About Michael D. Young:
Michael is a graduate of Brigham Young University and Western Governors University with degrees in German Teaching, Music, Educational Leadership and Instructional Design. Though he grew up traveling the world with his military father, he now lives in Utah with his wife, Jen, and their three children, where he creates online curriculum for BYU. He enjoys acting in community theater, playing and writing music and spending time with his family. He played for several years with the handbell choir Bells on Temple Square and is now a member of the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square.
He is the author of the novels in The Canticle Kingdom Series, The Last Archangel Series, the Chess Quest Series and the Penultimate Dawn Cycle (The Hunger), as well as several non-fiction works, including An Advent Carols Countdown, The Song of the Righteous, As Saints We Sing, and The Song of the Saints. He has also had work featured in various online and print magazines such as Bards and Sages Quarterly, Mindflights, Meridian, Nugent Magazine, The New Era, Keeping Tab, Allegory, Liahona, and Ensign. He has also won honorable mention three times in the Writers of the Future contest.
What inspires you to write?
I am inspired to write because I love the process of creation. To me, worldbuilding is a thrilling experience and it is all the better when other people enjoy visiting my worlds.
What authors do you read when you aren’t writing?
I am definitely a fan of Brandon Sanderson, who lives in the next town over and whom I’ve run into a few times. He has great worldbuilding and magic systems, and I like how many things are connected. I also enjoy other fantasy authors, such as Terry Brooks, Orson Scott Card, Robert Jordan, and of, course, C.S. Lewis and Tolkien.
Tell us about your writing process.
I'm a little bit of a cross between an outliner and a pantser. I like having some "goalpost" events in an outline and then I leave myself some flexibility about how to connect those different plot points. These days, I do a lot of planning and character sketches in Scrivener, which makes it easy to organize everything in one place.
For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
Mostly, I take a cinematic view of my characters and will picture them up on the big screen, seeing how they will react in a given situation. I can picture the costuming, the music, the special effects…all of that and then I try to capture it on the page.
What advice would you give other writers?
Be patient. Nothing in the publishing world goes quickly. While you are waiting to hear back about a project you have submitted, start something else. Try not to take people's reviews too personally. Books are highly subjective and one book is never going to please everyone.
How did you decide how to publish your books?
I have gone the route of doing both traditional and self publishing. For many of my books, I feel like they had a large enough audience that I wanted the expertise of professional editors, cover designers, etc. to polish up my book and so I went with traditional publishing. Some other books of mine where more niche, and so I felt that self-publishing was the way to go. If you are committed to learning all the steps of the self-publishing process, I advise new authors to give it a try. It is a lot to learn, but it can be very rewarding to have full creative control. It's a good thing to at least try so that you can appreciate all the complexities that go into publishing a book, no matter how you choose to publish in the future.
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
I don't think physical books will ever go away entirely. But I think we will find ways to merge technology with traditional print books, finding ways to interact with and expand a book's content with our Internet-connected devices. That will be fun, but the solid fundamentals of good storytelling will remain the same and will continue to be essential for success.
What genres do you write?: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Inspirational, Non-Fiction
What formats are your books in?: Both eBook and Print, Audiobook
Website(s)
Michael D. Young Home Page Link
Link To Michael D. Young Page On Amazon
Your Social Media Links
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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.
