About Chaz Fenwick:
Chaz Fenwick was born May 11, 1980 in the seaside city of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. Heavy metal music became his passion when he was introduced to the genre at the age of 15. Metallica’s black album was his first listening experience and he has been hooked ever since. To this day Metallica is still his number one band of choice to the point of obsession. Since discovering heavy metal, he has spent his teenage years partying, playing the bass guitar, writing screenplays and not taking school seriously. In class, he would spend time writing movie scripts inspired by Quentin Tarantino instead of the subjects he was there to learn. Rather than doing homework, he would spend hours learning bass riffs from three of his most influential bass guitarists Steve Harris, Cliff Burton and Jason Newsted. In his 20s he fell into money and into the adult entertainment industry, starting as a web designer for adult models. It opened the door to working on various projects alongside strippers and escorts. He lived for two years in Los Angeles, California, working on television production pilots with varying success (2006–2008). One show, Kiki’s American Adventure, turned into a single season on Playboy TV. In between film shoots he spent his time partying with porn stars on the Sunset Strip getting wasted at the Rainbow and Whiskey A-Go Go. Visa issues forced him back to his home country where he relocated to Noosa Heads in Queensland. This didn’t stop him from travelling extensively to countries like the UK, France, Monaco, Thailand, Cambodia and Russia. It was during his travels that he started planning out a film script called Hooligans with the intention of independently producing a short film or trailer with the ultimate goal of it becoming a TV series or feature film. Those plans were crushed during the time of the euro crisis when he lost everything on the stock market. He currently resides in Surfers Paradise on Queensland’s Gold Coast and has continued his Hooligans story in the form a novel.
What inspires you to write?
The inspiration to write Hooligans came from reading/studying a book in high school called “The Outsiders” by S.E. Hinton. The idea that the story featured two feuding subcultures, the greasers and socials, really appealed to me. At the age of 15, I became a fan of heavy metal music and embraced the metalhead subculture which is fairly similar to the greaser’s lifestyle. While my teen years weren’t as violent as the events in Hooligans, there were instances where us metalheads would go to parties and be targeted by other groups just because we didn’t look the norm. So, I wanted to take the whole subculture conflict idea and craft a more modernised story of my own that centred on teenagers of the heavy metal/ metalhead subculture.
Tell us about your writing process.
The story itself has gone through many different variations over the years and was originally written as a screenplay. I had never intended to turn it into a manuscript, so learning how to write a fictional novel has been fun and challenging experience. Though I’m glad I was forced on to this path since it gave me a chance to give the story much more plot and character backstories. 2012 I began writing and it took me about two and a half years to complete the novel with the help and advice from Paul Vanderloos who edited the book.
For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
When it comes to the characters of ‘Hooligans,’ I try to ‘be’ the character and get into their heads as best I can. Most of them are a mix of friends and acquaintances that I have met during my teenage years. A lot of the time I generally have a basic idea of where I would like the story to go but the characters eventually take over and move the story in another direction to what I had planned.
What advice would you give other writers?
Simple advice! Just write, write, write and read! Don’t be in it for the money.
How did you decide how to publish your books?
Due to past unfortunate experiences working with people where creative differences ruined the projects, I wanted full control of my own work. I did not want to answer to anyone so I chose the self-publishing route.
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
Self-publishing has definitely made things a lot easier for authors to get their work out into the world though it does have its challenges. Thousands of books are being published each day making discoverability much harder. The book publishing industry in general can’t be doing too well if bookstores all over the world are going bankrupt and closing their doors. From what I’ve read and researched, it seems to be in a state of turmoil.
What do you use?: Professional Editor
What genres do you write?: Fiction, urban fiction
What formats are your books in?: Both eBook and Print
Website(s)
Chaz Fenwick Home Page Link
Link To Chaz Fenwick Page On Amazon
Link to Author Page on other site
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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.
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