Author Interview – Richard Stephenson

Posted on Sunday, March 31, 2013

What made you want to be a writer? I feel that effectively communicating an entertaining story is the best way to flex the muscle that is my brain.

What do you consider the most challenging about writing a novel, or about writing in general? Editing. I hate it. It’s like doing homework.

Did writing this book teach you anything and what was it? It taught me that having a successful book involves much, much more than simply writing it.

Do you intend to make writing a career? As long as I’ve got ideas in my head that I can put on paper I’ll keep writing.

Have you ever had writer’s block? If so, what do you do about it? Nope. I take a lot of notes and flesh out the chapters before I even start writing. Once I do, I have the opposite of writer’s block – I can’t get the words on the page fast enough.

Can you share a little of your current work with us? “Resistance” is book two in the New America series. It picks up eighteen months after “Collapse.

Who designed the cover? Laura LaRoche at www.llpix.com

How do you promote this book? Every way I could think of. I created a blog that gets 800 to 1,000 views a day. Two twitter accounts with a combined following of over 18K. Facebook ads, ads with Kindle Nation Daily, cross promotion with other indies, and paid ads on a lot of sites. The most effective advertising I did was releasing a sneak peek of the first seven chapters of “Collapse” months before the release. The sneak peek raised a lot of interest and on my first day on Amazon, my book managed to sneak on to the top 100 list for one of its categories.

Will you write others in this same genre? Writing a four book series, working on book two right now.