Interview with Australian author James Hutchings!

So I had the wonderful chance to interview an author by the name of James Hutchinson 🙂  I thought this was awesome because everyone knows Australians have totally awesome accents!

James Hutchings lives in Melbourne, Australia. He fights crime as Poetic Justice, but his day job is acting. You might know him by his stage-name ‘Brad Pitt.’ He specializes in short fantasy fiction. His work has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, fiction365 and Enchanted Conversation among other markets. His ebook collection The New Death and others, is now available from Smashwords.

He blogs daily at Teleleli

He was kind enough to answer aaaaaalll my questions and gave a little information about his book as well! Check it out!

When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

I think I’ve wanted to do something creative since I was a teenager. But I’ve tried several different things, such as music and filmmaking, before I finally settled on writing. To be honest, if it turned out that I was actually better at, say, painting than writing, I think I’d be happy to change. So in a sense I still haven’t decided.

How long does it take you to write a book?
The New Death and others took almost exactly a year.

What is your work schedule like when you’re writing?

Since this one came out, I spend more time promoting it than writing. I make sure to write every day, but I don’t set a particular amount that I ‘have’ to write.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

I know a lot of authors have, or claim to have, various little compulsions like only being able to write on an old typewriter, but I’m pretty indifferent to my surroundings when I write.

How do books get published?

Having read Twilight, I ask myself the same question.

Where do you get your information or ideas for your books?

Some ideas just pop into my head, without me knowing where the idea comes from. An example of that is a recent poem I wrote, called ‘Angel Square‘, about a square where angels take the place of pigeons. I carry a notebook with me everywhere I go, and write down ideas as they occur to me. I don’t think I have more or better ideas than anyone else, but people who don’t write don’t bother putting their idle thoughts down. Other ideas come from experiences in my life. For example a while ago I found three injured birds in the space of a few weeks. I took all of them to the local vet. As I was carrying one of them, I thought that the woman at reception might wonder where I was finding all these injured birds, and that was the inspiration for my story ‘Lost, Feral or Stray’. I’ve written a lot about cats, based on having been a cat owner.

Of course other fiction is a big inspiration. In some cases it’s obvious. I’ve done poems directly based on stories by HP Lovecraft and other writers for example. In other cases it’s more subtle: for example the city of Telelelior Telelee is partly based on Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar, partly on Terry Pratchett’s Ankh-Morpork, and partly on Port Blacksand in the Fighting Fantasy series. the dialogue in Lord of the Rings had a big influence on how my characters talk.

When did you write your first book and how old were you?

This year, and 38.

What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

My other main hobby is coding online games. I spent several years writing an online game called Age of Fable (www.ageoffable.net). I don’t have any plans to do more on it, but it’s still online, and you can play it for free. I’m currently working on an online ‘card’ game, like Yu-Gi-Oh or Pokemon. I’ve also done a few smaller projects. For example I did an online version of the computer game Oregon Trail.

What does your family think of your writing?

I haven’t seen any of my family for many years, so I have no idea.

What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your books?

I was surprised just how many people are putting out ebooks. I was also surprised to learn that ebooks are quickly taking over from printed books as the main way that people buy books.

How many books have you written? Which is your favorite?
This is the only full-length book that I’ve written, other than a novel that I wrote years ago which was pretty bad.

Do you have any suggestions to help me become a better writer? If so, what are they?

Nowadays anyone can self-publish. If you can make a Word document, you can have an ebook on Smashwords or Amazon. However that means that if your work is no good, no one’s going to stop you. I’d recommend that people get onto Critique Circle (www.critiquecircle.com) and/or Scribophile (www.scribophile.com), put their work up, and listen to what people tell you. Don’t ‘defend’ your work against people’s ‘attacks’. They aren’t attacks, they’re helping you. I’ve found that the people who defend their work have a strong tendency to have the worst writing, I suppose because they’re not making the changes they need to make.

My next point doesn’t matter if you’re going to self-publish, but it is important if you want to be published by a regular publisher, or if you want to submit stories to magazines. Most places won’t publish work that’s already been published. And most places count putting a story on the internet as publishing it. In my opinion that’s silly, but that’s what they do. Scribophile and Critique Circle are exceptions, because google doesn’t index them and you can’t see any stories without logging on. However there are writing group websites out there where, if you put a story on the site, that counts as the story being published. That seems like a really terrible way to set things up, but they’re out there.

I’d also say that getting a book out isn’t the final step. It’s just the start of the work of self-promotion. This is true even if you’re not self-publishing: I’m told that authors are expected to pretty much arrange their own book signings and so on (if you just want to have a book out to show family and friends then this doesn’t matter, of course).

There are a lot of sharks out there, who make their money from authors and not from readers. They will make all sorts of promises about how they’re going to promote you and help you, but these are lies. Authors do not pay publishers, ever, and if they’re asking you to pay then it’s a scam. Of course if you’re self-publishing you might end up paying someone to design a cover for you, or you might pay for internet advertising, but those are different things. You might also pay a printer to print your books if you want to get physical books rather than ebooks – but in this age of the kindle and print-on-demand I don’t know why you’d want to. Preditors and Editors (www.pred-ed.com) is a good website to look at, and you can get good advice at the forums of Critique Circle.

Finally, I’d suggest learning to touch-type if you can’t already. You’re going to be doing a lot of typing, and every hour you spend getting faster at typing will save you ten in the long run.

Do you hear from your readers much? What kinds of things do they say?

I read a lot of reviews on blogs, and on sites like goodreads.com, but I don’t get a lot of emails from readers.

Do you like to create books for adults?

Even though The New Death and others has ‘adult content’ in it such as swearing and violence, I think that I would have liked to read it when I was a teenager. I’m not sure the distinction between children’s books and adult’s books is that clear, perhaps especially in fantasy.

What do you think makes a good story?

I think there are things that are essential, like having conflict and a resolution, but those things aren’t sufficient. A lot of good stories have plots that are very unoriginal, or that sound bad if you heard the plot without reading the story. I think it’s a case of ‘you know it when you see it’, which is why it’s so important to constantly get feedback and revise.

As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?

I wanted to be a lawyer for many years. I was a dull child.

 Thanks James for the interview! Go check out his work everyone!
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Comments

  1. Thanks! I've been really lucky with being able to interact with some awesome authors… The best part about that is being able to glean bits of wisdom from them that you might not have thought of 🙂

  2. I really enjoyed reading your interview of author James Hutchings. Your article provides a wealth of information that is really needed for writers in these changing times. 🙂

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