Interviews with Fantasy Authors

Below is a list of questions for Fantasy Authors being Interviewed for Nerdovore.com. Note: There is now a $10 fee for people wanting to participate in Nerdovore's Interviews with Fantasy Authors.

Round One Interview Questions

(Skip any questions you feel are unnecessary or redundant. You do not need to answer all 30, although it is certainly helpful if you do so.)

1. When did you start taking writing seriously and honing your craft?

2. Are you a pantser or planner? What is your philosophy on planning out your books / pantsing through the writing process?

3. What three fantasy authors would you say has most influenced your writing?

4. Have you ever abandoned a piece of writing and left it unfinished? Would you ever go back, change it and finish it?

5. Do you have a day job and what is it? (eg. Myself, I am an archery instructor.)

6. How has your career impacted your writing career?

7. What fantasy subgenre(s) do you enjoy writing the most?

8. Outside of fantasy, what genre or subgenre would you like most to write in? (eg. Historical Fiction, Mystery, Sci Fi, Spy Thriller, etc.)

9. What was the first book you've published and what do you like about it? (If you can please include links to where readers can purchase it on Amazon/etc.)

10. What was the most recent book you've published and what do you like about it?

11. How many books have published thus far and what are their titles? (Ignore this question if you've only published two books thus far.)

12. What was your favourite hero/protagonist you've thus far written about? What makes them special?

13. What was your favourite villain/antagonist thus far? What makes them special?

14. If you could propose the plot of a TV show what would you make it about? (eg. I think there is market out there for a Sword and Sorcery themed TV show on Netflix or HBO. No wait, The Witcher already fulfilled that niche. Oh well.)

15. Do you like to use tropes in your writing and subvert the reader's expectations, or do you try to avoid them entirely?

16. What skills do you yourself possess that you feel the need to write about and keeps you inspired? (eg. Archery, blacksmithing, horsemanship, languages, etc.)

17. Do you get annoyed when you see movies, TV shows or books that show unrealistic depictions of things or do you brush it off as the "magic of fantasy"? (eg. As an archery instructor I get annoyed when I see archery done incorrectly.)

18. Do you celebrate after you finish writing a chapter or a book? How do you celebrate?

19. Do you prefer to write what you would like to read, or do you try to cater to a specific audience? Or sometimes both?

20. What is the darkest thing you've ever written about? (eg. I once tortured a main character and had a villain cut his eye out, after which the MC suffered from PTSD.)

21. Have you ever published any short stories in a fantasy literary magazine? If so, which magazines and what was the title of the short stories?

22. If you could go back in time and change something in your past to become a better writer, what would you change? (For temporal causality purposes we will assume this doesn't completely change history and that only that one thing has been changed.)

23. When reading fantasy what is one thing you wish other authors would stop doing? (eg. I wish various writers would stop trying to copy GRRM.)

24. Do you sometimes find it difficult to find books to read because you are looking for something specific, nobody has written it, and you realize you should just write it?

25. Where do you see yourself twenty years from now and what might you be writing about by then?

26. What is your next book that is coming out, when should it be available, and what is it about?

27. What are you currently working on?

28. What are you currently reading by other fantasy authors?

29. Do you follow any specific authors on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc?

30. If you could recommend one or two fantasy author(s) for me to interview after you, who would that author be?


Round Two - Optional

I may come up with additional questions related to your answers from Round One, that are more specific to what you've written. If you would prefer to skip Round Two please let me know and we can proceed with just the answers from R1.

Update, October 2022

I stopped doing the author interviews because I discovered that a lot of people didn't follow the instructions and it became so time consuming to format everything - made worse by the writers who didn't follow the instructions. (Creative writers not following instructions, say it isn't so?)

That and I now have two kids to worry about. Oh and then there was the pandemic. That's the other reason I stopped doing the interviews.

At this point if I was to start doing them again I think I would charge a $10 fee because of the time required to format the questions and answers, format the links, images, etc.

Notes

I will be posting at least two images (most likely the book covers) on the Nerdovore.com blog post. If you have a professional photo of yourself or other photos you want included please attach the files with your responses to Round One. Maps of your fantasy world are also welcome.

If you have an author website you want readers to know about please let me know and I can include it with the interview.

Links on the blog posts will be rel=follow, so yes you will see a benefit there SEO wise. If you make any future links to Nerdovore.com I appreciate if you do the same.

After the interview is posted I would appreciate if you bragged about the blog post on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, your author website, etc and include links to the blog post. This is not mandatory, but hey, if you do it then you should be boosting your branding online.

I may not post interviews immediately, but will schedule them for specific release dates. I will notify you when the release date will be ahead of time and I will *try* to remember to send you a reminder when it does come out so that you can help promote it.

My goal is to be posting 4 interviews per month, for a sum of 48 interviews per year. I am hoping to conduct at least 15 interviews in February alone and then schedule them to appear accordingly.

If you have questions of your own you want to add feel free to do so. In particular, questions that pertain to specific topics about your books are definitely welcome.

If you have specific questions for me regarding the post itself please feel free to ask.

Thank you for participating and I wish you and your writing great success!

Sincerely,
Charles Moffat
Nerdovore.com


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