi to me. Nonetheless, it has some grain of truth.

When I wanted to do research on the holy kiss, at first I was bluntly ridiculed by my then current Cambridge advisor; he responded by asking cutesie questions about whether we could find reasons to only kiss the members of a congregation who were the prettiest, notwithstanding that in England there is a well-established social kiss and “Greet one another with a holy kiss” does not come across as a shorthand for all inapplicable ancient nonsense in the Bible as it might in the U.S. midwest, where hugs between friends are within standard cultural boundaries but kisses ordinarily are not.

Furthermore, when I tried to write a dissertation on it, every professor that sought to guide me took my intended doctrinal study, and reclassified it as a study of a physical detail of Biblical culture, to be studied alongside other Realia like, “When St. Paul said to put on the whole armor of God and used a Roman soldier’s weapon and armor as a basis for the analogy, what kind of physical weapon and armor would have been in his imagination?” which overlooks that the “breastplate of righteousness” and the “helmet of salvation” are the armor that God Himself wears in Isaiah. I drew a line in the sand and told my second advisor that I wanted to do a doctrinal study. He immediately pushed past that line and said, “The best way to do that is to do a cultural study, and let any doctrines arise.”

To my knowledge I am the first person who observed that the holy kiss is the only act that the entire Bible calls holy (excluding one reference to a “holy convocation” in the Old Testament where a different Hebrew word is translated “holy”), and it is called holy three or four times. This is one of the highlights that I condensed into a homily, “The Eightj Sacrament.” But then a few years later, I suddenly had people contacting me to tell me about the holy kiss, and people asked if I knew more than I had stated in the homily (yes, I did; the Ante-Nicene Fathers and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers collections contain something like a hundred references to a holy kiss, many of them boilerplate repetitions of “Greet one another with a holy kiss,” in festal epistles by St. John Chrysostom). Earlier I was rudely enough ridiculed by allies; then I was contacted in response to my website to inform me about the holy kiss by complete strangers.

At the moment I would downplay the importance of the holy kiss for active study. It is practiced in the Orthodox Church; I have said everything I want to say; I do not seek a kiss where none is offered. I have moved on to other concerns, one other concern as I am letting go as Fr. Seraphim of Plantina is in the process of canonization (one of my books, the one that’s gotten by far the most scathing reviews, is The Seraphinians: “Blessed Seraphim Rose” and His Axe-Wielding Western Converts).

I would like to say that The Best of Jonathan’s Corner is what I consider my overall best collection across my works and leave things at that, but I am rather suspecting another case of “Man proposes, God disposes.” The most important collection I leave behind (if any) may well be The Luddite’s Guide to Technology. The topic is loosely “religion and science,” but it is very different in character. “Religion and science” as I have met it, with one stellar exception, is about demonstrating the compatibility of timeless revealed truths of Christian doctrine with the present state of flux in scientific speculation. Science is, or at least was, characterized by a system of educated guesses held accountable to experiment. Orthodox gnosology (understanding of knowledge) should find this to be very, very different from how true Orthodox theology works.

With one exception, none of the Orthodox authors I hold dear know particularly much about science. The one exception is patrologist Jean-Claude Larchet, who raises some of the same concerns I do about technology, and does some of them better. Everyone else (for instance, Vladimir Lossky) shows little engagement with science that I know of. And if I may refer to the Karate Kid movie that was popular in my childhood, the sensei tells the boy, “Karate is like a road. Know karate, safe! Don’t know karate, safe! In the middle, squash like a grape.” The “religion and science” I’ve seen has a lot of “in the middle, squash like a grape,” by theologians who want to be scientific (and perhaps make what I have called the “physics envy declaration:” theologians-are-scientists-and-they-are-just-as-much-scientists-as-the-people-in-the-so-called-hard-sciences-like-physics), but who almost never bother to get letters after their name in the sciences, which are genuinely hard. My own formation, in mathematics, engineering, technology, and science, affords me the position of the blackbelt who declares, “Don’t know karate, safe!” Perhaps one blackbelt saying such things is needed!

Furthermore, my main concern from mathematics, engineering, technology, and science (all of which I was formed in, even if I’ve lost much of it) is not too much about science, but specifically about technology. I’ve experienced technology early; my life story and could largely be seen as a preparation for commenting on technology. And I have background in both studying theology academically and living it in practice.

Another dimension to profound giftedness
One reader who has studied giftedness at length commented to me that profoundly gifted individuals are often “very, very conservative, or at least populist.” I had thought earlier that my conservatism and my giftedness were two separate things. They are not, or at least there is a direct relationship.

The basic way I understand it is this. Possibly I had a contrarian spine built by requesting a conscientious exemption from Wheaton College’s requirements and leaving Wheaton College after it was not even put on the agenda. I have certainly had as much exposure to liberal recruiting, or more, than most liberals. But standard methods of recruiting gifted are less successful in dealing profoundly gifted. The university system has very effective ways of drawing in the gifted, and up to a point the more gifted someone is the better it works—but recruiting tools fall flat with some of the profoundly gifted. Much of the gifted range ends up liberal. It has been pointed out that the math department tends to be one of the most liberal, or the most liberal, department on campus, even though the author pointing this out (and I) have never experienced mathematicians trying to recruit to liberalism. I believe, apart from natural bents, that mathematics shapes the mind in a way that inclines towards liberalism. I stopped really trying to learn chess after I found myself at the Cathedral looking at my quarantine-dictated socially distanced space with regard to other parishioners in terms of what I could threaten to capture in a knight’s move. That may be superficial, and it may fade into the background with deeper study. However, mathematics does shape the character, in the direction of what Orthodox have called “hypertrophied dianoia, darkened nous,” i.e. “overgrown head and impoverished, darkened heart,” and mathematics may do this in a more concentrated form than humanities which promote the same. I certainly do not see that my successes in relating to my ex-girlfriend (there are some) were due to my bent to take a mathematician’s approach to relating.

Something that never happened in my formation in mathematics was that my advisor at Cambridge consistently tried to recruit me to Biblical Egalitarianism (he was a plenary speaker at at least one conference), for instance, by asking, “But what about Biblical Egalitarians, who believe that ‘In Christ there is no… male nor female?’” and I would dismantle the live grenade, for instance by saying that “who believe that” in English-speaking idiom means “whose non-shared distinguishing quality is that,” and second by saying that he was snuggling into the back door that “no male nor female” be cast along at least quasi-feminist lines, as opposed to recognizing that some conservatives (St. Maximus Confessor, for instance) hold that in Christ there really is no male nor female, but read it along profoundly non-feminist lines. (I think after a certain number of attempts my advisor gave up and accepted that I would not listen to reason.)

Yonder, which is a collection of works intended to answer and challenge feminism, might have been provocative when it was first published. Now there is much more than than the men’s movement, which I consider opening men to feminist-style protest. It is mainstream for women to dissociate themselves from feminism and “Like” texts that challenge it. When the U.S. Supreme Court came out in rainbow colors, I posted a response echoing First Things in the discussion at StackExchange, whose CEO is an adamant gay activist, saying, “The question is not whether gay marriage is possible in the U.S., but whether anything else is popular. It has been established that marriage has no particular roles, is dissolvable, need not be open to bearing children, and so forth. Why suddenly draw a line in the sand about marriage involving a man and a woman?” It was censored, with a comment of “Not even close!” However, in the time since then, I have seen comments not censored about the whole policy violation of turning the StackOverflow logo rainbow colors for a time and flipping it to veer in the opposite direction, and so on and so forth, was in fact not StackOverflow’s best moment.

C.S. Lewis has a tantalizingly brief remark in ?The Allegory of Love?, in reference to Spencer who alone receives almost undiluted praise in a book that is exacting of other authors, about how figures who turn out to be what some people call “ahead of their time” seem an odd throwback to the vintage past, when they first appear. Even Bach was respected in his life as a performing organist but not taken too seriously as a composer, because he composed in an area of music that had simply fallen out of fashion. I don’t want to compare myself to the famous people who populate the most obvious examples, but in regard to what Lewis said, it seems that some of my portfolio has matured.

My critiques of feminism may still not be mainstream, but they are no longer so far off the beaten path. As far as raising concerns about technology goes, we have gone past the point where one very bright friend tweeted a link to Paul Graham’s The Acceleration of Addictiveness and commented in only three words: “SOMEBODY UNDERSTANDS ME!” For that matter, we have gotten past the point where the cover of Time Magazine presents the Facebook “Like” button as a major part of our conundrum. Things that I said that were way off the beaten path when I said them remain of particular interest, but are far less provocative to say now.

When I tried to do a literature search before or during my writing of “Social Antibodies” Needed: A Request of Orthodox Clergy, I searched Amazon in regards to Orthodoxy and technology and was dismayed to find… my writing and nothing else so far as I could tell. Prior books that had influenced me such as Neil Postman’s 1985 Amusing Ourselves to Death and Jerry Mander’s 1974 Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (one Protestant friend answered my mentioning the title in mock puzzlement: “The author could only think of four?”), were available and remain available today. However, an encompassing theological argument that takes into account today’s singularity were simply not to be found.

Since then, times have changed, and I am not a lone author any more. I’ve learned a good deal from patrologist Jean-Claude Larchet, and what I’ve read from him on the topic is eminently worthy of study. I asked Ancient Faith to read “Social Antibodies” Needed: A Request of Orthodox Clergy, not exactly as a candidate for their imprint to publish, but to send to other authors to answer on the record. The response I got back was not detailed, but they said that they had forwarded the questions I raised for other of their authors to answer.

Two other comments before I drop this topic.

First of all, one thing that I can agree with one devotee of Fr. Seraphim of Plantina on is a quote that Fr. Seraphim tried to tell people he was a sinner and he was put on a pedestal anyway. I’ve been wary of being on a pedestal when I realized that I already am on a pedestal; God has just shielded me from some of the downsides. Apart from harassment, I have benefitted from what appears to be “fame lite.” Possibly I may get put on a bigger pedestal, but I am neither more nor less in God’s hands if God provides that.

The second one, perhaps a tangent, is that I am not mainly writing for success in my lifetime. Certainly I am not looking for writing to be lucrative; my revenues on Amazon, possibly due to Amazon’s ongoing repositioning and reinterpretation of its contracts, has gone from about US$150-200 per month to less than US$10 per month over a time frame when more and more people have discovered my writing. I am trying to write works built to last, and I have released my books under CC0 licensing (“no rights reserved,” meaning that anybody can republish it). This is an aspect of a long haul strategy.

Now to move on.

More wonders in Heaven and earth…
I have enlisted at the Orthodox Pastoral School, about which I have only glowing things to say. After health issues compounded by provider issues, I have asked to withdraw for the rest of the semester and re-enroll next semester when I believe I have good reason to hope I will be stronger. What they say I do not know, and I am not specifically counting on the measure of grace they have already extended to me. However, one possibility that is off the agenda is that God will stop blessing me because of what they decide. I would like to continue on with them, but if God has something else in store for me, I will just try and thank them for what they have already done.

The second thing is that I have prayed for years:

Prayer from St. Symeon for a Spiritual Father
O Lord, who desirest not the death of a sinner but that he should turn and live, Thou who didst come down to earth in order to restore life to those lying dead to sin and in order to make them worthy of seeing Thee the true Light as far as that is possible to man, send me a man who knoweth Thee, so that in serving him and subjecting myself to him with all my strength, as to Thee, and in doing Thy will in his, I may please Thee the only true God, and so that even I, a sinner, may be worthy of Thy Kingdom.

I am not praying that now.

Within the past month of my writing, I sent a polite email to a nearby priest and said that I was going to ask a blessing to visit the parish, when I realized that was not then an option due to the quarantine, and then I thought of asking permission to visit him face-to-face, when I realized that would not be an option for the same reason. But, I said, I wished in gesture to visit.

He responded even more graciously, and offered spiritual direction.

I asked a blessing of my confessor, and have begun receiving spiritual direction.

I have also been seeking for years to enter a monastery. That hasn’t happened yet, but I have a live conversation with a monastery now. It apparently won’t work out for me to visit again in 2020, but I have hopes of ending 2021 as a novice, possibly a “rassophore monk,” also called a “robe-wearing novice.”

A last measure in negotiations
The next thing is that in dealing with others, especially as regards difficulties with medical providers, the last measure of resistance I have offered is to let the other party have it their way and then let them decide if they like the consequences.

Earlier I came to the practice I am seen at on double the standard limit of one medication, and they decided to let me have my eccentric ways, at least for a time. But then they decided to relentlessly pursue strict standard dosing, and after a year or two’s power struggle, I let them have their way and I was in rapidly declining health. I can still remember the sad expression on my provider’s face when she realized what situation I was in: she was not in any sense happy that it looked like I would be dead within a year, but standard dosing was simply not conceivable as something negotiable, or a decision that was less important than my life. After three hospitalizations in about two months, insurance advised me to work with a doctor rather than a nurse practitioner, and the doctor found room in her heart to let me have maximum doses of two similar medications, plus another medication that would help. I returned to the even keel I had when I entered their care.

Experience has been that sometimes the only card I can play is to submit to being keel-hauled, and when I come up torn and bleeding on the other side, the other party figures out things it had not been able to connect the dots on before.

I went through that last measure again with the department recently.

I have been on a medication whose known effects include kidney damage and eventual death to kidney failure. I have been experiencing precursors to kidney failure, although not yet real quality of life issues; however, every time previously my providers tried to soften the blow to my organs by reducing my dose of that medication by one quarter, it seemed a cure worse than the disease. Kidney failure can kill me within a decade or two; the effects I was experiencing would likely kill me within a year. Every time previously, my provider did not like what my medicine was doing, but they chose maintaining my dose above causing my death in the short term.

This time, my provider decided to wean me off the medication already, which was having destabilizing effects, and furthermore to forbid me to even take a related over-the-counter medication that is dosed much lower than the prescription analogue, and furthermore does not damage internal organs, period. And I decided to offer the last measure of resistance: to submit to being keel-hauled and follow all of her changes to the letter.

After two days of feeling worse than drunk, I felt sober for the first time in ages, and have been writing prolifically.

More wonders
Before that happened, my writing experienced what I can only term a death, a religious experience I have forgotten, and a resurrection. My writing was growing scantier and worse; there was something morally corrupt. Now I am still not writing perfectly, but I feel younger. Decades younger.

I have also been involved with Toastmasters, to learn to better communicate with my neighbor. I participated, albeit didn’t rise above local level, in the 2019 Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking, and it is widely considered that the experience and preparation are worth it even if you do not place particularly highly, as I did not. I completed the Competent Communicator curriculum and have started on the Presentation Mastery path.

One of the things my spiritual father said in a first call or two is that we tend to think we have tried plan A (getting a doctorate in math from the University of Illinois and going from there), plan B (getting a doctorate in theology from Cambridge in theology and teaching, which would have left me saddled with over twice the major student loans I graduated with), plan C (getting a doctorate “union card” at Fordham), and are “going down the alphabet” in faint hopes…

…but God is always on plan A.

I believe that if I had made better decisions I could have a degree from Fordham. However, I don’t believe that God has withdrawn his care. If anything, he has given me a reminder that decisions have consequences, and a powerful reminder that placing reason above my conscience is not wise. At present I do not have the brand of PhD; I do have two master’s degrees connected with Orthodox theology and technology from excellent institutions, and quite a story with them. I think I am the most blessed I have been in my life, and stand to receive greater blessings still. I would close with words offered from a friend:

“Life’s Tapestry”

Behind those golden clouds up there
the Great One sews a priceless embroidery
and since down below we walk
we see, my child, the reverse view.
And consequently it is natural for the mind to see mistakes
there where one must give thanks and glorify.

Wait as a Christian for that day to come
where your soul a-wing will rip through the air
and you shall see the embroidery of God
from the good side
and then… everything will seem to you to be a system and order.

What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
The name of my latest collection is the twelve volume “C.J.S. Hayward: The Complete Works,” which are fading in. (You can see ten now at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09D8FLMS1).

Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I write as a spiritual exercise, but I don’t think that’s particularly unusual.

What authors, or books have influenced you?
Too many to mention. I’ve read 90% of what C.S. Lewis ever wrote, and that is an education in itself. G.K. Chesterton has also influenced me, and I have read St. John Chrysostom for ages; my favorite piece is “A Treatise to Prove That Nothing Can Harm the Man Who Does Not Injure Himself,” https://orthodoxchurchfathers.com/fathers/npnf109/npnf1037.htm

What are you working on now?
Taking a breather and working on something simple in theology to be translated to Urdu.

What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
One of the key SEO principles is to have good content that people will want to link to. Now I’ve done more than that, but people who start reading books can’t put it down.

Do you have any advice for new authors?
I wrote several times the length of the Bible in incomprehensibly high-IQ gibberish. That is to my knowledge all lost, and I don’t consider it much of a loss.

My recent ten to twelve volume series is about twice the length of the Bible, and it includes many good points.

What is the best advice you have ever heard?
If you want to write a Western, read a thousand Westerns. If you want to write a fantasy novel, read a thousand fantasy novels.

(Though there is something powerful about eclecticism in reading.)

What are you reading now?
Right now I’m taking a break from reading to attend to modernizing a client website.

What’s next for you as a writer?
I’d love to self-interview. I looked at these questions to help me see why?

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
The Bible, the Philokalia, and my own “The Best of Jonathan’s Corner” (https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1478219912). The works are worth review.

Author Websites and Profiles
C.J.S. Hayward Website
C.J.S. Hayward Amazon Profile

C.J.S. Hayward’s Social Media Links
Facebook Profile
Twitter Account

Matt T. Berry 

Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I had never written a book in my life before last year, and now (Aug 2021) I have launched 4 at once. I am an HR professional based in Australia, married with two boys (8 and 5) who are my inspiration. The first book, War, came to me in a dream and a raced to my laptop to get it down in time. The family loved it and we went from there, The Mis-Adventures of Alex series was born!

What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
The forth book in The Mis-Adventures of Alex series is called Birthday. It revolved around the main characted Alex (8) and his older brother Greg (10) helping their Dad setup the house to surprise their Mom when she comes home from work as it’s her birthday. THis book was inspired by me and my wife constantly promoting gratitude in our house and hoping some of it sticks with our boys.

Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I involve my kids inteh brainstorming sessions and this is more about filtering the outright crazy ideas and still giving them the respect of listening. I only need one or two gems to get my creative juices flowing. My wife in teh voice of reason and the detailed one who keeps the stories somewhat realsitic and me grounded.

What authors, or books have influenced you?
We love kids books in our house such as Ninja Kid and anything by Roald Dahl and David Walliams.

What are you working on now?
Promoting these four books I have just launched. The learning curve for writing/editing/illustrating/publishing was steep. Now I am reading all I can on marketing.

What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I am still learning this and it seems to be different for each country and market.

Do you have any advice for new authors?
Learn from the best but make your product your own.

What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Be different, be yourself.

What are you reading now?
I am a sucker for Jason Bourne stories, which is a far cry from children’s books, but I think it’s great to mix up the genres.

What’s next for you as a writer?
Take it slow and reflect on what i have done already. Gettign 4 books published is an accomplishment and I don’t want to move on to the next thing too quickly without time for reflection.

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Bourne Identity / Tropic of Cancer / American Psycho / Captain Underpants (for something different)

Author Websites and Profiles
Matt T. Berry Website
Matt T. Berry Amazon Profile

Matt T. Berry’s Social Media Links
Goodreads Profile

Cas Williams 

Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I am a South African author. I still live in South Africa, and my experiences in my beautiful country (especially as a woman of colour) has definitely influenced my writing. I am also neurodivergent, and I also use my experiences with my mental illness (and general weirdness) to guide my writing. I have written and published one book, however, I am currently working on getting my second book published by January 2022!

What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My debut novel is Death of a King. I am a huge fan of fantasy and science fiction, and love the whole found family trope! I am a huge fan of Marvel, and wanted to create my own version of a team of superheroes!
I wrote Death of a King in under a year (and if I am being honest, it is more of a novella), but I played around with the idea of a character who could not die, for a while. I also wanted a female character, who had the title “King”. And the rest, as they say, is history!

Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I tend to have long periods of frenzied writing, fuelled by custom playlists, caffeine, and action movies! I usually do the bulk of my writing in these periods, and then slow down to edit over a few weeks. And then I begin the process all over again!

What authors, or books have influenced you?
Phillip Pullman is someone I take a lot of inspiration from. He managed to create a whole universe (His Dark Materials) in a way that felt so effortless, in a way that made sense. I was also inspired by Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus- the writing was so lyrical, that I felt like I was in a dream.
I do have to include writers of colour on this list: Tomi Adeyemi, Tochi Onyebuchi, and Nicky Drayden- these are my favourite writers at the moment!

What are you working on now?
I am currently working on a literary/family saga. It will probably also be a novella in length, and will be very character driven, like all my stories.

What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I am not sure about this yet, but Awesome Gang is looking like the best method I have come across so far!

Do you have any advice for new authors?
I am still a new author myself, so the only advice I have is- don’t listen to other writers. I spent a lot of time, when I first started writing, on buying pretty notebooks and pens. I spent a lot of money on things that I couldn’t really afford. And I did these things because I was trying to write like other writers. It did not work! I am not neurotypical, and I don’t do my best work when I am writing from 9-5, or in a pretty notebook. Forcing myself to write like other, more established writers, (when I couldn’t afford it, and mentally and physically could not do it) did so much damage to the quality of my writing.
Be true to yourself, and be comfortable with your process! There is nothing wrong with it, or you!

What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Write what you know!

What are you reading now?
The Library of the Dead by T.L. Huchu

What’s next for you as a writer?
Working on my next project and making sure that I stick to my timeline!

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy.
War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi.

Author Websites and Profiles
Cas Williams Website

Danny Tuttle 

Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Hi, my name is Danny Tuttle, and the only book I’ve written is ‘The Prophet Paradox.’ I’m a retired chemical engineer and college physics teacher, an enthusiastic amateur researcher of ancient manuscripts, and an Air Force and Coast Guard veteran.
I live with my wife and daughter in Los Angeles, California, work from his home, occasionally wear pants, and travel daily, via the internet machine, to such places as the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas in Mogao, the Antarctic Icecube Neutrino Observatory, Hobbiton village in New Zealand, and the distant galaxies of the Hubble Deep Field.

What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
The Prophet Paradox was inspired by supernova 1987A, the first naked-eye supernova in 400 years. A burst of neutrinos (a type of subatomic particle) from the supernova was detected hours before the supernova was observed visually. I realized I could write a story about a scientist who detects neutrinos from a supernova, and then predicts that, hours later, a new star (a supernova appears to most people as a new star) will appear in the heavens.

Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I waited 33 years to finish the book. Is this unusual for a writer? Probably.

I wrote the outline and half the story of ‘The Prophet Paradox’ in 1987 shortly after the appearance of supernova 1987A. Then I looked for interested agents or publishers, found none, then left the project on the shelf for 33 years.

In 2020, I learned that I could publish an eBook for free, finished the book, and self-published.

What authors, or books have influenced you?
Tolkien, Frank Herbert, Roger Zelazny, George R.R. Martin, Neil Gaiman

What are you working on now?
Promoting ‘The Prophet Paradox,’ a lot more work than writing it.
Motional emf and Faraday’s law.
An analysis of the Thracian Golden Orphism Book, National Historical Museum, Sofia.

What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Websites like this one, since I’m not on Facebook, Twitter, have no website of my own, etc.

Do you have any advice for new authors?
Don’t wait 33 years to publish

What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Never judge anyone till you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.

Because then you’re a mile away, and they have no shoes.

What are you reading now?
Locke Lamora series, Scott Lynch

What’s next for you as a writer?
I have no idea. Probably write another book.

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
The Lord of the Rings
Dune
Lord of Light (Zelazny)
Till We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis

Author Websites and Profiles
Danny Tuttle Amazon Profile
Danny Tuttle Author Profile on Smashwords

Danny Tuttle’s Social Media Links
Goodreads Profile

Chris Thorndycroft 

Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m a British author who lives in Norway and am passionate about history – all periods! I have written nine historical novels including two trilogies set in Arthurian Britain.

What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Rotherwood: A Prequel to Ivanhoe. I was a massive fan of all things Robin Hood as a child. When I read Ivanhoe as a teenager, and realised what an effect it had on the legend, I knew I wanted to write a prequel one day.

Do you have any unusual writing habits?
None that I care to name.

What authors, or books have influenced you?
Oliver Twist and Treasure Island instilled a sense of adventure in me as a child that I have never lost. I later discovered Robert E. Howard, the prolific writer of pulp adventure, and became a fan for life.

What are you working on now?
Leaping forward in history a little, from the middle ages to the 18th century. I’ve always wanted to write a pirate novel and now I’m starting one! Adventure, battle and treachery on the high seas!

What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I’m still experimenting. Hitting social media and running promotions. Seeing what works. I don’t know how effective it is, but I really love Instagram.

Do you have any advice for new authors?
Don’t expect to be good right from the get-go. Writing is like a muscle. You need to train it up almost from scratch. Read widely. Write widely. Exercise that muscle!

What is the best advice you have ever heard?
See above. But also keep in mind that making it as an author is a marathon not a race. You have to start small and put the hours in.

What are you reading now?
Getting my nautical hat on by reading one of the classics in the genre; Mr. Midshipman Hornblower by C. S. Forester.

What’s next for you as a writer?
A pirate novel (or two), completing a trilogy of audiobooks and writing a new novel under my pen name.

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
The Lord of the Rings for its sheer length. Maybe a collection of hardboiled detective fiction like Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett to keep me guessing.

Author Websites and Profiles
Chris Thorndycroft Website
Chris Thorndycroft Amazon Profile

Chris Thorndycroft’s Social Media Links
Goodreads Profile
Facebook Profile
Twitter Account

Jamie Ray 

Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m a 46 year old womyn who identifies as non-binary trans non-queer lesbian (they/them/theirs) living in New Hampshire with her cats and a wonderful roommate who she hopes will never move out.

I’m proud to say I love the ladies. I’ve identified as trans since high school, or sometimes lesbian. At that time I thought I was a mxn trapped in a womyn’s body, but then realized I wasn’t, yet I don’t identify as womyn either. It was a long struggle of finding myself that wasn’t remotely fun & impacted my work, family, job & everything. In the past few years with the popularizing of the phrase ‘non-binary’ I finally found something that worked for me. There’s been some wonderful strides in gender & sexuality studies that I wish I’d had when I was young. Kids today are so lucky with all the resources and positivity that they often take for granted. I sound like an old maid, to use the horrible cliche, but I do like to remind them how lucky they are & not to bite the hand that feeds them.

I’m an activist for queer rights, and am proud to say I’ve marched with both Antifa and BLM. I’m a full time therapist. I have written articles for numerous blogs and magazines based on my work, often focusing on finding personal growth and healing via alternative spaces, and working with alternative parenting approaches for raising a sex positive child.

I wrote my first book in 2021 when I met Texas transplant Dr. Matthew Faustus, who had been involved with the Church and Christian academia until a few years ago when he became disgruntled. We were both at a queer spirituality conference when we started talking. I can write articles, but I’m too disorganized to write anything longer, while he’d been creativity stagnant and feeling spiritually lost. I had the ideas and he had the words. It was meant to be. We became friends and writing partners.

We’ve written two books, both published 2021: “Rebuilding America: A Liberal Proposal For A Post-Trump Social Revolution To Save America” and “The Little Dictionary Of Gender Identity”

What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
“The Little Dictionary Of Gender Identity”, published February 2021 in paperback and kindle.

Society was forever revolutionized when science verified the existence of more than just male, female and non-binary. We decided to put all the gender identities together in a dictionary. It came about when reading a newspaper clipping that said there were 18 identities? Really? We discovered there are so many many more. We do plan to update the book down the road if needed.

Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Is getting frustrated all the time count as an unusual writing habit? I’m joking. No, really, is it?

If it wasn’t for my wonderful writing partner Dr. Matthew Faustus, who has lots of experience writing and actually does the coherent writing while I do the incoherent brainstorming, I would never have written a book. I don’t have the attention span or organizational ability to write and finish a book. Its also so anti-climactic. Its out. The end. You don’t hear from anybody. So frustrating after all that work that can take years. I tried a few times, but even my master’s degree was torture.

What authors, or books have influenced you?
I don’t consider myself an author, so I can’t really answer this. My two books have been influenced by current events and social issues, while my articles come out of things I see in my work. Most of my writing was soon after graduating to build up my reputation.

What are you working on now?
Matt and I are finishing up a book examining heterosexual privilege and how it really is a thing that holds many of us back who aren’t in that group. It started as a conversation over if it existed or not. Pages and pages later … yes, it does. That’s planned for 2022 release. It’ll be on Amazon and bookstores around the world.

What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I’ve long suffered from agoraphobia and social anxiety disorder, so I don’t promote. Matt does all that for me. We have such a great relationship I’m happy to let him speak for me. I get really nervous talking to people if I don’t have a script prepared, so this is the first interview I’ve done of the book where I can work over the answers on my own time. Matt convinced me this would be fine to do and that it was time I spoke for myself. I also like my privacy, so I don’t have a website or facebook page or even instagram.

Do you have any advice for new authors?
If you can’t write, find someone who can. Part of writing is just the ideas, so if you have the ideas but don’t know how to put them down, don’t fret. Without ideas you have no book, so that’s equal to the person choosing the words for the page. Sometimes you can find an author who is looking for some idea to work on. I did. I was lucky. Two books later … wow.

What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Don’t be afraid. I don’t remember if someone told it to me or I heard it, but its been my motto all my life. Though, easier said than done.

What are you reading now?
I just got “Non-Binary” the new autobiography of Genesis P-Orridge. I grew up listening to Throbbing Gristle and really fringe experimental music, punk rock and others anti-social things. It was a place of safety.

What’s next for you as a writer?
Matt and I haven’t planned before our next book. It’ll probably happen by accident, like the last ones, if it does.

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Something by Ray Bradbury, cause he always made me dream big, and Virginia Woolf, who I was obsessed with in college. From there I’d want the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, but that puts me over the limit! I could list so many more! Of course, the hardest question is last.

Author Websites and Profiles
Jamie Ray Amazon Profile

 

Brock Poulsen 

Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’ve written several novels, but only a few are available to read. My current work has been on a fantasy story about revenge, and continuing my weird western monster hunter series.

What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My latest work is called Husk. It’s the third book in my weird western series, and in it I’m trying to show the struggles that good people have trying to do what they think is right. And in this case, what’s right is killing a zombie monster.

Do you have any unusual writing habits?
My best work happens in short bursts. I’ll take a 15 minute break from my day job and sprint: set aside all distractions and just write, ignoring typos or errors, just geting words onto the page.

What authors, or books have influenced you?
I really loved Brian Jacques’s Redwall books growing up, along with anything by Bruce Coville. More recently I have loved books by Marissa Meyer and Shannon Hale, both of whom tell gripping stories with real emotional stakes.

What are you working on now?
I’m writing the sequel to Husk, which dives further into how the wild west changes when there are monsters roaming around. I just passed 30,000 words, and it’s coming along nicely!

Do you have any advice for new authors?
The best advice is to read a lot of books. You know how you can listen to music and hear a sour note? When you read a lot, you’ll start to get an “ear” for sour words in a piece of writing. You might not know the theory reasons or the grammar reasons, but you’ll develop a sense of writing that sounds good.

What are you reading now?
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, and American Gypsy by Oksana Marafioti.

What’s next for you as a writer?
More novels! I’ll be publishing my fantasy story soon on kindle vella, and also bringing a sci-fi serial told in short episodes.

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
This question is impossible and I won’t stand for it. I can’t choose and you can’t make me. Honestly I have a hard time revisiting books I’ve already read because there are so many amazing stories I want to read.

Author Websites and Profiles
Brock Poulsen Website

Brock Poulsen’s Social Media Links
Twitter Account

Antonio Galarza 

Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Antonio Galarza is the author of Warlocks & Sorceresses: The Timeless Grimoire, the first book in the Division of Global Magic Affairs series. Fantasy, Supernatural, Romance, and Adventure stories fuel this author’s soul. Devoted introvert. General music aficionado. Creator. Infuriatingly humble TV fan. Corn-flake lover and friendly troublemaker raised in southwestern Puerto Rico. In the Land of Coffee, Yauco.

What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
We have always written in school for many hours. It was something I grew up NOT liking. However, in middle school, I decided why not create my own stories? At that point in time, I didn’t have a computer. There was no internet at home. But that didn’t stop me from picking up a blank sheet of paper and pencil and writing a story with all my favorite cartoon characters on it. It was crazy and I can hardly remember the plot anymore.

But over the years I discovered the internet, and what fanfiction was. Yes, it’s something you shouldn’t do. But I liked it and it also served as practice. I don’t condemn those who want to write stories about their favourite characters. As a reader, I might be guilty of that.

Years later, I wrote my own stories in a school notebook. In fact, I have three or four notebooks filled with outlines hanging around the house. But it all came about when my friend John told me the story was good and why not take my chapter outlines and convert them and publish them as a book. Which I did, and here we are.

Do you have any unusual writing habits?
There is not much to say about the process, really. It was a straightforward decision for me, actually. Apart from the fact that my ghostwriter, B. Steed, ghostwrote part of the story of my first book, which is no secret, really. I’ve to say I’m very grateful and proud of him. Such a wonderful soul.

During this time, I focused the process on creating a single story. But eventually I said to myself, this will not work, so after parting ways with my ghostwriter, the current story emerged. I didn’t end up using all the material he produced, which was a disappointment for me not to include. On the creative way, rather than financially for me. It thought about it, like a lot, but in the end it was something the story didn’t need.

In the end, I went down the path of multiple protagonists. It was the only way the story was going to flourish and progress. I wanted that cinematic feel to it.

There are nine protagonists in Warlocks & Sorceresses: The Timeless Grimoire. Actually, there are ten but one of them has only one chapter in the story, the prologue, in which this old man narrates the start of the entire story from an almost omniscient point of view.

I started destroying and rebuilding the old outline I had with my ghostwriter. From a story focused on one character, it became the story of ten characters with different backgrounds, goals, and personalities.

My nutshell process involves creating an outline along with a timeline with important dates for each day in the story. Then each chapter has its own document, where I make another outline. Yes, it’s funny, even my outlines become many small outlines which then have outlines of the scenes. A lot of research comes with it and don’t be afraid to ask for help on the web. If you become lost about a subject and need help, all the wonderful people that pass through Reddit are there for you.

What authors, or books have influenced you?
Oh, my God, I have too many. But to give you the short version in no particular order, Mark Lawrence, John Gwynne, Stephen King, H.C. Newell, George R. R. Martin, Arthur Conan Doyle, Cassandra Clare, Engle Jaimie, Stephenie Meyer, Anne Rice and many more I can’t remember off the top of my head.

You can take notes on which books influenced me when reading Warlocks & Sorceress: The Timeless Grimoire. It will be like a minor challenge for you to experiment.

What are you working on now?
Actually, in the sequel to Warlocks & Sorceress: The Timeless Grimoire titled Warlocks & Sorceress: A Celestial Misfit which has a cover already revealed on the Goodreads page, but I warn you not to read the synopsis which has spoilers from the first book.

Among other projects which are not in the same universe as this series. Includes one sci-fi fantasy standalone, one horror-comedy series, and one fantasy book involving Vikings.

What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I really don’t know what to tell you. I just comment on my social media and talk enthusiastically about my book to anyone who will listen. And the odd ad or two. In any copy of Warlocks & Sorceress: The Timeless Grimoire there on the copyright page, you can find my email. If you know of a bolder strategy, let me know.

Do you have any advice for new authors?
Write 500 words a day. And you will have written two books in a year.

What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Don’t trust your computer. Back up everything online.

What are you reading now?
I am taking a break from reading. I recently went way ahead of my reading goal this year. But if you ask me, the last thing I read was Curse of the Fallen by Newell, H.C. A very interesting story. Looking forward to seeing where the author takes her characters in the future.

What’s next for you as a writer?
Hopefully, I will be healthy enough to continue writing for many years to come. And let’s hope that next year will be much better than the last. For now, I want to concentrate on the second edition of Warlocks & Sorceress: The Timeless Grimoire, which comes out on August 27th with the new covers of the series.

In the meantime, the sequel Warlocks & Sorceress: A Celestial Misfit will be longer than the first book in the series, so I have to get back to work.

Warlocks & Sorceress: The Timeless Grimoire has also joined the Reader’s Choice Award Competition and we’ll see how it went on 1 September 2021.

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
If someone stranded me on a desert island, I would choose my three least favourite books to make a fire at night. There was one horrible book I had read to a certain point and left incomplete. It was about a soldier who mistreated women, and I think he even raped one nurse. I don’t really remember if it ever happened, as I completely stopped reading that book. I think they made a movie out of it actually, but I really put the name out of my head. Well, I would take four copies of that book to burn and have a bonfire.

If we are really talking about my favourites to read, I will never leave the house to get stuck on the desert island as there are over twenty books and I can’t carry them all.

Author Websites and Profiles
Antonio Galarza Website
Antonio Galarza Amazon Profile

Antonio Galarza’s Social Media Links
Goodreads Profile
Facebook Profile
Twitter Account

Ben Levin 

Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I have written somewhere around 150 different stories and books. Many of these “books” are actually just skeletons of stories rather than fully fledged, and I just like calling them books because it makes it sound more impressive. However, a lot of them have potential to become fully fledged books and I am pretty proud of myself for being able to come up with so many different story lines.

The other thing about myself I want to share is that I happen to be autistic, something which has actually helped me become a writer. I struggled to communicate when I was younger, but I found my voice through storytelling, which led eventually to writing. Recently, I was asked about my success as a writer in spite of being on the spectrum, and I want to point out a couple of things which are wrong with that question. First, the question implies that autism is a barrier to success which strengthens a lot of harmful stereotypes about how we cannot lead full and successful lives. Secondly, my success as a writer is not in spite of my autism. If anything, it is because of my autism.

What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My latest book, In the Hole, which is my first Young Adult novel, was inspired by a class at religious school where my rabbi showed my class a video about homeless children in Florida. Seeing their struggles opened up something in me and I wondered if maybe I could help with my writing. I then pictured my main character, David Kimball, and his story slowly began to come to me. I am delighted by how much potential I’ve been told In the Hole has to raise awareness about the homelessness crisis, and I really hope reading about what David went through can inspire other young people to overcome their own problems.

Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I have some habits I tend to engage in when I write, most of which I unfortunately find problematic. For example, I love warming up by playing a game for making up characters, but I think I am addicted to this game, because I usually end up making too many characters. However, there are other habits that are fine, such as playing music while I write, which I love to do. What is important for me is to make sure is that these habits aren’t limits that I end up feeling like I need to do before I write, or things that keep me from writing. I like being able to write regardless of the time of day and what I have access to, which is a goal I am working towards.

What authors, or books have influenced you?
There are a lot of books which have influenced me. In fact, I like keeping a shelf of the books which have inspired specific stories of mine, which I love having in my room. I call it my “Inspiration Shelf.” This shelf includes a Disney collection, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, several Magic Treehouse books, and many biographies. I also have a Hardy Boys book, and all of the books by one of my favorite authors, Sue Bentley. Also, the legendary Derek Jeter has written a series about the lessons he’s used to achieve his dreams, and it inspired a series I’m currently working on about a reading and writing club. It is important to remember that you can’t force the inspiration; inspiration usually comes to you. When you read, don’t look to be inspired, but also remember, this book could change your life!

What are you working on now?
I am currently working on five different projects: four stories as well as a book I wrote by hand, which I am now typing up. This final work is sort of a sequel to In the Hole, which depicts the story of David’s friend, Gloria who, like David, is homeless. This book, Thrive, focuses on the problems of both homelessness and racism. In addition, I am writing a biography about the Wright Brothers, a musical about a girl who is whisked to a magical world which I am still developing, and the seventh book in the series about a boy whose life revolves mostly around the friends from his reading and writing club. Also, I manage my school soccer team as a way to get better at writing sports series, and I write a book for the team every season. It is a lot of fun to do research so you can be better at writing about the things you love to write about!

What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
To be honest, I still have a lot to learn in that department. Mostly, what I do is post about my books on Instagram or Facebook, or do interviews such as this one. With every book, I learn more about selling my stuff, and I just need to work on keeping the stream of buyers going over time.

Do you have any advice for new authors?
I say this every time I am asked to give other writers advice: Read a lot of books, watch a lot of movies and television, and live a lot of life. Books, television, and life inspired and informed my stories. And it is also important to ask yourself: what are you passionate about? What do you regularly write about? Finding some common patterns can help you come up with new ideas for your stories. Similarly, what you like to read can also influence what you like to write. For example, I love reading about sports, friendship, and history…and I love writing about them too!

What is the best advice you have ever heard?
When my first self-published book, Ghost Wars, was released, I was a little frustrated by how slowly the sales went, and that I didn’t have a lot of books sold on Amazon. Once, I ended up venting about this is in Study Skills class and a friend told me, “Everything struggles at first and the important thing is to keep moving forward.” Hearing this from him helped me learn not to give up so easily, and also helped me become more patient with how things usually start off slowly. Even though I’ve had to be patient, both with book sales and with my growth as a writer, I can now see that it was necessary to have that time to grow. Now, with In the Hole launched and a lot more books being sold, I recognize the value of how I stuck with it over those years.

What are you reading now?
Currently, I am very engrossed in two different books I have to read for school: Born A Crime, by Trevor Noah, and The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller. Both of the books are heartwarming in their own way. I love The Song of Achilles because reading about Achilles and Patroclus’s relationship was so sweet, and they are so cute together! I also love Patroclus’s humility and thoughtfulness. Plus, I am grateful Miller made Patroclus the awkward small type because I am kind of similar physically and books don’t tend to make heroes like that, so I appreciate it.

I also enjoyed reading Born A Crime. It was humbling and saddening at the same time to read the pages, as Trevor Noah poured his heart, trauma, and soul into his book. I couldn’t imagine going through some of the things he’s been through such as having an abusive stepdad, not getting to see my dad too often in fear I’d give away the fact my parents had done something illegal, struggling with police brutality and prison, etc. And at the same time, I could relate to some other factors, such as Noah’s troubles with girls. Having relatable characters always makes books easier to read.

What’s next for you as a writer?
I have a lot going on with my writing. My publisher is releasing the first five books in my Nellie’s Friends children’s books series this December, and I am hoping to publish Thrive in a year or so as well. I also want to keep coming up with new story ideas and potential publishing material. Additionally, I have a lot going on with promotion this fall. I am running a book club and also organizing a sleepout at my high school to raise money for homeless and trafficked youth in New Jersey. I feel hopeful about whatever is ahead.

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Wow, this is another good question. I don’t know if I could only pick three or four! I did go to sleepaway camp once when I was 15, and I ended up taking four books with me then…and they were all biographies. I probably would take all biographies again…and at least one of them would have to be about an athlete because I love reading about sports.

I’d probably bring Derek Jeter’s The Life You Imagine, My Family Divided by Diane Guerrero, The Game of My Life, by Jason McElwein, and The Lions of Little Rock by Kristin Levine. It actually might be good for me to have only a few, because I tend to read a lot of books at once, and I usually end up skimming them, whereas when I have only a few books, I actually ending up reading them more carefully. Something for me to think about!

Author Websites and Profiles
Ben Levin Website
Ben Levin Amazon Profile

Ben Levin’s Social Media Links
Goodreads Profile
Facebook Profile
Twitter Account

Ricky Ginsburg 

Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Ricky Ginsburg began writing short stories and novels in October 2006 and has penned nearly 400 tales in a rainbow of genres since. He has three self-published novels readable on every modern device including handheld paperback:
• “A Tasty Murder” – August 2011
• “Sushi, Burgers, and Rocky Mountain Oysters” – March 2010
• “When Life Gives You Beef, Make Burgers” the sequel – June 2020
The first three novels of his murder mystery series, featuring Detective Valarie Garibaldi of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department have been published by Black Rose Writing:
• “The Blue Macaw” – October 2020
• “Shooting Limpkins” – April 2021
• “Clouds Full Of Ravens” – December 2021
• “Castro’s Pelican” – 2022
• “Herons Die Slowly” – 2022
• “Gulls Cry At Dawn” – 2023
• “Hawks Fly Alone” – 2023
“Boulong’s Cheese,” a post-Covid satire, will be released by Black Rose Writing in September 2021.

His writing comes from a lifetime of experiences, both normal and bizarre with heavy leanings toward the latter. Simply put, Ricky Ginsburg is one of those writers who sees a flock of birds heading south for the winter and wonders what they talk about on their journey. While much of his writing has elements of magical realism and humor, he also has a serious side, but keeps it in a small plexiglass box under his desk.

When he’s not writing, gardening, cooking, hiking, biking, traveling, taking photographs, eating massive quantities of sushi and barbecue, he enjoys mediation and chocolate egg creams. Despite a forced existence from birth until age eighteen that revolved around suburbia, Chinese takeout, and puberty, Ricky has managed to set foot on six of the seven continents, survived the loss of two wives, and eaten jellied monkey brains three times in search of the perfect flavor profile.

What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Clouds Full Of Ravens – 3rd in the Detective Valarie Garibaldi murder mystery series.

Do you have any unusual writing habits?
What is unusual?

What authors, or books have influenced you?
Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, John Grisham, Kinky Friedman

What are you working on now?
A Coming-of-age novel.

What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I wish I knew.

Do you have any advice for new authors?
This is a very expensive hobby.

What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Go back to sleep.

What are you reading now?
Kinky Friedman – The Prisoner of Vandam Street

What’s next for you as a writer?
Vacation

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
The Bible because I’ve always loved fiction and never had the chance to read it. War and Peace because it’s long and will make good kindling. Great American Short Stories, so I can read them over and over. The Tao.

Author Websites and Profiles
Ricky Ginsburg Website

Ricky Ginsburg’s Social Media Links
Goodreads Profile
Facebook Profile

KRISTA MARSON 

Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Hello! My name is Krista, and I am (or at least was) a traveling fiend. The advent of COVID-19 has pretty much grounded my travel forays, but I have a wellspring of memories that I can tap into. I presently work at a hospital, and I probably don’t even need to say how great my life has been the last year and a bit. Writing has been my escape hatch from this dystopian reality, and I invite anyone and everyone to join me in the bottom of my pit.

What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
I started writing my travel novel, MEMORY ROAD TRIP, four years ago after my niece asked me to tell her a travel story as we were sitting around bored at a wedding. I proceeded to tell her a story about how I got locked inside a French cathedral. She found my story so funny that she asked me to tell her another one, but the wedding toasts prevented me from telling her another hilarious tale. I always loved writing, but I mostly ever wrote poems. It took me a little while to find my voice, but once I found it, I wasn’t able to shut myself up. In the course of four years, I wrote over 250,000 words — enough stories to fill nearly three entire books. MEMORY ROAD TRIP is the first installment in what will be a three-part series.

Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Oddly, I have not suffered from writer’s block (yet! knock on wood.) I think I suffer from the opposite. I have too many thoughts and tend to “over-write” things. I’ve learned to embrace the mantra “kill your darlings.” I’ve murdered so many paragraphs during the editing process that there exists a literary graveyard under my desk.

What authors, or books have influenced you?
My heroes are John Muir, Victor Hugo, Vincent Van Gogh, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Henry David Thoreau (in no particular order.)
As a kid, I wasn’t a big reader. I always preferred to draw or write poetry. The first poet that I really got into as a teenager was Arthur Rimbaud, and I distinctly remember that I tried copying his style.
The first book that I ever read was James Michener’s THE SOURCE. I was given an assignment in high school to do a book report, so I searched through my mom’s stack of crime novels and found the least crime-looking one. I read the whole thing while listening to Europe’s “The Final Countdown” album. To this day, I can’t read a book unless I have music playing in the background.

What are you working on now?
I’m currently working on my blog (https://kmarson.com/blog/) and posting whatever thoughts come to my head at the moment. Other than that, I’m mostly focused on getting the word out about my book. I’d much rather spend my time writing the second installment, but as a self-published author, I am responsible for marketing myself, which isn’t nearly as fun as writing (so I’m discovering.)

What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Ya, good question. I’m still trying to figure the ropes out considering that I’ve never swung on them before. I am definitely open to suggestions. (hint, hint, wink, wink.) I figured that Awesome gang would be a good start! I’m not the most media-savvy person out there. I’ve managed to avoid Facebook until only recently. I have hardly any friends on there and it’s purely for the lack of trying. If anyone wants to visit my Facebook page and friend me, it will make me feel very special. For the most part, I think that I was born in the wrong century. Did I answer this question okay? I don’t think that I did.

Do you have any advice for new authors?
Being a new author myself, I still have a lot of questions as well, but I’m figuring things out as I’m going along. Writing is a lonely business, and it’s easy to forget that there are other people out there. The best advice I can give anyone is to find a good pair of eyeballs to read your novel before impatiently hitting the publish button. My number one saving grace was finding a good editor. Never underestimate the importance of ARC’s (Advanced Reader’s Copies.)

What is the best advice you have ever heard?
“Winter’s Coming.” There’s something about that phrase that makes me want to prepare for the worst.

What are you reading now?
Well, considering that I live in Phoenix, Arizona, I’m reading a book about cacti. I recently revamped my garden and planted a bunch of shrubs that haven’t survived the summer. Come fall, I’m simply going to stick a bunch of cacti in the holes that I already dug.

What’s next for you as a writer?
I’m going to quit my job at the hospital and work on making the book that I wrote into a movie. No? Don’t believe me? Ya, I don’t believe me either. Guess I’ll initiate Plan B then, which involves all the other internet promote-y stuff. Yada, yada, yada, we all know the drill. Personally, I’d rather just be a writer, but what good is writing if no one reads what I wrote? Marketing is part of the deal, so I may as well embrace it. Sigh. I wish that I was rich. Wouldn’t that just make life easier? If I was rich, I could afford to be a writer. What was the question again? Oh, ya, what’s next for me as a writer? Guess the answer is that I’m going to keep on writing but now with the side hustle of promoting.

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
The Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh. It’s a three-volume set, so does that count as one book or three? If I’m allowed two more books, then I’ll also bring along The Journals of Louis and Clark and Les Miserables.

Author Websites and Profiles
KRISTA MARSON Website
KRISTA MARSON Amazon Profile

KRISTA MARSON’s Social Media Links
Goodreads Profile
Facebook Profile
Twitter Account

Ben Lancour 

Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I am a physical education teacher in the Green Bay School District. Currently, I live with my wife and 2 children in Wisconsin. Henry and the Gym Monster is my only book.

What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
As a physical education teacher, I was inspired to start writing because there is a lack of picture books that teach social skills in the gym setting. I hope that this book encourages educators and parents to have discussions with their children about taking responsibility for their actions.

Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I wrote the book with only my raw emotions and experiences. No research was done. It was a huge mistake although my heart was in the right place, I should have sought out some more guidance before starting.

What authors, or books have influenced you?
Julia Cook and Joey Acker

When I taught special education, I used many of Julia’s books to have some awesome social skills conversations. After my job working with self-contained students who struggled with mental health, I transitioned to a new job and school district. It was here where I discovered Joey’s book. It was the first book that I saw that took place in the gym. That gave me the idea to combine Julia’s themes with my current role and classroom.

What are you working on now?
I’m learning how to write Amazon ads for Henry and the Gym Monster. I have not begun a manuscript for the next book yet.

What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I mean I have my own website, but not lots to offer outside my book. So traffic to my website is minimal at best. But I’ve seen lots of people do a great job at building a social media following. Facebook and Instagram (now Tiktok) are amazing! I’ve struggled in this area and decided to shift my focus and efforts elsewhere. In order to be successful with it, there are lots of things you can do, but need to be done in combination with each other. Engage at least 30 minutes a day. Post consistently! Stories, Reels etc… Making connections with people.

Do you have any advice for new authors?
Make a budget for yourself. Self-publishing got to be very expensive. Henry and the Gym Monster was a grad school project and then became a passion project post-graduation. The amount of time and money it took to complete was something I was not prepared for.

What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Join Facebook groups. There’s so much knowledge to gain and there are people that openly give it for free.

What are you reading now?
I didn’t read for my own enjoyment this summer as sad as that sounds. I recently completed a Kickstarter and was busy fulfilling orders, spending time with my family, and going “Up North.” Whatever I read is usually what my 4-year-old daughter picks out.

What’s next for you as a writer?
From a marketing standpoint, I want to line up author events/meet and greets next summer. Also, I’d like my book to be in as many local stores as I can get. I feel like for my book to gain popularity I need to make a difference in my community first.

 

 

Stefan Coleman 

Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Truthfully, I always struggle to write these, lol. Alright, well, I’m an English major but a math minor. I’m a substitute teacher born and raised in Alaska. I’m a graphic designer, and I’ve done all the cover designs and internal illustrations for my books.

I’ve written only the one book, with book 2 almost done and book three in the first draft stage. However, I’ve published about 120+, which are various notebooks, journals, and kids activity books on KDP, and I’m working to create a small business with them.

What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My latest book would be book 2 of my Firebrand series, titles Crimson Shores. This is inspired by a lot of things from Lord of the Rings to the old movie Captain’s Courageous and the BBC series Musketeers.

Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I’m a night owl, so if I’m not thinking about it, I’ll stay up working until 2:00 am sometimes. I also listen to music, and I’ll either listen to one of those hour long videos of epic music, or I’ll have a bunch of kpop playing.

What authors, or books have influenced you?
JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis are big, as are Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan. I also really like Timothy Zahn.

What are you working on now?
Right now, I’m working on a few more low content books for Amazon KDP, namely puzzle books for kids.

What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Twitter has been my best, as has Instagram, and I’ve seen some good traffic from Facebook.

Do you have any advice for new authors?
First, get on social media, and do it quickly. Build your author platform before your book is out, because if you try to build it after it’s out, it’s a lot harder to get momentum. Granted, is going to be hard anyway, but it helps to have the platform built first.

Secondly, as good as you think your book is going to be as soon as you finish the first draft… it’s really not. It takes a while to develop, but that’s alright. After you finish your first draft, go through and read it yourself, because then you’ll find the holes that need a little more filler. After that, rewrite the whole thing, and I mean literally put the document on one side of the screen, bring up a blank document on the other side, and then retype every word. You shouldn’t just copy/paste, as that defeats the purpose. By rewriting every word, you then decide if it has to be there, or if a better word will work, or if you need other words. You also see where your work is lacking.

Thirdly, trust your gut. If you think the story is good, then keep working at it. If you think something isn’t working, though, then it probably isn’t and needs to be changed. There’s a difference between the story being good and the story being conveyed properly, so even though your idea may be amazing, there might be a more amazing way to get that idea across.

What is the best advice you have ever heard?
When creating heroes, to every two virtues you give them, also give them one vice. In the same way, for every villain, give them two vices to every virtue. Perfect characters feel unrelatable, and flaws in characters make them more relatable to readers. If the villain has a virtue to them, then the reader cares about what happens to them.

As an example, Black Widow, aka Natasha Romanoff from Marvel Comics, started as a villain, and one of her defining traits is she’s constantly trying to make up for that in her life as a hero. She is extremely loyal to anyone she considers a friend or ally, she’s extremely intelligent, and she’s a really good fighter. However, she is not averse to killing (she kills pretty easily, actually) and she is really good at lying and keeping secrets. Her vices have reasons behind them, and help flesh out her character. Without her vices, a lot of her character is lost.

What are you reading now?
The Bible. I’ve been powering through the Old Testament (Leviticus and Numbers are tedious) and am getting into the action books.

What’s next for you as a writer?
Finish book 2 and then get on to book 3. I’ve got 6 books planned for my Firebrand series, so I’ve got a bit to do before it’s done.

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
How to Build a Boat
The Bible
A blank notebook
A blank sketchbook

Author Websites and Profiles
Stefan Coleman Website
Stefan Coleman Amazon Profile

Stefan Coleman’s Social Media Links
Goodreads Profile
Facebook Profile
Twitter Account
Pinterest Account

Miki Mitayn 

Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m an Aboriginal woman with stories to tell. I’ve been writing fiction since 2015 but The Conscious Virus is my first published novel.
I have three other books of the series at the first or second draft stage.

What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
The Conscious Virus was inspired by experiences of the Coronavirus Pandemic but it connects with ideas and experiences going back to 2015.

Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I write in the mornings before I go to work. Coming to the end of this book, I stayed up all night sometimes (or until 3 or 4 am), determined to get the best story out. Sleep-deprived, cranky, with nothing but my story to keep me going–that’s where The Conscious Virus came from. There was joy in it, too, as it came out to the world.

What authors, or books have influenced you?
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, Seth Speaks by Jane Roberts.

What are you working on now?
Although it pushed its way to the front to be the first book published, ‘The Conscious Virus’ will be the fifth or the sixth book in the Aedgar Wisdom series.
The first book of the series, the origin story, working title ‘Aedgar Arises,’ will be out next year. The first three books of the series are set in a remote Aboriginal community in the central Australian desert, close to Uluru.

What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
My own website has a loyal following. It has featured extracts from the conversations Nerida has had with spirits since 2015.

Do you have any advice for new authors?
Keep listening to the voices in your head. Love and value yourself. We are each here for a reason and writing keeps you on your path.

What is the best advice you have ever heard?
When I was a confused young woman, an old Aboriginal man told me to begin healing by loving myself. I considered it and began to treat myself with kindness and compassion. It saved my life. So, I know that an idea can help change a person’s life, if they are ready to hear it.

What are you reading now?
Spirits of the Ghan by Judy Nunn and Salem Falls by Jodi Picoult. I’ve just finished Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child. At work at lunchtime, I’m reading Both Sides of the Fence, a memoir by John Spencer, a man of Aboriginal and Scots ancestry about the history of Central Australia.

What’s next for you as a writer?
I’m looking forward to producing an audiobook version of The Conscious Virus in the next few months.

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
The I Ching (The Book of Changes), the Wilhelm translation; Traditional Healers of the Central Desert: Ngangkari by the NPY Women’s Council; The Macquarie Dictionary; Dear Veronica by April Crawford.

Author Websites and Profiles
Miki Mitayn Website
Miki Mitayn Amazon Profile

Miki Mitayn’s Social Media Links
Goodreads Profile
Facebook Profile

Kevin Kryptor 

Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
First book in this Cryptocurrency Explained Simply series is “Bitcoins, Blockchains and Smart Contracts” now available.
Two or more books expected in this series by end of 2021.

What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
“Bitcoins, Blockchains and Smart Contracts” inspired by increasing public interest in cryptocurrencies.

Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Not really unusual. I write scientifically. Mostly, nonfiction.

What authors, or books have influenced you?
Many authors in many different genres have inspired me. Too many to mention briefly.

What are you working on now?
Currently working on completing this Book Series “Cryptocurrency Explained Simply” by the end of the year 2021.

Author Websites and Profiles
Kevin Kryptor Website
Kevin Kryptor Amazon Profile