Dream Weaver Novels by Su Williams: Labrador + Poodle = Labradoodle

HAPPY SPRING!!!

DREAM WEAVER & ROCK STAR are still on sale for $0.99 on Amazon Kindle! Get your copy today! There's a great new gadget to get you to my books and books of featured authors.

Welcome back, everyone! I'm always excited to bring you interviews with great authors, and this week is no different. I haven't known today's guest very long so I'm getting to know him right along with you.

THIS JUST IN

Christoph's novel Luck of the Weissensteiners needs votes in the 50 Self-Published Literary Novels Worth Reading 2013-2014!!! Please stop by and give him your vote!

I GIVE YOU CHRISTOPH FISCHER
Christoph, I’m so excited to have you on my blog. We’d all like to know more about you. Where are you from? Tell us about your family…including those adorable pups of yours.

Thank you, I am very excited to be here, too. So, I am originally from a small town in Bavaria, but I have been living in the UK for 23 years. After a long stay in London and Brighton I now live in a small hamlet, not far from Bath. My partner and I have three Labradoodles, one 9, one 8 and one 4 years old and they have had 27 puppies in three adorable litters. We spoil them and treat them like children and get a lot of joy out of them. Labradoodles are such adorable and happy family pets.

Lovely! I want to come visit!

What kinds of books do you like to read?

I like to read a bit of everything, really. Heavy stuff, like Dostoevsky, cross-cultural and intense literary or historical fiction, but also comedy and thrillers.

Since I have met other authors online and have read their books to see what they are like, I have developed a taste for more or less everything.

I was just thinking the same thing today. There's so many great writers out there you kind of develop an eclectic taste in books. So, what kinds of books do you write?

I write mostly historical fiction. Family research got me inspired for my first novel and that led to more research and the follow-on novels. I also write contemporary fiction with subjects such as mental health and Alzheimers. I’d love to write a comedy but so far it does not seem to come naturally. ;-)

What is your best advice to someone who is thinking of writing and self-publishing a book?
Just do it. Write, write and write some more. Don’t sit at home and think about writing. Just write down anything, write a diary or a letter. It is a start. Then get good editors and honest beta readers.

Did you try the traditional route of querying agents and editors? If so, do you recommend it to other writers?

Publishing is not what it used to be. It can be a road of impersonal rejection, just because of the number of books competing for the attention of literary agents. Publishers will still expect you to do a lot of the promotional and social media platform work yourself. I was not prepared to give up the rights and control over my work for what is being offered in return, but I know of people who have who are very happy with the deals they have got, so I keep an open mind about it.

So true. It never made sense to me get contracted with a 'publisher' and yet I still had to do all the work I already do, and I'd have to share the proceeds. So, are you on KDP Select and why did you chose to use it?
I am on KDP Select because I tried Createspace and KDP first and I was never dissatisfied with it. KDP offered a good opportunity to get my work out there to people who otherwise might not have bought it. The follow-on sales were encouraging.
I keep meaning to explore other avenues, such as Smashwords or KOBO, to compare notes, but my first KDP giveaway was a big success so I am not in a hurry. I am not entirely happy with their demands of exclusivity, but right now I can easily offer that to KDP.

Why did you become a writer? And how long has your writing journey been?
I experimented with a short story 4 years ago and found I had enough ideas to turn it into a novel. I then began some family research that led to the ideas of more books. A friend persuaded me to publish one of the books on Amazon and it eventually got enough attention for me to go ahead with the second. Meeting other writers has been very inspiring.

Who are your favorite traditionally published writers?
So many. Christos Tsiolkas, Richard Yates, Lionel Shriver, KhaledHosseini, Enid Blyton, Douglas Adams, Henning Mankell, Dostoyevsky, Sartre….

Any great new talent out there you’d like to give a shout out for?
P.C. Zick writes excellent contemporary and literary fiction with great subjects, I read great thrillers by Malla Duncan, Khalid Muhammad and Seumas Gallagher, hilarious comedy by Ian Hutson, Maureen Fisher and Andrew Peters, top scifi by Ceri London and Nicholas Smith and historical fiction by John FHanley and Rob Carter. I could go on, but I won’t…

Can you tell readers the most helpful tools/websites you’ve discovered?
For some reason Twitter seems a very important medium for me. My sales drop when I stop tweeting about my books. Bookshow.me is very good for links to one book on all Amazon sites. If you have a blog, triberr is worth your while.

Is there anything else you’d like my readers to know about you or your books? Any exciting events coming up?
My new book “Time To Let Go” comes out May 15^th. It is a contemporary family drama that touches on Alzheimers and family dynamics.

I like interviews short and sweet; and I like to end them with something fun. So, if I gave you a snowball, a baby and a coin…what kind of story would you write? You can even give it a title if you want.
Probably a horror short story with a slot machine that looks like the baby Chuckie. It kills people in Las Vegas with snowballs, leaving no trace of the murder weapon and it feeds off the left over coins.