About Adam Dreece:
In 2014, Adam Dreece stopped hoping to be an author one day. He wrote and indie published the first two installments in his young adult, steampunk meets fairy tale, series The Yellow Hoods. In 2015, when the first two books became IAN Book of the Year finalists in YA and Fantasy, he released two more in the series, as well as a novelette.
Along the way, Adam has become a fixture on Twitter and Facebook for his blog articles and willingness to help other authors. He’s a frequent speaker on cons, festivals and events. He’s currently working on his first science fiction novel called The Man of Cloud 9, and has a weekly serial called The Wizard Killer. In 2016 he plans to also bring out the 5th book in The Yellow Hoods series.
He currently resides in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his wife and children. He is an active online mentor at adamdreece.com, and is a busy public speaker, panelist, and author in Canada and the Pacific Northwest.
What inspires you to write?
I love being able to touch people, and bring them to amazing places, and have them experience incredible moments. For twenty five years I wrote and did nothing with it other than occasionally sharing it with a few people, but each time I couldn’t believe how they said it affected them.
I kept focusing on ‘the responsible things in life’ until two medical events knocked me sideways, and I took that love of writing and made it front and center in my life. The more I bring my ideas and worlds to life, the more I want to keep doing it.
Tell us about your writing process.
I dash back and forth over the line between pantser and plotter. I’ll sketch out some idea of where I might be going, write the scenes, and then see where I ended up and wonder where it’s going. Being a dyslexic author, I take advantage of the ‘video’ or ‘3d’ nature of my thinking, and I allow myself to truly walk around in the moments I’m capturing.
I use Scrivener as my writing tool of choice, using the colored flags and custom meta-data to allow me to summarize the feel of a scene and be able to see what plot thread it’s a part of, all at a glance.
For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
I do a lot of acting as part of my writing, talking with the characters, being the characters, listening to them arguing or discussing something. I refer to it as ‘the crazies’, and if I don’t let them out and on to the page, well, there will be consequences.
What advice would you give other writers?
You need to understand how your creativity will come to the page, and of the hundred million articles out there on how to write, take them all with a grain of salt. Your first objective needs to be learning to finish something and put it out there for feedback. Finishing and learning how to handle feedback so that you can grow, is vital.
How did you decide how to publish your books?
I decided to be an indie author for a number of reasons, but probably the most important one was I wanted to have a direct relationship with my readers. I watched many of my friends in endless “hoping to be published” limbo, or “my publisher bumped my book launch again” purgatory. In the span of less than 2 years, I’ve put out four novels and a novelette in my best-selling series, The Yellow Hoods, as well as an apocalyptic fantasy serial, The Wizard Killer, and am about to release my first science fiction novel, The Man of Cloud 9. I’m able to have a level of diversity and poignancy that I’m repeatedly told by readers and other authors I wouldn’t be allowed to have with most traditional publishers UNLESS I was already successful (and then it’s a maybe).
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
I think the difference between self-publishing and indie publishing is going to get wider, the difference being like someone putting a video of them playing a song on YouTube and an indie band that’s working hard at building a following. We’re starting to get to that tipping point where self-publishing is a fading term, and what was once considered vanity to being the entrepreneurial path. However, along this path are some things that have got to stop. Stating that reviewers should be “kind to the authors who can’t afford to have editors”, and yet putting those types of books up with books that have been edited, damages the indie publishing brand overall. Quality measures are important, and excuses are just damaging to everyone. Amazon has already started to take steps towards this because, which is good.
What do you use?: Professional Editor, Professional Cover Designer, Beta Readers
What genres do you write?: Steampunk, Fairy Tale, Fantasy, Science Fiction
What formats are your books in?: Both eBook and Print
Website(s)
Adam Dreece Home Page Link
Link To Adam Dreece Page On Amazon
Your Social Media Links
Goodreads
Facebook
Twitter
All information in this post is presented “as is” supplied by the author. We don’t edit to allow you the reader to hear the author in their own voice.
