Episode 25 - The Game with Sean Ellis

In this week's episode, we discuss the new thriller anthology, The Game, to which Alan and David each contributed a story. Our guest is Sean Ellis, who conceived of, contributed to, and edited the anthology.

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Show Notes

Updates on writing and the proverbial "real world."

David's new book, Quest, was the #1 Hot New Release on Amazon's Men's Adventure chart.

Promo: I Should Be Writing

The Game anthology from Seven Realms Publishing

How/why Sean conceived of the anthology.

How Alan adapted his very powerful character to a "being hunted" scenario.

How David chose the particular setup of his story.

Sean's thoughts on the variety of stories in the anthology.

The lasting impact of "The Most Dangerous Game."

The power of the "man hunting man" theme.

Parallels with the popular YA series The Hunger Games.

Catching up on all of Sean's current and forthcoming books including Dark Trinity and Callsign: King.

How Sean manages to juggle multiple projects.

Visit Sean Ellis on the web at www.seanellisthrillers.webs.com.

Episode 24 – To Pen Name or Not To Pen Name

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We talk geography and that Dave will soon be moving to a much better place in the US.

Alan talks about research and the beauty of not needing any with pure speculative fiction.

Here’s the link to the Joanna Penn interview Dave mentioned that he did.

http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2011/08/10/writing-thrillers-david-wood/

We talk about The Game anthology, which is out now.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Game-ebook/dp/B005F9YFHU/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_2

And here’s the cool cover:

We go on to discuss the use (or not) of a pen name. Dave writes in multiple genres and is wondering whether he should keep his fantasy name, David Debord, along with his thrillers under his real name, David Wood.

We also discuss the nature of author branding and how much it can help or hinder an author’s career.

We discuss the nature of book stores and libraries and their need to have books in the right place, which is not an issue now with online stores.

This leads to a discussion of book covers making genre and style clear.

We discuss how sometimes publishers insist on an author changing their name to avoid sales downturns with new books from midlisters.

This leads us to talk about new publishing options which might allow unclassifiable books to be published where they might never have been published before.

Episode 23 – Keeping It Real

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We talk about the nature of research in fiction.

The blog post Alan refers to regarding research:

http://www.alanbaxteronline.com/2011/07/21/fiction.html

We talk about making sure the real things in our novels are correctly represented in order to not upset the readers who would know. And to add realism for the people who wouldn’t know.

We talk about the duty of editors to fact check the work of their authors.

We discuss the importance of beta readers to proof and fact check.

The importance of research, especially travelling to places you’re writing about in order describe them well.

The beauty of modern technology, like Google Earth, to help us with our research.

And, in a shameless plug, if you want to get your fight scenes right, read Alan’s short guide to writing convincing fight scenes, Write The Fight Right, available for only $1.99 - http://www.alanbaxteronline.com/write-fight

And Dave’s new Dane Maddock book is out – Quest. http://davidwoodonline.blogspot.com/2011/07/friday-update.html