An updated trailer of FALWYN - written by yours truly! It will be available via paperback in two weeks and is available now on ebook!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHPuPe1vtvY&feature=youtu.be
My editor, Kane Gilmour, is also an accomplished author! I recently read his hit, RESURRECT, & was fortunate enough to pin him down during his busy holiday schedule to ask him a few questions.
Please enjoy & check his books out! They're a wonderful read!
1. You have travelled & lived all over the world. You settled in Vermont with your family. Of all the choices you had, what made you choose beautiful Vermont?
Kane: That’s a weird one. I’ve actually always had family in Central Vermont—my aunt and uncle have lived here for over 40 years. Although I always loved it here in the state and have always wanted to live here, the way I ended up here was very strange.
I came back in 2007 for a visit, and on my way out, at the airport, I met a woman who was looking for an editor. It took a year for her company to secure the funding, and in the meanwhile I was living and working abroad in South Asia. But she eventually made me the offer, and I returned to the US and settled here in Vermont to work for that company—which laid me off 4 years later, along with 500 other employees. Not sure I ever would have thought to try to move here while working freelance. It’s an expensive place. But I love the state, and now that I’m here, I have no intention of leaving any time soon.
2. You have had many careers. When did you realize that you wanted to add published author to the list? Is writing something you plan to continue pursuing for the rest of your life?
Kane: I think I knew in my early twenties that I wanted to write. I just didn’t know I wanted to write novels. Then, when I really decided I wanted to write novels, I was around 26. It took me until 29 to start writing RESURRECT. It took me until 39 to finish it. I look back at that decade as a colossal waste, with regard to my career. Granted, I was busy getting a master’s degree, most of a doctorate, getting married, raising a child, working either half-time or full-time, and travelling the world. So it’s not like I was just sitting around watching TV and movies. (Okay, I watched a lot of TV and movies.) It just took me a long time to get my act together. But I knew for a while.
Do I want to keep doing it for the rest of my life? Yes. I just need to get paid enough to do that. Then I can focus on it entirely.
3. Are you an author who plans out his books, or do you write off-the-cuff? Which works best for you?
Kane: Yes. I plotted RESURRECT to death. Other books I’ve done with a loose outline of a few words per chapter. Other, as yet unfinished projects, I’m cuffing. I think a mix works best for me—have a loose road map, but then allowing myself to go where the story takes me.
4. Who do you write? Do you base your characters off actual people?
Kane: Most of my characters are original people. A few share names or partial names with real people. Some share a few characteristics. The one character who is practically a real-life person, is Curtis Johnson from RESURRECT. He’s based on my friend Perttu Aho. Although, even there, Johnson is quite different from Aho in a number of ways, particularly in surface ways. Aho isn’t a climber, for instance. But personality-wise, Johnson is similar to the 20-years younger version of my friend.
5. You weave a lot of history into your books. You’ve travelled through China & Tibet, and one can tell that it’s something you’ve experienced, because your writing is both descriptive and at times emotional. Gathering facts can be back-breaking work—what about it do you enjoy most?
Kane: I never really set out to include a lot of history in my work. Just turns out that way. I really enjoy travelling, so where I’ve gained useful tidbits that way, I’ve enjoyed it. But researching things on the Internet? Hate it. Mostly because the way I tend to do it, is to look for the historical bit I need, as I get to that spot in the story—which kills my forward momentum. I hate breaking stride to go look something up. A lot of the time, I’ll just leave myself a blank in the manuscript and come back for it later. Helicopters are a great example. I do not know the names of helicopters. But I feel like I need to drop in the name of them when I mention them or use one in a story. So I’ll just write HELICOPTER, and highlight it, and press on. Later on, I’ll come back with the make and model. But sometimes, just sometimes, I learn something really interesting. For example, in RESURRECT, I learned how a hang-glider actually works, because I needed that information. In OMEGA, I wanted to have a character flying a helicopter, and he needed to be a newbie pilot, so I learned as much as I needed for the scenes I was writing. It was fascinating stuff, and the controls of a helicopter and not very intuitive, so the information wasn’t something I could fudge on. The great part is when I do a lot of research on something—like the monorail controls at Disney World, and then a foul-tempered reviewer will say the trains are nothing like that, when actually, they are. No, research isn’t my favorite bit, but I do it.
6. Your action scenes are wicked! You write as if you have experienced a few of them yourself. Please share with us!
Kane: Oh gosh. Thanks. Where to start? I haven’t done most of the crazy in my books, obviously. But I have done some small stuff. I’ve rock climbed and rappelled. Boats and fast cars. Parasailing, mountain biking, river kayaking, and loads of international travel. I’ve been to a lot of the locations in RESURRECT, so I was able to make the stunts seem more realistic by dropping in local color and detail, but I’ve never driven a car onto the frozen ice off Helsinki. I have been to Finland though, and I did know people do drive on the ice to the outlaying islands in winter. I’ve been on nearly every mode of transport known to man, so I can throw in a few details there, as well. I’ve never been in a Mercedes MacLaren, but I was lucky enough to see one from a few feet away at Harrod’s in London, when I was writing RESURRECT. I’ve also experienced a few natural disasters like floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and so forth. So all of that, plus a healthy love for action films, lets me imagine a lot of crazy in my head. But I’ve never been run down by a helicopter or rappelled the inside of St. Peter’s Basilica. (Although I did go there to research.)
7. Jason Quinn, the main character in RESURRECT, is an all-around man’s man and adventurer. Exciting and experienced in life, he is the type of person anyone would want to be friends with. How do you connect with this character?
Kane: Quinn is me in a lot of ways, and not in others. He climbs a lot more than I used to. I could, perhaps, have gone that way, but my climbing partner suffered a fall and broke his ankle. It’s a team sport; you can’t easily continue without a partner, so I moved into other things. My very minor interest in Mars—I’ve read a few books—turned into Quinn’s obsession with the planet. My travel influenced his, but he’s on the road for nine months of the year or more. I haven’t had a loved one die, like he has, either. So for me, I think he’s an amalgam of lots of action heroes I’ve seen or read about, mixed with me, mixed with my ideas of what a hero should be. I have no idea if he’s successful as a hero—he does let some bad guys burn to death, while he watches, no less. Maybe he’s an anti-hero, although I dislike that term. Not sure what he is. He’d probably just describe himself as a normal guy.
8. Was there any point in writing RESURRECT that you became stuck and felt like throwing in the towel? What made you continue writing & sticking with the tale?
Kane: Nope. I always wanted to finish it. I always knew I would. I just had no idea how long I’d spend thinking about it instead of typing it. Ultimately, I rented a cabin in New Hampshire for three days and wrote most of the last third of the book in that one marathon sitting. Usually I came back to the story when I was unhappy with my life and where it was. I always looked at writing as a way I would ultimately not have to work for other people. Not there yet, but getting closer. As for the tale, I always thought it was a good one, so I stuck with the story because I wanted to see it done.
9. How long does it usually take you to complete a book?
Kane: Ten years or two weeks? Depends on the book and the length, but a typical novel length, and no interruptions or major upheavals in my life? I could write it in six weeks or less. RESSURRECT took me ten years of mostly not writing. CALLSIGN: DEEP BLUE took me two weeks of writing 6-8 hours a day. RAGNAROK and OMEGA were probably each a month for the first draft, and then Jeremy and I tinkered with both multiple times afterward. THE CRYPT OF DRACULA was probably two months, but at a much slower pace. I tend to write around 1000 words an hour, if I already have the story sorted out in my head, and I don’t get sidetracked researching things. So with RES being 96k, you can see it really only required around a hundred hours of typing, yet it took me ten years to do that. So it all really depends, but now, after having a few under my belt, I know how to get it done a little faster and not let life sidetrack me too much. I don’t want another decade to go by before we see the next Quinn adventure.
10. You have accomplished much in a very short amount of time. RAGNAROK became an Amazon bestseller and your collaborative efforts with other writers have seen equal success. How does it feel to have such talent & to be a recognized successful author?
Kane: I honestly have to keep reminding myself that some people see me as talented and successful. It’s always a scale, isn’t it? I berate myself for not having done more, but in the last two years I’ve had five novels out and an anthology I edited. I’ve written a handful of short stories—some for anthologies. I wrote scripts for a web-comic. I’ve edited over 40 books for other authors too. And worked a full-time 60-hour-a-week job for one of those years, and worked freelance for the other. I also have a nearly two-year-old girl and a nine-year-old son. That’s plenty, surely. But I always feel like I should have written ten more books in that time, because I know I could—if I wasn’t doing all this other stuff.
I was really lucky that Jeremy Robinson invited me into his world as a co-author, and it’s helped me gain plenty of readers. I’m grateful for every fan I’ve got. Unfortunately, the sales are slow, and not enough to pay the bills. So I’m slower than I feel I could or should be, because I’m usually working some day job to get by. So by my own scale of ‘successful’, I don’t feel I’m there yet. But I realize I do better than some authors and worse than others, so I guess I’m happy that people think I’m talented, but I think I’ll always consider my success to be not enough. Not financially, per se. I’ll just always keep striving to do more and do better.
11. What do you do for fun?
Kane: What is this ‘fun’ of which you speak? I actually have very little time for it now, but I still like to go to the movies, kayak, read, and travel when I can get away to do those things. Just happens rarely now.
12. Tell us three fun/strange/unbelievable facts about yourself!
Kane: 1. I have worked as a human trash compactor. 2. I was responsible for bringing the first pizza to Sri Lanka. 3. I only have six bones in my neck.
13. FROZEN—what’s the latest news? When can we expect to read the next chapter in the Jason Quinn adventures?
Kane: Besides the above issues and unexpected health issues, and every other thing that could get in the way? I have one more book to write—Book 5 in Jeremy Bishop’s REFUGE serial novel project, which will be called BONFIRES BURNING BRIGHT. That should be out in early January. Then I’m setting a couple of other projects aside: a Frankenstein novella and a YA book called MONSTER KINGDOM. I’ll still get to them eventually, but for now they take the back burner. Once I’m done with REFUGE, I’ll turn my full attention to FROZEN until it’s done. I only have a few chapters written, but most of it is sorted in my head. I hope to have finished writing by Feb at the latest, and then I’ll get it out el quicko. I expect the third Jason Quinn book will also see the light of day in 2014, to get me back on track, too. Not revealing the title of that one until the last page of FROZEN gets printed.
The good news for Quinn fans is that I have long-range plans for the series, there will be two books in 2014, and at least one more in 2015. I think people will be happy with it, and hopefully they’ll forgive me for the wait.
Website: http://kanegilmour.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kane.gilmour.author
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KaneGilmour
Please enjoy & check his books out! They're a wonderful read!
1. You have travelled & lived all over the world. You settled in Vermont with your family. Of all the choices you had, what made you choose beautiful Vermont?
Kane: That’s a weird one. I’ve actually always had family in Central Vermont—my aunt and uncle have lived here for over 40 years. Although I always loved it here in the state and have always wanted to live here, the way I ended up here was very strange.
I came back in 2007 for a visit, and on my way out, at the airport, I met a woman who was looking for an editor. It took a year for her company to secure the funding, and in the meanwhile I was living and working abroad in South Asia. But she eventually made me the offer, and I returned to the US and settled here in Vermont to work for that company—which laid me off 4 years later, along with 500 other employees. Not sure I ever would have thought to try to move here while working freelance. It’s an expensive place. But I love the state, and now that I’m here, I have no intention of leaving any time soon.
2. You have had many careers. When did you realize that you wanted to add published author to the list? Is writing something you plan to continue pursuing for the rest of your life?
Kane: I think I knew in my early twenties that I wanted to write. I just didn’t know I wanted to write novels. Then, when I really decided I wanted to write novels, I was around 26. It took me until 29 to start writing RESURRECT. It took me until 39 to finish it. I look back at that decade as a colossal waste, with regard to my career. Granted, I was busy getting a master’s degree, most of a doctorate, getting married, raising a child, working either half-time or full-time, and travelling the world. So it’s not like I was just sitting around watching TV and movies. (Okay, I watched a lot of TV and movies.) It just took me a long time to get my act together. But I knew for a while.
Do I want to keep doing it for the rest of my life? Yes. I just need to get paid enough to do that. Then I can focus on it entirely.
3. Are you an author who plans out his books, or do you write off-the-cuff? Which works best for you?
Kane: Yes. I plotted RESURRECT to death. Other books I’ve done with a loose outline of a few words per chapter. Other, as yet unfinished projects, I’m cuffing. I think a mix works best for me—have a loose road map, but then allowing myself to go where the story takes me.
4. Who do you write? Do you base your characters off actual people?
Kane: Most of my characters are original people. A few share names or partial names with real people. Some share a few characteristics. The one character who is practically a real-life person, is Curtis Johnson from RESURRECT. He’s based on my friend Perttu Aho. Although, even there, Johnson is quite different from Aho in a number of ways, particularly in surface ways. Aho isn’t a climber, for instance. But personality-wise, Johnson is similar to the 20-years younger version of my friend.
5. You weave a lot of history into your books. You’ve travelled through China & Tibet, and one can tell that it’s something you’ve experienced, because your writing is both descriptive and at times emotional. Gathering facts can be back-breaking work—what about it do you enjoy most?
Kane: I never really set out to include a lot of history in my work. Just turns out that way. I really enjoy travelling, so where I’ve gained useful tidbits that way, I’ve enjoyed it. But researching things on the Internet? Hate it. Mostly because the way I tend to do it, is to look for the historical bit I need, as I get to that spot in the story—which kills my forward momentum. I hate breaking stride to go look something up. A lot of the time, I’ll just leave myself a blank in the manuscript and come back for it later. Helicopters are a great example. I do not know the names of helicopters. But I feel like I need to drop in the name of them when I mention them or use one in a story. So I’ll just write HELICOPTER, and highlight it, and press on. Later on, I’ll come back with the make and model. But sometimes, just sometimes, I learn something really interesting. For example, in RESURRECT, I learned how a hang-glider actually works, because I needed that information. In OMEGA, I wanted to have a character flying a helicopter, and he needed to be a newbie pilot, so I learned as much as I needed for the scenes I was writing. It was fascinating stuff, and the controls of a helicopter and not very intuitive, so the information wasn’t something I could fudge on. The great part is when I do a lot of research on something—like the monorail controls at Disney World, and then a foul-tempered reviewer will say the trains are nothing like that, when actually, they are. No, research isn’t my favorite bit, but I do it.
6. Your action scenes are wicked! You write as if you have experienced a few of them yourself. Please share with us!
Kane: Oh gosh. Thanks. Where to start? I haven’t done most of the crazy in my books, obviously. But I have done some small stuff. I’ve rock climbed and rappelled. Boats and fast cars. Parasailing, mountain biking, river kayaking, and loads of international travel. I’ve been to a lot of the locations in RESURRECT, so I was able to make the stunts seem more realistic by dropping in local color and detail, but I’ve never driven a car onto the frozen ice off Helsinki. I have been to Finland though, and I did know people do drive on the ice to the outlaying islands in winter. I’ve been on nearly every mode of transport known to man, so I can throw in a few details there, as well. I’ve never been in a Mercedes MacLaren, but I was lucky enough to see one from a few feet away at Harrod’s in London, when I was writing RESURRECT. I’ve also experienced a few natural disasters like floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and so forth. So all of that, plus a healthy love for action films, lets me imagine a lot of crazy in my head. But I’ve never been run down by a helicopter or rappelled the inside of St. Peter’s Basilica. (Although I did go there to research.)
7. Jason Quinn, the main character in RESURRECT, is an all-around man’s man and adventurer. Exciting and experienced in life, he is the type of person anyone would want to be friends with. How do you connect with this character?
Kane: Quinn is me in a lot of ways, and not in others. He climbs a lot more than I used to. I could, perhaps, have gone that way, but my climbing partner suffered a fall and broke his ankle. It’s a team sport; you can’t easily continue without a partner, so I moved into other things. My very minor interest in Mars—I’ve read a few books—turned into Quinn’s obsession with the planet. My travel influenced his, but he’s on the road for nine months of the year or more. I haven’t had a loved one die, like he has, either. So for me, I think he’s an amalgam of lots of action heroes I’ve seen or read about, mixed with me, mixed with my ideas of what a hero should be. I have no idea if he’s successful as a hero—he does let some bad guys burn to death, while he watches, no less. Maybe he’s an anti-hero, although I dislike that term. Not sure what he is. He’d probably just describe himself as a normal guy.
8. Was there any point in writing RESURRECT that you became stuck and felt like throwing in the towel? What made you continue writing & sticking with the tale?
Kane: Nope. I always wanted to finish it. I always knew I would. I just had no idea how long I’d spend thinking about it instead of typing it. Ultimately, I rented a cabin in New Hampshire for three days and wrote most of the last third of the book in that one marathon sitting. Usually I came back to the story when I was unhappy with my life and where it was. I always looked at writing as a way I would ultimately not have to work for other people. Not there yet, but getting closer. As for the tale, I always thought it was a good one, so I stuck with the story because I wanted to see it done.
9. How long does it usually take you to complete a book?
Kane: Ten years or two weeks? Depends on the book and the length, but a typical novel length, and no interruptions or major upheavals in my life? I could write it in six weeks or less. RESSURRECT took me ten years of mostly not writing. CALLSIGN: DEEP BLUE took me two weeks of writing 6-8 hours a day. RAGNAROK and OMEGA were probably each a month for the first draft, and then Jeremy and I tinkered with both multiple times afterward. THE CRYPT OF DRACULA was probably two months, but at a much slower pace. I tend to write around 1000 words an hour, if I already have the story sorted out in my head, and I don’t get sidetracked researching things. So with RES being 96k, you can see it really only required around a hundred hours of typing, yet it took me ten years to do that. So it all really depends, but now, after having a few under my belt, I know how to get it done a little faster and not let life sidetrack me too much. I don’t want another decade to go by before we see the next Quinn adventure.
10. You have accomplished much in a very short amount of time. RAGNAROK became an Amazon bestseller and your collaborative efforts with other writers have seen equal success. How does it feel to have such talent & to be a recognized successful author?
Kane: I honestly have to keep reminding myself that some people see me as talented and successful. It’s always a scale, isn’t it? I berate myself for not having done more, but in the last two years I’ve had five novels out and an anthology I edited. I’ve written a handful of short stories—some for anthologies. I wrote scripts for a web-comic. I’ve edited over 40 books for other authors too. And worked a full-time 60-hour-a-week job for one of those years, and worked freelance for the other. I also have a nearly two-year-old girl and a nine-year-old son. That’s plenty, surely. But I always feel like I should have written ten more books in that time, because I know I could—if I wasn’t doing all this other stuff.
I was really lucky that Jeremy Robinson invited me into his world as a co-author, and it’s helped me gain plenty of readers. I’m grateful for every fan I’ve got. Unfortunately, the sales are slow, and not enough to pay the bills. So I’m slower than I feel I could or should be, because I’m usually working some day job to get by. So by my own scale of ‘successful’, I don’t feel I’m there yet. But I realize I do better than some authors and worse than others, so I guess I’m happy that people think I’m talented, but I think I’ll always consider my success to be not enough. Not financially, per se. I’ll just always keep striving to do more and do better.
11. What do you do for fun?
Kane: What is this ‘fun’ of which you speak? I actually have very little time for it now, but I still like to go to the movies, kayak, read, and travel when I can get away to do those things. Just happens rarely now.
12. Tell us three fun/strange/unbelievable facts about yourself!
Kane: 1. I have worked as a human trash compactor. 2. I was responsible for bringing the first pizza to Sri Lanka. 3. I only have six bones in my neck.
13. FROZEN—what’s the latest news? When can we expect to read the next chapter in the Jason Quinn adventures?
Kane: Besides the above issues and unexpected health issues, and every other thing that could get in the way? I have one more book to write—Book 5 in Jeremy Bishop’s REFUGE serial novel project, which will be called BONFIRES BURNING BRIGHT. That should be out in early January. Then I’m setting a couple of other projects aside: a Frankenstein novella and a YA book called MONSTER KINGDOM. I’ll still get to them eventually, but for now they take the back burner. Once I’m done with REFUGE, I’ll turn my full attention to FROZEN until it’s done. I only have a few chapters written, but most of it is sorted in my head. I hope to have finished writing by Feb at the latest, and then I’ll get it out el quicko. I expect the third Jason Quinn book will also see the light of day in 2014, to get me back on track, too. Not revealing the title of that one until the last page of FROZEN gets printed.
The good news for Quinn fans is that I have long-range plans for the series, there will be two books in 2014, and at least one more in 2015. I think people will be happy with it, and hopefully they’ll forgive me for the wait.
Website: http://kanegilmour.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kane.gilmour.author
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KaneGilmour
