First of all, please do not forget my Blogoversary and Followers giveaway (click on the button to the left)
Please welcome Matt Xell for this week's Unread Interview! Matt is promoting his book, Tower of Parlen Min!
Unread Interview is a series where I feature authors whose books I couldn't accept for review because of time or logistics issues.
Summary: Ves Asirin wins a trip to the Tower of Parlen Min. There, with 19 other children, he competes in the Sword Challenge; a series of puzzles and tasks, for $12 million. As fantastic and glorious as the tower seems to be, Ves finds that it keeps a dark and secret history that he has been connected to for over 150 years, a secret that will define his destiny ... if he can escape 'The shadow'.
It can be bought on several online vendors: Amazon (where it was split into 3, for the kindle, but don't let that hold you back), Smashwords and Lulu.
Also, I will be giving away 3 copies of Tower of Parlen Min to 3 lucky readers - all I ask of you is that you comment with your name and email (use the Disqus name/email option) and I will draw a number with random.org on October 14th.
This post is part of a Virtual Book Tour, you can keep up with all the posts at the Facebook Event or Facebook Page.
Have you ever wanted
to be a writer?
To be honest, if you
went back in time and told me back in Junior High that I'd be an Author, I'd
probably die of shock or try to kill you. I'd always liked fantasy literature and the visual arts, and
back then I used to do a lot of penciling (I was terrible at it) and what
little writing I did were comic book plots. What I wanted to be when I grew up
was be an IT speacialist; a software programmer or a web developer. So, no,
novel writing or any serious kind of writing was never on my life-time-to-do-list.
When did you start
writing "seriously"?
After I failed the
ninth grade (why, yes, I did). After that year, my self-esteem and much of the
ego and personality attached to it at the time took a massive dip and so too
did my love for expressing myself using art -- I absolutely loathed having my
artwork criticised.
My friends weren't
interested in my written comic book plots so no one criticized them like my
art. I turned to writing more and more as the years went by, my handwriting
became more and more minuscule so I could better hide my work, so small that
even I can't read my earlier works. By the time I was in my final year of High
School, I'd filled out several 180 page A4 notebooks with comic book plots and
scripts. At the time I didn't know there was a proper format for scripting, so
I wrote in novel prose. So all my earlier works read like novellas.
Do you read much?
I'd say a fair bit.
I'd say I've only read about 50 to 70 books in my life. Which is why being a
'natural' (he boasted) at writing when I've read so little is just as
surprising to me as it is to anyone else.
What kind of books do
you usually read?
Young adult fantasy
novels (Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Percy Jackson, The Golden Compass, A Series
of Unfortunate Events, Artimus Fowl; and old stuff like Enid Blyton's Famous
Five and Secret Seven, The Hardy Boys, Oliver Twist, Huckleberry Finn and
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ) and Adult mystery/suspense thrillers ( Tom
Clancy's Rainbow Six, Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, The DaVinchi Code
and The Lost Symbol and Stieg Larsons Millenium Trilogy). My Favourite book
though is surprisingly a french romantic novel set in during and after World
War 1 called A Very Long Engagement by Sebastien Japrisot.
What are your
favorite or least favorite scenes to write?
My favorite scenes to
write are action scenes; realistic and gritty, play-by-play, choreographed
action scenes. I'd say those are my forte. I love writing mystery and suspense
scenes a lot as well.
My least favorite
scenes to write are drama and romantic scenes. Drama, because being partly
introverted for most my life, I can't say I know various kinds and types of
people well enough, and what their emotional and psychological reactions to
certain scenarios, themes, conditions and settings. So for most of my writing,
I'd say I draw a lot of influence from what I've seen from drama movies (I saw
a lot of Academy Award winning movies that were boring during the writing of Tower
of Parlen Min). Luckily a of the characters in my book kinda wrote
themselves, and so I never know if I did a good enough job with the drama in Tower
of Parlen Min.
Romance, obviously
because I'm a man (too much on the masculine side I think), so I can't say I
understand even a quarter of why Twilight and other paranormal romances
sell as well as they do. But I want me some of those millions so you can bet
that when I figure out that secret, I'm taking over the genre :)
Do you relate more to
any of your characters?
Yes. In all my
stories, my main protagonist is somewhat a vague version of myself. So I relate
with Ves the most in Tower of Parlen Min
Why?
In every story I
write I always like to ask an
important question and hopefully get an answer at the end of the story.
I feel I wrote The Narrow Escapes of Ves Asirin to ask, 'what is the
meaning and point of life if we are just going to die at the end
of it all?'. And I feel Ves and Zenis are the best characters I was ever going
to write that would help me answer this question. Because Ves, when he was at
the orphanage, was pretty much living a drab, boring and uneventful life until
he went to the Tower. There he competed in the Sword Challenge, saw many
fantastic things like Jinn fire falling from the sky, interacted with the
Canids (sentient wolves), saw Wicca (magic), saw ghosts and spectres,
made friends for the very first time in his life, and found that even he was
not as ordinary or rather as sub-normal as he thought he was. For the very
first time ever, he was vividly aware of his life and the world's wonders ...
then of course came The Shadow which is in the business of killing and
taking life on a massive scale.
Which genre do you
feel it would be a challenge to write?
Romance of course and
comedy. The reason I think comedy would be a challenge is because it's
subjective to certain cultures, people and languages.
What inspires you?
And I'd say a lot of
what influences my writing isn't from novels and books but from art, movies,
comics, video games, manga (japanese comics) and anime (japanese animation).
And how's your
writing environment - music, place, etc.?
I'm not so much
strict or partial on enviroment. I think can I write in any place peaceful
enough and provided I have the materials I need. Solitude and silence is a
requirement only when writing serious and dark scenes, a lot of the
mystery/supense scenes. The music is dependant on the specific genre I'm
writing; for Tower of Parlen Min I listened to a lot of alternative rock
like Placebo, AFI, Asian Kung-Fu Generation and Billy Talent.
What would you say
about the book - your words, no blurbs! - to convince someone to read your
book?
If you're bored to
death during this summer and want a temporary escape into a fantastic world,
get a copy of Tower of Parlen, it's a thrilling 'rollercoaster' of a read,
filled with action, adventure, suspense, mystery and horror. If it's your kind
of book, it'll keep you hooked to the end!
What are your plans
for the future, writing-wise? New books, sequels, publishing deals, etc.
The current state of
both the traditional publishing and
self-publishing industries scare me a whole lot. And this is because the
internet and social networking are pretty much changing how content is being
delivered through all media, and everyone is pretty much both a consumer and a
producer at this point. So at the moment I'm an Indie author and I'm publishing
and marketing Tower of Parlen Min with a few good friends. I'm going to
hold onto the rights of the book for a long while until a compromise between
the two sides of the industries is found. I'm looking into distribution
licenses and how I can pitch that to interested publishers as opposed to
selling the rights outright, because I don't (I won't say never) think that's
going to happen.
I'm still plotting
the second book in The Narrow Escapes of Ves Asirin series; Eclipse
Over Atuwis Wood. I think I'll start writing that in april. And I'll be
releasing a lot of novellas based in Everlon (Ves' world) which will be
introducing some characters that feature in later books of the series, some
from the series distant past. Some will be free for download (or set your own
price) and some will sell for only 99 cents.
Thanks for your time and patience with me (as I had this interview for a month in my inbox *shame on me*)!
You can also find Matt Xell at several social networks (and he's a really nice guy): Facebook, Goodreads, Twitter, Formspring and, of course, his blog.
