#12 Questions for… James Lovegrove

3 min


James Lovegrove
James Lovegrove

#12questionsfor

James Lovegrove

 

MOTH: 1. What inspired you to become a writer?

JL 1. I couldn’t ever see myself doing anything else. As a child, I always liked to read, and I knew a few authors in the area – one was the father of a school friend, the other was a neighbor – so I was aware that being an author was an actual job done by real people. I used to write stories for fun, and I still do that today, pretty much, only now I get paid for it.

 

MOTH: 2. The title of your last book?

JL. 2. Sherlock Holmes and the Beast of the Stapletons. It’s a continuation of the story of The Hound of the Baskervilles, which is my favorite Sherlock Holmes tale. The Conan Doyle novel ends with what I feel is unfinished business (the villain is supposedly dead but nobody actually sees him die, so he could still be alive). I decided I would finish it!

 

MOTH: 3. Ebook – for or against?

JL. 3. I have nothing against ebooks but I don’t personally like reading off a screen. I like to own physical books. I like holding one in my hand and being able to read it anywhere I like, without worrying about battery level or anything of that sort. A physical book is an unimprovable artifact, perfectly designed for its purpose.

 

MOTH: 4. How do you deal with bad reviews?

JL: 4. I used to resent them more than I do nowadays. A bad review used to worry me because I thought it would put readers off buying the book. Now I understand that no book is perfect and there’s always at least one person who’s going to dislike it. What I can’t stand (or understand) is a bad review that misconstrues my intentions and even my personality. I had one recently that said I was a misogynist and all the female characters in the story were weak and lacked agency. This was demonstrably untrue, but I reckon the reviewer had a private agenda and wasn’t going to let objectivity or the truth stand in their way.

 

MOTH: 5. Is it better to promote yourself online or in other media?

JL.5. Promotion anywhere does help one’s career and raise one’s profile, I suppose, but I’m not very good at it myself. I would rather let my books do the talking. I see some authors who curate their public personas with great care and spend a lot of time doing it – too much time, almost. I prefer to spend my day actually writing rather than telling others about what I’m writing.

 

MOTH: 6. Which writers had most influence on your writing style?

JL: 6. A list: Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Ian Fleming, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Stan Lee, J.G. Ballard, Kurt Vonnegut. There are countless others but those are the main guys.

 

MOTH: 7. What success do you expect from your work?

JL: 7. Interesting question. To me, success can be defined as sales figures, and that’s an important thing, because if your books don’t sell well, no publisher is going to commission you to write more. But there’s also success in terms of creating a book that comes as close to your original vision of it as possible. Sometimes this happens – the book turns out exactly the way you wanted it to – and it’s very satisfying. Sometimes a book veers off in another direction and turns into a wonderful, exciting stranger, and that’s also fun. And very occasionally a book ends up being not all that you’d hoped, though good nonetheless, and this can be a bit disappointing.

 

MOTH: 8. What is your target audience?

JL: 8. I don’t really have a target audience in mind. I just write something I think is decent and worth reading, executed to the very best of my abilities, and then trust that readers will find it and enjoy it.

 

MOTH: 9. Describe your last work in 12 words.

JL: 9. Earlier this year I finished the first draft of a new Sherlock Holmes, The Three Winter Terrors. This is the third and latest of a set of Holmes novels that are “straight” adventures without any fantasy or SF elements, unlike my first five Holmes novels and my Cthulhu Casebooks trilogy. The Three Winter Terrors, as the title suggests, consists of three separate adventures, all taking place at winter time, that link together to form one larger story.

 

MOTH: 10. Advice for future writers?

JL: 10. Read. And write. Those are the two things you have to keep doing; you can’t be an author otherwise. Read, to see how it’s done. Write, to figure out how to do it yourself.

 

MOTH: 11. Where would you like your writing to take you as a guest?

JL: 11. I have no overall plan for my writing career. I never have. I just do whatever intrigues me or pleases me, and as long as I can keep doing that, then great, I’m happy. I hate getting stuck in any one genre or niche for too long. That’s why, over the years, I’ve written SF, horror, fantasy, Young Adult fiction, children’s books, tie-in fiction, pastiche novels, and lots else besides. I just go where the whim takes me, and that keeps things fresh and fun.

 

MOTH: 12. Holding your next book promotion?

JL: 12. I have no idea. Conventions aren’t happening at the moment, for the obvious reasons. Nor are signings. We’ll have to see what 2021 holds.


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