GUEST AUTHOR - THADDEUS ARJUNA

This month's guest author interview is with Thaddeus Arjuna, who is a multi-genre author with two murder-mysteries, a sci-fi trilogy, a biography, spiritual odyssey and book of poetry, odes, short stories and rants! That bio alone has to whet your appetite!

He says of himself, I write almost entirely eBook novellas. I feel that an E-book is a living, breathing entity. It is a medium that allows me to make changes whenever I want, add, redact, re-edit, and breathe new life into the story! And I can honestly say that almost all of my books have evolved continuously over the last 10 years. #ReadAndReview

How interesting to see a digital version of your books in that way, it's a good point, but with such a diverse portfolio of work, how do you choose what to write?

Initially, I had a plan to write three books. My parents had a printing press company, and they had several author friends, like Walter Farley, Yan D'Hartog, and John D MacDonald. They were at our home regularly when I was growing up, and Mr. Farley inspired me.

My first book was "Something is Wrong with Janet." She was my mother and also an institutionalized manic depressive. It was a difficult book to write because I got a lot of pushback from family members.

My 2nd book was "The Mansion at Peacock Gully." It was the first book I published. A true crime story. The first 3 books were about events or experiences I had growing up or earlier in my Restaurant career.

Gosh, that sounds tough to write a book about your own mother, particularly with such a challenging medical diagnosis, and obviously not everyone in the family approved which must have added to your pressure, I'm so sorry to hear that but well done for tackling it.

Let's talk about your writing style and preparation next. What do you do?

I usually jot down a few things I want to write about in a story, and have a mental outline of how I want it to flow. I have only written one book in the first person, although I usually use one of the characters as a first person too.

But I do have a problem with choosing names. I struggle with it. If I am writing a true story, I will use the same names, changing a letter or two. Nowadays I do searches for names, Sci-fi, Civil War, Asian Hindu names ( For Vishnu's Tears). Creating the characters is tough, too, but I enjoy the process immensely.

I love researching names too, thank goodness for the internet 🤣 What about your characters' language style - do you allow swearing?

I swear all the time, so in most of my books, the characters do too.

That's interesting, because I struggle to use swears in my prose, I've no idea why! And how about purple prose - is that an issue for you?

The only books that I can be accused of purple prose are my Poetry book, "The Beautiful Sadness," and my Romantic Fantasy, "The Siren's Red Tide Diary." And that would be debatable. I think both books are beautiful.

I think poetry makes it more allowable somehow! Now lets move onto publishing. Indie or trad?

I know how hard it is to traditionally publish. I self-publish because essentially, I am writing for myself. I retired 10 years ago, and I needed something to do. I never had any delusions of making a living from this. I just wanted it to fill a void. And maybe I would learn something about myself.

I'm indie too, but mainly because I want the control (too many years being self-employed has done that to me!), but also I'm impatient 😂 What about the editing side of things - what do you do there?

Because I write e-books exclusively, I do regular editing. I feel an e-book is a living, breathing thing. You can always make it better. I use grammarly and I just bought the pro Grammarly.

And what about your process pre-publishing, such as sending out ARCs, deciding on a cover, etc?

I frequently give away my books for free. If they write reviews they are my beta readers. If not? Oh well.

And my friend Carol Marrs Phipps has done all of my book covers but one. She has also done all of my banners.

Okay, seeing as you've mentioned reviews and the poor uptake of readers leaving some sort of feedback, can we talk about the trickier side of writing. What things do you consider your nemesis?

I am horrible at promotion, and I struggle with every single word. With writing, I know when a book is flowing well because the writing comes easy. But I can say that as I get older, that is almost never.

I also need to improve marketing, but I have really been hurt because I lost access to a much larger account on X/ Twitter (24K followers), and I don't trust marketers (because their are SO many scams on Twitter.) I just started with Cathy (Cathy's Promos) and she turned me on to you.

Well thank you to Thaddeus (and Cathy too!) and if you'd like to find out more about Thaddeus, then please click on his Amazon author page link here or his X link here. And if you enjoyed this post, then press here to get all the latest updates emailed directly to you via follow.it (You can unsubscribe at any time). Thank you!