Overview

Will is an interesting writer. When he started writing, he wrote kids choose your own adventure books. Now he is switching to writing adult thrillers. That's what he loves, and it makes the writing more fun and leads to a better story.

We discuss his influences, which are a bit surprising for a thriller writer, and what's next.

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Transcript

[00:00:50] Stephen: Yeah. All right. So let's talk some author stuff, which we do quite a bit. Yes. And the publishing the [00:01:00] business, and there's a whole lot to it. Now you said you wrote the, choose your own adventure books almost as an experiment, which I thought was great because I did the same thing with a few fiction books.

I wrote them to see if I could do it, to see what it's like to publish, see if they would sell, see how all of that jet. What did, what were some other things you learned from writing the, choose your own adventure books that are helping you now writing thriller?

[00:01:28] Will: Yeah. They cover that showcases your general.

I say that because we were very fortunate that we had a great cover artist who did the first two covers for our a series of fund mistakes. He donated them and he is very tired. He is a comic book artist though. So the covers people contacted us and said, I don't have all the images. I don't have all the illustrations.

And that was something that we had not thought about. So the last two books go [00:02:00] more along with the John. So I would say your cover is extremely important. Study others in your genre and don't feel bad if you think I'm stealing from them. Everybody steals from everybody. Okay. If you are writing a mystery and there is somebody with a magnifying glass and a trench coat on another book, see how that book sold.

Okay. Maybe you need something just like that or just a variation. And the other thing I've learned is to listen to your fans. I had no intention of writing an entire saga for port. Until the fans started saying, where does it go? What's next? And then it really helped me get feedback to start saying, okay, let's take the character in this direction.

Let's see what people think. Let's listen to our launch team, see what they think about this. So it really was something, listen to your fans and get a cover that fits your job. There

[00:02:55] Stephen: you go. And I agree. Over and over, [00:03:00] even from J D Barker, J D burger's been with Jim Patterson on the, a New York times bestseller.

And he said, if the guy over here in your genre is selling books and he has a girl looking to the left and there's a sunset behind her, you should put a girl looking to the left with a son. It is not just because the cover is what. Need to say, oh yeah, I like that type of book. It's not to say, oh, the story in that book looks great.

[00:03:32] Will: You don't see a vampire book with just like a ship on the cup. It might take place on a ship, but you need to see something that is power related. You need to see things, you see blood, you need to see a bat and you see it. But you know, it takes place on a ship then maybe you see like bigger and a cake Dracula on a ship, but you don't have.

And

[00:03:54] Stephen: I think it's changed through the years. I think sometimes people look at stuff from like the seventies [00:04:00] that they read loved growing up and they go, oh, I want it like that because you mentioned vampires.