While I don't mind answering some of them in a public forum, there are some I won't answer. Yes, PM, I am a very private person, so the personal questions are out. You're dealing with someone who won't even join Facebook because of their personal privacy policies and track record.
Besides, as my old IRC tagline on my client version used to read: "Fel will remain a mystery to you. What fun would I be if you knew all my secrets?"
But, for those who are curious, here are the questions he asked I'm willing to answer, and obviously, the answers to them:
How long have you been writing the stories ?
--I started the Firestaff series when I was in high school, back in the late 80s. I worked on it sporadically up until about 2003, including completely rewriting the first two books, until a friend on IRC asked to read it. The rest is history. The other stories came mostly after I finished Firestaff, except Subjugation. I worked on that simultaneously with the Pyrosian Chronicles as a "change of pace."
What inspired you to start/write ?
--Nothing. I just enjoy writing.
What is your drive for being an active author of 'FREE!!' works for such a long time ?
--The fact that no publisher ever felt that my work was good enough to pay me for it. After about 100 rejection letters and the ability to just CTCP it out to IRC friends, I decided that writing as a career was never going to happen, so now I just write to write.
What are your educational qualification (just the qualification, NOT from where) ? This has literally been bugging me a LOT !!!
I mean, you write the Tarrin Kael series and it shows that your writing is awesome and you must be a PhD or something in some literature+English fields. AND then you write the subjugation series !! And there you sprout a lot of quantum mechanics and a lot of particle physics like you are a physicist at CERN. And I couldn't even assume you ripped off your science from some other series such as star trek or something because your discussion on the physics in the forums shows you know more about it than you write !!! Damn you, you drive me nuts with curiosity.--I have some college level education, but it's all simple curiosity. I LOVE to know how things work, I love to know how things happen so I can understand why they happen, so I investigate on my own. I've probably watched more History Channel and Science Channel than anyone within 200 kilometers of my house, and I have nearly an entire bookshelf filled with books on various subjects. If you're curious about something, go find out everything you can about it!
What are your inspirational books ?
--All of them. Read everything you can. Even read the nutritional labels on the sides of your cereal boxes. Read, read, read!
What do you do/enjoy to do in your free time ?
--Sadly, I waste most of my free time playing Warcraft, at least when I'm not writing. It keeps me out of trouble. A Fel with nothing to do is a very dangerous Fel. When not playing Warcraft, I'm reading or watching TV. I'm very much a homebody, because if you're at home, you're not spending money.
When it comes to the things I enjoy, well, let's just say I have very broad tastes. I'm one of those strange people who watches cartoons at the age of 45, often flipping between cartoons and news and sports and documentaries. I'm an unrepetant brony (Twilight is best pony, but Luna is best princess!) and spend much of my time bouncing between extremes like watching cartoons on TV and reading theoretical physics books written by Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku or history books about times long past. I'm a political junkie, if only to marvel at the stupidity of the human race, and love Through the Wormhole because it never fails to make you think. I also enjoy football (go Man City!), the other football (go Saints!), music (anything but new country and gangsta rap, and I mean ANYTHING), and movies.
My sister always called me the smartest kid she knew who never grew up, and I guess she's right. I'm a 45 year old who likes colorful pastel ponies and theoretical physics. Maybe I should try out for a part on Big Bang Theory....
Yes, I'm seriously twisted, but that's just me.
Is writing a source of income too or do you do it purely for personal satisfaction ?
-I make no money at this, so yes, it's purely my hobby. The paypal account set up for the site pays for the site. But, I can admit, when I first set up the account, there was an initial flood of donations that went upwards of $1500USD. I'd never intended to touch that money, at least until my car more or less exploded. That money paid to fix my car, which saved my job and my livelihood (I live in a very rural area where if you have no car, you literally have no way to do anything, even buy food. It's a 2 hour walk to the closest convenience store). So I was very grateful people cared enough about my writing to save my job when my car went down, even if they had no idea that their donations got my car fixed.
So thanks guys! It's only about 5 years after it happened, but I appreciate it anyway.
Do you use an editor, if so, then to what capacity does the editor help you polish your work ?
--No editor. I "try" to do the editing myself, which doesn't always work out the best. But eh.
How much of your ideas are inspired from your fans, other works and other sources and if you are interested in sharing the info, more specifics regarding them ?
--Most of my ideas are just things that have been rolling around in my head for a long time. I do pay homage to some of my old favorite things within the books, however. If you read carefully, you'll see nods to games, books, movies, TV shows, you name it hiding within the writing. Some are obvious (Kumi, a.k.a. Eleri, my nod to Master or Orion and the Elerians, who were the inspiration behind the Faey), while most are not. I like to be sneaky with my pop culture references.
But I do listen to the readers in a very important way: you guys are more or less my editors and proofreaders. When you bring things up and I see you're right, I fix it, and reader discussion on the forums has more than once caused a revision of a chapter in progress because you bring up valid points that I honestly overlooked. When I make a mistake, someone almost always catches it and calls me on it, and I DO appreciate that. And often, the long debates I've had with people on the forums on various subjects allows me to further deepen my understanding of the way things in my own stories work because you make me look more deeply into subjects I've not spent much time considering. It's like I know how it works, but when someone asks me about it, I have to quantify that understanding by replying in a way that others can understand. This HELPS.
In a weird way, these stories are a community effort. Your feedback can and does affect the story, by keeping me on the right path. It doesn't change the plot, but it does help keep consistency and continuity, and that's very important.
How long does it take to flesh out an idea into a chapter if you already have the whole chapter's synopsis in your mind ?
--That depends. All my writing works more or less the same way: I have a very basic idea of what's going to happen, then I let the chapter write itself. This sometimes lets me write 10-12 pages in a day, sometimes I barely manage a paragraph. Sometimes it goes in unexpected directions, which occasionally requires me to back up and do it again. This method of writing isn't very efficient, nor do I recommend it, because it doesn't always work very well. But it's how I do things, so I stick with it. The example I've used most often about how this works is Miranda from the Firestaff series. She was never meant to be anything more than a faceless background character, Keritanima's maid...but Miranda would have none of that. She clawed her way into the story through sheer force of will and became one of my favorite characters from that series.
I've always joked that the story writes itself...but it does. It really does.
How do you come up with your stories' ideas ? Do you already have a full story initially in your mind as to how it starts, how it proceeds and how it ends and you fleshing out the book wise details on a later stage during its writing or do you just make up the story as you writes it ?
--see up there. I have a very basic framework and the rest fleshes itself out. The story has "landmark" points where certain important things happen, but how I get from landmark to landmark is basically just sitting at the keyboard and letting it go. This style of writing doesn't always work, however, and I'll be the first to admit it. But, it works most of the time, so I stick with it.
Some story ideas I've worked on more diligently than others, and I'm taking a different approach to the work I'm doing on Shifters to try to be more of a "traditional" writer with a more rigid plot outline that goes into more detail, but odds are I'll throw it all out when I start on the series and do it the other way.
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So, there ya go. If anyone has any other questions that don't delve into personal subjects, feel free to post them here.
