About Michael Barrington MA., MEd., Ph.D.:
I am international author, educated in England, Belgium and France and specialize in historical fiction. I have written ten books and more than fifty short stories. Let the Peacock Sing, The Ethiopian Affair, Becoming Anya, The Baron of Bengal Street, No Room for Heroes. I also speak six languages. The Bishop Wears No Drawers is a memoir of ten years spent as a missionary in Africa where I was stood up to be shot. I obviously survived! Passage to Murder is a mystery novel set in San Francisco during prohibition. My latest book Magic at Stonehenge is a collection of 42 short stories, and will be published in March 2024. I live near San Francisco with my French wife, a painter who designs my book covers. I also blog on my website: www.mbwriter.net. I am currently working an a novel , Labyrinth, composed of five distinct and parallel stories linked with a common thread. As the mood moves me, I will occasionally take a short break usually on a weekend and write a short story.
What inspires you to write?
I have always been a writer. I was the unfortunate child that was usually asked to stand up in class and to read the story I had written.My head is so full of ideas for me I don't have enough time to write everything I want to. I have traveled and worked in more than fifty countries and I draw on my experiences for some of my characters and situations
What authors do you read when you aren’t writing?
A difficult question. Not all authors produce quality books, even though one of them may have been a best seller. So I have favorite books! I love Paul Theroux's travel books. Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, Country Girl by Edna O'Brien, Wolf Hall by Hiliary Mantel, and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I love reading short stories: Hemingway, H.H Munro, Ngozie Adiche, George Saunders
Tell us about your writing process.
I treat writing like a job. I write or do research for eight hours a day. I take breaks and a day off here and there to play golf. I love writing late at night and into the small hours when the world is silent. I am extremely well organized and keep files of material that I may not use on a current book or story but might be useful later on. I am a pantser and very rarely if ever use a story board. I have a general idea and plot in my head and just write. I do not use character sketches. I let them tell me who they are, what they are like, color of hair, what they like to eat, clothes to wear, interests and peculiarities. specially how they feel in certain situations. I like to see my characters slowly reveal themselves and sometimes I laugh at what they say or do, especially if they reveal something unusual and unexpected about themselves.
For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
All the time. I fall in love with them. They almost become my family or sometimes people I'm glad are not in my family. I will often ask them what they are going to do next, how they will solve a problem etc but especially how they feel about things.I get so involved with them it's sometimes difficult to end my novel! When they go silent on me I will give them words which I might have to revise afterwards or even edit out.
What advice would you give other writers?
Discipline. It took me five years to write my first book. I had a full time job and the writing weekends I promised myself seemed to quickly evaporate. Set a writing goal: so many words each week. Get organized. I lost so much time in my early years not having a good filing system. I ended up spending hours looking for material I had already researched. Never give up even if you seem to run into a wall. And especially develop a thick skln for publisher rejections.
How did you decide how to publish your books?
I have done both. Finding an agent can be time consuming, frustrating and discouraging. Do research or buy into a newsletter that provides reliable resources. Publishing houses change all the time and there are many which will accept directly from an author.Failing that more and more companies are offering self publishing opportunities. Explore the publishing market very carefully. There are lots of seemingly genuine companies but they are scams and after your money. I curerntly have a book with an establshed publisher and another I will self publish. There is no guarantee that even with an establsihed publisher your book will become a best seller. the advaantage is that you will receive some payment up front as they purchase the right to publish your manuscript.
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
Our industry will struggle with the influence of AI. However, since creative writers themselves do not even know what they will write, a software program will be left guessing at best. It will never be able to reproduce the human emotions of a writer expressed through a character who is not yet fully developed! Approximate perhaps, but accurately I doubt.
What genres do you write?: Historical Fiction, Memoir, Short Story Collection, Murder Mystery
What formats are your books in?: Print, Both eBook and Print
Website(s)
Michael Barrington MA., MEd., Ph.D. Home Page Link
Your Social Media Links
Facebook
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.
