About Tracie McBride:
Tracie McBride is a New Zealander who lives in Melbourne, Australia with her husband and three children. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in over 80 print and electronic publications, including Bleed, FISH and the Stoker Award-nominated anthologies Horror for Good and Horror Library Volume 5. Her debut collection Ghosts Can Bleed contains much of the work that earned her a Sir Julius Vogel Award. She helps to wrangle slush for Dark Moon Digest and was the vice president of Dark Continents Publishing (2010 – 2014). Visitors to her blog are welcome at http://traciemcbridewriter.wordpress.com/.
What inspires you to write?
Dreams. Nightmares. Fears and desires. Everyday events and impossible imaginings. But mostly, I’m inspired by other writers, and the drive to make an emotional impact on readers in the same way that my favourite authors impact on me.
Tell us about your writing process.
Being a short story writer, I don’t have to plan in as much detail as a novelist might. Depending on what my impetus is for writing, I will either outline a plot or create a mind map of ideas and themes. I prefer pen and paper for planning and laptop for construction.
For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
Good grief, no! My characters are often the sort of people I would cross the street to avoid.
What advice would you give other writers?
Writing is usually seen as a solitary profession, but the support, encouragement and advice of other writers is invaluable; seek out other authors, preferably those who are familiar with your preferred genres and who are further along in the journey than you are, and learn from them. But at the same time, learn to discern between useful advice and not-so-useful (the better writers are not always the better critics).
How did you decide how to publish your books?
Explore everything! Legacy publishing, small press, author co-ops, self-publishing…the options are varied, and a little dizzying for newcomers, but I’d advise new authors to keep an open mind and be flexible when it comes to publishing. The only thing you want to steer clear of is vanity publishing (you’ll recognize them by the exorbitant sums of money they’ll be charging authors to produce and market their books).
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
Just like Andy Warhol’s predicted 15 minutes of fame for everyone, I think that in the future, everyone will be a book publisher. Such is the beauty (and the peril) of e-books and Print on Demand technology.
What do you use?: Professional Editor, Professional Cover Designer
What genres do you write?: Horror, fantasy, science fiction
What formats are your books in?: Both eBook and Print
Website(s)
Tracie McBride Home Page Link
Link To Tracie McBride Page On Amazon
Your Social Media Links
Goodreads
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
LinkedIn
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.
