Author Bio:
Greg T Meyers (1964) was born in the United States and graduated with degrees in Marketing and Psychology but after living in London, England he became fascinated with the European medieval period and spent the last 30 years of his life studying it.
Oddly enough, Greg rarely read fiction until he stumbled upon The Post Captain by Patrick O’Brien while in Panama. Being so drawn in, he read the entire 20 book series in short order and it was then he started entertaining the idea of writing a work of historical fiction himself.
When asked what got him started writing Solar Minimum he said he was one day considering that everyone living today had ancestors that lived through the medieval period and that it is all a very real part of each of our individual past. It was then he started fantasizing what would happen if our trouble-ridden world were to plunge back into that period. “While life would certainly be harder, I think we would all be better for it spiritually,” says Greg.
Greg began writing Solar Minimum in February of 2013 and finished all 500+ pages in a short seven months. Solar Minimum is currently proposed to be a three book series with book two due in 2014.
What inspires you to write?
I love creating a world where terrible things happen (like they do in the real world) and then ensure that they always get resolved. I believe this is the heart and soul of every good story. Whether we admit it, we all like happy endings because that’s what we all want for ourselves. Beyond that, I love the time period from 400 to 1750 AD, what a wild and truly AMAZING time in our world, we have much to learn from it. I love weaving in true into fiction where the characters and lessons are real and drawn from actual events.
Tell us about your writing process.
I’ve tried a lot a different methods and I always come back to a good ol’ notebook with masking tape tabs. I carry it with me everywhere and jot down inspiration, things I see and other ideas. I then write a general outline for a book like a coloring book. I then sit down with some Mountain Dew and look out my office window on the Cache National Forest and let my mind go. Some times I color outside the lines (when I’m lucky) and I let the story go where every it takes me. I always joke that I’ve already seen the movies of my writing and they are AWESOME. I just write what I see.
For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
I’ve never tired to talk to them but they sure talk to me and let me know when I take them somewhere in the story they don’t want to go or when I have them do things they think are stupid. For every defined character there is certainly an allowable border they live in and we both know it well. I did have an experience the other day after not writing for a while where a character told me they were WAITING!
What advice would you give other writers?
Just do it. I spent most of my adult life telling myself that someday I was going to write. Just open up a new Word document and start. With the advent of the Internet, research is quick and powerful. Your writing will be much better if it’s accurate and you’ll enjoy it more. Thanks to Google earth, you can go to London and walk down a street and then write about it before your first cup of coffee. 2014 is a wonderful time to be a writer.
How did you decide how to publish your books?
I’m still looking for that elusive publisher but in the mean time I went the self pub route because I can. It’s exciting to have a following and talk with others who love your work and when I hear that someone else loves my work, it makes me want to write more. It would be a pretty lonely world if authors today didn’t self publish. I think about that a lot actually. 50 years ago and older, there were certainly a lot of writers who wrote and died with no one knowing. Withering Heights is a perfect example… shame.
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
I think the traditional publisher will be a relic. With companies like Creative Source doing what they do for so cheap, I can see the big printing houses going away. I think everyone will still like a physical book in their hands but how they get it will change radically in the next 10 years. I think bookstores will follow the same path of the old record stores.
What do you use?
Professional Editor, Beta Readers
What genres do you write?
Fiction, Historical Fiction
What formats are your books in?
Both eBook and Print
Website(s)
Greg T Meyers Home Page Link
Link To Greg T Meyers Page On Amazon
Link to Author Page on other site
Your Social Media Links
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7202476.Greg_T_Meyers
https://www.facebook.com/solarminimum
https://twitter.com/solarminbook
