Glad to
speak with you today Nina Lewis!
How long
have you been writing romance novels?
I have been
writing stories, on and off, since I was nine or ten. Mostly in imitation of
the stories I was reading, so I started with versions of The Famous Five and Malory
Towers, imagining myself and my school friends in exciting adventures. Then
I started reading my Mum’s romance novels (secretly, obv.), and my own writing
became a little more, um, adult.
What
inspires you to write romance novels? Is that the only genre you write?
Romance
(writing it and reading it) is like a holiday from reality, and I find I need a
lot of holidays! We are taught to feel guilty for not functioning efficiently
24/7, in our families, in our jobs; but that is actually unnatural, and also
unhealthy. People need down-time, and people need to tell stories about their
lives that allow them to go back and face reality again.
Although The Englishman is contemporary fiction,
I feel most at home in historical fiction and historical romance, and that is
what I will be writing in future.
How many
words per day do you like to write? Is that a daily goal or weekly goal?
I am
extremely undisciplined, so I have no daily or weekly stints. But I am fairly
obsessive, so when I am in a ‘flow’, I write a great deal in a short time.
Other times, I merely polish or edit; and that can be both rewarding and frustrating.
What is the
name of your first book? How long ago was it printed? Where did you market it
and did you have a good sale number?
I have
published non-fiction, but The Englishman
is my first published fictional text. It will be published by Omnific
Publishing in May 2013 as an ebook and a paperback – and here’s to hoping it
will sell well!
I understand
you have a book series. How many books are in the series (or will be in the
series when completed)? How did you come to write a series?
I do not
plan to write a series, although I’ve lately thought that I may want to. But because
I am interested in a number of different historical periods, the novels that I
hope to write next will variously be set in the French Revolution, late
fourteenth-century Oxford, and twelfth-century France and England.
How do you
feel about online book reading? Do you have a book that you’ve written for a
digital shelf like ibooks or kindle?
I do not own
a Kindle yet, and I am reluctant to get one, because I stare so much at a
screen anyway. But I expect I will get one within the next twelve months, or
so. It’s the future.
Do you think
it’s worth to ask buyers to purchase a digital novel for the same amount of $
as a print novel?
Authors and
readers are likely to have differing opinions on this. You’d think that an
ebook costs less to produce, so it should be cheaper. But authors must live,
too, and what price would you put on creativity? In the end, supply and demand
regulate the market.
How do you
think the change in the publishing industry affects authors today?
Self-publishing and indie publishing put established
publishers under pressure, and that is a good thing. At the same time, there is
a glut of ebooks, and while some are outstandingly good, there is a lot of
stuff that’s not so great. Dividing the wheat from the chaff can be
time-consuming and frustrating. I dip into so many novels to decide which one I
want to buy, that at the end of a couple of hours’ surfing and reading, I am
frustrated and bored and end up buying nothing.
It obviously
makes a huge difference that you can pick up a paperback and browse through it,
while you can typically read the only first few pages of an ebook. The shape of
stories changes if you know you must hit the readers between the eyes on page
two, or they won’t buy it.
If you could
give a budding author advice what would it be?
Keep at it.
Learn to stand back and look at your writing as if you were an editor.
Can you
recommend our readers a publisher that you like to work with?
I have
worked only with Omnific, and I have found them helpful and professional.
If you could
be a famous author, who would it be and why?
The ideal
situation, I think, would be one in which I could be proud of my novels because
I feel that each of them is the best I was able to write at that time, and at
the same time one in which I am able to make enough money to live by writing. I
envy all writers for whom this is the case! If you want names – in the romance
genre, I admire Georgette Heyer, because she is a restrained writer, both in
language and in emotion. And she writes brilliantly witty dialogues.
Tell us
where we can find your book(s) and provide a link!
The Englishman will be published by Omnific Publishing on May 7, 2013. The cover, blurb and an extract were
revealed on subclubbooks.
Thank you!
Happy to speak with you Nina - Thank you for sharing your journey as an author, as well as The Englishman, your first novel!
