About L.Y.G.E.R.:
L.Y.G.E.R. is the type of person you fantasize about when you dream up your next book’s hero/heroine, and writes whatever strikes the author’s fancy. It’s that simple. A lover of the strange and macabre, the author is quite eclectic and doesn’t fit a stereotype. The author has an enduring love for sci-fi, fantasy, and Christian themed or inspired projects but is quite opinionated and has no qualms about sharing political commentary, popular or not.
Known for “telling it like it is,” the author has survived a very public family tragedy, been mentioned or appeared in the news multiple times, slipped out of town ahead of angry lynch mobs raised by corrupt bureaucrats challenged by the author, worked for the government, worked in military, finance, real estate, legal, and medical fields, ghostwritten how-to guides, memoirs, technical manuals, and copywrote for several industries, all while travelling across much of the continental U.S..
Christian, the author has drawn many of the inspirations of various tales from this faith and other religious texts, has never been married, and between publications travels the globe seeking inspiration for the next (hopefully best-seller) project. Other inspirations include H.R. Giger, H.P. Lovecraft, Brian Lumley, Frank Herbert, Robert Jordan, Terry Brooks, and many, many others. The author continues to write ad copy, photojournal, and travel when not writing the next novel you’ll find here.
What inspires you to write?
A combination of experiences and vivid dreams. Some of my current works are ideas that stemmed from dreams that repeated until I got them down on paper and watched the story unfold from there. They all draw on my own experiences, and those others have shared with me, with other people over the years. They don’t always reflect my own viewpoint on people and human interactions, but there are usually elements common to my personal opinion present.
Tell us about your writing process.
Stream of Consciousness more than anything else. That fills in the largest parts. I try to set myself daily goals, but there are days I put down 5 times as much material as it continues to come to me. Other days I struggle to approach my goal, and there are days it simply isn’t there and I work on other things, sometimes not even writing, while the ideas ferment and inspiration returns. Beyond that streaming, I go back and fact check to make sure everything remained consistent and connected in the final picture. Sometimes I have a solid beginning and end, but I’m not sure how they meet. I wait until it becomes clear to finish that story. In the meantime, I work on something else.
For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
I’d say we have regular interactions, though more frequently it’s not in the conscious world. Sometimes the best pieces I think are lost as I wake and get around to getting everything down. I’ve lost track of how many Eureka! gold moments I’ve had that I couldn’t even remember the foggiest detail about once I was ready to write.
What advice would you give other writers?
Write. A lot. You’re probably going to have years you want to throw aside as garbage if you let it sit for three months and read it again. But you can’t get better until you try. Keep writing, keep getting outside editors and other’s opinions and have a thick skin. Or get out so those of us who can write can make a living.
How did you decide how to publish your books?
My editor more than anything. I tried to go the traditional publishing route, tracked down successful agents with similar projects that could propel my work from obscurity into a bestseller status if they wanted, researched them, their products, and then queried, with a completed manuscript. I sent out maybe a dozen that way. Only one bothered to respond, and it was a barely literate response from an assistant saying it wasn’t reviewed and wouldn’t be reviewed by the agent, thank you. As the weeks passed and I started looking for more agents to query, I thought about how long it might well take to get the book published if I had to do this for 100 or more agents to get picked up, or if I was never accepted. And then I accepted my editor’s advice, who urged it would be much easier to make several times the money per book if I self published. He also noted that most publishers expect an author to continue and do most of the marketing themselves to make the book a success.
Sure, an advance would be very nice, but if I’m going to bust my tail and do all the work, I might as well get my works out to the public and let them judge my quality instead of wasting my time and efforts trying to catch an agent or publisher’s attention. Time I could put into another project.
From then on, it was a no-brainer. Though with a large enough advance, I’d consider a traditional publisher, but they simply don’t provide enough value these days to publishing. Instead, they throttle the business. They do bring a higher overall quality product to market than many self publishers, and they have established relationships that may bring new options (film adaptations anyone?) that self publishers don’t see very often, but these are so rare it makes more sense to master one’s own craft and let them come crawling to justify their value in the equation. And it seems, the success of Amazon suggests this is also a large part of the public’s opinion.
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
It’s not going anywhere, at least until we reduce the world’s population back below perhaps say, a billion people? Maybe less? I don’t know. Everything changes. The survivors adapt, the rest die off or retire to obscurity until they die. Morbid, perhaps. But true.
What do you use?: Co-writer, Professional Editor
What genres do you write?: Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Christian, Religious, Romance, Nonfiction (memoirs & copywrite).
What formats are your books in?: Both eBook and Print
Website(s)
L.Y.G.E.R. Home Page Link
Link To L.Y.G.E.R. Page On Amazon
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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.
