Indie Interview: @GeneDoucette, author of Fixer
Conversations with authors and writers from the self-publishing world.
Meet Gene Doucette
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Best Known for: The Immortal Series
Gene is also a humorist and an award-winning screenwriter and playwright. He lives in Cambridge MA with his wife and, when the colleges aren't in session, his two children.
Dear Gene, thank you
very much for agreeing to participate in the Indie Author Spotlight!
How long have you
been writing and how did you get started?
I’ve always been
writing. That probably sounds like a pretentious response, but it’s
basically true. As soon as I learned how to read and then discovered
that it was someone’s job to arrange words for other people to
enjoy, I wanted to do it. My mom still has a poem I wrote in first
or second grade back when I wanted to be Shel Silverstein.
Your book Fixer,
is doing quite well, was this your first book? If not, what was your
first published book and did it do well?
My first published
novel was Immortal, and then came the second book for that
series, Hellenic Immortal, and then Fixer, which is a
standalone book unrelated to the other two. All three books have
been doing very well!
Tell us a little
bit about Fixer…
Fixer is a fun
book. It’s about a guy named Corrigan Bain who grew up with the
ability to see about five seconds into the future. He uses this
ability to run around town and save people every day, which sounds
like a decent enough profession, except he tends to hallucinate the
ghosts of people he failed to save and he’s pretty sure he’s
going insane. And then it gets more complicated when it turns out
there is something living in the future that doesn’t like being
seen.
How does this book
differ from other Sci-Fi/fantasy novels?
Well it’s kind of
an amalgam. It’s present-day and has a lot of elements of—in
addition to sci-fi/fantasy—mystery, suspense, horror, and humor.
And when the reviews first started coming in I heard a lot of
“superhero” comparisons, which is true even if it’s a category
I never actually thought of.
I have a habit of
toying with ideas that might have magic in them in someone else’s
hands. Part of the fun is taking something that would involve a
certain degree of mysticism or, well, something supernatural, and
taking away the magical part and looking for a way to make the same
thing happen without it. In Fixer, I sort of started with the
notion of a guardian angel and then tried taking religion out of the
equation.
You’ve written
and published a novel, congratulations! How do you define ‘success’
in terms of being an Indie author?
I don’t think an
indie author should have any different expectations. We have seen a
lot of massive success start with indie publishing in the past few
years, and I’m sure we’ll see a lot more in the years ahead.
Indie publishers are much more nimble and can respond more quickly to
market needs, and can tolerate underperforming titles far more than
the big publishers. I expect books that nobody knew they wanted
until they wanted it to come out of the indie market. I don’t
expect to be surprised by much coming from the mainstream.
Do you have any
special tips that you’d like to share with other authors, regarding
writing, marketing or publishing?
I don’t know that
the tips I have are any more special than anybody else’s. I will
say that writing is hard, and anyone who says otherwise could
probably be a better writer than they are.
There is an absurd
amount of advice out there on how to write a novel, but the only
thing you should care about is finishing it. Use whatever approach
you want. If you finish it, you did something really difficult and
you should be proud.
Now stop being proud
and start rewriting it, because the first draft sucks. Trust me.
Is there anything
you’d like to say to your readers?
Thank you for reading!
Stop by my blog or tumblr or twitter or facebook author page and say
hello, I’m lonely.
Why did you choose
to write in the sci-fi genre?
I don’t think there
was a choice involved. I wrote what I thought would be cool to write
about, and when I was done people said it was sci-fi so I said okay,
it’s sci-fi. I mean, it is, but I didn’t set about
writing in this genre, it’s just that what I wanted to write fell
into that category.
Do you also read?
What sort of books?
I do read, of course,
but I am sort of terrible about it. I will read for research, which
means a lot of non-fiction science and history books, and I will read
fiction. But I can’t read fiction while I’m writing fiction,
because I am a natural mimic. I will end up adopting another
author’s voice, and sometimes when I sit around and figure out the
plot of my book I find myself plotting someone else’s book instead.
When I do read fiction my tastes run toward authors who write things
I can’t even fathom writing myself. For example, everything Neal
Stephenson ever wrote.
How did you learn
to write?
Is that a thing? I
thought people just started writing.
I guess the aforementioned mimicry is the answer to the question. I read a lot more fiction when I was younger and wasn’t also attempting to create fiction, so I’m sure I spent a lot of time dissecting the things I liked to see what it was about them that I liked, and then learning how to do the same thing. But the I learned by doing chestnut is probably the real answer.
What are your
thoughts on self-publishing vs. traditional publishing?
This can be a
short answer, a long answer or a super long answer, because this is a
complicated question. The short version is, do what makes the most
sense for you and understand the strengths and weaknesses of both
decisions. For instance, self-publishing means you need to be a
masterful self-marketer and you need to do it all day, every day, for
a long time. But you can adjust the price of your book to whatever
you want and expect to see all of the net from it yourself.
I think
self-publishing is kinder to some genres than others, but I also
think that it will always be the case where you will hear, “the
book is self-published but
it’s actually good” because it’s not something anybody assumes.
Now having said
those things, I’m bound to get a lot of feedback from people who
want to tell me what I didn’t consider. This is why it’s
complicated.
Do you have any
more books being released soon?
I
do! In February of 2014 I have a book coming out called Sapphire
Blue that is actually supernatural erotica (again, I don’t pick
genres, people tell me after the fact what they are) that I’m
putting out under the name G. Doucette in order to give it a little
separation from my other titles. And in October of the same year
Immortal at the Edge of the World will be coming out. That’s
the third book in the Immortal series, and I’m working on it
right now.
Is there anything
else you’d like to tell us about yourself or your books?
The books are all
awesome and you should read them. Like, now. I’ll wait here.
Thank you, Gene!
GIVEAWAY!
ENDS NOV. 8
